Category Archives: defense policy

Trapped Americans

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In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors offered this in describing President Joe Biden (D) and his administration as the Taliban’s hostage:

Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted they lack the military resources and political mandate to ensure that every American is evacuated amid the Taliban control of Kabul.

The key part here, assuming Austin and Milley are on the up and up (which I have no reason to believe, given their emphasis on the wokeness of our military over its combat effectiveness), is the political mandate. If Biden were a serious actor in this tragedy, the political mandate would be loudly extant, with the direct result of the military resources being promptly available.

There are some 10,000-15,000 Americans out in the Afghan sticks. How are these supposed to make their own way to the airport, Biden and his State Department having written them off as needing to fend for themselves?

There are lots of airfields scattered around the countryside that those military resources could be used to retake for the purpose of staging military transport to go get those Americans and ferry them to Kabul.

That would be difficult to do this late in the Biden Retrograde, but eminently possible.

Some SIV Questions

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A Just the News piece centered on plans to temporarily house 10,000 Afghan refugees at Ft. Bliss (assuming President Joe Biden (D) will deign move to help them escape in the first place) also had some information on how what requirements Afghanis must satisfy in order to be eligible for the Special Immigrant Visas that would allow them to enter the US.

  • worked with US military or through the Chief of Mission authority as translators or interpreters in Iraq or Afghanistan
  • provide a picture ID
  • proof of a US military background check
  • letter of recommendation
  • filing fee of $435
  • go through in-person interview at a US embassy or consulate

In the chaos of the collapse of Biden’s effort in Afghanistan—a chaos he’s said in plain terms that he knew would occur—and the parallel (!) collapse of Afghanistan, how will these Afghanis satisfy any of those criteria?

Where will they get the picture ID that having one of on their person puts them at immediate risk of butchery by Taliban thugs?

In what way will they prove the existence of a background check—especially in the face of the precipitous nature of Biden’s “retrograde?”

Where will they get those USD435—AFN37,500 and rising (as of 19 Aug) in the face of the Biden Retrograde?

At what US embassy or consulate will a prospective Afghani undergo his in-person interview?

What is Biden doing to reduce the already existing backlog of 10s of thousands of SIV applications already in his State Department’s pipeline?

What is Biden doing to streamline this cumbersome—even were all the pieces easily accessible—process?

It’s certainly critical that Afghan refugees be successfully sorted out from terrorists masquerading themselves as Afghan refugees before anyone is allowed into our nation, but it’s also clear that neither Biden nor anyone else in his Executive Branch (particularly his State and Defense Departments) are prepared to deal with this situation, or even are serious about catching up with their Afghan refugee crisis, much less their Afghanistan nation crisis.

The Biden/Harris Failure

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RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has most of the right of the matter. Never mind that she speaks from one side of the aisle, the truth of her remarks on this item is independent of that.

Biden has betrayed our allies and our own military in the wake of his failure. Thousands of translators and Afghan Special Forces who bravely fought alongside American troops now risk being executed in the streets. And the sacrifices made by our military men and women—who have fought, been wounded, and died in Afghanistan for decades—have been disrespected beyond measure.

I wrote that McDaniel has mostly right. She actually has understated the matter.

President Joe Biden (D) also has betrayed the United States, all of us citizens, and especially those Americans still in Afghanistan.

National security officials in the Biden administration told a bipartisan group of Senate staffers on Tuesday that about 10,000 to 15,000 US citizens remain in Afghanistan, according to two Senate aides.
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According to the aides, the administration officials—from the State and Defense departments, as well as the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff—also told the assembled Senate staffers that there is no plan to evacuate Americans who are outside Kabul, as they do not have a way of getting through the Taliban checkpoints outside the Afghan capital.

Not even a matter of no plan for their evacuation. No interest at all in going and getting them. They’re on their own, abandoned by the Biden/Harris administration (Joe’s required designation).

But Biden gets his vacation. The Biden/Harris administration’s Vice President Kamala Harris, also a Progressive-Democrat, gets her disappearance.

Does Biden’s perfidy—or Harris’—have any bottom at all?

America Last Again

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In the collapse of the US presence in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Afghan “army” and so of that pseudo-nation, there is a wholly justified effort to help Afghan refugees escape from the coming destruction and slaughter.

However.

This is what our President Biden/Harris and their Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin are doing about that:

[Department of Defense Press Secretary Admiral (Ret) John] Kirby says American citizens will not be given priority evacuation over Afghan SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants.

In Biden/Harris’ and Austin’s own words, recited by Kirby:

We’re going to focus on getting people out of the country, then sorting it out at the next stop. It’s not going to be just Americans first, then SIV applicants. We’re going to focus on getting as many folks out as we can.

It’s not going to be just Americans first.

Wow.

Not even in this administration’s present failure are these folks putting Americans anywhere but the back of the metaphorical bus.

Oblivious

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President Joe Biden’s (D) Secretary of State Antony Blinken, just a few days ago in the depths of the Afghan collapse:

We’ve known all along: the Taliban are at their strongest since 2001.

Yet Biden chose to withdraw, completely and relatively suddenly, it turns out, at the height of the Afghan fighting season. When he, Blinken says, knew the Taliban were at their strongest. He chose not to wait until winter. He chose not to carry out former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal plan, even as he claimed he was trapped by it, both in his Saturday “statement” and Monday afternoon when he finally showed up for work—briefly; he hustled off the stage rather than take questions—to make his excuses for his everyone else’s failure in Afghanistan.

That speech came after he and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) both were absent from duty until after Kabul had fallen, together with our embassy; the Kabul airport was blocked from incoming/outgoing flights; and he’d surrendered Bagram Air Base north of the fallen capital.

This is a level of dereliction of duty that is amoral and seriously dangerous to our national security, to our nation itself.