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Richard Baehr on Afghanistan

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 There has been plenty written about our Afghanistan withdrawal. The “great achievement” pointed to by our President reading a script someone wrote for him, was that we brought 124,000 people out during our airlift. It would seem worth pointing out that 6,000 of these were Americans, 7,000 were Afghans with special visas (meaning well fewer than half the 18,000 translators identified several months ago), and a few thousand (number not provided) who were nationals of our Nato allies.

What this means is that over 100,000 , or more than 80% , are people who did not fit any of the categories for whom the airlift was intended. How these people were the ones selected for admission to the airport and outbound flights is entirely unclear. Supposedly vetting of these people is now underway, and already  several hundred have been identified who had problematic backgrounds (potential threats).  

The large majority are likely people with no or minimal background records we can access .You  can do the math on how many potential threats to America might be admitted if 1 per cent of 100,000, or 0.1% of 100,000 turned out to be bad guys. 19 people did a lot of damage 20 years ago in the space of a few hours. We took a lot of Afghans out, but left a few hundred Americans, and a  lot of Afghans we were committed to getting out, in the hands of a ruthless band of  very well armed America loathing  tribesmen straight out of the middle ages.

  Of course, we are now told the Taliban are different- more inclusive, more respectful of women, anxious to govern pragmatically, and join the community of nations, and of course responsive to American pressure (with sufficient cash bribes). And we can count on them to do the job preventing the county from being overrun by jihadists anxious to make it a primary base again for attacks against the West. Of course we can simply come in over the top to bomb them into the stone ages (what’s new) if they fail to do a good job on the terror front. This is the wisdom of our diplomatic and homeland security luminaries. 

Biden and the Left-wing Standard of Attacking Presidents In just a few months Joe Biden has wrought a series of disasters that will invoke outrage that dwarfs the concocted anger directed at Donald Trump. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/05/biden-and-the-left-wing-standard-of-attacking-presidents/

As Joe Biden entered office in January 2021, there still roared a left-wing revolution, a woke madness spreading through popular culture and Congress, much of which he indirectly has aided and abetted. It has redefined not just politics but the rules of the presidency. And the eventual casualty of these radical shifts in protocols and customs will be—Joe Biden.

Take impeachment, which heretofore had been rare and has still never led to a Senate conviction. Prior to Trump, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were the only presidents to have been impeached (Richard Nixon resigned to avoid it), and both were acquitted in the Senate. 

Yet leftist congressional representatives introduced articles of impeachment the very first week Trump was in office, on the absurd allegation of profiting from his office (the presidency cost the Trump corporations hundreds of millions). The House later went on to impeach him twice, without writs of “treason” and “bribery” or even “high crimes and misdemeanors” as set out by the Constitution. Instead, Trump was, first, successfully impeached for supposedly abusing his power and obstructing Congress. I don’t think the average American has ever been pulled over by the police for the high crime “of obstructing Congress” (historically a presidential pastime) or has been charged with “abuse of power” (said of every president from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama). 

Trump’s second impeachment was even flimsier. He was accused of “incitement of insurrection” concerning disturbances on January 6 that supposedly led to the violent death of Officer Brian Sicknick, the fatal shooting of an unarmed Ashli Babbitt, and the entire fable of an “armed insurrection.” Post-impeachment, we would learn that Sicknick died of natural causes. Strangely, for months no information about the shooter of Ashli Babbitt or the inquiry into that fatal act was ever fully released to the public. No one was charged with armed insurrection, largely because none of the buffoonish rioters were found either to have carried or used a firearm that day or were exposed as master plotters with plans to destroy the U.S. government. They may well have been guilty of felonies, but armed insurrectionary conspiracy was not one of them.

Who Is Responsible For the Darkness That Has Descended on Us? The Treason Party. David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/who-responsible-darkness-has-descended-us-david-horowitz/

The late author Susan Sontag once famously said, “Communism is fascism with a human face.” A more perfect description of what the Democrat Party has become would be hard to come by. For five years the Democrats have focused their energies on laying the foundations of a communist economy and a one-party state. In pursuit of the latter, they have tried to abolish the electoral college, change the election laws to undermine the integrity of the voting system, give non-citizens the right to vote, eliminate voter I.D.’s which connect legitimate voters to their ballots, pack the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, pass legislation that would put control of presidential elections in the hands of the Democrat-favoring Washington bureaucracy and remove that control from the fifty states, as the Constitution now requires.

