The United States has been subverted by people who believe in the failed ideologies of communism, socialism, and Marxism. America’s experiment in self-governance—with State power constrained by well-crafted limits of our constitution—is under direct threat from people who want to “deconstruct” our nation and replace it with a collectivist system of governance.

Many of the 1960s-era adherents to collectivist ideas have infiltrated our government, churches, and a multitude of other institutions, meaning these destructive philosophies have penetrated deep within our country and will be difficult to root out. Many of these radicals are also embedded within the education system, indoctrinating American children.

These people are America’s enemies. But, trying to counter subversive efforts without a full understanding of your enemy is a fool’s errand. I recently interviewed The Epoch Times’ Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative journalist and an expert on communism, socialism, and Marxism, to determine how America might reorient itself toward mounting an effective defense against the proliferation of these destructive ideas.

One of the least effective ways to discuss communism, socialism, and Marxism is arguing against the economic outcomes and human suffering that inevitably follows adoption of these systems.

“Your average socialist doesn’t care that it doesn’t work economically. Your average socialist doesn’t care that it’s going to uproot the family system and destroy family order,” Philipp said. “They believe that their end goals are so righteous, that killing a few people along the way is worth it for the sake of accomplishing what they hope to create.”

Frequently cited in arguments against collectivist systems are the hundreds of millions of people killed by leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Kim Il Sung, and Mao Zedong. But, “real socialists and communists don’t even bat an eye to it,” Philipp said.

While he believes the numbers of people murdered by communists should be part of this conversation, he also thinks that in order to persuade people against these philosophies, opponents of collectivism must address the roots of these ideas.

Religion and Natural Order

Karl Marx stood in strong opposition to religion. Though he had been a Christian in his youth, the timeless question that turned him away (and that he used to recruit people into a socialist mindset and the communal communist order) was essentially: If God is righteous, and if everything is created by God, then why does evil exist?

“If God created all things, and evil exists, then he must have created evil. That was the theory,” Philipp said. “And then they believe, well, if he created evil, then he must not be totally good. And therefore, he must not be the true, perfect image.”

For millennia, this has been a part of theological and philosophical debates, with religious scholars arguing that evil is not God’s creation, but the absence of God. Evil exists because man has free will, so people can choose to do good or evil. But, according to Philipp, what communists and utopians have sought to do is essentially try to eliminate evil from the world, as they see it.

Certain questions naturally follow: How do you prevent people from doing bad things? How do you prevent greed? How do you prevent people from doing things you don’t want them to do?

“You have to destroy the natural order. And, so they looked to create systems that could dictate to a very specific degree all elements of free will, that was one side of it,” he said. “That was always the downfall of utopians.”

Communists believe in the destruction of all previous institutions, including religious institutions. They believe in rebelling against God, whom they see as imperfect. Therefore, communism cannot coexist with the church. Communist ideology suggests that in order to perfect society, “you need to remove God from human morality, you need to remove God from human art, you need to remove God from architecture, and from our family structures, and from the way we shape our lives,” Philipp mentioned.

Dialectical Materialism

One of the pre-existing ideas that was brought into Marxism was that of the “negation of the negation,” which basically means that through the destruction of an existing institution, a more highly evolved system will emerge. For example, the chicken is born through the negation of the egg, the plant is born through the negation of the seed, a higher institution can be born through the negation of an existing institution. This would mean that by destroying institutions, a higher state of human evolution can be induced.

So, they must challenge the church, challenge tradition, challenge belief, create antithesis—the opposite of what is. “Marxism did the same thing under what they call ‘dialectical materialism,’” Philipp said, which is where you intentionally create inversion. You identify important cultural systems of that society and create the antithesis of that.

“So, you promote divorce, you promote feminism, you need to find ways to break up the family,” he said. “You need to look at the ways of doing it, and then develop social movements to argue against whatever the existing institution is.”

“If you want to destroy religion, you need to promote atheism,” he said. “Want to destroy the family, you need to promote feminism, promote divorce, promote the taking away of children by the government.”

The Way Forward

We don’t need to look too closely to see the ways in which communists, socialists, and Marxists have infiltrated the United States and other countries. Communists infiltrated American churches in the early 20th century. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has penetrated American schools. They have seized influence in U.S. companies and within our government.

Notably, their presence is visible in the authoritarian policies born from the pandemic response: the capricious, autocratic mandates; the brutal repression of people marching in the streets demanding the government’s boot off of their necks and a return to normalcy; actions by members of groups such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum who decry a return to normalcy, while pushing a global centralization of power.

For freedom-loving individuals, once you understand the goals of communists, socialists, and Marxists, you cannot cede any ground to them. There’s absolutely no capitulating, no negotiating, no meeting halfway.

“Every time they make a moral argument, and you say, ‘Okay, I want to be reasonable here, I’ll concede half the ground to you,’ society loses half its morals, society loses half its beliefs,” Philipp said. “Every time they do this, and they continue doing it, they force people to acknowledge it. And every time they do this, every time people give ground, they give up half their values.”

All supporters of individual liberty, freedom, and human rights must unite to confront the destructive forces attempting to take over. Americans must use all non-violent means available to deliver an immense repudiation of authoritarian systems of governance.

The battle isn’t unwinnable. There are only a few thousand politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate executives. There are more than 333 million American citizens. Who really holds the power in this country?

If government schools enforce Draconian mandates or teach lessons that indoctrinate your kids with communism, socialism, or Marxism, send your kids to private school or homeschool. If businesses enforce unconstitutional mandates, you stop spending your money there—put them out of business. If airlines enforce authoritarian policies or mandates, then stop flying with them. If your place of employment is caving to authoritarianism, you team up with like-minded employees and say no.

“You do not give an inch, you don’t sacrifice even a single morsel of your system of values, you don’t give in even a drop, you don’t play their games, you don’t talk within the boundaries of their arguments,” Philipp said. “You don’t even engage with them, in terms of giving any ground on anything. If they want to call you names for it, so be it. If they want to attack you, so be it. You do not sacrifice an inch.”

