RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bidens-gift-global-jihadists-safe-national-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden continues to humiliate the United States by letting the Taliban terrorists dictate the terms of his surrender.

Indeed, the president just capitulated to the terrorists’ threat to adhere to his own self-imposed deadline of August 31st  for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The evacuation of U.S. troops from the Kabul airport has already begun.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid warned during a press conference in Kabul that:

August 31 is the time given and after that it’s something that is against the agreement. All people should be removed prior to that date. After that we do not allow them, it will not be allowed in our country, we will take a different stance.

And Biden dutifully followed the orders.

The president is so infused with the radical agenda of his left-wing base that he began his August 24th address to the American people on the latest developments in Afghanistan with praise for the House of Representatives’ passage of the Democrats’ budget framework for their socialist $3 trillion budget bill. He went out of his way to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi for pushing this “progressive” leftist program through the House. Then he put in a word of support for the Democrats’ partisan voting bills to federalize elections. He spent more than five minutes of his twelve minute address on left-wing domestic policies that had nothing to do with the Afghanistan crisis on most Americans’ minds. 

When Biden finally got around to discussing that crisis, he stated that his administration was on pace for an August 31st withdrawal. He added, however, that meeting this deadline depends on continued cooperation from the Taliban in allowing access to the Kabul airport.

The U.S. would judge the Taliban by their actions, Biden added. But his own actions can only be judged as an appeasement of the Taliban.

The president left himself a little wiggle room to adjust the timeline should that become necessary. He referred vaguely to the development of contingency plans just in case they are needed. But that is ultimately meaningless talk because the U.S. administration is operating from a position of weakness.

Biden failed as Commander-in-Chief to plan for a safe and orderly evacuation for as long as it takes, backed by a credible threat of overwhelming force against the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS if they try to interfere with the evacuations.

Instead, Biden has allowed the Taliban to call the shots even when it comes to completing the evacuation of American citizens. As for those Afghans seeking to escape the Taliban’s wrath for working with the United States, they are out of luck. The Taliban are no longer letting them leave the country.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-falling-man-the-17-year-old-soccer-star-who-plunged-from-a-u-s-military-jet-11629834591?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Hundreds of Afghans swarmed the runway of Hamid Karzai International Airport attempting to climb onto a taxiing 140-ton U.S. Air Force transport plane. Two Apache helicopters buzzed low to disperse them.

Powering through the scrum in a green tunic, 17-year-old Zaki Anwari made his way to the front and clambered onto the plane’s landing gear. As it accelerated past 120 miles an hour, he held tight.

Hours earlier, as the Taliban began its first morning in charge of Kabul, Mr. Anwari, a high-school senior and attacking midfielder for the national youth soccer team, phoned his brother to tell him that if he didn’t flee Afghanistan he would never play again.

“Do not go, go back, you are smart, don’t go,” his elder brother Zakir said.

“I have to try,” Mr. Anwari replied.

Millions of people saw footage of what happened next: a defining image from America’s chaotic exit from a 20-year war that had an unsettling resonance with the 9/11 attacks that ignited it. As the C-17 Globemaster III arched skyward over Kabul, Mr. Anwari fell.

Inside the cockpit, the crew had made a snap decision to take off to escape the surrounding crowd. Mr. Anwari, nicknamed “Shield” for his ability to keep the ball, couldn’t hold on.

“They are falling over there,” a bystander said in one video shot from the runway, as a crowd ran toward the silhouettes falling to the ground. “Oh, my God,” he said.

At least two other young men died that day, according to aid agencies. Another fell from the plane around the same time as Mr. Anwari and a third was crushed by the retracting landing gear. Several other young men gripping onto the C-17 would have shared their fate if they hadn’t leapt seconds before the wheels left the runway.

All were members of a generation of Afghans who haven’t known rule by the Taliban and were terrified enough to grab hold of an accelerating military jet if it meant a ticket out.

