By Andrew Malcolm
Word out of the White House this week is that Joe Biden, or at least his handlers, intend to recapture the narrative on his colossal Afghan exit screw-up. Good luck with that tardy effort.
It’s as if saying something in Washington, even without attribution, makes it so in this White House wonderland. Especially after the shocking deaths Thursday of more than a dozen U.S. troops at the Kabul airport.
News Flash: The evacuation narrative train left the Kabul station more than a week ago when U.S. troops were finally gone, the Taliban was all over but so were countless thousands of Americans and Afghan allies.
But the reality won’t stop this president from reading the lines touting his immense evacuation. Nor keep his dysfunctional team from parroting the same glowing things about Biden’s plan in order to reach any Americans not paying close attention to the chaotic and now deadly withdrawal scene.
Upwards of 100,000 people have been flown out of Kabul, if you believe Biden’s numbers. For sure that’s a huge number of Americans, Afghan allies, and other nationals to get safely beyond the reach of the fundamentalist Taliban in a short period of time.
Kudos to the aircrews and mechanics who’ve been tirelessly hauling humanity all over the region by the hundreds in huge cargo planes. And the Marines guarding the perimeter.
The real issue about this historic flight of humanity, however, is why such a gargantuan cramped effort was necessary in the first place? For months Team Biden will be trying to fog over that issue like the inside of your windshield in a rainstorm.
Here’s the narrative: Donald Trump did a deal with the Taliban last year when they were only wannabe rulers in which all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, before the annual Afghan fighting season got underway in that godforsaken land.
In exchange, the Taliban agreed to reduce violent attacks, mainly on Americans, forbid terrorists to set up shop there again, and to negotiate in good faith with the elected central government in Kabul.
The withdrawal commitment was political cover for the United States, so the exit wasn’t an ignominious admission of defeat, like the Soviets in 1989 and every other attempted occupier for the last 33 centuries.
No one except perhaps some kindergarteners in Arkansas expected the Taliban to live up to much of that agreement. And only those toddlers were disappointed.
For some inexplicable reason, Biden delayed the withdrawal first to the anniversary of 9/11 that started this whole mess and then to Aug. 31, which is the prime-time combat season in a land that has no NFL to follow. Taliban forces were well on the move by then.
Taking the flag down at Bagram weeks early with no contingency plan for adversity was the signal for insurgents to step on the gas. So, they did.
Now, the U.S. military is an amazing collection of proud outfits whose men and women, volunteers all, thankfully train for many things you could never even imagine. Hard to believe that one scenario would be to have a commander in chief with diminished mental capacity and a notorious lifelong distrust of the military.
And that man would order woke Pentagon leaders to forget those dumbass civilians in Afghanistan, just get the last 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan. And do it now.
Then once they were out, the Taliban took over everything, and the reality of thousands of potential hostages emerged, Biden abruptly changed his mind to — No, wait, better send 6,000 troops back to re-secure the airfield. Oh, and assemble enough huge planes to fly more than 75,000 frightened people all over the Middle East.
And then send in the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to meet with the Taliban’s leader to politely request an extension of that Aug. 31 exit deadline that the American leader himself had set.
And all the time that U.S. commander in chief was on vacation refusing or incapable of telling countrymen what the hell was going on.
The sporadic times he did venture out, Biden would display an ignorant smugness and talk about vaccinations as if that was the top topic. He had a watery look in his eyes and slurred thoughts that would make even an Arkansas kindergartener say, “Mommy, what’s wrong with that old man?”
Now, all this is not just domestic political theater. China has its eyes on finally annexing Taiwan. It could assess Biden as a weak, confused leader with no will or support for a new foreign military adventure. And China would be right.
The same for Russia’s Vladimir Putin eyeing the rest of Ukraine and/or the Baltic states.
Talk about theater. Last week, Biden’s CIA Director, William Burns, met the Taliban leader. We don’t know what actually happened because…Biden. Remember Obama put him in charge of their administration transparency. So, Biden called a transparency planning meeting — and closed it to media.
Burns might have sought an evacuation deadline extension after Aug. 31. A Taliban spokesman later said no change.
But it’s striking that many of Biden’s foreign policy aides are the same ones who engineered that flimsy nuclear deal with Iran that involved paying the mullahs $1.8 billion in advance. Perhaps we’ve purchased a tacit extension.
Then came late word that, unbelievably, U.S. officials had given the Taliban a long list of Americans and Afghan allies they’d like admitted to the airport for evacuation. Sounds good perhaps if this was a business deal. But wait, the Taliban are terrorists and that naïve list of names could just as easily become a hit list for elimination.
At virtually every stage of this unfolding and now deadly exit drama, Joe Biden has done something dumb. As I wrote here last week, Obama warned us about that proclivity.
Biden changed the pullout plans because they were Trump’s. Last month he uttered rosy talk about how well it was going, a kind of “Mission Accomplished” self-congratulations before the mission. He said no helicopters would ever lift staff to safety from the Kabul embassy roof.
As sure as Anthony Fauci will soon change his mind again on masks, events will unexpectedly turn and bite you in the hair plugs. Sure enough, helicopters did lift Kabul embassy staff to safety.
This is far from over. The blood of several generations will be permanently placed on bidens hands. He will be considered the worst potus in American history.
His reputation is on par with mao, pol pot, Stalin, and yes, Hitler
history repeats itself in a circuitous fashion and always bites you in the ass. the idiot can hardly read promoters and his handlers have refused to read and understand history.
Expect international terrorist to severely escalate within the next six months-America, you are #1 thanks to the peabrain pedophile.
We are fucke&
God help us…
It’s hard to project what Trump would have done in these circumstances. First, it’s difficult to see this every happening under Trump. His plan and his operation was to project strength and power, not empathy and weakness. The Taliban were cooperating, dancing to his tune. He had to remind them who was in charge a few times, but that only served to smooth the process more.
If faced with a Taliban threat to the withdrawal, there would have been no withdrawal, so there would have been no competent or incompetent emergency airlift. Trump would never have abandoned Bagram, so there would be no evaluation of how well or poorly he secured the airport. Therefore, there would have been no 13 US military personnel killed by a suicide bomber. That simply goes without saying.
In short, had Trump been President (well, he IS President, but had he been in office), it is impossible to imagine such a disastrous and embarrassing catastrophe going down. In face, had idiot Biden simply followed Trump’s plan, much like keeping his secured border in place, it is unlikely we would be watching such an complete failure.
Our military personnel and equipment are fully capable of delivering a knock-out blow to the Taliban or anyone. But has Obama and idiot Biden driven out too many hard-charging commanders and replaced them with woke-ass pussies? Would they trust unleashing “white supremacists” and Trump supporters on the enemy or would only drag proper pronoun-spouting transgender woke Charmtroopers be deployed? Our determination is now to be questioned.