Richard Engel, reporting for NBC News:
The chaos and devastation --- including massive human rights violations inflicted by the Talbian --- is at what seems biblical scale.
Watch:
Monday, August 16, 2021
Ms. Katie
Ms. Katie's on Twitter.
Plus, "ON/OFF FLASHER FRIDAYS OF THE DAY."
More, "BRITNEY SPEARS TOPLESS STRIPTEASE FULL VIDEO IN 4K."
Afghanistan: A Return to Brutal Islamic Rule Under Stone-Age Taliban
On comes the barbarity.
At LAT, "The Taliban won. Here’s what that could mean":
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Afghans woke fearfully to both a new and old reality Monday with their country under the control of the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that ruled Afghanistan with a brutal hand for five years before a U.S.-led invasion ousted it from power in 2001. The Taliban captured major population centers with breathtaking speed last week, culminating in the fall Sunday of the capital, Kabul, and the ongoing flight of foreign diplomats, including ones from the U.S. There were reports Monday of chaotic scenes — and at least two deaths — at Kabul’s international airport amid the crush of people desperate to flee the country. The millions of Afghans left behind now face a radically different government, and lifestyle, from the one they have known over the last two decades. How will the Taliban rule? Have they changed? When the Islamist insurgent group first came to power in 1996, it billed itself as a corrective movement in a society mired in the lawlessness of years of civil warfare. Under its harsh interpretation of religious jurisprudence, women and girls were pushed almost completely out of public life and forbidden from employment and schooling. The Taliban imposed sartorial injunctions on both sexes, and mandated such brutal punishment as hand-chopping and execution by stoning — for infractions of its brand of Islamic law. It also banned television and music. Lately, the militant group has sought to present a more benevolent image. “We will respect rights of women,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen in an interview with the BBC. “Our policy is that women will have access to education and work.” But they will also have “to wear the hijab,” he added, referring to the Islamic head covering for women. Other statements from the Taliban have sought to reassure Afghans and others that insurgents would not engage in looting or revenge killings against members of the former government, and that embassies, international missions and charities would be allowed to continue their work unperturbed. Even international journalists, the group said, could operate after registering with authorities. Yet the group’s recent actions have been at odds with that rosy image, unverified reports say. In the areas it has recently overrun, girls’ schools have reportedly been closed, women have been plucked out of their place of employment and told to send a male relative in their stead; or forced into marrying a Taliban fighter. (A Taliban spokesman on Twitter vehemently dismissed the last assertion as propaganda.) It has also re-imposed harsh punishments. Last month in the southwestern province of Helmand, the group’s fighters hanged two men it said had been convicted as child kidnappers. It kept their bodies swinging from a bridge for days. And far from offering amnesty for those linked to the state, there have been ominous reports from residents on social media and elsewhere of militants going door-to-door asking for government employees. Months before the Taliban entered Afghanistan’s major cities, scores of activists, journalists, prominent female advocates and other members of civil society were killed in a Taliban assassination campaign...
I don't believe "Taliban statements" for one minute.
It's virtually 100 percent certain the stone-age rule will return to the country, with amputations, mass murder and executions, harsh sharia law and the brutal subjugation of women, many of whom will be murdered by families and communities for violating antediluvian tenets of Islam --- women stoned to death, raped and passed around as sex slaves, and the loss of life prospects. The women's place is in the home and no women can leave the shack without a male escort, at risk of beatings.
At Least 7 Dead as Chaos Erupts Amid Evacuations at Kabul International Airport
I'm still shaking my head at this debacle.
It's a huge story and an extreme risk for Joe Biden and his presidency.
