For those of who have been wondering whether there was any screw-up that the Biden administration could preside over that would be bad enough to get them any blowback from the MSM, it looks like the Afghanistan debacle might be it.
As I’ve said before, I think there is plenty of criticism to go around regarding our 20-year involvement in Afghanistan, and extricating ourselves was always going to be less than a clear-cut win.
But decades from now, if there are any honest college history classes left, this cavalcade of imbecility is going to be taught as a classic case study of what NOT to do in foreign policy. Or in human affairs generally.
The unfolding disaster is bringing a fresh roster of proofs of Murphy’s Law every day. Honestly, what else could have gone wrong that hasn’t?
Heartbreaking stories and video of the terrified victims of Biden’s feckless incompetence, trapped in a nightmare scenario slipping into a grim future that promises to be nasty, brutish and short? Check.
Stranding thousands of American citizens, likely to be turned into either victims or sources of ransom money for the Taliban? Check.
Decimating our allies’ faith in us and our ability to competently project power on the world stage? Check.
Emboldening our enemies on all fronts? Check.
Arming a scabrous horde of weird-beard cavemen with almost $100 billion worth of high-tech weaponry and superior small arms with which to threaten us and all decent people within firing distance? Check.
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this has been, on so many levels. Biden was in bad enough shape before this all happened.
He had taken to “calling a lid” on his public appearances every day about 10:00 a.m. (Is that a coffin lid? You make the call.) He’s avoided having any substantive press conferences, and when he does speak with the press even for a few minutes, it’s easy to understand why.
Then, exhausted by the 2-hour work days he’s been putting in, he takes off for Camp David for some R&R. (In his case, those stand for “ramble” and “rot.”) But no sooner is Air Force One wheels up than Afghanistan goes teats up.
So naturally, Biden leaps into action. Four days later.
If by “leaping into action” you mean “lying prone and vacant-eyed while aides scurry around wringing their hands for days, before finally pressing the button that slo-o-owly raises Biden’s recliner into an upright position so that he can be helped to his feet and guided out in front of a camera to slur his way through some talking points written in huge print on the teleprompter.”
While Joey Gaffes was lying in state in Camp David, most of the MSM had tried to put the best spin they could on things.
Who can forget the hapless dolt from CNN (surprise!) named Clarissa Ward, who did some reporting from Kabul? After first dressing herself in a black shroud and covering her hair – as any filthy infidel harlot should naturally do – Ward delivered this insightful gem to CNN’s dozens of viewers: “They’re chanting death to America, but they seem friendly.”
Step aside, idiot CNN reporter from last summer who stood in front of multiple burning buildings, enveloped in smoke and chants of “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon!” and said those immortal words, “These protests are mostly peaceful.”
There’s a new Queen of the Morons. All hail Clarissa Ward!
Perhaps even funnier were all of the dopes who twisted themselves into knots explaining why Donald Trump was actually responsible for Biden’s Blunder. I mean, after all, Trump decided that we should get out of Afghanistan, so – yada yada yada – this is all his fault.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
It’s just like when my wife decides I should take out the garbage. So I carry two bags out into the driveway, then start spinning around and then toss both bags directly up into the air. After which they fall on the pavement and burst open, spraying cat litter and spoiled food and dirty diapers and banana peels in all directions.
Then I sit down in the middle of the mess, tossing handfuls of cat litter into the air above me, before dragging out some spoiled food and eating it. When she gets up in the morning and comes outside, she finds me wrestling with three rabid raccoons over the spoiled meat, while simultaneously vomiting because of food poisoning.
And I look up at her, wipe some cat litter out of my hair and the rabies foam off of my mouth, and say, “YOU told me to take out the garbage. So this is all your fault!”
Check and mate!
When nobody was buying this reasoning, Biden gave his terrible Camp David speech.
When that didn’t work, he followed a disastrous short speech with a disastrous interview with former Clinton hatchet man turned “journalist” – nothing to see here, move along — George Stephanopoulos.
George couldn’t be any more in the tank if he were Irwin Rommel, and he was all set to give a warm tongue bath to Biden, if only he could string together an even partially cogent series of sentences.
But the Prez just could not do it.
He mumbled, he rambled. He started sentences, switched to another topic, then switched again. And somehow still couldn’t land on a syntactically understandable thought.
Stephanopoulos tried to help. When Biden said that we’re in control of the airport at Kabul, GS gently nudged him, “Still a lot of pandemonium outside the airport.” (Insert your own “if by ‘pandemonium’ you mean…” joke here.)
Biden responded, “But no one’s being killed right now.”
When George has to mention all of the pictures of the violence, and the Afghans falling off the departing jet to their deaths, Old Joe gets snippy: “That was four days ago, five days ago.”
So we all just learned that on Joe Biden’s planet, the statute of limitations on bringing up people dying is 3 days. Good to know.
By now, the MSM are in full panic mode, racing around like chickens with their heads cut off. (Or AOC with her empty head still on, I guess.) Blaming everyone else isn’t selling, so they’ve been desperately trying to depict the situation in Afghanistan pre-blunder as hopelessly complicated and opaque. How could anybody have known this was going to happen? Who could have predicted such a shocking outcome?
General Mark “Thoroughly Modern” Milley – yes, that’s an obscure reference, but it fits – happily confessed his ignorance of all things military in service of trying to exonerate Biden. He said, “Nothing that I or anyone else saw” indicated that the Afghan military would collapse if we pulled out without warning.
The sound you just heard was every soldier and officer who spent more than an hour in Afghanistan over the last 20 years doing one nation-wide, simultaneous spit-take.
If only Milley had paid any attention at all to, you know, ARMY STUFF, rather than sucking his thumb about white rage, as he stayed up late reading third-rate conman Ibram X Kendi’s fourth-rate drivel under the covers with his flashlight on every night!
Ugh.
No matter how much the MSM talking heads and our mediocre leaders try to obfuscate things, the truth is pretty simple. As typically insightful CO reader Eric Dickey (hat tip to you, my friend) summed it up last week: “Evacuate first, then withdraw. How hard can it be?”
Indeed. But sadly, many of the most powerful people in our government have been trained in the “Ready, fire, aim” school of foreign policy, and they seem bound and determined to follow their training.
God help the decent people in Afghanistan, and all of us here in America, too.
More than ever, it’s been a long 4 years, and it’s only been 28 freaking weeks!
Martin Simpson 