The last American military forces have left Afghanistan
Biden has met his sacred withdrawal deadline:
The U.S. military has confirmed that all U.S. forces have left Afghanistan. It is now August 31st in Kabul, which had long been the scheduled date of the final American withdrawal from the country after nearly two decades of a U.S. military presence there in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks…
There are also photos and videos indicating that the Taliban have moved in and are now in complete control of the airport. Previous pictures and video had already indicated that the American military presence there was already rapidly shrinking.
I think Biden and the Democrats believe this will now fade from the consciousness of the American public, and they can move on to their destructive domestic agenda. I hope they live in infamy instead, and the American people reject them so soundly it will be definitive. But that remains to be seen.
It is an absolute mortal lock that this story will almost totally disappear from the MSM in a day or two.
When they can’t spin a story then they just stop covering it.
Think US/Mexico border.
Reports say, that- maybe 250 or more US people want to leave Afghanistan.
The White House has said that, [now the military is gone from Afghanistan, the diplomats will take up the work, to get these people out of that country].
And if the Taliban people say,
[ NO! Well will not let YOUR PEOPLE leave! ],
…what will you do then?
Will you BRIBE them with money or other goods?
Will you BEG them to let these Americans go?
Biden White House, you now have no power to make the Taliban do anything.
How can you help these people, now?
I think the worst is yet to come.
I think remaining US citizens will be ransomed, and Afghanis who aided America will be publicly punished in gruesome fashion.
The worst is yet to come.
not_a_lawyer
Who exactly are these last Americans left in Afghanistan?
Are they dual US/Afghan citizens?
Are they aid workers?
Are they private contractors?
I assume they aren’t Bill and Betsy from Peoria who decided to retire in Kabul but I’ve had a hard time understanding who these people are and why they were there in the first place.
“I think Biden and the Democrats believe this will now fade from the consciousness of the American public”
And there is a very good chance that it will.
TR:
Biden and company don’t care. And perhaps the Taliban will decide to let them go – after all, the Taliban have everything they want, including unlimited access to many of the Afghans who helped us. The Taliban may decide to concentrate on torturing and killing them, and let the Americans go because it would be bad PR to hurt them and not really worth it.
That’s actually what I think most likely to happen. And Biden et al are counting on the American public not caring what happens to the Afghans who helped us, and not understanding the repercussions for the future. They think Americans will be only too happy to forget, as they did with South Vietnam.
I fear they are correct. Of course, the administration has other problems.
I detest all of this deeply. I don’t have words for how greatly I despise the current administration and everyone who has covered for them in the past and will cover for them in the future.
Lots of stuff on the internet. I don’t have a link but saw this posted
“Just when you thought you couldn’t hate them more…
DOD ordered all military dogs to be left behind”
Griffin,
I wondered the same thing. This article gives a clue. It isn’t Bill and Betsy from Peoria who decided to retire in Kabul, but it’s not so different from that.
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/some-el-cajon-students-stranded-afghanistan-safely-back-home-and-back-at-school-district/2705681/
“I think Biden and the Democrats believe this will now fade from the consciousness of the American public, and they can move on to their destructive domestic agenda.” neo
That is what they’re hoping. I don’t think the Taliban/ISIS/al Queda triumverate are going to let Biden and the Democrat’s surrender fade from the consciousness of the American public. And their coming actions are why the MSM is not going to be allowed to ignore it. Liberals in the big cities now have more than just the Delta varient to fear. Most just don’t know it yet.
TR,
Upon what basis would you imagine that Biden and the Democrat’s want to help the American citizens they’ve stranded in Afghanistan? They want the ‘problem’ to go away, not work on it.
not_a_lawyer,
“I think remaining US citizens will be ransomed”
Oh yes, the worst is yet to come and some American citizens will be ransomed but only after a few are publicly beheaded… to encourage compliance with their demands.
Griffin,
Have you heard anything about the San Diego school kids in Afghanistan? I haven’t.
neo,
I hope you’re right but I’m afraid you place far too much emphasis on the Taliban caring about PR and the optics of the matter. They’re religious fanatics and Allah has firmly instructed them as to how the issue must be handled.
Michael Yon, with video.
https://michaelyon.locals.com/post/1012388/taliban-hanging-victim-from-american-black-hawk
@Geoffrey:
From the article I skimmed a few days ago about the San Diego school kids got a definite whiff of ‘Afghans with Green Cards’ about the whole thing.
