Betraying Ukraine is just another day's work in February 2025, but the question is, Who will it next be, in May 2025?
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| "We just signed an agreement . . . the Taliban will be killing terrorists." |
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| "Up until yesterday I still believed Hong Kong has the rule of law." |
"Watch me hand over Ukraine to Putin like I handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban."
Of course Trump isn't responsible for what Biden did, only for giving him the opportunity to one-up Trump's own fuck-up.
Hey, how is the Taliban war on terrorism going anyway?
Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll of nearly 5,000 (all online smh):
Almost six in 10 swing-state voters labeled Trump as dangerous — a concern far more pronounced among undecided voters, who make up less than one-tenth of the swing-state electorate. Even 28% of those who plan to vote for him in November agree that Trump is dangerous. Fewer than half as many Biden supporters said the same about their candidate.
Swing-state voters who volunteered that they had heard something about his recent comments degrading NATO were especially lopsided in thinking Trump was the more dangerous of the two candidates.
An American tourist, 40ish, destroyed two second century AD Roman statues at the Israel Museum because they violated the Torah.
Sad story.
OK who does that other than ISIS and the Taliban?
Republican efforts in Congress are responsible for the new information coming to light.
It is unclear how many American citizens still remain in Afghanistan.
Nor is anything said about the fate of tens of thousands of Afghan friends of the US who never made it out despite American promises to bring them here.
600 legal permanent residents of the US have also been rescued.
Kind of hard to have any credibility when your commander in chief has none.
Biden signaled surrender already in early May, much earlier than hitherto reported; that's why the country collapsed like a house of cards.
Defeat in Afghanistan was a CHOICE made by the Democrat president, no different than the Vietnam defeat was a choice, made by the Democrat Congress of the time, of which Biden was also a part, which cut off funding to the government of South Vietnam.
The contractors which were necessary to the mission of the Afghan Army were already pulling out by the time of the May 8 Biden meeting where discussion of evacuating Afghan SIVs was supposedly excluded for fear of destabilizing the Ghani government, much earlier than has been reported until now:
At the time of the May meeting, Taliban forces were engaged in a countrywide offensive and were already capturing key territory in the west and outside Kabul, the nation's capital. U.S.-funded private contractors, meanwhile, were flying out of the country as part of the American troop withdrawal. The Afghan military needed the contractors to keep its air force flying. ... On Aug. 8, McKenzie delivered his findings to Milley, who in turn shared them with Austin. McKenzie warned that Kabul would be encircled in 30-60 days and that the city and the whole country could fall within weeks or a couple of months at most.
None of his supporters want to talk about that stupid load of BS Trump tried to sell.
U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, as did his son, appeared somewhat stunned when he spoke to the press on Monday, detailing surprisingly civil interactions with Taliban commanders who oversee the network he has fought to defeat for two decades. When asked how he felt about that, he demurred.
"I was very conflicted," McKenzie said in a candid moment during a televised briefing at the Pentagon from his headquarters in Tampa, Florida. "I am going to be thinking about that in the days ahead."
He described Taliban cooperation with the U.S. evacuation mission in recent days as "actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations."
McKenzie detailed that despite assertions from Biden and other top leaders, the U.S. did not withdraw all of its own citizens, nor the Afghans it had pledged it would protect in exchange for their cooperation in the war effort. The military presence on the ground at the airport retained the ability to bring them out of the country, but many were not able to get to the airfield amid the chaos in the capital city.
"The military phase is over, but our desire to bring these people out remains as intense as it was before," McKenzie said. "The Department of State will now take the lead on it."
The U.S. would not have been able to accomplish that mission if it had stayed for an additional week or so, he added, batting down suggestions from Capitol Hill and elsewhere that Biden should have ordered an extension to his deadline. ...
McKenzie assesses as many as 2,000 "Hardcore ISIS fighters" are operating in Afghanistan now, some of whom were freed in recent days from jails the U.S. originally ran at Bagram and elsewhere.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies reported Monday that Osama bin Laden's chief of security returned to his hometown in Afghanistan earlier in the day accompanied by a band of heavily armed Taliban fighters in brand new military trucks.
"The video of al Haq is evidence that Al Qaeda commanders now feel secure enough to appear publicly in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," the foundation's Bill Roggio wrote in an analysis note.
More.
This response epitomizes what has been wrong with US policy in Afghanistan since 9/11, and everywhere, frankly.
America treats this like a matter of law enforcement instead of like what it is, a war.
It cannot bring itself to punish the nation and destroy its ability to make war, pretending justice for an individual is sufficient.
That's why we've been there for 20 years, hunting down individuals. We make fine but false distinctions between ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc., instead of destroying them all.
The Taliban, now America's chosen people in Afghanistan, has simply run out the clock and exhausted us with our own inadequate, enervated Rules of Engagement.
Trump used to understand this but quickly was co-opted by The Blob, because his character was and remains weak, the fundamental reason why his presidency was such a disappointment.
In their push to retake Afghanistan, the Taliban made the security situation much more precarious by breaking prisoners out of prisons — including hardcore fighters housed at Bagram Air Base, Taliban officials acknowledged to NBC News.
Two Taliban leaders said in an interview that their biggest blunder was “releasing thousands of prisoners, among them hardcore Islamic State commanders, master trainers and bomb-makers. They were very trained people, and they are now organizing themselves.”
The Taliban itself was never designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, but the Haqqani network, which has close ties to Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence, has long held that distinction.
More.
The idea that the Taliban is not a terror organization is a lie, a fiction maintained by our lunatic US State Department and its friends in the press.
But Tuesday White House National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden noted that the Taliban was added to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by executive order in July 2002, even if it is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the State Department. Either designation triggers asset freezes, according to the State Department, though they can differ on other restrictions imposed on the target organization. The Treasury Department told ABC News the Taliban is still on their SDGT list.
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
More.
