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Home » From “we’re getting everyone out” to “everyone who wants to get out” to “there’s nothing we can do about the hostages”

From “we’re getting everyone out” to “everyone who wants to get out” to “there’s nothing we can do about the hostages”

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest:

The State Department says there is little it can do to help Americans and at-risk Afghans whose planes are reportedly grounded at an airport as the Taliban prevents them from leaving the country.

At least six chartered planes are attempting to evacuate these Americans and others from Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport, but the Taliban is reportedly preventing them from taking off. Since it evacuated U.S. military forces and diplomatic personnel from the war-torn country, the Biden administration has not had the resources necessary to ensure that flights chartered by nonprofit groups and others can depart Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was a functioning country just a little while ago, with a government that did not include the Taliban. No, it wasn’t Switzerland, or even close. But there was no big crisis there back in April, when Biden announced his withdrawal deadline, and no great urgency to any pullout, which could have been engineered by someone other than the utter incompetents and/or saboteurs who seem to have been in charge in all branches under the supposed control of our brilliant commander-in-chief.

Come to think of it, though – with their track record, it’s probably best that they’re saying that there’s nothing they can or will do at this point. Haven’t they already done enough to wreck Afghanistan, the US, our relations with our allies, our military, and our standing in the world?

They could have prevented all of this by following established evacuation protocol. Failing that, there’s always common sense – and in this case a second grader could have figured out a better way. Instead, they voluntarily (and with malice aforethought? – one can’t help but wonder) gave up every bargaining chip we had. Their stance right now is probably giving ideas to many other groups who perceive us as a helpless Gulliver tied down by a bunch of Lilliputians.

Now the Taliban call the shots, not us.

Comments

From “we’re getting everyone out” to “everyone who wants to get out” to “there’s nothing we can do about the hostages” — 31 Comments

  1. This will get worse, far worse. We have a thousand hostages instead of the 40-odd when Carter failed. Eventually, Biden’s handlers will forced to do something as American citizens are beheaded at the airport. They will try to do something and botch that, too. The Islamists have a good thing and are not about to give it up for some wooley headed “international reputation.”

  3. Having vacated a large air base in East Asia and now no standing there only thing they can do is sent plane loads of cash for ransom which I expect by weeks end.

  4. The Secs of Defense and State (two worthless POS’s) are headed to the Middle East, presumably to “sort things out.” That’s a fool’s errand and they’ll return (unless we’re lucky and they’re taken hostage) with empty hands.

    But as Shirehome says, it is not being reported in the MSM, so most of the “smart set” will not even know there are potential evacuees at Mazar I Sharif. This just keeps getting worse and worse, just when I thought it was all over. Maybe it’s better this way — the administration will have a hard time burying a story that keeps getting worse.

  5. Afghanistan has not had a functioning government since we overthrew the Taliban in 2021, and it doesn’t have one now. The Taliban want US recognition and unfreezing of their assets. Whether they control the people holding the hostages is unknown.

  9. “Eventually, Biden’s handlers will forced to do something as American citizens are beheaded at the airport.” Mike K

    Money, formal recognition, abandonment of all American forces from the M.E.?

    “if it isn’t in the NYT or on CNN, it’s not happening. Right?”

    There’s a limit to how much they can ignore and there’s a high likelihood of the Taliban producing enough American blood that the MSM will simply have to cover it.

    Skip,

    Appeasement never works, predators see it as an incentive. “If God did not want them to be sheared, he would not have made them sheep!”

    F,

    If the traitorous Secs of Defense and State were taken hostage, it would be such sweet justice that upon learning of the news, it would be extremely hard not to take pleasure in it.

    “Some men need killin.”

    bob sykes,

    The Taliban are in the process of establishing a government, one of strict enforcement of Shari’a Law. One whose ‘provenance’ goes back 1400 years.

    fullmoon2,

    Trump was seen by Jihadists as a “strong horse”. Biden is seen to be a “weak horse”. Jihadists know exactly how to handle weak horses.

    bof,

    If such a miracle were to occur, the world would be a far better place.

    huxley,

    Is there any doubt that ‘the show’ is going to get far grimmer?

