I intended to title this bog: The Redux of the Keystone Cops, Part II. However, the events of the past few weeks are too tragic, and too deadly to even hint at humor. The leaders responsible for the failed American evacuation of Afghanistan have either lied to us, or they are incredibly, unbelievably, incompetent. All of the following: President Joe Biden, Secretary of State (SOS) Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense (SOD) Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Mark Milley, Commander of Afghanistan Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie, and National Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan, should resign, or be fired. These people are either too untruthful, or just plain incapable, of holding such critical high level positions in our government. The number one responsibility of our government is to keep Americans safe. Those mentioned above have exhibited an inability to do that. The American people have lost confidence in their ability to lead. Heads must roll!
There are a couple of others who need to be mentioned for slightly different reasons. They are White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and Press Secretary for the Department of Defense, Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby. Both are in a difficult box. It is not clear if either of them have done anything wrong. If they knew what they were reporting was false they should resign for knowingly misleading the American public. If they were only regurgitating what their bosses told them to report, they should resign for a different reason. If their superiors lied to them they should resign because of the complete lack of confidence created by those lies. How could a credible person remain in such a public position representing someone they couldn’t trust? Loyalty is an admirable quality. It is foolhardy, even dangerous, to remain loyal to someone who is untrustworthy. Either way these two people should be looking for new employment.
Sometimes we forget that just a couple of months ago we were helping the Afghan military hunt down, and kill, terrorist members of the Taliban. So one can be forgiven for asking: Why did they say that? Why did they do that? When President Biden was asked on 5/6 if the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable he said: “No it is not inevitable. Because you have the Afghan troops, they’re 300,000 well equipped, as well equipped as any army in the world, and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It’s not inevitable.” On 7/23 Biden asked Afghan President Ghani to say whatever was necessary to reverse the perception of how badly the war was going, even if he had to lie. In a televised interview George Stephanopoulos asked our President what would happen if Americans were still in Afghanistan come 8/31. Biden said he would not leave Americans behind. Again he lied. For what I believe is the first time in American history we left an unknown number of our citizens behind enemy lines as we beat a hasty retreat. When it was obvious the withdrawals weren’t going as smooth as Biden promised, enter NSA director Jake Sullivan. He lied for weeks in covering for Biden. He continued to tell us that the president had repeatedly warned about the difficulty of this mission. That is completely false. Biden, Milley, Blinken,, and Austin, all said they were relying on the Taliban, a group of terrorists we were killing, and who were trying to kill us, to provide security at the airport. What could go wrong? They said we could trust the Taliban because Al Qaeda and ISIS-k, also terrorist groups, were mortal enemies. The Taliban’s hate was displayed when they opened prison gates and released 5,000 Al Qaeda and ISIS-k prisoners at Bagram air base. This is not the typical behavior of a mortal enemy. Ultimately it was a breach of Taliban security that allowed an ISIS-k terrorist to murder 13 American soldiers! Next we take a look at comments made by Afghan Cent. Com. Commander General McKenzie. McKenzie told us that the Taliban had been helpful in a couple of areas so we were comfortable in sharing intelligence with these terrorists. This is naive at its best, criminal at its worst. There was one part of this mission that garnered very few quotes. That is the part about our closing Bagram Air Base and leaving over $80 billion in modern military weaponry to the Taliban. The brain trust was nearly silent about this horrendous decision. It was inexcusable, and will almost certainly lead to the deaths of Americans. I could go on for pages with a multitude of idiotic, numbskull, quotes from these people. I’ll save you that and use one last brain dead quote from our Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield. She said the U.N. had sent “a very strongly worded press statement” to the Taliban. She said the letter warned the Taliban to respect women’s rights and humanitarian law. This foolishness sums up the ignorance of people who continue to think that all people are nice. All people are good. The Taliban is a group with a history of beheading Christians, stoning women to death, and throwing homosexuals off of buildings. There’s every chance the Taliban didn’t receive the letter. A better chance they couldn’t read it. And there’s no chance they would give a damn anyway. The only people who wonder how Americans, and all women, in Afghanistan will be treated by the barbarians are our dementia addled President and high ranking members of his administration.
In the 50 years Biden has held public office he has learned that perception can be as important as reality. Uncle Joe seems to have an unmatched ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Biden had a gift handed to him with the Afghan situation. About 80% of Americans wanted to get out of Afghanistan. All he had to do was to devise a 3 part plan that: 1. Got our citizens and those Afghans who helped our war fighters, safely out of the country. 2. Repatriate all of our military weaponry. 3. Remove our heroic war fighters. This was always going to be difficult. But the most powerful country in the world could have made it happen. That would have allowed Biden to take a bow as the President who put an end to the longest war in U.S. history. Alas, Joe saw the potential for an epic photo-op. If he moved the evacuation date to 8/31 he could plan a celebration on, wait for it, 9/11!!! Imagine the symbolism. Unfortunately, when Joe and his advisors should have been huddling to put together a cohesive evacuation plan to save American lives, they were otherwise occupied. President Biden was busy signing a veritable mountain of executive orders reversing Trump programs, most of which were successful. General Austin was busy handling his military-wide stand down order. It seems he was adamant in finding every brave soldier who simply wasn’t woke enough. The gruff General Milley was testifying to Congress. He took considerable time explaining the importance of his understanding the significance of white privilege. SOS Blinken was still recovering from the ass kicking the Chinese delegation gave him on his home turf in Alaska. This reminds me of a reported Obama quote about his VP: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to F*** things up.” How did he know?
I wish I could tell you the worst of this debacle is behind us. I can’t. Who knows how may Americans and deserving Afghans are still to be evacuated. Someone will have to get those people out. That will fall on patriotic ex-soldiers who care more about fellow citizens than their government does. There will almost certainly be mercenaries who will extricate these people, for money. When all else fails we will have to pay mountains of money in ransom to the barbarians. Biden has been around too long to pay ransom. He, and his handlers, will figure out how to funnel what they will call “humanitarian aid” into the hands of the Taliban. Of course this will help fund terrorism. As usual, taxpayers will continue to fund the screw-ups of our politicians and bureaucrats.
After promising to bring EVERY American home, the administration is now bragging about getting 90% of them home. The team was all excited about their “incredible success” in completing the greatest human airlift in history. They got over 100,000 people out of the country. Only a tiny fraction of the evacuees are Americans. Given the Biden administration’s proclivity for prevarication we will find out shortly that most of the 100,000 evacuees aren’t the interpreters, or Afghans who actually helped our war fighters. In fact, don’t be surprised if many of them aren’t even Afghans! In their zeal to produce the greatest CYA (cover your ass) in history, they loaded planes with anyone who had a pulse. Many of those who have arrived in the U.S. don’t have papers, or IDs. Many can’t read or write. We have no idea who they are. Furthermore, with no working Embassy in Afghanistan there is absolutely no way to properly vet them. We are going to be stuck providing for tens of thousands of people who have no right to be here. Some of them may want to kill us. Thank you Mr. President.
So what is the final analysis? The Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS-k, and various other terrorist groups with the common goal of killing us control nearly all of Afghanistan. More than they controlled before 9/11/01. They have over $80 billion of modern military weaponry gifted by the Biden administration. They have thousands of potential hostages. America is at far greater risk of terrorist attack on the homeland than we were prior to 9/11/01. We should be furious. We must demand accountability for this terrible fiasco. We must contact our members of Congress and insist answers for failure of this embarrassing and deadly mission.