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It was a huge mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in our nation’s military history. But it was Joe Biden, who made that decision. I know for a fact that the military advised him not to leave Bagram.
He said we’re going to downsize to 600 Marines. And the leadership told him we can’t hold Bagram with 600 Marines. He said, I don’t care go to 600. He arbitrarily picked a number out of the sky. And they couldn’t hold that base with 600. So they collapsed to Kabul.
This is Joe Biden, and his incompetence that made that decision. And that decision is what cost those lives today. The perimeter around that base is a street wide. That’s it. But out of Bagram, you had kilometers of range that you can see the enemy coming. But not when it’s just a street in the middle of an urban area.
It’s a horrible decision. It’s 100 percent Joe Biden’s and that’s not the first lie this guy has told or I should say he’s totally disconnected from the truth, many, many other lies, and it just he needs to step down. He needs to resign or the cabinet needs to do something. //
WALTZ: –on that Bagram point because we were just briefed by the military yesterday on the Armed Services Committee, that when we went back in to evacuate the embassy, they were once again presented Joe Biden with the option of taking Bagram. And he once again didn’t choose to do so.
So, on the one hand, he didn’t listen about shutting it down too fast. By the way, 5000, hardened ISIS, Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are now on the loose, and then he didn’t listen when they had to go back in to evacuate our Embassy after the after the collapse of Kabul.
And now he’s tying the hands of our special forces who are chomping at the bit to go out into the city and outside of the city to get our Americans that are stranded. He won’t let them do that either. Their hands are being tied. So this is just incompetence. And it’s just outrageous. //
What they are saying they were told by Defense in briefings is that the military wanted to use Bagram. That would entail deploying additional troops from the US to Afghanistan to secure a much larger perimeter. Biden vetoed the recommendation and imposed an artificial limit of 600 troops. Six hundred may sound like a lot, but 600 men can barely defend themselves, much less secure checkpoints and process refugees when you are deep inside of enemy territory.
David Harsanyi
@davidharsanyi
This is like celebrating the Titanic's sinking as the most successful lifeboat rescue mission in history.
Caitlin Doornbos
@CaitlinDoornbos
Replying to @CaitlinDoornbos
Kirby just called the evacuation "the largest airlift that the U.S. military has conducted [and] got 122,000 people to safety.
"The numbers speak for themselves -- 122,000+, that is significant, and a lot of lives were saved and a lot of lives are now in a better place." //
Tea Party Patriots
@TPPatriots
"Instead of keeping his promise to the American people, President Biden kept his promise to the Taliban..." - @itsSpencerBrown //
Simply put, Joe Biden personifies the worst of partisan politics; the belief that self-aggrandizement and “winning” — at any cost — always justify any means to a non-negotiable end. Integrity, honor, and, in this case, “a few” American lives, be damned. Or, put more tactfully, “are expendable.” //
What I am talking about is Biden’s ill-conceived withdrawal, based solely on political expediency — haphazardly executed and prosecuted in a manner opposed by multiple high-ranking military leaders and former leaders, as well others. (See: “Bagram,” “American citizens first, military last.”) //
Baseball1969
an hour ago
Just in- 51 military service dogs were left behind..they were at the airport but after 3 days the DOD decided to release them on the tarmac …
The American people are not to blame for this mess. Joe Biden and those who supported him are. Never Trumpers don’t get to run from that now that things have collapsed.
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Kabul airport is without air traffic control services now that the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan, and U.S. civil aircraft are barred from operating over the country unless given prior authorization, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday.
The FAA said in a statement that "due to both the lack of air traffic services and a functional civil aviation authority in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing security concerns, U.S. civil operators, pilots, and U.S.-registered civil aircraft are prohibited from operating at any altitude over much of Afghanistan." //
The FAA said U.S. civil operators "may continue to use one high-altitude jet route near the far eastern border for overflights. Any U.S. civil aircraft operator that wants to fly into/out of or over Afghanistan must receive prior authorization from the FAA."
Schmitz said initially he wasn’t going to meet with Biden, but then said he thought he owed it to his son to share what he thought with Biden. “It didn’t go well,” he sighed. He said Biden spoke more about his own son than about Jared and “that didn’t sit well with me.”