I don’t see the point in whipping oneself up into a righteous frenzy about the whole business of who or what got left behind. It’s a done deal. Over, Red Rover. I don’t even think there’s all that much rhetorical value in hammering the debacle or the injustices — mainly because focus needs to turn inward and domestic and too much blather about national honour and all those shiny words just distracts from what really needs to be looked at and rectified.
Afghans gonna Afghan. But they’re not the ones need their noses rubbed in the shit to teach them an unforgettable lesson. Afghans are wiser than Americans in 2021. Wasn’t always so, doesn’t always need to be. But there’s only one way to learn and it always has to involve blood, tears, atrocities. It’s the Human Way.
The American People should be whipped into a fury by the insults to *them* perpetrated upon them by their own Ruling Class and minions. That’s where any hope for the immediate future lies.
@Zaphod:
I’m not about whipping Afghans into a fury. I’m about about whipping Americans into a cold fury over the actions of our self-anointed, fraudulently in power, “elite.”
We can be furious over [in]actions that led to what was in the video, realizing that the people that let that become the norm in Afghanistan would be just as happy to have it happen here to us, happier I’d bet.
Zaphod,
Re: “I don’t see the point in whipping oneself up into a righteous frenzy about the whole business of who or what got left behind.”
The monetary loss is significant but the lesser matter. Those weapons will be used to kill innocent people. They will be used to shatter people’s lives.
As for who got left behind…
“For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” – Matthew 16:27
As for it being “a done deal”…
“At this point, what does it matter” ?
@Geoffrey Britain:
just quoting:
“Upon what basis would you imagine that Biden and the Democrat’s want to help the American citizens they’ve stranded in Afghanistan?”
I don’t mean to be riposting-in-attitude, or ironic, but- under what basis do I imagine that they would help?
None.
But, like when I was 10 years old, and I hoped that Santa would bring me an Indian Motorcycle-brand motorcycle, I guess it’s in human nature for some of us, to hope for things that have little chance of happening.
@geoffb:
Granted. But the focus needs to be on US Elites and what they are capable of doing domestically through incompetence or (potentially much worse) design.
It’s too easy to distract ‘Conservatives’ with Over There talk and Honor and bugles and Fallen Eagles and all that stuff. These things are real enough and do have a season and place. Wrong time now and wrong place.
@TR:
Putting aside my flamethrower for a minute, what do you think of the new Indian motorcycles?
We had to make some difficult decisions during WWII about various Islands, Wake comes to mind. We were on the way to relieve them or enforce them and some of the high brass in the Pacific decided to let the island go to the enemy because of the risk factor. That was the debacle 80 years ago and here we go again.
This time it was what appears to be a decision go give up before we really started and as for the risk factor I think a well planned coordinated decrease of all individuals at risk would have worked. When I was in Europe in 1968 doing intelligence work and Russia during the month of August took over the Czechs one evening my wife was given notice to evacuate within 24 hours, allowed one packed bad and leave everything behind while we were set with a few hours notice to start destroying all of the info and materials in our building. Lots of 55 gallon burn barrels and gasoline outside of our building to destroy everything. We had Russian Tanks pulled up to the W. German borders 40 miles away and thought things might get serious.
Women and children first and leave no one behind seems to be and old fashioned idea.
@OldTexan:
Currently reading a book by Tameichi Hara who was the only Japanese destroyer captain serving at the beginning of WWII to survive through the surrender. Had his final command (cruiser) sunk under him on the Yamato’s last mission. Incredible story.
Why relevant?
He was heavily involved in the first naval sorties to the Philippines. Talk about fog of war and confusion and near run things and all kinds of mistakes and failures on both sides! Of course as the war dragged on and unnatural selection kicked in, everybody got a lot more competent. What happened at Wake afterward was Not Very Nice… but the decision to abandon it was excusable in the general panic/kerfuffle.
What just happened in Afghanistan is inexcusable… even allowing for peacetime officering and generalship.
When reading your reminiscences above, or those of others who served in Germany though the 80s, or Russians for that matter, one feels as if it’s voices from another people, not just another time. What happened to us? And by us I mean the West… and I am being a bit rhetorical given some of my other rants.
You can watch the show here:
Kabul Airport Live Cam
https://youtu.be/ijhBR_glUsU
Camera helpfully tracks takeoffs in case someone tries for a shoot down.
Looks like two C-17s on the ground right now. Both with running lights active. One of these just landed. A third just departed.