These efforts led to massive irregularities in the presidential election results that put the brain-damaged, pathological liar in the White House and led directly to the crises on the southern border, in America’s streets, and in Afghanistan. They were accompanied by a campaign to demonize former President Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him as “white supremacists” and “cultists.” This was itself a dagger aimed directly at the heart of the democratic process which depends on respect for the political opposition and compromise on legislation. If an opposing political party is placed beyond the pale, the inevitable result is a one-party state.

Character assassination has become the Democrats’ first weapon of choice, with Trump’s multiple bogus impeachments providing examples of how far Democrats are prepared to go to tear up the Constitution and two-hundred and forty years of American political tradition. Trump is no longer president but as a private citizen he is still the target of a Pelosi “commission” or “committee,” stacked completely with members who voted to impeach him, whose sole purpose is to convict Trump of inciting a fake “insurrection” in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. This is one more despicable effort to demonize Trump and his 74 million voters as “domestic terrorists” and therefore enemies of America to be dealt with as such.

Al-Qaida and ISIS: Still in Afghanistan Does Biden have a realistic plan for keeping them contained there? Terence P. Jeffrey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/al-qaida-and-isis-still-afghanistan-terence-p-jeffrey/

“Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history,” President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation last Tuesday afternoon.

But is that war over?

Biden may have withdrawn the U.S. military from Afghanistan, but terrorist groups intent on attacking the United States still operate there.

A week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress enacted a war authorization that was succinct yet sweeping.

It said: “That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations and persons.”

Al-Qaida, of course, was the terrorist organization that planned and committed the 9/11 attacks. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was the person most responsible. The Taliban’s Afghanistan was the nation that most significantly aided bin Laden and al-Qaida.

Soon after 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban and drove Osama bin Laden into hiding in Pakistan, eventually finding and killing him.

For twenty years, the U.S. military maintained a presence in Afghanistan that prevented the Taliban from retaking control of the country and stopped al-Qaida from using it as a sanctuary from which it could plan and launch terrorist attacks against the United States.

But this April 14, Biden announced he was going to follow through on the agreement former President Donald Trump had made in 2020 with the Taliban to remove all U.S. forces from that country.

“It’s time for American troops to come home,” Biden said that day.

But it is not only the Taliban and some unevacuated Americans Biden has left behind.

That same April day that Biden said he would complete the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CIA Director William Burns testified in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“I think we have to be clear-eyed about the reality, looking at the potential terrorism challenge, that both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghanistan remain intent on recovering the ability to attack U.S. targets, whether it’s in the region, in the West, or ultimately in the homeland,” Burns told the committee.

Thank you, President Biden By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/thank_you_president_biden.html

Joe Biden may have aged, but there is a consistency about him that remains true to form.  For this, we must thank him.

Anything that would assert American exceptional ideals and maintain American supremacy in the world is an anathema to Mr. Biden. 

Those who paid attention to this man over the years are not truly surprised by his indifference to Americans and allies of Americans who have been left behind in the terrorist haven of Afghanistan.

In early 2009, when some 150,000 American soldiers were still stationed in Iraq, President Obama put Vice President Biden in charge of bringing the U.S. troops home. According to the Atlantic magazine: ‘Biden threw himself into the mission. He chaired meetings and oversaw negotiations.’ In February 2010, Biden said: ‘I am very optimistic about Iraq. I think it’s going to be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.’

Protecting America from hostile Afghan refugees By Rachel Ehrenfeld

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/protecting_america_from_hostile_afghan_refugees.html

The Biden administration used military, commercial and charter flights to secretly fly more than 123,000, mostly undocumented and unidentified Afghans out of the country. Reportedly, 50,000 to 100,000 have already been transported to the U.S.

Who are these Afghans?

We know the Biden “airlift” did not­­­ carry most of the Afghans who aided the U.S. forces, translators, and others who already held or were cleared for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).

We also know the Afghans who were brought here, unlike thousands of SIV holders, were allowed access to the airport by the Taliban. 

So, are these Afghans affiliated with the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS? Are they friends or foes of the U.S.?

How can we find out who these people are? Is there a way to identify these Afghans’ intentions towards the U.S. or their compatibility quickly and reliably?President Trump’s first executive order proclaimed:

“The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism. In order to protect Americans, we must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes towards our country and its founding principles.”

Section 2 of the active order states that the policy of the U.S. is to

“…protect our citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States, and (b) prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes” (emphasis added).

Our Afghan Atomic Bomb—Insane Foreign Policy Meets Insane Immigration Policy John Derbyshire

https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/our-afghan-atomic-bomb-insane-foreign-policy-meets-insane-immigration-policy/

We are now out of Afghanistan. This is such a relief after twenty years of futility, Joe Biden has been getting thanks from some surprising people—Ann Coulter and Richard Spencer, for example.

