A week ago tomorrow, Kabul fell and the Taliban gained effective control of Afghanistan.
Joe Biden and his national security team have taken that week to offer very little in the way of facts, and evidently, even less in the way of security for Americans or U.S. allies stranded there. A British reporter on the ground in Kabul reports that the things he and “hardened combat soldiers” are seeing are the worst things any of them have ever seen. He also says it’s all getting worse.
"This is the worst day by far."@ramsaysky says the situation at Kabul's airport is "utterly horrendous", and that 'hardened soldiers' told him its the "worst thing they have ever seen in their entire career" pic.twitter.com/dQwo47HMiQ
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 21, 2021
As if the chaos in Afghanistan isn’t bad enough, the Biden administration is evidently in a state of chaos itself. Biden’s plans keep changing as the news keeps making him its prisoner. He was supposed to return to Delaware today, but that changed at the last minute and now he’s staying in Washington. He had scrubbed all public comments from his schedule Thursday, then about-faced that and gave remarks and took questions Friday. That went about as well as all of his previous remarks over the past week, which is to say, it didn’t go well at all. He offered evidence that he is either totally divorced from reality or he thinks he can lie enough to divorce the American people and the entire world from reality.
Reality is grim and is reportedly getting worse in Afghanistan, as a direct result of Biden’s actions and decisions. Even now, with Americans stranded, he refuses to send in enough troops to gain any effective control over the situation as the evacuation, which is limited to just the one runway at HKIA, continues. The Taliban are trying out their new American military hardware and mocking the U.S. at the same time.
The New York Post summed up how it’s all going on its Saturday cover.
Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit rounds up some of the latest including the fact that greater Kabul is now being patrolled essentially by al Qaeda. Along with that, this.
People inside Afghanistan tell me the main gate to the Kabul airport is under Taliban control. The Sullivan gate, under NATO control, is more dangerous. #AfghanistanCrisis #Afghanistan
— Susan Katz Keating (@SKatzKeating) August 21, 2021
The State Department and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have both publicly contradicted Biden’s happy talk that Americans are able to get to HKIA because the Taliban is letting them through. That doesn’t appear to be happening, and the arms of U.S. foreign policy and national security are aware of it even if Biden, the commander-in-chief, isn’t.
This is a meltdown that could have should have been avoided. Bagram Air Base should have been the last place the U.S. left, not the first. This key decision set the ongoing chaos, and American impotence to stop it, in motion. The United States has no effective national leadership, a fact that’s not impacted at all by the departure of Kamala Harris to Singapore and Vietnam, because she offers no relevant experience to handle the issue. Harris has already failed even to address the chaos Biden has created at the U.S.-Mexico border. Harris could stay overseas forever and it wouldn’t matter.
On our way to Southeast Asia to visit Singapore and Vietnam. pic.twitter.com/DrLwSDMuhZ
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) August 21, 2021
The best the country can hope for at this point is that we get Americans out of Afghanistan and the chaos there and at the border don’t merge into a deeply serious terrorism threat on home soil. Odds are those threats will merge and many more will rise up as Biden’s chaotic reign spins out of control.
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