At the U.S. Open:
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Thirty-Seven Percent Containment at Lake Tahoe's Caldor Fire (VIDEO)
Extreme weather. All over the country.
It's really biblical, and, frankly, all you can do sometimes is pray. It's all in His hands.
At the San Jose Mercury News, "Caldor Fire containment jumps to 37% as weather calms":
Friday a ‘monumental day’ for more than 4,500 crews battling blaze. One week after the Caldor Fire made a terrifying push into the Lake Tahoe basin, a promising shift in weather conditions allowed crews to start gaining sizable containment of the Northern California wildfire that has threatened thousands of homes and forced mass evacuations in two states. Thanks to cooler, more humid weather conditions, an influx of 1,000 more firefighters and the strengthening of lines on both western and eastern flanks of the fire, crews had contained about 37% of the blaze as of Saturday, more than doubling progress in the past week and evoking a cautious sense of optimism for the first time since the fire broke out in mid-August. “It’s starting to come together,” said Cal Fire spokesman Capt. Keith Wade. “It seems like big containment jumps, but it’s days and days of work.” Terror surrounding the blaze’s spread skyrocketed on the evening of Aug. 29, when it roared across the face of Echo Summit, flung embers that set spot fires across Highway 89 and crept down toward the beloved Tahoe Basin, home to more than 40,000 people and the iconic lake. Some 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe were ordered to evacuate, creating a massive traffic jam that lasted for hours. But just two days later — as crews staved off flames from the communities of Christmas Valley and Meyers — a favorable shift in winds arrived before the fire could explode farther northeast, giving more than 4,500 firefighters the chance to clear new firebreaks with dozens of bulldozers, strike down dry trees, lay hoses near homes and drop 500-gallon buckets of water on hotspots. By Saturday, with 13 large wildfires burning across California, nearly a third of personnel, engines, helicopters and even bulldozers battling the blazes were committed to the Caldor Fire — a massive effort that fire officials say is beginning to pay off. Overnight Friday, the wildfire grew just a few thousand acres to reach 214,017 acres total. High winds that gripped the region last weekend receded Wednesday and remained calmer through the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service, bringing relief to hand crews charged with stopping spot fires that soared out a mile ahead of the fire and letting helicopters make more water drops. Temperatures meanwhile cooled slightly and humidity rose. A thick layer of smoke bearing down over the fire also helped to block out the sun and quiet its spread, though it brought air quality to hazardous levels around South Lake Tahoe and blew smoke toward the Bay Area, where the Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Spare the Air alert for Sunday...
Still more.
New Jersey. God Have Mercy
No matter your politics, this story is heart-wrenching.
At NYT, "New Jersey’s Stunning Storm Toll Includes Many Who Drowned in Cars":
Malathi Kanche was heading home after dropping her son off at college Wednesday evening when the small S.U.V. she was driving was overwhelmed by floodwaters set off by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. With the vehicle stalled in waist-deep water on Route 22 in Bridgewater, N.J., she and her 15-year-old daughter climbed out. They clung to a tree as the torrent rushed past, according to a close family friend and neighbor, Mansi Mago. Then the tree gave way, and “the water took her,” said Ms. Mago, recounting what another stranded motorist told her hours later. A 46-year-old software designer who emigrated from India, Ms. Kanche was one of six people who were still missing two days after Ida caused the deaths of at least 25 people in New Jersey — more fatalities than in any other state — as the monster storm whipped its way onto the Gulf Coast and tore north to New England. At least a third of the fatalities in New Jersey were people who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in a densely packed state known for its car culture, its tangle of highways, suburban commuter towns and limited public transportation. Screeching alerts had sounded repeatedly on cellphones late Wednesday, warning people to stay inside, but no travel bans were put in place in New Jersey or New York, where 16 deaths — including 13 in New York City — have been linked to the storm. On Friday, in an acknowledgment of the growing risk of flash flooding as climate change unleashes increasingly intense storms, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that the city would increase its use of evacuation orders and travel bans. In New Jersey, officials have not said whether they would apply new measures to protect the state given the likelihood of severe storms happening more frequently. As the region faced the daunting task of cleaning and clearing debris, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York both said that they were expecting large infusions of recovery aid from the federal government. President Biden was expected to soon declare the states a federal disaster area. Mr. Murphy, speaking from Millburn, whose downtown commercial corridor had been ravaged by the rain, said the state would make $10 million in aid available to small businesses. “If you’ve been crushed and you can prove it, you’re eligible,” Mr. Murphy said. Early