Afghanistan - America- Chaos

Joe Biden’s Surrender Is an Ugly, Needless Disaster
Matt Lewis, The Daily Beast
Sun, August 15, 2021, 4:02 PM

With the Taliban retaking Afghanistan amid a frenzied U.S. exit, I am reminded that Robert Gates, Barack Obama’s defense secretary, famously said that Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That isn’t an exaggeration.

Biden opposed the Persian Gulf War (later, reversing his decision and saying George H.W. Bush should have gone all the way to Baghdad) and supported the Iraq War, before opposing the surge in Iraq (not to mention famously wanting to partition Iraq into three countries). As vice president, he opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

This brings us to Afghanistan. As recently as a month ago, Biden denied a Taliban takeover was inevitable. Everyone knew that was wrong. Everyone except Biden, I suppose. Based on his horrible track record, we can assume he was being sincere. If he wasn’t, he would have demanded a more responsible exit plan before proceeding.

Biden inherited an Afghanistan where Americans were suffering few casualties, and where a small residual force was seemingly maintaining some semblance of order (not to mention preventing the country from once again being used as a staging ground for international terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S.). With his what-could-go-wrong withdrawal, he has managed to turn it into the tragic debacle that is happening now in front of our eyes.

To be sure, Biden didn’t do it alone. His predecessor, Donald Trump, deserves much of the blame. Biden claims that, by withdrawing forces, he’s honoring his predecessor’s commitment. But he has reversed lots of other Trump policies, didn’t adhere to Trump’s May 1 deadline for withdrawal, and could have easily cited examples of the Taliban not living up to their side of the agreement as reason enough to scuttle the deal.

The point is that Biden was not locked in to following through with Trump’s unwise “America First” policy. As much as Trump deserves blame for this situation (and so much more), the fall of Afghanistan is happening on Biden’s watch. This is his rodeo. This is, if not his Vietnam, his fall of Saigon.

Now, Biden is rushing troops back into Afghanistan to try and end or at least mitigate the optics of a desperate evacuation that leaves translators and other allies and Afghans who’d depended on us behind. But it’s already terribly late, as the civilians waiting for flights that may never come can vouch.

Some people believe that Biden’s real problem was his execution. For example, why would he refuse to leave a residual force behind, and why would he time his withdrawal for the summer fighting season? With more prudent logistics and better timing, Biden might have bought a cushion of time between the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban takeover. That would have resulted in better PR for Biden, but the fundamental problem was the decision to withdraw U.S. troops without leaving a residual force behind—not the hamfisted way he did it.

It could have been even worse. Biden originally had this insane idea of linking the Afghanistan withdrawal to September 11, and that may be why he couldn’t wait for the fighting season to end before giving in. In his mind, he somehow thought that ending a 20-year war on this particular date would be romantic and symbolic. And it would. For the Taliban!

In this pathetic departure, with American arms again ending up with our enemies as they did in Iraq, Biden is reinforcing the notion that our enemies can simply outlast us. Likewise, he is demonstrating (as Trump before him did with the Kurds) that putting your neck on the line for this nation is a fool’s errand. These decisions will make any future military interventions that more difficult.

This naivete is on full display with the anemic threats the U.S. is now issuing. Their behavior could lead to “international isolation.” Executions, our embassy warns, show a lack of “human rights.” It’s not a perfect analogy, but I am reminded of Die Hard, when John McClane tries to use a police radio to report a terrorist attack and is threatened with an FCC violation: “Fine, report me. Come the fuck down here and arrest me!” The Taliban are pillaging, executing and pressing 15-year-old girls into “service” as Taliban brides while we are threatening to, what, ruin their reputation in the international community?

In short, it’s a shit show. If you had told me 10 ten years ago that Biden would be elected president to clean up after Trump, I would have worried about precisely this kind of mess. Trump was so chaotic and dangerous that Biden, who (aside from his track record of bad foreign policy calls) had been a handsy gaffe machine, looked like Abe Lincoln by comparison. Today, however, we are witnessing the one-two punch of the Trump-Biden era. The scene unfolding in Afghanistan is exactly what you might expect from a policy that both men endorsed.

Photos and videos appear to show Afghans trying to flee the Taliban falling out of planes as they leave Kabul airport
Tom Porter, Business Insider
Mon, August 16, 2021, 7:07 AM

People clinging to jets leaving Kabul airport have fallen to their deaths, local media reported.

