Saturday, August 28, 2021

Twenty-five minutes to infamy - Ed Timperlake

 

​ by Ed Timperlake

Biden's late appearance for his press conference about the Kabul bombing created a more dangerous situation than most people realize.

On what was arguably the worst day of Joe Biden's presidency, he was scheduled to address America and the world at 5 P.M. on August 26, 2021.  We'd been told earlier that day that the president and commander-in-chief was going to address the bomb that killed Marines and a Navy corpsman in Kabul.  Biden was 25 minutes late.

That delay is not trivial.  It has direct consequences on an ever-present 24/7 strategic threat that Russia, China, and North Korea pose to America.  All three have "ready now" ICBMs with multiple warheads aimed at targets in the continental United States.

I know this because I was President Reagan's principal director of mobilization planning and requirements in the Pentagon at the height of the Cold War.  In those days, as is true today, we focused on building a survivable American nuclear force, land-based ICBM silos, USN Boomers, and USAF strategic bombers.  Recently, as I pointed out in an earlier American Thinker post, the threat level has been increasing, especially directly from President Putin:

Is President Putin diabolically smart or simply a psychopath? Perhaps he is both, because by his direct action, the world is now a much more dangerous place as the former KGB officer creates a nuclear doomsday scenario backed by real Russian naval capabilities:

  • Russia is said to have built a new 100-megaton underwater nuclear doomsday device, and it has threatened the US with it.
  • The device goes beyond traditional ideas of nuclear war fighting and poses a direct threat to the future of humanity or life on Earth.
  • Nobody has ever built a weapon like this before, because there's almost no military utility in so badly destroying the world.

With that threat, it's fair to ask why Joe Biden delayed his address for 25 minutes.  The delay could have been excused if the White House national security staff and leaders had high-level actionable information that justified a delay in ensuring that the information presented was accurate and fact-based.  But that was proven not to be the case because of Biden's colossal and historic communication goof:

Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here.  The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O'Donnell of NBC.

Q  Mr. President, you have said leaving Afghanistan is in the national interest of the United States.  After today's attack, do you believe you will authorize additional forces to respond to that attack inside Afghanistan? And are you — are you prepared to add additional forces to protect those Americans who remain on the ground carrying out the evacuation operation?

His answer was priceless: blame the military:

[T]he military — from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Joint Chiefs, the commanders in the field — have all contacted me one way or another, usually by letter, saying they subscribe to the mission as designed to get as many people out as we can within the timeframe that is allotted. That is the best way, they believe, to get as many Americans out as possible, and others.

As an aside "by letter"?  Heck!  Why doesn't he channel President Lincoln and at least use the telegraph for faster electric combat coms, huh?

To be fair, O'Donnell did not ask an unreasonable military policy question — but that doesn't justify a delay to gather additional information.  Or at least one hopes so, or it is even worse, because the Biden national security team would be seen as truly making it up as they go.

Those Americans who watched and, more importantly, our world leader friends and enemies just saw a president needing an additional twenty-five minutes to get prepared after having earlier announced a hard deadline time.

It may appear to be just a typical Biden trivial time-delay moment.  However, the entire American strategic deterrence posture, especially during the Cold War, was measured in thirty minutes.  That was the time of flight for incoming missiles to destroy us.  Today, I suspect the time is even shorter.  Regardless, the fundamental building block to make sure we would never be attacked was competent, determined presidential leadership with the "football" launch codes to unleash hell on our enemies.

If anything leads Russia, China, or North Korea to believe strongly that President Biden is not mentally together — and his 25-minute delay may have proven that — America is in even greater danger than we thought.  The global consequences of terrorism with Afghanistan's fall to committed fanatical killers are yet to be seen.

But the damage to our strategic response time and Presidential Biden's capability and intellectual will to launch a retaliatory strike if threatened with nuclear war has also come into question.  That issue cannot be solved by unelected enablers such as Dr. Jill or whoever "instructed" him to call on Kelly O'Donnell.

Make no mistake: the world is watching one of the most inept presidential performances in either war or peace in American history, and it is just beginning, not ending.

Image: Biden's collapse into a fetal position.  YouTube screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Ed Timperlake

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/twentyfive_minutes_to_infamy.html

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Biden’s Benghazi - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

Muslim feelings were more important than American lives.

 


More American soldiers died in one week of Biden’s retreat than in the last two years of war. 

9 American soldiers had died in combat in Afghanistan from August 2019 until now when over a dozen of our men were murdered in one single day during Biden’s shameful retreat.

Like so many of the American soldiers who were killed by the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies during the Obama-Biden administration, and like the Americans murdered in Benghazi by Jihadists allied with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, they did not have to die.

American soldiers died because they were prevented from defending themselves.

Abandoning thousands of Americans behind enemy lines, the Biden administration turned the Kabul airport into Fort Apache surrounded by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Jihadis.

Taliban Jihadists controlled checkpoints, checked papers, beat Americans, and entered the airport to “coordinate” security with American forces. Thousands of American citizens and soldiers were cut off from each other, able to meet only with the approval of the Taliban.

“We use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible," Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie had bragged. McKenzie had repeatedly described the Taliban as "partners".

As warnings of an imminent ISIS-K attack grew, the Biden administration continued to rely on the Taliban to keep their fellow terrorists in check. This was the same treasonous mistake that led to the murder of Americans in Benghazi at the hands of an Islamic militia that was being paid to protect them from other Jihadis. It was also how the British lost thousands of soldiers during the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842. But Biden, Austin, and Milley remained blind to both recent and classical history about the perils of trusting the lives of your men to the enemy.

Even now with so many American soldiers dead, the Biden administration and its generals can only think of closer “security cooperation” with the Taliban showing that they learned nothing.

The Taliban and ISIS-K are feuding because ISIS-K consists of former members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. But that hasn’t stopped ISIS-K and the Taliban from cooperating by freeing each other's members from prison during previous attacks. 

