12
1

Afghan chaos undercuts Biden's promise of competence


 invite response                
2021 Aug 18, 2:48pm   117,547 views  1,137 comments

by RWSGFY   ➕follow (4)   💰tip   ignore  






....
The shambolic unravelling of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan comes from a yet to be written textbook of "how to lose at everything". Warnings hadn't been heeded, intelligence was clearly totally inadequate, planning was lamentable, execution woeful.

Let's just focus in on one thing - although there are any number that are worthy of examination.
The withdrawal came during the "fighting season" - a phrase I have to say I have always found rather odd. But in Afghanistan there is a fighting season which starts in spring - and then in winter, when the country freezes over, there is a time when the Taliban go home to their tribal homelands. Did no-one think that it might have been better to have ordered the withdrawal for the dead of winter when Taliban forces weren't there, poised to fill the vacuum?

The end result might have been the same - a Taliban takeover - but it would have almost certainly led to a more orderly drawdown. Yet the Biden administration wanted an eye-catching date. They wanted the withdrawal completed by 11 September. Twenty years on from 9/11 - an artificial, self-imposed deadline.

...

Biden's election campaign could be boiled down to three messages to distinguish himself from Donald Trump. First, he would be more empathetic. He would be more competent. And instead of "America First", it would be replaced by the mantra "America is back".
But in his address yesterday, there wasn't a whole lot of empathy towards the thousands of Afghans who've helped Americans these past 20 years. On competence, even his biggest cheerleaders would struggle to say the withdrawal of American troops has been anything other than shambolic.
And after the bewildering events of the past few days, how exactly is America back?

...

But on the policy itself, Joe Biden is utterly defiant. He summoned up his inner Harry Truman and made clear in his speech that the buck stops with him. He was, however, happy to distribute blame in much the same way that a muck spreader disperses manure in all directions. The Afghan leadership weren't up to it, the Afghan armed forces had no fight in them; Donald Trump had negotiated a bad deal.

...

A fascinating nugget from a briefing that's just been given by Joe Biden's National Security Adviser. Since the fall of Kabul, Jake Sullivan revealed, Biden hadn't spoken to another world leader. Wasn't that just a bit surprising, given that there were a lot of other nations - including Britain - who'd committed vast resources to Afghanistan?

...

When the G7 gathered in Cornwall and the Nato nations met in Brussels the sense of relief was palpable among the prime ministers and presidents that a more outward looking American president was in charge. But given what has unfolded - how America has been humiliated, how Joe Biden embarked on a policy he was cautioned against by these leaders - there is now a good deal more wariness.
And who will feel they have gained most from America's departure - apart from the Taliban, of course? Why, three countries near Afghanistan - Russia, Iran and China. I'm not sure that is what Joe Biden had in mind when he said after his inauguration that "America is back".



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58252174?source=patrick.net

« First        Comments 319 - 358 of 1,137       Last »     Search these comments

320   Eric Holder   2022 May 13, 10:48am  

Patrick says








Yes, but at leaset we are not a one-trick pony like that fucking "gas station with ICBMs".
321   Patrick   2022 May 13, 8:20pm  

https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-house-shares-misinformation


Yet while the White House shared bogus info itself on Thursday about vaccines, Twitter has yet to note the inaccurate message to many users.

"When President Biden took office, millions were unemployed and there was no vaccine available. In the last 15 months, the economy has created 8.3M jobs and the unemployment rate stands at 3.6% — the fastest decline in unemployment to start a President's term ever recorded," the White House’s verified Twitter account wrote.

Observers were quick to point out the COVID-19 vaccine was, in fact, available when Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021. The same Twitter account even shared a video of then-president-elect Biden getting his second dose a week before Inauguration Day.


Not that the vaxx is a good thing. It's dangerous and utterly ineffective. But Biden is just flagrantly lying to the public, again.

Remember him looking right into the camera and saying something like "If you get this shot, you won't get sick"?
338   Patrick   2022 May 22, 7:57pm  

https://notthebee.com/article/watch-biden-wear-a-mask-as-he-walks-alone-down-the-steps-of-af1-only-to-take-it-off-to-greet-everyone-face-to-face


Hilarious: Watch Biden wear his mask as he walks alone all the way down the steps of AF1, only to take it off to greet everyone face to face
348   HeadSet   2022 Jun 5, 7:48am  

Biden would just tell the young bro in the above clip to ditch the Camero and get the electric Mustang.
353   Patrick   2022 Jun 7, 3:34pm  

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/your-show-of-shows/


The unravelling of the USA gets its summer steroid booster shot this Thursday when the political twerk-fest known as the January 6th Select Committee commences prime-time televising of its inquiry into the so-called “insurrection” the day that Congress met to tally the 2020 electoral college vote when hundreds of protesters entered the US Capitol illegally, egged on and enabled by a squad of FBI plants larded through the crowd, and by shadowy figures inside the building who unlocked the doors for them.

The objectives of this extravaganza are A) to soften up the remaining “purple” voters before the midterm election, B) to paint former president Donald Trump as an instigator of the uproar and an enemy-of-the-people so he won’t be able to run for office again, and C) to punish former White House employees and Trump partisans with onerous legal fees so as to knock them off the political game board.

The Party of Chaos certainly doesn’t need to reinforce the mass formation psychosis of its base who maintain that the 2020 election was the fairest-and-squarest in US history. The committee members will chant the talismanic phrase “The Big Lie” ad nauseam to ward off reasonable suspicions that they are the ones doing the lying. Since a kind of maniacal stupidity attends all the party’s doings these days, it could easily backfire on them. Even two years later probes are still pending in several swing states, and only a few weeks ago, the documentary 2000 Mules released time-stamped videocam footage of blatant wholesale drop-box ballot-stuffing around the country. ...

The context, of course, as I aver above, is a country that is imploding six ways to Sunday — to paraphrase Chuck Schumer, the Party of Chaos’s Senate leader. At least half the public is already onto the extravagant damage inflicted upon our national life by the beneficiaries of the 2020 election. Thanks to “Joe Biden,” the dollar is hemorrhaging value, we instigated a war in Ukraine that will lead to global famine and mass refugee events, oil and natgas are unaffordable thanks to our destabilizing of global distribution networks, spare parts are unavailable for every imaginable machine in the land, the business model for farming is broken, real estate is groaning under rising mortgage interest rates, the CDC is still pushing Covid vaccines despite proof that they are ineffective and harmful, cities are overwhelmed with criminal violence and psychotic homeless drug fiends, and, as a final indignity — actually, an advertisement to the world of our depraved weakness — the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.
355   Patrick   2022 Jun 8, 10:50am  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-white-house-keeps-stoking-covid-fears-ashish-jha-kids-flu-schooling-11654459689?mod=opinion_lead_pos


The White House Keeps Stoking Covid Fears


Paywalll, but I commend the WSJ for telling the truth about this.
356   Patrick   2022 Jun 8, 11:06am  

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/06/07/billionaire-ceo-warns-economy-will-worsen-blames-biden-admin-for-destroying-america/


“We have a hundred years worth of oil,” he said. “Let them open up the spigots and the price of crude oil will come back down to 55, 60, maybe 65 — half!”

The billionaire supermarket chain owner highlighted the irrationality of the current administration’s policies on the matter.

“Nobody can understand — all the people I talked to — nobody can understand why this obsession with North America,” he said. “[Biden] wants to fly to Saudi Arabia and beg the Saudi Arabians to give us another half a million barrels at $120 a barrel.”

“Does that make any sense at all?” he added. “It makes no sense!”

« First        Comments 319 - 358 of 1,137       Last »     Search these comments

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions