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We Shouldn’t Lie to Ourselves

Zalmay Khalilzad (l), US negotiator at the Doha conference, with the Taliban representative signing the Doha Agreement, Feb. 29, 2020.

A suicide bomber killed 13 American soldiers, wounding 18, while defending the perimeter around HKI airport in Kabul on Thursday 8/26. The bloodbath included 95 Afghans killed and more than 100 wounded among the teeming thousands feverishly trying to get out of a now Taliban-ruled country. It’s heart-wrenching but the bloodbath both illuminates and obscures the key reason for our presence in Afghanistan. We were in Afghanistan to kill and obstruct people who have a nasty habit of mass-murdering moms, dads, and children as they go shopping, and to work and school. Somehow, we forgot it.

The terror bombing at HKI Airport in Kabul, August 26, 2021.

It’s easy to become wearisome of something when you’ve forgotten its original purpose, or have been raised on fantasies over the course of three administrations of it being a Denmark in the Hindu-Kush. The mission has been muddied and politicians, the people we elected D to R, have been the most ardent purveyors of the slinging. Conversely, and more prominent over the most recent few years, a steady drumbeat of “forever wars”, left to right, continually pummeled the nation and so overwhelmed it that the 2020 November election became a contest between two withdrawal-enthusiasts.

In the end, Biden gave us a deadly debacle, a forever-stain on the country, and coincidentally, if you think about it, a stain on the politically opportunistic cliché of “forever wars” popularized by Trump. Would Trump have led us into a similar drubbing had he won in 2020? It’s hard to say, but his after-the-fact big talk that “we wouldn’t have done that” isn’t reassuring in light of the public record.

I can’t speak for the left, but we on the right shouldn’t lie, least of all to ourselves. History will not be kind.

The February 2020 Doha Agreement that Trump and his people describe as “conditions-based” was only ink on paper to the Taliban (taqiyya: lying and deception are justified in dealing with infidels). The “conditions” – break from al-Qaeda, cease attacks, and bargain with the Afghan government – were in the Agreement’s hidden annexes. The Taliban didn’t think enough of the promises to publicly admit to them. The Taliban didn’t get around to starting negotiations with the Afghan government till September 2020, and then only half-heartedly. As for the break with al-Qaeda, a Defense IG report in August 2020 confirmed that the break hadn’t taken place. So much for the much-vaunted calibration of US actions to conditions on the ground. The withdrawal of US troops continued apace in 2020.

ISIS-K fighters in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

The most damaging aspects of the agreement to American interests were openly declared, such as the withdrawal date of May 1, 2021 for all US forces. I repeat “all”. Foreshadowing what Biden did – albeit horribly – the Trump/Taliban agreement reads,

“The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement [i.e., by May 1, 2021].”

This may come as a surprise to the Trump brigade but Trump didn’t possess a crystal ball from throughout 2020 to before Biden’s deadly fiasco this August. Trump was singing a different tune before the current hot potato. Going back to the period of his ardent efforts in 2020 to reach agreement with the Taliban, the group and its terrorist allies continued their attacks before the ink was dry – in fact, before they even found the pens and long after. A Defense Department IG report covering January to March 2020 stated, “Taliban violence continued at high levels, even during a negotiated weeklong reduction in violence that led to the agreement’s signing . . . . The Taliban escalated violence further after signing the agreement.”

The boast that we hadn’t lost a single soldier since the ceremony rings hollow since the thugs didn’t want to upset the skedaddle then underway and instead turned their guns on the Afghans. And they continued to do so throughout 2020. In spite of the violence, Trump persisted in reducing troop levels from 13,000 to 2,500 by the end of his term in January 2021. Trump is now a tough talker but “conditions” in real time didn’t dissuade him from negotiating with the officially-designated terror group and fulfilling their desire of getting us out. On that, the terror group and Trump agreed.

What of those released prisoners at Bagram when Biden abandoned the base? It was an abomination . . . like Trump’s agreement strong-armed the Afghan government to turn loose 5,000 in 2020. How many of those returned to the fight to maim and kill more Afghans, and maybe later to show up as suicide bombers of American soldiers and Afghans ringing the lonely and isolated outpost of an airport in the middle of Kabul in August 2021?

ISIS prisoners at the Bagram prison.

No wonder Afghan president Ghani split with bags of cash. Cowardly? Yes, but I understand his logic. Why should he stick his neck out if two successive administrations were set on abandoning his country? American resolve had evaporated under the barrage of two presidents bent on getting out. The Doha Agreement was strictly a pact between the US and the officially-designated terror group. The Afghans were left on their own to bargain with the wolves. The aforementioned Trump-approved jailbreak of 5,000 and the cutout of the Afghan government from the negotiations was heartily opposed by Ghani in 2020. He could see where this was heading back when the orange man was loudly lambasting “forever wars” and American policy began to reflect the smear.

Do you think that Trump let up on the rhetorical heat after leaving office? Not a chance. In April, Biden set a deadline of September 11 for the pull out. Three days later, Trump berated Biden for not doing it sooner by saying, “. . . we can and should get out earlier . . . .” Further writing, “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”

The big question posing as the elephant in the room is the one about the wisdom of a pullout to begin with. Right now, and excusably so, our eyes are glued to the unfolding debacle at Kabul airport. It’s contemptible and sufficient grounds for a presidential resignation. Dramatic as that is, we should not let it cause us to ignore what we are leaving behind. Do we really want another terrorism-compatible vacuum as existed on 9/10?