Uprooting Communism, Socialism, and Marxism in America (theepochtimes.com)

China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran have maintained their embassies in Afghanistan. Taliban representatives also met with those governments, as well as the government of Turkmenistan, before assuming power. India and the United States, by contrast, closed their embassies and recalled their diplomats.

At a recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, both Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, called on the international community to engage with the Taliban, particularly on the subject of antiterrorism. It is estimated that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, roughly 6,000 of whom are from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

The so-called Iron Brotherhood—the relationship between China and Pakistan—has been strengthened by the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan as the two countries find that their policies on the Taliban running Afghanistan broadly align.

Both Pakistan and the Chinese regime welcome the Taliban into power as they hope that the Taliban can help curb terrorism in their respective countries and because a Taliban takeover will complicate decision making for India and the United States. Pakistan applauded the U.S. withdrawal because it meant an end to India’s influence in Kabul.

China and India have had several border clashes, which have resulted in a year-long standoff in the Himalayas. India got on well with the previous Afghanistan government. The Taliban, on the other hand, is likely to become India’s adversary, particularly if it aligns with China. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) engagement with the Taliban will ensure that India has no influence in Kabul.

The United States has been fighting the Taliban for the better part of two decades and is expected to remain at odds with the terrorist organization. At the same time, the relationship between Beijing and Washington continues to be adversarial in terms of economics, trade, and national defense. Consequently, the CCP and Pakistan strengthening ties with the Taliban has put the United States in a difficult position.

Pakistan sees an opportunity to expand its geo-economic interests, connecting Central Asia with the Arabian Sea at Gwadar Port. These hopes hinge on the assumption that the Taliban could stabilize Afghanistan and that the Taliban could and would prevent terrorist attacks from being launched from Afghanistan into Pakistan, China, and Central Asia. But so far, the U.S. pullout has emboldened terrorists across the region as they see this as a major victory. The Syria-based chapter of the Turkestan Islamic Party issued a congratulatory statement when the Taliban took Kabul.

Although the Taliban has promised to clamp down on foreign terrorists, it has not given any indication of how to do that.

Terrorist attacks on Chinese targets in China are rare, but the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an obvious, soft target. CPEC projects have come under attack in the past, either because the Pakistan Taliban resented China’s presence in Pakistan or as reprisals for the CCP’s repression against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, has increased its attacks in Pakistan, killing seven Pakistani soldiers near the Afghanistan border and in a separate incident, killing 13 civilians on a bus, as well as claiming responsibility for a suicide attack in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. Consequently, the TTP has been identified as one of the greatest threats to stability in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has offered a pardon to TTP members if they promise not to get involved in terrorist activities, but the offer has been rejected. He has since expressed his hope that the Taliban would help convince TTP members to drop their armed insurgency. Meanwhile, there are reports that TTP fighters were released from Afghanistan prisons when the Taliban took over the country.

The Taliban has said that it would like to join CPEC. While this may seem like a win-win situation, it would require providing additional investment and taking more risks by Beijing. It is possible the Taliban will cooperate with the Chinese regime, in some limited way, preventing terrorist attacks, in exchange for recognition and financial support. But it is unclear if the Taliban would have the power or the willingness to do that.

One motivation for the Taliban to make good on its antiterrorist promises to Beijing is that it is hoping China will extract the $1 trillion to $3 trillion of minerals—including lithium for electric car batteries—that are sitting idle under the earth in Afghanistan. Economic support from China has become even more important for Afghanistan as international financial institutions have frozen bank accounts and other overseas assets, and international donors have stopped sending money.

As there will most likely be no money from the West, the Taliban knows that China may be its only major source of funding. But this does not guarantee the safety of Chinese investments. In the past, Taliban promises of protection for Chinese projects proved ineffective. Meanwhile, in addition to attacks by the Taliban, Chinese investments will be vulnerable to attacks by other militant groups—foreign or anti-Taliban groups.

Even under the relative stability of the U.S. involvement, China had made little progress on its existing investments in Afghanistan and had not even begun the extraction of Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals. On the other hand, Beijing may be encouraged to invest in Afghanistan just to extend the country an economic lifeline. The CCP probably does not need a pariah state, another North Korea, on its border.

Aside from terrorism and security concerns, alignment between the CCP and the Taliban could have economic implications for the domination of Central Asian markets and geopolitics. As the influence of Russia slowly diminishes in the region, India hoped to benefit, filling some of the void. In 2016, the CCP briefly established a military base in Tajikistan to conduct counterterrorism operations against ethnic Uyghur separatists. Through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Beijing has increased its engagement with and influence over Central Asia, working to counter independence movements by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from destabilizing China’s Xinjiang region. Chinese investment in the region has already eclipsed Indian investment, and Beijing hopes to widen the gap.

The CCP’s propaganda machine is exploiting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a signal of diminishing U.S. hegemony, military, and geopolitical power. Beijing has warned both Taiwan and India that the United States may no longer be a reliable ally. Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh similarly said that “Biden had ‘dealt a blow to Indian national security’” and that India-U.S. ties would suffer as a result.

The Times of India, an Indian English-language daily news media, however, has interpreted the U.S. pullout a bit differently, saying that the Taliban has not won a war. It has simply “exploited the flawed policies of a fatigued American president,” rather than the United States itself. Whether Delhi turns away from the United States remains to be seen. India has more than $3 billion in investments in Afghanistan, which it may want to preserve.

It is possible that India and the United States may allow a Taliban-led Afghanistan, as long as it ends regional terrorism. India is also a major economic player. So the Taliban may be willing to engage economically with India as a way of counter-balancing Chinese influence.

President Joe Biden has moved the U.S. foreign policy away from overseas nation-building, instead, focusing on maintaining U.S. primacy, ahead of China and Russia. As such, the United States may be satisfied with a stable Afghanistan and an end to international terrorism, rather than be concerned about Afghanistan’s internal affairs or whether China and Pakistan maintain most of the influence in the country.