At USA Today, "US troops try to manage Kabul airport turmoil; 7 dead as thousands attempt to flee Taliban":
WASHINGTON – U.S. troops Monday sought to gain control of the international airport in Kabul after thousands of Afghans rushed through the civilian side and swarmed the military landing strip. At least seven people have died in the mayhem. Senior U.S. military officials say the dead include some who fell from a departing American military transport jet, according to the Associated Press. Videos show people clinging to the sides of a U.S. military plane as it taxied, as well as falling from a plane as it took off. U.S. troops killed two armed individuals at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the chaos there as civilians poured onto runways and halted flights, Pentagon press John Kirby said. The troops had been fired on, he said, adding that there may be one servicemember wounded, but reports are incomplete. There is no indication that the individuals killed were members of the Taliban. There are about 2,500 troops at the airport and another 500 will arrive by Tuesday, he said. In all, there will be 6,000 American forces at the airport. Amid this, President Joe Biden is expected to address the Taliban's takeover later Monday from the White House. US troops try to secure civilian side of airport U.S. troops are attempting to set up barriers to separate the military portion of Hamid Karzai International Airport from the civilian terminal and its landing strip, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly. The airport had no physical barrier between those operations, although they are separated by a significant distance. Huge crowds of Afghans desperate to flee the country and its new Taliban leadership entered the civilian side of the airport and swarmed a U.S. Air Force C-17 as it taxied on a runway. U.S., Turkish and other allied troops were clearing the field to allow flights to resume, Kirby said. Large crowds of Afghans remain on the south side of the airport where civilian flights arrive and depart. The Taliban’s surprisingly swift rout of Afghan security forces and fall of the government on Sunday — including the flight of Afghan President Ashfar Ghani from the country — drew comparisons to the U.S. abandonment of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, as well as harsh criticism for President Joe Biden’s strategy for winding down the nearly 20-year-old war in Afghanistan. US veterans:'Were all of our sacrifices wasted?' War veterans react to stunning Afghanistan collapse Jonathan Finer, Deputy White House National Security Adviser, speaking on MSNBC early Monday, confirmed there will be additional US troops at the airport. "Absolutely there's a plan to secure the airport," Finer said. "That's why we've been able to flow additional forces into Afghanistan without having to fight their way in. There has been contingency planning going on now for a period of month. We believe there are the forces in place to be able to provide security for the airport, particularly with the additional forces that are going to be arriving again today, tomorrow and in the coming days, and the main focus of our efforts today are going to be getting that airport back up and running so the flights can continue." Biden expected to speak Monday afternoon Facing heavy criticism for his handling of Afghanistan, Biden planned to return to the White House on Monday and deliver remarks in the afternoon. Biden spent the weekend at Camp David, where he had been out of sight save for an image of him participating in a videoconference that was released Sunday by the White House. Robert Gibbs, who served as White House press secretary during the Obama administration, called it imperative that Biden speak to the nation and the world. “Hopefully this happens very soon,” Gibbs tweeted Monday morning. “He must lay out again the reasoning behind his decisions, how he sees the future of this region & what must be done to prevent another safe haven for al-Qaeda to plan attacks." House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., put it more bluntly. “Mr. President,” McCarthy tweeted, “Do your job and address the nation.”
The comparison to Saigon is haunting. If Vietnam was America's first defeat in war, Afghanistan's the second, and far more foreboding.
Still more.
Claire
The editor of Quillette and a stunning beauty --- and fascinating too.
Her face is a picture of serenity. Her skin so fair it's heavenly. And her blonde hair so light and shimmering and dreamy. I suspect she's been in the sun and her tresses have bleached out, for at other times her hair is more an autumnesque shimmer of mystical light grey.
Most intriguing is her Australian accent. I've heard some Aussie men's accents (most notably, "Crocodile Dundee"), but not as frequently women's. The Australians are not so near the British in their mode of pronunciation, for, at least for Ms. Claire, it's seems there's a bit of harshness, almost the hard ack! of the German (harsh in the sense of that back-of-the-throat sound, like "Achtung!" (attention in German).
This is much less a criticism than a celebration of variety, and in Ms. Claire a brush of her fair beauty and wonder.She's hella smart too, if not a bit arrogant sometimes (all part of her unique personality, as true for anyone).
Via Twitter:
Democrat Congressional Majority in Jeopardy
Kiss Pelosi's slim House majority goodbye --- and thank goodness!
