All Biden's Fault, As Usual

In a major upset, the Trump Administration has said something truthful. NPR notes

Two West Virginia National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., remain in critical condition after being shot while on patrol just blocks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

"Two families are shattered and destroyed and torn apart as the result of the actions of one man," said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

"Two families are shattered and destroyed and torn apart as the result of the actions of one man," said Pirro, in what should be obvious but, judging from most of the response from the Administration, apparently is not.

Immediately after a report (not substantiated at the time) that an Afghan national was responsible for shooting two members of the National Guard deployed to Washington, D.C,. the X right got into action politicizing the crime.. One was Bo Loudon, of whom during last year's campaign it was reported

Despite barely being old enough to vote, 18-year-olds Bo Loudon and Barron Trump were unofficially recruited onto team Trump to help the oldest presidential candidate in history tap into the manosphere and capture the “bro vote.”

Earlier this year Trump, 78, began experimenting with the new audience by engaging with YouTubers and podcasters, many of whom are sympathetic towards the MAGA movement....

 Loudon, a conservative content creator, and the youngest Trump heir were apparently tasked to help Trump navigate the complex web of internet celebrities and influencers.

“The strategy is reaching an audience that maybe isn’t being recognized,” Loudon told Piers Morgan on Thursday.

Much to the distress of the vast majority of the world not named Javier Millei, Viktor Orban, or Vladimir Putin, we know how that turned out. The 19-year-old maintains his influence in Trumpland. Therefore, he promptly amplified Donald's stridently partisan and anti-American response to Wednesday's shooting:

🚨BREAKING: President Trump just revealed the Biden admin. extended the stay of the foreigner "animal" who shot our National Guard.

Follow: @BoLoudon pic.twitter.com/UJzsF8dGuh

— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) November 27, 2025

Before we even knew the suspect's motive(s), Trump had decided the real culprit was not American policy or the (presumed) offender himself. It was a former President. And that is turning out to be less than the entire truth.

🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration is suddenly blaming Biden for the D.C. shooter’s asylum approval…

…but CNN just confirmed the shooter applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved in April of THIS YEAR, under Trump. pic.twitter.com/bUe5iJzJSF

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) November 27, 2025

Nor could we have been surprised that the Trump rot has seeped even into the Central Intelligence Agency, where in an e-mailed statement Director John Ratcliffe claimed

In the wake of the disastrous Biden Withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation.

This individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration's catastrophic failures.

In such cases, it's customary to say "before the bodies are even cold...."  Yet, the the Administration quickly not only decided, but proclaimed, that Operation Allies Welcome was a grave error ("and so many others") but that the primary culprit was not Rahmanullah Lakanwal but Trump's immediate predecessor.

Those "so many others" slandered by Donald's C.I.A. director served as partners to the C.I.A. in Afghanistan and deserved exceptional consideration by Washington when the war in Afghanistan ended. They sacrificed in their capacity for the USA and had they remained in Afghanistan, would have been targeted by the new Taliban government. The program has been imperfect but that was not the message of either the President or the C.I.A. director, who slammed the program itself and the President who created it.

And that Taliban government did not come about magically when the USA withdrew from Afghanistan in spring of 2021. Rather

The Trump Administration February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the tAliban tha t excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021 for the final withdrawal.

And the Trump administration kept to the pact, reducing U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.

The withdrawal, though chaotic in execution, was planned and orchestrated by the first Trump Administration, negotiated with the Taliban and behind the back of the Afghan government. As we now see with the Russia-Ukraine war, it is Donald's style figuratively to pull the rug out from under our allies and shoot them in the back.

Very few other Democrats, liberals, or progressives are doing what tweeter Allen is doing, indirectly defending the Biden Administration by explaining that the Trump Administration does not have clean hands in the case of Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Notably, his bio reads "America FIRST," in contrast to the MAGA crowd which inaccurately portrays itself as "America First."  

At the very least, though, the Trump Administration should be held responsible for caring less about the Guardsmen or the nation they were representing than they do in condemning another American President. Donald speaks for the America Last crowd or, perhaps, the Hate America gang. 

In either case, more Democrats need to realize that a narrative has quickly formed and a counter-narrative, that President Trump has put our soldiers in harm's way, must arise. It will be hard to motivate Democrats to do that. Here is a suggestion: pretend Donald Trump is blaming Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, and Democrats will do something about it. 

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A Hobson's Choice on Afghanistan

On a positive note, here the GOP is avoiding the red herring of blaming the administration of President Joe Biden for what has been trumpeted, largely unfairly, as a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. On a negative note, the Party has a very bad memory.

 

“Ever since Afghanistan fell, we have projected weakness, not strength.”

-@RepMcCaul on the growing threats America faces under Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/B0aAnsQOZk

— GOP (@GOP) April 11, 2023

A fact check conducted by the Annenberg Center on Public Policy in August, 2021 found

The Trump administration in February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal.

And the Trump administration kept to the pact, reducing U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.

Biden delayed the May 1 withdrawal date that he inherited. But ultimately his administration pushed ahead with a plan to withdraw by Aug. 31, despite obvious signs that the Taliban wasn’t complying with the agreement and had a stated goal to create an “Islamic government” in Afghanistan after the U.S. left, even if it meant it had to “continue our war to achieve our goal.”

President Trump wanted to get the USA out of Afghanistan but advisers counseled against it. As a result, he split the baby, freeing Taliban soldiers, negotiating a withdrawal behind the back of Kabul, and reportedly "all but froze" the Special Immigrant Visa Program. Then he avoided withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving a terrible situation for President Biden.... which for Donald J. Trump amounts to "mission accomplished."