  10. The Taliban will use the excuse that other rogue groups are doing the bad things that get reported. This is just the [sorta] plausible deniability of using both controlled cutouts and not bothering to control others that are doing what the governing Party wants without being directly told.

    The first is like the FBI informants, the second is like BLM/Antifa here.

  11. Taliban Shmaliban Ban Ban Caliban.

    Leaving Afghanistan has freed up a lot of Federal / Military Industrial Complex Attention + Resources which can now be applied to you good people so clearly in need of further nudging and Domestication. 😛

    I for one welcome your new LBTQWERTIOUP Overlords and their myriad ‘Contractors’. You’d all do well to do so, too 😛 .. Could make a start with Lawn Signs and Lapel Pins. Moving on to Proskynesis.

    Or do the other thing.

  12. It wouldn’t be so bad if they truly believed that the US could/would get everyone out; but, it hasn’t been believable from the get go.

    They screwed up big time; and just don’t care except to tell more lies to cover up their screw ups.

    The Democrats are always used to “moving the goal posts” and have had the MSM cover for them; so, this Afghanistan screw up shouldn’t expected to be any different.

    Biden and his supporters just sicken me.

  13. Blood chits. We carried them ion Vietnam. They offered a reward for returning us to U.S. custody. We all knew they were useless if we got shot down in North Vietnam. and probably in Laos as well. I carried a couple of packs of Salem cigarettes wrapped in plastic. The SE Asians all smoked in those days and they loved Salems. Figured they might work better than the blood chit. 🙂

    I’ve been in many foreign countries over the years. Always felt pretty secure as an American. I believed the State Department was on my side and would do what was needed should I need their assistance. WTF is going on with our diplomats now?? It is inconceivable that the government knows there are citizens in Afghanistan who need their help and they have taken such a cavalier attitude.

    I am deeply ashamed of my government. They refuse to secure our borders, they fail our citizens in peril overseas, they play politics with a deadly pandemic, they claim to believe in the voodoo science of AGW, and are trying to bankrupt the country. If I were trying to destroy the country, (or fundamentally transform it) it’s exactly what I would do.

    Their plan is so clear now that I’m amazed how few Americans seem to see it.

  14. @JJ:

    *adjusts toga*

    CIVIS SERES SVM.

    I mean:

    Wo shi Zhongguoren!

    Not even “I am a Chinese Citizen”.. Just “I am Chinese”. That’ll do the trick in a sticky patch just about anywhere on earth today.

    But try to look a bit inscrutable when you say it.

    I knew which way the wind was blowing in 2005 when I met a Fujianese girl whose family had bought up tracts of tobacco growing farmland in Rhodesia (I won’t use the other word) which had been stolen from Whites. Why? Because Chinese looked into why foreign cigarettes were ‘better’ and figured out it wasn’t the Virginia Leaf bulk stuff… it was the little bit of Rhodesian Leaf quietly blended into each cancer stick that did the trick. While we slept… Mars attacked.

  15. The Washington Free Beacon news report is pretty much straight journalism.
    Sundance at the CTH had some things to say about the situation that take his usual deep dive into the Deep State’s convolutions, that are beginning to give the adjective “byzantine” a run for its money.

    For those not following CTH, the Teams are (1) DoS, CIA, Intel -vs- (2) WH, Pentagon, NSC. The Propaganda PR outlets for them are (1) CNN, CNNi, Politico, Reuters and The Washington Post; and (2) ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX (I have seen NYT placed on team (2)’s roster as well).

    Take it FWIW to you. He embeds the full interview with McCaul.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/05/hfac-congressman-mike-mccaul-reports-six-planeloads-of-americans-currently-being-held-hostage-in-northern-afghanistan/

    Remember the Deep State teams. Remember the Deep State media alliances. Remind yourself of the Deep State motives for both. Once you see the strings on the marionettes, you can never watch the puppet show and not see them.