Zaphod,
“The USA lost its collective soul (if nations can be thought to have souls) long ago.”
Of those who voted in the 2020 election more than half voted for Trump. An indication that the majority of American voters have not lost their soul i.e. moral compass.
As you well know, we weren’t talking about my personal immortal soul but of yours. Nice try at deflection but no cigar.
I do agree that, among others, the Joint Chiefs bear their share of responsibility for this debacle and at the least, deserve courts martials for dereliction of duty. Along with dishonerable discharges and full loss of benefits.
@GB:
We could both profitably agree to stick to the maintenance of our respective immortal souls.
I’m not particularly interested in the American Voter and his Collective Soul vs. some Horus’s Feather or whatever. The American Voter has little to zero say in the running of anything and can have as many plenary indulgences as the Vatican Bank can print. And more. In fact, I’d give him triple time off purgatory per bundle of faggots (see below). I ought to run for Pope come to think of it, even it it cramps my blog-commenting style. I’d make a good John XXII bis.
I speak of USGov, its institutions, and its minions… another thing entirely. Sooner it is subjected to an auto da fe, the better.
TR,
It is part of human nature to hope for things that have little chance of happening. But hope is a prayer not a strategy.
I don’t know if he’s realized it yet but Marine Lt. Col Stuart Scheller who just resigned in protest at the lack of accountability in the highest echelons of our military has embarked upon a strategy. I hope he runs for Congress. He’s using his position, actions and sacrifice to bring further attention to an intolerable situation.
We need men like him in Congress, men like him in our government.
So too are the “Almost 90 Retired Flag Officers Demand Mark Milley, Lloyd Austin Resign After Afghanistan Debacle”
https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/30/almost-90-retired-flag-officers-demand-mark-milley-lloyd-austin-resign-after-afghanistan-debacle/
As long as we are doing something, we can hold our heads up. Though nothing is more important than speaking out.
That particular topic has been a somewhat marginal interest of mine since I was a child watching war movies on TV.
In recent years, trying to drill down into the details of the multi-pronged but failed Wake relief operation, I discovered that the Saratoga, which was tasked with delivering the aircraft complement of “Marine Fighting Squadron 221 (VMF-221)” had taken on Brewster Buffalo F2A’s, instead of the Grumman F4F models such as were earlier delivered to Wake, and used there successfully – those that had not been destroyed by bombing – in its initial defense.
Although the F2A’s were probably capable of attacking bombers and troop ships, from what I have read, American pilots claimed they were hopeless, (certainly as configured by the US) against Zero’s: which, on my reading, appear to have been with the Japanese second-try invasion fleet.
My inexpert guess is that if delivered they would have all been shot out of the sky trying to replicate the defensive feats earlier performed by their Grumman equipped Marine brethren.
That said, for all I know, the Saratoga’s own planes might have wrought havoc on the second invasion fleet. I would not dare to venture a serious opinion on the matter.
Anyway, the Brewster, for those interested in technology, is one of those interesting technological “What Ifs”, somewhat in the way the P39 was. Until recently, I had no idea that the American version when loaded and armed weighed so much more than the plane used successfully by the Finns against the Russians, albeit against generally inferior makes.
Anyway, as you no doubt know, Marine pilot reports from Midway concerning their attempted deployment of Brewsters there against the Zero – the same Buffalos which the Saratoga abortively attempted to deliver – seem to have been the nail in the coffin of the Buffalo; which, unlike the Wildcat, seemingly could not compete as configured, on any terms or under any circumstances.
Zaphod,
I’m not arguing about what should be done about the cancer infesting America. I was expressing concern about the soul of a man who essentially states about human beings caught in a horrific, life threatening situation… “I don’t see the point in whipping oneself up into a righteous frenzy about the whole business of who or what got left behind. It’s a done deal.”
Yes, the state of our souls is our concern not others. Which does not absolve others of the responsibiity to point out serious error.
I realize you’re not an American. My concern is that apparently you fail to appreciate the larger connotations implied when the US Government basically says to its citizens, “you’re on your own baby!” Put more bluntly, if America goes down… so do you and the rest of humanity too.
Unless of course you’re willing to sell your soul for your 30 pieces of silver. I.E. collaborate with tyranny. Then you’ll have got yours alright. But then, you’ll have lost the only thing that in the end matters.
“Man does not live by bread alone” my friend.
That’s an appeal to “enlightened self-interest” not impracticable idealism. Take from it what you will.
