Afghanistan

Now the Taliban Have Gone Too Far

Featured image 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 »

Whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on

Featured image 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 »

The Taliban forms a pro-al Qaeda government, Part Two

Featured image 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) »

The Taliban forms a pro-al Qaeda government

Featured image 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 »

Hostages (not hostages)

Featured image 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 »

The Cluelessness of Our Ruling Class, in 43 Seconds

Featured image 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 »

Joe Biden displays his wisdom

Featured image 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, »

The horror: Conservative experts criticize Biden on liberal cable outlets

Featured image 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), »

Who we brought out

Featured image We have been advised by the Biden administration that our surrender and evacuation of Afghanistan is a world-historic success. We know that’s not true, but we have yet to assess the the catastrophe in its multifarious dimensions. For example, we have yet to get a handle on the 120,000 Afghans included with some 6,000 American citizens in the airlift out of Kabul. AP diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee gives us a »

What we left behind: VDH edition

Featured image I noted the American materiel we left behind in our hasty departure from Afghanistan in “What we left behind.” I included the mind-blowing graphic below from the Times (UK). A mind-blowing graphic in today's Times on what $85bn worth of lost equipment means in practice for the Taliban: pic.twitter.com/GDcuNQbb6P — Will Brown (@_Will_Brown) August 29, 2021 Our friend Victor Davis Hanson is a renowned classicist and military historian. Last night »

When the New York Times has moved on

Featured image The New York Times is basically done with Afghanistan. My friend the Times reader reports: Afghanistan is now entirely off the NYT’s front page. The question of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal has disappeared even from the coverage inside. Still no mention of the Ghani phone-call controversy. There are two long articles trying to puzzle out how the Taliban might rule, and one on a protest for women’s »

Stranded (Not Stranded), cont’d

Featured image Joe Biden and his administration want to move on from the epic humiliation of the United States that it engineered in Afghanistan. It sought to move on even while the humiliation was in process. The lack of a sense of shame has proved key to the persistence of Biden and administration officials throughout. Our humiliation is sure to be compounded in the coming days as news emerges of those we »

The myth of Biden’s empathy

Featured image Somewhere along the line, Joe Biden got a reputation for being empathetic. I’m not sure how this happened. It’s true that Biden seemed to empathize with the unborn, but that was before he seemed to empathize with pregnant women who want to destroy their unborn babies. He seemed to empathize with the victims of crime, but later seemed to empathize with the criminals who harm them. Actually, Biden cares only »

A Happy Ending

Featured image Amid the disaster of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, there were some stories that ended happily. This is one of them. One of my colleagues and his sister are friends with an Afghan family, a husband, wife and three young children. The father translated for our forces in that country. The family came to America some time ago as legal permanent residents, and the father has a Minnesota driver’s license. Several »

When the New York Times is back in your corner (2)

Featured image Now that the worst is over Afghanistan (in terms of optics, not reality) we can expect the mainstream media to (1) move away from the subject and (2) revise the narrative that emerged when the debacle was happening before our eyes. According to my friend who dutifully reads the New York Times every day, this is where that organ seems headed: NYT returns to form today. The paper does its »

An update on Col. Scheller [updated]

Featured image Washington Examiner breaking news reporter Kaelan Deese has a disturbing update on Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, who last week posted the video seeking accountability for the fiasco in Kabul from his superiors in the chain of command. So far as we know, Col. Scheller is the only military or civilian official to have been held to account. In an update last week, I noted his statement that he had »

Stranded (Not Stranded)

Featured image It’s been more than 10 years since I borrowed from the name of the pop/rock group Was (Not Was) to comment on current events, as I did an embarrassing number of times in my “Wazwaz (Not Wazwaz)” posts discussing Minnesota’s notorious Wazwaz family in 2009 and 2010. This week I have occasion to borrow from Was (Not Was) once again. Our humiliating departure from Afghanistan has given us the spectacle »