Newsworthy

 We all know who decides what is newsworthy, so this is really no surprise.

Ignominious retreat

The war in Afghanistan was almost never well managed, but the withdrawal became an ignominious retreat and an absolute disgrace of uncoordinated, ill-conceived, morally bankrupt failure.  It's shameful how America abandon Americans in the country as well as Afghani Christians, women and anyone else who believed that the country had a hope for a real future.  Instead, the walked away and handed the Taliban the victory.

This lack of knowledge is highly indicative of the failures of the administration and excuses for the same.

CNN goes after that guy after realizing the Taliban ain't woke

That guy is in the cross hairs of the left.  They can only exist with someone to blame.  But in this case, they aren't wrong.

Dictator Watch - Afghanistan Edition

The Taliban is likely going to eliminate Christians in the country.  Oh, and slavery for women too, so there's that.

Stopped clock got it right on Afghanistan...in 2003

The guy in the video (who shall remain both nameless and without a title on this blog), like a stopped clock, was right.  Unfortunately you have to go back to 2003 for the correct view.

When president Trump announced he wanted to withdrawal all troops from Afghanistan, he made some valid points. In fact, I agree that there needed to be a timetable for withdrawal.  I think announcing the timetable was a rookie mistake however.  But the calamity and chaos was compounded immeasurably when the guy in the video started making the decisions.  The pullout under the cover of darkness, with no handoff of infrastructure and power, along with the announced delay, and his clear lack of a plan on how to do it, was done in the worst possible way. You would be hard pressed to think of anything that could have been done to make it worse.

Sure there were likely to be a lot of problems, even if president Trump was in charge during the pullout.  But you can bet it would not have been this bad.  It would have been manageable problems, not a total collapse and return to the Taliban.  

Beyond that, the guy in the video is lying now. But worse still, he continues to compound the problem, making it look like America's erstwhile allies in the country are on their own, with nary a chance to fight, flee or survive because, well, it is what it is.  The right wording might force the Taliban to at least pause before slaughtering more people.

All of that aside, was an Afghanistan war a good idea for America?  It made sense when they were trying to find Bin Laden. Not a war per se, but an invasion.  That's where they believed he was. The mistake was engaging the Taliban as enemy combatants as a side effort.  If they were in the way, take care of it, but do not put the country on a path towards democracy unless you are willing to stick it out for as long as it takes.  American forces are still stationed in South Korea and Japan and Germany.  It took decades for those situations to resolve into stable democracies that no longer needed American support. And to be fair, the purpose of continued American military presence in those locations has changed over time. But to think the situation would require any less in either Iraq or Afghanistan is foolhardy.

So the rationale for a pullout conflicts with some of the side goals of Afghanistan, but since they were decided as goals at one point, pulling out prematurely was an invitation to disaster. The only way to avoid that would have been that there was a plan made, to transition power to a self supporting Afghani government capable of at least suppressing the Taliban  if not eradicating it.  The plan should have started about 10 years ago.  It wasn't.  President Trump should have included it as part of his withdrawal model.  He didn't, even though he likely had more of a plan than this chaos.  The next guy should have at least had some basic plan for a transition of power and assets.  He failed spectacularly and Afghani people will pay the price for his colossal failure.

America's non-answer to Taliban resurgence

 What's going on in Afghanistan?  Exactly what was predicted, the Taliban has won after an extremely poorly planned and poorly executed American cut and run.  Not a withdrawal, a panic fleeing.

Careful, this might trigger you:

Meanwhile, the administration that botched the withdrawal, is missing in action:

The guy with no plan is killing Afghanis as well as Americans

The guy with no plan (and no title I will recognize), pulled out of Afghanistan with no plan.  President Trump would have pulled out of the country as well, but there would not have been the chaos reported in the video below - there would have been issues, but there would have been a plan.  There' certainly would have been a transition to the Afghan government rather than a pulling out under the dark of night. 

In America, the open border and the "catch and disperse" of illegals, without and COVID testing is leading to American COVID infections and deaths.  In Afghanistan the pullout was so poorly managed that the country is being overrun by the Taliban with no seeming ability to defend itself from the onslaught.

Yeah. Great job. C'mon man!

Taliban kill Afghan comedian

Revenge killing by the Taliban, that's just great.  I get the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan, what I don't get is the wasted time given that Afghanistan is right back to where it was pre 9/11; a brutal, backwards dictatorial mess.  The non-Taliban government there wasted decades not becoming stronger.  The U.S. did not have the stomach to root out the Taliban like it should have.  Wasted is the time and treasure and lost was the opportunity, however faint to get away from this garbage:

Fort Hood Terror Gunman Guilty of Murder (aka workplace violence)

Army Maj. Nidal Hasan has been found guilty of murder in the Fort Hood shoot deaths of 13.

CNN:

A military jury on Friday convicted Army Maj. Nidal Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder in a November 5, 2009, shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, making it possible for the death penalty to be considered as a punishment.

The jurors deliberated fewer than seven hours over two days to hand down a verdict against Hasan, who admitted to targeting soldiers he was set to deploy with to Afghanistan to protect the Taliban and its leaders. The shooting rampage occurred at a deployment processing center.

He admitted doing so to protect the Taliban. It begs the question; does the Obama administration still consider this an incidence of workplace violence?

Obama's record: Taliban victory is a symptom

Fox News is reporting another attack on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Kabul is the location of the latest attack, which seems to be part of a Taliban ramping up of efforts on the heels of the Iraq pullout and ongoing Afghanistan troop draw down.

Afghanistan -- A U.S. official says all 13 NATO service members killed in a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital were American troops.

The Taliban is going to win the PR war.  Democrats constantly banged the drum that Bush failed to win the peace. Aside from being in the right place at the right time to kill Osama Bin Laden, president Obama has not done anything substantive to win the peace.  What's worse, is the fact that leading up to the eventual withdrawal  of U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban is winning the PR war.  They'll eventually be able to claim (erroneously) that they drove the U.S. out.  It will create fear in the Afghan population.  They could bulldoze their way back into power.  They likely will.

It's symptomatic of a very large problem. Cluelessness.

2014 for full Afghanistan withdrawl?

President Obama said tonight he will complete the pullout of Afghanistan by 2014.  Here's Obama in 2007 saying he'll get them out in his first term.   He does have a reason for breaking the promise though - it's not about health care.



Just pointing it out.

Oh by the way, if I'm in the Taliban, this is good to know stuff.

UPDATE:  While I got the numbers wrong, my pre-speech assessment was still correct.