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Afghan chaos undercuts Biden's promise of competence


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2021 Aug 18, 2:48pm   163,921 views  1,308 comments

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....
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

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1081   richwicks   2024 Feb 3, 9:07pm  

HeadSet says


Patrick says


Another ominous sign for Democrats is that voters across all income levels felt that Mr. Biden's policies had hurt them personally

Oh yeah? My state of Virginia just gave the Dems both state houses, seemingly based on abortion rights (Repubs wanted a 15 week ban). When it comes to woman voters, economic issues take a distance second to what woman reflexively see as an attack on their rights.



Yep, they were voted in, just like Biden got the largest percentage of the vote in all of US history, and also just like 25 million NEW voters voted in 2020 than 2016.

Just vote harder. If you pretend that we have a voting system, we do! Isn't that magical? It's like when I close my eyes, the entire world stops existing.
1086   Patrick   2024 Feb 9, 1:08pm  

https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/eventful-events


Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report issued Thursday said it rather plainly:

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013, when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice president?”). He did not remember even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”

The disclosure raises not a few uncomfortable questions. If Mr. Biden’s declining mental condition was apparent to federal attorneys interviewing him — admittedly not top psychologists — then wouldn’t the same picture present itself to the scores of assistants and subalterns busy toiling with the president around the clock for three years in the White House? Not to mention the myriad other government officials, agency heads, corporate nabobs, and news media notables streaming through the Oval Office every hour of the day? And yet, every last one of them has gone along with the pretense that Mr. Biden is doing just fine and is capable of running for reelection. Weird, a little bit.

If there has been any discussion about Mr. Biden being in possession of the so-called “nuclear football,” the briefcase full of launch codes for our arsenal of missiles and bombers, it has gone unnoticed in the press. I suppose a conspiracy to suppress that chatter would be labeled a “conspiracy theory,” which also suggests that Mr. Biden’s mental deficiencies have somehow infected the entire body politic of the USA. That is, much of the whole US population is mentally unwell, living in a national hall of mirrors. How did that happen? Is it possible that there are branches of our government dedicated to driving the population crazy. . . a kind of ordeal-by-gaslight? ...

A not inconsiderable part of our Ukraine problem has been that our chief executive was for years engaged in bribery and money-laundering misadventures there, for which there is abundant and powerful evidence, meaning he may have had very personal interests in keeping that country disordered — and sending billions of dollars there, some of it surely embezzled among the Zelensky government. You’d have to also be aware that the bag-man in those operations, the President’s son, Hunter, might well have misbehaved with drugs and prostitutes on his many trips to Ukraine as a board member of Burisma. Hunter’s self-compiled archive of round-the-world drug-fueled porn recordings on the laptop that (the FBI confirmed recently) was unquestionably his own, suggests that the Ukraine authorities may have their own recordings of him behaving similarly, or worse, and are using them to blackmail “President Joe Biden.”
1089   Ceffer   2024 Feb 11, 9:42pm  

Biden Actor doesn't have the football, anyway. Not CIC, and Trump never gave up the football.Patrick says

https://babylonbee.com/cleanArticle/white-house-locks-nukes-with-new-security-question-which-of-these-images-shows-mexico



1090   Patrick   2024 Feb 12, 9:33am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/implausible-deniability-monday-february


Here’s a serious question. Would you let your grandmother drive in this condition? Of course not. You’d take away her driver’s license for her own protection. Sorry Nana. It’s better this way. Should someone who can’t safely drive his convertible Camaro down the street to Martha’s Vineyard Frozen Custard have access to the nuclear football?

Democrats will bark that these days you don’t elect a man, you elect a team. But if we are really electing Biden’s team, and not just him, then let us meet the team. The team should be running for President along with — or instead of — Joe Biden.

I’m sure they are terrific folks and would make the campaign proud. Aren’t you? Let’s get them out there. Somebody ask the media to do it … oh never mind. I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.
1094   HeadSet   2024 Feb 13, 2:42pm  

Patrick says





Do not fall into this trap. It is not about age, it is about senility.
1104   Patrick   2024 Feb 19, 2:05pm  

https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/brandon-rotting-in-the-white-house


“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” the report states.