Taylor Hoover was set to return home on September 15, retire and marry his fiancé. “It’s the absolute worst feeling in the world,” his father said. “Every one of them is a hero, there’s no doubt…They died with their brothers and their sisters right next to them, doing exactly what they all wanted to do, and that is defending this country.” In regard to Biden, Hoover said his family didn’t want him anywhere near them. Hoover said that Biden checked his watch on “every single one of them that came out of that airplane.” “They would release the salute,” he said and then he would look down at his watch, “on every last one.” “Seeing that, and the disrespect. Hearing from his, uh, former leaders. One of his master sergeants said exactly what you just said…that this was avoidable, that they left them over there, they had them over there and let them down.” Hoover said, “This can’t happen, ever again.”
Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
.@RichardEngel: "This was a humbling day for the United States, a day of humility for a world superpower. Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires...The [U.S.] fought [there] for 20 yrs and is now...withdrawing...in defeat. This is a difficult moment for the military"
.@RichardEngel: "The world's greatest military couldn't hold on and ultimately, handed the country back to the same extremists that they had toppled just a few weeks after 9/11...The next Osama bin Laden might be watching what is happening right now[.]" //
“But if you’d step back and look at what is going on, this is the United States, after 20 years. This war used to be called Operation Enduring Freedom, and it’s turned out not to be enduring and they’re not leaving a society that is free,” he said in the below clip. “It is only free according to what the Taliban says will be free, the Taliban promises that it will be free.”
“You could also look at this as a tremendously humiliating – moment of American humiliation leaving, forced to leave on the Taliban’s clock and with the Taliban’s good graces,” Engel continued. “So tactically, it makes sense, but I’m not sure how history – I think history will judge this moment as a very dark period for the United States.” //
As Engel noted in his reports, we toppled the Taliban in a matter of weeks after 9/11. And now, after 20 years, in a matter of weeks, the Taliban has control again and it’s because of the way the exit was done.
Psaki was asked Friday about members of the Marine Corps criticizing top generals on social media.
Al Jazeera English correspondent Kimberly Halkett asked, “Does [the president] believe he was given bad advice? And will he ask for any resignations of his generals given the high cost of American and Afghan lives?”
“No to both of those questions,” Psaki responded.
So that means he’s endorsing all the actions, refusing to cashier anyone. He’s explicitly endorsed the decisions. It’s all on him now //
As I pointed out previously, this mess of this withdrawal was intentional by Biden. He always intended to just pull everything out and absorb whatever the consequences were, because he didn’t think there would be a lot of consequences. “F**k that,” he said about obligations to allies, others “got away with it” when it came to Vietnam. Indeed, he’s so old, he was one of the people responsible for the Saigon failure, as well. He had no moral compass then either.
That’s been the whole problem here. The “empathetic” old “unifier” is and always has been a mean old guy who doesn’t really care about anyone other than himself.
Bill Hemmer asked what the former S.O.S. thought of how Biden laid out the deal he inherited from the Trump team. Pompeo laid it out in clear terms…
Bill, as for the deal we were very clear from the beginning with the Taliban we were negotiating with the Afghan government also we had to deal with them too, we weren’t just talking to the Taliban. We were clear with the Taliban, we had this understanding that you’re going to live up to it and we had a conditions-based withdrawal plan and we executed that. We whittled down from 15,000 to a little over 2500 troops and the last 13 months of our administration and we didn’t have a single American attack or an American killed and it wasn’t because of a piece of paper that was a set of understandings but it was because the Taliban understood that if they acted against Americans and took actions that were inconsistent with what they promised when they pushed on us in the Trump administration we responded with American power and American might. We made clear to the Taliban that deterrence was going to be maintained and the difference is with the Biden administration is that when the Taliban pushed they withdrew and showed weakness.
So how many Americans was that again? And she never answered if there was a plan past August 31. Assuming the numbers she’s saying today are correct, that means of the 105,000 people they claim to have evacuated, only 5400 were Americans, a little over five percent of the evacuees.
After numbers ranging from over 10,000 to up to 40,000 estimated Americans, the Biden team seemed to settle on the number of 6,000 Americans, claiming that’s the number they need to get out. That way they can claim they were actually successful. Except there will still be thousands stuck in Afghanistan. All their prior suggestions indicated that there were far more people.
So how many of the 105,000 people were SIV holders — the people who were also supposed to be getting high priority? The State Department can’t even say.
"I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability."
A reckoning will come for this catastrophe; military and political. For those of us who fought, it’s too much. //
Unfortunately, my colleague Streiff’s prediction came true — they just fired LTC. Scheller for what he said, and he likely knew he was risking his career to make that statement.
Scheller posted on Facebook, “I have been relieved for cause based on a lack of trust and confidence.”