In spite of Beijing’s warnings to U.S. allies, there is no reason to believe that the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan signals a lessening of U.S. commitments to its partners and allies, including India. India currently participates in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, one of the primary U.S.-led strategies to contain Beijing.

The task of creating a functioning economy and a stable civil society in Afghanistan will now fall on Pakistan and China, neither of which has much experience in these areas. It is possible that that task will be an expensive and painful one for them, providing the United States and India more room to plan and maneuver.

The China-Pakistan-Taliban Dynamic: What It Means for the US and India (theepochtimes.com)

Thousands of people are still seeking to flee Afghanistan, including Americans, more than three weeks after the Biden administration pulled U.S. military forces from the Taliban-controlled nation.

“Thousands of people are still trying to flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan,” Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yings wrote in a Twitter post on Thursday.

“U.S. Green Card holders. People who live and pay taxes in the United States are trapped.

“We met a man today who runs two businesses in Atlanta. He’s stuck with his family right now in Kabul,” he added.

Thousands of people are still trying to flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

U.S. Green Card holders. People who live and pay taxes in the United States are trapped.

We met a man today who runs two businesses in Atlanta. He’s stuck with his family right now in Kabul.

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) September 23, 2021

“We also talked to a group of former U.S. embassy workers,” Yingst added in another tweet.

“They are still in Kabul, despite promises they would be evacuated,” he added.

We also talked to a group of former U.S. embassy workers. They proudly showed me photos inside the embassy, working for the Americans. One had an email from the Deputy Chief of Mission. They are still in Kabul, despite promises they would be evacuated.

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) September 23, 2021

Especially concerning was Yingst’s report that U.S. citizens remain trapped in the country.

“There are still U.S. citizens here as well. The daughter of that man from Atlanta has a U.S. passport,” Yingst tweeted.

“We’ve met multiple American passport holders still in Kabul. Some made it out on Qatari flights, others did not,” he said.

There are still U.S. citizens here as well. The daughter of that man from Atlanta has a U.S. passport. We’ve met multiple American passport holders still in Kabul. Some made it out on Qatari flights, others did not.

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) September 23, 2021

Yingst’s latest video featured one man with a green card seeking help to escape Afghanistan.

Our live coverage from Kabul continues on @FoxNews. Tune in. pic.twitter.com/gLL3JOk0TU

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) September 23, 2021

The report follows news last week of an elderly California couple who is returning home after being trapped in Afghanistan for weeks following the U.S. military’s departure from the country, according to California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.

“This is a cause for celebration and the result of almost countless hours of work under very difficult conditions,” Issa said in a statement.

“Our team simply would not give up, and today it paid off and we got them home.”

The names of the couple are reportedly being withheld at the family’s request due to fear of violence toward relatives who remain in Afghanistan.

Issa’s office said it has helped 33 Americans and holders of American visas to escape Afghanistan.

“While we have made extraordinary progress, but we’re not stopping until everyone comes home,” Issa said.

House Rules Committee Democrats quietly extended a rule earlier this week in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that effectively bars Republicans from obtaining information on President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, say GOP representatives.

The provision was adopted during the Rules panel’s Sept. 20 hearing on the defense bill, and it includes a continuing resolution on spending and a measure designed to nullify state laws limiting abortion access at any time during a pregnancy.

The provision, which has been extended by Democrats multiple times since the original adoption, reads as follows:

“24. Provides that House Resolution 188, agreed to March 8, 2021 (as most recently amended by H. Res. 555, agreed to July 27, 2021), is amended by striking ‘September 22, 2021’ each place it appears and inserting (in each instance) ‘October 27, 2021.’”

The provision continues one of the chief tools House Democrats have used in the rules adopted in January for the 117th Congress to frustrate the ability of Republicans to demand and receive information from the Biden White House and the executive branch using the resolution of inquiry (ROI).

The wording of ROIs “will vary depending on the person to whom the resolution is directed. The House traditionally ‘requests’ the President and ‘directs’ the heads of executive departments to furnish information,” according to the House parliamentary procedures manual.

The Rules panel’s action comes as Republicans on the House Foreign Relations Committee seek an investigation of the administration’s actions in the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The ROI is an effective investigative tool because it puts the authority of a congressional committee behind a legislative request rather than causing representatives of the minority party to rely on letters and telephone calls seeking needed information and data.

It’s much more difficult for executive branch officials to ignore a request backed by an ROI, while telephone calls aren’t returned and letters from lawmakers are easily and often ignored.

The ROI is also more difficult for the majority to defeat because House rules require such a measure to be marked up within two weeks of its introduction or it becomes a privileged motion for the whole House. If the resolution is approved, the ROI then becomes a request of the House, not just a committee.

Rules committee member Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) offered a motion on Sept. 21 to end the ROI ban, saying that “in light of President Biden’s failed Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, it is absolutely imperative that we restore this tool to get to the bottom of this administration’s avoidable debacle.”

Reschenthaler said he was “concerned that the majority maintains this provision simply to shield the administration from addressing the very real concerns that members on both sides of the aisle have” on the Afghanistan situation.

Rules member Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), spoke in favor of Reschenthaler’s motion, telling the panel the ROI ban should be terminated because “we can’t get phone calls answered from the administrative state. This is not right and it needs to change. … I urge the majority to restore minority rights” under the ROI process.

Burgess also seeks the passage of an ROI concerning the Biden administration’s treatment of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children coming across the U.S. border from Mexico.

Reschenthaler’s motion was defeated 9–4, marking the fifth time Democrats, led by Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), have rejected efforts to restore ROIs. ROIs were first adopted in 1879.

A spokesman for the Rules panel majority didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

During debate on a previous attempt, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the panel’s ranking Republican, said: “The speaker and the Democratic majority have ruled with an iron fist, beginning in earnest at the start of the 117th Congress. In one fell swoop, they eliminated two critical minority tools, motions to recommit and the use of resolutions of inquiry.”

Besides the ROI, Cole was referring to limits during the 117th Congress on the minority’s ability on the House floor to offer motions to recommit bills to committees with instructions to change them rather than having votes on final passage.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told The Epoch Times the ROI ban has prevented effective legislative oversight on multiple issues.

“Democratic Leadership has suspended a centuries-old House rule that allows for more congressional oversight—all to protect President Biden from scrutiny for the multiple disasters his failed leadership has caused,” McCaul said.

“Whether it’s the deadly catastrophe in Afghanistan or the crisis at our southern border, the American people expect Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable for their mistakes. The majority needs to lift this indefinite ban on resolutions of inquiry and allow for vigorous oversight.”

Republicans on the foreign relations panel have been frustrated by having to depend on letters to gain needed oversight information on the Biden administration’s lax administration of congressionally mandated sanctions against, for example, Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Europe.

The Biden administration didn’t answer questions posed by House Republicans in a March 5 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Questions also went unanswered from an April 22 letter from McCaul to Blinken concerning Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

In the April letter, McCaul predicted the withdrawal would “hand the Taliban an undeserved victory, damage U.S. credibility as a counterterrorism partner, and gravely endanger the lives of Americans and Afghans alike.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-democrats-use-obscure-rule-to-stifle-gops-kabul-probe_4010514.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Two Afghan refugees who were brought into the United States following Democrat President Joe Biden’s disastrous pullout from the country are facing federal charges related to allegedly trying to rape a minor and suffocate a woman.

“Bahrullah Noori, 20, is charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, and with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor, with one count alleging the use of force,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. “The indictment alleges that that the victims had not attained the age of 16 years and were at least four years younger than the defendant.”

“Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, is charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her,” the statement continued. “The indictment alleges that the assault occurred on September 7, 2021.”

The statement said that the cases were not related to each other.

The DOJ added:

Noori and Imaad were charged previously in complaints filed in U.S. District Court. They made initial appearances in Madison on September 16 and are being detained at the Dane County Jail. Noori and Imaad are scheduled for arraignment tomorrow, September 23, at 9:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m., respectively, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker.

If convicted, Noori faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charges alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other two charges. Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years. The charges against them are the result of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Fort McCoy Police Department.

The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it is vetting the Afghan refugees that it is bringing into the country, even after the administration left behind thousands of SIV applicants and possibly more than 100 Americans.

The New York Times reported on the struggles the administration has had with vetting people:

Refugees pushed their way onto airplanes. Hundreds of children were separated from their parents. Rogue flights landed without manifests. Security vetting of refugees was done in hours or days, rather than months or years. …

American officials have said the refugees are being thoroughly vetted, with the authorities feeding fingerprints, portraits and biographical information into federal databases to weed out potential risks. Mr. Mayorkas said the Defense Department had sent hundreds of biometric screening machines to 30 countries. …

But unclassified briefing documents titled “2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission” reveal that in some cases, spotty information is being collected: Flight manifests have been at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status is unknown, and there is a lack of basic demographic data.

This article has been expanded after publication to include additional information.

Related:

• Biden Administration Says It Is Thoroughly Vetting Afghans Brought To U.S. Reports Indicate Otherwise.
• Dozens Of Afghan Evacuees Flagged For Potential Terror Ties; Two Shipped Out Of U.S.

A group of Republican congressmen on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden over his handling of the border, his surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the eviction moratorium that he said himself might be unconstitutional.

Republican Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio sponsored the resolution to impeach Biden. He was joined by three co-sponsors: Reps. Brian Babin and Randy Weber of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Gibbs slammed Biden over his mismanagement of the country in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“I take this seriously. I don’t think it’s haphazard. I’m not trying to get media attention for myself,” Gibbs said. “[Biden has] done so much damage to this country in less than nine months, which is really scary.”

The congressman concluded Biden is not qualified to lead.

Border Agents Furious After What Kamala Harris Said About Them

“He’s not capable of being commander in chief, and that’s obvious by the actions since Day One when he took the presidency back in January,” he added. “Maybe something like this makes the White House think twice before they do some of this nonsense.”

Gibbs filed three articles of impeachment.

One article states that Biden “violated his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President” in his handling of the illegal immigration crisis.

Another article says he violated the separation of powers when he extended the federal eviction moratorium “despite the clear warning from the U.S. Supreme Court” and “with no legislative directive from the U.S. Congress.”

When asked about an extension to the eviction moratorium on Aug. 3, Biden told a reporter: “The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster. … But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it’s worth the effort. But the present — you could not — the Court has already ruled on the present eviction moratorium.”

A third article of impeachment calls for the president to be removed over his botched exit from Afghanistan. The article states that Biden “failed to act responsibly as Commander in Chief with regard to the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan.”

“Who in their right mind takes troops out before they take out American citizens and our allies?” Gibbs said.

He added that he does not foresee his attempt to impeach Biden going anywhere with Democrats in control of the House, but said he filed the articles in an attempt to hold the president accountable.

“Obviously, it’s not going to go anywhere with Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi,” he said. “It shows that there are some Republicans that think that this president needs to be impeached, he needs to be removed from office one way or another.”

“At some point, they’re gonna be held accountable for their actions, and this is kind of putting them on notice,” Gibbs stated.

The Republican commented on the articles of impeachment on social media on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“It’s clear the President is not up to the job, that his entire administration is willing to thumb its nose at the Constitution,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

“Though Pelosi’s House will not hold [Biden] accountable, it’s incumbent upon House Republicans to call out his egregious violations of his oath of office.”

It’s clear the President is not up to the job, that his entire administration is willing to thumb its nose at the Constitution. Though Pelosi’s House will not hold @POTUS accountable, it’s incumbent upon House Republicans to call out his egregious violations of his oath of office https://t.co/lrQ3xZ75p3

— Rep. Bob Gibbs (@RepBobGibbs) September 21, 2021

President Biden must be held accountable for clearly unconstitutional actions, including willfully violating the separation of powers in attempting to extend a federal eviction moratorium. https://t.co/8tO4a8Oxfz

— Rep. Bob Gibbs (@RepBobGibbs) September 22, 2021

“President Biden must be held accountable for clearly unconstitutional actions, including willfully violating the separation of powers in attempting to extend a federal eviction moratorium,” he tweeted Wednesday.

