Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers

At Amazon, Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.

American Honor

Bernard-Henri Lévy, at the Tablet, "Even in the midst of deep humiliation, there are still signs of the exceptional nation I’ve loved since childhood."

Biden’s Shameless Exploitation of His Dead Son

At Frontpage Magazine, "As bad as you think Joe Biden may be, he’s even worse":

After getting 13 American military personnel killed in Kabul, Biden met with family members and, instead of listening to their pain and apologizing for his actions, lectured them about his son.

Former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the scion of the family who took up the family business, figured large in his father’s speeches defending his disastrous retreat in Afghanistan. It was the same stump speech that Biden had been giving about his dead son for six years which he dusted off to explain why he was abandoning Americans in the hands of terrorists.

It was the same speech to which he subjected the family members of the men he killed.

“When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl Jared Smitz, said. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.”

The loss of a son is unimaginably painful, but Biden has spent the remainder of his political career exploiting Beau Biden, the way that he spent his early career exploiting his dead first wife and daughter by accusing the truck driver of being drunk or having broadsided her. In reality, his first wife drove into the path of the truck. What should have been a private tragedy was weaponized into a public spectacle with Biden taking his Senate oath at his son’s bedside.

The infamously theatrical scene of Beau as a little boy lying in a hospital bed in a room filled with reporters and photographers was not an act of devotion, but disturbing exploitation. Two young boys, Beau and Hunter, who had lost their mother could have used some privacy while they recovered. Instead, Biden dragged them into the spotlight in a public relations bid.

In death, Biden exploited Beau even harder than he had in life. After his son’s death, Biden contemplated building an entire political campaign around his dead son...

Still more.

 

This is What Victory Looks Like?

*Shrug*

At the Other McCain, "Biden Speech Signals Beginning of Media Effort to ‘Pivot’ Away Afghanistan."

Mollie Hemingway: 'We Can Never Fight Another War Like Afghanistan Ever Again' (VIDEO)

At RCP, "FNC's 'Special Report' Panel: Hemingway: 'We Can Never Fight Another War Like Afghanistan Ever Again'":

BRET BAIER: They have hosted radical Islamic terrorists and others, they say they are fighting ISIS-K. It's really a witch's brew there, Mollie. How about who knew what went and this leaked Reuters report the transcript from this call between President Biden and the Afghan President Ghani?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Yeah, we impeached a president for a phone call and now we have this leak of phone call that President Biden had where he asked someone to lie, in exchange for military support. It sounds like something that last year would have caused major problems for the previous president.

I think we cannot lose sight of how we can never fight a war like this ever again.

There was a Pew poll last week that showed that Americans are broadly supportive of the departure from Afghanistan. That's the Trump policy that Biden supported.

They have even more agreement that the manner in which we fought this war was a failure. You don't see people talking about World War II the way we talk about this war. This war has been prosecuted poorly, according to the American people for decades.

And then there is even more agreement that the manner in which Biden departed was a complete debacle. That's not really up for debate. It was a debacle. It was a national humiliation and disgrace.

The proper response to that is to clean out our military like we did after the Bay of Pigs and make sure that people are replaced with people who know how to do their jobs. Unfortunately, the current president who was involved in this phone call is incompetent and unable to replace the military leadership who failed. So it remains to the American people in their elections to replace him and the woke generals who cannot do basic jobs like winning wars or exiting a country...

Video at the link.

Steve Coll, Directorate S

At Amazon, Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Republicans Blame Pentagon Planner Colin Kahl for Bungled Afghanistan Strategy

At Free Beacon, "'Sen. Hagerty: 'We have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of Biden's incompetently planned withdrawal'."

Read the whole thing.

Professor Kahl is on leave from Stanford. I know some of his research, some of which is quite good, actually.

But he's stupid. He's been attacking Republicans on Twitter for years, and his partisanship irks critics --- and they want him gone. 

Joby Warrick, Black Flags

Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.

Shame! Shame! Shame!

Following-up, "A Bitter -- and Angry! -- End to America's Longest War (VIDEO)."

Via the New York Post:

A Bitter -- and Angry! -- End to America's Longest War (VIDEO)

Certainly Americans are bitter --- and untold numbers of folks may very well be angry --- but it's the president himself who's the angriest of all.

And why? Well, he literally can't blame anyone but himself. And as most analysts now agree (on cable news, at least), this is the greatest military debacle in U.S. history. He's left to screaming his frustrations, blaming the pox of public opinion, for his failures, but it's all on him. What a craven and pitiful imitation of a man, gawd.

And angry? Shoot, I've been fuming with rage these last few days, and not just because he botched everything, but especially for the literally tens of thousands who've been left behind --- and don't be fooled, it's not just "100-200" Americans whom the administration's abandoned. Peter Bergen was on CNN a little while ago just hammering the president, excoriating him for leaving so many behind, and especially for turning Afghanistan into the #1 terrorist hotspot in the world, with Jihadis now surging into the country from around the globe.