An easy out for Trump and Biden is to blame the Afghan leaders and soldiers. Both have smeared the Afghans. Neither mentions Biden’s withdrawal of the support that kept the Afghan air and ground forces in the field of battle. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan military is too easy a plum for Trump not to use to excuse his own skedaddle infatuations. It’s a convenient alibi for Biden for obvious reasons. Anyway, tarring the victim country makes it easy to not have to think about what we’re leaving behind, a Taliban/al-Qaeda/ISIS playground.

Children trained in the use of AK-47’s at an al-Qaeda at a camp in Afghanistan.

Which brings me back to remembering our original reason for invading the country: remove the Taliban, keep them out of power, and kill terrorists. The nature of the danger of terrorism means that it’ll be a threat into the foreseeable future. It’s like crime. You reduce it, not eliminate it, which means that you maintain precinct stations in high crime areas. If you tire of the war on terror, then you should be in favor of defund the police.

Trump and Biden, in the end, are unknowingly pushing for the international equivalent of Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and any Democrat-run big city in America. All I can say is this: keep a wary eye on the skies, water supply, and any place with a large gathering of people. Thank you, Biden and Trump.

RogerG

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The Trump Anchor

Trump at a recent rally in Alabama

While thinking about the return of Trump – he’s already conducting campaign rallies – I ran into Peter Robinson’s essay of vignettes on the political, social, and economic morass that is California. Robinson was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is currently the Murdoch Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. No RHINO this guy.

His story of the predicament of Mike Garcia (R) in California’s 25th Congressional District is illuminating.

Rep. Mike Garcia (R) of California’s 25th congressional district.

Garcia is the son of Mexican immigrants, an Annapolis grad, flew two dozen missions in the Iraq War, and is overflowing in charisma and oratory skills. The 25th is tailored for Republicans to be legitimately competitive (D 38%, R 32%, NPP 25%). It like much of the state has been trending increasingly Democrat but is an easier get than most of the other districts on the coastal plain. The district centers on Simi Valley, the home of the Reagan Library for good reason. Yet, a Democrat, Katie Hill, took the seat in 2018 but had to resign in scandal in 2019. In a special election, Garcia took the seat back for Republicans, and barely won reelection in 2020 by 333 votes out of 339,000 cast. Why so tough, after all, in a competitive district with a great candidate?

As I’ve said repeatedly, I voted for Trump twice and would do it a third time if he is the 2024 nominee. The Democrats are too wretched. But campaigns like economics are decided in the margin, that space where voters or consumers could go either way, or simply leave a line on the ballot unmarked. Looking at the 2020 result, I can only conclude that Garcia was running with the Trump anchor chained to his ankle in a Republican-competitive district that Biden won by 10%. Trump is wildly popular among the rabid 24% of the electorate, but he’s highly toxic to a good chunk of the rest, especially in California. For any candidate like Hillary, Biden, or Trump, how many of the getables are willing to engage in hold-the-nose? For Garcia, thank the Almighty that enough were willing to ticket-split.

Holding the nose is an epidemic when the choices were Hillary, Biden, or Trump. Just looking at Trump, his ribald, brutal verbal ticks appeal to crowds not offended in bars and locker rooms. His approach is as Gutfeld would say, “direct”. But depth of understanding is shallow to such as extent that he ran the executive branch in a naively “direct” manner in, for instance, personal overtures to the world’s pariahs like Kim Jong-un. If you agree with Trump that foreigners are screwing us, Trump scraps the Trans-Pacific Partnership whose purpose was to create the commercial foundation for an alignment of Asian and Pacific countries against a resurgent and hegemonic Red China. Don’t like the “forever wars”? He’ll negotiate a pull out. Direct and understandable, yes. Effective in the long run . . . ?

He began his most recent rally in Alabama with Patton’s speech at the beginning of the movie “Patton”. How ironic. Scott’s Patton regales the crowd with Americans “staying out of the war as a bunch of horse dung”; “Americans love the sting of battle”; and “. . . making the other poor bastard die for his country”. It was lost on the rally-goers that Patton’s call to arms and martial virtue doesn’t comport with Trump’s pull-out fixation – essentially a negotiated runaway – and his drumbeat against “forever wars”.

Bar-room bouncers having to deal with roadhouse fights aren’t likely to deal with nuance, and the bouncer Trump wouldn’t practice it anyway. As president and politician on the stomp, he plays checkers as the CCP is immersed in chess.

Playing checkers gave us the Doha Agreement. Biden doesn’t play checkers since he doesn’t understand the colors of the pieces. Translating, Trump was getting to the king line on the checkerboard with his Doha pact; Biden is in the sand box; and the CCP is in the chess room with the rest of the geeks.

Pompeo and Taliban leaders in Doha, early 2020.

Trump got his withdrawal agreement which would have produced the loss of an operating base on China’s western flank and key on-the-ground assets in a strategic location to counter Islamofascism, protect our allies (read Israel and the Gulf Arabs), and kill those who have killed so many of us. To borrow from Patton, long distance, over-the-horizon diligence is “horse dung”. Once you’re out, you’re out, and you’re not going back in . . . unless we lose another 3,000 in the American heartland.