When Biden abandoned Bagram Air Base, he not only threw away the best and most secure means for evacuating Americans, he also handed over thousands of terrorists imprisoned at Pul-e-Charkhi who included Al Qaeda and ISIS-K terrorists. It would not be surprising if the perpetrators or organizers of the Kabul airport attack turned out to have been imprisoned there.

The Biden administration and its cronies keep promising that the Taliban will fight ISIS-K.

Taliban units have gone back and forth from ISIS-K in much the way that our “good” Jihadis in Syria went back and forth between the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.

When the Biden administration coordinates with the Taliban, there’s no way to know if it’s coordinating with the factions of the Taliban potentially sympathetic to ISIS-K.

But there’s no question that it’s coordinating with Al Qaeda.

The Taliban put Khalil Haqqani in charge of security in Kabul. The Haqqani network has been closely allied with Al Qaeda. The Wall Street Journal noted that, "prominent Taliban units with ties to the Haqqani network now operate within feet of U.S. troops securing the area. "

Shahab al-Muhajir, ISIS-K’s new leader, was a former Haqqani network commander.

Afghan officials from the former government have claimed that ISIS-K is just another mask being worn by the Haqqani network. 

"Shahab Almahajir, the newly appointed leader of the Islamic State of Khorasan Province-ISKP is a Haqqani member. Haqqani and the Taliban carry out their terrorism on a daily basis across Afghanistan and when their terrorist activities do not suit them politically they rebrand it under ISKP," former Afghan interior minister Masoud Andrabi had tweeted.

Just like in Libya and Syria, sorting through the complex web of alliances and enmities between Jihadist groups, is a long and difficult process with no ultimate truth at the end, only more lies. 

The only sane thing to do is to trust none of them. 

Turning over security around the airport to a group with ties to Al Qaeda was treason.

Biden entrusted the lives of American citizens and soldiers to a Jihadist organization, the Haqqani network, which was allied with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Even now the Haqqani network is holding Mark Frerichs, a Navy vet, hostage.

The Biden administration not only failed to free Frerichs, but coordinated on security with his captors in the hope that they would protect American soldiers and civilians.

They even turned over lists of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban to help them with their "security" arrangements in what has been described as a "kill list".

An official defended the move by arguing that "they had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport."

That did not have to happen.

Biden made the decision to evacuate the military before the civilians. Then he rushed the military back, but refused to allow our soldiers to actually create a secure evacuation pathway. 

The Taliban were put in charge of security to and around the airport. And even when the Taliban handed over security to a group allied with Al Qaeda and even possibly ISIS-K, the Biden administration and its incompetent appeasers in uniforms and suits went on trusting the Taliban.

The Biden administration was repeatedly warned that ISIS-K was planning an attack. Just as the Obama-Biden administration was warned that the Benghazi consulate was threatened.

Both in Benghazi and Kabul, the response was to lean harder on the goodwill of the Jihadis.

And in Kabul and Benghazi, Americans died because a treasonous administration put its trust in terrorists instead of letting American military personnel protect the lives of Americans.

Americans did not have to die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Kabul.

Americans trying to reach the airport did not have to be beaten in the street by Taliban thugs.

The United States did not have to leave Afghanistan in an airport encircled by the enemy, while rushing to meet the Taliban’s August 31 deadline even if Americans had to be left behind.

These were decisions that Biden, his cabinet members, advisers and generals made.

They should be held accountable for them.

The failure to hold Obama accountable for Benghazi led directly to the tragedy in Kabul. 

Appeasing Jihadists has become the cornerstone of the Obama-Biden foreign policy. Over a thousand American military personnel died during the Obama-Biden surge in Afghanistan because they were not allowed to defend themselves so as not to offend Muslims. 

Why did Biden accede to the Taliban demand that we leave Afghanistan by August 31?

The same reason he turned over security around the Kabul airport to the Taliban.

So as not to offend the Taliban.

American soldiers didn’t die because they had to. They died because they weren’t allowed to protect themselves and their fellow Americans.

They died because Biden put the Taliban’s feelings ahead of the lives of American soldiers.

Since 2007, when Biden ran for president on a platform of surging soldiers and nation-building in Afghanistan to win the hearts and minds of the locals, he was selling out our soldiers.

This is his most shameful betrayal.

Don’t call Joe Biden the commander-in-chief. Call him what he is, the traitor-in-chief.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bidens-benghazi-daniel-greenfield/

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Europe Braces for Tsunami of Afghan Migrants - Soeren Kern

 

​ by Soeren Kern

And they are not being welcomed with open arms

  • German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has estimated that up to five million people will try to leave Afghanistan for Europe.

  • "I am clearly opposed to us now taking in more people. That will not happen under my chancellorship. Taking in people who then cannot be integrated is a huge problem for us as a country." — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

  • "As minister of the interior, I am primarily responsible for the people living in Austria. Above all, this means protecting social peace and the welfare state over the long term." — Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer.

  • "It is clear to us that 2015 must not be repeated. We will not be able to solve the Afghanistan issue by migration to Germany." — Paul Ziemiak, general secretary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.

  • Afghan criminals, including rapists and drug traffickers, who previously had been deported to Afghanistan, have now returned to Germany on evacuation flights. Upon arrival in Germany, they immediately submitted new asylum applications.

  • "Our country will not be a gateway to Europe for illegal Afghan migrants." — Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum Notis Mitarachi.

  • "We need to remind our European friends of this fact: Europe — which has become the center of attraction for millions of people — cannot stay out of the Afghan refugee problem by harshly sealing its borders to protect the safety and wellbeing of its citizens. Turkey has no duty, responsibility or obligation to be Europe's refugee warehouse." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Taliban conquest of Afghanistan is poised to trigger an unprecedented wave of Afghan migration to Europe. Pictured: Afghan asylum seekers disembark from an evacuation flight from Afghanistan, at the Torrejon de Ardoz air base in Spain, on August 24, 2021. (Photo by Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images)

The Taliban conquest of Afghanistan is poised to trigger an unprecedented wave of Afghan migration to Europe, which is bracing for the arrival of potentially hundreds of thousands — possibly even millions — of refugees and migrants from the war-torn country.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, expressing an ominous sense of foreboding, has estimated that up to five million people will try to leave Afghanistan for Europe. Such migration numbers, if they materialize, would make the previous migration crisis of 2015 — when more than a million people from Africa, Asia and the Middle East made their way to Europe — pale by comparison.