Glenn Beck Tells Tucker Biden Officials Are Blocking His Effort to Save Afghan Christians – RedState
Beck also spoke with Sen. Tom Cotten (R-AR) who indicated that he’d heard similar unbelievable reports of the State Department trying to stop flights, even a British flight with Brits trying to get out their Afghan allies.
Glenn Beck
@glennbeck
I've heard reports that OUR State Department told Macedonia to stop taking Afghan refugees. @SenTomCotton tells me he's heard similar reports. If our govt won't save these people, WE WILL. But the State Dept. must stop standing in the way. //
I previously reported about how the State Department booted 500 Afghan interpreters and other Special Immigrant Visa holders after they had made it into the airport. This, even as some planes were going out with largely empty seats. It’s not clear if any of those people got out.
So this isn’t just a problem of Joe Biden being derelict in his duty here and not doing enough, there is actual active blocking of people trying to save people here. There needs to be answers as to why they would do such a horrible thing immediately because the time is running out and every action like this costs lives.
Joe Biden has presided over one of the bloodiest days of our war in Afghanistan. That day was made possible solely by his incompetence and, sad to say, the spinelessness and/or incompetence of the chain of command of the US military. Young men were put needlessly at risk to do a hazardous mission that did not need to have been done. We didn’t need to operate from a single airfield. We didn’t need to let the Taliban occupy half of that airfield. We didn’t need to put our security in the hands of the Taliban. We didn’t need to evacuate US and allied nationals and our Afghan allies under these circumstances. This situation didn’t just develop organically. These were all of these choices made by the Biden White House and its commissars in the Defense and State Departments.
It didn’t have to be this way, but it is, and Joe Biden owns all of this.
RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Nancy Pelosi jokes around for 6 minutes while completely ignoring the 12 U.S. service members killed by terrorists in Afghanistan. Unacceptable
Independent Women's Voice
@IWV
How can @SpeakerPelosi give this self- righteous speech about women’s rights while supporting the man who just abandoned Afghan women to the Taliban?
Donald Trump did a deal with the Taliban last year when they were only wannabe rulers in which all U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, before the annual Afghan fighting season got underway in that godforsaken land.
In exchange, the Taliban agreed to reduce violent attacks, mainly on Americans, forbid terrorists to set up shop there again, and to negotiate in good faith with the elected central government in Kabul.
The withdrawal commitment was political cover for the United States, so the exit wasn’t an ignominious admission of defeat, like the Soviets in 1989 and every other attempted occupier for the last 33 centuries.
No one except perhaps some kindergarteners in Arkansas expected the Taliban to live up to much of that agreement. And only those toddlers were disappointed.
For some inexplicable reason, Biden delayed the withdrawal first to the anniversary of 9/11 that started this whole mess and then to Aug. 31, which is the prime-time combat season in a land that has no NFL to follow. Taliban forces were well on the move by then.
Taking the flag down at Bagram weeks early with no contingency plan for adversity was the signal for insurgents to step on the gas. So, they did. //
During the Taliban’s swift march to victory in the Afghan mountains, Biden was AWOL on vacation in the Maryland mountains.
No one heard anything and when we finally did, Biden was not confident and decisive. He was confused, defensive, looked lost. A healthy president, asked a challenging media question, would not turn and stride away.
Today was one of the darkest days the United States has suffered in the last two decades. It opened with suicide bombings disrupting the already bungled evacuation attempt in Afghanistan. The latest count is that at least 13 American soldiers have perished, with at least 90 Afghans, including many women and children.
For nearly eight hours, the President of the United States remained silent. Shockingly, even as the death toll rose, we heard nothing. No written statement offering condolences for their deaths ever came. The White House couldn’t even muster a quick show of empathy via Joe Biden’s Twitter account. Once again, it became patently obvious that we simply don’t have a president. //
So, what now? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. But for Republicans, they are answers nonetheless. Without control of the House, the GOP cannot start hearings and investigations to figure out what went into the series of incompetent, inexcusable decisions that led us to this moment of national disgrace.
But what they can do is call for impeachment. They can call for Biden’s resignation. They can start finally talking about his clear mental and physical decline. Will any of that lead to his removal? I have no idea, but what I do know is that this is no time to sit on the sidelines and hide behind norms and decorum. Rather, this is the time to take a strong position and take no prisoners in the process.
The GOP does not need a majority to file articles of impeachment. They certainly don’t need a majority to get in front of a camera and point out that Biden is suffering from some combination of senility and dementia.
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official. //
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.