There were scenes of chaos at Kabul airport as crowds stormed the runaway and tried to enter planes.

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in a rapid effort that overwhelmed Afghan forces.

People have fallen to their deaths after clinging to C-17 jets as they took off from Kabul airport, in an attempt to flee the Taliban in Afghanistan, local media reported.

Footage posted on Twitter by the Afghan news agency Aśvaka appeared to show a person falling from a plane as it took off from the airport.

More story, photos, and videos at https://news.yahoo.com/photos-videos-appear-show-afghans-130713678.html

BREAKING NEWS:
Former President Donald J Trump has been out of office for EIGHT months. All calls are now made by the Democrat owned Senate, House and White House.
How much clearer can it get?

Inco cho owns this Kabul fiasco lock stock and barrel.

Temple wrote:

///

((again; Under Trump's treaty/agreement,
the USA had to be out of Afghanistan by May 1,
and Biden renegotiated this deal for August....
get out or go to full-blown war..
the 2 choices.))

So, Biden's plan is for a full out war. Swell.

This picture is of the Afghan Taliban as they are taking over the country.

All aspects of this photo REQUIRE CRITICAL THINKING. How observant are you? Can you apply logic to certain aspects and situations around which this picture revolves?

Think for yourself. But yes, the first obvious thing is there is a MAGA hat displayed at Taliban headquarters.

Begin asking WHY. That is only the first and simplest question.

The Wise And Powerful wrote:

Temple wrote:

///

((again; Under Trump's treaty/agreement,
the USA had to be out of Afghanistan by May 1,
and Biden renegotiated this deal for Augustrenegotiated this deal for August this deal for August....
get out or go to full-blown war..
the 2 choices.))

So, Biden's plan is for a full out war. Swell.

No- Biden honored trumps treaty for a full pullout
by May 1st--
But- Biden renegotiated the pull-out date for August..
Same trump treaty for full-pull-out as signed trump/word treaty.

Biden just renegotiated trumps deal for August ..
(3-month extension)

Taliban collect ammo guns from civilians after takeover: report
The Taliban captured an array of modern military equipment when they overran Afghan force
By Edmund DeMarche | Fox News | published 2 hours ago


Vowing that they will not "harm innocent civilians," the Taliban have started to collect guns and ammunition from Afghan civilians in Kabul, a report said.

Reuters, citing a Taliban official, reported that the group said people in the city will no longer need to hold onto their weapons because they no longer need personal protection.

"They can now feel safe," the official told the outlet.

Reuters spoke to one business owner who said Taliban fighters already visited his workplace to inquire about where his security team keeps its weapons.

Spike Cohen, the 2020 vice-presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, retweeted the headline and posted, "’Give us your guns. We will protect you’ –Every government that is about to commit mass murder ever."

The Taliban captured an array of modern military equipment when they overran Afghan forces who failed to defend district centers.

Bigger gains followed, including combat aircraft, when the Taliban rolled up provincial capitals and military bases with stunning speed, topped by capturing the biggest prize, Kabul, over the weekend.

Biden approval drops to lowest level this year after Taliban takeover
Tue, August 17, 2021, 2:47 PM·4 min read

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's approval rating dropped by 7 percentage points and hit its lowest level so far as the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed over the weekend in an upheaval that sent thousands of civilians and Afghan military allies fleeing for their safety, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The national opinion poll, conducted on Monday, found that 46% of American adults approved of Biden's performance in office, the lowest recorded in weekly polls that started when Biden took office in January.

It is also down from the 53% who felt the same way in a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll that ran on Friday.

Biden's popularity dropped as the Taliban entered the capital, Kabul, wiping away two decades of U.S. military presence that cost nearly 1 trillion taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives.

However, a majority of both Republican and Democratic voters said the chaos was a sign that the United States should leave.

A separate Ipsos snap poll, also conducted on Monday, found that fewer than half of Americans liked the way Biden has steered the U.S. military and diplomatic effort in Afghanistan this year. The president, who just last month praised Afghan forces for being "as well-equipped as any in the world," was rated worse than the other three presidents who presided over the United States' longest war.

The United States and Western allies continued to evacuate diplomats and civilians on Tuesday, one day after Afghans crowded into Kabul airport in a desperate attempt to flee the Taliban regime.

Americans expressed a variety of opinions that may still be evolving as the Taliban completes its takeover of the country.

