Afghanistan
September 14, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday. He gave a 15-minute opening statement and responded in his fashion to questions posed by members. The State Department transcript and video of Blinken’s opening statement are posted here. The State Department video of the entire hearing is posted below. The hearing commences at about 45:00 of the video. The New York Times account of the hearing
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September 13, 2021 — John Hinderaker
John Ondrasik (Five For Fighting) released a song yesterday titled “Blood On My Hands.” It expresses his dismay at the consequences of Joe Biden’s inept withdrawal from Afghanistan. John has a long history of patriotism and of supporting American troops in many ways, including many performances overseas. This song expresses those values. Ondrasik wrote about it: Like all Americans, I was stunned and horrified at the images of falling bodies
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September 12, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I am not sure how much U.S. newspapers have been covering Afghanistan lately. I see that there is no reference to events there on the front page of today’s New York Times or my home town newspaper, the Star Tribune. The Times is back to waging its non-stop war against Republicans: “G.O.P. Seethes at Biden Mandate, Even in States Requiring Other Vaccines;” “False Election Claims in California Reveal a New
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September 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A reader responded to my post about the shunning of Joe Biden by family members of troops who died at Kabul airport with this trenchant message: The heartbreaking ritual at Dover AFB, too often repeated, is inherently theatrical. It fixes our national attention, ignites the glare of media coverage. Every word and gesture is pregnant with emotion and meaning. We know this very well. And our leaders know it, or
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September 11, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Last night the White House released President Biden’s recorded statement on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. This was to be the day that Biden celebrated our departure from Afghanistan. As our departure turned into the epic humiliation of the United States at the hands of forces that were instrumental to the 9/11 attack itself, he had a change of plan. While the 9/11 attack was still underway, Rick Rescorla understood
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September 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
When George Bush was president, parents of armed service members killed in Iraq received special attention from the media if they denounced the war and criticized Bush. Cindy Sheehan gained a huge profile for bitterly attacking Bush after her son was killed. Eventually, she became a fringe figure, to put it as politely as I can, but this was only after Barack Obama succeeded Bush. Before then, the mantra on
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September 10, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times has just posted this intensely interesting investigative scoop by Matthieu Aikins based on reporting by him as well as Christoph Koettl, Evan Hill, and Eric Schmitt: ” In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb.” Subhead: “U.S. officials said a Reaper drone followed a car for hours and then fired based on evidence it was carrying explosives. But in-depth video analysis and interviews at the
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September 10, 2021 — Scott Johnson
President Biden is set to attend events at all three 9/11 memorial sites — in New York City, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon — on the twentieth the anniversary of the attacks tomorrow. We can be thankful that he will not give a live speech to commemorate the anniversary. Rather, he will instead speak in “in the form of a video in advance — or if that will be available
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September 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we’re seeing assessments of the 20 year war on terror. We’ll see many more in the next few days. The ones in the mainstream media will probably be along the lines of a piece in the Washington Post by the paper’s book review editor, a leftist of course. He argued that 9/11 put America to the test and America failed. I think
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September 8, 2021 — John Hinderaker
It’s bad enough that the Taliban don’t have any women in their government, now they have committed the ultimate outrage: painting over a mural of George Floyd. After successfully completing its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban has been painting over murals in Kabul and replacing them with proclamations of victory, including one that featured Black Lives Matter icon George Floyd. The Taliban have started painting over murals left behind from
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September 8, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I’ve held off writing about the hostages stranded by Biden in Afghanistan while the facts are sorted out. I’ve gone from Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt yesterday “Secretary of State Blinken: This Is Not a Hostage Crisis” to Michael Goodwin’s New York Post column “Plane truth of Biden’s Afghanistan botch” to Peter Hasson’s FOX News story “State Department obstruction of private rescue flights from Afghanistan revealed in leaked email.” Joe Concha
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September 7, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In an earlier post, I discussed how top jobs in the new Taliban government will be held by leaders with close ties to al Qaeda. But there’s more to this story. You can find a list of the Taliban cabinet members here. It includes four terrorists who were released by the U.S. in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. The four are: Mullah Norullah Nori (Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs)
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September 7, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Taliban has announced the formation of the government that will rule Afghanistan. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Taliban gave no positions of power to other political forces, religious minorities, or women. And it pledged to implement strict Islamic rule. Of course it did. That’s what the Taliban is all about. Did the Taliban at least exclude al Qaeda-linked elements from its government? No, it did not. The
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September 6, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Rep. Michael McCaul made news on FOX News Sunday yesterday morning. McCaul related the refusal of Joe Biden’s new partners among the Taliban to allow flights to leave from Mazar-i-Sharif Airport in northern Afghanistan. The blocked flights were to carry Americans others to safety out of Afghanistan. STUCK ON PLANES: @RepMcCaul says Americans and Afghan interpreters have been held hostage by the Taliban for days at the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport
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September 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We commented last week on how our “nation builders” thought it was important for Kabul University to have a master’s program in gender studies, but it turns out someone had the bright idea that modern art was also a necessity for Afghan women, starting with Duchamps’ “contextual art” urinal (from a 2015 British documentary—just 43 seconds long, but take in the looks on the faces of the Afghan women subjected
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September 5, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Peggy Noonan writes of Joe Biden and his disastrous Afghanistan decisions: A longtime friend of his once told me Mr. Biden’s weakness is that he always thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. I asked if the rooms are usually small, and the friend didn’t bristle, he laughed. I suspect Mr. Biden was thinking he was going to be the guy who finally cut through, who stopped the nonsense,
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September 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post is upset that cable news channels invited former high-level defense and national security officials to discuss the Afghanistan debacle. Among those whom the Post questions whether we should have heard from are two former National Security Advisors (H.R. McMaster and John Bolton), a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and architect of the successful surge in Iraq, (David Petraeus), a former Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta),
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