Scathing criticisms of Joe Biden’s disastrous cut-and-run in Afghanistan have been issued by even his media cheerleaders at CNN, NPR and the New York Times. Career diplomats including former Obama officials have publicly excoriated his administration for incompetence. Foreign leaders are baffled.
Only the Taliban is happy.
A withdrawal from Afghanistan may have been necessary, but it didn’t have to happen this way. Only 2,500 soldiers were there anyway – about the same as in Iraq. As in Iraq, this small number kept relative peace. The last American soldier killed in Afghanistan was a year and a half ago. That’s one more dead soldier than I’d like, but it’s a violent world and soldiers keeping the peace have a dangerous job.
Biden assured us just a month ago that this wouldn’t happen. He said the Afghan soldiers far outnumbered the Taliban, and there would be no “Saigon” moment where American embassy staff are helicoptered from the roof of the embassy as the barbarians bang down the gate.
But here we are, only a month later, and that’s roughly what is happening. It’s in part because Biden discontinued nearly all the air support that was key to the Afghan government’s military. The Taliban now own the entire country, and are threatening even the chaotic Kabul airport where Afghans are clinging to the outside of airplanes trying to take off. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of Americans may be trapped.
For millions of Afghans, the future is bleak. When the Taliban was last in power, they prohibited girls from attending school. In soccer stadium spectacles, they stoned women and burned them to death.
Biden is left begging the Taliban for mercy and warning them that untoward acts will earn them the tsk-tsk of the “international community.” As if these guys right out of the 11th century worry about whether they’ll be invited to Davos for the next climate summit.
How did Biden stumble so badly?
Let’s assume that Biden, his generals and his intel services simply got it wrong about how fast the Taliban would take over the country. Let’s say they thought it would take years or at least months, rather than a week or two. Maybe they forgot how important U.S. air support was.
OK, but how did they not see that their initial assessment was wrong as events unfolded over the last two weeks? How did they not see that the Taliban were storming ahead and would be overrunning Kabul within days? Do they not have access to satellite and spy plane images? Did they know less than CNN about the Taliban advance? Why did they wait till almost literally the last minute to evacuate non-military personnel?
These questions are being asked throughout the world. But they are not being asked of Biden himself, because Biden himself is off on vacation and not taking questions. His chief press secretary is doing the same.
Biden is known around the White House for knocking off at about 2:30 in the afternoon, but he still needed a vacation. And so he took one.
The Taliban did not.
This American president is seriously ill. He’s not there mentally or, now, even physically. The world knows it. These are very dangerous times.
Update: The president today flew back to the White House and delivered a short speech about the unfolding crisis. But none of the obvious questions were asked of him, because he refused to take questions. Then he went back to his vacation.
the Aspen beat 
Would Kamala be better than who-ever is directing Biden? Hang-on we have 3 1/2 more years of this incompetence ahead of us.
Sickening.
NO.
and
OH NO!
But… Butt… At least he doesn’t make mean tweets !
Since when does makingnhonest tweets part of the destruction of America.
We need to all wake up and start facing all of the crying left babies in the room. Men be men so women don’t have to!
Enough already.
I was being sarcastic, i.e. , towards those who seem so shallow as to be so upset by Frumps tweets that they saw it as a valid reason not to support him.
That’s Trump, not Frump, a misspelling.
He’s not present but pretends to be prescient. Has any president ever been more wrong? I dread how his policies will play out.
“How did Biden stumble so badly?”
Biden has “stumbled” throughout all of his political life. He is the physical incarnation of incompetence (surpassed only by his crackhead son Hunter). It is for that EXACT reason that Obama chose him to be his VP. Biden’s blistering inadequacy made him walking talking breathing body armor for his former boss. Biden is a quintessential clusterf_ck of incompetence, which I wish I could say is staggeringly surprising but I really can’t because, sadly, that tendency is now SNAFU in the District of Corruption.
There are, as always, two distinctly different conclusions one can reach about the Afghanistan debacle. One might conclude, as it appears most commentators on this subject have, that Biden, his administration or whoever is actually running the show behind the curtain is/are incompetent, failed to take the correct steps out of stupidity, lack of insight, lack of foresight, etc. That conclusion assumes that it was, therefore, an unintended consequence. On the other hand, I conclude that it was the intended result of a deliberately chosen course of action (or inaction, more accurately) and the result was precisely what had been intended to be the outcome. After all, you can’t remake America in the mold of a socialist workers paradise as long as there are enough people in it who have the will and means to resist. Once the means are eliminated and the will is broken, replacing the dominant culture becomes much more likely as well as easier to achieve. Once patriotism is replaced with cynicism, who will be willing to stand and defend the social and economic status quo? Who will be willing to shed blood and expend treasure to preserve the wreck of this former Colossus? Nobody. And that is what our future globalist overlords intended when they caused Biden and Harris to be “elected.” It’s really all part of their plan. As the popular expression goes, “Prove me wrong.”
