5331 private links
A fund started by radio host Glenn Beck raised more than $20 million in less than three days to help evacuate Christians from Afghanistan.
The Nazarene Fund is gearing up to extract approximately 5,000 people, mostly women and children, from Afghanistan as the country descends into chaos and the Taliban take over, according to The Blaze. //
According to their website, The Nazarene Fund exists “to liberate the captive, to free the enslaved, and to rescue, rebuild and restore the lives of Christians and other persecuted religious and ethnic minorities wherever and whenever they are in need.” //
"The Taliban is stopping you, checking your phone. If you have a Bible app or anything to do with Jesus on your phone, you’re instantly being killed. They are setting Christians on fire, those who have converted because they’re the worst, according to the Taliban.” //
“Please pray for these people,” Beck added, who later said most of the millions in donations were small ones.
This is a dishonest and despicable spin that no one, not even the author, believes. It is partisan hackery, it is stupid. But that, in a nutshell, describes our “foreign policy experts.”
A former aide to former Vice President Mike Pence blamed racist views of a top Trump administration official for the inability of many translators and other allies to get out of Afghanistan before the U.S. withdrew troops. //
Miller said in a statement Saturday that "the sole reason that anyone is stranded in Afghanistan is because Joe Biden stranded them there in the single most imbecilic act of strategic incompetence in human history."
"All the desperate lying liars in the world can’t change that one inescapable fact," he said.
Miller's wife, Katie, who was Pence's communications director, tweeted out a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service showing the number of special immigrant visas for Iraqis and Afghans was higher during the Trump administration than during the last four years of the Obama administration.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R43725.pdf //
Olivia of Troye
@OliviaTroye
·
Aug 20, 2021
🧵There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov’t would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State.(1/7)
Olivia of Troye
@OliviaTroye
I tracked this issue personally in my role during my WH tenure. Pence was fully aware of the problem. We got nowhere on it because Trump/S. Miller had watchdogs in place at DOJ, DHS, State & security agencies that made an already cumbersome SIV process even more challenging.(2/7)
Pence, in a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, said the Biden administration’s “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a foreign policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-pence-biden-broke-our-deal-with-the-taliban-11629238764
Pence said Biden had no plan to "facilitate the regional resettlement of the thousands of Afghan refugees who will now be seeking asylum in the U.S. with little or no vetting."
State Department spokesman Ned Price this week said the Biden administration inherited a special immigrant visa system that had chronic shortages in staffing, lacked a coordinating official and had a bureaucratic 14-step process that was enshrined in statute.
At Biden’s direction, Price said, the administration added resources and made enough changes to shave more than a year off the average processing time.
The number of visas issued went from 100 in March to 813 visas per week recently, according to Price.
We are ruled by buffoons who embellish their incompetence with a disdain for Americans and Constitutional freedoms. They are protected by a deeply corrupt and highly partisan civil service that will deceive the American people to protect a Democrat and engage in the ruthless character assassination of any Republican. Top cover for both is flown by the fearless firefighters in our media who will never do anything beyond acting as stenographers for any Democrat administration. We are at the point where virtually any foreign government should be considered more reliable than our own. //
Genna
an hour ago
Every member of the Biden administration who spoke to us this week about the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan withdrawal lied to us, contradicted one another and dodged uncomfortable questions. While telling us the evacuation is going well, people on the ground in Kabul and videos shot in real time tell a very different story. Why should we believe the infrastructure bill is an important piece of legislation that will benefit the American people, the COVID vaccines are safe and effective and the southern border is secure
As the pressure to evacuate people from Kabul airport grows, the US military has released updated figures for one of its flights. It reports that a C-17 Globemaster aircraft evacuated 823 Afghan citizens on August 15th. This is a new record for the type – by a long way – and gives some idea of the scale of the operation underway.
In a Twitter post on August 20th, US Air Mobility Command released confirmed and updated figures for one of its many evacuation flights from Kabul. We recently reported that a new record was set for a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft when it carried 640 Afghan citizens out of Hamid Karzai International Airport. This has now been increased to a massive 823.
Air Mobility Command
@AirMobilityCmd
CORRECTION: A @usairforce C-17 Globemaster III safely transported 823 Afghan citizens from Hamid Karzai International Airport Aug. 15, 2021. This is a record for this aircraft.
The initial count of 640 inadvertently included only adults. 183 children were also aboard. //
It is also not the first time this has happened. While it is a record for the C-17, it is not a record overall. In 1991, over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated from Ethiopia to Israel as part of Operation Solomon. This involved Boeing 707, Boeing 747, and Hercules C-130 aircraft. One El Al Boeing 747 aircraft is recorded as transporting 1,080 people (estimates vary, but even lower estimates are a record).