While the administration tries to take credit for top-line evacuation numbers, many outsiders — veterans, diplomats, NGOs and others — have been frantically coordinating to help American citizens and Afghan allies escape because the normal channels are chaotic. One such group of veterans has taken to calling themselves “digital Dunkirk” or “Task Force Dunkirk,” referring to the mass evacuation of allied troops from France in 1940.
“We are having to come up with alternatives to get people in,” said Mick Mulroy, a former defense official and CIA officer and Dunkirk member. “The sheer masses of people are making it very difficult.”
Members of these informal groups and the soldiers in the airport they are working with are increasingly frustrated by the bureaucracy and lack of support from the State Department. One person involved in the efforts shared screenshots of a chat with a soldier who expressed anger with State officials interfering at the last minute.
“They’re f---ing changing up everything because they decided to show up for the first time,” the soldier texted, after State officials changed the location for processing American citizens at the last minute.
EXC: Joe Biden’s State Dept Halted A Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan Aimed At Avoiding Benghazi-Style Evacuations Just MONTHS Before Taliban Takeover.
Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. //
The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” – which was designed to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support concerning Americans overseas was paused by Antony Blinken’s State Department earlier this year. Notification was officially signed just months before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
No matter what they say, this is a national disgrace. Americans and friendly Afghans will be left behind. The Taliban controlled access to the airport as well as setting the deadline for finishing the mission. Our troops were not allowed to leave the airport to try to find US citizens and loyal Afghans. This was not the Berlin Airlift. We’ll be damned lucky if it doesn’t turn out to be Dien Bien Phu. //
conservativecurmudgeon
11 minutes ago
Okay, we will take them at their word.
This is the greatest “airlift” since the early days of the Cold War. Of course, the Berlin Airlift was FAR more concerned with getting goods in than getting people out. But, no matter...
The reason we’ve had all three —the Cold War, the Berlin Air Lift, and now Biden’s Catastrophe in Kabul is because of the utter incompetence of the leftist worldview...
We EVEN HAD the Cold War because of the likes of Klaus Fuchs, Harry Hopkins and Alger Hiss, who were left in positions of real power —and who were handing atomic secrets to the Russians— during the reign of FDR; and, Roosevelt likely knew this, and did nothing. Roosevelt (a true classical global leftist) had a real man-crush on Stalin and all things totalitarian, and he saw nothing wrong with all the REAL Reds in his midst. If we’d had even a tithe of moderating influence of, say, an Arthur Vandenburg at Yalta, the Iron Curtain would not have likely descended to the degree it did... but, it was polluted with the likes of Edward Stettinius and Bedell Smith, and others that viewed the Russians then as the High Command views China now— strategic partners that might be a bit overbearing, but hey: those Commies get things done, right?
Not to mention: there would have been no NEED for a Berlin Airlift —had Truman been more confident in his atomic Arsenal. We had our vast numerical superiority at the time— the Russians would very likely have backed down anyway. But, again, most of the post-war high command (with the obvious exception of Curtis LeMay) was still enthralled with Papa Joe...
Which leads us to today: Joe Biden is (or, what’s left of Joe Biden) is just fine with 7th Century Primitives using the advanced technology his own countrymen paid for and developed, and that is currently being used by these Islamic barbarians to flay and martyr Americans; he rather likes strongmen and authoritarianism, and has always thought more highly of coercive groups than sovereign individuals. He’s fine if America takes a shot in the neck as long as global coercive collectivism is advanced.
It’s a straight line from FDR to Biden— and both created existential crisis that our valiant air forces had to fix.
we now know why Biden and his cohorts have been so careful to not criticize the Taliban and to not label them an enemy — the administration is taking orders from them.
Of course, aside from the realities on the ground in Afghanistan, this humiliation goes much further in damaging the credibility and capability of the United States. What do you think China is going to take from all this as they set their sights on Taiwan? Or the Russians who were just “punished” by the laughable sanction of banning ammo sales to Americans (a move meant to hurt American gun owners, not Putin)? You can bet Iran is getting ready to take us to the cleaners as well. //
Skeptical Techie swhitebull
a day ago
Dien Bien Phu pales by comparison to the cataclysm Biden has precipitated. We are only in the beginning phases. The enslavement and body counts are as yet incalculable. The far-reaching consequences go far beyond Kabul and Afghanistan. We know already, they stretch to the South China Sea, Japan and Taiwan. The extent of the damage and carnage on a geographic scale are yet to unfold enough to allow a meaningful forecast as to the ultimate costs