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Mitch McConnell's Suspicion

John Berman is a fine anchor person (anchorman, anchor, whatever) who generally listens to the guests he interviews and responds accordingly, at least compared to most of his peers on our two cable news networks, MSNB and his own CNN.

Not always, however. In the video below, Berman, responding to Donald Trump's latest pro-Putin remarks, can be seen asking CNN legal analyst Gloria Borger

I want to lay Trump aside here and talk about what Mitch McConnell said. How much do you think the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan is shaping the Administration's approach here?

That would have been a good question had the Senate Minority Leader been attributing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the "messy withdrawal from Afghanistan?"  Rather, the clip shown immediately before Berman's query depicts McConnel stating

I don't believe Vladimir Putin would have a couple hundred thousand troops on the border of Ukraine had we not precipitously withdrawn from Afghanistan last August.... It looked not only chaotic but it looks weak and so they are pushing the limits everywhere, reacting to the perception of American weakness and loss of resolve.

Weakness and loss of resolve. McConnell did note that the withdrawal looked chaotic. It was easier for television news, cable and over-the-air, to focus on the 13 USA service members (and dozens of Afghans) murdered during the withdrawal by Islamic terrorists than on the 120,000 Americans, civilian and military, and Afghans who were safely evacuated.

The media knew there were many tens of thousands brought out safely and characterized the mission as chaotic. They learned of the killings and had pictures of hundreds or thousands of Afghans desperately trying to get on the airplanes so they could get out of the country. The media were not impressed by the impact of American withdrawal- unavoidably leaving thousands of Afghans to the whims of the murderous Taliban. Instead, after 19 years of war which ended in an American defeat, the media were exorcised by our inability to rescue everyone without the appearance of a fire drill gone haywire.

Something was out of whack there and Berman, who actually believes it was the "messy withdrawal" which may have shaped President Biden's response to Putin's aggression, seems not to have noticed. While the decision to leave Afghanistan may have had no impact. the nature of the withdrawal almost certainly had none, and the Minority Leader knows it.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have cited "weakness" and "lack of resolve," which he likely believed would resonate with many voters.

Neither the war in Afghanistan, the American withdrawal, nor the manner of withdrawal probably has had any influence on Vladimir Putin's strategy or tactics in Afghanistan.  But if it did, it wasn't the hyped "messy withdrawal," whose importance the media has exaggerated ever since the exit of the US forces.  The policy decision was of far greater importance but was unexamined and largely downplayed by the media, perhaps because it was presumed to be universally popular. Not with Mitch McConnell it wasn't, and he may speak for far more people than is assumed.

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Popular Strategy

I’m somewhat confused by the DC press corps suddenly being outraged that US drone strikes might be counterproductive and actually kill innocent civilians based on bad intel. Have you paid any attention to the last 12 years of US targeting debacles?

— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) September 20, 2021

No, the media has not, and the American public has not. Had the media paid attention, the American people nonetheless would have not.

Speaking Monday to Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, U.S Representative from Hawaii and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, laid out the threat she perceives from "Islamist ideology," which she distinguished from "Islam." She stated

Militarily, we have two choices in how we do that. Number one, continue to invade and occupy and nation-build in countries around the world, just as we did in Afghanistan- at great cost. number two, we an take a targeted approach using air strikes, using our special forces to go in and go after these terror cells.

The reality is that the cost, the cost to the American people, the cost to our troops, the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach to go after these Jihadist terrorists, that if we continue to make the very same mistakes that we saw in Afghanistan and other parts of the world of invasion, occupation, and nation-building...

Gabbard argues "the cost to the American people, the cost to our troops, the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach." 

"Two out of three ain't bad," Jim Steinman wrote for Meat Loaf over 40 years ago, and Gabbard might have gotten two right. Obviously, the cost to American soldiers will be far less and, unless there is an increase of terrorism on American soil, the cost to the American people will drop. But the cost to civilians will not.

Drone strikes in North Africa/Middle East are likely to rise. They will do so in part because the military will not roll over and play dead.  The weapons of war must be used for something and they probably will be called upon to do more now that there will be fewer American soldiers in the region to respond to terroristic threats.

Journalist Garrett Graff is rightfully annoyed that there was little attention paid by the media to USA "targeting debacles" of the past twelve years.  Avoidance of the topic helped prevent public outrage over civilian deaths.

But this door swings both ways. One reason media generally ignored the air strikes was that there is scant interest among the public in deaths of foreign civilians. They are not Americans.  The deaths we care about are those of American men and women, the same individuals to whom we say "thank you for your service" when we are sincere and when we are not.

That's why Tulsi Gabbard can claim "the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach,"  though she knows otherwise. She may know, too, that while numerous surveys in recent months have asked voters whether they support withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, far fewer explore sentiment about air strikes.

Those questions would raise awareness of this approach, to which the federal government has been pivoting in fits and spurts over the past three Administrations. Investigation of the role of the intelligence establishment in assisting the strategy is critical. Still, not many Americans would care- and even fewer would disapprove, especially if Gabbard and others continue to whitewash it as "targeted."

 

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Tweet Of The Day- Taliban

It's not a tweet from today but rather of seven days ago. However, CNN's Fareed Zakaria has done what few others have done.  In the video below, he can be seen commenting

In other words, the world's most ideologically committed Islamic government has said its closest ally will be a nation engaged in what many observers call cultural genocide against its Muslims. Lesson: the Islamic militant movement has always been more about power than about religion.

