I & I Editorial Board:

“…When President Joe Biden met with this year’s WNBA champions Seattle Storm in the White House on Monday, he took a symbolic knee, apparently to show he’s Woke. No surprise. He just took a knee before the Taliban, too, after the terrorist group’s humiliating rejection of his request for an “extension” on his Aug. 31 deadline for evacuating Afghanistan.

Biden’s plans, if you can call them that, to get Americans out of Afghanistan have been an epic disaster. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of Biden and his administration.

Biden rejected extending the deadline, citing the “increased risk” of terrorism as a reason for doing so. The fact is, he really had no choice, after the Taliban rejected the U.S. plea, calling the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal a “red line.” The U.S. president did what the Taliban told him to do.

That rejection, by the way, came after Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Kabul for emergency talks with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar sent Burns packing with nothing for his efforts, another humiliation.

“If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations, the answer is no,” said Taliban official Suhail Shaheen. “Or there would be consequences.”

Adding insult to injury, Biden told our allies that the U.S. “won’t be able to get everyone out of Afghanistan,” according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, twisting the knife, the Taliban demanded that the U.S. take only Americans, not Afghans, with them.

Late in the day, facing a barrage of criticism from all quarters, Biden appeared to abruptly change tack, calling for “contingency plans” for lengthening the withdrawal, whatever that means.

It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of the Biden administration, which in a brief two-week period has managed to alienate and weaken our major allies while emboldening and empowering our foes, in particular Russia, China, Iran and the myriad Islamist terrorist groups across the Mideast and South Asia.

And things are about to get even uglier in Afghanistan, if that’s possible.

The good news is that, as of Monday, the U.S. had already helped evacuate 37,000 people from Afghanistan, according to a leaked ambassadorial communication. The bad news: Only 4,000 Americans were among those evacuated.

The U.S., despite having the biggest airlift capacity on Earth, has had to rely on private carriers to evacuate the country, at the same time doing little to get stranded American citizens into the airport, say some.

“The South Africans, the Brits, the Qataris, their ambassadors have been getting safe passage for people to the airport,” said former congressman and one-time Navy SEAL Scott Taylor, who is working with others to privately evacuate people from Kabul.

Taylor, in remarks to the Daily Caller, called the U.S. refusal to aid private groups such as his “frustrating” and, in even blunter terms, a “massive f*#k up.”

There remain 15,000 more Americans and at least 50,000 Afghans to be evacuated, according to recent U.S. estimates. But even the Biden administration admits it doesn’t know how many Americans are even there.

From initial assurances that all would be rescued to Biden’s more recent comment that the U.S. “won’t be able to get everyone out,” it now looks as if a nightmare scenario is unfolding.

It includes possible mass hostage-taking or imprisonment of Americans as “spies,” with abuse, torture and possibly even executions for some. We’ve been here before. Remember the 444 days in Iran from 1979 to 1981, under the Ayatollah Khomeini? The Taliban is even worse. And it’s terrifying to think what it’ll do to those Afghans who helped us these past two decades.

In addition to gifting the now-national Taliban army with billions of dollars in spanking-new U.S. rifles, missile launchers, aircraft and even uniforms, we have now created the potential for “Largest Hostage Crisis in American History,” as Commentary online called it.

Begging terrorists for help is a huge mistake for a superpower. Our willful weakness makes the world a far more unstable and dangerous place than it already is.

Do the Democrats in Congress care? It doesn’t seem so. They’ve been moving forward on other things, even as they criticize and distance themselves from the increasingly isolated, politically damaged and mentally failing Biden. His public approval in nearly every poll has collapsed, and Democrats fear the taint of his failure going into 2022.

While the rest of us worry about the utter implosion of U.S. foreign policy, the loss of our prestige and power around the world, and the tragedy of the Afghan people and Americans trapped in Kabul, Democrats in Congress have had their eyes on the real prize.

With little fanfare, they just announced a $3.5 trillion spending bill that if passed into law will put Americans further in hock for decades to come, raise taxes, kill thousands of small businesses, add to already soaring inflation and give government unprecedented control over all aspects of American life.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” as the Democrats like to say.

