President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials...."The public opinion is pretty damn clear that Americans wanted out of the ongoing war and don't want to get back in. It's true today and it's going to be true in six months," said one Biden ally. "It isn't about not caring or being empathetic about what's going on over there, but worrying about what's happening in America."
ADDED: I came back into this post to edit something about the formatting and accidentally lopped the "P" off "President," leaving "resident Biden."
Resident Biden... doesn't that seem about right? He's the man living in the White House.
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81 comments:
If that last paragraph is true then it would really seem like it’s the media who is pushing hard for war and interventionism abroad. I kind of do think most Americans are tired of this, and tired of constantly being lied to about it, but who knows.
There exists a certain cold logic and realism in these statements. But they are implicitly reliant on a compliant news media to let this go and walk away sooner than later. Which they will, especially as November elections approach.
"... the political fallout at home will be limited..."
What could be more important?
"worrying about what's happening in America"
As Dems always do. But when they say "what's happening in America," they mean their own power. About that they're never callous.
Primat der Innenpolitik, to coin a phrase.
It is because the press will give Biden a pass. They always do. If it isn't being covered, people will lose track of the issue. If this was Trump, we would never hear the end of it.
Jimmy Carter could not be reached for comment.
That is in fact a 100% honest headline. Very rare. In fact many thought this type of true headline to be extinct. I did.
The Biden Pentagon Doesn't Know How Many Americans Are Stuck in Kabul and Has No Plan to Rescue Any
Advice to Americans stuck in Afghanistan: identify as Central Americans trying to cross the southern border of the US. You'll get the full support of the US government then, including welfare $$ and transportation to an American city.
I think what's disturbing is people freaking out over the end of a 20-year slaughter that was doomed from the beginning and designed to make endless profits for the military industrial complex.
It's also very disturbing to see trumpers lamenting the implementation of the Trump pull out I'll be at he would have done a much more beautiful job but the mission is still being accomplished
It isn't about not caring or being empathetic about what's going on over there, but worrying about what's happening in America.
America First?
It was FOUR DAYS AGO and you're STILL talking about this?
We are witnessing the collapse of the Left in real time, worldwide. Get ready for a new era.
My understanding is that there had been no deaths of US forces for the last 18 months.
So it was hardly a “war” it had become a peacekeeping mission. Not to say that we shouldn’t have left, but it doesn’t look like this was very well thought out.
"It isn't about not caring or being empathetic about what's going on over there, but worrying about what's happening in America."
But when your administration's disregard of Americans over there parallels and makes unmistakable your administration's disregard of Americans here, you have a problem that won't slip down the memory hole.
The lefts messaging has been clear since late Monday.
Keep defending the withdrawal. Ignore at all costs the absolute disaster of the implementation.
Closing Bagram air base, an impenetrable fortress with a huge capacity to turn planes in and out of the airfield, is unexplained. Bagram was a self contained city within the secure perimeter. It has the capacity, if stocked up, to support 10's of thousands of people while waiting to get processed. Aircraft could have been staged there, instead of flying one, or three planes at a time in and out of Kabul.
Shipping out soldiers first,and civilians last? Whose idea was that.
Lacking dozens of people fired at the highest level of the military, State Dept, and CIA, we can place all blame on Slow Joe's specific demands.
America First?
I think the Biden policy is more like: "America, but only if you get here by the 31st."
Watching Biden as he falls actually stirs a smidgeon of admiration in me. He still has the ability to sound fierce, committed, noble, virtuous, defiant even as he makes one contradictory statement after another. My wife thinks it’s muscle memory. I think of it more as a copulating male preying mantis who continues to go at it even after his partner has bitten off his head.
This is absolute deflection BS. A lot of us remember Vietnam (and more recently, Iraq). How many protests have been flooding the streets of America with thousands of people demanding withdrawal? Where are the current-day Jane Fondas and Cindy Sheehans? Conscripted soldiers haven't been dying by the hundreds per week (in fact, there have been extremely few deaths in the last several years). Is this situation really forefront in American minds as Biden is trying to suggest?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that a majority of Americans would like to see us withdraw from Afghanistan, but I know of no pressure coming from the American public on this issue that it had to be done in such a haphazard way. If you could wave a magic wand and bring American troops and support staff out of Afghanistan without major impact on the functioning of that country, then yes, just about everyone would support that. What basically no one supports is doing it by stranding Americans and allies there, turning over billions of dollars worth of weapons, technology and facilities to our enemies, and allowing a complete and total takeover by the Taliban, bringing us full circle back to where we were in 2001 with Afghanistan as a safe-harbor for terrorists.
You call that “living”!?!?
Just wait until the desperate people waiting on-line in the hot sun, for two or more days without relief begin dropping and dying.
Chaos on the “safe” side of that airport fence. Just ponder how bad it is on the Taliban side.
This regime is taking cynicism, to new heights. An ersatz presidency. Just make sure the ice cream and dementia treatments don’t run out.
Dems can always count on the media to fall in line in their reporting. The media outrage at the collateral damage to people and U.S. interests will follow the script. But this catastrophe gets under the skin of non-globalist Americans and will show up in the great political realignment currently underway and at the ballot box.
[p]Resident Evil?
Wince said...
But when your administration's disregard of Americans over there parallels and makes unmistakable your administration's disregard of Americans here...
State Dept's Overseas Security Advisory Council said Aug. 14: "Repatriation flights are not free, & passengers will be required to sign a promissory loan agreement & may not be eligible to renew their U.S. passports til the loan is repaid. Cost may be $2,000 or more per person."
At night, the Taliban are strolling thru the crowd and beating them with chains, apparently trying to provoke incidents with troops on the other side of the fence. They are going door to door, looking for those who’ve been identified as helping our forces, where two things are occurring: 1) the names of the residents are noted and they are told the Taliban will soon be back to deal with them, or 2) they are grabbed, taken away and never seen or heard from again.
Biden is the merde Midas. Everything he touches...
And the only thing his people care about is "the political fallout." They have no conception of, for instance, honor - it's antique, and no doubt white supremacist.
I read tha he went back to Delaware because he has trouble sleeping in the white house.
I calling my pillow tonight and vying him one. It will help Biden sleep better and will benefit a man doing God's work, Mike Lindell.
Win win!
President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited
I think he’s wrong, at least in the sense that once the label “incompetent” gets attached to Biden and his administration, it will be very hard to shake. Moreover there’s a real chance the label will spread from the administration to Biden’s entire party.
Awwwww. Won’t that just be too, too, too bad?
The fly in the ointment for that plan is the 10k Americans they failed to get out. Americans will not forget if the 10k are not rescued.
It is hard to understand right now how that will turn out. I suspect the Taliban have demanded significant prizes to allow them out. Question is can or will Biden pay it? I think the Taliban know if they overplay their hand they could reignite the war. The Taliban are probably happy to have Biden in charge right now. - So they could give him a bargain to let the Americans go.
The President's Brain is Missing
“Nude man stabs other nude man on Seattle sidewalk”
Sounds about right…
People will forget. Probably by Labor day.
Again, the American people wanted out of Afghanistan. In fact, the ruling elite never made the case for staying there 20 years. Its amazing Biden does ONE thing the American people want, and this is what he gets hammered for. Judas Priest, Americans are stuck on stupid.
Dead innocents, dead gays, dead women, death death death - please America - lose interest.
Political fallout is limited when you can cheat and scam the vote system.
“Resident Joe”. Is that was Biden would call a Freudian slip? What an imbecile our Resident is!
I think they're misreading public opinion. Americans no longer "cared" about Afghanistan because things had quieted down and stabilized. But it's a big leap to get from that kind of "don't care" to the psychopathic type that Biden has exhibited in talking about the people who are currently trying to flee Afghanistan as a result of his policy.
And if Biden's handlers are hoping to normalize average Americans' not caring about what happens to dark-skinned, disadvantaged, oppressed women and gays in other parts of the world, doesn't that present a problem in terms of getting average Americans to care about the fate of blacks, illegal immigrants, LGBTQs, etc. in this country? The fact is, the left's entire political/social strategy depends on getting nice white people feeling sorry for the sufferings visited upon these oppressed groups. This undercuts that strategy, bigly.
Yet another example of Biden Administration incompetence: are Americans who are being rescued from Afghanistan required to reimburse the US Government for the flights out? Yesterday afternoon a State Department spokesperson said of course not, but as of yesterday afternoon the online form Americans were required to fill out claimed that Americans had to sign a promissory note (“cash and check not accepted”) and that costs “could exceed $2000.” How about everybody getting on the same page? I guess saying one thing and doing another is one of the hallmarks of this administration.