Biden achieved Trump’s endgame with a whole lot of chaos while destroying US credibility for a generation or more. Trump would have done a better withdrawal but still manufacture a vacuum in Afghanistan. All the rhetoric about “forever wars”, lack of fighting willingness of the Afghan forces, and Afghan government corruption is beside the point if the Islamo-crazies flock to the feudal Hindu-Kush, as they did before under the watchful eyes of the Taliban, to have the tranquility to coordinate mass-casualty events among the Kaffir (an insulting term used by some Muslims for non-Muslims).

That’s what is so amazing about Trump’s use of the Patton speech. Patton was calling men to arms. Trump was calling the nation to get out. Biden couldn’t get either right and gave us a cluster-f@#*. Get prepared for a perpetually heightened terror threat level to go with the non-stop COVID hysteria. Can a civilization withstand such a water-boarding? I guess that we’ll see.

RogerG

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Lara Logan Gets It Right in “Sacrificing Afghanistan”, aired Sunday, 8/22/21

Lara Logan interviews Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh in “Sacrificing Afghanistan” on Fox News.

Below is guest Lara Logan on Fox Business from Friday, 8/19/21.

This is my review of the current scene in light of her insights:

Yes, we are horribly, horribly governed, and have been for quite some time. 2016 brought in the orange man and his wretched rhetoric of “forever wars”, while getting some things right. I’ll give him that. But the guy wanted out, trying to peremptorily get out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan as if by doing so, we’ll cure the opioid epidemic in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. 2020 brought us a mentally incontinent and doddering fool, beholden to the powerful and growing neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party. The only real difference on Afghanistan between the two administrations is the difference between a smoother and impulsive bugout. The big, big question, heartily avoided, is the one over the wisdom of a pull out in the first place, no matter how conducted.

To be clear, I don’t get my cues on issues from celebrities on Fox News or talk radio. Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham chanting a common line matter not a twit to me when it sounds like so much nonsense.

And nonsense is everywhere in today’s political cauldron. The reason is obvious: our political discussion is dominated by cultists. Chirping hackneyed lines like “forever wars” or “respect of the world community”, they bring catastrophes in tow. We are experiencing it now, and will in the future in grotesque episodes when scenes from Kabul fade from the news cycle.

Cultists are famous for denying reality in the service of an imaginary one. For instance, the Democratic Party’s neo-Marxist cult has embarked on a great smear job of the country: it’s systemically racist. It’s easy to bug out of Afghanistan if you believe the country is evil, love and reciprocity lie in the heart of fanatical jihadists, and the revolution at home is far more important. At root, that’s how we get to the abandonment of Bagram Air Base and our Afghan allies in the middle of the night and the chaos begins to pour down on Kabul and the rest of the country.

The Trump cult has its own dispiriting lunacies. Cultists wanted a personality, not policies, and got one in the bravado and bombast of the man from Mara Lago. As long as he remained in your face, he was loved by a zealous following to the ends of the earth. So, the loaded jargon of “forever wars” filtered from his microphone to the broadcast studio and became a mysteriously accepted doctrine.

His appointees, having to translate his rhetorical burps into policy, engineered the Doha Agreement (Feb. 2020). Now, they’re trying to clean the fingerprints from the established policy in paper by hitting the airwaves to say, “We were tough”. Tough about what? Agreeing to get out, which was the great prize for the jihadists while fully disheartening to our Afghan allies? The scenes of Pompeo hobnobbing with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, speak volumes. It, like Biden’s horrendously precipitous skedaddle, shouldn’t ever be forgotten.

Combine Logan’s program with Levin’s on Sunday night and we get a fuller picture of the debacle. Levin interviewed Colonel Richard Kemp, commander of British forces in Afghanistan. He insists that there’s enough blame to lap on everyone involved, including the Europeans. Kemp justly reserves special contempt for Biden: Biden’s behavior is deserving of a court martial. But he also rebuts the rubbish coming out of the mouths of telegenic anchors and hosts from one end of the spectrum to the next. He has great respect for the Afghans, for many fought bravely until air and logistical support vanished in the abrupt surrender of Bagram upon, amazingly, the insistence of the Taliban according to Logan

Discussion between Mark Levin (l) and Colonel Richard Kemp on Levin’s show.

Kemp’s dire warnings about the future clearly draw into question the more fundamental insistence of pulling out to begin with. The damage to America’s reputation will reverberate on America’s global allies as they seek cover under less hospitable umbrellas. Now, chew on that for awhile.

RogerG

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A Butt-Protection Exercise

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meeting with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, now the Taliban’s de facto political leader, in Doha, Qatar, in September 2020. (Photo: U.S. Department of State/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Now that Afghanistan is collapsing into what it was before – a terrorist Disneyland – the administration responsible for the bugout is in hiding like the thousands of Americans stuck in Kabul, and the people from the previous one are all over the airwaves in a butt-protection exercise. The question before the house isn’t only the wisdom of Biden’s wholesale surrender and run for the hills. It’s also about all that led to the bugout, including the sanity of any kind of pullout, smooth or otherwise. Everyone from Trump’s hawking of the rhetoric of “never-ending wars” in 2015-20 to Biden and his abrupt skedaddle should be in the dock for cross-examination. Admittedly, Biden and his people should be under the most scrutiny, but save some for Trump.