Whether they now try to remove political liability Biden via the 25th Amendment, making Kamala Harris president, or wait and take their chances in the 2022 midterms, remains to be seen.

But Biden’s total lack of competence can no longer be doubted. He’s failed to push back against the murderous Taliban, set up the possible re-establishment of both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghan territory, and in effect asked for a mass hostage crisis. Such ineptitude isn’t mere bureaucratic failure; it’s deadly…”

August 25, 2021

Analysis of the utter failure of the Biden Administration in Afghanistan

Biden Embraces Defeat

Brian T. Kennedy:

“…It would be easy to attribute the disaster of leaving Afghanistan, both human and strategic, to the incompetence of President Biden and his administration. After all, human incompetence normally explains a lot. But the affairs of a great nation like ours and its military are not the work of one man. There are generals, well-credentialed foreign policy experts, and senior intelligence officials who have devised how best to leave Afghanistan in order to achieve certain strategic and political objectives. The notion that there was a single incompetent decision made to abandon Afghanistan defies both logic and common sense. It was a matter of high government policy that the United States depart Afghanistan, abandon military equipment, and leave both Americans and our allies to the tender mercies of the radical Islamic Taliban.

The exit from Afghanistan, then, appears designed to accomplish two things: first, to demoralize the American military and the American people. Over 22,000 American service personnel have been killed or injured in Afghanistan. Every American knows someone who served there. Knowing full well that the Afghan military would not defend the country, there could be little doubt that the United States was turning the country over to the Taliban. Moreover, the US did so with the appearance of being run out of the country in shame and defeat. One can only assume this was meant to demonstrate to American servicemen that their sacrifice had been in vain, and to the American people that our cause of defending America from the scourge of radical Islam was not just.

How else are sensible people to view the footage of killings, chaos, desperation, harassment, and contempt for the US and our citizens in Kabul? Taken together these images are far more effective tools of propaganda than nearly anything Al-Qaeda and ISIS has employed over the past two decades. Their message is clear: America is weak and resistance to Islam is futile. That is the lesson the Biden Administration has made possible. It is one for which radicals such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have signaled their approval throughout their tenure in Congress.

The second purpose of the Afghan debacle was to signal to the world that the United States has no interest in defending a liberal world order and that from here on out we will not defend either human freedom or our own self-interest, however bizarre that may sound. Even the most serious isolationist would not have left Afghanistan the way we have. A minimum requirement would be to preserve the prestige and credibility of the United States with our allies and to ensure that our enemies would not be emboldened by our fecklessness.

What must Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea think of the United States and our commitments to defend them against the Communist Chinese and their predations in the region? To be sure, Afghanistan does not play a similar role to that of these other nations, whose economies are closely tied to the prosperity and the security of the United States. But for the US to withdraw in this dramatic fashion is to send a signal that we are no longer concerned whether our enemies fear us. They do not, apparently, and that is just fine.

There is a new world order and America has chosen a new place in it. Whereas we were comfortable “leading from behind” during the Obama administration, today the United States is merely one of many other nations doing our best to cooperate in what some have termed a Great Reset. Defending human freedom may have been fine for earlier generations, but what matters today is understanding the grievances and ambitions of other peoples, be it the Islamic world and their deeply held religious convictions or the Communist Chinese and their struggles to find their place atop the world order.

Self-Defeat

Political leanings aside, what of self-interest? There is no clearer evidence of this rejection than the abandonment of Bagram Air Base. Right now, if it were adequately fortified, the United States could have an expeditionary force poised to strike at anyone in the region who meant the US harm. Claremont Institute scholars Mark Helprin and Angelo Codevilla argued for something like this nearly two decades ago, as opposed to the nation-building efforts that proved so painfully misguided. Such a base of operations would not be part of some “forever war,” but rather a forward outpost of US military power capable of defending the American homeland. No nation building, no lectures on LGBTQ rights, just straight national defense.