Congressman Officially Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against Biden: ‘He’s Done So Much Damage’ (westernjournal.com)

There is no overlooking Milley’s gross disregard for the law when he directly contacted a foreign military chief without informing his boss, the president.

Modern U.S. history tells us that above all else, politics, not merit, makes the difference between an employed and unemployed military officer. 

Bob Woodward’s and Robert Costa’s upcoming book, Peril, serves as a follow up to New York Times Best Seller, Rage, and seems to be yet another hatchet job on the Trump presidency.

In this latest installment, Woodward brings to light the atmosphere within the executive branch surrounding the 2020 presidential election. As the Washington Postreports, the book takes particular aim at Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff first appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018.

According to the authors, Gen. Milley seemingly disregarded the chain of command and made numerous discrete phone calls to his Chinese counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army throughout the waning hours of the Trump presidency.

In one conservation from Oct. 30, 2020, it is believed that Milley assured Gen. Li Zuocheng, a member of China’s Central Military Commission, that:“you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” 

Unfortunately, Gen. Milley’s conversations, which the Joint Chiefs confirm took place, are not unexpected. 

In, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, released July 20, 2021, Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker alleged that after the election, Gen. Milley conveyed to those around him that, “This is a Reichstag moment.” Drawing a comparison between Trump’s claims of election fraud and, “the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship.” 

Following the Capitol Riot on Jan. 6, 2021, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sought to become a wannabe, modern-day Col. Stauffenberg.

Washington Post reporter Isaac Stanely-Becker wrote: 

“Believing that China could lash out if it felt at risk from an unpredictable and vengeful American president, Milley took action. The same day [Jan. 8, 2021], he called the admiral overseeing the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the military unit responsible for Asia and the Pacific region, and recommended postponing the military exercises, according to the book. The admiral complied.” 

China expert Gordon Chang argued that there was no reason to believe at the time that the People’s Republic of China feared an attack from the U.S. was imminent. 

A savvy lawyer could argue that Gen. Milley’s later actions were within the bounds of the National Security Act. However, as some have argued, there is no overlooking Milley’s gross disregard for the law when he directly contacted a foreign military chief without informing his boss, the president. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is, at the forefront, the president’s “principal military advisor.” The chairman is not a general or diplomat but an advisor who analyzes data, formulates opinions, and submits findings and recommendations to the commander-in-chief and subordinates. 

White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki brushed aside any criticism of Gen. Milley’s actions at last Wednesday’s press briefing, reiterating, “I think it’s important to remember the context…The outgoing President of the United States, during this period of time, fomented unrest, leading to an insurrection and attack on our nation’s capital…One of the darkest days in our nation’s history.” 

Trump derangement syndrome is pervasive and long-lasting. 

In the past two months alone, the White House has had its fair share of opportunities to let the heads roll. Above all else, the Afghanistan debacle was one episode that should have resulted in a shake-up, and, as Newt argues, “It’s troubling how unphased many of our leaders appear to be, especially the principals of the Biden administration.” 

However, this is not the first time Biden, and his ilk, have put petty politics above sensible, goal-oriented mission objectives. 

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan, entered the Obama-Biden world at its inception. Campaigning on a promise to withdraw from Iraq, Barack Obama planned to refocus U.S. war efforts on Afghanistan, the original war. Although unfamiliar with him personally, President Obama appointed Gen. McChyrstal to lead NATO forces in Afghanistan after dismissing his predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan. 

President Obama cast aside the previous administration’s attempts at nation building. Instead, the newly elected president favored a counterinsurgency strategy (COIN). 

Professor James Lebovic wrote in, Planning to Fail: The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, that, “when in March 2009 Obama announced his initial strategy… the White House statement noted that the primary goal was to ‘disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens.’” By crafting such a narrow set of objects, Lebovic finds that the president’s plan came almost immediately into conflict with the Pentagon’s, “wide-ranging –and costly –upgrading of the U.S.mission in Afghanistan.” 

McChrystal was ultimately in favor of COIN, believing the strategy was more effective than the purely counterterrorism-based approach supported by then-Vice President Joseph Biden. As Lebovic argued, Biden found that, “a counterinsurgency strategy was unworkable, prohibitively costly and misdirected… it conflated the two goals of defeating the Taliban and keeping Afghanistan free of al-Qaeda. Achieving the first goal was unnecessary… because the Taliban was not a direct threat to the United States or its global interests.” 

An ideal counterterrorism strategy, in Biden’s view, Lebovic wrote, would entail, “A small, residual U.S. special operations force, paired with drone aircraft.” This was nowhere near the Pentagon’s vision to deploy a large contingency of U.S. troops to population centers to protect and “win over the hearts and minds” of the Afghans. 

In December 2009, President Obama went with a counterinsurgency-lite strategy based around costs, not strategic goals. As stated in a presidential memo, Obama’s “cost-driven policy,” “is not fully resourced counter insurgency or nation-building, but a narrower approach tied more tightly to the core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al Qaeda and preventing al Qaeda’s return to safe havens in Afghanistan or Pakistan.” 

Gen. McChrystal lobbied the president for an additional 40,000 troops, of which he only received 30,000. Lebovic argued that, “the president’s ultimate figure did not come with a strong sense of which goals would be met, or how. Obama offered his number instead seemingly as a compromise… the halfway point between McChrystal’s request for forty thousand and Biden’s proposal for twenty thousand.” 

The president’s grand “surge” came with its own set of strings attached. Of those 30,000 troops sent to Afghanistan, most would begin withdrawing starting July 2011. This surge-to-exit strategy was unfavorable amongst those charged with executing the administration’s vision. 

Dealt a losing hand, Gen. McChrystal’s career was brought to an abrupt end following a less-than-flattering exposé in Rolling Stone. In “The Run Away General,” during a trip to Paris in Summer 2010, Michael Hastings allegedly witnessed the general and his aides badmouthing the number two, Biden: 

“Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond…. unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner. ‘Are you asking about Vice President Biden?’ McChrystal says with a laugh. ‘Who’s that?’” 