Friday, Mr. Murphy was still warning people to remain off the roads, especially near waterways that had not yet crested. “Many motorists have been caught by surprise that the depth of the water on a road that they thought they knew — not to mention the swiftness of the current,” Mr. Murphy said. “You can easily be swept away or trapped,” he said. “And sadly, we have many examples of just that.” The stories of devastation and death were tempered by the many tales of rescue in New Jersey, where the National Weather Service said three tornadoes also touched down during the storm, leveling homes in South Jersey but killing no one. In South Plainfield, N.J., a 31-year-old man, Danush Reddy, lost his footing as he was walking alongside a flooded roadway and was swept into a 36-inch-wide sewer pipe, borough officials said. His body was found miles away...
Police found Ms. Kanche's body on Friday.
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.
Thursday, September 2, 2021
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)
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.
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.
The Democratic Norm Breakers
This is really something, even for the disgusting Democrats!
At WSJ, "The Jan. 6 committee wants to subpoena GOP phone records":
Critics feared that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would be partisan, and the latest proof are subpoenas for the private phone records of House Republicans. This is a violation of political norms that Democrats will come to regret. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), chair of the House special committee, sent letters Monday to 35 companies, from AT&T to Facebook to Parler, asking them to preserve information about account holders charged with crimes related to, or “potentially involved with discussions” in planning, the Jan. 6 riot. The companies are requested to preserve emails, and voice, text and direct messages in preparation for subpoenas to come. he letters contained a list of individuals whose names haven’t leaked. But CNN reports that nearly a dozen House Republicans are on the committee’s “evolving” radar, including Jim Jordan, ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. Republicans are furious, and rightly so. Indiana Rep. Jim Banks noted in a letter to Mr. Thompson that this “authoritarian undertaking” would depart “from more than 230 years of Congressional oversight.” The move recalls California Democrat Adam Schiff’s public release of the call logs of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes in 2019. At least Democrats claimed the collection of Mr. Nunes’s information was incidental to other records it targeted. The special committee is using its oversight power to snoop on political opponents. They’d gain access to information far beyond the events of Jan. 6. Democrats say they need the call lists to see if Members of Congress fomented the assault on the Capitol. They hope to confirm their narrative that the riot was a planned “insurrection,” though Reuters reports that the FBI has found no such evidence in six months of looking. Conspiracy is a crime and matter for the Justice Department, not Congress. The subpoenas are also legally dubious, coming after recent judicial warnings about the limits of Congressional fishing. The Supreme Court last year in Trump v. Mazars reminded Congress that subpoenas must have a “valid legislative purpose.” The Jan. 6 committee has offered no such rationale. Our legal sources say the subpoenas may violate the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause because Congress can’t pass a law that would limit Members’ speech. The private companies may want to think twice about complying. In the Schiff affair, the telcos handed over call logs without even notifying the targets. Mr. Thompson’s letter is demanding the same, telling companies that if they “are not able or willing to respond to this request without alerting the subscribers or the accounts” to “please contact the Select Committee prior to proceeding.” The “please” part is an admission that the committee knows it lacks authority to make such a demand. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr says “federal law requires telecommunications carriers to protect the privacy and confidentiality of Americans’ call records.” He says his agency “has brought enforcement actions against carriers to ensure their compliance,” and Congress isn’t automatically entitled to anyone’s private records. Even if the companies don’t want to fight the subpoenas in court, they have an obligation to alert targets so they can contest the subpoenas. Mr. Banks’s Friday letter reminded corporate general counsels of their “legal obligation not to hand over individuals’ private records unless the subject of the subpoena consents to the information being shared or the company has a court order to turn over the records.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also warned companies against rolling over to Democratic pressure, noting they could forfeit their “ability to operate in the United States.” Democrats and the media spun this as pressuring companies to ignore “duly” issued subpoenas. But Mr. McCarthy was pointing out that federal privacy law protects information, and that Democrats haven’t proved in court that their committee is entitled to these records. If Democrats follow through and use their power to investigate GOP opponents, there will be no end to it. Republicans are likely to take the majority as early as 2022, and two can play at Adam Schiff’s nasty game.