Since 2015, around 570,000 Afghans — almost exclusively young men — have requested asylum in the European Union, according to EU estimates. In 2020, Afghanistan was the EU's second-biggest source of asylum applicants after those from Syria.

Afghan males, many of whom have been especially difficult to assimilate or integrate into European society, have been responsible for hundreds — possibly thousands — of sexual assaults against local European women and girls in recent years. The arrival in Europe of millions more Afghans portends considerable future societal upheaval.

The 27 member states of the European Union are, as usual, divided on how to prepare for the coming migratory deluge. The leaders of some countries say they have a humanitarian obligation to accept large numbers of Afghan migrants. Others argue that it is time for Islamic countries to shoulder the burden.

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, said that the EU has a "moral responsibility" to take in those who are fleeing the Taliban. The leaders of many EU member states disagree.

In Austria, which in recent years has taken in over 40,000 Afghans (the second highest number in Europe after Germany, which has taken in 148,000 Afghans), Chancellor Sebastian Kurz vowed that his country will not be accepting any more. In an interview with Austrian broadcaster Puls 24, he said that Austria had already made a "disproportionately large contribution" to Afghanistan:

"I am clearly opposed to us now taking in more people. That will not happen under my chancellorship. Taking in people who then cannot be integrated is a huge problem for us as a country."

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, in a joint statement with Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, called for Afghans illegally in Austria to be deported to Islamic countries, now that they cannot, according to EU law, be deported back to Afghanistan:

"If deportations are no longer possible because of the restrictions imposed on us by the European Convention on Human Rights, alternatives must be considered. Deportation centers in the region around Afghanistan would be one possibility. That requires the strength and support of the European Commission."

Nehammer, in an interview with the APA news agency, insisted that deportations should be viewed as a security issue rather than as a humanitarian matter:

"It is easy to call for a general ban on deportations to Afghanistan, while on the other hand ignoring the expected migration movements. Those who need protection must receive it as close as possible to their country of origin.

"A general ban on deportation is a pull factor for illegal migration and only fuels the inconsiderate and cynical business of smugglers and thus organized crime.

"As minister of the interior, I am primarily responsible for the people living in Austria. Above all, this means protecting social peace and the welfare state over the long term."

Schallenberg added:

"The crisis in Afghanistan is not unfolding in a vacuum. Conflict and instability in the region will sooner or later spill over to Europe and thus to Austria."

An opinion poll published by Österreich 24 showed that nearly three-fourths of respondents back the Austrian government's hard line Afghan migration. The poll linked the support to a high-profile criminal case in which four Afghans in Vienna drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl who was strangled, lost consciousness and died.

In Germany, migration from Afghanistan has emerged as a major issue ahead of federal elections scheduled for September 26. Paul Ziemiak, general secretary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, said that Germany should not adopt the open-door migration policy it pursued in 2015, when Merkel allowed into the country more than a million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In an interview with German broadcaster n-tv, he said:

"It is clear to us that 2015 must not be repeated. We will not be able to solve the Afghanistan issue by migration to Germany."

CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet has remained silent on the Afghan issue, as has the chancellor candidate for the Social Democrats (SPD) Olaf Scholz. By contrast, the chancellor candidate for the Greens party, Annalena Baerbock, called for Germany to take in well over 50,000 Afghans. "We have to come to terms with this," she said in an interview with ARD television.

Meanwhile, Afghan criminals, including rapists and drug traffickers, who previously had been deported to Afghanistan, have now returned to Germany on evacuation flights. Upon arrival in Germany, they immediately submitted new asylum applications. "It is not a completely new scenario that people come to Germany who previously had been deported," said an interior ministry spokesman.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has called for a coordinated European response to prevent mass migration from Afghanistan:

"The destabilization of Afghanistan will likely increase the flow of irregular migration to Europe.... Europe alone will not be able to assume the consequences of the current situation. We must plan and protect ourselves against large irregular migratory flows that endanger those who are part of them and fuel trafficking of all kinds."

Marine Le Pen, who is running neck and neck in the polls with Macron ahead of French presidential elections set for April 2022, said that France should say "no" to massive migration of Afghan refugees. A petition on her party's website — "Afghanistan: NO to a new migratory highway!" — stated:

"We are fully aware of the human tragedies and the obvious distress of some of the legitimate refugees. But the right of asylum must not continue to be, as it is now, the Trojan horse of massive, uncontrolled and imposed immigration, of Islamism, and in some cases of terrorism, as was the case with certain jihadists involved in the attacks of November 13, 2015 [date on which a series of coordinated jihadist attacks took place in Paris in which more than 130 people were killed and more than 400 were injured.]

"The mayors of certain large cities have already announced their intention to welcome refugees. It is in our opinion an obvious risk to their fellow citizens.

"What matters to us first and foremost is the protection of our compatriots."

Meanwhile, five Afghans who were airlifted to France have been placed under counter-terrorism surveillance for suspected ties to the Taliban, according to the French Interior Ministry. One of the men, who worked for the French embassy in Kabul, admitted, under questioning, to have previously managed a Taliban checkpoint. Another 20 Afghans taken to France are being investigated for asylum fraud.

In Greece, the government, fearing a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis, has erected a 40-km (25-mile) fence and installed a new surveillance system on its border with Turkey to deter Afghan migrants from trying to reach Europe. In recent years, Greece has been a key gateway to Europe for migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Public Order Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis said:

"We cannot wait, passively, for the possible impact. Our borders will remain safe and inviolable."

Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, added that the EU needs to send "the right messages" in order to avoid a new migration crisis "which Europe is unable to shoulder." He stressed: "Our country will not be a gateway to Europe for illegal Afghan migrants."

In Italy, Prime Minister Mario Draghi called for the Group of 20 major economies to hold a summit on the situation in Afghanistan. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica noted:

"The G20, for Draghi, has a strategic value: it is in that forum that one can and must reach a commitment that binds not only the forces of a West that has come out battered from its twenty-year mission in Afghanistan, but also and above all those countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey which have interests and influence on the self-proclaimed Islamic state."

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a statement to Parliament, announced a plan to take in 20,000 Afghan migrants:

"We must deal with the world as it is, accepting what we have achieved and what we have not achieved....

"We will not be sending people back to Afghanistan and nor by the way will we be allowing people to come from Afghanistan to this country in an indiscriminate way.

"We want to be generous, but we must make sure we look after our own security."

In Turkey, the government is building a 295-km (180-mile) wall along its border with Iran to prevent a new influx of migrants from Afghanistan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that a new wave of migration is "inevitable" if Afghanistan and Iran fail to secure their borders. He added that Turkey will not become a "refugee warehouse" for fleeing Afghans:

"We need to remind our European friends of this fact: Europe — which has become the center of attraction for millions of people — cannot stay out of the Afghan refugee problem by harshly sealing its borders to protect the safety and wellbeing of its citizens. Turkey has no duty, responsibility or obligation to be Europe's refugee warehouse."

Meanwhile, thousands of Afghan migrants are arriving in countries across Europe, including Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia and Sweden, among others.

Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo (here, here and here) agreed to temporarily shelter hundreds of Afghans who worked with Western peacekeeping military forces and are now threatened by the Taliban.

Spain said that it would temporarily host up to 4,000 Afghan migrants at two military bases used by the United States.

Slovenia, which currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, said that the European Union will not allow a surge in Afghan migration. Prime Minister Janez Janša tweeted:

"The #EU will not open any European 'humanitarian' or migration corridors for #Afghanistan. We will not allow the strategic mistake from 2015 to be repeated. We will only help individuals who helped us during the #NATO Operation. And to the EU members who protect our external border."

Meanwhile, dozens of Afghan migrants are trapped along the border between Poland and Belarus. Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's practice of sending migrants across their borders is an act of "hybrid warfare." Lukashenko is accused of seeking revenge for sanctions the EU imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that although he sympathized with the Afghan migrants, he said that they were "a tool in the hands of Mr. Lukashenko" and that Poland would not succumb to "this type of blackmail."

 

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17680/europe-afghan-migrants

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China Cancels Christmas for Americans - Gordon G. Chang

 

​ by Gordon G. Chang

Let us remember: Every single sofa that Americans buy from China gives its malicious regime the funds to grow biological weapons, dig missile silos, and develop even more means to kill Americans. So every sofa we build on this side of the Pacific helps defend the American republic.

  • No, Madam Vice President, climate change has almost nothing to do with the ongoing [supply chain] disruptions. There are many factors, such as the long-term shift of manufacturing to East Asia. Moreover, there are short-term problems, the transport of empty containers being one of them.

  • Expect retail prices in America to go up. If you're the shipping manager for Apple, you don't really care because the additional costs for shipping, say, an iPhone are negligible. The added costs are not negligible, however, if you make larger items. "A 40-foot container can hold 20 sofas," Jonathan Bass, CEO of home décor firm WhomHome, tells Gatestone. "The dramatic increase in rates — it can now cost $25,000 to ship a container across the Pacific to the East Coast — adds about $1,625 per sofa." That increased cost puts this furniture item out-of-reach for most consumers.

  • Bass, a near-shoring advocate, has a fix: "Now, given shipping costs and other factors that are not temporary, it would be cheaper to makes sofas and other items in North America."

  • Moving production would not only employ North Americans and bring prosperity back home, it would also mean that Americans would stop funding a hostile Chinese regime that, among other things, just labeled the U.S. an "enemy."

  • Let us remember: Every single sofa that Americans buy from China gives its malicious regime the funds to grow biological weapons, dig missile silos, and develop even more means to kill Americans. So every sofa we build on this side of the Pacific helps defend the American republic.

Christmas in America has been called off this year. Supply-chain disruptions in Asia mean no toys for the tots in December. As a result of a multitude of factors, freight rates have skyrocketed. The cost of hauling containers across the Pacific Ocean, for example, has increased more than 500% during the last year. Pictured: The Lianyungang Port Container Terminal in Jiangsu province, China, on March 24, 2021. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Quick, someone call Santa. Christmas in America has been called off this year. Supply-chain disruptions in Asia mean no toys for the tots in December.

At least that's what Vice President Kamala Harris suggested on her trip to Southeast Asia, and she is right. Shelves across America were bare earlier this year, and they will, in all probability, be bare again due to extraordinary supply-chain disruptions in China and throughout East Asia.

There is one solution that eliminates these disruptions and saves the planet. Harris did not mention it, and global elites just hate it.

"The stories that we are now hearing about the caution that if you want to have Christmas toys for your children, it might now be the time to start buying them, because the delay may be many, many months," said Harris to a roundtable of business leaders in Singapore on August 23. "So across the board, people are experiencing the issue."

Why will American children be disappointed during the holidays? "Of course, the climate crisis is fueling a lot of this," she proclaimed. "When we look at the stronger typhoons that have disrupted shipping lanes and sea level rise, which threatens port infrastructure as an example. So these are the many issues that are causing these disruptions."

No, Madam Vice President, climate change has almost nothing to do with the ongoing disruptions. There are many factors, such as the long-term shift of manufacturing to East Asia. Moreover, there are short-term problems, the transport of empty containers being one of them.

Another culprit is the Delta Variant. A new wave of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia has led to lockdowns in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City, authorities ordered residents starting August 23 to "stay where they are."

Across China, lockdowns have shut factories, stopped trucking, and paralyzed ports. In May, disease closed Shenzhen's Yantian Port, the third biggest port in Asia. Officials on August 11 closed the Meishan terminal of the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port. Meishan handles about a fifth of the traffic there, the world's third-busiest container port.