This, along with a litany of other hot mic comments prompted President Obama to recall McChrystal, fire him and appoint a replacement, Gen. David Petraeus. 

Did Milley and McChrystal both disagree with the commander-in-chief from time to time? Of course. But of the two, which one viewed their boss as the modern-day embodiment of Hitler and took unilateral action to subvert his constitutional authority? 

If McChrystal can get cut loose after expressing his frustration towards the president and his aides while being charged with the seemingly impossible task of stabilizing Afghanistan, then why does Gen. Milley still have a job? 

Health agency mandates measles vaccines and quarantines for refugees

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Afghans being brought into the United States are carrying viruses including malaria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as COVID-19.

The health agency said that the Afghans will have to receive vaccines for measles and undergo quarantining. Since last month, the Biden administration has brought in thousands of Afghan nationals after their government collapsed amid a Taliban takeover.

As of Monday, the agency “has been notified by public health departments of 16 measles cases among the evacuees. All patients confirmed to have measles have been isolated and provided care,” said the CDC, “and their contacts have been quarantined. Contacts who were not immune were given the MMR vaccine or, if not vaccine-eligible, immunoglobulin.” MMR refers to the measles, mumps, and rubella shot.

“Evacuees who are in the United States are required to be vaccinated with MMR and complete a 21-day quarantine from the time of vaccination at U.S. ‘Safe Haven’ designated locations, such as military bases,” the CDC wrote.

Other than measles, tuberculosis, and malaria, the CDC said that there are concerns about evacuees having an increased likelihood of “shigellosis, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and viral diarrheal diseases.”

The CDC, according to the release, is “also aware of some cases of varicella, mumps, tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, hepatitis A, and COVID-19 among evacuees. Although COVID incidence in this population has been notably low, COVID immunization and testing is being provided for all evacuees.”

The military bases where the Afghans are being housed include Fort Pickett in Virginia, Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Fort Lee in Virginia, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Dix in New Jersey, and Camp Atterbury in Indiana.

Starting last month, the U.S. military led a chaotic and rushed evacuation as the Taliban took over the country following the U.S. forces’ pullout. While a few thousand Americans are believed to have been evacuated, far more Afghans were flown out of the country on military flights.

On Tuesday, the Taliban started naming more officials to the country’s interim government.

Main Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir will be deputy defense minister, while Sadr Ibrahim was named deputy minister for the interior. Both men had been expected to take major positions in the new government but neither was named in the main list of ministers announced this month.

Reuters contributed to this report.

CDC: Afghans Arriving in US Infected With Measles, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Tom Malinowski said some inmates should be ‘released to their home countries’

While working as a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, a New Jersey House Democrat lobbied for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, where senior Taliban government leadership were then imprisoned.

Rep. Tom Malinowski led the charge to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison—which holds some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists and criminals—as early as 2007, arguing through lobbying channels and academic journals. As a Human Rights Watch lobbyist Malinowski advocated a Senate measure introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) that would have closed the facility and released some inmates to their countries of origin.

In 2014, Malinowski joined the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. During his tenure there, the Obama administration released five Taliban detainees in exchange for U.S. Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Four of the detainees released in the swap have now returned to power in Afghanistan’s newly installed jihadist government. Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Mohammad Fazl all returned to Afghanistan after stints in Guantanamo and will occupy positions in the Taliban government overseeing issues from defense and intelligence to culture and tourism.

Wasiq is the new director of intelligence for Afghanistan. He was in Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2014. Noori, the Taliban’s border chief, deputy defense minister Fazl, and information and culture minister Khairkhwa also were imprisoned in Guantanamo during that time. During those years, Malinowski actively worked to close the prison camp.

“Guantanamo should be closed,” Malinowski wrote in 2008. “Most everyone agrees that this could be done quickly by bringing the prisoners to facilities inside the United States, at which point some would be prosecuted and others released to their home countries.”

Malinowski’s liberal record on foreign policy has been used against him during his campaigns. When he first ran for Congress in 2018, Republican outside groups including the Congressional Leadership Fund accused him of “seek[ing] legal protections for terrorists” and “criticiz[ing] America for waging war on al Qaeda.”

Malinowski has also faced scrutiny over his questionable stock trades. The congressman is facing an investigation from the House Ethics Committee into whether he violated a federal law that requires he disclose his stock trades.

The New Jersey Democrat is in a vulnerable position going into the 2022 midterms. His already competitive district could be substantially redrawn this year and see its share of Republican voters increase. Malinowski defeated Republican challenger Thomas Kean by just over 1 percentage point in 2020. 

Malinowski did not return a request for comment.

New Jersey Dem Lobbied To Close Guantanamo While Top Taliban Leaders Were Inmates (freebeacon.com)

Surgeon Joseph Sakran said Trump could use politics to compromise vaccine’s approval process

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe employed a left-wing doctor who questioned the efficacy of the vaccine during the Trump presidency to portray his GOP opponent as anti-science.

In an ad released Friday, McAuliffe trotted out trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran to argue Youngkin “won’t listen to doctors and scientists.” While the ad presents Sakran as an unbiased expert who merely cites “the science,” Sakran himself sowed doubt about the vaccine during its development and has a long history as a liberal activist and donor.

Sakran in May 2020 questioned a Moderna announcement that touted “promising vaccine results,” suggesting that the company only did so to manipulate its stock price.

“Moderna announced promising vaccine results…..and the executives then sell 30 million in stocks,” Sakran wrote. “Something smells funny!” Months later, he contended that the Trump administration could use “political pressure” to “circumvent” health experts and create “an expedited vaccine making healthy people sick.”

Prominent liberals echoed Sakran’s rhetoric at the time. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for example, asked in September if “anyone at all” will “ever fully trust the CDC again” as “Trumpist nonsense has infected everything.”

“And who on God’s earth would trust a vaccine approved by the FDA?” Reid added. She has since claimed “anybody rational was hesitant” to take the vaccine because “Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods.” Reid now regularly criticizes those who express vaccine hesitancy.