Sebastian Smith
@SebastianAFP
The 1 pm remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan are not happening at 1... No new time announced by White House.
1:05 PM · Aug 20, 2021
Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
Biden dismisses the State Department dissent cable, brushing it off as no big deal: "I have all kinds of cables. All kinds of advice."
Then there was this excellent question which asked Biden why we should trust his assessment of Afghanistan now after he was so wrong about the Taliban’s advance.
Curtis Houck
@CurtisHouck
This question from Bloomberg's Justin Sink is better than Zeke's about how can Biden say a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan going forward won't pose a serious terrorism threat.
Peter J. Hasson
@peterjhasson
Fox's @JenGriffinFNC responding to Biden's Afghanistan speech: "I couldn't fact check it fast enough because there are so many misrepresentations of what is happening on the ground."
2:21 PM · Aug 20, 2021
Skeptical Techie
3 hours ago edited
Is there anybody who can not understand that handing over multiple easily destroyed caches of some of our best and most technically advanced weapons to the CCP and Putin (our most dangerous enemies) should suffice as at least "Crimes and misdemeanors"?
There are two suspects Harris/Biden in the same class (and both in the direct chain of command), subject to the same laws and procedures. Impeach and prosecute them together. As for Harris's culpability, it should be argued that due to, at least, intermittent incapacity and/or absence of the President, she was in command or should have taken command and thus, just as culpable.
Indict and prosecute each civilian in the direct line of command from SecDef through to SecArmy, SecNav & SecAir.
Following UCMJ, do the equivalent to CJCS but add in dereliction of duty for not being even reasonably informed. Use his own recent statements as exhibit A through...
At the same time, make motions in the house to remove the Speaker and Senate to remove the Minority Leader. Consider motions to remove the Ranking Member of both Armed Forces Committees.
Maybe also set precedent in both chambers calling for a nonbinding vote of no confidence in all the above noted leadership, by title and name. //
Skeptical Techie DeeInFL
2 hours ago edited
The last 20 years are irrelevant!
The only relevant facts are how the President acted with the situation at hand. The same could be said for the Vice President whenever, over the last few days, the President was absent and/or incapacitated as she was in command or should have taken command.
The current situation is 98% the results of the actions taken in the last days back to a week or two at the most. At any point up to when those impetuous and derelict commands and actions were taken, this current situation could have been averted and then mitigated as much as reasonable.
All the latter impetuosity and dereliction were in the direct control of the President, Vice President, SecDef, SecNav/SecArmy/SecAir and CJCS and only to a moderate degree less further down the chain of command. Everyone below the President had opportunities to resist those precipitous actions, at the very least by protesting and resigning. By virtue of all the USA hardware, technology and sensitive information left behind for the Taliban to later be turned over to the CCP and Putin was, at the least, dereliction of duty. Then there are the enormous human costs, which are nowhere near their zenith.
MPs and peers unite to condemn ‘dishonour’ of US president’s withdrawal and his criticism of Afghan troops left behind to face Taliban /
Joe Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was condemned as "catastrophic" and "shameful" on Wednesday as the Houses of Parliament delivered an unprecedented rebuke to a US president.
MPs and peers from across the political spectrum, including Boris Johnson, put some blame for the Taliban's takeover and the chaos that followed on Britain's closest ally.
Mr Biden was accused of "throwing us and everybody else to the fire" by pulling out US troops, and was called "dishonourable" for criticising Afghan forces for not having the will to fight.
Former defence chiefs who led British troops in the Middle East were among those to speak out, while there were warnings that the West's withdrawal would embolden Russia and China.
The interventions mark a deterioration in UK-US relations almost exactly 20 years after Britain joined America in invading Afghanistan to root out terrorism after the September 11 attacks.
But it was not just Mr Biden who faced criticism, with Mr Johnson and his ministers told they had overseen the worst disaster in British foreign policy for 65 years.
The Prime Minister was accused of not doing enough to rally allies to support Afghanistan as the US departure became apparent, including by his predecessor, Theresa May.
A former soldier-turned-Conservative MP just lit up the House of Commons in an emotional speech about the failure in Afghanistan and the ‘shameful’ actions of Joe Biden.