The closure of Meishan is especially consequential for American consumers because shippers use Ningbo to load cargo for Long Beach. Moreover, the closure could not have come at a worse moment. August is the peak shipping time for the day after Thanksgiving, better known in American retailing circles — and around kitchen tables across the U.S. — as Black Friday.

As a result of a multitude of factors, freight rates have skyrocketed. The cost of hauling containers across the Pacific Ocean, for example, has increased more than 500% during the last year. Spot rates — rates reflecting current pricing — on China-U.S. East Coast routes were $20,804 the first week of August; they were under $11,000 on July 27.

"These factors have turned global container shipping into a highly disrupted, under-supplied seller's market, in which shipping companies can charge four to ten times the normal price to move cargoes," said Philip Damas of maritime consulting firm Drewry, referring to typhoons and COVID rules. "We have not seen this in shipping for more than 30 years."

High shipping costs do not appear to be a temporary phenomenon. Damas expects "extreme rates" to continue until next year's Lunar New Year holiday, but some predict they will continue until at least the end of 2022, especially as ships are pulled off routes to convert them from dirty bunker fuel to cleaner natural gas and diesel.

August 20 saw an all time-record for ships backed up off the container ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Yet container disruptions are not end of the story. "There's another massive shipping traffic jam out there, one that's holding up even more cargo," reports FreightWaves. The disruptions in the bulk cargo sector are even worse, in part due to China's strict COVID rules, especially quarantines imposed on pilots.

Nick Ristic, dry-cargo analyst at Braemar ACM Shipbroking, reports that in mid-August there were 1,692 bulkers with an aggregate capacity of 142 million deadweight tons waiting in queues around the world. That was, he says, "the highest level we have on record and about 15% higher year-on-year."

Expect retail prices in America to go up. If you're the shipping manager for Apple, you don't really care because the additional costs for shipping, say, an iPhone are negligible.

The added costs are not negligible, however, if you make larger items. "A 40-foot container can hold 20 sofas," Jonathan Bass, CEO of home décor firm WhomHome, tells Gatestone. "The dramatic increase in rates — it can now cost $25,000 to ship a container across the Pacific to the East Coast—adds about $1,625 per sofa." That increased cost puts this furniture item out-of-reach for most consumers.

What to do? During Harris's trip, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry had formed a partnership "to enhance supply chain resilience." She raised the issue continually during her Singapore visit, even discussing the matter with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

"There's so much in particular about the pandemic that highlighted the fractures, and the failures, and the fissures in our system," Harris said in her meeting with Lee. "And this moment gives us the opportunity then born out of crisis to actually fix and find solutions to long-term issues that have challenged us."

Bass, a near-shoring advocate, has a fix: "Now, given shipping costs and other factors that are not temporary, it would be cheaper to makes sofas and other items in North America."

Vice President Harris, who believes just about all the world's problems result from climate change, should be happy with that solution, because it would eliminate carbon emissions from trans-Pacific shipping. "The world's cargo fleet heats waters at the rate of four nuclear bombs per day," Bass notes.

Moving production would not only employ North Americans and bring prosperity back home, it would also mean that Americans would stop funding a hostile Chinese regime that, among other things, just labeled the U.S. an "enemy."

Let us remember: Every single sofa that Americans buy from China gives its malicious regime the funds to grow biological weapons, dig missile silos, and develop even more means to kill Americans. So every sofa we build on this side of the Pacific helps defend the American republic.

 

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17692/china-cancels-christmas

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The Surprising Origins of Critical Race Theory - L. K. Samuels

 

​ by L. K. Samuels

The origins of Critical Race Theory have a dark history.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been cited as an offshoot of Karl Marx’s theory of class struggle, which was designed to pit one class against another so as to foment worker-led revolutions. It is also widely accepted that the Marxian Frankfurt School in Germany reworked Marx’s “social conflict theory” in the 1950s by adding “race” to their long list of “oppressed” minorities. But historically, the Frankfurt School theorists were latecomers to the racial theory table. They were not the originators of Critical Race Theory. A revolutionary socialist movement had already existed decades before in Germany. These racial justice warriors sought to pit one race against another and encourage the oppressed to overthrow the oppressor. They called themselves German National Socialists.

After World War II, the Frankfurt School intellectuals and academics began to plagiarize the “racial struggle” and “victimhood” theories that had originated with Nazi theorists in the mid-1920s. It is true that the Nazi theorists, many with Marxist leanings, were less sophisticated in their racial superiority approach. But their long-term goals on racial disparity and struggle were remarkably similar.

The National Socialists, like the Marxian Frankfurt School leaders, dedicated themselves to fighting racial oppression imposed by other advantaged races. But in the case of the Nazis, they identified the “oppressed race” as the Aryan and German people and the “oppressor race” as the Jews. They believed that the Jews controlled the world as members of a wealthy and privileged race that supposedly mistreated the so-called Aryan races. 

To demean the so-called “Jewish oppressors,” the National Socialists taught German children that the Jews, Jewish-run banks, and capitalists were persecuting the German nation and its people. This “oppressor versus oppressed” narrative is pure classical Marxism, which had devastating effects across the annals of modern history. Such racist nonsense divides society, creating hostile tribalism and unending ethnic violence.

Of course, this racial struggle was exactly what the Nazi propagandists intended in their effort to purge certain “oppressor” races. They wanted only one race to exist in German-controlled lands. That is why Critical Race Theory is so poisonous. Its endgame almost always results in horrific final solutions to punish so-called privileged and oppressor races.

The march towards securing superiority over an oppressor race began in earnest after the Nazis nationalized most German schools in 1933.  School administrators quickly inserted racist policies into newly rewritten textbooks and school policies. With the assistance of the National Socialist Teachers League, (the official Nazis teacher’s union), students were inundated with racial theories that invaded most disciplines. Nazi party officials promoted the Führer’s Volksgemeinschaft concept of equality, which included social engineering, social justice, racial tribalism, national collectivity, and social Darwinism. But their biggest mission was to implant biased ethnic-racial studies into Germany’s classrooms.