Twenty years after 9/11, we are still not clear on how to think about radical Islam. It is real, it is evil, but it has lost the ideological argument.

My take: pic.twitter.com/gpEMxWUR78

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) September 12, 2021

Probably, and if so, it is analogous to the GOP's voter suppression in the USA. That is less (although somewhat) directed against blacks as a group than it is an expression of raw, naked power, an effort to acquire unlimited dominance and control. The party's white evangelical Christian base, a critical ally in the endeavor, also is less motivated by race than by power. Fundamentalists have a way of doing that.

Zakaria obviously continued "twenty years after 9/11, we are still not clear on how to think about radical Islam. It is real, it is evil, but it has lost the ideological argument."

In those three sentences, Zakaria has committed the sin of using the terms Muslim, Islamic, and Islam. To be sure, he specifies "Islamic militant movement" and "radical Islam," applying the accurate, and helpful, adjectives.

But in contrast to a current affectation of political correctness, he actually noted that the Taliban are Muslims. That is simply not done in polite company.

In contrast to Zakaria, there is a whole host of politicians, journalists, pundits, and activists. Included among them is Canadian Kimahli Powell, Executive Director of Rainbow Railroad.

Powell chatted on Friday with CNN's Victor Blackwell about Rainbow Railroad's efforts on behalf of LGBTQIA+ Afghans.  His Twitter timeline includes the following remarks by him and/or his organization:

With our partners, Rainbow Railroad is calling on the U.S. government to take ten specific actions to ensure the safety of #LGBTQI+ people in Afghanistan. We'll continue to post updates here as they happen.

Rainbow Railroad continues to liaise with #LGBTQI people on the ground in #Afghanistan. @KimahliPowell updated @CBCToronto and @chrisgloverCBC on our efforts to find safety for people caught in this conflict

In this seven-part thread, focusing on the Taliban's threat to LGBTQ+ individuals, from August 26, Powell addresses the "increasingly dire" plight of sexual minorities in Afghanistan, somehow without mentioning that the Taliban rationalize oppression with their religious zealotry.

There is an abject and reprehensible refusal, with serious and little understood implications, to referring to the Taliban as Islamist. Powell and others thereby are unable to characterize accurately a group which is militant, radical, and fundamentalist The Taliban are motivated by religion- but even more by power, which Zakaria is able to assert because he does what few others are willing to do: utter the term "Muslim."

Zakaria accurately characterizes the Taliban as Muslim while recognizing that they do not accurately represent the faith. They are religious fundamentalists who pose a danger to Afghanistan far greater than posed by religious fundamentalists in many societies, including our own.

Religious fundamentalists pose a danger to many societies, including our own, but especially in Afghanistan, a topic largely unexplored for fear of giving offense. However, Fareed Zakaria, perhaps because he himself is a Muslim, has had his "NIxon going to China" moment. Nonetheless, that doesn't excuse all others from ignoring the elephant in the room.

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A Lovely Gang

If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, even a wise tweeter- as this fellow is- can be palpably wrong once in a while:

That the USA might not—ever—recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan is frankly ridiculous.

— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) September 13, 2021

 

This is merely one reason recognition is currently inconceivable:

 

It's not as if the Taliban are opposed to all protest marches. Some they zealously guard.

Afghan women at a pro-Taliban protest on 9/11 wore full burkas and shouted “death to America” as they marched with Taliban fighters standing guard. pic.twitter.com/S8XwwH6wo7

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 11, 2021

 

Afghan women at a pro-Taliban protest on 9/11 wore full burkas and shouted “death to America” as they marched with Taliban fighters standing guard.

Was the selection of a date unintentional- or did the Taliban figure "9/11" was a nice touch?  Business Insider last week reported

The Taliban on Tuesday announced an interim government in Afghanistan that excludes women and includes the head of a militant group who's wanted by the FBI.

Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the Taliban's founders, was named prime minister. He's on a United Nations blacklist.....

The Taliban named Sirajuddin Haqqani interior minister. Haqqani is the head of the Haqqani Network — a US-designated terror group in Pakistan and Afghanistan with close ties to al-Qaida — and there's a $10 million US bounty on his head.

The FBI's most wanted list says Haqqani is wanted for "questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American citizen."

Sweethearts, all of them.  Times change, people change, regimes change, and the Taliban- along with Al Qaeda- is hostile toward ISIS-K. However, sometimes the enemy of our enemy is not our friend and for the foreseeable future, the theocratic fascists in Kabul cannot be recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

 

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Critic Makes Maher's Point

In his "new rules" segment Friday night, Bill Maher attacked two right-wing Johns, the Republican governor of South Dakota, American chauvinism.... and is condemned by a journalist/broadcaster of the left:

This has to be seen to be believed. Old, rich, centrist white guy tells people in America to stop complaining about racism & injustice because 'only 5% of Burundians have electricity' & Honduras has more murders than us. Can't make this stuff up. Pure, unadulterated whataboutism. https://t.co/WQyAucvRc6

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 28, 2021

Citing his experience talking to immigrants, Bill Maher, in the video included in the tweet, had noted

Blind hatred of America is just as blinkered as blind love. And we Americans should really get some perspective on where we live.....

I have never been a "rah, rah America" type and in fact have often made fun of Republicans in the past for being overly sentimental because they're the ones who tear up at military flyovers and get a boner when the governor of South Dakota rides into a biker really dressed like a painting of Teddy Roosevelt.

Being old and white (and wishing I were rich), perhaps I have no standing to note what should be obvious. That is in part that if you possess the perspective Hasan lacks, you undoubtedly would reject both blind love and blind hatred of America. 

If discussing health care in the USA, it's "whataboutism" to note that we have a superior system than in, say, Honduras (if in fact we do). Comparison to other affluent societies, such as predominate in western and northern Europe, would be more appropriate.

But Maher wasn't talking about health care.   After criticizing John Boehner and John Roberts, the latter over voting rights, Maher observes

But liberals, as usual in this era, have now gone too far in the other direction. They under-romanticize America. They have no perspective....

In Saudi Arabia, grown women can be jailed for doing the kinds of things we think of as routine without the permission of a male guardian. China rounds you up if you're the wrong religion and puts you in camps. More children in Burkina Faso work than are in school. Only 5% of Burundians have electricity. The homicide rate in Honduras is eight times what it is here. The inflation rate in Venezuela is 2,719%. The Philippines in the last five years have put to death 27,000 low level drug dealers, my old job. In North Korea, people starve to death....

There is a reason  Afghan mothers are handing their babies to us. And we should take them. Americans right now should take Afghan refugees into their homes and into their neighborhoods....

Most people will not do so

but that doesn't make us the bad guys. We're not the bad guys Oppression is what we were trying to stop in Afghanistan. We failed, but any immigrant will tell you we've largely succeeded here. And yet the overriding thrust of current woke ideology is that America is rotten to the core, irredeemably racist from the moment it was founded, and so oppressive, sexist and homophobic.

When the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the Soviet Union did not take in Afghan refugees beyond some officials from the government the USSR had propped up and the mujahideen had overthrown. But many thousands of Afghans, rescued by USA marines, will be welcomed to the USA (as well as to a few other nations) in the wake of the withdrawal of American and allied forces.

The USA isn't the only western republic which is accused of being oppressive and racist. A Canadian, Zionist, and human rights activist picks up on another lack of perspective, if not blatant hypocrisy:

Massive rally now of social justice activists in front of the United Nations Human Rights Council calling to boycott, divest and sanction Afghanistan's Taliban regime for its abuse of women, gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. pic.twitter.com/Y4JQlDPKMO

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 27, 2021

 

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Having It Both Ways

Will Bunch notes

The New York Times led the paper over the weekend with a “news analysis” by Peter Baker that implied that Biden — in ending a war that had dragged on for nearly two decades, in a move supported by a strong majority of regular, non-journalist Americans — had trashed his long reputation for empathy and that the threat to the safety of U.S. allies also showed incompetence on a level rivaling Trump. The story was published on a weekend when the Pentagon evacuated a stunning 11,000 people in an operation in which not a single American has died.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar — anchor of its not-opinion morning show “New Day,” but also the wife of an active-duty Green Beret who writes frequently of being a military spouse — has also struggled to contain her anger at the Afghan withdrawal, writing an analysis and tweeting frequently about the “moral injury” of it all. Big-time journalists like Keilar or her CNN colleague Jake Tapper — whose reporting on U.S. troop valor in Afghanistan became a book and a movie, The Outpost — have a personal connection to these events that they don’t seem to feel for the world’s other tough stories like (for example) China’s ethnic cleansing of its Uighurs.

The problem is that the average American who’ll never go to Afghanistan is totally dependent on the news media to understand what is happening there. The chaos and “Biden fiasco” narratives seem hard to unlock, even as the accelerating success of the evacuation seems to have become the more up-to-date news. What’s more, the endless replays of desperate Afghans clinging to the wing of a U.S. jet, now several days old, seem to crowd out needed discussions of issues like how America spent more than $80 billion training an Afghan army that then refused to fight, or when the so-called experts who promoted this war think would have been a better time to end it, as the 20th anniversary loomed.

Bunch thus criticizes the media for generally a) ignoring other, even more serious, stories such as genocide in Xinjiang; b) ignoring other issues pertaining to Afghanistan, including the financial resources expended by the USA, the failure of the Afghan army to fight, and c) allowing the President's critics not to offer an alternative.

In the last several years, even after the Trump Administration negotiated a virtual surrender at Doha and President Biden announced the withdrawal of soldiers, there was nary a hint of criticism of the war from most of the mainstream media, CNN perhaps especially. Those outlets knew what the polls indicated, that a solid majority of Americans wanted out.

In the commentary ("analysis") to which Bunch links, Keillar writes

In Afghanistan, thousands of translators, cultural advisers and other Afghan support staff who worked and fought alongside American troops will be left to the mercy of the Taliban if the US doesn't get them out of the country.

For many Afghan war vets here in the US, it's a violation of a promise at the core of the military ethos: you don't leave a brother or sister in arms behind.

For veterans of the Afghanistan campaign

It's a war they couldn't win. But even when you lose a war, there are some very important things you can still keep, or at least hope to: your friends who got you through, your values, your word.

The botched exit in Afghanistan could cost veterans that too.

Sorry, no. There are tens of thousands of individuals who have been airlifted out of a country now completely controlled by a brutal, sadistic bunch of religious extremists, whose victory was a foregone conclusion once withdrawal of American troops took place. 

The "unscripted ending of the war" is a part of the war. Leaving was never going to be clean and easy, except in the imagination of Keillar and, judging by her implication, some veterans of the war. The airlifts and the continuing danger to the people left behind are a function of the war and the withdrawal. If they are dissatisfied with the Taliban's deadline, which will curtail the rescue mission, they should suggest a military alternative.

