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Posted Wednesday 25 August. Events moving swiftly, could be out of date:
Americans Await Evacuation As Biden Takes A Knee To Taliban
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
When President Joe Biden met with this year’s WNBA champions Seattle Storm in the White House on Monday, he took a symbolic knee, apparently to show he’s Woke. No surprise. He just took a k befoe the Taliban, too, after the terrorist group’s humiliating rejection of his request for an “extension” on his Aug. 31 deadline for evacuating Afghanistan.
Biden’s plans, if you can call them that, to get Americans out of Afghanistan have been an epic disaster. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of Biden and his administration.
Biden rejected extending the deadline, citing the “increased risk” of terrorism as a reason for doing so. The fact is, he really had no choice, after the Taliban rejected the U.S. plea, calling the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal a “red line.” The U.S. president did what the Taliban told him to do.
That rejection, by the way, came after Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Kabul for emergency talks with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar sent Burns packing with nothing for his efforts, another humiliation.
“If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations, the answer is no,” said Taliban official Suhail Shaheen. “Or there would be consequences.”
Adding insult to injury, Biden told our allies that the U.S. “won’t be able to get everyone out of Afghanistan,” according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, twisting the knife, the Taliban demanded that the U.S. take only Americans, not Afghans, with them.
Late in the day, facing a barrage of criticism from all quarters, Biden appeared to abruptly change tack, calling for “contingency plans” for lengthening the withdrawal, whatever that means.
It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of the Biden administration, which in a brief two-week period has managed to alienate and weaken our major allies while emboldening and empowering our foes, in particular Russia, China, Iran and the myriad Islamist terrorist groups across the Mideast and South Asia.
And things are about to get even uglier in Afghanistan, if that’s possible.
The good news is that, as of Monday, the U.S. had already helped evacuate 37,000 people from Afghanistan, according to a leaked ambassadorial communication. The bad news: Only 4,000 Americans were among those evacuated.
The U.S., despite having the biggest airlift capacity on Earth, has had to rely on private carriers to evacuate the country, at the same time doing little to get stranded American citizens into the airport, say some.
“The South Africans, the Brits, the Qataris, their ambassadors have been getting safe passage for people to the airport,” said former congressman and one-time Navy SEAL Scott Taylor, who is working with others to privately evacuate people from Kabul.
Taylor, in remarks to the Daily Caller, called the U.S. refusal to aid private groups such as his “frustrating” and, in even blunter terms, a “massive f*#k up.”
There remain 15,000 more Americans and at least 50,000 Afghans to be evacuated, according to recent U.S. estimates. But even the Biden administration admits it doesn’t know how many Americans are even there.
From initial assurances that all would be rescued to Biden’s more recent comment that the U.S. “won’t be able to get everyone out,” it now looks as if a nightmare scenario is unfolding.
It includes possible mass hostage-taking or imprisonment of Americans as “spies,” with abuse, torture and possibly even executions for some. We’ve been here before. Remember the 444 days in Iran from 1979 to 1981, under the Ayatollah Khomeini? The Taliban is even worse. And it’s terrifying to think what it’ll do to those Afghans who helped us these past two decades.
In addition to gifting the now-national Taliban army with billions of dollars in spanking-new U.S. rifles, missile launchers, aircraft and even uniforms, we have now created the potential for “Largest Hostage Crisis in American History,” as Commentary online called it.
Begging terrorists for help is a huge mistake for a superpower. Our willful weakness makes the world a far more unstable and dangerous place than it already is.
Do the Democrats in Congress care? It doesn’t seem so. They’ve been moving forward on other things, even as they criticize and distance themselves from the increasingly isolated, politically damaged and mentally failing Biden. His public approval in nearly every poll has collapsed, and Democrats fear the taint of his failure going into 2022.
While the rest of us worry about the utter implosion of U.S. foreign policy, the loss of our prestige and power around the world, and the tragedy of the Afghan people and Americans trapped in Kabul, Democrats in Congress have had their eyes on the real prize.