I’m as glad as they are. But I think the appalling mess Biden’s people made of the evacuation cancels out any gratitude due to the president. When the Soviet Union, on its last geriatric legs, made a cleaner, cheaper show of withdrawing from Afghanistan in defeat than we have, heads should roll.

A basic atom bomb depends on a mass of nuclear material going into a spontaneous fission reaction. You put two or more subcritical masses into some device, keeping them apart from each other. Then, when you want an explosion, you bring them together to form a critical mass. Bang!

Similarly, the current mess is the result of two subcritical masses of insanity coming together:

U. S. foreign policy insanity; and
U. S. immigration policy insanity.

Our foreign policy insanity—these dumb missionary wars we keep getting involved with—has been a constant for decades now. It’s possible we have finally learned our lesson; but I seriously doubt it. I look forward to milking that insanity for commentary as long as I can work a keyboard.

So let’s see what this week has shown us about our immigration insanity. The focus of concern: the floods of Afghans we have taken in.

The original idea, which seemed reasonable (at any rate to me) was that we should take in and settle Afghans who had trustingly put their lives on the line to help us advance our foreign policy, as insane as that policy was. That would be a fair and decent thing to do.

As it’s worked out, though, none but a small proportion of the tens of thousands of Afghans we’ve brought in belong to that category. Most are just random Afghans who got to Kabul airport and bribed or elbowed or threatened their way onto a plane. Far from owning Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) papers to show they have at least claimed to have helped us, many have no papers at all.

Meanwhile, Afghans who are SIV applicants but could not make it to Kabul, are being hunted down and killed by the Taliban. Moral of the story: Put no trust in the U.S.A.

Ann Corcoran has noted that most of the incoming Afghans are likely being admitted on parole, not as refugees. What does “on parole” mean? If you follow Ann’s link to the Homeland Security Today website, you get this:

Parole does not confer immigration status and does not provide a path to permanent residency or the ability to obtain lawful immigration status. However, a parolee may be able to obtain lawful status in the United States through other means.

‘Adults,’ ‘Progress,’ and Disaster Historians will look back at the Great Afghan Fumble of 2021 and say it was there and then that the United States took a large public step towards its own diminishment. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/04/adults-progress-and-disaster/

Is there anything to add to the avalanche of disparaging commentary on the national humiliation that is the Biden Administration’s handling of our departure from Afghanistan? I’m not sure. 

True, the scandals keep coming. As I write, it was only a few days ago that someone leaked and Reuters published the story about Joe Biden’s July call to Ashraf Ghani, then president of Afghanistan, now a multi-multi-millionaire thanks to the $169 million of American taxpayer money which he stuffed into bags before leaving Afghanistan for the United Arab Emirates. During that call, Biden made the president of Afghanistan an offer he couldn’t refuse: military aid in exchange for lies. There is a “perception around the world,” Biden said, that “things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, . . . to project a different picture” (my emphasis).

Opinions differ about whether this conversation constituted an impeachable offense. Were it Donald Trump making the call, you can bet your burqa-wearing seventh wife that Nancy Pelosi would have articles of impeachment drawn up before the cocktail hour. For Biden, not so fast, though it is an occasion for thought that someone—presumably someone in the Pentagon or the State Department—leaked the audio and transcript of the conversation. That’s a felony, but these days only Republicans get charged for that sort of bad behavior. The question is: what does it portend that someone in the deep state apparat excreted that embarrassing tidbit? Was it a warning shot across the bow of Biden’s sinking skiff? 

It’s also pretty scandalous that the Biden Administration, still reeling from the news that the United States left a zillion dollars worth of prime, made-in-the-USA military hardware behind in bases across Afghanistan in its rush to hightail it out of that god-forsaken country, is now hit with the news that they ordered federal agencies to scrub public records listing the nearly $83 billion worth of military matériel—airplanes, Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles of every size and description, some 600,000 assault rifles, various pieces of artillery, and countless rounds of ammunition—proffered as a tasty trifle for the Tally-bahn toffs. 

There are going to be more such news stories, about the fate of the hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies left behind (not “stranded,” according to Jen Psaki, just abandoned), about the behavior of the thousands upon of thousands of fundamentalist Afghans who have been transplanted to the United States, about what the Taliban is doing with all the merchandise of death we kindly gifted them. So the autopsies will keep coming and will furnish ever more detail about this gigantic political failure.

