This is important to watch: Colonel Richard Kemp speaks on the Afghanistan debacle
Who is Colonel Richard Kemp? He’s a retired British officer who was had a long military career in combat as well as anti-terrorism operations. From July 2003 to November 2003 he was the head of the British effort in Afghanistan called Operation Fingal, whose mission was “to assist the interim administration with security and stability.”
Kemp pulls no punches. Here he says things that are in alignment with much of what I’ve been thinking about the repercussions of the recent Biden-administration-generated events in Afghanistan. But he speaks with far greater knowledge than I.
In a way, it was a relief to hear someone state the situation so well. But it was also very frightening and depressing, even it if isn’t new information. Here’s one excerpt:
What we’re seeing and what we’ve seen in the last few days is – it’s the greatest foreign policy disaster that I’ve seen in my lifetime of any nature from any Western country, and I would go so far as to say that this is the most disastrous foreign policy since at least the Second World War for the United States of America. It has unbelievable strategic consequences, well beyond Afghanistan itself, and I think, you know, people often compare Vietnam and Saigon in 1975 to the things they’re seeing on the television now. I think it’s worse than that and it’s very different to that.
Please watch the whole thing, or as much as you can (the little woman in orange in the lower left corner of the picture wasn’t on the show as I watched it; just ignore her). Kemp’s segment is 24 minutes long:
Levin had another guest last night, and he also was well worth a listen. It was retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who was Trump’s National Security Chief of Staff (you’ll see from his Wiki page that he is 77 years old and served in Vietnam long ago). During the interview he describes the plan the Trump administration had in place and how profoundly it differed from what Biden and company have done:
As I said, please watch the whole thing.
[NOTE: Regarding Kemp’s suggestion that Biden should be court-martialed: I don’t think that that can legally be done, because he’s a civilian Commander-in-Chief. Kemp may be unaware of the details of that. I’m surprised that Levin didn’t correct him, though, because as a lawyer Levin must know it, but my guess is that he didn’t want to interrupt the vehement point that Kemp was making, which was that he believes that Biden has committed a very grave act of aiding the enemy to the extent that it could be seen as treason. Another issue – if we’re considering the legal definition of treason itself, which includes giving aid and comfort to the enemy – is whether Biden possesses the requisite mental capacity to stand trial. But as I said, he certainly couldn’t be court-martialed for it anyway. And there is no way he will be tried for it in the civilian court system, although I suppose he could be impeached for it.]
putting the country in danger by running for president knowing your brain is already fried is treason.
Dave:
Not legally.
Plus, if your brain is fried, you wouldn’t know that.
It’s actually those who knew it and covered it up who betrayed the country. But again, not legally treason even for them.
Yep, Bidet cannot be court-martialed, but he and his civilian and military top advisors ( all now furiously providing “cover your ass” excuses ) can be placed up against a long wall before a you-know-what type of squad and sent off to meet their maker.
Many hundreds, if not thousands of Afghans who assisted the USA will be executed by the Taliban. And those are the males.
The females will be in bondage for the rest of their lives.
You can thank Bidet and his top civilian and military advisors for this.
As we have seen, Bidet could give a flying F about any of this, and as I have said before, there is no way that this exit “strategy” was concocted by Bidet all by his lonesome; his advisors- military and civilian – had to be instrumental in devising it.
Further, the plans they concocted are being implemented as they planned.
The disaster there is intentional and purposeful – devised to embarrass and humiliate the USA.
The planners of this strategy got that part 1000000% right.
Obama at every opportunity blamed the USA for all the world’s problems, and many of his advisors are now Bidet’s advisors.
We are witnessing the implementation of policies – domestic and foreign- that are a manifestation of the Obama hate-America-first world view.
Orange woman bad.
“Regarding Kemp’s suggestion that Biden should be court-martialed: I don’t think that that can legally be done”
Doubtless true.
But a devastating rhetorical stroke which, sadly, would never occur to our GOP “leaders”.
The NYT has turned on Biden. He’ll be out in 90 days or less.
My hope is that Ron Klain, WH Chief of Staff, fires scores of people in the military, intelligence and at State. But I doubt it. There will be no accountability for this disaster.