With little fanfare, they just announced a $3.5 trillion spending bill that if passed into law will put Americans further in hock for decades to come, raise taxes, kill thousands of small businesses, add to already soaring inflation and give government unprecedented control over all aspects of American life.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” as the Democrats like to say.
Whether they now try to remove political liability Biden via the 25th Amendment, making Kamala Harris president, or wait and take their chances in the 2022 midterms, remains to be seen.
But Biden’s total lack of competence can no longer be doubted. He’s failed to push back against the murderous Taliban, set up the possible re-establishment of both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghan territory, and in effect asked for a mass hostage crisis. Such ineptitude isn’t mere bureaucratic failure; it’s deadly.
And more:
Worst is yet to come.
The Largest Hostage Crisis in American History
By Noah Rothman
America has been held hostage before. In 1976, TWA Flight 355 was taken over by Croatian nationalists, and a New York City police officer lost his life in an effort to resolve it. The 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro by militants with the Palestinian Liberation Front ended only following American military intervention. Most famously, the vanguard of the Islamic revolution in Iran took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. These traumatic episodes pale in comparison to what the United States may now be facing in Afghanistan. America may now be in the middle of the largest hostage crisis in its history.
On Monday, the Biden administration announced that it had ferried at least 37,000 people out of the increasingly inhumane conditions that prevail in Hamid Karzai International Airport—the last remaining bastion of Western influence in Afghanistan. That’s no small feat. But insofar as you can call the herculean conscription of both civilian and military forces into the effort to evacuate Americans and their partners from behind Taliban lines “easy,” that was the easy part. The clock is ticking down to zero hour, and the United States will not meet its deadline.
“We’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated,” Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin promised late last week. “And I’ll do that as long as we possibly can until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.” That “clock” had been set not just by the president, who has insisted that the United States would remove all vulnerable Americans and U.S. allies from Afghanistan by August 31, but the Taliban. “It’s a red line,” said Taliban representative Suhail Shaheen. “If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations, the answer is no. Or there would be consequences.”
In the effort to speed things along, the United States has reluctantly begun executing special forces operations designed to exfiltrate Americans outside of the airport, even at the risk of inflaming tensions with the Taliban and their State Department-designated terrorist allies who are providing for our “security.” Simultaneously, American forces are reportedly turning away Afghans eligible for evacuation and relocation. But even abandoning our allies to prioritize Americans will not cut it. As of Monday, only about 3,300 of the estimated 10 to 15,000 Americans who were trapped in Afghanistan when Kabul fell have been ferried out of the country. Even at this unsustainable pace, the American mission in Afghanistan will not be over by August 31. And everyone but the Biden White House seems to know it.
“Given the number of Americans who still need to be evacuated, the number of SIVs, the number of others who are members of the Afghan press, civil society leaders, women leaders—it’s hard for me to imagine all of that can be accomplished between now and the end of the month,” said U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Monday. A number of prominent federal legislators are demanding that the administration commit to a longer operation, and they are joined by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He will use the occasion of an emergency G7 summit on Tuesday to pressure Biden to “ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years.”
Joe Biden finds himself in a trap of his own making. U.S. forces operate out of Kabul’s airport at the pleasure of the Taliban. At any point, what Biden called a “ragtag” group can disable the airport and reengage in combat with the American forces they’ve so far allowed a narrow berth. Biden is determined to avoid that outcome. The only alternative to such a disaster would be to bribe the Taliban into submission. It’s an option the president has already foreshadowed. “The Taliban has to make a fundamental decision,” Biden said on Sunday. To be successful, they are “going to need everything from additional help in terms of economic assistance, trade, and a whole range of things.” The Taliban, Biden said, is “seeking legitimacy to determine whether or not they will be recognized by other countries.” No doubt, all these carrots are being dangled before our captors by CIA Director William Burns, who was this week dispatched to Kabul likely to negotiate an extension of our mission there.
The message from the Taliban couldn’t be clearer: Your money or your lives. And there are thousands of Americans in Afghanistan from which the Taliban might choose to make a few examples. As the heartrending audio received by Rep. Carol Miller’s office attests, the Americans trapped behind enemy lines believe they are abandoned by their government to the mercies of a vengeful Islamist militia. As one staffer at the abandoned American embassy admitted, “it would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than to face the brutality of a likely unsuccessful effort to reach American service personnel on their own. Our citizens and friends are resigning themselves to a terrible fate.