Look, I voted for Trump twice because the Democrats are too despicable, and in the hope that his worst bombast could be mitigated to get the big things right. He did right on borders, taxes, judges, energy, and ending the careers of al-Baghdadi and Soleimani. But troubling signs were in the air. The infantile abuse heaped on John McCain in 2015 (“I like people that weren’t captured.”), who was tortured in the Hanoi Hilton as Trump was busy filling out deferments, was absolutely repugnant, and a sign of things to come.

John McCain spent 5 and a half years in Hoa Lo Prison, the “Hanoi Hilton”. Here he is with a broken arm being examined by a prison medic.

As it turned out, the “never-ending wars” lingo wasn’t empty political rhetoric for the man from Mara Lago. He wanted to bug out of Syria and turn over the north to Erdoğan’s Turkey so they could rebuild the Ottoman Empire, only to be dissuaded by people with a better grasp on reality. He was chomping at the bit to jump ship on Afghanistan, only to be held back by the adults in the room once again. The guy seemed to be hell-bent on rebuilding an 18th-century fortress America, a time when it took a month after the Battle of New Orleans (fought Jan. 8, 1815) to deliver notice of the signing of the Peace of Ghent ending the war (signed Dec. 24, 1814). Pan-Am and underwater cables ended the era of defense starting at the edge of the continental shelf. Not so in Trump’s stunted mind.

Au contraire, Tucker Carlson, “oceans matter” . . . only in the 18th century. In an age of satellites, fiber-optics, vibrant international trade and travel, and when a missile only requires a booster, oceans only carry a warning not to swim alone across one. Heck, oceans haven’t even inhibited the flood of migrants from the rest of the continents at a time when our southern border is an open sieve.

Butt-protection is the order of the day when a Biblical calamity is taking shape in the land that time forgot. Biden and his people only further soil themselves every time they come out of hiding. Trump and his people show up in friendly venues to hawk the line, “It wasn’t us. We would have conducted a better bugout”.

For instance, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Friday, 8/20. I listened to the whole thing. It was pure butt-protection.

He made assurances that Trump threatened the Taliban if they broke the Doha Agreement (signed Feb. 2020), which might have worked since no American soldier had been killed since early 2020. That just means that the hooligans were biding their time waiting for the American skedaddle. It’s what all scheming thugs do when the good guys agree to abandon the field on date certain. They wait for the date certain, plan and stockpile arms in the meantime, and then pounce. Doha wasn’t about leaving behind a country absent the terrorist Disneyland. It was about getting us out, period. It was the announcement that we were reverting back to 9/10.

The throw away line of leaving behind a residual force upon leaving office wasn’t particularly reassuring. Remember, the deadline concerned getting everyone out – granted, with our equipment and civilians in tow. The Taliban should be good with that. They’ll be free to hobnob around in parts of the country under their control, maybe the whole country, with their Al-Qaeda friends after date certain to terrorize girls, boys, women who wear makeup, and eventually get around to killing the bountiful infidels beyond their borders.

Pompeo in the interview made many utterances on the untrustworthiness of the Taliban so much so that threats of slaughtering the villages of Taliban leaders if they broke the agreement were thought necessary. Question: If they were that dishonest, why were you negotiating with them in the first place? Answer: Trump wanted us out. Doha was recklessness on paper.

In that, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, and H.R. McMaster agree. It was recklessness on paper. In an age before the mean tweets and the hawking of isolationism, these people were considered wise on the right. Then came the pop jargon of “neo-con” as a pejorative by Mick Jagger, Donald J. Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. If you’re wondering, here’s a sample from Jagger’s “Sweet Neo-Con”:

“You call your­self a Chris­t­ian, I call you a hyp­ocrite/ You call your­self a pa­triot. Well, I think your [sic] are full of sh*t!… How come you’re so wrong, my sweet neo-con.”

I wonder if Carlson and Ingraham downloaded the tune with excitable, trembling fingers.

All the stipulations in the Doha Agreement are meaningless if the gangsters can’t be trusted and are simply waiting to pounce. Conditions like the Taliban reaching agreement with the Afghan government and promises to prevent ISIS and Al-Qaeda from taking root in the country would be worthless. Remember, today’s catastrophe hadn’t happened yet and Trump clearly wanted out at the time. Today’s after-the-fact assurances by Trump, Pompeo, et al, of toughness ring hollow. It sounds like so much of a butt-protection exercise.

Others warned Trump at the time of Doha. UN ambassador Nikki Haley resigned during the negotiations saying, “Negotiating with the Taliban is like dealing with the devil.” Lisa Curtis, former national Security adviser who sat alongside our envoy Zalmay Khalilzad during the negotiations said, “The Doha agreement was a very weak agreement, and the U.S. should have gained more concessions from the Taliban.” During negotiations, Trump frequently called for troop pullouts. That’s right, get your deadly foe to agree by disarming yourself. That won’t end well.

Bolton and McMaster are scathing in their indictment of Trump, and rightly so. McMaster: “Our secretary of state [Mike Pompeo] signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.” Bolton: “Had Trump been re-elected, he’d be doing the same thing. On this question of withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump and Biden are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

Bolton (l) and McMaster

Drop the lefty jargon of neo-con-as-pejorative. It gets us nowhere because political rhetoric is no substitute for sound policy. A real America First strategy realizes that some of our enemies don’t wear uniforms and are hell-bent on killing us, all of us. The killers don’t reside here, but can, plan and coordinate mass-casualty operations in safe redoubts in countries that we abandoned, are well-stocked with weapons that we abandoned to them, and now no one is safe. We’re back to 9/10. Thank you, Biden . . . and Trump.