“It was not just the fall of Kabul. It was the fall of a whole new generation who believed and worked for progressive Afghanistan,” Shafiqa Khpalwak, a Kabul-based poet, wrote on Twitter. “Trusted the world. And hoped for a brighter future.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17672/arabs-biden-brings-extremism-terrorism-back-to

For the first time in several years, the jihadis sense US weakness, confusion and lack of vision under the Biden administration.

“The United States withdrew from [Afghanistan] to open the door for its enemies and opponents to fill the vacuum…. If we assess the situation, we will find that the forces that will replace the US there are: Russia, China, Pakistan, and of course Iran. Russia and China are driven by the desire to exploit the vast mineral wealth of Afghanistan.” — Jameel Al-Theyabi, Saudi journalist and political analyst, Okaz, August 15, 2021.

“The escalating threat of terrorism from Afghanistan appears to be taking place with the support and patronage of major countries… by turning a blind eye to the activities of violent and terrorist organizations, which require Arab and international solidarity to confront the threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda together.” — Monir Adib, Egyptian expert on global terrorism, Al-Ain, August 16, 2021.

“The Americans must admit their failure to build a state, or an army, in Afghanistan, or even a movement to confront terrorism and extremism, and now it is withdrawing all its agents, leaving Afghanistan hostage in the hands of extremists.” — Osama Saraya, former editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram; Al-Ahram, August 16, 2021.

Thanks to the Biden administration, say the Arabs and Muslims, terrorist groups that want to wage jihad (holy war) against the US and Israel and threaten the security and stability of many Arab countries have firmly increased their foothold in the Middle East.

As the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is celebrating the “defeat” of the United States in Afghanistan, the Arabs seem worried that they will be the ones to pay the price by being targeted by terrorist groups, including Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

Commenting on the withdrawal of US troops and the speedy Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, various Arab political analysts, writers and journalists said that they have no doubt that the region is headed toward a new era of extremism and terrorism.

The Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said that they were emboldened by the “defeat” of the US and have called for stepping up the fight against Israel. “The demise of the American occupation of Afghanistan is a prelude for the demise of all the forces of oppression, first and foremost the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said during a phone call to Taliban leader Mullah Baradar to “congratulate him on the alleged victory against the US.”

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second largest terrorist group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, also issued a statement “congratulating the dear Afghan people on the liberation of the Afghan lands from the American and Western occupation.” PIJ expressed hope that all Muslims would one day be united “under the banner of Islam to liberate Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/08/warlord-diplomacy-now-the-real-struggle-begins/

Kabul has fallen to the Taliban in spectacular fashion, with the group’s fighters streaming across the country seemingly unopposed and walking into the capital city to declare victory. The speed of their advance shocked all but the most cynical analysts. President Biden has stubbornly stuck to his decision to end America’s participation in the Afghan conflict as one former national security official after another has come out in opposition, saying America needs to stick it out as long as it takes. Whether some of them are more interested in helping the Afghans or protecting their own legacies is an open question.

With President Ghani fleeing the country moments before Kabul fell, hordes of civilians swamping Karzai International Airport to try and get on the last flight out of town, and China, Russia, and Pakistan moving in to claim their share of the spoils, it might seem like Afghanistan’s more than four decades of perpetual war are finally over. Coverage in Western media widely paints the picture that the Taliban have won, all of America’s and her allies’ efforts were in vain, and all that is left to do is point fingers while we watch the Taliban reassert their brutal form of theocratic tyranny on a powerless population.

But having possession of Kabul, and ruling Afghanistan are not the same thing, as history has shown invaders and would-be kings, from Alexander the Great to the British and the Iron Amir alike.