At NBC News, "Early indicators suggest Democrats' House majority is in jeopardy":
WASHINGTON — Democrats with proven track records of winning tough districts aren't running for re-election. Republicans are enjoying early fundraising windfalls. And, as Donald Trump and Barack Obama both learned the hard way, midterm elections almost always break against the president's party. The early indicators that showed Democrats poised to make big gains in Congress four years ago now point the other direction, suggesting that the narrow 220-212 Democratic House majority is in serious danger. "Based on all factors, you'd have to consider Republicans the early favorites for the House majority in 2022," said David Wasserman, who tracks congressional races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "But as we found out in 2020, surprises can happen, and it's not a done deal," he said. "Democrats' best hope is that Biden's approval rating stays above 50 percent and that Republicans have a tougher time turning out their voters without Trump on the ballot." Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away — including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up. House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden's generally popular agenda, which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election. "Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump," said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous. They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats. "House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority," said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, "but we are taking nothing for granted." Emmer and other Republicans say they think they can continue to press their advantage on divisive issues supported by the "far left" and make hay of rising inflation and crime rates. "We are going to continue to relentlessly hold House Democrats accountable for their socialist agenda," Emmer said. Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin, one of just seven Democrats representing districts Trump won, shocked politicos Wednesday when he announced that he'd "run out of gas" and wouldn't seek a 14th term in Congress. His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes. Incumbency is an enormous advantage — well over 90 percent of members of Congress win re-election — and some Democrats worry that lawmakers like Kind who are abandoning swing districts this year are the only ones who can win them...
It's still early, and while I'm very confident Republicans will take control of both chambers, it's still early and risks for the G.O.P. still impossible to calculate.
It's going to be fun, though.
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Years of Miscalculation in Withdrawal from Afghanistan
All sides bear blame.
A close buddy of mine, who served years in the U.S. Army and Army reserve, told me that once we booted the Talbiban in 2001, we at most should've stay a few more years, leaving the Afghans to build their own country.
At NYT, "Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations":
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top advisers concede they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. The past 20 years show they should not have been. If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks. Commanders did know that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms. In the past several days, the Afghan forces have steadily collapsed as they battled to defend ever shrinking territory, losing Mazar-i-Sharif, the country’s economic engine, to the Taliban on Saturday. Mr. Biden’s aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks. For Mr. Biden, the last of four American presidents to face painful choices in Afghanistan but the first to get out, the debate about a final withdrawal and the miscalculations over how to execute it began the moment he took office. “Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal,” said Douglas E. Lute, a retired general who directed Afghan strategy at the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement,” he added, “but the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.” “The puzzle for me is the absence of contingency planning: If everyone knew we were headed for the exits, why did we not have a plan over the past two years for making this work?” A Skeptical President From the moment that news outlets called Pennsylvania for Mr. Biden on Nov. 7, making him the next commander in chief for 1.4 million active-duty troops, Pentagon officials knew they would face an uphill battle to stop a withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Defense Department leaders had already been fending off Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, who wanted a rapid drawdown. In one Twitter post last year, he declared all American troops would be out by that Christmas. And while they had publicly voiced support for the agreement Mr. Trump reached with the Taliban in February 2020 for a complete withdrawal this May, Pentagon officials said they wanted to talk Mr. Biden out of it. After Mr. Biden took office, top Defense Department officials began a lobbying campaign to keep a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan for a few more years. They told the president that the Taliban had grown stronger under Mr. Trump than at any point in the past two decades and pointed to intelligence estimates predicting that in two or three years, Al Qaeda could find a new foothold in Afghanistan. Shortly after Lloyd J. Austin III was sworn in as defense secretary on Jan. 22, he and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended to Mr. Biden that 3,000 to 4,500 troops stay in Afghanistan, nearly double the 2,500 troops there. On Feb. 3, a congressionally appointed panel led by a retired four-star Marine general, Joseph F. Dunford Jr., publicly recommended that Mr. Biden abandon the exit deadline of May 1 and further reduce American forces only as security conditions improved. A report by the panel assessed that withdrawing troops on a strict timeline rather than how well the Taliban adhered to the agreement heightened the risk of a potential civil war once international forces left. But Mr. Biden, who had become deeply skeptical of American efforts to remake foreign countries in his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president, asked what a few thousand American troops could do if Kabul was attacked. Aides said he told them that the presence of the American troops would further the Afghan government’s reliance on the United States and delay the day it would take responsibility for its own defense. The president told his national security team, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, that he was convinced that no matter what the United States did, Afghanistan was almost certainly headed into another civil war — one Washington could not prevent, but also, in his view, one it could not be drawn into...
Still more.