RogerG

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Our Punditry Is Just as Bad as Our Ruling Class

CNN anchors with Brian Williams of MSNBC (l)
MSNBC anchors
Fox News anchors

Let me be clear, I’m not tarring everyone in our punditry and governing classes. Not everyone is this stone cold stupid. But much of the chatter is hooey, and the hooey is only getting worse.

First on the list of buffoons are the folks in legacy media and all those swirling in their social circles. You know, the people at CNN, MSNBC, the networks, and the big metro newspapers and magazines. They’re hooked on soiling themselves daily, and have for quite a few years. They are the PR department of the left-wing revolution.

Next, we’re confronted by the primetime lineup on Fox News who, along with certain elements in the Republican Party, have resuscitated the Charles Lindbergh wing of foreign policy. If you’ll recall, Lindbergh was the mouth of isolationism before the Fall of France and Pearl Harbor put the kibosh to the whole smear.

Charles Lindbergh speaking at America First Rally in 1941.

Tucker Carlson is an out-and-out isolationist. In a quip during one of his recent shows, he said, “Oceans matter”, or something to that effect. Yes, they do if you have to cross them. No, they aren’t if you want to kill Americans. Why do you think North Korea and Iran want ICBM’s? Why do you think the Russians and the CCP have them? Even if you can’t get your hands on one, box cutters at the throats of airline flight attendants and flight crews will suffice. Voilà, you’ve got a mammoth cruise missile that has the range of an ICBM. Bin-Laden showed the way. Oceans only become another geographic feature on the way to killing Americans.

If the fanatics are more interested in a hands-on approach to the mass killing of Americans – and since I don’t think Tucker is willing to drive the airlines, cruise lines, and shipping companies into the ether by cutting us off from the outside world – trying to keep out the goons at passport/visa checkpoints won’t guarantee anything. More overpaid TSA government workers aren’t reassuring. We’ve already experienced the government efficiency that resulted in flight training for foreign nationals not interested in landing.

A chilling final image of Mihdhar and fellow hijacker Majed Moqed, captured on a surveillance camera at Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport the morning of September 11th. (© 2009 WGBH Educational Foundation)

After Tucker, Sean Hannity jumps in with his program of Trump-love. Nearly everything Biden does – agreed, most of it is horrible – is condemned with the follow-up, “Trump wouldn’t have done that.” It’s not just that Biden is dreadfully wrong. He is! It’s that Trump is a god to Hannity. Biden bad, Trump good. It’s that simple to the man from New York City, and soon to be living in a Florida seaside estate maybe next to Trump.

Batting third is Laura Ingraham. She was once a Reaganite in foreign policy but now has enlisted in the Lindbergh brigade. In her on-air confessional, she’s on the Trump train to paint “forever war” on any foreign engagement that might get sticky.

All of this buffoonery came to light in the days since our screens were awash in the abominable scenes in Kabul. Yep, this disaster is 100% Biden’s. No doubt. He carried out a Buster Keaton pullout. But don’t forget, they all wanted a pullout: Biden, Trump, and the telegenic celebrities in primetime Fox News. The left was preconditioned to be a booster of the bugout from W’s Bush-lied-people-died wars. This is something for which there is kumbaya between Code Pink and the Lindbergh wing at Fox News.

Biden concocted a dastardly bugout. Trump and his Trumpkin brigades, aping Trump’s “forever wars” lingo, wanted a nicer bugout. Either way, the timetable and the smoothness of the bugout will end in the same place: mass-casualty events.

In the end, as we’ll soon learn, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are a revolving door. Regardless of Bush’s asinine and airy rhetoric about the universal aspirations of mankind and our efforts to export wokeness, we were in Afghanistan to kill terrorists, the kind that’ll cry “Allah Akbar” as they spray bullets in a night club.

Omar Mateen, the Orlando Pulse Nightclub killer.

The mission demands 10,000 troops on the ground, bases in-country and outside, roving special forces, Afghan allies, intelligence operations par excellence, and an Afghan government that won’t stand in the way. That indigenous government doesn’t have to be Switzerland, just functioning enough to stay out of the way.

Yes, kill ‘em before they get a ticket to the Iowa State Fair. That’s a real America First strategy.

If you’re worried about our sons and daughters in harm’s way, well, any place is in “harm’s way” if these fanatics get a haven to slaughter us. If we can tolerate 35,000 troops in Germany, we sure as hell can put up with 15,000 to kill those who would kill us, and have done so.

Taliban soldiers killed in a fire fight with US troops.

How’s that for speaking truth to power, media power?

RogerG

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We Are Horribly Governed

Hot in the news is the flight from Afghanistan – not flight as in air travel but as in skedaddle. It’s so bad that only explanatory expletives do it justice. Simply put, we apparently have some of the world’s worst blank slates running the show in DC. In addition to the botch taking place in Afghanistan, this group of mediocrities is attempting to strangle the country in perpetual mutilation of life with unending COVID-variants as the excuse. It’s insane.