Impeachment resolutions have been filed by GOP Members in the House. M.T. Green filed one.
And I think I heard Kevin McCarthy talk about impeaching Biden.
I got it wrong too. It’s odd that it is one of the better known parts of the Constitution, yet the only part I remember well, is the “high crimes and misdemeanors” part. Treason is specifically included.
Article II
Section 4. The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
A stickler for procedure might worry about Biden’s mental competency to stand trial. But hey, he ran for the presidency and won, why worry about that any more than Biden worried about Americans in Afghanistan?
Col. Kemp certainly confirms the worst and his alluding to the massive strategic concerns this atrocity promises to initiate are what Americans will face within the not too distant future.
China is now flying nuclear capable bombers into Taiwanese airspace. Putin has tens of thousands of soldiers near the Ukraine’s border.
Cornhead,
The NYT, CNN, MCNBC, ABC, etc. have not suddenly seen the light about Biden. This is all a coordinated process. Biden is surrounded by people who are quite able to ascertain the degree of and speed of Biden’s decline.
I continue to suspect that Biden was allowed to make this ‘decision’. If so, it seems highly likely that Klain had to be in on it.
Here’s a link that should eliminate the orange woman in the lower left corner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQcpwc5_lE&ab_channel=RedRoseMedia
Also, first word of your post is a typo.
Dave:
Thanks. Will fix.
Tony Blair says, “the U.S. decision to withdraw from the country has “every Jihadist group round the world cheering.” Also,
Ouch, an imbecilic slogan. Should we infer that there is an imbecilic person attached to that slogan?
I’ve read that both the U.K. and French have special forces operating in Kabul and have successfully removed hundreds of their citizens. I also read some days ago that a U.S. military commander at the airport told some of those spec. ops. people to stop making us look bad. Obviously, our military has orders to not venture outside the airport.
“Impeachment resolutions have been filed by GOP Members in the House. M.T. Green filed one.
And I think I heard Kevin McCarthy talk about impeaching Biden.”- Cornhead
While Biden’s malfeasance clearly offers a far greater impetus for impeachment than anything Trump did. Conviction right now is not going to happen. The Democrats would never allow it. Regardless of how bad this gets.
And putting this out there now is frankly stupid. Sadly its pretty clear there is no way out of this mess that has any positive outcome. Either the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate heavily. Or we rapidly ramp up our level of engagement to save face. Neither will seriously mitigate the original problem. Which is almost entirely created by the sheer incompetence of how this was handled.
And also for political reasons it behooves them to wait. I do not want the GOP to stoop to the level of the Democrats. Where every political disagreement ends in impeachment trials. And while there is likely a good 40% of the public will never change their mind on Biden. I would like to see as much of the public favoring his impeachment as possible. Before proposing that normally drastic step. To put as much pressure as possible on the Democrats to save their own bacon
Given the emerging domestic and geopolitical conditions, I don’t think there’s anything the democrats can do to keep their bacon out of the fire.
Can there be any worse “optics” than American citizens held hostage with torture, gang rape and beheadings televised?
How competent does anyone here imagine the illegitimate Xiden/Harris administration is going to be in the face of China attacking Taiwan? Much less defending the Ukraine from Putin? Keeping increasing inflation under control? Making enemies out of liberal parents whose children are being taught that they’re inherently evil… simply because of a lesser degree of melanin?
Forcing highly questionable vaccinations upon the unwilling, when the CDC just admitted that there is an increased risk of serious side effects? FDA ‘approval’ of a vaccine with a number of tests projected to be completed in 2025? FDA misinformation declaring Ivermectin to be unapproved for humans, when it has been both approved for treatment of “river blindness” in Africa since the late 70s and proven highly effective at treating Covid-19 in many countries around the world.
It’s not just politicians, media and pharma execs who deserve to be executed for participation in mass murder. CDC, WHO and now FDA execs belong in that rogues gallery as well.
Impeaching and removing Biden would still leave his éminence grise in place. That’s who we need to remove.