"It's also very disturbing to see trumpers lamenting the implementation of the Trump pull out I'll be at he would have done a much more beautiful job but the mission is still being accomplished"
Not being a Trumper, I really don't care how carefully Biden followed Trump's plan. The resulting cluster fornication is still Biden's fault because it was his call to make.
If Biden, Army and Intelligence leaders, don't resign... what do we do? Hope normal politics eviscerates them?
It's possible the American public might forget about this crap fest if the Taliban lets them. For that to happen, they will have to suppress the urge to hand Biden a shit sandwich on or about 9/11/21. By that time, Biden's ability to respond to either a hostage situation or all out executions would be extremely limited short of restarting a war no one wants. So the temptation would be strong.
Biden has taken a hard hit in the polls. Moreover, there is reason to think this may not be just a short-term effect. The administration's whole defense of its handling of the Afghanistan situation, as articulated by its supporters here, has been that it is helpless in the face of events. That image is going to dog them.
As I think about it, this may mean that the country will be headed for some new aggressive foreign adventure, if the Biden people decide that they now need to show off how tough they can be.
This whole calculus relies on the Taliban being content to remain within Afghanistan's borders and throw nothing at the U.S. Not sure that seems likely.
I’m already seeing the comments passing right over the cowardly and complete cluster that is our withdrawal to going back to Bush to change the subject. The democrats are good at this. Let’s see, Biden is really incompetent, can’t blame it on trump because he wanted out and Biden is saying he is just doing what trump wanted, can’t blame it on Obama because he is black, ah Bush. We hated him before, that works.
I don't doubt it.
"According to [Richard] Holbrooke, when Biden was asked [in 2010] about America's obligation to maintain their presence in Afghanistan to protect vulnerable civilians, he scornfully replied by referencing the US exit from southeast Asia in 1973.
"'F*** that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.' "
Because politicians "getting away with it" is the part that really matters, if you're the politician.
I'd been wondering for years what we were still hoping to accomplish there that we hadn't yet. I wanted us to wrap it up. That doesn't make me honor-bound to support wrapping it up in this criminally negligent, majestically incompetent fashion.
Ah, but they believe the political fallout at home will be limited. I feel better now. I think they have no idea the fallout coming their way, and it's not the kind measured in approval ratings. If you were Xi, why wouldn't you move aggressively in the Pacific? What are we going to do? If you were Putin, why wouldn't you send little green men into the eastern corner of Estonia?
yep, don't blame the Resident of the United States Jo Biden; be like Howard,
lamenting the implementation of the Trump pull out
Since it's Universally Accepted, that President Trump won relection, ISN'T His fault?
If he was more effective, as a 2nd term President; would we be IN this mess?
Резидент Байден...
That's the problem when a sociopath like Biden makes a decision based on his own complete lack of empathy and tries to imagine how normal people will react.
It's going to be hard for the Biden admin to just wish away American hostages & the scenes of Taliban mob justice visited upon the poor Afghans who worked with us. Both are coming soon to a screen near you!
I don't think Biden will survive this. The Deep State is already turning on him, since he tried to throw them under the bus and about half of the country loathed him from the get-go. He only needs to lose a fraction of the support that got him elected & he's done.
This is shaping up as the worst political miscalculation of our lifetimes, if not in American history.
"The public opinion is pretty damn clear that Americans wanted out of the ongoing war and don't want to get back in. It's true today and it's going to be true in six months," said one Biden ally.
I find it very interesting how convinced they are that the American people don't value competence, or good results.
I also find it interesting that they "think" that their utter Charlie Foxtrot in Afghanistan won't have other, serious, foreign policy consequences "in six months."
Then there's their belief that Americans won't make the Democrat Party pay for all these failures.
To quote someone in an old post:
like Drago says, history begins anew everyday for leftists.
I am glad to see Drago back in the saddle here.
Howard said...
I think what's disturbing is people freaking out over the end of a 20-year slaughter that was doomed from the beginning and designed to make endless profits for the military industrial complex.
No, Howard, we're "freakign out" over the complete and utter incompetence displayed by the Biden* Administration in accomplishing the worthy goal of getting out of Afghanistan.
And we're thinking about the Obama / Biden "surge" in that "slaughter that was doomed from the beginning and designed to make endless profits for the military industrial complex." We're wondering how many corrupt payoffs came to Democrats because of that "surge".
Thank you for reminding us about all those things. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you're personally just as incompetent as the Administrations you're defending
Americans will not lose interest because the emboldened Taliban and their Islamist allies will not let America live in peace. They will challenge and attack.