As a veteran who served there, Tom Tugendhat said he was feeling a mixture of “anger, grief, and rage” over what has happened, given the sacrifices that people have made, including watching “good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us.” He noted how many who had served were “struggling” over the emotional reaction to this. //
“The Cold War was won with patience. Cypress is at peace with patience. South Korea with almost ten times the number of troops that America had in Afghanistan, is prosperous through patience. So let’s stop talking about forever wars. Let’s recognize that forever peace is bought not cheaply, but hard, through determination and the will to endure. And that the tragedy of Afghanistan is that we’re swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.”
Unfortunately, Biden has all but guaranteed we will be dealing with a terrorist state, supporting terrorism around the world — the very thing we went there to stop and confront. He’s made it so much worse now with the incompetence of the pullout. That’s a terrible thing to understand after 20 years of war and as we approach the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.
Tugendhat related a story from his fighting days:
“It is the image of a man whose name I never knew, carrying a child who had died hours earlier, carrying this child into our firebase and begging for help. There was nothing we could do. It was over.
Mr. Speaker, this is what defeat looks like — it’s when you no longer have the choice of how to help. This doesn’t need to be defeat. But at the moment, it damn well feels like it.” //
2buildit2
a day ago
That was worth watching.
There is some ironic overload that the shrill hysteria about DJT being erratic and Biden being the sane adult has resulted in Joe Biden making these United States seem an unreliable ally. Bidens glaring error and inability to respond to reality and the slavish ideologues in his cabinet have tarnished our good name.
I wrote here before the election that Joe Biden as president , the Neville Chamberlain of our time, would almost guarantee war with China. I was naive. He'll just surrender.
Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
Two remarkable lines in today’s papers from @Steven_Swinford @benrileysmith
— UK military left in the dark by the US about timings and pace of their withdrawal… UK official confirms this is the case
— Biden ignored Boris Johnson’s attempts to speak on the phone for 36+ hours //
Was Biden incapacitated? It’s not like this was a request from the president of Thailand. We are talking about our oldest and closest ally in the British. And Biden took almost two days to even return their phone call as Afghanistan descended into absolute chaos?
Further, the UK military was reportedly left completely in the dark about what the US was doing as far as pulling out. Timelines were not given, no preparations were made with NATO forces (which had more personnel on the ground than we did), and when the time came, pandemonium predictably broke out. Why was there no communication?
None of this makes any sense. As I asked yesterday, if Biden were trying to cause chaos in Afghanistan, what would he be doing differently? Is this incompetence or malice at this point? It’s hard to imagine a motive for the latter given this is going to hurt him politically, but we are at the junction where things are so haywire that all angles should be explored.
The United States is in a precarious position, disdained by our allies and unable to strike fear into our adversaries. Despite being assured that was going to be the result of Trump’s presidency by the same mediocre experts who never get anything right, the country came out of his four years stronger and more respected around the globe. It’s only taken seven months for Biden to tear all that down.
one would think General Milley, with several decades of experience, should have had the foresight to see this coming disaster. If he didn’t see the oncoming wreck, he should resign. If he did see it coming and testified to the contrary, he should resign.
If he truly didn’t see this disaster speeding toward him, he’s not fit for the position he holds and he should resign. //
My family has served in America’s military back to the Revolutionary War – the most recent being my eldest son who served as a SEAL for almost a decade. I don’t criticize the men and women in harm’s way, I am critical of those who lead them.
I am critical of politicians and inept generals. Milley is apparently both. In my estimation, he stopped being a “leader of men” when he testified about wanting to “understand white rage”, the “rage he claimed fueled the January 6th riot. That testimony barely 6 weeks ago focused wholly outside the charge of our military. His focus should be our enemies abroad. He should have been focused on a very real rage – that of the Taliban which would soon consume Afghanistan. He should have concentrated his “understanding on contingencies for getting Americans out of harm’s way before Afghanistan turned into a burning cauldron. Instead, we have thousands of Americans trapped outside the wire.
ABC News
@ABC
“When push came to shove, they decided not to step up and fight for their country.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan places blame for the speed of the Taliban takeover on the Afghan national security forces. https://abcn.ws/3jW8jvH
Marco Rubio
@marcorubio
What a bunch of crap
This administration was specifically told Afghan forces would surrender faster than our ability to exit.
They decided to ignore these warnings & smugly tell everyone how smart & brilliant they are. //
One intelligence official told ABC News that “no one listened” when they told the administration “it would take no time at all for the Taliban to take everything.”
Biden didn’t only prove himself to be a fool on the matter just a few weeks later but reiterated during his speech that he had “no regrets” on his withdrawal plan. This is perhaps the most egregious thing said by Biden during the whole presser. //
Biden’s speech was everything you could have expected from Biden: The speech was filled with various finger-pointing at Trump, at the military, at the Afghan people, despite it ending ironically with a Truman-Esque “the buck stops here.” But yet, the symbolism that truly showed through at that presser was when Biden had to then turn his back on the cameras and walk away. Worse than that, he then walked outside to Marine One to head back on vacation.
He didn’t take any questions. He didn’t act like a person who is in charge. He acted like he was checking a box. “Well, I addressed the country. Can I go back on vacation now?” In fact, Biden created more questions than answered them. Remember, just a few weeks ago, Biden said Afghanistan was not going to become a new Vietnam, and any withdrawal would not lead to Taliban control on the country. //
We already know what they plan to do to the country that we have spent 20 years, 2 trillion dollars, and thousands of American lives to create and Joe Biden was willing to throw all that out. Worse yet, even with the benefit of hindsight, he has no regret.
Yet, despite these huge errors in judgment, Mr. “The Buck Stops Here” didn’t stick around after his presser to accept questions. //
He turned his back on the military. He turned his back on the Embassy officials still on the ground. He turned his back on our allies who are still in the country. He turned his back on the Afghan people. He turned his back on the Gold Star Families, wounded veterans, and others who were lucky enough to return home. He turned his back on the local interpreters who saved countless American lives. It isn’t like the President doesn’t see the same images we see or isn’t terrified by the same video we are seeing. In fact, he probably has access to even more footage and data. Not so much as a plan, a promise, or a guarantee. Despite all these horrible results of his failure to plan, he has no regrets. //
DarthCY
7 hours ago
Why do people assume Biden has a conscience? He knew this would happen and just didn't care. Quit trying to measure him by standards of decent human beings. Nothing in his history shows he has morals or decency.
Tom Cotton
@SenTomCotton
If you’re an American stranded in Afghanistan, or know one who is, please contact my office immediately:
(501) 223-9081 or
evac@cotton.senate.gov
The situation is dire, but we’ll do everything in our power to help keep you informed and to help get you out.
4:06 PM · Aug 15, 2021
Angelo Carusone
@GoAngelo
Imagine being trapped in Afghanistan in this moment..and thinking best person to call is Tom Cotton of all people.
Honestly, if someone’s in that situation where Tom Cotton is the only number they can call, they’d be better off just calling NYC’s 311. I mean really. Tom Cotton.
Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
Cotton spokesman says that their office has heard from multiple US citizens in Kabul trapped behind Taliban checkpoints, who can’t safely reach the US perimeter and have no clear option for what to do. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/s //
Nick Pappas
@NickAPappas
Have you considered the possibility this was so botched that they didn’t have anything besides a phone number on Tom Cotton’s Twitter account?
9:33 PM · Aug 15, 2021
Christina Pushaw
@ChristinaPushaw
Yeah, why would you call a Senator who served in Afghanistan when you could have called Biden?
Oh wait, Biden was on the phone to the Broward superintendent praising the forced masking of kindergarteners. Then he went on vacation.
8:02 AM · Aug 16, 2021
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
Scummiest tweet of the week comes, unsurprisingly, from the head of Media Matters: condemning a US Senator for using his office to try to help Americans get out of Afghanistan safely rather than just tweeting empty, performative "demands" -- all because he's a Republican.
This is already a disaster in Afghanistan. But may get even worse.
There are thousands of Americans still trapped in Afghanistan. According to the Biden team, 5,000-10,000 are still trapped near Kabul, but John Kirby said they didn’t have a real count, showing more ignorance. //
Sara Cook
@saraecook
Replying to @saraecook
The below note went out this afternoon to American citizens requesting to be evacuated from Afghanistan, @alanacbs reports. It instructs people to come to Hamid Karzai Intl Airport in Kabul, but says the US govt cannot guarantee their safety as they make the trip. @CBSNews //
Richard Grenell
@RichardGrenell
American citizens are told they are on their own in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden has failed us.
The Afghan government started disintegrating a month or more ago. The intelligence community has been forecasting that the Taliban would emerge victorious within 90 days. And yet, nothing has been done to evacuate Americans or process eligible Afghans for refugee visas.
Apparently, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley had successfully sold President Trump on keeping a residual force in Kabul and believed he could sweet-talk Biden into doing the same. But, at the same time, the Pentagon did nothing to plan or prepare for the withdrawal to try to forestall the event. //
Eric Brakey
@SenatorBrakey
I am hearing the U.S. was unprepared in Afghanistan because the Pentagon slow-walked Trump’s withdrawal order—hoping they could pressure @JoeBiden to cancel the peace deal completely.