That is a particularly harsh way to refer to the College of Cardinals or the members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Certainly you overstate the case by at least 30%
Neo: “I detest all of this deeply. I don’t have words for how greatly I despise the current administration and everyone who has covered for them in the past and will cover for them in the future.”
Those are my thoughts exactly – “detest” – even that word isn’t strong enough for how I feel about what has happened and those who covered for those who have given the lives of thousands over to their killers.
Also, going forward I will refer to Joe Biden as “Taliban rapist enabler” for what Biden and his abettors have done is turn over the lives of ALL Afghani women to the Taliban rapists.
The nightmare that is now descending upon Afghanistan is just so horrible that there are no words to describe it.
What has happened and what is about to happen leave me with a painful pit in the bottom of my stomach.
@DNW:
Doubtless my past dalliances with personality-disordered Korean harpies might be an impediment to getting my grubby heretical mitts on the Keys of St. Peter. But it’s never too late to change teams!
Back to more serious matters, have you ever read Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers? It begins thusly:
“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”
We know immediately that we’re in the presence of a work of literature which has something for everyone.
Compare and contrast with the winner of the 2021 Bulwer-Lytton Prize:
“A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare.”
—Stu Duval, Auckland, New Zealand
Standards are slipping.
DNW. Cute.
I thought a bundle of sticks was A faggot. Huh.
Reports are the service dogs were left behind. Like to see the logistical difficulty with having, say, a dozen eighty pound dogs on each outgoing flight. Or perhaps three, depending on how many there were. They don’t take up a lot of room, spread out.
Either there was some absolute weight limit already stretched, or it was deliberate evil. Can we get fecal icing on this pile of dead bodies, just for grins?
Considering the massive resources available, pretty much anything that made sense morally as well as in other spheres could have been done. The choice was not to do it.
As has been said, we don’t deserve dogs. Maybe the sooner the dogs figure this out, the better.
“A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare.”
Zaphod:
Please to stop torturing me!
That’s what I call the Annie Proulx-ing of literature. Actually worse than her.
Of course, Bulwer-Lytton is a parody prize.
That said, I could never get anywhere with Burgess, “Clockwork Orange” aside of course.
Yes, and I had forgotten all about it until just now.
That was years ago when I was devouring Greene and Waugh paperback reprints.
I actually liked, The Loved One.
Though, Golding’s “Darkness Visible” is by my reckoning the best – or most startling – on my little library shelf of 20th century moral fiction and black comedy by English authors.
Leaving the service dogs behind when they could probably have been squeezed in to departing evacuation planes was a particularly nauseating action, especially since the Taliban can almost certainly be guaranteed to kill them.
Another indication of the kind of Administration people running the show at Kabul airport.
@GB
Thank you. Those are great ideas. 🙂
@DNW:
We seem to have shared similar literary tastes back in the day. Have not read that Golding though. My favorite Greene is The Power and the Glory. As with Peter Hitchens, one one wonders just how more more depressing and miserable Greene’s outlook could have been had he not been a convert.
The Loved One left me in either the Putrefaction or Cremation camp… still undecided… but will forego embalming. Must remember to read the Jessica Mitford American Way of Death sometime.
@Huxley:
Burgess did confess late in life that he’d wasted too many years trying to make sense of Finnegan’s Wake (and I guess being experimental himself).
Earthly Powers is surprisingly good and has no super crazy Pynchon nonsense. It’s a very dodgy man’s picaresque travels through C20 and ending up pope in a melted chocolate hot tub with aforementioned catamite. Unless my memory is playing tricks. I will put my money where my mouth is and re-read the thing.
@Zaphod
You’re a motorcycles fan? Cool!
I haven’t ridden the 2021 models of the Indian Motorcycles [tm] yet, but I like the outward-looks of these models:
The Scout, The Chief, + The Super Chief Limited.
jpcycles [dot] com seems to like the 2021 I.M. models. Here’s a an article on the jp site that talks about these models. Please give it a look.
Cheers, TR
https://www.jpcycles.com/countersteer/reviews/2021-indian-motorcycles-first-look
The robust priest friend of the catamite keeper, saves somebody, who turns out to be an anti-Christ or something.
And as a complication the protagonist has an episode with his pathologically and prodigiously fulminating member which goes off as he sleeps, and leaves his sheets in a mess every morning. Unless, that was one of the others’ works.
I won’t cheat. I’ll actually pull the book out.
Zaphod:
My mother loved the Enderby novels. Something caught with her. She was a bright reader, but not super literary.