“President Joe Biden’s aides were “too scared” to question him on key decisions made in the run-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, sources close to the administration have told The Telegraph.” h/t Ace.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/joe-bidens-aides-too-afraid-to-tell-him-he-was-wrong-on-afghanistan-say-white-house-insiders/ar-AANzWlc?ocid=uxbndlbing
Mythx makes some good points, if only because some Democrats will spin it that way. If Dems and the Biden admin. don’t move aggressively to save their bacon then we’ll have thousands of U.S. hostages and deaths and it will be apparent that treasonous actions were involved. (Or am I just dreaming?)
In my opinion, the structure and rules of all this is being set by the State Dept. and by the Taliban because of the deals that State cut with them. (The White House must acquiesce too.) State wanted a quick and clean governmental transition from the Ghani admin. to a Taliban admin. State probably thought that if they gave the Taliban control then it would be in the Taliban’s interest to agree to and execute some mild conditions. Agree to yes, execute no. Oops, too late.
I thought that much of this mess had the stink of the Iran nuclear deal, only much much worse in the short term. Unrelated to that, I thought I’d look up Antony Blinken’s background. It seems he was one of the chief architects of the Iran nuclear deal.
_____
I believe most citizens don’t understand that U.S. citizens are not been evacuated from Afghanistan in great numbers. After all, Biden said that thousands of people are being flown out per day. They don’t know that only a tiny fraction of those people are Americans.
But Americans do care about recuing Americans.
Psaki today denies that the Biden admin. is stranding Americans in Afghanistan.
isn’t the act of refusing to provide results of cognitive exam proof of dementia under democrat logic during the trump era?
Retired General Don Dolbuc (ten tours in Afghanistan) says that another 6000 combat troops and some SpecOps forces need to go in and secure the airfields around the country. Then sortie out to pick people up, bring them to the airfields, and evacuate them. It sound s crazy, but he knows the country like few do. Once all the citizens and Afghanis are out, then the combat troops could evacuate. A worse disaster? Possible, but he talks like he knows what needs to be done.
I watched his interview on Fox News. Only person I’ve seen who believes in a military solution.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/don-bolduc-afghanistan-exit-geopolitical-disaster
Politically strategic ambiguity. Of course this only works as long as relatives of those abandoned don’t get media traction.
“As long as the Biden administration refuses to put a number on the Americans that need to be rescued; and considering the Taliban have affirmed a deadline date of August 31st with those Biden officials; it becomes possible for the Biden administration to pick an arbitrary number of rescued Americans at the deadline date and then say “mission accomplished.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/23/taliban-warns-u-s-not-to-extend-august-31st-withdrawal-deadline-or-there-will-be-consequences-pentagon-says-no-idea-how-many-americans-need-help/#more-215783
Related:
https://gab.com/josefbosch/posts/106808803587469190
“They killed Samuel and Vicki Weaver for one sawn off shotgun… but they just left 600,000 assault rifles behind in Afghanistan.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
Love your Country; it’s only human. But you do not owe any allegiance to that other monstrous metastasizing perversion of a ‘Government’.
At some level, some of these clowns know exactly what they’ve done and what they’ve done to the future.
I say again, stupidity can be pretty thorough, but by accident may do something not so stupid. Ninety percent of decisions to reach a counterproductive goal is a pretty good number. You can hardly get there by random stupidity, or by what might be called “aversive” stupidity in which a certain category of issues is automatically dismissed. But being wrong 100% of the time is a hell of an accomplishment. Takes a lot of work. Probability theory precludes randomnity in such a case.
Videos above have been expunged.
A full one is found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQcpwc5_lE
Sorry, Gerard. That link has been blocked, as well. Youtube claims that “This video is private.”
Of course, if the poster complains to urscrewed, they will “investigate” for weeks, and then explain that it was a mistake, and reinstate the vid, long after 99% of the people who would have watched it have moved on. Mission accomplished.
Why no one also publishes on Rumble -and provide both links – is mystery to me. Probably the same reason they continue to use Discus, despite the fact that they deplatform non-left posters with the same sort of flimsy excuses the rest of left-coast social media monopolists issue.