The Ipsos poll found that 75% of Americans supported the decision to send in additional troops to secure key facilities in Afghanistan until the withdrawal is complete, and about the same number supported the evacuation of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in the country.

Yet Americans appeared to be largely unsettled on what to think of the war, with majorities expressing somewhat contradictory views about what the U.S. military should have done.

For example, a majority of the 18-to-65-year-olds who took the Ipsos survey - 68% - agreed that the war “was going to end badly, no matter when the U.S. left,” and 61% wanted the United States to complete its withdrawal of troops on schedule.

Yet a smaller majority - 51% - also agreed that “it would have been worth it for the United States to leave troops in Afghanistan another year,” and 50% wanted to send troops back into the country to fight the Taliban.

In many cases, Republicans and Democrats appeared to share the same outlook on the war: six in 10 Republicans and seven in 10 Democrats agreed, for example, that the swift capitulation of the Afghan government “is evidence why the U.S. should get out of the conflict.”

About 44% of respondents said they thought Biden has done a “good job” in Afghanistan. In comparison, 51% praised the way former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama handled the war.

Approval of Biden's handling of Afghanistan is even lower than that of former President George W. Bush, who ordered the Afghanistan invasion and entrenched the United States in the costly and ultimately futile effort to foster new leadership in the country.

About 47% of Americans felt that Bush did a good job in Afghanistan.

To be sure, the latest polling should be viewed so far as just a one-week drop: it is still far too early to say how the Taliban takeover will affect Biden politically.

Forty percent of registered voters said in the Reuters/Ipsos poll that they would vote for a Democrat in next year's congressional elections, while 37% said they would back a Republican.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 947 American adults, including 403 Democrats and 350 Republicans. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.

The Ipsos online snap poll gathered responses from 1,000 people, including 443 Democrats and 247 Republicans. It has a credibility interval of about 4 percentage points.

Afghanistan has 22 tons of gold in a New York vault. The Taliban can’t touch it.
By Samanth Subramanian
Published 3 hours ago

The Biden administration has frozen the Afghanistan government’s holdings in US banks, preventing the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars—a major, if indeterminate, part of the country’s foreign reserves.

Among the assets trapped in this freeze is a stash of gold bars deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to figures published by Afghanistan’s central bank, the deposit amounted to roughly 22 tons of gold as of December 2020, the most recent date for which this data is available. At current prices benchmarked by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the gold is worth around $1.25 billion.

The gold represents more than a tenth of the reserves the Afghanistan government holds, in banks at home as well as in various countries including the US. The central bank, named Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), owned around $10 billion in reserve assets as of June, according to data published by the bank. In relative terms, this is a very significant figure for Afghanistan. By comparison, the country’s GDP in 2020 was roughly $20 billion, according to the World Bank.

US freezes Afghanistan’s assets

Most of this $10 billion in reserves is parked overseas, although certainly the DAB’s own vaults hold at least $160 million in commercial gold and silver, as well as a treasury of ancient gold ornaments that are part of the so-called Bactrian Treasure, recovered from 2,000-year-old burial sites. Roughly $9.5 billion of the DAB’s holdings are international reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which estimated in June that these reserves could pay for Afghanistan’s imports for 15 months.

It isn’t clear precisely what proportion of these international reserves resides in US bank accounts in particular. But roughly $4.2 billion of the DAB’s $9.5 billion in international reserves are held in the form of US treasury bonds, treasury bills, and US dollar-denominated government bonds.

The US had frozen Afghanistan’s assets back in 1999 as well, three years after the Taliban first took control of the country. In January 2002, after the US military overturned the Taliban’s government, the assets were thawed, releasing roughly $193 million in gold and $24 million in other assets held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Biden's speech on Afghanistan fact-checked
By Reality Check team
BBC News
17 August 2021

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/58243158.amp

Taliban mocks America in a propaganda video that shows its fighters dressed up in US Army uniforms and gear
Alia Shoaib
Sat, August 21, 2021, 4:00 AM

The Taliban have released a propaganda video featuring its fighters wearing US uniforms and gear.

The insurgents have captured billions of dollars worth of US equipment left behind by fleeing Afghan soldiers.

Khalil Haqqani, a designated global terrorist, gave a sermon in Kabul while carrying a US assault rifle.

See more story, pics, and video at https://news.yahoo.com/taliban-mocks-america-propaganda-video-100031519.html