Leaving Bagram Air Base, and the billions in advanced equipment that was there, with the Afghan military will be seen rightly as an act of submission by the Biden Administration to a global order headed by Communist China. Certainly China, and apparently also Biden, would prefer an America in retreat and withdrawal from the world stage. What better way to demonstrate America’s intentions to the PRC than withdrawing from the region and allowing our most advanced armaments to be taken by America’s enemies?

An added bonus for the Left is having tens of thousands of Afghan refugees imported to the United States. Whether they were allies of the United States or not is quite beside the point. Many of them will bring with them an Islamic ideology that is incompatible with the Judeo-Christian West. Since the Left no longer believes in the West, they do not care about the threat posed to it by spreading Islamist imports throughout the country.

This stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s America First foreign policy and the simple proposition that if we were going to put America’s soldiers in harm’s way, it had to be for the good of the lives of the American people and the defense of the American way of life. President Trump was guided by prudence and an appreciation of how other nations viewed the United States. This was among the many reasons he was elected in the first place.

After all, Americans were never opposed to staying in Afghanistan so long as our purpose was the single-minded defense of the United States. But once the mission in Afghanistan became first nation building and then imposing America’s left-wing social agendas on the Afghan people, Americans saw precious little that was good for them in the transaction. Losing the sons and daughters of the United States was one thing when we were defending the American people against terrorist attacks. It is quite another when their lives are lost to try and establish democratic institutions in a nation with no experience in civil society, or in pursuit of gender equality for Afghan women in a deeply dysfunctional society that, among other things, sanctions the sexual abuse of children. However desirable certain things may be, it doesn’t mean they are possible or that they are the job of the US military.

What Now?

Finally, it bears stating that those American soldiers who fought in Afghanistan did not die in vain despite the current machinations of the Biden Administration. Those soldiers held the line as their brothers had on distant battlefields before them. They fought the war over there in Afghanistan rather than here on the streets of America. They knew full well they were never going to turn the Afghans into civilized men of the West. However mistaken the policy of our generals and our ruling class to impose woke nonsense on the people of Afghanistan, the men and women of our armed forces were fighting for the people of the United States to live free of the miserable despotism that is Islamic rule. For that they are owed our undying respect and admiration.

The US is not leaving Afghanistan because of some failure on the battlefield. The Greek forces under Alexander the Great were believed to have won every battle they engaged in with the Afghans. Indeed, the superiority of the Greek forces, like the American forces now, were so much greater that there was little honor in the exchange. That we could have killed every last Afghan man, woman and child is quite obvious. That we would have been justified in doing so, given that they harbored Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, seems less well appreciated.

If it is any consolation, America’s enemies may not have thought us serious to begin with. The world has watched as an American presidential election was conducted in a manner befitting a banana republic; we have failed to build a national missile defense for ourselves or our allies including Taiwan, South Korea and Japan; and, 20 years after September 11th, have yet to hold to account Saudi Arabia who helped perpetrate the attack and Iran who provided intelligence for the execution. That America survives despite all this is nothing short of a strategic miracle.

We are at a moment now like none other in our history. The American political order has been made a mockery of since November 3rd, 2020. Much will be necessary to sort that out. But our credibility on the global stage has now been eradicated and Americans will reasonably wonder whether our union can endure. Now is the time for men of good will to rise to the defense of the American experiment in free government. We should pray it is not too late…”

August 25, 2021

Too busy with the “Lego Insurrection” to pursue actual criminal activity…

FBI declines to do anything about Ilhan Omar marrying her brother to commit immigration fraud

The FBI is a Democrat bureaucracy pursuing Democrat political objectives.

August 25, 2021

Another Covid dictator self identifies as a virtue signaling fraud.

DCCC Chairman Partied Maskless at Billionaire’s Estate in France After State Dept. Issued ‘Do Not Travel’ Warning

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney vacationed in Europe as he told Americans to ‘follow CDC guidelines’

Democrats.

August 25, 2021

Dangerous freedom variant

Dangerous New Freedom Variant Causing People To Ignore Government And Live Their Lives https://t.co/RBdrrM2CNx

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 24, 2021