If Brianna Keilar- and the "so-called experts" to which Bunch refers believe that the USA should have remained in Afghanistan, they need to have the courage to tell us so. If instead they are satisfied that the USA pulled out, they need to summon the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the nearly unavoidable result of the policy, popular with Americans and little questioned by media, chosen by President Biden.

 

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Odd-Looking Victory

In the video below, Kyle Kulinski shows a portion of an interview of John Bolton by CNN anchor Brianna Keilar. The exchange at 4:34:

Keilar: Did the U.S. lose the war in Afghanistan?

Bolton: No, I don't think- we walked away from t. I think it's a huge mistake.

Keilar: How can you- walking away? How is that not- I mean, can you explain what you mean by that?

Bolton: Because we weren't defeated.

 

Bolton a moment earlier had stated that the withdrawal may lead to terrorism in Afghanistan; strengthening of extremists in Pakistan "and the risk of a Pakistani Taliban takeover " of the government in Islamabad, which would give the insurgents "control of dozens or scores of nuclear weapons"; and loss of "our ability to watch on the west of Afghanistan what Iran is up to." But we didn't lose.

So  Kulinski asks rhetorically "John, what would victory even mean? What would include- what goals would have to be met in order for John Bolton to say 'yea, we won?"

Bolton isn't alone in refusing to concede national defeat. He is nearly alone in suggesting the possibility of specifying the dangerous implications he believes likely to accrue from an American withdrawal. Coupled with the refusal to acknowledge defeat, it is a dangerous stance, one which can be marshalled to advocate other misadventures on behalf of a nation still insisting it is "exceptional."

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Why can't this question be asked to George W Bush? https://t.co/BOXP7dZlf6

— David Weissman (@davidmweissman) August 20, 2021

Reporter asks

The President also said there is no national security interest, no national interest, in Afghanistan. I'm a little confused by that. Can you explain why there is no national interest n Afghanistan, why did we have troops there for twenty years if there is no national interest in Afghanistan?

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responds

We had a significant interest in being in Afghanistan, to our national security, twenty years ago. You've heard the President talk about this. The goals was to defeat, decimate Al Qaeda, to prevent Al Qaeda from launching attacks on the homeland from Afghanistan. We did that.

Mission accomplished! It was great that the USA invaded Afghanistan twenty years ago, and great that we've now left. It's a perfect world.

Obviously, a question of why soldiers were dispatched to Afghanistan twenty years ago with no national interest involved is much better posed to the President who actually dispatched those soldiers.

Kirby's answer, though, is revealing.  His argument rests on two propositions: a) the incursion twenty years ago prevented Al Qaeda from attacking the USA; b) the withdrawal will not reinvigorate Al Qaeda to the extent that it will be able to launch terrorist attacks it would not otherwise have been able to.

Either may be true, neither may be true, or one or the other may be. Kirby notes Al Qaeda is degraded, though Biden had (inaccurately) claimed it is "gone" from Afghanistan. (Note: age takes its toll.) That may be enough.

Or not.   As The New York Times summarized, "The Taliban are in power again without the help of Al Qaeda, and they have understood that they lost their government and their country in 2001 because of Al Qaeda. " However, the other is  "American intelligence capabilities in Afghanistan will be degraded with no military or diplomatic presence on the ground and with American troops and drones based hundreds of miles away."

Or perhaps both will prevail. The Taliban may tread carefully because Al Qaeda got the Taliban in trouble the first time around. Yet, whatever intelligence capabilities we had in Afghanistan we probably no longer have.  It's a situation which can confuse anyone, particularly a reporter who would ask today's Pentagon about a perceived national security interest 20 years before Joe Biden became President.

 

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Zealots, Far More Deadly

No one can possibly get this question wrong. Is Michael Moore correct or invoking moral equivalence here?

American film makes Michael Moore on the current situations of #Afghanistan. @MMFlint #Afganistan #sundayvibes #MondayMorning #IGotVaxxedDidYou pic.twitter.com/tSYgKNVml7

— 🚷 (@multiversism) August 15, 2021

Moore is correct. The Taliban are religious nuts and we have our own. And he is invoking moral equivalence.

Actually, not religious nuts. Far more seriously, they're religious fanatics. Sexist, murderous, religious fanatics. We in the USA have our own religious "nuts."  They, too, are fanatics- the most extreme of Christian evangelicals; Opus Dei among Roman Catholics; Lubavitcher Chasidim, arguably the most radical of Orthodox Jews.

They are different from the Taliban..  They don't require men to pray continuously and wear a beard or else submit to a beating. They don't prevent girls from being educated or some women from pursuing certain occupations. They don't torture women for leaving their home without a suitable male escort nor enforce a dress code with violations punishable by death. Collaborating with the enemy in any fashion may lead to execution.

Taliban collapses with laughter as journalist asks if they would be willing to accept democratic governance that voted in female politicians - and then tells camera to stop filming. “It made me laugh” he says.pic.twitter.com/km0s1Lkzx5

— David Patrikarakos (@dpatrikarakos) August 17, 2021

They are radical Islamists. They are not normal Muslims and differ dramatically from other Muslims. But they are religious extremists in the East, and there are Christian (to a lesser extent, Jewish) religious extremists in the West.