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Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Massive Financial Aid Scam Hits California Community Colleges
This is nasty scam.
My division dean mentioned it last week and she sent out a long email notice to all department faculty members today.
Nasty --- and a bit unreal, to think about it.
At LAT, "More than 65,000 fake students applied for financial aid in wide community college scam":
California student aid official Patrick Perry was beginning a routine check of federal financial aid records a few weeks ago when he came across a mystifying number: 60,000 more aid applications from a particular group of students this year than last. They were first-time applicants to California community colleges who were older than 30, earned less than $40,000 annually and were seeking a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate. They were spread out across the state, applying to 105 of the 116 campuses in the California Community Colleges system — with the top number at Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey, Merced and Antelope Valley. And their applications began surging in May through mid-August. “We were kind of scratching our heads going, ‘Did or didn’t 60,000 extra older adult students really attempt to apply to community colleges here in the last few months?’” Perry, director of policy, research and data for the California Student Aid Commission, said Tuesday. He alerted California community college officials Thursday. Around the same time, chatter emerged about abnormal enrollment patterns on a research listserv for community colleges, on which faculty were beginning to question whether some of their “students” were actually fake bot accounts. The colleges and student aid officials put their heads together and uncovered what is believed to be one of the state’s biggest financial aid scam attempts in recent history. California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students and said they did not know of any confirmed Cal Grant fraud, but the investigation is continuing. Perry said he thinks the attempted fraud was stymied before much, if any, aid was distributed because community college classes are just starting and campuses are now on high alert. “I can’t tell you whether any money has gone out or not, but my guess is probably not,” he said. “I think we’ve caught it.” It was unclear what financial aid may be involved in the fraud — state-funded Cal Grants, for instance, federal Pell Grants or COVID-19 emergency relief grants. California community colleges have received more than $1.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 relief for low-income students. In addition, the fake applications are roiling the ability of college officials to determine true student enrollment numbers at a time of declining community college attendance and major efforts to recruit students and offer them financial and emergency pandemic aid to help them continue with higher education goals. Many professors are crestfallen trying to assess whether they have a class of students or bots. Since last week, Perry said, the number of suspected fake financial aid applications has surpassed 65,000, and the problem appears confined to state community colleges. No irregular patterns were detected with the University of California or California State University. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General confirmed it was investigating but declined to comment further because the inquiry is ongoing. But the financial aid commission and community colleges have found similar red flags for both admission and financial aid. Applications were missing a phone contact or had the same phone number on multiple applications. Numerous applications used an Outlook.com email address, listed student ages as old as 90 and repeated addresses — most to a vacant house. “We were looking at the financial aid and they were looking at applications for enrollment and we finally put the two together,” Perry said. “The two just matched up and at that point we went, ‘Yeah, this is fraudulent.’” The community college system is beefing up internal reporting and security measures after finding that 20% of recent traffic on its main portal for online applications was “malicious and bot-related,” according to a memo issued Monday by Valerie Lundy-Wagner, interim vice chancellor of digital innovation and infrastructure. Nearly three-quarters of that traffic was caught by new software called Imperva Advanced Bot Detection, which was installed in July, and the matter remained of “grave concern,” Lundy-Wagner said. “I’m certainly alarmed,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is on temporary leave working for the Biden administration. “There’s lots of unscrupulous players right now trying to access and exploit benefits, not unlike what’s happened with unemployment insurance and any number of other benefits that have been made available recently because of the pandemic. “But I’m confident that the colleges have been able to identify the activity and are working to mitigate the risk to campuses,” he said.