As we watch in real time the bungle in Kabul, Biden goes out Wednesday before cameras to announce threats to governors for refusing to countenance the suffocation of children behind masks. Vaccine ID papers are beginning to be required everywhere. Businesses not big enough to function in a warehouse (Costco, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.), that haven’t already gone defunct, will be pushed over the edge this time around. Terms of employment are being rewritten to conform to the hysteria. So, our “best and brightest” from the White House to the Pentagon to the CDC abandon us to the fate of psychotic killers in Kabul while those of us still at home face an existence that is beginning to resemble life under the jackboot in the waning days of the Soviet Union or the CCP’s hyper-surveillance state.

UC San Francisco researcher conducts COVID testing as part of neighborhood-wide testing and vaccination program in San Francisco.

The lunacy of the approach to the virus was apparent early on. We dither over fatalities rates – whether 1% or 1.5% – and transmissibility R factors and completely miss the obvious: bugs evolve because they will always find a host to incubate despite your best efforts at perfection, as in perfect compliance with the demands of our overseers. It’s impossible with 330 million people . . . and counting since our borders are open sieves. Variants bust out and off we go into the world of sci-fi fantasy.

The thing that transpires before your eyes as you walk outside in many locales is Franz Kafka’s imagination made real.

Scene from Orwell’s 1984: the Two minutes of Hate.

The rescue plan from this Kafkaesque existence was mistakenly based on a vaccine. Now it’s coming to light that the jabs have a shelf life of only six months. The booster becomes the next front in the campaign for coerced compliance. Of course, this will only be true till the next edition of the bug erupts. And it’s back to what didn’t work before. Remember the definition of insanity?

When will we grow up and realize that some periods require more perseverance than others? At a certain point, life must go on. Mitigate wherever practical, develop and utilize therapeutics, and balance the mitigations with the acknowledgement that humans can’t be stopped from being human. Safety-obsession leads to a life not worth living.

From Biden’s brain to Fauci’s and Gen. Mark Milley’s mouths, incompetence rules. How many times can a great country continue to take body blows and still stand? Our allies are running from us as fast as our citizens are running from our “experts”. Amazing, absolutely amazing, that things have come to this pass.

Pres. Biden, Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Gen. Mark Milley

Just think, a majority voted for this. This is popularly-elected incompetence.

RogerG

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A Bi-Partisan Bugout

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) and major Taliban leaders in Doha.

Larry Elder said it best: “We have forever wars because we have forever enemies.” The aphorism is lost on many talking heads and politicians across the political spectrum, including Biden and . . . Trump.

Last night, I couldn’t take it anymore. The Fox News primetime lineup were all in for a bugout. The only difference them and Biden on the abandonment of Afghanistan is the pace. They wanted a scheduled bugout and Biden carried out a precipitous one. Lost in all the barking was something Elder quickly understood. Our forever enemies hate us, want to extinguish us, and are in it for the long haul to construct a worldwide caliphate. The belief is central to their identity. Taliban/Al-Qaeda leaders have repeatedly said, even during the negotiations,

“One day mujahedeen will have victory and Islamic law will come not just to Afghanistan, but all over the world. We are not in a hurry. We believe it will come one day. Jihad will not end until the last day.”

They won’t be satisfied till we are like them in burqas, beards, prayer rugs, sandals, and the 8th century. I was so disgusted that I flipped to the Smithsonian Channel.

Let’s clear away some deadwood to logic. One is the chimera of the Taliban and A-Qaeda as distinct entities. They aren’t for practical and operational purposes. One 2020 UN report put it succinctly:

“Relations between the Taliban, especially the Haqqani Network, and Al-Qaida remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage. The Taliban regularly consulted with Al-Qaida during negotiations with the United States and offered guarantees that it would honour their historical ties.”

I’m not a fan of much that comes out of Turtle Bay, but this got it right, probably because it’s too well known in intelligence circles to refute. Think of Al-Qaeda as the Taliban’s Quds Force (of Islamic Republic of Iran fame, and once headed by Soleimani, now dead, thank God).

That’s who the Trump people were negotiating with. Many of the people sitting across the table from Trump’s negotiators in 2018 to 2020 were Al-Qaeda under the Taliban flag, which was well known throughout. Many of our adversaries wear two hats than can be switched with a flick of the wrist.

Taliban/Al-Qaeda fighters in Kandahar, August 13, 2021.

Good faith gestures in negotiations with people who want to kill, convert, and replace you is the height of folly. Leading up to the Trump/Taliban/Al-Qaeda “peace” agreement in Doha on February 29, 2020, was an officially-sanctioned jailbreak of 5,000 Taliban/Al-Qaeda prisoners. All returned to the fight to kill Americans and friendly Afghans. Two examples among many should suffice. The Taliban commander of Helmand province, Mawlavi Talib, was one of those set free. Even worse, the Taliban head, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was in custody for years in Pakistan till Trump asked for his “good faith” release in a bribe to the Taliban to let us bugout. Today, word is that Baradar is residing in Kabul’s presidential palace.

Mawlavi Talib (center) in Kabul, August 15, 2021? I can’t tell.

Trump consummated the diplomatic abortion, and Biden carried it out precipitously and with gusto. Despicable, absolutely despicable.