The Dream is in the Desert
For black Americans, at LAT, "‘We’re here to stay.’ Despite isolation and racism, Black Americans feel at home in California’s desert":
PALM SPRINGS — La’Ronjanae Curtis has grown used to the disbelief of college classmates and friends when she tells them she was born in Palm Springs, a city of 48,000 where people of color are relatively few. “There are Black people out there?” they always say. Curtis proudly tells them that she’s living proof. Tourists flock to the Coachella Valley and Mojave Desert to take in the psychedelic hues of their sunsets, lose themselves among otherworldly rock formations, and sip drinks poolside at Modernist hideaways in Palm Springs the way Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack did in an earlier era. For the few Black Americans who live in the California desert, it takes willpower to feel at ease in these playgrounds, and imagination to make them feel like home. In the first half of the last century, hundreds of Black people from the South, and from Los Angeles and the Bay Area, settled in desert communities like Palm Springs. They came for some of the same reasons that drew many white people: plentiful jobs, ample land to put down stakes, and the live-and-let-live openness of what still felt like America’s frontier. But the picture-postcard settings and air of possibility masked an uglier reality for Black newcomers. Many towns historically restricted Black families to segregated neighborhoods through housing covenants and lending practices. That legacy lives on. Today, the presence of an established Black community isn’t obvious when driving through Curtis’ hometown, where low-lying houses hide behind Moorish-style screens, meticulously kept cactus gardens look as untouchable as jewelry displays, and locals ride around their condo complexes in golf carts designed to resemble Mercedes and Rolls Royces. Most Black residents live far from the carefully constructed fantasy visitors see. Curtis, who attends San Diego State University, says relatives on both sides of her family migrated from San Francisco in the middle of the last century. They mainly settled in Desert Highland Gateway Estates, a neighborhood of about 400 homes that sits on the wind-whipped northern outskirts — three miles from the Midcentury Modern furniture stores and spray-misted restaurant patios of downtown. The other historically Black neighborhood, Lawrence Crossley, is at the opposite end of the city near the airport — a single U-shaped street lined with several dozen two- and three-bedroom houses shaded by palms. The lush green of a municipal golf course borders the neighborhood on one side. At the far end, a strip of barren desert. Dominique Brenagh, 38, takes shelter from the 100-degree heat in the shade of his carport at the small ranch-style house where he grew up and his family still lives. Brenagh says his father’s relatives moved to Palm Springs in the 1950s from Louisiana in part to escape the segregation and violence of the Jim Crow era. “Back in those times, you had the KKK out there that was oppressing people,” he says of the South. Brenagh looks back on his own life as a happy one by comparison. He smiles when reminiscing about sneaking from his backyard onto the golf course to play with friends. “I love it here,” he says...
Reporting From Kabul
NBC's Richard Engel:
Richard Engel reports from Kabul. https://t.co/Cjo6AUTupE
— On Assignment with Richard Engel (@OARichardEngel) August 15, 2021
Fuggetaboutit: Democrats Need to Stop Pushing for Zero Covid
It's Kat Rosenfield, at the Spectator, "The zero COVID delusion":
During World War Two, ordinary citizens were encouraged to plant victory gardens, collect scrap metal and carpool to save fuel, always with the understanding that these measures would somehow contribute to victory. The propaganda of the time was heavy on the same ‘do your part’ messaging that we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic, giving meaning to people’s sacrifices by characterizing their efforts as a patriotic duty and a moral imperative — and by strongly implying that those who balked at those sacrifices were on the side of the bad guy. One of the most famous posters from the era shows a snappily-dressed man behind the wheel of a car, with a ghostly, familiar figure sporting a toothbrush mustache in the passenger seat. ‘When you ride ALONE,’ the poster warns, ‘you ride with Hitler!’