That's where Moore, who recognizes that we have religious extremists in the developed world, is wrong.  Ours don't regularly walk around with rifles and shotguns intending not only to intimidate the majority who don't agree with them, but who also intend to use those firearms to exterminate their enemies.

They're religious nuts and we have our own,  MIchael Moore maintains.  But tomorrow I will still be alive after criticizing religious extremists and you will be alive even after reading about it. It's a claim many Muslims in Afghanistan cannot make about the radical Islamists who are will shed a lot of blood in an effort to remake their country into their own image.

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Not Afghanistan

A guy who describes himself as "retired C.I.A.":

Thought keeps popping in my head: I hope one of our folks has the American flag from the US embassy. I do not want it falling in Taliban hands. This matters to me for some deep spiritual reason. It just does.

— Marc Polymeropoulos (@Mpolymer) August 14, 2021

We shouldn't fight wars for reasons of national pride, nor resist ending them because of fear of humiliation. If we choose to continue a military presence abroad, there needs to be a better reason, even from someone with such a great surname.

President Biden also may fail to recognize the stakes. Biden in 2010 had told Richard Holbrooke that the USA was not in Afghanistan to preserve womens' rights and earlier this year told CBS' Margaret Brennan

There are a thousand places we could go to deal with injustice. I can think of ten countries where women and/or children and/or people are being persecuted or being hurt. But the idea of us being able to use our armed forces to solve every single problem that exists throughout the world is not within our capacity.

The question is- is American's vital self interest at stake or are the vital self interests of one our allies at stake. And the fact that they have a system in parts of Afghanistan, as they do in parts of Pakistan, as they do in parts of other countries, that we're going to send troops because there is not- human rights are not being valued the same same degree that we are, that's a different story about sending combat troops....

I still find this @margbrennan exchange the most illuminating/honest in how Biden thinks about Afghanistan
“Don’t you bear some responsibility for the outcome if the taliban ends up back no control & women end up losing the rights—-“

“No I don’t!”

pic.twitter.com/vxMV8J0YnV

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 8, 2021

After eight years during of a President not prioritizing the interests of our allies and four years in which a President actively undermined them, it is encouraging to have one who is vitally concerned with the self-interest of allies. (Presumably, Biden was unaware that when he said "women and/or children and/or people," he was suggesting women and children are not people.)

Biden correctly notes that the issue is whether the interests of our nation or of our allies is at stake. Brennan had helpfully asked Biden about Holbrooke's belief that the American military must remain in Afghanistan to safeguard the rights of women.  Biden then, credibly, noted that human rights are lacking in numerous countries across the world.

But of course the issue is not human rights or, more specifically, the rights of women. A much broader concern must be terrorism.  In light of the stunningly rapid deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, a range of politicians, retired members of the military, and other pundits have sounded an alarm about Al Qaeda.

This has come about rather suddenly- about as sudden as the Taliban's recent march through Afghanistan.  From the time Biden announced on April 14 the decision to withdraw from the country until the collapse begun last week, there were few warnings about the possibility of Al Qaeda resuming its operations in Afghanistan as a staging area. Then-President Trump had declared the Middle East ISIS-free, and that was that, aside from an occasional article in the print media. Now, alarm.  

The dire predictions that Afghanistan now will become a hotbed of terrorism and- more importantly- a sort of homeland for terrorism may or may not become reality.

That is why it is so difficult to assess accurately the consequences of the withdrawal.  Womens' rights, left to radical Islamists who distort Islam to their own end, will deteriorate dramatically and Afghanistan probably will end up even worse off than when the American military invaded in 2003.

But no one cares. No one, except possibly the Iranian government and Jimmy Carter, cares about Afghanistan. The issue is the future of terrorism and no one can determine definitively what that is, other than the geniuses saturating the airwaves of cable news the past several days.

 

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Strategic Ploy

They've blown it.

I didn't expect this, not even from this President. Nonetheless, the USA and the Taliban signed a deal Saturday which includes, as President Trump noted later during his news conference, result in the withdrawal of American soldiers from Afghanistan over a 14-month period. 

It is subject to the success of  "intra-Afghanistan negotiations," as The Hill puts it.  However, the Taliban

“will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies,” the agreement says.

The Taliban also committed to sending a “clear message that those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies have no place in Afghanistan” and will instruct its members not to cooperate with groups or individuals that threaten the United States, according to the deal.

In return,

The intra-Afghan talks will be launched with a prisoner release, according to Saturday’s deal. The Taliban will have 5,000 prisoners released, while the Afghan government side will have 1,000. Remaining prisoners will be released in three months.

The Hill adds

In a letter to Pompeo and Esper this week, 22 House Republicans led by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) expressed “serious concerns” about the deal and asked for “assurances that you will not place the security of the American people into the hands of the Taliban, and undermine our ally, the current government of Afghanistan.”

This is not a negotiated surrender, though it could be framed that way. It is worse than a surrender. Five-to-one (in prisoner release) is not a good ratio. In return, we get promises from the organization that gave sanctuary to the forces responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 and which aims to impose Sharia law upon Afghanistan. The situation is dicey; “other factions,” reports The Washington Post,” including breakaway Taliban groups and others claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, have footholds around the country and potentially could grow stronger without U.S.-led forces to keep them in check.”

Elizabeth Warren, Bernard Sanders, and even Joe Biden have implied that they would withdraw all USA forces from Afghanistan. In retrospect, they should have realized that President Trump, who fancies himself a master deal maker, would make a deal negotiating withdrawal of American soldiers.