Burgess had plenty of horsepower under the hood. I did look at his Joyce books too. Maybe that was his problem. “Clockwork Orange” was kind of a throwaway for him and he rather resented it as his defining moment.
I’ll take a look at “Earthly Powers.”
@TR:
Thanks for the link! There’s a small H-D scene here but have never seen an Indian except for vintage display models in (fashion) stores.
Hopeless Romantic that I am, I like the look of the stock Springfield. All I have to do to get one is swim an ocean, fight on the winning side in a civil war, and duck wherever LeClerc and Avi have strung piano wire across the roads :). One can dream!
@DNW:
IIRC the book also maligns Tamils. Got something for everyone! I’m sold. Another $10.96 to the Bezos retirement fund.
charles:
Yes. Words feel inadequate to describe.
neo:
Perhaps not for me to comment, but I’ve never read you so … desperate.
I get it. I get by half in denial.
If they manage to pass the 3.5T monstrosity, that in addition may truly be the end of what we think of as The Republic.
Neo, Charles,
Yes, I so agree.
Horrifying, what our government’s utter cowardess, narcissism, malice and incompetence has done, & set in motion to play out.
Sleep is hard, as is the waking — for many days now.
Geoffrey Britain:
I don’t think anything in the Koran tells them to murder the Americans – relatively few – who are there. They can afford to let them go relatively unharmed in order to pretend to the world that they are good guys, and get more concessions from the world. And then they will wreak their vengeance on the far larger group of Afghans whom they consider apostates and collaborators – many hundreds of thousands of them. That message will be for the Muslim world rather than the West, whom they think will pretty much ignore what they are doing to Afghans. The message to Afghans and other Muslims is: cooperate with the enemy and we will torture and murder you and your family when the west deserts you and lets us take over. Because the west will inevitably desert you.
It’s done not just to punish but as a deterrent to discourage any such cooperation next time, if there ever is a next time.
I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong in these predictions, but it’s not naivete that makes me say what I’m saying. I think it’s a cold-blooded calculation that they might make.
huxley:
You are correct. That’s how I feel.
I have felt pretty bad ever since I realized Biden had won and the Democrats control both houses. I know they will stop at nothing. But now it’s worse.
My only comfort is that I tend to be a pessimist and I hope I’m being too pessimistic here. But I have a tremendously ominous feeling about what’s going on in the world, more than I’ve ever had before.
Then again, when I was a child being raised in the home fallout shelter era, I feared the world would end before I got to grow up. That turned out to be wrong, fortunately.
The Afghanistan mess will not be forgotten soon. There is more in store, but I agree the media will stop reporting. Biden has been tainted by his inaction, which will not go away.
Like COVID has hidden other deaths, Afghanistan has hidden other catastrophic laws our leaders are trying to push through. Americans need to wake up. I do not mean the group that reads your terrific blog. Our friends and families, for starters, need to wake up. America cannot continue to focus on gender, CRT, vaccines, and woke indoctrination. We have to stop hating America and the other side. America has faults, like all countries. Our current leadership are the worst people to govern this Country. I think that can change. If you look at USA history we have been in horrible straits before. We have been divided and broke before. Somehow we move forward.
“….and the American people reject them so soundly it will be definitive.”
I suspect that to be truly effective, that “definitive” rejection may have to occur somewhat more kinetically than merely professing disdain or even firmly balloting.
And so say many of us. But we don’t fancy being droned by the flying knives missile 😀
Guaranteed no collateral damage or your money back! *
* Terms and Conditions Apply.
For those interested, here is a link.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2021/08/30/unbelievable-us-military-left-service-dogs-behind-in-afghanistan-n2595038
Maybe they could have squeezed the dogs into those planes that flew away with plenty of room.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/20/nearly-empty-us-flights-leave-kabul-biden-abandons-americans-afghanistan/
At least Milley and Austin can concentrate on important security matters.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/08/30/michael-moore-after-afghanistan-evacuation-time-to-defend-america-against-our-own-domestic-taliban/
I see some Democrats are ready to Move On.
But believing that the Baptists are going to hang anyone from a Blackhawk chopper is kind of a stretch.
Here are a few posts that bring up points new and old.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/08/31/cui-bono-who-benefits-from-the-afghanistan-withdrawal-n2595041
David Burge aka Iowahawk indulges in his trademark gallows humor in a series of Tweets; sadly, I don’t see them on the Thread Unroller yet, but they are worth a click.