America’s humiliation in Afghanistan did not end with the fall of Kabul. It is only just beginning.
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Withdrawing prematurely does not satisfy sexually or militarily.
Biden’s Collapsing Reputation
Maybe the presidency wasn’t the ideal job for a first-time executive after all.
By James Freeman (James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”)
More Americans now disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as President than approve, according to the RealClearPolitics average of public opinion polls. The significant deterioration in support for Mr. Biden since the start of his presidency—accelerated by his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan—is likely due in part to unrealistic expectations sold to news consumers by U.S. media outlets and by Mr. Biden himself.
A more or less typical inhabitant of Washington’s political swamp, Mr. Biden was commonly presented in 2020 as experienced and principled. Now the media presenters of this idea have suddenly been confronted with its refutation, as Princeton’s Robert George noted last week:
To get rid of Trump, some people felt it was necessary to say things about Joe Biden that aren’t true--that he is competent, for example, compassionate, caring, even wise. For some to say it, they had to find a way to make themselves believe it. Now reality has come crashing in.
Among the many problems overlooked in the media campaign to elect Mr. Biden is that his work experience is remarkably limited for someone his age. In March this column noted:
A true inspiration for everyone considering a second career, President Joe Biden has embarked on his first executive job at the tender age of 78... After a few years as a lawyer and county council member, he spent 36 years as a legislator in the U.S. Senate. Then Mr. Biden spent eight years as vice president, standing at the ready in case anything ever happened to the man in charge. Fortunately, the country never needed to call upon Mr. Biden to exercise executive authority... Now some of the voters who finally decided to give Mr. Biden a shot at management may be developing second thoughts.
After thinking it over, many voters have decided he’s managing poorly. Susan Page, Matthew Brown and Mabinty Quarshie report on Mr. Biden’s standing in the latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll:
His overall job approval rating now stands at 41% who approve versus 55% who disapprove – a big drop in the closely watched barometer of political health. Until last week, national polls generally showed his approval rating above 50%.
Now, while he has held the backing of 87% of Democrats, only 32% of independents say he’s doing a good job.
The Biden polling weakness is not limited to the issue of Afghanistan, according to USA Today:
“Today, President Biden’s overall approval has taken a turn for the worse due to his awful job performance rating on Afghanistan,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center. “His approval on immigration and the economy are also upside down. The only issue keeping him remotely in the game is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he is barely at 50%.”
As for Afghanistan, what’s striking is how many people agree with him on the idea of a withdrawal but blame him for the execution. USA Today reports:
Biden’s decision to pull out troops was backed by most Americans, 53%-38%. But almost two-thirds, 62%, disapproved of the way his administration has handled that withdrawal.
“He basically handed the Taliban all these weapons, and he’s inspired a resurgent ISIS now,” said Aubrey Schlumbrecht, 51, of Lakewood, Colorado, a home health-care nurse and political independent who was among those polled. “He is not even taking any responsibility. He says he owns it, but he’s blaming other people and he’s blaming the Afghan people themselves.”
...now 73% of Americans believe Afghanistan will once again become a base for terrorists who want to attack the United States. There is scant support for developing diplomatic relations with the emerging rulers there; 71% say the United States should not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Mr. Biden may think it’s unfair for voters to blame him for the ending of a long war waged by his predecessors. But as a candidate he presented himself as an expert in foreign policy, uniquely qualified to manage such challenges.
If voters are now more skeptical than the president about the wisdom of dealing with the Taliban, they have good reason to be. In the Atlantic, Graeme Wood reviews what happened the last time Afghanistan’s new rulers ran the country:
When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost.
The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history. The Taliban has once again declared a general amnesty, and asked everyone to show up for work in the morning and prepare to unite behind a Taliban government that will rule according to Islamic law—but perhaps, the group has suggested, not in the harsh manner that made it infamous during its rule from 1996 to 2001. Women can continue their education so long as they wear the hijab, and the Taliban will guarantee human rights and freedoms of speech and expression, it said, so long as they comply with Sharia. (Spoiler: The Taliban does not believe they do.)