The moral and patriotic imperatives of our current moment are different. (A 2020 version of that same poster might read, ‘When you ride TOGETHER, you ride with Death!’) But they offer the same comforting assurance: that together, if we just try hard enough and follow the rules, we can beat this thing. Therein lies the problem. We cannot beat this thing. The notion that we could literally stop the spread of COVID by locking down and vaccinating it out of existence was always a fantasy. As National Geographic recently noted, ‘only two diseases in recorded history that affect humans or other animals have ever been eradicated’. (Only one of these viruses, smallpox, was a danger to human beings; the other is a bovine disease.) Every other virus, from ebola to influenza to the bubonic plague, still exists among us; we’ve just learned to live with them, and to control them as best we can through inoculation, preventive measures, and treatment for those who get sick. Until very recently, we lived with them relatively easily. Take the flu: every year, it ripples through the American population. And every year, people deal with it according to their own personal set of priorities and risk tolerances. Some are content to take their chances. Some get a flu shot to protect themselves or their loved ones. Some take additional precautions because they’re immunocompromised or otherwise at above-average risk. But every year, no matter what, tens of millions of Americans catch the flu. Some get very sick. Some die. Yet we still don’t assign a moral element to the flu season — even though every person who dies from the flu caught it from somebody else. Nobody hisses through their teeth at the selfish irresponsibility of people who don’t upend their lives to avoid getting the flu; nobody tells you that you have an individual moral duty to stop the spread of endemic viruses, generally. Co-existing with other creatures is the price of admission for planet earth, and that includes the millions of microorganisms that have evolved over the course of millennia to survive by making us sick. But COVID — and more specifically, the messaging around it from our authority figures — changed how we conceive of our relationship with viruses. All those months of being told to mask up, stay home, and keep our distance have instilled in a fearful population the seductive illusion of control. We’ve been led to believe that if we just care enough and try really hard, we can stop getting sick and save lives. Suddenly, the only moral position is to do everything within your power to avoid illness, no matter how extreme, no matter how much it disrupts your life or hurts your livelihood, no matter the brutal costs it might exact elsewhere. And if you get sick anyway? This is somebody’s fault. Someone, somewhere, did this to you. ‘The fact is, if you get infected, even if you are without symptoms, you very well may infect another person who may be vulnerable,’ Anthony Fauci said on ABC last week. ‘So in essence, you are encroaching on their individual rights.’ This is the flip-side of the delusion that we can control our way to zero COVID: the specter of the noncompliant villain who’s keeping us from getting there. Those who dissent, who express skepticism, who want to question the rules instead of simply following them? They’re not just asking questions; they are ‘literally killing’ people...
Still more.
Biden Blames Trump for Taliban Resurgence
The inevitable blame game.
At Axios, "Biden blames Trump for Afghanistan bedlam":
President Biden on Saturday doubled down on his long-standing rationale for withdrawing the U.S. military from Afghanistan as the threat of Kabul falling to the Taliban looms large. Driving the news: Biden blamed his predecessor, former President Trump, for empowering the Taliban and leaving them "in the strongest position militarily since 2001." Trump responded with a statement blaming Biden for the situation unfolding in Afghanistan. * Biden said in a statement that he had to make a choice and that he would not pass on the war to a "fifth" U.S. president. * "When I became President, I faced a choice — follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict," Biden said. * "One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country," Biden added. "And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me." What he's saying: Trump said in an emailed statement hours after Biden's comments that his successor had "ran out of Afghanistan instead of following the plan our Administration left for him." He didn't elaborate further on details of this plan...
Still more.
The Taliban Takeover
It's underway.
At WSJ, "Taliban Take Over Kabul as Afghan President Flees Country":
KABUL—Taliban fighters on Sunday took over the Afghan capital as President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad, triggering a massive effort to airlift Western diplomats, civilians and Afghans likely to be targeted by the country’s new rulers. Demoralized Afghan security forces offered no resistance as the insurgents, who seized most of the country in just over a week, appeared Sunday morning on Kabul’s outskirts. While the Taliban initially said they wouldn’t enter the city while a transitional government is being formed, they reversed their stance by nightfall, saying that someone needed to maintain public order after Afghan police deserted their posts. “To prevent chaos and looting, the Islamic Emirate has ordered the mujahedeen to get control of the abandoned areas,” a Taliban statement said. The Taliban fighters, it added, won’t bother any civilian or military officials of the former regime. By evening, the main road to the Kabul airport—packed with Afghans desperately trying to escape and with thousands of American troops protecting the evacuation effort—presented a bizarre scene of Taliban fighters mingling with uniformed Afghan troops. Mr. Ghani, who fled the presidential palace and spent Sunday morning at the U.S. Embassy, left the Afghan capital in the afternoon. “God will hold him accountable and the people of Afghanistan will make their judgment,” Kabul’s chief peace negotiator said in a video message. A senior security official confirmed Mr. Ghani’s departure. On Sunday morning, the administration of Mr. Ghani told all employees to go home. Soon after, sporadic gunfire erupted and some checkpoints were abandoned