The Military Victory that Wasn’t

The most surprising part of the Taliban’s takeover was how little fighting it took to accomplish. Even traditional strongholds of anti-Taliban sentiment, such as Mazar-i Sharif, and famed warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum’s home province of Jowzjan, fell almost without a shot being fired, with local officials either fleeing or publicly handing control over their districts to the Taliban. The Afghan military was well trained and equipped, with modern weapons and an effective, if fledging, air force that could have coordinated to stop the Taliban’s advance at numerous points but failed to do so. Even if only half of the 350,000 soldiers America was paying to train and employ on paper actually existed in practice, it was a force still more than enough to keep 75,000 Taliban fighters at bay.  Afghanistan’s traditional militias, after openly reforming and rearming in anticipation of America’s withdrawal also chose not to fight. In the final telling, the Taliban’s successful conquest of Afghanistan and seizure of the capital was not a great military victory. It was a political one.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17613/turkey-amir-hetsroni

Turkey, with a population of 83 million and two Nobel Prizes, ranks 62nd on the list of countries by Nobel laureates per capita. This score is worse than that of the Azerbaijan, Algeria, Yemen, Ghana, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Morocco, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.

Although [Professor Amir] Hetsroni just agreed to a new three-year contract a month ago, Koç University dismissed him in June for “conduct unbecoming to a member of Koç University faculty,” according to his termination notice. The reasons the university administration set out — including “inappropriate behaviour” — are vague, except for an accusation that he caused “significant damage to his faculty apartment by leaving its windows open.”

“I was fired on the spot without any advance warning for voicing criticism of Turkey and the university in private Whatsapp conversations that were leaked by a third party to the university management…. Obviously, my criticism of Turkey has nothing to do with my teaching level, research output, or service quality. If this is enough to get fired today in Turkey, I don’t even want to think about the fate of a professor who would dare say these things in class.” — Amir Hetsroni, newsaboutturkey.com., June 22, 2021.

Turkey is always fun unless one has to live there. Academia, for instance, is shockingly becoming solely “his master’s voice.”

There are more than 200 universities in Turkey, most of which are run by the state. There are, however, only 10 Turkish universities featured in the World University Rankings 2019, a list of top 1,018 institutions, according to Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the world’s leading provider of services, analytics and insight to the higher education sector.

Turkey, with a population of 83 million and two Nobel Prizes, ranks 62nd on the list of countries by Nobel laureates per capita. This score is worse than that of the Azerbaijan, Algeria, Yemen, Ghana, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Morocco, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/freedom-protests-cuba-and-us-john-stossel/

John Stossel exposes the truth about the lies and propaganda being told by progressives, BLM and the mainstream media about massive freedom protests by Cubans who have rallying against oppression and suffering under Communism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/the-taliban-havent-changed/

“The Taliban haven’t changed. The West’s sense of moral clarity about their wickedness and confidence in its ability to defeat them has.”

For the first time in nearly two decades, the Taliban control most of Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul.

As the self-destruction of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan continues apace and the Biden administration haphazardly races to evacuate U.S. citizens and allies from the war-torn country ahead of its self-imposed deadline of August 31, an odd line is emerging: Maybe the Taliban aren’t so bad.

Experts such as Mustapha Ben Messaoud, the chief of field operations at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), claim to be “optimistic” about the Taliban’s return to power, citing “ongoing discussions.” Reuters reported that officials at UNICEF have “cited some Taliban local representatives as saying they were waiting for guidance from their leaders on the issue of educating girls, while others have said they want schools ‘up and running.’” A spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet at least had the decency to acknowledge that the concerns of Afghans were “thoroughly understandable,” in what nevertheless may qualify as the understatement of the century.

The president of the United States and his team have also hypothesized that the Taliban may turn over a new leaf. In an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos last Wednesday, Biden responded to a question about whether the Taliban had changed:

“No. I think — let me put it this way. I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,” he said.

The claim that the Taliban were facing an existential crisis echoed White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s assertion from earlier this month that “the Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their role to be in the international community.”

It appears that they have made that assessment already.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-resistance-ahmad-massoud-panjshir-amrullah-saleh-islamist-national-security-11629728994?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Ahmad Massoud is in a remote base in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province. He is the son and successor to the legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, a resistance leader against both the Soviets and the Taliban until the latter assassinated him on Sept. 9, 2001.

As Kabul fell to the Taliban again, the young Mr. Massoud issued a resounding call for resistance. “We Afghans find ourselves in the situation of Europe in 1940,” he said on Aug. 16. “Except in Panjshir, the debacle is near total, and the spirit of collaboration with the Taliban is spreading among the vanquished, who lost this war by their own failings. Only we remain standing. And we will never yield.”