    During a scripted discussion between guardian of the swamp gates Chris ‘Baghdad’ Wallace and representative Mike McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) member states that six plane-loads of Americans (AmCits) and Afghan ‘interpreters’ are currently being held hostage by the Taliban at Mazar I Sharif airport in Northern Afghanistan.

    Notice how Baghdad Wallace has been instructed to steer the framework of the first question to the current status; ie, “Who has gotten out since Friday?” Wallace knows the script. He needs McCaul to deliver on the expectation of the “hostage narrative” that Wallace knows pre-exists in the background. McCaul plays pentagon friendly politics, and Wallace feeds the neo-con’s narrative.

    I confess I don’t follow the plot here: this interview is scathing about incompetence on all parts, WH & DOD included; however, Wallace did have to prod McCaul three times to get the number evacuated since 8/31 (Zero) out of McCaul, after which everything went very smoothly, and it did indeed sound like both were reading from the same script about the major talking points to bring out.

    Sundance then repeats something he has said a couple of times before:

    We have yet to see a single video of a rescued American Citizen reunited with their family in the United States. No crowds or families greeting the extracted American residents; no human interest stories and local broadcasted news coverage of relieved Americans, husbands, wives, daughters or sons arriving back in their hometown…. nothing.

    Five, six or seven thousand Americans reported as saved from the clutches of the Taliban, and not a single human interest story of those Americans arriving home to the waiting arms of their loving family. Not one.

    This has occasioned some discussion over at Chicago Boyz (as in this post by Sgt Mom), which I found interesting, but the commenters did not introduce any viewpoints we haven’t covered here on the general topic of the Democrats’ tendency to memory-hole inconvenient narratives as quickly as possible — which, as I said above, doesn’t square with McCaul bringing out the hostage situation; sometimes, Sundance is pretty opaque, but always good for a provocative perspective.

    Maybe I’m missing something.

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/66610.html

    It looks as if with the official departure of the US military from Kabul, a media cone of silence perpetuated by the National Establishment Media has descended over the whole ghastly mess, leaving a good many of us who have been following the chaotic and bloody disaster that it was with unanswered questions. Like – exactly how many Americans were left behind in Afghanistan? … Between the proverbial fog of war and the cone of silence – a great many questions remain.

    Where, for instance – are the tearful and ecstatic airport reunions with their families, of Americans who did manage to get out of Kabul? You’d think that regional news stations would have a bumper crop of stories about local people who are coming home and have breathless tales of their escape to tell. Of course, according to Peter Grant, who posted a couple of days ago, escape lines are still being run, and a lot of people who got out of Afghanistan alive have damned good reason to keep quiet about who guided, sheltered, and assisted them. There are at least as many stories of American military and diplomatic staff sabotaging such efforts, which certainly would prove embarrassing to them, if names and offices are specifically mentioned.

    No coverage of the troops – the Army, Air Force and Marines who deployed to Kabul – returning home, for the joyful reunion with their families and friends? No joyous reunions of spouses and children at the falling-out formation on the flight line or the parade deck. Military media lives for that stuff, …

    Where are the heart-rending stories of the Afghani refugees themselves – their hairbreadth escapes, their hopes and dreams and reasons for departing? They’re at military bases scattered here and there, including at Fort Mccoy. There are some pictures of the various camps and facilities in local media … but not much else. The cone of silence is well clamped down. It’s as if the Biden Administration just wants the whole debacle to go away.