With this agreement- which may, fortuitously, fall apart- Trump seems to have outflanked almost any potential Democratic nominee.  Most of the Democratic candidates haven't explicitly ruled out having any combat soldiers in Afghanistan but they have come awfully close.   The President has approved a terrorist-friendly arrangement critics can credibly label a "sell-out," but Democrats are in no position to exploit one of Trump's vulnerabilities, a man easily manipulated by the country's enemies

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We May Have That Itch Again

In a recent NBC News/The Wall Street Journal poll, 1283 registered voters were surveyed on a variety of issues.  The most interesting and evidently important question was

If it were determined by the military commanders that the best way to defeat the ISIS army was to use American military troops on the ground, would you be in favor of this decision or would be in opposition to this decision, or do you really not have an opinion one way or the other?

The results were, at first glance, stunning:

In favor of American military troops on the ground …………….. 45
Opposed to American military forces on the ground…………… 37
No opinion either way…………………………..………………….. 16
Not sure……………………………………………………………. 2

This would seem to be an extraordinary result, a finding that most Americans with an opinion, if it became U.S. policy, would support American soldiers yet again being sent into combat- and that without the inevitable groundwork which policymakers and others would lay.

But upon further reflection, one ought not to be surprised. The pollsters skewed the results in the direction of a favorable response in two ways.  Although not the obvious takeaway, using ISIS as an adjective- "ISIS army"- rather than as a noun ("ISIS") adds an element previously unknown.  Is ISIS an "army" in any conventional sense? No one (else) has suggested it is, and we Americans are accustomed to defeating an army rather than getting bogged down fighting terrorists, an elusive bunch.

More obviously, there is no more effective way to prompt an affirmative response than to precede the question with the predicate "if it were determined by the military commanders that the best way to defeat..."

Americans have a difficult time questioning the uniform (suggesting that if Colin Powell had ever run for President and somehow been nominated by the GOP, he would have been extremely difficult to beat, even though he is evidently a con man or a sucker).  It is as if pollsters last year had asked "Do you support a cut in food stamp benefits, even though it would leave millions of children hungry?" That would be an interesting poll- with predictable results.

But on another level, the question does have basis in reality.  Already, there have been military men suggesting that ISIS cannot be defeated without soldiers on the ground.  And if the President were to announce that Americans were being sent to the Middle East to fight, surely he would claim the support of the brass, which would present a united front to the public. Nervous Nellies (nervous nellies?) would not be tolerated, lest they would go the way of General McChrystal. (The military is still subservient to the civilian branch of government, at least in theory.)

Nonetheless, there still is a disquieting impulse among the populace to do it all over again.  Reacting generally to the war footing, rather than specifically to this survey, Digby comments

And frankly, I'm almost as disgusted that the American people continue to be thrilled at the prospect of kicking ass over some trumped up threat --- and yes, I do believe that a whole lot of us are anxious to get back to the business of ass-kicking. It's much more exciting than thinking about the wealthy elites stealing more and more of your meager earnings. But it's a dangerous and nasty way to entertain ourselves out of a nasty malaise.

And in memory of simpler, less complicated,  times, here is Tom Paxton in 1980 singing about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a resulting Olympic boycott:








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Echoes Of The Past

On Wednesday, President Obama described one leg of his four-part strategy as

Second, we will increase our support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground. In June, I deployed several hundred American service members to Iraq to assess how we can best support Iraqi Security Forces. Now that those teams have completed their work — and Iraq has formed a government — we will send an additional 475 service members to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission — we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. But they are needed to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces with training, intelligence and equipment. We will also support Iraq’s efforts to stand up National Guard Units to help Sunni communities secure their own freedom from ISIL control.

Have we heard something like this before?  Oh, yeah:

US military advisors instructed South Vietnamese military men how to operate M-1 rifles, M-1 carbines, M-3 submachinguns, belt fed M-60 and WWII light & heavy machinguns, .45 pistols, 90mm & 106mm recoilless rifles, 60mm & 81mm mortars, clay more land mines (anti-personnel), M-113 APC's, M-41 Walker Bulldog light tanks, how to fly helicopters, how to build military bridges, how to fortify gun emplacements, how to build military compounds, how to utilize US military rations and medical supplies, and the functions of US uniforms, such as body protective armor (helmets/vests/etc.). Tactics and Strategies were studied & taught, as well as land navigation arts, such as map reading and compass usage. How to call in artillery and air strikes with the use of radios, maps, and compass.

The Vietnam War was justified partially by the Domino Theory, the notion that if Ho Chi Minh took over South Vietnam, soon the North Vietnamese would be in Laos and Cambodia.  Although not Obama's emphasis, the the 20th century iteration was invoked by Obama when he contended  if ISIS isn't annihilated, they will be in your kitchen in Dubuque:

So ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East — including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region — including to the United States. While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.

No need to limit discussion to jihadi terrorism and the Middle East when Ukraine, freedom, justice, dignity, and Ebola are so much more applicable. The President remarked

Abroad, American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorists. It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian peoples’ right to determine their own destiny. It is America — our scientists, our doctors, our know-how — that can help contain and cure the outbreak of Ebola. It is America that helped remove and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons so they cannot pose a threat to the Syrian people — or the world — again. And it is America that is helping Muslim communities around the world not just in the fight against terrorism, but in the fight for opportunity, tolerance, and a more hopeful future.

America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia — from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East — we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.