Sakran, meanwhile, called the vaccine “promising” just weeks after he warned that Trump could use politics to compromise its approval process—and just days after Biden won the November election. In December, he praised the Food and Drug Administration for recommending authorization of the Pfizer vaccine and declared himself “ready to get vaccinated.”

Sakran told the Washington Free Beacon he has “always been clear that vaccines work and ha[s] always encouraged their use” but declined to answer questions about his vaccine rhetoric during the Trump presidency. McAuliffe did not return a request for comment.

In his McAuliffe campaign ad, Sakran also made questionable claims to criticize Youngkin’s positions on coronavirus-related measures. Sakran, for example, said Youngkin “is against requiring masks in schools, even though the science has made clear that’s how we prevent outbreaks in schools.”

That science, however, is far from clear. Many American allies in Europe have exempted children from wearing masks in schools, and the World Health Organization advises against requiring masks for children ages 5 and under.

“Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty,” hematologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in September. “And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”

McAuliffe’s embrace of Sakran could also undermine the Democrat’s position as a supporter of Israel. Sakran, a self-identified “Palestinian American,” has referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state and condemned former president Donald Trump’s “reckless” decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As governor, McAuliffe notably denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but has since welcomed an endorsement from an activist group that staunchly defends the anti-Israel campaign. Sakran did not respond to a request for comment about his past Israel rhetoric.

Sakran has long supported liberal causes and politicians. He created “Doctors for Hillary” in 2016 and gave nearly $7,000 to support failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He went on to launch gun control advocacy groups that caught the attention of Democratic officials—Sakran attended the 2019 State of the Union address with Rep. Mike Thompson (D., Calif.). In addition to his Clinton contributions, Sakran has donated nearly $9,000 to Democrats since 2016, including a $2,800 offering to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

With Election Day quickly approaching, McAuliffe leads Youngkin by just 3 points, according to a September Washington Post poll. The pair will square off at the polls on Nov. 2.

McAuliffe Taps Onetime Vaccine Skeptic To Slam Youngkin on COVID (freebeacon.com)

The Biden administration said on Monday it will double the refugee admissions cap to 125,000 in fiscal year 2022 from the current cap of 62,500.

Fiscal Year 2022 begins on Oct. 1. The State Department announced that it has sent a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that recommends the refugee cap increase “to address needs generated by humanitarian crises around the globe.”

The report is produced by the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. It said the Biden administration seeks to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) through “strengthening its global infrastructure to welcome significantly greater numbers of refugees” as well as making the program responsive to future changes.

In particular, the new admissions target plans to focus on certain populations and programs, including: “expanded resettlement of Central Americans; enhanced access to the USRAP for Afghans at risk due to their affiliation with the United States; increased resettlement of LGBTQI+ refugees; priority access for at-risk Uyghurs, Hong Kong refugees, and Burmese dissidents; and resettlement of Burmese Rohingya.”

The report lays out the new refugee caps by region: 40,000 refugees from Africa; 15,000 from East Asia; 10,000 from Europe and Central Asia; 15,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean; 35,000 from the Near East and South Asia; and 10,000 in “unallocated reserve to be used if needed in any region.”

Former President Donald Trump had set a refugee cap of 15,000 before the Biden administration more than quadrupled that figure in May. Biden said at the time that Trump’s cap “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees.”

The Biden administration said in its report that it expects arrivals in the current fiscal year to “fall far short” of the 62,500 target. In FY 2021, 7,637 asylum seekers were found to meet the criteria for being admitted as a refugee into the country as of the end of August. The administration said it “will redouble efforts in FY 2022 … to meet the longer-term global objectives.”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement that the latest move “is reaffirming our commitment to refugee resettlement in line with our long tradition of providing a safe haven and opportunity to individuals fleeing persecution.”

“With the world facing unprecedented global displacement and humanitarian needs, the United States is committed to leading efforts to provide protection and promote durable solutions to humanitarian crises, to include providing resettlement for the most vulnerable,” the statement reads.

“A robust refugee admissions program is critical to U.S. foreign policy interests and national security objectives, and is a reflection of core American values,” Price said in the statement. “The United States has long been a global leader in refugee resettlement.”

Some members of Congress have voiced their support for the administration over the measure.

“We are greatly encouraged by President Biden’s announcement today affirming his commitment to admit up to 125,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year and to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “As multiple humanitarian crises continue to unfold around the world, the President’s action could not come at a more important time.”

They added, “We look forward to working with the Biden Administration to restore this life saving program and our reputation as a leader in providing refuge to those fleeing persecution around the globe.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also praised the Biden administration, saying he had been advocating for the high refugee cap since April.

“Facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time, I know the Biden Administration is working to restore the United States’ longstanding bipartisan tradition of providing safety to the world’s most vulnerable refugees—including Afghan refugees,” Durbin said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, communities facing the border crisis at the south are grappling with the worst border numbers in history, driven by Biden’s policies that have, so far, allowed a large portion of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States.

However, the “rather sudden” surge of immigrants has prompted a large-scale response from the federal government, including moving some 6,500 immigrants from Del Rio to other parts of the border to ease the burden on the overtaxed agents.

In recent weeks, thousands of illegal immigrants have amassed near the Texas border but are now leaving the United States, returning to Mexico to pick up supplies or to avoid being deported back to their home countries.

Haitians and others were witnessed on Sept. 20 crossing the Rio Grande to enter Acuña, Mexico, preempting a U.S. crackdown on an illegal immigrant camp under the International Bridge at Del Rio.

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.

Biden Admin to Double Annual Refugee Cap to 125,000 (theepochtimes.com)

When 13 United States service members were killed last month by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, it was clear the Biden administration’s rushed exit from the country had cost innocent American blood.

New information now suggests the administration is even more culpable than it initially appeared.

According to India’s Firstpost, the ISIS-K suicide bomber has been identified as Abdul Rehman. He was a jihadi who had been in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison for the last four years.