Majority of Interpreters, Other U.S. Visa Applicants Were Left Behind in Afghanistan
Y'all know how pissed I am over all of this.
I need to keep my anger in check, actually. I'm not an angry person (which gives you an idea how infuriating all this is).
In any, at WSJ, "U.S. still doesn’t have reliable data on who was evacuated from Afghanistan, a senior State Department official says":
WASHINGTON—The U.S. left behind the majority of Afghan interpreters and others who applied for visas to flee Afghanistan, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday, despite frantic efforts to evacuate those at risk of Taliban retribution in the final weeks of the airlift. In the early days of the evacuation effort, thousands of Afghans crowded Kabul’s airport seeking a way to flee the country. Some made it through without paperwork, while American citizens and visa applicants were unable to enter and board flights out. The U.S. still doesn’t have reliable data on who was evacuated, nor for what type of visas they may qualify, the official said, but initial assessments suggested most visa applicants didn’t make it through the crush at the airport. “I would say it’s the majority of them,” the official estimated. “Just based on anecdotal information about the populations we were able to support.” The Special Immigrant Visa program set up in 2009 aimed to help those at risk of Taliban reprisal for helping the U.S., including interpreters for the U.S. military and diplomatic and foreign aid workers. The Biden administration has been under intense pressure by lawmakers, veterans and other advocates to do more to help the more than 20,000 Afghans who had already applied for visas when the U.S. decided to withdraw. Including their family members, as many as 100,000 Afghans may be eligible for relocation. The U.S. had only just begun airlifting those in the final stages of the process when Kabul fell. The U.S. and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan on a combination of military, commercial and charter flights in the final weeks of the mission. The State Department says it doesn’t have reliable data on the composition, but it says about 6,000 were U.S. citizens. It says fewer than 200 Americans that wanted to leave have been left behind. The majority of those evacuated were Afghans, including those that worked for foreign embassies, aid programs, media and some that had simply made it through the crowd but had no paperwork. “Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help,” the official added. On Friday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. had evacuated 7,000 Special Immigrant Visa applicants to the U.S. It wasn’t clear whether the figure included family members. The State Department has repeatedly said it lacks complete data on the composition of the evacuation population. “Much of that information is going to be forthcoming once these individuals have cycled through transit points in the Middle East, in Europe, and for those who are being relocated to the United States, relocated here,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday. Among the visa applicants left behind was an Afghan interpreter who was part of a 2008 mission to rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators when their helicopter made an emergency landing in blinding snow in a valley 20 miles southeast of Bagram Air Field. His application had been snagged in the bureaucracy when the Taliban took over, and now he is in hiding. On Tuesday, the interpreter, identified only as Mohammed to protect his identity, made an appeal for help to Mr. Biden in The Wall Street Journal. “Don’t forget me,” he said. In response to the story, Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said the U.S. wouldn’t forget him. “We’re going to cut through the red tape,” he told MSNBC. “We’re going to get him and other SIVs out.” In the final days of the evacuation leading to the withdrawal of all U.S. troops on Monday, the U.S. focused its efforts on U.S. citizens and permanent residents...