The glaring truth about Biden and his masters By Liam Brooks

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/the_glaring_truth_about_biden_and_his_masters.html

Corrupt.  Incompetent.  Pathological.  Criminal.  Treasonous.

Those are just a few of the (printable) adjectives that aptly describe the illegitimate gang of idiots currently running our country.  Joe Biden, the so-called president, is nothing more than a marionette controlled by a gaggle of career bureaucrats and academics, none of whom has ever contributed anything substantial to our once vibrant society.  Indeed, they are nothing more than destroyers, power-mad ideologues who use a demented old grifter as a mouthpiece while they dismantle, piece by piece, our once great Republic.  Globalism is their ultimate goal, and the nightmare we’re experiencing brings us ever closer to that frightening reality.

Biden is a figurehead for the Marxist madness that’s corrupting our schools, destroying small business, and slowly but surely eliminating our nation’s sovereignty.  The current push to force Americans to “register” their firearms under a United Nations gun-grabbing scheme is just one example of the ongoing attack on our cherished freedoms.  Another glaring example is the fascist collaboration between the ruling elites and Big Tech to silence dissent, a clear violation of the First Amendment. 

If the Marxist drive continues, it will go on and on until the Bill of Rights is little more than a footnote in a long forgotten history.  After all, it’s hard to teach real history when tyrants control the schools and certain “undesirable” books are banned.  Don’t scoff.  On our present course, it’s not only possible, but likely.  And don’t think the internet can save any documented evidence of real history, because the algorithms Big Tech uses and the Thought Police (i.e., “fact-checkers”) they employ can control virtually everything online…including Cloud, or whatever files you use to store data.  Privacy is virtually nonexistent nowadays, and that includes your bank accounts, business sites, photo files, and email accounts, just to name a few.  (Ask Tucker Carlson.)

But as smart as they think they are, progressives are actually pretty dumb.  And arrogant.  The hubris in our ruling elite sometimes opens a door where their stupidity, ineptitude, deceit, and downright hatred of our founding principles are on full display…for anyone who cares to look, anyway.  The ongoing disaster created by their surrender to the Taliban — laughingly referred to by certain talking heads as a “successful withdrawal” — is a prime example.  Even the compliant media, which normally spin or ignore the administration’s boatload of disastrous mistakes, had to scratch their respective heads over this one.  It’s truly one of the worst military debacles in our nation’s history, costing innocent lives, abandoning American citizens, and handing over almost a hundred billion dollars in high-tech equipment and weapons to a murderous gang of cave-dwelling lunatics. 

The Wall Street Journal Gets the Texas Abortion Law Wrong By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-wall-street-journal-gets-the-texas-abortion-law-wrong/

The Wall Street Journal’s editors have posted an uncharacteristically weak editorial on the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’s fetal-heartbeat law from going into effect. The Journal’s editors concede that the five-justice majority correctly decided that the plaintiff abortion providers did not have a case for sundry procedural reasons. Nevertheless, they join the chorus of center-right strategists who maintain that, however well-meaning, the curb on abortions is a “blunder” that will ultimately lose on the merits while “hand[ing] Democrats a political grenade to hurt the anti-abortion cause.”

I’d respectfully suggest that the editors are overthinking it. Their analysis is wide of the mark.

To begin with, the Journal’s editors point out that the Texas law would render illegal pre-viability elective abortions that are permitted by Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992). As the editorial acknowledges, however, the High Court already has on its docket for the term that begins a month from now the Dobbs case, involving a Mississippi curb on pre-viability elective abortions after 15 weeks. Given that the justices will necessarily revisit Roe—as revised by Casey—in Dobbs, the fact that the Texas law forbids that which Roe/Casey permits does not necessarily mean the Texas law is infirm.

The Journal is correct that the Texas law does not expressly specify exemptions to terminate pregnancies attributable to rape and incest. It should be noted, however, that rape and incest are not relevant factors in at least 98 percent of abortions. (The Guttmacher Institute has estimated that rape accounts for about 1 percent of abortions, and incest about 0.5 percent.) The act does bar a male who impregnated the abortion patient through an act of rape or incest from bringing a lawsuit under the statute, but it is true that no one else is subject to this bar. The law also provides an exemption if a physician performs an abortion under the belief that a medical emergency exists, but, though it defines a number of pertinent terms, the statute fails to define “medical emergency.” As I understand it, this concept is broadly construed under Texas law, but it is unlikely to include non-life-threatening physical injuries or mental anguish attributable to a rape/incest pregnancy.

All that said, the Journal’s emphasis on the absence of a rape and incest exemption is indicative of the editors’ prioritization of the political implications of the law over its purpose to protect unborn life.