Most despicable was the collective amnesia over the real reasons for the 2001 invasion. It wasn’t only as our incontinent president put it yesterday when he limited the justification to removing the Taliban from power and the killing of Osama bin-Laden. Preemption was on the lips of officialdom in DC in the heady days after 9/11. Preemption means to forestall this from happening again: take over the rats’ nest, clear it out, and continually hunt down those foolish enough to be later recruited to kill Americans. Like them, we have to be in it for the long haul, something not well understood by our last two presidents, if not the last three if the myopic Obama is included.

So, we’ve come to this pass. The Taliban/Al-Qaeda are back in the seat of power, ready to continue their bloody evangelism. India, Taiwan, our allies, the signers of the Abraham accords, and Israel must be wondering if they’re going to be the next victim of an American bugout. The goatherders-with-a-cause will be emboldened, and get fresh video for recruitment of the next generation of suicidal killers.

Thank you, Biden . . . with Trump as your enabler.

RogerG

*Thanks to the reporting of Jim Geraghty and Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review.

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The Great Bugout

Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug.16. 2021. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death. (Verified UGC via AP)

Kabul has fallen. President Biden followed in the footsteps of his mentor, President Obama, in abandoning a fight. Obama did it to the Iraqis and we got ISIS; Biden repeated the ignominy and we’ll get a reinvigorated Taliban/Al-Qaeda. Expect a return of the 1990’s: the near sinking of the USS Cole, the bombing of our Kenya and Tanzania embassies, and escalations to grander slaughters.

Damage from the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen’s Aden harbor, Oct. 2000.
Scene from the 1998 bombing of US embassy in Nairobi

Both parties were at fault in stirring the pot against “forever wars”. Trump tried to implement a bugout in Syria and had been laying the rhetorical groundwork for the same in Afghanistan. But at least he was amenable to common sense and could be dissuaded from the worst of his instincts. Not so with Biden.

Biden’s “gut instincts” seduced him to turn his back on what was already a light footprint. Clearly by 2018, US forces were reduced to a level that resembled the overthrow of the Taliban: reliance on indigenous forces, CIA operatives, special forces, and US air power. The 100,000 troop levels ended over a decade ago. Biden decided even that wasn’t enough. The bugout was fully on.

A member of the Taliban stands outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

The parallels with the 1975 Fall of Saigon are tempting. But the worst parallel is the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform who suffered so much for an ignominious ending like this. They were brave, and abandoned by politicians childishly patronizing crowds who had gotten used to thinking of wars ending like World War II.

Our light footprint could have worked, not at nation-building, heaven forbid, but at killing the thugs who would turn jet airliners into missiles. Intelligence gathering, a base in the country and a few in the surrounding region, special forces scurrying around the country at a moment’s notice, and tactical and strategic killing of the ringleaders and their henchmen would have worked. Israel’s Mossad pointed the way. But no, Biden forsook that possibility for a bugout.

The vaunted pivot to Asia and the China threat will now be diluted by worries over Pashtun tribesmen infiltrating a Lollapalooza or college student union to blow it up. Today, our future just became darker.

RogerG

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Dégringolade of a Once Mighty Nation

Dégringolade: noun; a rapid decline or deterioration (as in strength, position, or condition), downfall.

Pres. Biden and Senators in front of the White House, August 12

The Democrats running the show in DC have passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill – $550 billion billed as “additional spending” – and approved on a party-line vote (50-49) the Socialist Bernie Sanders’s $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” blue print. We are throwing money to the wind and will reap the whirlwind. We’ll get little for it but a national wasteland.

We could end up as the next Argentina. Argentina presents an abject lesson in the effects of drunken-sailor public finance. The Latin American country in 1970’s and 1980’s faced a debt crisis and began to wildly print money to address it. The result was an annual inflation rate that averaged 300% from 1975 to 1990. Middle-class purchasing power shrunk 30%. What is waiting in the wings as we embark on our own colossal spending binge, almost all of it from borrowing, bloating the national debt to such astronomical levels that the only way out is the one paved by Argentina? Could this be the beginning of the USA as simply another failed state?

Dire? Yes, because the numbers point in that direction. The national debt is scheduled to balloon from $17 trillion to $40 trillion over the next decade.* To put it in perspective, 1 trillion square miles would cover the surface of 5,000 earths; 40 of them would amount to 200,000 planet earths. There’s no solace in the fact that I won’t be around to experience the worst of it. My kids and grandkids will live to see their country become a basket case.

Much of this bloat will be swallowed up under “infrastructure”, which the most recent little and big sister editions aren’t. It’s a race-mongering, greenie utopian, nation-building exercise. It’s infrastructure to produce a faculty-lounge Soviet Union.

Leaving that aside, let’s take a closer look at the $550 billion mini-monster (remember, it’s $550 billion in $1.2 trillion) coming down the pike. Simple question: Is it even necessary? No. State and local governments currently spend $500 billion on real infrastructure. It’s not that there’s no infrastructure expenditures without this monstrosity. The drunken sailors in charge of the federal fisc are burying the cupcake of state spending under a gargantuan load of ice cream of federal cash. Don’t expect a cherry on top. Look forward to a belly ache and diabetes.

So, there’s no shortage of cash for “infrastructure”, if we understand that 500 billion hours ago would place us in the onset of the Early Eocene Period, which would leave another 56,762,626 more years before we started to walk upright. What happened to this interstellar load of dollars to justify an additional intergalactic heap? Well, it’s essentially wasted. Once again, the numbers are dispiriting.