as panicked residents clogged the streets. By early afternoon, the Taliban took over Kabul’s main Pul-e-Charkhi prison, freeing thousands of inmates, videos on social media showed. As the Taliban moved to seize Kabul, the U.S. Embassy sent out an alert Sunday night warning U.S. citizens in the capital to stay where they were, effectively putting a halt to America’s rushed efforts to get its citizens out of the country before the government collapsed. “Do not come to the embassy or airport at this time,” the alert said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected parallels being made with the rushed U.S. exit from the U.S. embassy in Vietnam in 1975, when staff was evacuated by helicopter from the building’s roof. He said the aim in Afghanistan was to target al Qaeda, which had been achieved. “This is not Saigon,” said Mr. Blinken, speaking to CNN on Sunday. “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission, and that mission was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11. And we succeeded in that mission.” Helicopters had earlier ferried American and Western diplomats and civilians to the military side of Kabul airport. One after another, Chinooks and Black Hawks took off from the landing zone, spraying dust. Below them was a city of traffic jams and roundabouts choked by cars—many of them filled with Afghans trying to reach the airport’s relative safety. Dark smoke, presumably from burning documents, rose from the presidential palace. In the airport, large crowds gathered at the military gate, trying to get through the checkpoint. There was an exchange of gunfire, with a warning of a ground attack sounding in the terminal. Dozens of gray U.S. Air Force and British transport planes awaited their passengers, the landing strip secured by newly arrived American troops. Some of the evacuating Westerners waited on cardboard boxes marked with the words “non-Pork MRE,” or meal-ready-to-eat. Others—including Afghan dual citizens—nervously waited their turn for the shuttle bus that would take them to their planes, away from the city they would be unlikely to see again soon. In Kabul, just before the Taliban takeover, long lines formed outside banks and at the city’s few functioning ATMs as residents rushed to withdraw their cash before it was too late. Few succeeded. The stunning meltdown of the Afghan state left the city in shock.
This is America's longest war, and like the last one, Vietnam, we lost it.
One of the most significant foreign policy debacles ever.
Still more.
Friday, August 13, 2021
Biden's Failure in Afghanistan
The top headlines at the New York Times right now, "LIVE: As Major Afghan Cities Fall With Stunning Speed, U.S. Readies Evacuation," and "Afghanistan’s Unraveling May Strike Another Blow to U.S. Credibility."
And from Frederick Kagan, whose father recently passed away, at the New York Times, "Biden Could Have Stopped the Taliban. He Chose Not To":The Taliban is sweeping across Afghanistan seizing more than a dozen provincial capitals in the past week, and is poised to seize more. Afghan defense forces, finding themselves mostly cut off from U.S. air support, haven’t been able to stop them, and the Afghan government may not survive for much longer. The United States has all but abandoned the country. A disastrous Taliban takeover wasn’t inevitable. President Biden said his hands were tied to a withdrawal given the awful peace deal negotiated between the Trump administration and the Taliban. But there was still a way to pull out American troops while giving our Afghan partners a better chance to hold the gains we made with them over the last two decades. Mr. Biden chose otherwise. The way he announced the drawdown and eventual departure of American troops — at the start of the fighting season, on a rapid timeline and sans adequate coordination with the Afghan government — has in part gotten us into the current situation. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of keeping American military forces in Afghanistan indefinitely, even at very low numbers. I and others have argued that the investment, including the risk to American personnel, is worth it to prevent militant groups from once again overrunning the country. Mr. Biden believes that further expending U.S. resources in Afghanistan is “a recipe for being there indefinitely.” He rightly notes that President Trump had left him few good options by making a terrible deal with the Taliban. That’s a fine argument, but it explains neither the hastiness nor the consequences we are now observing: the Taliban overrunning swaths of the country, closing in on Kabul, pushing the Afghan security forces and government to the brink of collapse and prompting the Pentagon to prepare for a possible evacuation of the U.S. embassy. A responsible withdrawal needed more time and better preparation. History will record Mr. Biden, a supposed master of foreign policy for decades, as having failed in this most critical assignment. As U.S. military planners well know, the Afghan war has a seasonal pattern. The Taliban leadership retreats to bases, largely in Pakistan, every winter and then launches the group’s fighting season campaign in the spring, moving into high gear in the summer after the poppy harvest. At the very least, the United States should have continued to support the Afghans through this period to help them blunt the Taliban’s latest offensive and buy time to plan for a future devoid of American military assistance. American diplomats could have used this time to negotiate access to regional bases from which to continue counterterrorism operations. Simultaneously, the American military should have prepared contingencies in case those negotiations failed. And even that plan would have meant contending with an increasingly brazen Taliban. (A report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the Taliban launched its latest offensive after U.S. and coalition forces officially began drawing down in May.) Adopting a more judicious approach would have required Mr. Biden to accept two things in addition to a longer timeline: the temporary deployment of additional U.S. forces and the slightly increased risk of American casualties. Sending additional troops into Afghanistan could have allowed the United States to carry out the withdrawal safely without severely disrupting military support...