    Peter Grant’s post is excellent.
    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/09/afghanistan-update-on-those-boots-on.html

    Additionally, one commenter at CTH gives this reading of the alleged pictures of the stranded planes, which I haven’t seen anywhere else. I certainly believe that the media, especially the blog world is ludicrously slap-dash at tossing out file photos that are not actually from the story they illustrate, so he could be correct.
    I don’t know enough to judge.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/05/hfac-congressman-mike-mccaul-reports-six-planeloads-of-americans-currently-being-held-hostage-in-northern-afghanistan/comment-page-3/#comment-8058770

    reeko September 6, 2021 4:37 pm
    just FYI, but there are pix trending the net showing these purported six aircraft sitting on the tarmac at Mazar-i-Sharif. while there may, in fact, be six aircraft hidden at Mazar, or elsewhere at secret locations, the pictures of them are in fact, false. (mostly posted at Gateway Pundit) that is NOT Mazar-i-Sharif. in fact, doing just a precursory FOTINT analysis of that pic shows: 1. no ground carts of any type hooked up to those six aircraft. no power/AC/fuel etc. in fact, the only ground carts visible are parked over by the building. obviously, there are no people inside those planes… unless they are dead people. 2. there are no vehicles whatsoever in the parking lot beside the largest building, which is most likely a hanger – not a “terminal” and in fact, there is no sign of anything happening anywhere around the entire facility. 3. comparisons of side-by-side sat images of MZR and the suspicious photo show that, ignoring the taxiway orientation, that there is no revetment off of a taxiway like that at MZR. just FYI. carry on.

  16. The abhorrent activities of the illegitimate Potato regime are not so much due to its illegitimacy as they are a continued pattern of dishonesty and criminality that perpetrated and preceded the stolen election. Each follows and distracts from the other in an endless parade of repugnance, the totality in turn distracting from the specter of illegitimacy.

    So we lament each new mess, all the while ignoring the elephant in the room.

  18. A principle regarding abandoning Bagram in the way it was done, or the endless lines of zillion dollar equipment: There are so many professionals between Biden and the actual air field or flight line that…somebody would have suggested doing it the right way. Somebody, in some slot. Cannot not have happened. And, you’d think, higher would do a forehead slap and say, “Of course! Thanks for reminding us. Make it happen.”
    That it didn’t happen must mean there’s a hard order out there, signed by higher, to do the ineffably stupid and counterproductive. As in, “NO! Not this time. This time we’re doing it differently because reasons.”

    So much we’re looking for is routine and doesn’t even require direction. So much is obvious and permission is routinely asked and granted. So much is outside the bounds of Authority’s reach, and even attention. So much. And yet where is it?

    As is noted, reunions at airports aren’t done by government fiat, which can be withheld. A positive effort has to be made to reach out beyond government’s…reach…and make not happen what would happen naturally between people powerfully motivated to do it. Not a matter of “If my bridge club isn’t meeting, I’ll go see my kid at the airport.” No. It’s “Get the hell out of the way and let me get my WELCOME HOME! sign unfurled.”
    After people, theoretically, get to the US on whatever air transport they were lucky enough to catch, then they go FREAKING HOME. They leave the C17, give the crew a thumbs-up, and catch another flight. Or call Uber. Or meet family. Then they go home. Somebody’s going to want to interview them. Post a quick reunion vid on facebook.
    What am I missing?

  19. Afghanistan has not had a functioning government since we overthrew the Taliban in 2021,

    Are you ever sober when you post?

  21. Again, I tell you, the deep state wants this to happen. The military industry wants a sort of forever war and their allies in the bureaucracy engineered this all from the start. Biden will eventually order the military to get involved and we’ll be there for the foreseeable future.

    Biden will be the fall guy for the whole affair. Harris will take over and the spending will proceed apace.

  22. Re: no stories about reunions/experiences

    After Benghazi the CIA people at the Annex were disappeared all over so as to keep them from being subpoenaed by Congress and so the only people heard from were the ex-special forces contractors. National Security was the reason but reelection of Obama was the real reason.

    I expect that the returning people may be getting told that they need to keep everything about getting out private so as not to expose something national security related. Perhaps there are NDAs being signed as part of the evacuation. That would cause them to avoid any publicity as something that might make for an inadvertent breaking of the NDA.