A Dishonest Afghanistan Accounting
Must read, at WSJ, "Biden spins a tragedy for U.S. interests into an antiwar victory":
American Presidents must make hard decisions, and we’re inclined to support them when they do so overseas in the national interest. But President Biden’s defiant, accusatory defense on Tuesday of his Afghanistan withdrawal and its execution was so dishonest, and so lacking in self-reflection or accountability, that it was unworthy of the sacrifices Americans have made in that conflict. The charitable interpretation is that this is what Mr. Biden really believes about Afghanistan in particular, war in general, and how to defend the U.S. The uncharitable view is that he and his advisers have decided that the only way out of this debacle is to lie about it, blame everyone else, and claim that defeat is really a victory. Neither one is reassuring about Mr. Biden’s character, his judgment, or—most ominously—the long three-and-a-half years left in his Presidency. *** Start with the dishonesty, although we only have space to cover some of the falsehoods. Mr. Biden again claimed he was hamstrung by Donald Trump’s bad deal with the Taliban. Mr. Trump’s deal was rotten, but as a new President he could have altered it as he has so much else that Mr. Trump did. The Trump deal was based on the Taliban fulfilling conditions—such as negotiating a deal with the Afghan government—that they had already broken when Mr. Biden became President. Yet Mr. Biden claims he was both a prisoner of that deal and courageous for fulfilling it. He also repeated that his only choices were total withdrawal or “escalation” with thousands of troops. His own advisers offered him alternatives in between, as did the Afghanistan Study Group. He was so bent on withdrawal, and so quickly, that he refused to adjust the military plan even as the Taliban made gains and the CIA warned that the Afghan government was likely to fall. Mr. Biden described the evacuation as if it were a triumph, and that his Administration had planned for such a contingency in case the Afghan military collapsed. This is, literally, unbelievable. Multiple media reports have revealed that the White House was caught by surprise and preparing for vacation en masse when Kabul fell. The military had to scramble and stage a heroic effort to evacuate those who were able to get to the airport. Mr. Biden wants to take credit for putting out the fire he started. The President even had the ill grace to blame Americans for not leaving Afghanistan sooner, and Afghans for not fighting. But his own government clearly felt no urgency, as the U.S. Embassy had to frantically destroy documents in the final hours. As for the Afghans, he demeans the sacrifice of the 66,000 who died fighting the Taliban, often next to Americans. They collapsed when they lost air support as the U.S. contractors left and after the military abandoned Bagram Air Base in the dead of night. Most dishonest—and dangerous—was the President’s assertion that “the war in Afghanistan is now over.” No one in the jihadist movement believes that. The Taliban have won a major victory in the long war that Islamic radicals are waging against the U.S. They have secured Afghanistan for what is likely again to become a refuge for recruits for al Qaeda, ISIS-K and the Haqqani network. Mr. Biden wants Americans to believe that the U.S. can counter this from “over the horizon,” by which he means drones and satellites. But now the U.S. has no military in the country, and no CIA listening post in Khost. It has no friendly government or allies to locate and gather intelligence on terror camps. The U.S. has all of those assets to counter terrorists in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. Every expert we know says Mr. Biden’s claims of easy over-the-horizon capability are a fantasy. *** The President finished his remarks with a discourse on the horrors of war, which no one denies. But in laying out the costs, and the human tragedies, he also sends a signal to the world about his own resolve. He is telling rogues and autocrats that he lacks the will to send American soldiers into harm’s way. He will conduct his counterterror war only from a distance, with unmanned drones. Those are useful and can save American lives. But they are no substitute for soldiers on the ground who can capture or kill the likes of bin Laden, or rescue Americans held hostage. The hard men in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and the terror dens of Helmand will test Mr. Biden’s war-weariness. Mr. Biden’s unapologetic speech also signals that the White House intends to close the books on Afghanistan and pivot to domestic affairs. No one will lose their jobs. They’ll all talk from the same script. Mr. Biden may never speak of it again. All the more reason for Congress and the press to explore the many bad decisions that led to this American security debacle...
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
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!
Sunday, August 29, 2021
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