RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/08/20/cutting-to-the-chase-why-trump-was-driven-from-office-n1471233

“In plain language, resident complexities and interpretative assessments aside, Trump was a true president: forthright, unbeholden, and effective. From the point of view of America’s “ruling class”—entrenched political parasites, so-called “opinion leaders,” media collaborators, and wealthy oligarchs—such attributes are high crimes and misdemeanors for which the chosen culprit must be made to pay. There can be no absolution. He upset the apple cart. He fractured and exposed the inner circle. He offended the elites. And now he may even be planning his return. As if in a parody of the Book of Amos (2:4), whether for three transgressions or for four, Trump remains anathema for rejecting the law of the lords that be. ”

There has been no end of commentary dealing with Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency and the scandal of his electoral loss. There’s no doubt that from the day of the “grand escalator ride” (and even before) to the day of his departure from the White House, a social, media, and political upheaval was in progress, and would not cease even when he once again became a private citizen. Reasons pro and con for the debacle have proliferated since Hurricane Trump made landfall in America, but the issues are basically very simple and can be stated economically.

There were essentially three called strikes against him, all that was needed to count him out.

He was not “presidential.” He was considered crude in speech, rough-hewn in manner, and given over to bluster and hyperbole unbefitting the highest office in the land. For these transgressions, he could not be forgiven.
He was an outsider, the first president in American history with no military or political experience. He was not a politician, a general, a lawyer, or a holder of public office. He was never a member of the Beltway club, whether Republicrats or Democrats. He was not followed by a train of professional lobbyists, owed no political debts, did not accept a salary, and did not enrich himself when in power. For these transgressions, he could not be forgiven.
He was competent and proudly patriotic. He put America first, cutting taxes, renegotiating bad trade deals to the nation’s advantage, reducing a red-tape regulatory nightmare, making the country energy-independent and a net exporter of energy, rebuilding the military, defending the southern border, re-establishing global prominence, and connecting with the commons. For such transgressions, he could not be forgiven.

https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/2021/08/20/joe-biden-leading-the-world-off-a-cliff-n1471414

President Biden just delivered a speech on Afghanistan so rife with misdirection and mendacity that it’s hard to know where to start. But from the welter of Orwellian Newspeak, let’s pluck a line in which we find Biden praising himself for his handling of Afghanistan. Biden told us : “This is about America leading the world, and all our allies have agreed with that.”

If so, this is about America, under his stewardship, leading the world off a cliff.

Whatever the arguments for leaving Afghanistan or maintaining a minimal force, Biden and his advisors and planners (assuming there were any?) have delivered the worst of all worlds. Whatever the difficulties inherent in any retreat, this is a rout. The great American superpower has been chased out of its embassy, out of Kabul, out of Afghanistan, by the Taliban — who now surround the airport where Americans are fleeing for their lives, and Afghans who worked with them are begging for passage — if they can get to the airport at all.

This is a humiliating defeat, echoing way beyond Afghanistan. It is guaranteed to embolden America’s enemies and signal our allies that it is folly to trust America. China is gloating online, with propaganda organs putting out headlines such as this, from the Global Times: “U.S. will abandon Taiwan in a crisis.” Nor should we write that off as mere propaganda; there is a deeply alarming likelihood that this is exactly what Beijing, with its ringside seat (including an open embassy flying the Chinese flag in Kabul) is now calculating. Russia’s Vladimir Putin must be relishing the moment, fresh from telling Biden at a June summit that neither Russia nor China was interested in a U.S. military presence in Central Asia, once Biden completed his plans to pull out of Afghanistan. These predatory powers want America gone from their neighborhoods, and for their purposes, the more ignominious the departure, the better.

Nor is it going to reassure America’s friends and allies that Biden and his handlers are so busy trying to spin the story that they seem to have fetched up in some alternate universe. Biden began his remarks by stressing that the U.S. evacuation effort in Kabul is “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history.” He underscored that of all the countries in the world, only America is “capable of projecting this much power on the far side of the world with this degree of precision… .” Yes indeed, America is a mighty nation, and we can be proud of the astounding abilities and courage of our armed forces.

But as Biden, or his speechwriters, formulated this praise of the military, it serves chiefly to deflect attention from the atrocious planning and strategic idiocy emanating from the office of the commander-in-chief (including the decision to pull out weeks ago from Afghanistan’s commodious Bagram military base, near Kabul, leaving the commercial airport as the only escape route). This is not the Berlin airlift — in which America led a defiant support of freedom. In Kabul, the American troops ordered back in by Biden to carry out the evacuation have been handed a mission that boils down to America’s self-demeaning rush for the exit. If Biden is going to tout U.S. military power, he owes us all an honest explanation of why, under his command, this nightmare scene — with its iconic image of Afghans falling to their deaths from an American Air Force jet on takeoff — turned out to be the best America could manage.

There’s plenty more, including Biden’s bizarre claim that al-Qaeda is gone from Afghanistan: “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?” According to a report just this June by a United Nations panel of experts on these matters: “Large numbers of Al-Qaida fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.” (These are topics on which even the UN tends to produce more reliable information than the Biden White House, which is doubly intriguing because, though we can’t tell for sure, it is quite likely U.S. intelligence has helped inform the UN report.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/can_the_biden_presidency_last_much_longer.html

Democrats now understand that Biden has poisoned the Democrat brand, as proven by a shocking special election flip of a seat in a wealthy suburban district that Biden won by 25 points.

Though removal from office once was unthinkable, Joe Biden has lost the support of most of the key actors whose support helped him win the presidency, and whose cooperation is essential to maintaining the illusion that he is capable of fulfilling the duties of president of the United States.