It's a bloody, horrific debacle.
I fear most for the women and children, who're not doubt facing a grim future.
Still more.
Afghanistan on the Brink
The Taliban should be taking over any minute now, it's that bad.
If this isn't banner headlines in newspapers across the country in the morning, the publishers are idiots and traitors --- and no doubt in the tank for our bumbling, fumbling chief executive.
At the Los Angeles Times, "Taliban captures four more key Afghan cities on its way to encircling Kabul":
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban completed its sweep of Afghanistan’s south Friday as it took four more provincial capitals in a lightning offensive that is gradually encircling Kabul, just weeks before the U.S. is set to officially end its two-decade war. In just the last 24 hours, the country’s second- and third-largest cities — Kandahar and Herat, respectively — have fallen to the insurgents, as has Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, where American, British and NATO forces fought some of the bloodiest battles of the conflict. The blitz through the Taliban’s southern heartland means that the insurgents now hold at least half of the country’s 34 provincial capitals and control more than two-thirds of the country — weeks before the U.S. plans to withdraw its last troops. The Western-backed government in the capital, Kabul, still holds a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. While Kabul, the national capital, isn’t directly under threat yet, the resurgent Taliban was battling government forces in Logar province, some 50 miles from the capital. The latest U.S. military intelligence assessment suggests that Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that, if current trends hold, the Taliban could gain full control of the country within a few months. The group has already taken over much of the north and west of the country. In the south, the insurgents stormed the capitals of Zabul and Uruzgan provinces, in addition to Helmand. Attaullah Afghan, the head of the provincial council in Helmand, said that Taliban fighters captured the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah following heavy fighting and raised their white flag over governmental installations. He said that three national army bases outside of Lashkar Gah remained under control of the government. Atta Jan Haqbayan, the provincial council chief in Zabul province, said that the capital, Qalat, fell to the Taliban and that officials are in a nearby army camp preparing to leave...
Thursday, August 12, 2021
'The Night House' Review
At Variety, "‘The Night House’ Stars on the Film’s Loud Jump Scares and Female-Led Horror":
“The Night House,” the upcoming psychological horror directed by David Bruckner, follows the trend of recent films, like “The Invisible Man,” “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” by centering on female protagonists dealing with grief and trauma. However, this movie sets itself apart by cranking up the volume on the jump scares During the Wednesday premiere at the Cinépolis Chelsea in New York City, the “Night House” stars discussed the film and some of the reviews that have called it “one of the loudest horror movies ever made.” Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a woman dealing with the sudden suicide of her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), whom she can still somehow sense around her maze-like house as she discovers dark secrets about his past. When asked about the importance of telling female-led horror stories, she added with a laugh, “It’s as important to tell them with women at the front as it is to tell them with men at the front, so, you know, you might as well!” Jonigkeit even compared Hall’s performance to one of the female icons in the horror genre. “Even as far back as ‘Misery’ with Kathy Bates, I think there are so many really strong female characters that are getting in the forefront. This genre has created a bunch of opportunities for amazing performances, and Rebecca’s is definitely up there with the top of them,” Jonigkeit told Variety. In film critic David Ehrlich’s review for IndieWire, he called “The Night House” “shudderingly intense and sadistically loud” with jump scares that “often arrive without any warning whatsoever.” Meanwhile, Variety critic Dennis Harvey praised composer Ben Lovett‘s “effective score” that contributed to the film’s “discomfiting atmosphere.” The film’s co-writer Ben Collins and Lovett offered differing takes on the several reviews that have referenced the jarring jump scares and score. “David Ehrlich called it the loudest horror movie ever made. I don’t agree with him necessarily — I would like it to be true just because it’s a nice thing to say,” Collins told Variety. He also noted that the film “does get loud at times,” but says it was intentional...
Sounds good to me.
My eldest son and I occasionally see horror flicks together.
We're going to see this one on Saturday night --- I hope my heart holds out, lol.
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