The Morning Briefing: Team Biden Seems Caught Off Guard by Predictable Taliban Tragedy

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. I’m still trying to figure out how the pub cheese got on the ceiling.

It’s been one of those weeks here in the Kruiser Bunker. This weekend may very well involve a bourbon IV drip. That’s probably frowned upon by most medical professionals, but I know what works for me. I’m a big believer in being true to myself.

Since January 20, we’ve been subjected to a daily barrage of awful news, brought to us courtesy of the Joe Biden Oval Office Puppet Show. This isn’t a presidency, it’s a national disaster. Biden’s Cabinet meetings should be run by FEMA.

It can be difficult to figure out which firehose of awfulness to focus on during any given news cycle. One of the stories lurking in the background recently is the unmitigated disaster that is our hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. As with all Biden administration policy, the withdrawal seems like it was thrown together by a bunch of drunks who take all of their cues from MSNBC.

A.J. Kaufman wrote yesterday about the present state of miserable affairs in the situation:

President Joe Biden’s irresponsible and unnecessary decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan is becoming the most predictable travesty of his troubled administration.

As anyone who wasn’t playing partisan politics predicted, the Taliban is retaking Afghanistan in an appalling fashion. The rapidly deteriorating situation is a humanitarian and national security tragedy.

On Thursday, the Pentagon decided to send troops to help evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and also assist at the Kabul airport. Kabul is expected to fall within a month.

The Taliban has captured nearly two-thirds of the country, including 10 provincial capitals in the last week, and now Ghazni, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, strategically situated on the main road between Kabul and Kandahar.

While many of us predicted this debacle four months ago, Biden administration officials inexplicably did not believe the collapse would occur so quickly.

Bryan and I were discussing that yesterday on the VIP live chat — this was all too easily predictable, yet Team Biden seems to have been caught off guard by what’s happening with the Taliban. One often wonders if there are ever any functional adults in the room with this administration.

To be sure, many Americans long ago grew weary of our presence in Afghanistan. That doesn’t mean a hastily arranged shambles of a retreat was called for.

More from AJ:

Do progressives, libertarians, and isolationists realize that as we demonstrate a lack of will, our enemies are watching? Many yell clichés about “forever wars” but our question is not whether the U.S. will leave a country, but whether it does so responsibly.

Rick had more yesterday about the ongoing mess:

The Biden administration is putting out feelers to the Taliban begging them not to attack our embassy in Kabul and are dangling foreign aid as a bribe.

It’s a fitting end to our involvement in a “Forever War” that ended up with the United States bartering with the enemy for a safe exit.

The Biden administration is already urging Americans there who are not working for the government to get out while the going is good.

There are 1,400 Americans working at our billion-dollar embassy in Kabul and the Biden administration would rather not have a repeat of the Saigon experience where pictures and films showing our evacuation from the U.S. embassy depicted people hanging out of helicopters trying desperately to leave. The images made an indelible mark on many Americans of that generation.

While I was working on the above, this came in from The Wall Street Journal:

KABUL—The Taliban completed the seizure of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and the Islamist movement’s birthplace, and took into custody a warlord who organized the failed defenses of the western city of Herat.

Combined with other advances, including the capture of the provincial capital of Helmand, the fall of these two major cities has given the Taliban full control of southern and western Afghanistan, allowing the insurgent movement to pool its forces for a final march on Kabul.

This is yet another mess created by Team Biden for reasons that will probably remain a mystery. Coherent, measured policy simply does not exist for this administration.

Saigon 2.0 may still happen.

Everything Isn’t Awful

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Reduct This

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