You FOOLS who thought that the U.S. could say "no mas" and walk away are fools. We could leave Afghanistan, but the war will follow us wherever we go. It is not within our power to say "20 years of war is enough." The enemy decides how long the war will go on.
And it will go on. Biden did not end the war. He simply moved the battlefield.
Fully expect the Islamists to mark the September 11 anniversary in their own way. Expect other enemies of the feckless and weak U.S. to strike as well.
“I may be the most immoral son of a gun in this room,” Biden said at a Democratic caucus in early 1975 as he argued against aid to Cambodia, according to the Wilmington Morning News. “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation."
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oCqBpgc-YMkJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vietnam-afghanistan/2021/08/15/fd155518-fdd5-11eb-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d
So Biden thinks he can wait out the botched pullout Well, it worked for Obama
after Benghazi.
What the Biden foreign-policy record shows, I think, is a man who behaves as if he knows much more than he does, who has far too much confidence in his own judgment in the face of contrary advice from experts. (My hunch is he’s overcompensating for an intellectual inferiority complex, which has manifested itself in his history of plagiarism, lying about his academic achievements, and other embellishments.)
On national-security matters, President Biden lacks some of the most important qualities needed in those who govern—discernment, wisdom, and prudence; the ability to anticipate unfolding events; the capacity to make the right decision based on incomplete information; and the willingness to adjust one’s analysis in light of changing circumstances.
To put it in simple terms, Joe Biden has bad judgment....
According to my colleague George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Biden has argued that the United States does not have an obligation to Afghans who trusted the United States....
Carol Keehan, the former head of the Catholic Health Association, who has worked closely with Biden for years, echoes those sentiments. “He’s very clear about justice,” she told NPR. “When Joe Biden talks about faith, he talks very much about things like the Gospel of Matthew—‘what you’ve done to the least of my brother, you’ve done to me.’”
Just don’t tell that to the girls, women, and other frightened souls in Afghanistan who, thanks to a decision made by Joseph R. Biden Jr., are about to enter the gates of hell.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QrKk69KXS5IJ:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-afghanistan-record/619799/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d
So Biden thinks he can wait out the botched pullout Well, it worked for Obama
after Benghazi.
There is a fairly good chance that in the not to distant future Taliban fighters are going to start killing Americans in horrific ways, record it, and post it to the internet. Others are going to start taking hostages and demanding money from the hostage's relatives. Be interesting to see how America reacts to that. But even if that doesn't happen, the rank incompetence of the people in charge is now completely undeniable. And if its not incompetence, then they must have wanted this to happen.
"...it doesn’t look like this was very well thought out."
A dramatic understatement accurately applicable to every action and policy decision made by the USA in response to the 9/11 attacks. The catastrophe for which Biden is being blamed now was authored by the Bush administration the moment they authorized invasion of Afghanistan, with collaboration by co-authors Obama (and Biden) and Trump, who actively and passively (respectively) continued the catastrophe during their years in office.
Biden has always been a callous sob who covered it with a phony, bluff back-slapping persona.
He’ll carry through because he doesn’t really care about other people at all. Those loyal interpreters and American aid workers are nothing to him. Nobody will remember this next year, he thinks.
In some CA. newspapers, Afghan news amounts to a Page 2 picture of - predictably - local protesters in Kabul. No bad Democrat publicity must touch down anywhere near the Newsom recall vote.
Beiden stares you in the face and shouts "Shut up, you'll forget all about this shit in a while and go back to loving me!"
"... the political fallout at home will be limited..." What a bunch of short term hooey! Wait until American hostages are taken, or better yet, nightly film of the Taliban executing women, gays, etc. These Politicos are clueless or more likely arrogant 'Elites' who have been proven wrong over many millennia.
What happens if three years from now there is terrorist attack in the US committed by people trained in AFG and transported to the US through the Southern border?
I think what's disturbing is people freaking out over the end of a 20-year slaughter that was doomed from the beginning and designed to make endless profits for the military industrial complex.
Nice try, Howard, but that's not why people are "freaking out."
If Joe Biden voters could see what he was doing right now, they’d be rolling in their graves
Shorter Joe Biden:
Fuck Afghanistan and fuck the American people.
It seems there was a confusion of cables that left the administration thoroughly bumfuzzled.
Bumfuzzled in Teh Beltway
Good Lord… when he’s lost NPR, you know the knives are out!
rcocean said...