Can’t prove you’re wrong because you’re right. Fortunately, that is not the entire story. I do not know what it is, but I know that it is. Great countries do not just fade away.
I tend to believe your second consideration more than the first. Most of their supposed screwups tend run in the direction you mention.
Honor in a bedlam comprises keeping one’s word once given and speaking the truth once known. Those two acts every man, woman, and child can do without assistance or backup from another, man, woman, or child. No one needs an army to make them or help them keep their word and tell the truth. They can do it themselves, on their own, and immediately upon the need or occasion.
We say in these heartbreaking times, do what you can locally, and that is sound advice for good practice. The two things each one of us can do locally, without waiting for anyone to lead or direct us, are: keep the word once given, and, tell the truth once known.
The one who does these things steadily, despite hardships, is known throughout the world as an honorable man, woman, or child. They may be liked, they may not. But they will be regarded as honorable, which is all that really matters.
I hear people saying we needed to stick in out in Afghanistan like we did in S. Korea, Japan, and W. Germany for decades to maintain order and build up a peaceful and working society, but those countries don’t have a national average IQ of 84, and their main industry wasn’t growing a narcotic that breeds a corrupt culture friendly with organized crime and rogue intelligence agencies around the world who buy their product, and they didn’t practice the most backward form of the most backward major religion on the planet. This means that “taming”, “decorrupting”, and “civilizing” Afghanistan isn’t a decades long project, but a centuries long project that will still make it a country in a very isolated part of the world with few economic assets, so it is hard to see the payoff in that. 20 years of Western support, modern training and weapons, and their leaders sell out to ragheads carrying AK47s for a few bucks and the rest drop their high tech weapons and run for the hills as the first sign of fighting. Biden didn’t lose Afghanistan because Afghanistan wasn’t winnable even with competent leadership, and even the backwards Taliban could see that a country that supposedly elects a senile old loser like Biden, and promotes generals more interested in Marxism, CRT, and LGBQT rights than training an effective fighting force is not a country with competent leadership, and they have taken advantage of the situation.
So accurate and sadly factual!
Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman’s book On Combat…”If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath—a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path.” Logic tells me Biden and his entourage are a pack of wolves.
Where there are sheepdogs, there is typically a shepherd, which puts me in mind of a recently published article entitled “The Silence of the Shepherds” — Republicans in Congress who appear to be content with this march of folly.
What we are witnessing in Afghanistan is hardly as shocking as the deliberately encouraged invasion of our “Homeland” across our southern border during the past 7+ months. It’s very hard to find data on how many illegals have entered the country, but border apprehensions (mostly of the catch-and-release variety?) have reached the 1,000,000 mark; as for “get-aways,” who knows?
Meanwhile, our own “Taliban” have established roughly 265 “sanctuary” communities around the country, and an Underground Railroad is moving this human contraband, Covid and all, into a neighborhood near you.
If this isn’t “impeachable,” then nothing is. So our “chief law-enforcement officer” along with the rest of his government might as well stay on vacation. As Cankles once exclaimed, “what difference does it make?!”
In describing Biden and his criminal son, the word “feckless” comes to mind.
Yes, “without effect (feck in Scots dialect).” On the other hand, as the central agent of the rapid wholesale destruction of America, his effect is enormous. He’s downright “feckful.” A clusterfeck, in fact.
Yes, and we are all well and truly fecked as long as he or his cabal are in office…
Ay, laddie, ye be feckin’ right about that.
I don’t buy it that Biden is an incognizant as many people think. He’s always been like this. There’s a reason why he ran several times in party primaries and got nowhere. Even the Democratic voters knew better.
I have a problem blaming Biden for all of his mistakes. He is exempt from criticism in much the same way that an infant can’t be blamed for the steaming pile of fecal matter in his Huggies. Joe has always been a mediocrity and in his best days was never competent for the office he now holds. And his best days are decades in the past. For that reason I place the blame for the current White House clown show on the amoral Democrat operatives who supported him and promoted him for the job, knowing of his corruption in office, chronic incompetence, impending senility and failing attention span. They pushed him, lied and cheated for him to be elected not for the sake of the country, but for their own aggrandizement and accession to power. The entire Democratic Party is guilty of these treasonous acts. No one who worked for his election or voted for him is deserving of the description of citizen. They have shown themselves to be silly people whose thoughts and opinions should forever be denigrated and mocked. Don’t try to convince me of your seriousness or intellect if you cast a ballot for this train wreck…
Glenn , we repeat that your writings are very appropriate and we have commented so often but even so, we couldn’t get beyond this in your piece, “How did Biden stumble so badly?” And we know that you answer that sof nonsense.
So, we insist on being able to still comment on that nonsense just because IT SCREAMS FOR A RESPONSE: IN THE SIMPLEST TERMS, BIDEN IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE manipulable FOOL THAT THE DEMOCRAT MACHINE WANTED, NEEDED, AND COULD NOT FIND OTHERWISE.
Where is the better response to that?