And people are wondering if the U.S. is now vulnerable to a new attack on the homeland? Well duh, and it's all on Biden and the hypocritical and ghoulish leftists who put him into power --- and aren't Democrats supposed to be "antiwar" after all?

It's all horrifying and this country will reap the whirlwind of totalitarian Islam's rape, carnage, famine, and endless --- never-ending --- murder and terror. 

At LAT, "America’s longest war ends as last U.S. troops depart Kabul airport":

KABUL, Afghanistan — With the roar of a U.S. military cargo plane lumbering into the night sky over Afghanistan’s Taliban-held capital, the last U.S. troops departed the country at almost the stroke of midnight Monday, ending America’s longest war and leaving lasting but disparate wounds that cut across two nations.

The momentous final scenes played out in darkness. But Tuesday’s first light marked the dawning of incontrovertible knowledge: Afghans had once again been delivered into the hands of the Taliban, the medieval-minded Islamist group that horrified the world with its cruelties before being toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

In a gesture by the Biden administration that was perhaps intended to bring closure to Americans but instead bestowed a bitter aftertaste of defeat, the final U.S. withdrawal came a dozen days before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by Al Qaeda, which used Afghanistan as a staging ground.

Death stalked and circled until the very end. In a war that cost the lives of nearly 2,400 U.S. service members, a final round of bloodletting came Thursday in the form of a suicide attack by Taliban rival Islamic State that killed 13 young troops and left more than 170 Afghans dead.

So long did this war last that to many, if not most, Americans, Afghanistan had slipped in and out of consciousness, like a disappearing Instagram story, until it was all but forgotten.

The war was eclipsed by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, its aims morphing and muddying with passing years. It wore on amid a dramatic shift in American politics marked by rancor and division that led to the election of President Trump, who in 2020 signed a deal with the Taliban to pull out U.S. troops. The move undercut Afghanistan’s fragile government.

The conflict tested four American presidents, left thousands of soldiers maimed, plowed ahead even after the death of Al Qaeda’s chieftain, Osama bin Laden, and marked the latest devastating blow to the image of an America that believed itself a force for good in the world. That reckoning is still resonating at home and abroad, a stark reminder that U.S. forays into other lands often have lasting consequences — and end with a degree of humiliation.

For Afghans, the war brought countless fresh graves and frequent doses of abject misery. But also, notably in Kabul, the U.S.-led military presence heralded a generation of economic opportunity and freedom — especially for women, who came out from beneath burqas to work as journalists, teachers and human rights activists. All this is now in jeopardy, even as the Taliban attempts to convince the world that it will not rule as before.

Like much of the war, this denouement was a long time coming but unfolded in a headlong rush.

The leader of the U.S. Central Command, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. “Frank” McKenzie, said the last liftoff of an American military aircraft came one minute before midnight in Kabul — just before the start of Tuesday, the day set by President Biden as the deadline for the departure of U.S. troops.

Within moments of the final U.S. plane’s takeoff, Taliban fighters swiftly moved into Hamid Karzai International Airport, which had been the scene of a massive U.S.-led airlift that carried more than 116,000 people out of the country — and into uncertain lives — since the militant group seized power two weeks earlier in a quick but nearly bloodless offensive.

As if to symbolize the dizzying turnabout, the group’s foot soldiers surged onto the airfield wearing U.S.-supplied uniforms and carrying once-coveted U.S.-made weapons and gear such as night-vision goggles. They fired salvos into the air and shouted “Allahu akbar!’’

The final C-17 cargo plane to depart carried the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, and Ross Wilson, the acting U.S. ambassador, who stayed on at the airport after the embassy was shuttered two weeks earlier. Strings of tracers lit the sky as the last U.S. warplane — providing cover for the hulking C-17 below — flew toward the horizon, the sound of its engine fading.

Below, some of the arriving Taliban fighters appeared befuddled by their new domain; one walked up to a metal gate and fiddled unsuccessfully with the handle, then tried to bash it into submission. In cavernous hangars, the fighters unearthed odd finds: boxes of military MREs, or meals ready to eat, tool boxes and an especially large power saw.

One Taliban squad posed in front of an assortment of partially disassembled Chinook helicopters, calling for a Taliban cameraman to record the moment. The men lifted American M4 rifles into the air as they cheered...

Just awful. Biden's turned this great nation into a colossal, bumbling hegemon of despair. 

This is not the country I grew up in, and I'm sure I've said this before, but I just never --- I mean never --- could have believed how this country could be put so low.

I'm sure you're angry, too, dear readers. We can commiserate for a while, and then it's back to the front lines of resistance. This is not our destiny, and the American public knows it. A righteous repudiation of the president and his party is on the way, and it's going to the most awful and terrifying rebuke of rank political cowardice and perfidy in my lifetime.

