By the Taliban, who are unexpectedly turning out to have quite a sense of humor when it comes to rubbing Amerika v2.0’s nose in it.
The soi-disant “superpower” now resembles one of those stories you see from time to time on Eyewitness News: the 700-lb bedridden guy unable to get up, even to go to hospital, and requiring the fire department to slice off the upper wall of the house just to winch him out of there. The inability of Lloyd Austin, Thoroughly Modern Milley, Tailspin Taylor and the other beribboned buffoons of the Potemtagon to adapt swiftly and effectively to ground conditions that are changing hour by hour is as telling as anything.
It is not just that General Milley and the Joint Buffoons of Staff cannot plan; they cannot execute. Compare the 2,500 Americans evacuated from Kabul over this last week to the 7,000 Americans and allies choppered out of Saigon in just nineteen hours. Can Milley do anything in nineteen hours other than call his tailor and order up his next row of ribbonry?
The Taliban know an American humiliation when they see one, and for the moment they’re content to let Austin and Milley and the rest of Washington’s worthless elite dig deeper. Aside from that, the mullahs are waggish enough to tease western media with hints of a “broad-based government”, although we all know that in the end the broad-based government won’t be based on broads. Other than that, the Sharia crowd confine any direct engagement with the Great Loser Satan to social media trolling, such as recreating (in American uniforms left at Bagram or elsewhere) Iwo Jima with the Taliban flag.
In case you missed it, and I don’t see how you could’ve, here t’is:
Steyn continues:
Funnier than Colbert and Fallon and the other court eunuchs, but who isn’t? And once again you get the feeling that these guys know us rather better than all the Ivy League tosspots of the world’s most ludicrous “elite” know them. On the subject of which, see the Tweeted video of the brother of Afghanistan’s president (the guy who fled with 169 mil in American tax dollars) joining the Taliban.
Enjoy it while you can: the big beards are not going to audition for Comedy Central indefinitely. Having won a spectacular victory, the beneficiaries of two decades of American “nation-building” will at some point want their international airport back.
Correctimundo. There’s a second big winner now emerging from the smoke and ash of Amerikan ruin, though, and guess who it might be.
This is a human tragedy for those desperate to flee Afghanistan. But, as I’ve said repeatedly, for everyone else this is a story about America. We like to think of our site as a big-picture pad, so what would that be in this scenario? Well, the big picture is that, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States blew its unipolar moment and has chosen to surrender the world, after half-a-millennium, to post-western dominance. Whatever the truth of Biden’s charge that the money-no-object Afghan National Army went over to the other side, there is no question that key elements of American national power have gone over to China’s side: the Chamber of Commerce, Hollywood, the NBA, not to mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s protectors at the CDC and NIH; oh, and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, at least two of whom have checked out with respect to anything to do with China…
Beijing has won without firing a shot, which is the way to do it. They have no desire to occupy Afghanistan or to prioritize (as did Washington, confusing the Great Game with the Gay Games) Pride Month in Kandahar. Your average goatherd will barely notice the ChiComs’ presence, except insofar as the best tables at the only Michelin restaurant in Spin Boldak seem to go to the visiting Chinamen. But, an hour south of Kabul, Chinese development of the world’s second largest copper mine will proceed apace. We were there for two decades, but all the lithium will go to Chairman Xi, just in case you thought the Chinese didn’t have a tight enough hammerlock on the world’s batteries, without which all your high-tech toys are novelty paperweights and doorstops.
After the US abandonment of Bagram air base, the Germans began moving their people out last month, quietly and without fanfare. Also in July, Mullah Baradar, the Taliban honcho now back in Kabul, flew to China to meet with Xi’s Foreign Minister. And the government of Greece (which no German or Scandinavian would consider a functioning administration) somehow managed to anticipate a looming Afghan migrant tide and construct and complete a border fence with Turkey, in order to prevent another 2016 “refugee” stampede.