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1432322804091920385
This story was linked in one of his tweets.
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-war-in-afghanistan-is-what-happens
Of course, the task of the President and Congress after those reforms were successfully implemented has been to strip them all away again. Maybe Stuart Scheller and the rest of the real Marines can get on fixing that.
** Sounds kind of like the folly of having nearly all of your pharma supply chain located in a hostile country when a pandemic comes along — which said country probably started.
I guess that when you leave likely hundreds of Americans and their families behind, and at the “mercy “ of the Taliban, well, then, leaving all those helpless working dogs behind to be slaughtered is just nothing.
P.S.—Saw the Marine General in charge of the evacuation say last night that, while his people were ready to put any Americans who made it through the perimeter and into the airport on one of the last half dozen flights out, no Americans made it through that perimeter and into the airport in the final 12 hours of the evacuation.
Who was in charge of the perimeter, pray tell? Apparently the Taliban.
This morning there was also a report that people attempting to fly into Kabul airport on a private rescue mission to evac some Americans were warned that they would be fired on if they attempted to land, so they turned back.
Lee Smith talking with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders” program (youtube, 2 parts): https://youtu.be/n01AZHa9Gh8
https://youtu.be/r0_36hjjhVk
Perhaps even the decision by American military command to leave the dogs is worse than we can envision. Could they have abandoned the service dogs so as not to offend the Afghan Muslims being flown out?
Neo said: Then again, when I was a child being raised in the home fallout shelter era, I feared the world would end before I got to grow up. That turned out to be wrong, fortunately.
Me too, but I feared the world would end before I ever got to kiss a girl. That turned out to be wrong, fortunately.
“They think Americans will be only too happy to forget, as they did with South Vietnam.”
The veterans who served in Afghanistan the last 20 years aren’t going to forget. Neither are the neocons or the other “Great Game” players who don’t really care about the incompetence of the withdrawal but see ANY pullout from Afghanistan as a blow to their dreams of imperial majesty.
One thing I’m beginning to realize is that our problem isn’t only that Joe Biden is a mediocrity who is now in cognitive decline. Our problem is also that Joe Biden is, at least in some significant respects, a bad person. And I mean “bad” in a way different from previous Oval Office occupants.
Trump could be a raging jerk to anyone he felt wronged him, Obama couldn’t be bothered to lower himself to the rest of us, Bush was a clueless child of privilege, and Clinton’s personal pathologies were vast and varied. But I think Biden is just plain miserable and mean in a way that he’s hidden for years by trotting out his personal tragedies. Go read some of the stories out there about Biden’s interaction with the families of the 13 dead Marines. I wouldn’t even have believed Hillary Clinton would have ever been that callous and indifferent.
Mike
The new narrative is out and being set into place now.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395426.php
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dO9bg4_tViM/SLs0ygtxeoI/AAAAAAAABi0/QdfKfEABemk/s400/frosted+flakes.bmp
The veterans who served in Afghanistan the last 20 years aren’t going to forget.
MBunge:
We can agree on this. Furthermore, I think, veterans in general.
A sleeping giant may have awoken. And their family and friends. Plus the patriotic fly-over boys (and some girls) who were likely to enlist in the future.
I don’t believe Team Biden and the Woke Oligarchy have any idea of the Bug-Out’s repercussions further down the line.
Afghanistan withdrawal by Biden will be forgotten or forgiven by the many millions of Democrat voters, already indoctrinated and stuck on stupid. Plus the two year’s interval til 2022 that allows perfection of massive vote fraud pro-Democrat.
Based on our fat, couch-sitting, snarfing population watching ABC or the others, America is done for. CRT is in all our schools, colleges and universities.
As for Zaphod, I think the time is past for him and his ever-so-smart snarky worminess to be blocked from this forum.
Missed at least one.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/american-interpreter-biden-left-behind-in-afghanistan-i-dont-believe-in-anybody-anymore
As for Zaphod, I think the time is past for him and his ever-so-smart snarky worminess to be blocked from this forum.
Cicero:
It’s good to verify that Cancel Culture is alive and well on the Right as well as the Left. Still, the Left wins on points.
But thanks for playing.
______________________________
Then go home and check yourself
You think we’re talking about someone else.
–Frank Zappa, “Plastic People”
@ Cicero – “I think the time is past for him and his ever-so-smart snarky worminess to be blocked from this forum”
None of us has escaped criticism for our foibles, and I’ve often learned some useful things from some gentle chiding nudges; well, okay, sometimes some flame-throwing “what are you thinking!” ripostes.