9:55 PM · Aug 15, 2021 //
Having worked directly for one of the three-stars on the Army Staff, I can tell you this resonates with me. The standard Pentagon response, at least on the Army side, to any task you don’t want to do is to nod vigorously while doing absolutely nothing. //
To me, this all sounds like the military leadership (can we start putting Lloyd Austin’s face on milk cartons yet, because he hasn’t been seen for a week) convinced itself that it had persuaded Biden to slow down the withdrawal and adhere to their recommendations. They might have convinced themselves that they had convinced Biden to cancel the Afghan withdrawal completely just as he had with most of President Trump’s initiatives. Then, unexpectedly, Biden decided that he was plowing ahead, and yes, his callous disregard for human life played into that decision and pulled the trigger on the withdrawal. The military and State were left flat-footed because they’d refused to take any preliminary steps needed to evacuate noncombatants and friendly Afghans.
One of the iconic social media images of President (so-called) Biden, other than him doing a faceplant on the stairs of Air Force One, is him with an ice cream cone. //
It seems as though the Taliban have seen the images.
Abdulhaq Omeri
@AbdulhaqOmeri
#Taliban eat ice-cream #Kabul #Afghanistan .
It is hard to credit the idea that you could get four hardened fighters to pose with ice cream cones in Afghanistan today unless they were trying to send a message: that Joe Biden is a joke, and they are laughing at him.
That was pretty horrible to read — that indeed he was looking at Vietnam actions as a model of what he could get away with.
But that isn’t all. He blamed Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. But that wasn’t who was responsible. Guess who was involved in 1975, too? You guessed it — Joseph R. Biden and the Congressional Democrats.
Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸
@JackPosobiec
During the 1975 Fall of Saigon, Joe Biden had already been a Senator for 2 years
8:04 AM · Aug 15, 2021 //
In the spring of 1975, as North Vietnamese divisions approached Saigon, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese with connections to the U.S.—soldiers, officials, spies, interpreters, drivers, bar girls, cooks—begged their American friends and colleagues to help them find a way out. But the embassy in Saigon and the Ford administration in Washington were slow to face the gravity of the situation and reluctant to prepare an evacuation for fear of panicking the population into chaos. In mid-April, President Gerald Ford finally realized that the government of South Vietnam might fall, and he asked Congress for $300 million in emergency aid, including money to evacuate the remaining 2,500 Americans and their dependents along with up to 175,000 South Vietnamese.
But Congress, led by Senate Democrats, had no interest in throwing away more money on a lost war that Americans wanted to forget. The prospect of sending U.S. troops to help evacuate Vietnamese along with Americans was a nonstarter. Some of the most strenuous objections came from the 32-year-old first-term senator from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden.
“I feel put upon in being presented an all-or-nothing number,” Biden said at a rare White House meeting between the president and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 14. “I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out.”
Ford countered: “We opened our door to the Hungarians. I am not saying the situation is identical, but our tradition is to welcome the oppressed. I don’t think these people should be treated any differently from any other people—the Hungarians, Cubans, Jews from the Soviet Union.”
Biden and other Democrats were unmoved. In a Senate speech on April 23, Biden argued that the president lacked the authority to rescue any Vietnamese. “I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals” other than diplomats of third countries, Biden said. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.” The U.S. should leave the task of protecting them to “the organizations that are available” and “diplomatic channels,” he added. A week later, North Vietnamese tanks entered the grounds of the presidential palace in Saigon just hours after the last helicopter carried the last Americans out of Vietnam. //
Here he is at the funeral of Sen. George McGovern in 2012, saying that he was right about Vietnam.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/we-cant-abandon-afghans-who-helped-us/618416/
....
Here he is at the funeral of Sen. George McGovern in 2012, saying that he was right about Vietnam.
Howard Mortman
@HowardMortman
.@AnnieLinskey : "2 weeks before Saigon fell in April 1975, Joe Biden was among senators summoned to WH for top-secret briefing on crisis Vietnam" https://washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vietnam-afghanistan/2021/08/15/fd155518-fdd5-11eb-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html
Biden told that story 10/25/2012 McGovern funeral:
"5 weeks later helicopters taking off roof...I was right"
7:00 AM · Aug 16, 2021
So, not only was Joe Biden involved in this debacle in Afghanistan, he was involved in the Saigon debacle as well. He didn’t have any moral compass then and he doesn’t have any moral compass on it now. All those folks who helped us are just to be tossed aside. All he had taken away from it by 2012 was that “he was right” when he was so manifestly wrong.