It would not be comforting to argue "we have failed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya but we'll be able to destroy ISIL."  Better to mobilize the public with an appeal to American exceptionalism, particularly for a relatively dark-hued President born in the far-off nation of Hawaii.

The President (photo below of Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images via The Daily Beast) could have promoted his policy primarily as a means to secure regional stability. But it wouldn't have won many points with the public, much of which is fixated on "the Homeland," thanks to the campaign of fear by parties outside the Administration.  Besides, our military and political effort the past thirteen years has brought no more stability to the Middle East and north Africa than it did some 45 years ago in southeast Asia.

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Clinton Off The Mark

To be fair to him, Bill Clinton has a point.  Almost.

This would not be when he told Senator John McCain (R-AZ) during an event for the McCain Institute for International Leadership (hat tip to outsidethebeltway.com) "'Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!' I think that's a big mistake.  I agree with you about this. Sometimes it's just best to get caught trying, as long as you don't overcommitt- like, as long as you don't make an improvident commitment."  Informants have assured us that the former President was not referring to avoiding over-commitment and detection when befriending female interns..

According to Politico's Maggie Haberman, Clinton maintained that as President, if "there was a poll in the morning paper that said 80 percent of you were against it … you’d look like a total wuss."  He contended additionally

Nobody is asking for American soldiers in Syria. The only question is now that the Russians, the Iranians and the Hezbollah are in there head over heels, 90 miles to nothing, should we try to do something to try to slow their gains and rebalance the power so that these rebel groups have a decent chance, if they’re supported by a majority of the people, to prevail?...

My view is that we shouldn’t over-learn the lessons of the past,” Clinton said. “I don’t think Syria is necessarily Iraq or Afghanistan — no one has asked us to send any soldiers in there. I think it’s more like Afghanistan was in the ’80s when they were fighting the Soviet Union … when President Reagan was in office [and] got an enormous amount of influence and gratitude by helping to topple the Soviet-backed regime and then made the error of not hanging around in Afghanistan” to try to cash in on the gains.

President Obama has been unnecessarily passive, as Tom Rogan argues here. But to suggest his approach has been motivated largely by public sentiment is sheer speculation on the part of the husband of Senator Obama's primary (pun intended) Democratic rival of 2008.  

You might have noticed that the Big Dog avoided advocating a particular course of action, which would have been helpful, though exposing him (and perhaps his wife) to some hard questions if the recommendations were adopted and failed.  You might also have recognized a former President knocking a current President for allegedly subjecting his policy to popular sentiment while arguing that "rebel groups" must be given "a decent chance, if they're supported by a majority of the people, to prevail."

Dismayed by a Democratic President who considers the will of the people, Clinton commends a (former) Republican president who chose a politically popular position (alliteration intentional) by opposing those nasty Russian commies or, as Clinton put it, aiding "rebel groups" in Afghanistan "in the '80s when they were fighting the Soviet Union... when President Reagan was in office (and) got an enormous amount of influence and gratitude by helping to topple the Soviet-backed regime and then made the error of not hanging around in Afghanistan."

It is common wisdom, as Clinton clearly displayed, that the biggest mistake the U.S.A. made in that era in Afghanistan was not "hanging around," taking some of the credit for defeat of the Soviets and helping effect a pro-American, democratic regime in Kabul.   In this case, common wisdom is wrong.

As the former President should have learned by now, victory by the most powerful military in world history is the relatively easy part.  Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Muammar Khadafi can be removed from power, but the aftermath is exceedingly treacherous.

Clinton demonstrates the common perception that aiding the rebels in Afghanistan was a slam-dunk.  (And at the time it seemed so.) Maybe so, but hardly in the way he believes. Casey Gane-McCalla of NewsOne gives us a history lesson, the broad outline of which seems to be generally lost to history.  He explains

During in the 1970s, when the Russia was the biggest threat to America and radical Islam was not as a concern of the USA’s, the USA began funding and training Islamic militants to fight our Russian enemies in Afghanistan.

These militants, known as the mujahideen would rebel the Russians out of Afghanistan and later become the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

One of the most prominent members of he mujahideen was a wealthy son of a Saudi Arabian businessman named Osama Bin Laden.

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Afganistan in 1979 and met with Bin Laden and even took a picture with him. Brzezinski would tell the mujahideen

We know of their deep belief in God, and we are confident their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours, you’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again. Because your cause is right and God is on your side.

The BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Russian journal Demokratizatsiya have all written that the CIA and U.S.A. funded and supported Bin Laden during the Afghan war.

Former British Foreign secretary, Robin Cook said:

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

Several other authors, journalists and statesmen have all made the claim that Bin Laden was funded, armed and trained by the CIA to fight off the Russians.

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

The U.S.A. would fund Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader and alleged heroin dealer who worked closely with Bin Laden. Hekmaytyar and his political party/paramilitary group would receive more than $600 million from the USA. Author, Alfred McCoy, would claim that the CIA supported Hekmatyar in his illicit heroin trade to allow him to fund the mujahideen.Like Bin Laden, Hekmatyar has also become an enemy of the U.S., waging a war against coalition forces in Afghanistan after 2001.

The mujahideen was a forerunner of Al Qaeda and morphed into the deadly terrorist group. But, as Brzezinski's remark reflected, the USA in Afghanistan opposed an overrated enemy and ignored the threat posed by an up-and-coming one because the officially atheist Soviet Unionwas a godless nation fought b people convinced God was on their side.   There is a moral to that story (perhaps more than one) which Bill Clinton, with his famously superior intellect, ought to understand.
 



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