Live and let live.
Or, write and let write.
It’s what scrolling is for.
huxley; Cicero:
I don’t think banning a commenter is the same as cancel culture. When I ban someone I do it because commenting is a privilege and this is my page (not a general platform) and I regularly ban trolls who use awful language or say deeply offensive things. I don’t out them or try to get them fired or harass them in any way (some of the marks of cancel culture). As far as I’m concerned, they can continue to live their lives completely unmolested.
Zaphod is an interesting case because he’s got a quirky mind and some interesting things to say, but he likes to be provocative and purposely skirt the line of what’s deeply offensive. He sometimes crosses that line – actually he does with some regularity – and I have removed some of those comments (so you probably never saw them) and I once put him in comment moderation for a while.
If he or anyone else keeps crossing the line after repeated warnings I do ban that person, but I’m highly reluctant to do it and don’t do it often, particularly if that person also has some valuable or interesting things to say at times (which is the case for Zaphod). But I will do it if and when pressed.
Bush was a clueless child of privilege
The notion that Bush has been the beneficiary of privilege – private law – is oversold. Liberal journalists when Dan Quayle was running for office invented a fiction that you had to have a connection to gain a berth in the National Guard (ignoring all the mopes who gained a berth with no discernible connections, like the young Richard Gephardt) and located a Democratic pol who insisted (without corroboration) that he had arranged for a position for Bush. Others have contended that Bush must have had legacy preferences to enter Yale; Bush’s transcript at Yale (GPA around the 25th percentile) wasn’t bad enough to demonstrate that (and was better than Gore’s at Harvard).
Some events in his business career raise suspicions; the thing is, the articles about his business career have been written by journalists like Molly Ivins who (1) have no experience in business and (2) were hostile to him a priori and (3) aren’t under any threat of a defamation suit. Note, the same type (e.g. Sidney Blumenthal) have tried to trash his father’s military service and his father’s business career while others have tried to trash Trump’s business career. They may have a point about Bush the Younger, but the people who wrote about this for outlets like Harper’s show no evidence of knowledge of how to read an income statement or balance sheet. Note the problem for Democratic operatives with by-lines: other than Jimmy Carter and Bob Kerrey, you’d be hard put to find a Democratic presidential candidate of note in the last 60 years who had anything resembling a business career.
He had to pay his traffic fines in Maine like everyone else.
Clinton’s personal pathologies were vast and varied.
Mendacity, satyriasis, cupidity, sociopathy.
Most of the Presidents we’ve had in the post-war era have been willing to accept large honoraria. (I think in re Nixon and Reagan, these may have been one-offs and in re Carter not for his personal coffers). I’d be surprised if the Clinton Foundation could survive a forensic audit.
“…a bad person…”
But he was OK when he suggested using the Logan Act to hogtie Michael Lynch?
(PersonalIy, I think “bad” just doesn’t quite cut it. A more judicious choice might be “despicable” or “disgusting”—even “nauseating”…but YMMV. OTOH one could always compromise with, say, “horrendous”….)
@Art Deco:
I’d be surprised if you could survive proposing too loudly that the Clinton Foundation be subjected to a forensic audit.
And there’d be a distinct dearth of forensic investigation into your regrettable demise.
“…the Afghan military, which collapsed almost instantly after the U.S. left….”
Um, no.
Should be, “…the Afghan military, which collapsed almost instantly after the U.S. pulled the rug out from under it….”
…which the author of that piece himself confirms later in the article by quoting the following:
“Contractors maintained [Afghan military] bombers and…attack and transport aircraft throughout the war. By July, most of the 17,000 support contractors had left. A technical issue now meant that aircraft — a Black Hawk helicopter, a C-130 transport, a surveillance drone — would be grounded.
“The contractors also took proprietary software and weapons systems with them. They physically removed [Afghan military] helicopter missile-defense system. Access to the software that [the Afghan military] relied on to track…vehicles, weapons and personnel also disappeared….”
In other words, “Biden” clearly decided to pull the rug out from under the Afghan armed forces…
…and “his” SecDef and JCOS said something along the lines of “Hey, why not?”…
And so, to paraphrase John Kirby(?):
“We have Americans pulling the rug out from under our allies all the time….”
No doubt this has been duly noted by the Taiwanese (no shrinking violets, they).
