Some Words from our Vice President

Vice President Kamala Harris (D) said these things on her gallivant through Southeast Asia.

We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. Beijing’s actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations.

And

It is in our vital interest to stand united with our allies and our partners in Southeast Asia in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific[.]

It would be nice if we could take her seriously. It would be better if People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping could take her seriously. Sadly, Harris didn’t even indicate that the PRC needed to stop its moves to coerce, to intimidate or to withdraw its claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. All she had was her empty description of the PRC’s attitude.

It would be useful if the Biden/Harris administration backed up its pretty words with hard action. Do what, exactly, in our stand[ing] united with our allies and our partners?

We’re So Special

That’s the attitude of Progressive-Democrats, as illustrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA).

She held an expensive fundraiser last weekend while her constituents [were] still bound to COVID-19 regulations, which require, among other things, masks to be worn when people are in close proximity with each other.

The principals, from Pelosi to her bank book-opening attendees were maskless. Every single one of them.

On the other hand, the wait staff—every single one of them—had to wear the masks. Because they’re just hir’d he’p; they don’t matter so much.

Congressman Byron Donalds’ (R, FL) description is spot on and broadly inclusive:

They make all their rules for the American people but they don’t follow them. They tell the poor of America what needs to be done but they don’t actually do it themselves. So, they love having crystal on a table and getting jumbo lump crab and all that good stuff without masks, but when it comes to the American people, like let’s say in the city of New York, they are not allowed to go in a restaurant if they don’t present their vaccine card[.]

Because our Betters are Special.

Trapped Americans

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

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.

Missed the Point

President Joe Biden (D) took a break, Monday, from his vacation (which he decided to go on during his Afghanistan failure) to come to the White House and deliver a 20-minute talk about why he’d taken us out of Afghanistan so precipitously. Then he returned to his vacation.

Just the News thinks he messed up with his speech.

Forced to confront bipartisan anger over the bungled US exit from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden instead gave a speech on why drawing down US troops after two decades [of] war was in the American interest.
In so doing, he missed the point.

It’s true enough, as JtN goes on to say, that most Americans wanted us out of Afghanistan, and it’s true enough, as JtN adds, that what we didn’t want was the utter failure of Biden’s withdrawal execution.

But JtN missed the point of Biden’s little talk.

Biden didn’t interrupt his vacation to justify his withdrawal or his method of withdrawal. On the contrary, Biden disrupted his vacation to make a Saul Alinsky-esque effort to change the subject from his bungled withdrawal to the subject of it being everyone else’s fault we still were there, and it being the Afghans’ fault their government didn’t perform up to snuff.

That Biden botched even that simple task is just a measure of the man’s own, continuingd, failure to perform up to snuff.