I visited Mr. Massoud in Panjshir last year and spoke with him by phone on Saturday. His voice was clear and resonant but choppy. I asked about rumors circulating in Europe and the U.S. that he was preparing to give up. “That’s propaganda,” he says. “Apparently, there are defeatists among you who mistake their wishes for realities. So, no. Make this known: There is no question of giving up the fight. Here in Panjshir, our resistance is just beginning.”

What about Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani’s claims that Mr. Massoud was “withdrawing?” “I repeat that this is disinformation. We will never accept an imposed peace, and we will resist until we achieve justice and freedom. . . . No surrender, of course. I would prefer to die than to give up. I am the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Surrender is not in my dictionary.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9918373/Taliban-warn-consequences-Britain-try-extend-August-31-withdrawal-deadline.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus

President Joe Biden has set the deadline of August 31 for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan
Taliban spokesman Dr Suhail Shaheen said the group will not allow an extension and threatened a ‘reaction’
He warned of ‘consequences’ if US and UK cross the ‘red line’ and delay their exit amid evacuation efforts
Dr Shaheen also branded it ‘fake news’ that girls’ schools are being closed and residents fear the new regime
Boris Johnson will discuss a possible extension to the deadline with G7 leaders in a virtual call on Tuesday 
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said there are ‘hours not weeks’ left for the Kabul airlift  
Taliban will not announce the makeup of its government until the US completes its troop withdrawal 
There are fears ISIS will ‘take advantage’ and mount a suicide bombing at Kabul airport

The Taliban has threatened a ‘reaction’ and warned of ‘consequences’ if the US or UK do not leave Afghanistan by August 31 and extend the deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

President Joe Biden wants all Americans to have left the country by the end of the month although he admitted on Sunday night that an extension was under discussion, while this morning UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the evacuation effort is ‘down to hours now, not weeks’. 

Taliban spokesman Dr Suhail Shaheen said the group will not accept an extension to the deadline and warned of retaliation if Western forces extend their ‘occupation’ since the group dramatically swept to power. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/20/france-deploying-special-forces-to-evacuate-french-civilians-from-afghanistan/

The French military has deployed their special forces to the crumbling nation of Afghanistan to evacuate their citizens, even as the leadership of the American military claims that they are incapable of doing the same, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

French special forces have already succeeded in evacuating at least 400 civilians from the capital city of Kabul, including both French citizens and Afghan civilians who aided French forces in the war. The successful rescue efforts took place just outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, the city’s main airport which has been secured by the Taliban, and thus has become a scene of pure chaos after the fall of the nation’s Western-backed government.

In addition to French efforts, British special forces have been similarly evacuating their citizens from the besieged capital city in the days since Sunday, when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

These successful European efforts have been carried out even as American military leaders have claimed that the United States is incapable of conducting such operations. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a press conference on Wednesday that “the forces that we have are focused on the security of the airfield…we don’t have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people.”

There are currently thousands of American citizens still trapped in the Taliban-controlled nation, in addition to thousands of Afghan civilians who assisted the American military over the course of the 20-year war. The sudden collapse of the nation to Taliban forces directly contradicted Joe Biden’s prediction back in July that it was “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would overrun the country prior to the final departure of American forces, which was set for August 31st.

Following the fall of Kabul on Sunday, which led to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country, thousands of Afghan civilians stormed the airport in a desperate attempt to escape Taliban rule. Stunning videos showed hundreds of Afghanis surrounding an American Air Force jet as it was taxiing on the runway, with several men clinging to the landing gear. Shortly after the aircraft took off and reached an altitude hundreds of feet in the air, some of the men who still held on could be seen falling to their deaths.

The chaos has led to universal condemnation of the Biden Administration, from across the political spectrum in the United States as well as within the international community. Many have likened the disaster to the Fall of Saigon in 1975, which marked the end of the Vietnam War, with some even declaring the Fall of Kabul to be even worse.