According to Richard J. Evans in The Third Reich in Power 1933-1939, Nazi educators and administrators from the Education Ministry mandated that the topics of “racial biology” and “racial science” be inserted into almost every school course across Germany. Biology was heralded as the key to understanding and identifying racial differencesThe National Socialists even developed a racial-social arithmetic for their textbooks to indoctrinate students. For example, this racial mathematics used formulas to design calculations that would determine how many blond Aryans lived in a German population.

The German language did not escape this politicization of education.  Language had to focus on speech patterns to provide a racial background that would subliminally implant German schoolchildren with the racial-socialist ideology of Nazism.  The study of geography had to bow to a racial makeover that required Nazi ideology to be more compatible with heroism, home, and race. Amazingly, Nazi educators even found ways to link climate to race.

Not surprisingly, such old-style racism is now returning to our world, mostly voiced by progressives, the woke mob, and Black Lives Matter. Similar to the National Socialists, this orthodoxy is a hodgepodge of social justice, oppressor-versus-oppressed victimhood, and racial tribalism. A German poster from 1933 highlights the Nazi’s dedication to a socially just racial state, proclaiming, “Because Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich wants social justice, big Jewish capitalism is the worst enemy of this Reich and its Führer.”

A number of present-day “anti-racist” activists are emulating the National Socialists’ pogrom policies. For instance, co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Toronto, Yusra Khogali, called for the extermination of certain races. Taking jabs at white privilege and oppressor races and gender, she mused in 2016 that she had an urge “to kill men and white folks.” Moreover, she tweeted that “white skin is subhuman.” Hitler and his Nazi horde spouted the same “subhuman” accusations against Jews, and eventually acted upon their convictions in the Holocausts.

The origins of Critical Race Theory have a dark history.  Why would anyone justify racism, racial superiority, or racial inferiority in today’s world? Such inflammatory rhetoric has never led to racial or social equality. CRT must be discarded into the ashbin of history, along with any resurgence of National Socialism and its socialist-racist narratives.

Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00089

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

L. K. Samuels is the author of Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum (2019)

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_surprising_origins_of_critical_race_theory.html

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Why Is Congress on the Sidelines as Afghanistan Burns? - Pete Hoekstra

 

​ by Pete Hoekstra

People are dying. America is suffering humiliation. And the president and the bureaucracy are trying to get away with it.

  • But the oversight -- the real-world exercise of the constitutional separation of powers, checking and balancing each other -- that is what our host leadership wanted to avoid.

  • Importantly, it was the leadership--not those who served under them, often on the front lines--who resented the very thought of oversight and resisted at every turn. The troops and embassy staff were always thrilled that we took the time and ran the risk to see first-hand what was happening... Members of Congress, on the other hand, were just everyday people who knew nothing about what needed to be done or how to do it.

  • People are dying. America is suffering humiliation. And the president and the bureaucracy are trying to get away with it. Hats off to Meijer and Moulton, both military veterans, by the way, for showing us all that Congress is an equal branch of government -- and for refusing to let the Biden administration cover up its catastrophic failure in Afghanistan.

Congratulations to the two members of Congress, Peter Meijer (right) and Seth Moulton (left), who had the exceptional courage to pay an unannounced visit to Kabul. The situation in Afghanistan is screaming for immediate congressional oversight. (Moulton image by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images; Meijer image by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Congratulations to the two members of Congress, Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who had the exceptional courage to pay an unannounced visit to Kabul. The situation in Afghanistan is screaming for immediate congressional oversight. Right now, before it's too late, Congress might still be able to exercise an influence over, and perhaps help change, the disastrous Afghanistan policy of the Biden administration. Americans should applaud Meijer and Moulton for bucking the corrupt Washington system, despite intense pressure to bow to it.

When I heard about this "unauthorized" trip yesterday I knew exactly what would happen. The bureaucracy, congressional leadership, and the media would all strongly criticize the effort. Washington scorns and derides those who disrupt the system and don't play by its rules. I felt that same pressure for 18 years as a member of Congress. The Washington elite consider themselves the ruling elite. They dedicate immense effort to controlling the story line in DC. They keep members of Congress in the dark, like mushrooms. They tell the elected representatives of the people as little as possible, and only divulge information when necessary.

During my congressional tenure, I visited Iraq ten times and Afghanistan five times. Let me share one incident that typifies how the elites skirt congressional oversight in any way they can. On one trip to Iraq, we members of Congress were told that we would have to stay in Jordan and fly into Iraq each day. Ensuring our safety would just be too difficult if we stayed overnight in Iraq. Besides, there was no room for us in country. The result? The trip to and from Iraq would take approximately five hours each day. Our time on the ground to exercise congressional oversight would be severely limited.

During our initial meeting with the military and State Department leadership I asked them about this. Why were planes, helicopters and all kinds of other vehicles available to transport us each day into Iraq, yet no tents were on hand for us to sleep in? Their response was simply, "Nope, no resources in country. Sorry about that." I had heard differently, however, so I asked them, "Ok, how did you find resources for the Washington Redskins (now Team) cheerleader squad to stay in country for a multiple-night visit?" They laughed off the idea that NFL cheerleaders would be visiting a war zone, but I told them I had an inside source who'd told me that they were in country at that very moment. The leadership all looked at their staff, who confirmed that the cheerleaders were in Iraq, and staying in Iraq overnight.

Of course, I understand: cheerleaders make far more pleasant guests than a congressional delegation. But the oversight -- the real-world exercise of the constitutional separation of powers, checking and balancing each other -- that is what our host leadership wanted to avoid.

This might be the most amusing example of the often appalling arrogance of the military bureaucracy, the State Department, and the intelligence community, but unfortunately it wasn't the only instance. This was an attitude that I faced over and over again. Importantly, it was the leadership--not those who served under them, often on the front lines--who resented the very thought of oversight and resisted at every turn. The troops and embassy staff were always thrilled that we took the time and ran the risk to see first-hand what was happening. But their leadership believed that they were the professionals. Members of Congress, on the other hand, were just everyday people who knew nothing about what needed to be done or how to do it.