However, the amateur’s leading Israel’s government seem to believe that their country has no greater friend than the current occupant or the WH.
The mark of a real troll is not that he says or moots offensive propositions, or delivers them in a sarcastic way; but, rather 1, that he refuses to then argue the proposition in a logical way when challenged, thus demonstrating that he is simply trying to get under readers’ skins; and 2, that he repeatedly directs his sarcasm personally, in a way that demeans not public figures, but other commenters.
This, insofar as I have seen, Zaphod does not habitually do.
This place already has enough of the atmosphere of an echo chamber to warrant going the extra mile.
It is unfortunate that some of the other commenters who took contrarian positions on Neo’s pages refused ever to defend their “deposits” but simply dropped them and scampered on.
If a man will pick up the gauntlet, i.e., take up the question, and avoid directing personal invective at those he is exchanging with, I’d make allowances.
Lord knows that Zaphod and I disagree deeply on a number of things. He after all, thinks that the church ladies of the left should be saved if possible from destroying themselves, and turned to potentially useful pursuits. Whereas I say let them reap the conflagration they have kindled, even if it burns much of the old neighborhood down with them.
He must have a soft spot in there somewhere.
@DNW:
“He after all, thinks that the church ladies of the left should be saved if possible from destroying themselves, and turned to potentially useful pursuits. Whereas I say let them reap the conflagration they have kindled, even if it burns much of the old neighborhood down with them.”
There must be an understaffed quarry in Kamchatka.
“He must have a soft spot in there somewhere.”
Damn right. Fires permitted on Sundays. An additional pierogi on High Holy Days. As much cabbage as anyone can eat. Highest class Zoroastrian Sky Burials gratis for the unfortunates who insist upon not thriving under my merciful correctional regime.
neo:
I wasn’t addressing your thoughts or process for banning commenters.
I was addressing Cicero for what I considered his right-wing, flip-side equivalent of Cancel Culture. Something doesn’t fit in with one’s cherished, obviously absolutely correct beliefs? Ban it or demand it banned. Take away its place in a public space.
I stand by that.
@Zaphod and Art Deco:
“And there’d be a distinct dearth of forensic investigation into your regrettable demise.”
The death, by suicide, accidents, and homicide during robbery or drive-by etc. would be looked at but what was determined would never link back to the real cause, being inconvenient to a Clinton.
Well, since this thread is still alive: I note that our own resident trolls (Manju and Montage to name the most prolific ones, who fit DNW’s description very aptly) disappeared almost immediately after the certification of the election in Biden’s favor.
Mission ended, although not in their case accomplished, as they did not change any minds among the regular commenters here (or not that I noticed), and I doubt among any of the lurkers, due to the fine responses by Neo and others eviscerating what they put forth.
I sporadically read comments at Powerline, just on occasional posts where I’m interested in the zeitgeist over there, and noted the same decamping of their resident trolls. However, I read a couple of threads recently and noticed that they have some new ones, who are not getting any more traction than the old ones did.
Zaphod might be an Ogre or a Gnome, but definitely not a Troll.
For one thing, his nonpolitical interests are too broad and sometimes quite deep.
More importantly, he has a sense of humor.
Although, of course, he could just be a New Improved Troll 5.0 Release, much more subtle in approach.
If that’s the case, then we’ll see if Neo & Co. can bring him over to the Right Side.
AesopFan:
Sometimes when trolls disappear it is of their own free will. Sometimes they are banned. Sometimes I announce the latter. Sometimes I do not.
I actually cannot recall what happened to either Manju or Montage. But I have a vague recollection that I finally banned at least one of them.
Yeah, that’s what I figured: a softie at heart.
I should have known it when in an indiscreet moment of weakness you revealed that your 7th great-grandmother was herself the Mischling great-granddaughter of Shlomo of Konigsburg, Chief Rabbi of the Hanseatic League, and chaplain to the Ben Israel contingent of the Teutonic Knights. Treacherously killed from behind at Grunwald, I am given to understand, while leading his contingent forward shouting, “Viva Moishe Rey!”
“One drop”, as they say.
Quit pretending, Zaphod.
A starving kid show up looking wan and pitiable at your campfire, and you’d be sharing your coffee and fatback with him before anyone could say “Tikkun Olam”.
I actually cannot recall what happened to either Manju or Montage. But I have a vague recollection that I finally banned at least one of them.
He resurfaced with a different portfolio of guises and poses and posts as ‘Bauxite’.