Biden’s Afghanistan Bungle: Wrong Man, Right Thing, Worst Way Let’s hope in transition from failed Global War on Terror to Domestic War on Wrongthink against dissenters from America Last that those seeking absolute control show same competency here as abroad: Ben Weingarten
https://weingarten.substack.com/p/bidens-afghanistan-bungle-wrong-man?token=
When it comes to the fast-accelerating calamity in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is the wrong man, doing the right thing, in the absolute worst way.
It is for this reason that in his brief, no questions-allowed White House remarks on Monday, the president created the ultimate straw man, defending the decision to withdraw rather than his disastrously executed withdrawal itself.
Afghanistan, and the “Global War on Terror” more broadly, have proven an utter failure in which America frittered away its dominant position in two decades. That failure is a consequence of our ignorance of the enemy, arrogance/naïveté in thinking we could, or should turn Islamic, tribal backwaters into Jeffersonian democracies, pervasive corruption, and the bureaucratic and economic imperative among those invested in this project to keep the charade going.
All of this undermined our national interest.
These and other points ought to be addressed—though they won’t be because our establishment is so overwhelmingly complicit—but they are not the primary issue of the day.
At issue today is the disgracefully botched execution of an exit by a leader who, unlike his predecessor, is self-evidently neither feared nor respected.
At issue today is the failure of the Woke military and intelligence apparatus that the president commands.
At issue today is the propaganda coup our adversaries are enjoying, the strategic vacuum they will now fill and the reality setting in that while Emperor Biden meanders with no clothes, Emperor Xi may well make a move at Taiwan and beyond.
And at issue today, while the administration admits it can’t evacuate Americans, as I write in part, is this:
That the administration is poised to compound this disaster by layering on top of it another refugee-driven immigration crisis only further demonstrates the insane priorities of our current leaders, sure to be seized upon by those who wish us harm. It only further demonstrates that the elites have learned nothing—simply moving from the politically correct naivete of a generation ago to the cynical, Woke “equity” agenda of today.
And what should they have learned, having paid no price for their folly? How else to explain that while the Biden administration has articulated no plan to do the bare minimum of protecting Americans stuck in Afghanistan, it is fixing to take in up to 30,000 Afghan refugees at U.S. military bases? While betraying those Afghans who did courageously fight alongside us would be wrong, how does the administration justify not putting Americans first? Does anyone believe the U.S. government is capable of vetting these individuals? If not, doesn’t prudence demand that if we’re going to be in the refugee resettlement business, we do so at a safe distance from our shores, at minimal cost and in a place they are likely to assimilate?
Think about this: The 9/11 terror attacks were at core a failure of immigration, as well as related intelligence. Twenty years on, we’re inviting tens of thousands from the first country we targeted in response to those attacks, again under control of the very regime that had harbored the very 9/11 attackers, to immigrate here. What could possibly go wrong?
Indeed, 9/11 is the elephant in the room here. The greatest travesty of all—on top of the incalculable loss of blood and treasure—is that two decades later, the efforts putatively aimed at avenging our dead have largely failed. America’s elites even rescued defeat from the jaws of one of their sole unambiguous victories, by converting the disarmament of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi into Benghazi. Israel and several Sunni Arab nations were initially driven together in response to a former American president, Barack Obama, explicitly empowering the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad, Iran—a protector of none other than al-Qaeda.
Joe Biden is indeed the wrong man, doing the right thing by withdrawing from Afghanistan, in the absolute worst way. But he’s also the perfect man to do it—the ultimate D.C. Swamp creature uniquely culpable for the foreign policy that frittered away America’s strategic position, as a former chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vice president and now commander-in-chief.
His response to criticism of the Ruling Class for which he serves as an avatar further makes Biden a perfect man for the times. The Ruling Class, which has led failure after failure, does not engage in introspection. It does not hold itself accountable. It does not reform itself.
Rather, when faced with its myriad failures, it seeks to make enemies of those calling the failures out. It casts them as racists, bigots and, yes, terrorists.
The transition from a failed “Global War on Terror” to a Domestic War on Wrongthink against those who dare to dissent from the America Last project, and its architects, therefore makes complete sense.
Former President Donald Trump and the tens of millions of pesky like-minded Americans make for the only thing separating the Ruling Class from complete, unmitigated power.
Americans can only hope those seeking absolute control show the same competence here as they have abroad.
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