Carry on...

Afghan Interpreter Who Helped Rescue Biden in 2008 Left Behind After U.S. Exit

I've been upset by this whole Afghanistan withdrawal, but nothing gets me more furious than this. 

The president and his party are enemies of the American people. Though, keep in mind, while Biden's approval numbers are tanking, it's still well over a year until the 2022 midterms, and voters generally have short memories. 

That said, I'll be gobsmacked if Republicans don't take the House next year, and if they don't they're blubbering idiots. 

In any case, an exclusive piece at WSJ, "Interpreter stranded in Afghanistan makes a White House appeal: ‘Don’t forget me here":

Thirteen years ago, Afghan interpreter Mohammed helped rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm. Now, Mohammed is asking President Biden to save him.

“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who asked not to use his full name while in hiding, told The Wall Street Journal as the last Americans flew out of Kabul on Monday. “Don’t forget me here.”

Mohammed and his four children are hiding from the Taliban after his yearslong attempt to get out of Afghanistan got tangled in the bureaucracy. They are among countless Afghan allies who were left behind when the U.S. ended its 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan on Monday.

Mohammed was a 36-year-old interpreter for the U.S. Army in 2008 when two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters made an emergency landing in Afghanistan during a blinding snowstorm. On board were three U.S. senators: Mr. Biden, the Delaware Democrat, John Kerry, (D., Mass.) and Chuck Hagel, (R., Neb.).

As a private security team with the former firm Blackwater and U.S. Army soldiers monitored for any nearby Taliban fighters, the crew sent out an urgent call for help. At Bagram Air Field, Mohammed jumped in a Humvee with a Quick Reaction Force from the 82nd Airborne Division and drove hours into the nearby mountains to rescue them.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden, who was then running for vice president, often spoke of the helicopter incident and the trip as a way of burnishing his foreign-policy credentials.

“If you want to know where al Qaeda lives, you want to know where [Osama] bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” he said on the campaign trail in October, just months after the February rescue. “Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down…in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”

The trip to Afghanistan was on one of the many overseas trips the three senators took together... 

And for what? Biden Just. Does. Not. Care.

Afghanistan's slipping from the news cycle a bit, especially on cable news, but WSJ and NYT have prioritized coverage of the debacle, and I'm thankful.

In any case, keep reading here, and, as always, more later.

And thanks for reading!

 

Dexter Filkins, The Forever War

Very prescient.

At Amazon, Dexter Filkins, The Forever War.

Colin Clark, After the Caliphate

At Amazon, Colin P. Clark, After the Caliphate: The Islamic State & the Future Terrorist Diaspora.

Dumping the Browser Tabs

Hey dear readers!

I honestly haven't been able to blog.

Right now I'm doing heavy prep work. My college starts its fall semester on Monday and I'm teaching six classes. I'm excited, but the prep is exhaustive, as my school is once again mostly online for fall, and the Canvas (online learning) system takes time to revise from semester to semester.

By the end of this term (second week of December), I'll have taught almost two full years since the start of the lockdown in March of last year. More specifically, the spring term starts up in early February next year, so altogether, at that time, it'll be about 23 months since I've taught on campus.

Not only that, of course I've been glued to the TV in my remaining time this last few days, and of course I was completely glued to the set after the bombings yesterday at the airport. Things are so bad: It's astonishing what's happening, and events are moving so fast you shouldn't trust anyone claiming they know what's going to happen --- this weekend or years from now. 

So, I've have read a few articles I've been meaning to share. The old veteran blogger Jimmie Bise used to have a saying, something along the lines like "dumping the browser tab," as in my title to this post. Sometimes you read so many articles before you know it you've got a dozen tabs open, and that's too much to blog! You've gotta dump 'em! (And I see that Jimmie's doing very well, has published a recent book, and is interviewed at this podcast). Good for him!

At any rate, a few of my tabs:

At YouGov, "Americans who think the withdrawal from Afghanistan went poorly blame Biden." 

If his numbers are crashing now, it's going to be like a rockslide down Mt. Whitney before too long. Again, you can't predict the future. The best I can say is it's going to be a rough few years ahead, and I'd be surprised if the Democrats can hold on to their congressional majorities in next year's midterm elections (and if G.O.P. candidates are prepping new attack ads following the news out of Afghanistan --- these dolts need to get new campaign managers. *Sheesh.*

Also, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K)." 

This is a very good piece, and it's interesting because the New York Times is out with this today, "What Is the Islamic State Khorasan, a.k.a. ISIS-K?"