The most pressing questions before us now are: Why did Meijer and Moulton have to sneak into Afghanistan? Why haven't Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi organized oversight trips into Afghanistan? Why is Congress on the sidelines as Afghanistan burns?

People are dying. America is suffering humiliation. And the president and the bureaucracy are trying to get away with it. Hats off to Meijer and Moulton, both military veterans, by the way, for showing us all that Congress is an equal branch of government -- and for refusing to let the Biden administration cover up its catastrophic failure in Afghanistan.

 

Pete Hoekstra is a former Representative in Congress from Michigan. He served as the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. More recently he was U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17679/congress-afghanistan

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Biden Admin Gives Iran's Mullahs Another Victory: Taliban Takeover - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

One of the critical opportunities that the Iranian regime sees in Taliban's takeover is that the group can once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, or Islamic State

  • In the past, the Iranian regime used to hide its ties with Taliban; not anymore.... "The Taliban today," Kayhan wrote recently, "is different from the Taliban that used to behead people." So far, there seems insufficient evidence if that is true. At the moment, it does not look that way.

  • "Thinking that the Taliban will come under Tehran's command is tantamount to growing a snake up your sleeve." — Ali Khorram, former Iranian diplomat, iranintl.com.

  • The Iranian regime seems happy to build alliances with any government or terror group that shares Tehran's hatred towards Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, Israel or the US.

  • One of the critical opportunities that the Iranian regime sees in Taliban's takeover is that the group can once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, or Islamic State -- called virtually identical "Pepsis" to the Taliban's "Coke" -- that attack the United States.

  • In 2017, a trove of 470,000 documents released by the CIA also revealed close ties between Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime. A federal court ruling, found that "Iran furnished material and direct support for the 9/11 terrorists." At least eight of the hijackers passed through Iran before heading to the US. A federal US District court ordered Iran, for its role in 9/11, to pay some of its victims more than $10 billion, although there may be no way to force Iran to comply. US Federal courts have also ruled that Iran still owes Americans $53 billion for Iran having bombed the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, and other assaults.

  • What we are seeing is that the Biden administration just handed the mullahs of Iran – as well as the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Turks -- yet another victory as they all cheer the US failure in Afghanistan and celebrate the takeover of Central Asia by terrorists.

The assumption that Iran and the Taliban are not allies because one is Shia and the other is Sunni, is woefully inaccurate. In the past, the Iranian regime used to hide its ties with Taliban; not anymore. The Iranian regime seems happy to build alliances with any government or terror group that shares Tehran's hatred towards Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, Israel or the US. Pictured: Iran's then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right) hosts Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center-left) in Tehran, Iran on January 31, 2021. (Photo by Tasnim News/AFP via Getty Images)

Among the many winners of the Biden administration's failure in Afghanistan and takeover of the country by the Taliban, are the mullahs of Iran's regime. The assumption that Iran and the Taliban are not allies because one is Shia and the other is Sunni, is woefully inaccurate.

Iran's leaders have long been waiting for this takeover -- at least one of the reasons they have been cheering America's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even before the American surrender, the Iranian regime had been meeting with the leaders of the Taliban. In January, a delegation from the Taliban was already publicly consulting with senior Iranian officials, including then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. According to him, both parties held productive talks, and discussed their ties and the future of Afghanistan

As Zarif pointed out during his discussions with the Taliban delegation, the Iranian regime was lobbying for the Taliban and stating that:

"political decisions cannot be made in a vacuum and an inclusive government must be formed in a participatory process and needs to consider all fundamental structures, institutions, and laws, such as the constitution."

In addition, in late January, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, tweeted:

"In today's meeting with the Taliban political delegation, I found that the leaders of this group are determined to fight the United States."

As the Afghan government and President Ashraf Ghani were still in control, the event apparently enraged the Afghan government. Chief of the General Staff of the Afghanistan National Army, Yasin Zia, responded to Shamkhani by tweeting:

"Unfortunately, your understanding, @aliskamkhani_ir, as the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council of the ongoing war in Afghanistan is inaccurate. The Taliban is not against the US, but it is against the people of Afghanistan. We act decisively against any group which is the enemy of people of Afghanistan."

Iran, as well as Pakistan, has long provided shelter to Taliban leaders. Taliban leaders have been traveling back on forth to Iran since 1996, when the Taliban first captured Kabul. For example, Foreign Policy magazine reported in 2016 that:

"Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed in Pakistan by an American drone last weekend after leaving Iran, where his family lives. U.S. officials say that Mullah Mansour regularly and freely traveled into and out of Iran."

The Iranian regime, like Pakistan, has long been providing Taliban with weapons and cash. In 2017, Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, accused the Iranian regime of providing the Taliban with arms and financial aid. In addition, two unnamed Western officials told Foreign Policy magazine in 2016 that the Iranian government was "providing Taliban forces along its border with money and small amounts of relatively low-grade weaponry like machine guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades."

In the past, the Iranian regime used to hide its ties with Taliban; not anymore. Kayhan, a newspaper funded by the Office of Supreme Leader of Iran and considered a mouthpiece of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been attempting to change public opinion about the Taliban. "The Taliban today," Kayhan wrote recently, "is different from the Taliban that used to behead people." So far, there seems insufficient evidence if that is true. At the moment, it does not look that way. Reports keep surfacing about people inside Afghanistan being beheaded, women having their eyes gouged out for having a job, and children as young as 12 being "dragged out of their homes" to be used as sex slaves or for forced marriages to fighters.

The Iranian leaders' attempt to create a good picture of Taliban evidently created outrage among some Iranian people who do not hold such positive views about Taliban. Former Iranian diplomat Ali Khorram, for instance, warned the regime:

"Thinking that the Taliban will come under Tehran's command is tantamount to growing a snake up your sleeve. As far as Iran's national interests are concerned, the liberal government of Ashraf Ghani is a hundred times better than a radical ISIS-Taliban government."