Again, the American people wanted out of Afghanistan. In fact, the ruling elite never made the case for staying there 20 years. Its amazing Biden does ONE thing the American people want, and this is what he gets hammered for. Judas Priest, Americans are stuck on stupid.
Speaking of "stuck on stupid", we have this comment. The "American people" wanted a competent pull out that didn't make the US look pathetic. The Biden* Administration failed to deliver, and is rightly getting hammered for it.
I want $10,000. If you rob a bank, and kill 5 people in the process, in order to give me $10,000, I'm not going to be happy about it, and if you say "what, I gave you what you wanted", I will not be impressed. In fact, I'll be full of contempt for you.
Much the same applies to the current Democrat talking point of "he gave America what they wanted."
"Biden does ONE thing the American people want, and this is what he gets hammered for."
You can build a non-profit, help countless people out of abject poverty. Give them and their families hope for the future. And people think you're God-like. But you fuck just ONE sheep...
It's certainly true that Americans wanted out from Afghanistan, and Biden gave them that. However, Americans also like to think of their country as competent and kind, and Biden blew that all to hell. The latter may overwhelm the former in the public mind.
My City Was Go… Joe Biden Must Go
I watched Biden on TV
But Joe Biden was gone
There was no connection
There was no one home
Reality had disappeared
All his word salad
All his punches pulled
Reduced to empty statements
Ay, oh, way to go, Dementia Joe
Well, I watched the pundits weigh in
They said Joe Biden is gone
He left thru the back door
There is nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
And all my lifetime memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
Ay, oh, way to go, Dementia Joe
What Howard and LLR Chuck and the rest of the far left lunatics don't realize is that Biden and his Best and the Brightest idiots have pissed off the rest of the west's leaders and Biden's abject weakness, in the face of no doubt untold hours of video and documentary kompromat on the entire Biden Crime Family, has now openly emboldened the sabre-rattling of Biden's beloved ChiCom's (who were the ones who supplied Hunter with all those drugs and underage girls) and thus the pressure is not just from the US, but also across Europe.
Oh, it gets better:
”White House officials believe Americans’ horror over graphic images of the chaos in Kabul and pleas from Afghans who fear they will be killed by the Taliban will morph into support for the president’s decision to pull troops from the country by Aug. 31 after a 20-year war.”
The possibility that the horror, assuming it happens (and it has already begun), will cause Americans to wonder why the evacuation wasn’t better planned and executed, seems beyond their capability to reason.
Biden can't have his cake and eat it too. Yes, the polls reflect unhappiness with our being in Afghanistan for a lot of reasons, including the corrupt way the Pashtun-controlled Afghan government has operated.
But the polls also show that Biden's popularity has taken a significant hit because of the demonstrably incompetent way he has handled the situation.
Women, who voted for him in very large numbers compared to Trump, will be very unhappy that Sharia law under the Taliban will, in effect, makes women slaves to men.
There will be no Me-Too movement allowed under the Taliban.
It is fair to suggest that American women will likely remember Biden's incompetence when they go to the polls.
The "but we wanted out" argument is the very definition of straw man. No one thinks we could have stayed there much longer. Nation building (which Biden was for before he was against) wasn't working and never would. So it was (probably long past) time to go.
The question is how you leave, not if. This pull out was orchestrated by people who really didn't care how smoothly or not it went because they had no intention of taking responsibility for whatever happened. What they wanted was there to be no troops there so Biden could declare the job done on 9/11/21. It just might work too, except that the Taliban gets a vote.
.
The "but we wanted out" argument is the very definition of straw man. No one thinks we could have stayed there much longer. Nation building (which Biden was for before he was against) wasn't working and never would. So it was (probably long past) time to go.
The question is how you leave, not if. This pull out was orchestrated by people who really didn't care how smoothly or not it went because they had no intention of taking responsibility for whatever happened. What they wanted was there to be no troops there so Biden could declare the job done on 9/11/21. It just might work too, except that the Taliban gets a vote.
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some time ago - maybe a month ago, I read the term Resident Biden. It was intentional
I thought that is the realistic title.
He is no more making these decisions than I am.
I've heard it's Klain
Whatever else that is, it isn't an "Afghanistan policy."
"The fly in the ointment for that plan is the 10k Americans they failed to get out. Americans will not forget if the 10k are not rescued."
One American trapped in Afghanistan is a tragedy. Ten thousand Americans trapped in Afghanistan is just a statistic.
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