If you're not up on it, "IS-K" is definitely the preferable term. Note that "ISIS" stands for the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria," but the group dominated that part of the world way back in 2014 --- almost eight years ago --- and since then they were completed routed by the Trump administration --- and if it weren't for the debacle in Afghanistan they'd still be long forgotten. (Not by me, but almost all of the American public, of whom most are more concerned with domestic affairs --- like the economy --- than U.S. incursions in hotspots around the world. It's been that way a while, and political science research going back decades has established this point as fact. (But note this 2014 piece on the topic at the Washington Post . More, a 2015 Gallup Poll found that just 21 percent indicated that foreign policy was a top concern. See here and here, too, for more examples.)

In any case, top analysts for a while have preferred simply the "Islamic State." The goal of this organization, perhaps the most violent, merciless, and indiscriminate terrorist group in the world, is a global caliphate. That is, the group's interpretation of Islam is totalitarian, in more ways than one, but especially in that its ideology calls for Muslim domination of the entire world. All non-believers would be placed under the yoke of extremist Islamic rule, and no one would be safe --- frankly, I hesitate to say it, but if such a thing were to ever to come about, it's not out of the realm of the possible that Islamic jihad could murder more innocent people than the Nazis during WWII.

Finally, read this great piece from Henry Kissinger, who at 98 years remains one of the most important international relations scholars ever. See, "The future of American powerHenry Kissinger on why America failed in Afghanistan."

That's all for now. Thanks for reading and check back soon for further updates. 

How Many Remain in Afghanistan?

I've been thinking about this, especially the number of Americans are deadly risk of being left behind.

At the New York Times, "How Many People in Afghanistan Need to be Rescued? The Number Remains Elusive":

WASHINGTON — More than 70,700 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan as of Tuesday evening. Nearly 6,000 American troops are protecting the international airport in Kabul, the capital. And additional U.S. flights are leaving every 45 minutes.

The Biden administration has provided a stream of updates about its airlift of Americans, Afghans and others since Aug. 14, when the Taliban closed in on Kabul. Yet U.S. officials are reluctant to offer an estimate of the one number that matters most: How many people ultimately need to be rescued.

That tally has never been more critical, with the American government preparing to wind down evacuations as the U.S. military begins its final withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, President Biden reaffirmed his plan to remove all American troops by Aug. 31, although he left room “to adjust the timeline should that become necessary.”

But U.S. officials believe that thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan, including some far beyond Kabul, without a safe or fast way to get to the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government over the last 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

And refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

Recounting his conversations with other world leaders, Mr. Biden said Tuesday evening at the White House that they had agreed to “continue our close cooperation to get people out as efficiently and safely as possible.”

“We’re currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” Mr. Biden said. “The sooner we can finish the better.”

But other senior U.S. officials doubt the evacuations will be complete by then.

“Americans want us to stay until we get our people out, and so do our allies,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said Tuesday. Mr. Biden, he added, should “tell the Taliban we’re getting our people out however long it takes.”

Administration officials say the numbers are changing on an hourly basis, if not minute-to-minute, especially since other countries have their own evacuation operations.

But the American effort is unquestionably the largest. Given the resources and risk the United States is putting into the evacuation, how can the government not know how many people it is planning to fly out?

“Very good question! We are wondering the same,” said James Miervaldis, the chairman of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit that advocates the relocation of Afghan interpreters to the United States. Here is what we know...

Keep reading.

 

Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan

At Amazon, Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History.

Desperation Sets In

The U.S. issued a warning on Afghanistan today, and of course, hopes have been shattered among the people.

At NYT, "Desperation sets in for Afghans after return of Taliban":

For many Afghans, desperation is deepening. At least a quarter of a million people have fled their homes since the end of May as the Taliban marched steadily across the country. About 80 percent of them are women and children, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

At a park in central Kabul on Saturday morning, people who had escaped the Taliban’s march across northern Afghanistan in recent weeks were stuck in dust-blown makeshift settlements, washing their clothes in a stream and unsure of where to turn.

Days after they reached Kabul, the Taliban seized the city of six million, and now they may be stranded without assistance as international aid groups try to evacuate staff members who they worry are at risk of Taliban reprisals.

Known for barring girls from school and chopping off the hands of thieves when the group led the country in the late 1990s, the Taliban have presented conflicting signals of how they intend to govern this time. Top leaders have pledged to protect the rights of women and the free press, even as fighters beat protesters and search for supporters of the former government or its Western allies, according to the United Nations and witnesses.

The former insurgents have also demonstrated little aptitude for administering basic services in a country that is heavily reliant on foreign aid...

Keep reading.

 

'Dumkirk'

Today's cover.

And you know, even in defeat the Britain triumphed and Churchill roused the nation with his "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940.

And the U.S. today, well, you can fill in the blanks ____________________.

They're Liars and Hypocrites, But You Knew That Already

Very passionate essay, from Caitlyn Flanagan, at the Atlantic, "The Week the Left Stopped Caring About Human Rights."

Steve Coll, Directorate S

At Amazon, Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.