  23. It’s one thing for the returnees to keep quiet. But it’s another for a third party to say something, record something, put it out, if only to the local paper.
    Not likely to get an NDA on a next-door neighbor. Or maybe somebody just happens to be at the airport and sees something happening.

  24. “the utter incompetents and/or saboteurs who seem to have been in charge in all branches” are all Obamaphiles, starting with Susan Rice the liar, blacks worried about systemic racism (SecDef), mealy-mouthed losers (Sec of State), top brass military (Gen. Milley), incompetent, sexual deviants (SecTrans Buttigieg).

    They are all Democrats, the party of evil, which seeks to ruin the Republic and cannot tolerate the Constitution. As I’ve commented before, the Democratic Party has always been the party of evil. Goes back more than a century; Woodrow Wilson as POTUS re-segregated the Army, believed in eugenics, for an example. Is it a surprise they support abortion on demand, with 60 million Americans now executed in utero, and wide open borders flooding us with Latinos and other comers, more than 1 million this year?

  25. Agree Richard.

    Just trying to get some handle on the silence. Likely a combination of factors not the least of which is the left control of media, social and main stream.

  26. Yawrate:
    I agree that the people controlling Biden are sneaky enough to do that, but I think it gives them far too much credit for competence. If their purpose was to continue the war, all they had to do was cancel the agreement with the Taliban (which was ignoring what they had agreed to anyway, giving them plenty of grounds) and just start sending the troops back in. They could have continued their war without looking completely incompetent, and leaving a huge number of hostages and tens of billions in equipment behind, all of which looks so bad even the media was disgusted enough to pay attention temporarily. This administration is both evil and stupid, but I think it was stupid that was responsible for what we’ve seen in Afghanistan.

  29. @ Banned Lizard > “The abhorrent activities of the illegitimate Potato regime are not so much due to its illegitimacy as they are a continued pattern of dishonesty and criminality that perpetrated and preceded the stolen election”.

    Open letter to all the Biden voters who are not reading this blog and its comments, and in particular to anyone who aided and abetted the changes in elections that facilitated fraud, even if you didn’t personally cast an illegal ballot, harvest ballots unethically (it was all made legal), or obstruct the cleaning up of voter registrations (and anything similar):

    Every death in Afghanistan from this debacle is on your head as much as it is on Joe Biden’s and that of everyone in his administration who either organized or failed to stop the Killing-field-formerly-known-as-Kabul.

  30. @ geoffb – “I expect that the returning people may be getting told that they need to keep everything about getting out private so as not to expose something national security related. Perhaps there are NDAs being signed as part of the evacuation. That would cause them to avoid any publicity as something that might make for an inadvertent breaking of the NDA.”

    Extremely likely to be true; “national security” has, as we’ve learned especially in the last 4 years, been used to cover a multitude of sins that are more in the realm of “job security” than actual foreign or domestic threats.

    And the people whose jobs they’ve secured ARE the threats.

    @ Richard Aubrey – “It’s one thing for the returnees to keep quiet…
    Not likely to get an NDA on a next-door neighbor. Or maybe somebody just happens to be at the airport and sees something happening.” & “Somebody’s going to want to interview them. Post a quick reunion vid on facebook. What am I missing?”

    You are missing the not-very-thinly-veiled threats of the above power-wielders (“all Trump voters are white supremacists and if you question Biden you are one of them”). That, added to the suppression practiced by the State-run Social Media, may be cancelling out any whistle-blowers.

  31. I’d think a joyous reunion would redound to Biden’s favor. Even if it had to be hired. Then the happy folks say that, to keep secret the way out, they have to keep quiet.

    But look: Can there be anything so bad as to upset current administration’s arrangements? Have a half a bottle of cheap port and then let your imagination run wild. And ask yourself if it would make any difference that everybody knows it.
    And, on the question of “knowing” it, no matter the failure of big tech censorship which can be devoutly hoped for, would any Biden supporter, having been drenched in the facts, care? Or know in the sense of it being part of her actual view of the world. DoJ. It is to laugh.

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