Mr. Biden can argue that the tragic chaos of our exit was inevitable, but it’s clear that his administration has also botched parts of this operation that are well beyond the borders of Afghanistan. At Axios Jonathan Swan, Hans Nichols and Glen Johnson report:
Shortly before 8 a.m. last Friday, an official at U.S. Central Command sent a searing wake-up call to colleagues: The sweltering Qatar air base where the Biden administration is housing thousands of Afghan evacuees was awash with loose feces and urine and a rat infestation, according to internal emails shared with Axios...
The email by supervisory special agent Colin Sullivan — with subject line “Dire conditions at Doha” — went to officials at the State Department and the Pentagon. It described “a life-threatening humanitarian disaster … that I want to make sure all of you are fully tracking.”
“While not in any way downplaying the conditions in Kabul... the current conditions in Doha are of our own doing.”
... The State Department had done little to advise the Defense Department about how to build appropriate facilities to house thousands of Afghan refugees, according to the U.S. government official who read out the emails to Axios.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions. The official said U.S. Central Command was doing the best it could under appalling conditions and inadequate forethought and contingency planning from the State Department and White House.
Public opinion on Mr. Biden’s mismanagement of the Afghan exit may evolve over time. We should also note once again that polling, including today’s offering from USA Today, is not a hard science, if it’s even a science.
But for the moment one can only wonder: who are these 41% of voters who approve of the job Joe Biden is doing?
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Biden Folds to the TalibanRead More →
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Teach Respect, Not Critical Race Theory
Discussions of race and prejudice should begin at home.
By John Beatty
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Victor Davis Hanson Examines The American Socialist Revolution
Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative historian with an exciting perspective on the dangers facing traditional American institutions. Hanson published...
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South Dakota Dispatch: An interview with Governor Kristi Noem
By Salena Zito
My interview with the 33rd governor of the 39th or 40th state admitted to the union (President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the statehood papers before signing them so that no one could tell which Dakota became a state first) in the state.
Click here for the full story.
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An Israeli leader speaks out:
Upcoming Webinar
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Unfortunately, many leaders of terrorist organizations were emboldened by America’s muddled and haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rapid takeover of the Taliban. According to a Times of Israel article from Wednesday, August 18, 2021, Hezbollah leader, Sheik Nasrallah, called the American behavior in Afghanistan, “the moral downfall of America.” He continued, “In order not to have Americans fighting for other nations, Biden was able to accept a historic failure. When it comes to Lebanon and those around it, what will be the case there?”
He ominously warned, “Those watching most closely and drawing conclusions from this are the Israelis.”
What does this imply for the situation around Israel’s northern border? Joining us on Wednesday will be Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Zehavi (Res.) Founder and CEO of the Alma Research and Education Center along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. During this webinar, Lt. Col. Zehavi will also address groundbreaking research she and her team at ALMA have done uncovering a vast network of tunnels from Southern Lebanon into Northern Israel.
About the speaker: Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi is the CEO and founder of Alma – a nonprofit and an independent research and education center specialized in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. Sarit has briefed hundreds of groups and forums, ranging from US Congress members to journalists and visiting VIP groups in Israel and overseas. Sarit scripts numerous position papers and updates focusing on Lebanon, Syria and Israel’s national security challenges. She served for 15 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, specializing in military intelligence. Sarit holds an M.A. in Middle East Studies from Ben-Gurion University. Sarit Zehavi and her husband Yaron are raising their five children in Western Galilee.
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From HONEST REPORTING
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned a bipartisan group of US lawmakers that a nuclear arms race could erupt if Iran obtains the bomb.
And:
The IDF has deployed more troops to the Israel-Gaza Strip border in anticipation of more Palestinian violence on Wednesday following the Hamas-organized riots last weekend.
And:
Naftali Bennett wants Joe Biden to see Iran deal as 'no longer relevant'
Israel remains America's closest Middle East ally, but there are likely to be disagreements when new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett makes...
CONTINUE READING
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