While many countries -- including the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland -- are evacuating their citizens from behind enemy lines and shutting their embassies in Kabul, the Iranian regime is celebrating the Taliban's takeover. Iran has kept its embassy as it was. As stated by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, quoted by the official news agency IRNA:

"The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Kabul is fully open and active. Iran's consulate general in Herat is also open and active".

The Iranian regime seems happy to build alliances with any government or terror group that shares Tehran's hatred towards Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, Israel or the US.

One of the critical opportunities that the Iranian regime sees in Taliban's takeover is that the group can once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, or the Islamic State -- called effectively identical "Pepsis" to the Taliban's "Coke" -- that attack the United States.

In 2017, a trove of 470,000 documents released by the CIA also revealed close ties between Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime. A federal court ruling, found that "Iran furnished material and direct support for the 9/11 terrorists." At least eight of the hijackers passed through Iran before heading to the US. A US Federal District court ordered Iran, for its role in 9/11, to pay some of its victims more than $10 billion, although there may be no way to force Iran to comply. US Federal courts have also ruled that Iran still owes Americans $53 billion for Iran having bombed the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983 and other assaults.

As the Taliban's takeover has caused many people from Afghanistan to flee the country, while the Iranian regime claims that it has good relationships with Afghanistan, it has closed its borders to the refugees. According to Iran's Red Crescent (IIRC), Iran's interior ministry and the regime's guards at the border were detaining Afghan refugees and returning them back across the border to Afghanistan.

What we are seeing is that the Biden administration just handed the mullahs of Iran – as well as the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Turks -- yet another victory as they all cheer the US failure in Afghanistan and celebrate the takeover of Central Asia by terrorists.

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

 
Source:https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17678/iran-taliban-victory

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The sordid secret behind the defeat of the Afghan military - IDF SSgt. (res.) Ben Kerido

 

​ by IDF SSgt. (res.) Ben Kerido

To understand the defeat of ANDSF by the Taliban, we must know how the United States Armed Forces trained the Afghan military. 

A question that many of us have been asking ourselves is how the Afghan military collapsed so quickly in the face of the Taliban assault. After all, it seems like it was only a month ago that Biden assured the American people that a Taliban take-over of Afghanistan was “not inevitable”...

Oh wait, it was just a month ago... during a press briefing on July 8th, to be precise. In that press briefing Biden stressed that the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) was comprised of approximately 300,000 trained soldiers with weaponry and equipment pitted against about 75,000 Taliban militants. Therefore, there was really no chance of the disaster scenario in Kabul we see unfolding before our very eyes – or so he said.

In that case how did the Taliban rout and defeat a force as much as four times its size in months or even weeks? After all, when the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, it took the Mujahideen about three years to topple the government. As Biden withdrew US forces, the Afghans didn't even last a month.

When Biden finally addressed the world regarding Afghanistan on August 16th, 2021, he presented a theory regarding the rapid capitulation of the ANDSF. He stated:

The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight... We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force... What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future... if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that... U.S. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.”

The Biden administration may wish to console themselves that the responsibility for the abysmal failure of the ANDSF lies solely in the hands of their Afghan allies, but there is a sordid secret just beneath the surface of his blame-shifting rhetoric.

In order to understand what happened in Afghanistan in the fight of ANDSF against the Taliban, we must first understand how the United States Armed Forces trained the Afghan military. The American military designed the ANDSF to follow an Air / ISR (Intelligence, Support, Reconnaissance) model. In simple terms that means that the Afghan ground troops rely heavily on both detailed and accurate intelligence and especially on strong air support. In other words, the effectiveness of the Afghan military is severely diminished without a functioning air force and efficient intelligence gathering and communication.

A US Department of Defense Inspector General report to Congress at the end of 2020 emphasized that an international collection of private defense contractors supplemented these functions and were absolutely crucial to the maintenance of the Afghan air force. Without the private contractors, the report indicated that the Afghan military and the air force in particular would collapse almost immediately.

Similarly, Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as well as a former US Army officer and Black Hawk helicopter pilot who served valiantly in Afghanistan, concurred. In June of 2021 – two months before the fall of Kabul – Bowman declared to the media:

"We're talking about the more or less grounding of the Afghan air force... Air power is arguably the Afghan government's main edge in its fight with the Taliban. If we don't help them maintain those aircraft, then the Afghan security forces will be deprived of that advantage, and that could have a decisive impact on the battlefield and ultimately on the state of the Afghan government."

The Biden administration didn't listen.

By July of 2021 the 18,000 vitally-important private contractors – including the crucial collection of aircraft maintenance personnel – were diminished to well under 8,000 as part of Biden's withdrawal. The Biden administration essentially hamstrung the Afghan forces while they were actively engaged in heavy battle against the Taliban militants. In that context the Afghan military failed against – and in some cases fled from – the vicious Taliban onslaught. That is the sordid secret behind the failure of the ANDSF in their struggle against the Taliban.

An analogy could be made to a teacher instructing her students how to solve complex mathematical equations with the assistance of a calculator. But just as their final test commences, the teacher removes the batteries from her students' calculators. Some of the students futilely try to solve the math problems with great difficulty; others are discouraged and walk out, knowing that a failing grade is inevitable. When the entire class fails, the teacher then berates them, claiming that their own unwillingness to learn or take their education seriously is to blame.

This is precisely what Biden did on August 16th, 2021. He even lied and falsely claimed specifically that the US was still adequately maintaining the Afghan air force when in reality he had already sent most of the contracted maintenance crews home. Even worse, rather than admit that his administration rejected the strong counsel of his own defense officials and ultimately crippled the Afghan military at their greatest hour of need, Biden instead had the audacity and the chutzpah to falsely accuse his demoralized Afghan allies of disloyalty, lack of motivation, and even cowardice.

With “friends” like these, no wonder the Afghans shrugged in despair and acquiesced to the Taliban takeover.

 

Ssgt. Ben Kerido is an IDF Paratrooper and Special Forces reservist, former US Department of Defense contractor, defense magazine article contributor, and author of the blog series “Inside Stories of the Israel Defense Force”and “Ramblings of a Reservist” on Lehavdil.com.

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/312541

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