Because impeachment or the 25th Amendment removal from office would hinge on their support — Democrat officeholders now understand that they are at risk of losing their next election thanks to his sullying of the brand of the party that foisted an already senile placeholder on the public.  In a special election Tuesday, voters in Connecticut’s 26th Senate District, who supported Biden by a 25-point margin, flipped a seat to the Republican candidate (hat tip: Christina Laila).

This is one of the wealthiest suburban constituencies in the country, encompassing Greenwich, Stamford, and New Canaan — people who read the New York Times and who care about foreign policy.

The earlier switch of affluent suburbanites away from Republicans over the past decade or more has been essential to Democrat victories in many blue states.  They believed media propaganda that Trump was an ignorant buffoon whose incompetence made America a laughingstock in the European countries they like to vacation in.  When they see headlines like this, even more such voters will be alarmed:

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-press-conference-feast-disinformation/

Biden emerged from his cave, saw his shadow, and told us there will be three more years of winter.

That winter, descending upon America’s position in the world, was on public display at Biden’s Friday press conference about Afghanistan. It was a feast of disinformation.

No al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? Come on, man.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are enemies? Gimme a break.

Almost no one thought the Afghan army would fall apart this quickly? You might want to check your notes.

Our Nato allies agreed his decision to withdraw was wise? Ain’t so. Our most important allies are taking the very rare step of publicly blaming an American president.

We’ll know if terrorist groups form in Afghanistan because we have “over the horizon” capabilities? Over the rainbow is more accurate. We need resources on the ground to understand what’s happening.

And on and on and on with drivel and falsehoods.

How bad is this mess? So bad and so obvious that even the mainstream media, lap dogs for the last two years, began asking Biden tough questions. It’s unclear if they will follow up and inform the public about the deceptions, as well as the incompetence and bad judgment.

Yesterday, Juan Williams said the American people will soon forget this failure in Afghanistan. Not very likely. A friend of mine, reflecting on those pictures from the Kabul airport, rendered a much more profound judgment, “People cannot unsee those images.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/19/afghanistan-the-ugly-aftermath-and-the-death-of-u-s-influence/

It’s one thing to lose a war intentionally, quite another to botch it so badly that it damages our relations around the world. But thanks to the epic ineptitude of the Biden administration, our military leaders and dysfunctional intelligence agencies, that’s exactly what has happened.

The news couldn’t be more depressing. Our president’s response was, no joke, a strongly worded letter to the Taliban from our United Nations ambassador. At the same time, our own State Department informed U.S. citizens now stuck in the capital of Kabul that they should make their way to Karzai Airport if they can, but that the U.S. can’t guarantee their safety.

Even as the horrible images of the Taliban’s takeover come tumbling in over social media and news sites, the harm to the U.S. and its global reputation has been significant.

The Taliban has already started killing people, including a woman for not wearing a burka, while making up more comprehensive death lists of those who will be summarily murdered once it takes total control.

Here’s how the London Times describes the mayhem:

Despite pledges to be magnanimous, the Taliban have been accused of beheading prisoners, gouging out eyes and executing hundreds. Fleeing civilians have brought tales of girls forced into marriage or kidnapped as sex slaves. Video on social media shows Islamists pumping machine gun rounds into the bodies of captured Afghan policemen.

This is what the Biden administration’s ineptitude hath wrought. Now add to that the hundreds of Americans and other Westerners now stranded and cut off from leaving after Kabul’s main airport came under Taliban control “unexpectedly.”

https://quillette.com/2021/08/18/america-the-indispensable/

Post-millennium America does not look good at a glance. The country has struggled with the pandemic and with deepening divisions over race, class, inequality, and culture. It is in the humiliating process of losing another war, this time in Afghanistan. Since 2016, the world’s largest economy has been presided over first by the buffoonish and occasionally deranged Donald Trump, and then by an aging Joe Biden who bears scant resemblance to Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet, despite its manifest failings—the assault on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters was not a good image builder—the US remains the indispensable country, the last major counterforce to the rising authoritarian challenge of China, and its growing list of allies, including perhaps the new Islamist regime in Kabul. It remains, without question, the only nation with the natural resources, population, military, and technical skill to rally the West and salvage its threatened legacy.

The US routinely rises to the challenge late, a pattern evident in both World Wars, the initial period of the Cold War, the response to China’s late 20th century industrial juggernaut, and the terrorist threat. But in the end, it remains a huge and blessed land with enormous sokojikara, or “reserve power,” as Japanese political scientist Fuji Kamiya described it decades ago, that allows it to overcome competitors.

The case for America

Pessimism about America’s direction has resurged, following a brief improvement when Biden became president. According to an ABC/Ipsos poll, Americans’ optimism about the country’s direction has dropped 20 points since May. Concern is growing that the country is in a  precipitous decline, something that won’t improve with the bleak images from the Afghani debacle. Most Europeans believe that China will soon replace America as the world’s economic powerhouse. The Chinese, unsurprisingly, seem to feel the same. In a since-deleted tweet, Ministry official Zhao Lijian described Western efforts to slow China’s dominion as being “as stupid as Don Quixote versus the windmills … China’s win is unstoppable.”

So will our children—now living in unhappy and increasingly divided societies—grow up kowtowing to the Mandarins? Without America, that’s the future for the West and everyone else. Europe, politically divided, demographically stagnant, and anti-American, lacks the capacity and willingness to resist. Germany appears unwilling to stand up to either its largest trading partner, China, or to its now-favored supplier of energy, Russia. Weaker European states, such as Italy, the Czech Republic, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, and even rightwing favorite Hungary have signed up to be cogs in China’s “Belt and Road initiative.” Asia’s democracies can’t hack it without America. Japan is a rich but aging country that lacks much forward momentum, something that can also be said of South Korea. India is still too poor and chaotic to match China’s regimented power.