Spending reform isn’t in the cards, just more cash. The problem isn’t that we don’t spend enough. It’s that we squander so much of it. Union featherbedding in the form of Davis-Bacon, and the little Davis-Bacons (state), bloat the cost of these projects by 22%. With federal Project Labor Agreements, labor costs are ballooned 30% when more workers are mandated than comparable projects in the European Union. It’s a sweet gig for the union hall, but in the end, we’ll still be plagued with crumbling bridges and interstates and a national debt that’ll relegate more of our children to pauper status.

Remember Obama’s measly $787 billion stimulus bill of 2009 which was supposed to produce those “shovel-ready jobs”? “Shovel-ready” ran into the buzz saw of entrenched environmentalism. Those lovable Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) in federal law, to be combined with Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) in states like California, empower environmental jihadists to delay and run up costs till they have squashed the thing and the proponents throw up their hands in disgust.

Nearly every step on the approval path is plagued with public hearings. A great idea, right? It seems peachy till you notice who’s attending. Let me tell you it isn’t the young family breadwinners negotiating clogged freeway traffic trying to get to work or the grocery store. It’s the traveling troupe of eco-zealots who seek to make mincemeat of planning commissioners and building department officals. If that isn’t enough, the laws give the same lunatics the right to sue, which frequently shoves the project back to the EIR/EIS level and a restart of the whole rigmarole.

California set the tone at the state level with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the creation of new commissions and boards like the Coastal Commission. Others were empowered like the Air Resources Board and the sundry Air Quality Management Districts scattered throughout the state. Other states followed suit. California gave us Silicon Valley . . . and Ottoman regulatory efficiency. As a result, will we go the way of the Ottoman Empire, courtesy of the golden state?

Putting a number to the scene, EIS’s take 7-25 years to complete, depending on the availability of legal talent and motivation to mash up the works. Eco-zealots have both in ample supply. I’m reminded of Rachel Maddow standing before the Hoover Dam in 2011 wondering why we don’t seem to be able to accomplish big-scale feats anymore. Apparently, it never occurred to her that her eco-allies had something to do with it.

Rachel Maddow in front of the Hoover Dam, 2011

Disgorging a couple of humungous bills through Congress can only be considered a win in one sense. They were examples of a group of overpaid, insular politicos in DC getting more votes than the opposition in a couple of rooms in the capitol building. They won’t be wins for the American people, particularly the young and the ones yet to be born. Our children will be burdened with a legacy of dégringolade.

RogerG

*“Time to Move On from COVID Capitalism”, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, April 5, 2021

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Our Marxist Zeitgeist

Scene from “Raya and the Last Dragon”

While reading Ross Douthat’s (NYT film critic) review of Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon”, I was struck by how art may be imitating life, or vice versa. Honestly, I haven’t seen the movie, and won’t. But his depiction of the movie sheds light on what is happening on our streets and in power circles of the Democratic Party.

We are in a peculiar zeitgeist. The word “zeitgeist” became popular among poets (Goethe) and philosophers (Hegel) in the 1800’s to refer to the spirit of a time. How did we get to the zeitgeist of official neo-Marxist indoctrination of the kids (CRT, campaigns against systemic racism, etc.) and Green New Deal socialism? This is much more ambitious than simply punishing an individual political actor, party, or business. This political endeavor is a much, much grander thing: a revolution.

Ross Douthat

Douthat’s film review brings to light certain aspects at play in the newly constructed modern mind, especially amongst the people who dwell in our cultural commanding heights. He cites the fact that older Disney animated movies held to a particular set of plot devices that have disappeared from their newer offerings. Snow White, for instance, depicted an older fairy tale with a protagonist prince or princess, a romance, and a villain. The plot was simple and endearing.

What does Disney offer us today? The protagonist is still there, but the villain turns out to be an abstract threat, “some impersonal force, some moral or spiritual disturbance”. The romance is replaced by a sibling or platonic bond. These two characteristics speak volumes about today’s ethos.

The romance of man and woman is either reduced to pure physicality or, as in the case of “Raya”, gone. Why gone? Fear of the adjective “heteronormative”. Someone in the audience might be offended by the prevalence of the only sexual attraction tied to procreation. Let’s face it, LGBTQ is the chic victim group of our time. So, the man/woman attraction is replaced by something more neutral. In that way the prominence of heteronormativity is suppressed in order to raise the status of the other sexual arrangements.

Next, the absence of personalized evil – like a Simon Legree in Uncle Tom’s Cabin – in popular media. Evil is nebulous, in the form of “some impersonal force, some moral or spiritual disturbance”. A constant inundation of this plot device gets us into thinking of our alleged problems as the product of abstract forces. This might go a long way in explaining the resort to the abstract “system” in the scurrilous writings of the Anti-Racism crusaders Robin DeAngelo or Ibram X. Kendi. It’s the justification for the “systematic” reordering of the economy, and the omnipresent life associated with it, in the Green New Deal, and all of society in CRT. This is not reform, but revolution.

We probably got to the destination of our current Marxist moment with the assistance of popular entertainment. It’s easy to pour blood on a cop’s home, or maybe shoot him or her, or topple statues, or ransack a downtown business district if such actions are instrumental in bringing down the hypothetical, abstracted evil. It’s easier to push the nihilism through organs of the state if the population has been softened by a warped version of reality.

Something to think about, don’t you think?

RogerG