Gearing up? I’m sure. If gearing up means calling a lid on your life an hour after breakfast. And what do you suppose they mean by “a more traditional form of leadership.” Arranging serial overseas military humiliations? Selling favors to all comers from foreign lands? Inviting transsexuals to cavort on the White House lawn? Abolishing control of US borders? Running a $2-trillion annual deficit? Mandating unsafe and ineffective so-called “vaccine” shots on millions? Cancelling the First Amendment? Stealing elections? Conspiring to jail his political adversaries?
1112   Patrick   2024 Feb 27, 9:39am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/greedflation-tuesday-february-27


On Friday, Politico reported that Team Biden is strongly considering making snack-food shrinkflation — “fewer chips in the bag,” as Joe said — the magnificent centerpiece of Joe Biden’s belated State of The Union speech on March 7th. I realize that idea sounds more like an SNL sketch than a real plan. It’s literally unbelievable that the leader of the free world would target smaller processed food packages as America’s primary problem.

On the other hand, maybe they haven’t told Joe yet about the border, Ukraine, the Middle East, or Taiwan? I could understand not telling him; it’s a lot for someone in Joe’s condition to handle.

Politico’s article seemed like a trial balloon designed to test-market the shrinkflation concept and debut two new Biden Administration catch phrases, a new, made-up buzzword, “greed-flation” (I am not making that up) and the old standby, “price gouging.”

Greedflation combines two bad things: greed and inflation. It’s a twofer! It is tempting to believe Joe came up with that himself, or maybe during a chat with John Fetterman, because if that’s the caliber of thinking of the people managing Joe, then we are in serious trouble.

Now imagine what Saturday Night Live could do with this kind of material — if they were allowed. Sadly, you just can’t get that kind of entertainment in the United States anymore; we’ll have to wait for the next Republican president. But fortunately, you don’t have to wait, an Italian comedy show released its new skit mocking Joe Biden yesterday. It might even be better than SNL.




https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1762369822149488711

And if you are still hungry, like there were too few cheese-its in the can, here is another recent Biden skit by the same outfit, which is even more brutal than the first one (2:28).

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1761552726570188957

Enjoy! I’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine when suffering from greedflation. It seemed appropriate that the humor should come at Biden’s expense.
1113   HeadSet   2024 Feb 27, 10:48am  

I notice the Biden skit above has the actor with a blatant latex mask for the top of the head. I wonder if that is a prop artifact or an intentional part of the skit.
1116   HeadSet   2024 Mar 4, 6:46am  

Dems Begin To Panic As Biden Not Dead Yet

A temporary condition.
1117   Patrick   2024 Mar 4, 1:22pm  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-abolition-of-woke-monday-march


Looking and sounding just like the Energizer Bunny running down on those unreliable generic batteries, Mumbly Joe laboriously and monotonously updated reporters this weekend about his cunning plan to airdrop humanitarian supplies into Gaza, except — painfully — he told them he ordered air drops into Ukraine — twice! — even though he was reading from pre-prepared notes in his lap.




As much as Joe wants to dump pallets of cash out of helicopters in Eastern Europe, airdrops in Ukraine would be an especially bad idea right now, since the Russians have near-total control of its skies. Not only that, but the Ukrainians have demonstrated a keen ability to more nimbly shoot down their own aircraft even more accurately than Russian planes.

I wouldn’t suggest it. Joe should stick with dropping things on Gaza.

He has to make it eight more months. But it looks like the courageous final five functioning neurons in Joe Biden’s brain, worn and thin and desperately clinging to life, may be finally giving up the ghost, packing it in, and closing up shop. You can’t blame them. I really, really hope they’ve taken the nuclear football away from Joe. At this rate, instead of nuking Moscow, Russia, he’d probably accidentally nuke Moscow, Pennsylvania.
1119   Misc   2024 Mar 5, 1:08pm  

HeadSet says

Dems Begin To Panic As Biden Not Dead Yet

A temporary condition.


What ???? He got better ???
1120   Misc   2024 Mar 5, 1:09pm  

I'm gonna watch that Shit Show they call the State of the Union Address on Thursday.

I think it is showing on some comedy channel.

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