Everyone – Greeks, Germans, Chinese – knew where this was headed (and very quickly) …everyone except the decadent, decayed hyperpower in nominal control of the timeline.
On Friday the chump who serves as US Defense Secretary was asked why his US troops at Kabul Airport couldn’t do (as the French, British and others are doing) and fan out into Kabul and surrounding provinces and extract their nationals. Mr Austin replied that American forces don’t have “the capability” – and, as a hack lobbyist formerly on the board of Raytheon, he should know.
But what exactly does America have “the capability” to do? The “Special Immigrant Visa” for loyal Afghans who made the mistake of trusting the infidel takes two years to process. What’s so “special” about that? Well, the regular visas take five-to-ten years. Impressive as the government’s comparative SIV urgency is, if you’re in Jalalabad and your application isn’t already in the mail, you’ll find it quicker to bicycle over the Khyber, take a rusting steam packet from Karachi to Mexico and use the Rio Grande express check-in.
Which is what will happen. The implosion in Afghanistan and the dissolution of America’s southern border will converge, and thousands of excitable young Mohammedans will wind up in the Lower Forty-Eight – while the few actual loyal Afghan support staff get stuck back in Kabul to be beheaded on jihadist snuff videos.
Why cannot the great flabby leviathan rouse itself? Why do French paratroopers have the “capability” and not their more lavishly funded Yank counterparts? Why can the Greeks build a border wall in a month but in America a winning presidential candidate can merely campaign on it for a year and a half and then get screwed over by his own corrupt donor-beholden party leaders?
That’s just the nature of flabby leviathans, once they’ve disavowed all the things that made them great. Lots more, of which you’ll want to read the all.
I still choose Malice over stupidity in this current climate, but as has been noted by several commenters here, the people with Malice in their hearts have installed The Morons “in charge” and tasked them with doing what they do best. Fumbling around, producing FUBARs and Failing. The 3F Troop.
So it’s highly likely it’s BOTH Malice and Stupidity.
Where the Heck Ah’ We!? (Misheard as ‘we’re the Heckowie).
“So it’s highly likely it’s BOTH Malice and Stupidity.”
That’s my conclusion.
A big part of the trouble is that the process of intelligence collection and analysis has been politicized in favor of neoliberal policies, so the people who need to rely on those agencies for impartial analysis in order to set policy have been repeatedly misled and even lied to. The latest – and most disastrous – lie was that the Afghan National Army existed at all, or had any loyalty to the Karzai or Ghani governments. It was no surprise to me to see that “Army” fold up like a cheap tent in a hurricane following the US statement about ending support. That little disaster came from the neoliberals at the State Department, who screwed Biden like they did to Trump and threatened to do to any President who defied them. That was followed up by the neoliberals running the Pentagon, who closed Bagram Air Force Base, by slipping away in the dead of night, leaving arms, ammunition, aircraft, and other supplies to whomever wanted them – and the Taliban gladly stepped in… And that thoroughly sabotaged the evacuation effort, leading to the current debacle at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Those Pentagon neoliberal bureaucrats screwed every American citizen left in the country, every troop stranded there, and quite a few others – and they screwed Biden, too. And then the “intel community” did its part, too, mouthing some ridiculous nonsense about there being 90 days before the Taliban could possibly come in. They were only off by 83 days. Ooops, another “intelligence failure”.
What Trump should have done, on his first day in office, at one minute after he assumed office, was to conduct a Joe Stalin-style purge of the Pentagon, the “intel community”, and the State Department. Biden should do the same, unless he wants to get driven right out of office and wind up in some godforsaken nursing home, doped up and drooling into his shoes until he finally gets shuffled off into Eternity – and a lot of other Americans and others around the world end up in the same location, albeit not so peacefully. The neoliberals infesting the government need to be purged either by effective leadership or by revolution, or like any other parasite, will hollow out and eventually destroy the host.