Indian authorities learned Rehman was allegedly part of a plot from ISIS-K to stage suicide bombings in New Delhi, where his father frequently traveled for business. The authorities had him arrested and incarcerated in Bagram prison in 2017, Firstpost reported.

Indian intelligence officials said he was handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency by the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency, in September 2017.

Yet when President Joe Biden began implementing his reckless and ill-planned withdrawal strategy in Afghanistan, chaos ensued. This very chaos allowed thousands of suspected and convicted terrorists to escape Bagram unscathed on Aug. 15, including Rehman.

Just 11 days later, Rehman allegedly carried out the attack that killed 13 American service members and well over 100 civilians.

“America’s disorganized retreat from Afghanistan has led to hundreds of highly competent and highly committed terrorists being set free to rejoin the Islamic State, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups,” an officer who worked on the Rehman case told Firstpost.

“Literally a decade’s work on counterterrorism has been undone by the U.S.’ failure to secure key prisoners in Bagram.”

Those are pretty damming words from an officer who was reportedly involved personally in the counterterrorism effort.

While it may sound dramatic, Rehman’s deadly actions showed just how quickly things can get off track in terms of terrorism. If other prisoners who escaped also end up participating in violence, it will not be that far-fetched to suggest that the Biden administration undid many if not most previous counter-terrorism efforts in the region.

Firstpost reported that Rehman was selected to lead the bombing plot in New Delhi because he was familiar with the area. But after intercepting communications, India’s RAW was able to send in an agent posing as a jihadi.

The agent convinced Rehman he had amassed enough people and explosives to carry out the attack, which led Rehman to communicate with his commanders. The CIA was then able to exploit those conversations and arrest Rehman.

He was sent on a special flight to Kabul, Afghanistan, where the CIA led an investigation. Questioning by the CIA alongside Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security exposed multiple ISIS leaders, whom the U.S. then killed via drone strikes in 2019.

“There’s no clarity on what happened to Abdul Rehman between his escape from Bagram and the suicide attack,” an intelligence official said. “It is possible he wanted revenge, or that he was persuaded by his old jihadist friends to atone for his role in the killings of his associates in this manner.”

Obviously, the path to apprehending Rehman was long and meticulous. All that work was wiped away in a matter of days thanks to the Biden administration’s incompetence.

To make matters worse, Rehman is just one of the thousands of prisoners who escaped Bagram in August. Who’s to say others are not going to be seeking revenge as well?

We already knew that Biden’s incompetence led to horrible conditions at the Kabul airport and ended with thousands of Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

The fact that the administration’s incompetence also led to the escape of thousands of terrorists, at least some of whom are willing to commit suicide bombings and kill civilians, is just the icing on the hugely disappointing cake.

New Evidence Reveals How Biden Set Free ISIS-K Member Who Ended Up Killing 13 Service Members by Suicide Bomb: Report (westernjournal.com)

The gut-wrenching reality of what it means to be an American citizen left in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan when the U.S. government will not help was brought home vividly when a woman trying to flee the country shared her story on Fox News.

Jennifer Wilson, the COO of the nonprofit Army Week Association who works with the group Project Dynamo to rescue Americans trapped in Afghanistan, joined Fox News’ Dana Perina on “America’s Newsroom” along with a woman whose name was given as “Julie,” a U.S. citizen trapped in Afghanistan.

“I’m not doing, I’m just sitting,” she said.

“They broke me, you know, the United States broke me because I’m a U.S. citizen,” she said.

“I’ve been through a lot of,” the woman began, until an eruption of misery brought a flood of tears and a halt to her words, “very bad in my life.”

“I just come to get married here to have life with my family and get back there,” she said.

Then came the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and what she said was her abandonment by the State Department.

“Basically, I’m dying,” she said as time goes by and she remains trapped.

She said that Wilson was her best hope, because the State Department would do nothing for her.

“I call them so many times. I email them. They just take the phone. They say, ‘I’m sorry we can’t do anything for you,’ and that is the answer,” she said.

“And I said, ‘What’s going on with you guys? I’m a U.S. citizen,’” she said, adding that, “And I just lose a lot of family here.”

After “Julie” was no longer able to speak because of her tears, Wilson took over.

“What she is not able to tell you at the moment is, she went back to get married. She got the letter from the U.S. Embassy telling her and her family they could get into [Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport] back when it was still open, and they went there and 18 members of her family were killed in the bombing,” Wilson said, apparently referring to the Aug. 26 suicide bomb attacks that killed 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 170 Afghans.

Officials Discover Major Felons Among Refugees Vetted by Biden Admin and Brought to US

Wilson said that “currently only she and her daughter hold U.S. passports” and Project Dynamo can only bring those two bring out of the country.

“I had to have a conversation with her. Do you want to leave with your daughter and leave the rest of your family because I can’t get them out right now. All I can get out is you and your daughter because you hold the right passport,” Wilson said. according to Fox.

“She will tell you just, all she has left is who is left in her family from the bombing. She can’t leave them. I could not make that decision with a member of any of my family,” she said.

“Being faced with that after losing 18 family members two weeks ago. I am not smart enough and I don’t have the emotional intelligence to know what she is going through,” Wilson said.

Wilson said that she can evacuate “Americans and NATO passport holders. So, my call list is about 500 Americans, NATO and their family members.”

“It was in those vetting calls that I found Julie. I called up, basically just to say ‘are you an American?’ She told me her story and it broke me,” Wilson said, according to Fox News.

“It hit different. I have been doing this for four weeks. I have not felt like that yet. It was awful,” Wilson said.

Terrified American Trapped in Afghanistan Breaks Down on Live TV, Pins It on Biden Administration (westernjournal.com)

If the Biden administration had hoped that media coverage of its disastrous exit from Afghanistan would fade anytime soon, new billboards gracing the highways in central Pennsylvania say otherwise.

According to USA Today, Scott Wagner, a Republican former Pennsylvania state senator and 2018 gubernatorial candidate paid for the signs, which show a smiling President Joe Biden dressed in Taliban military garb holding a rocket launcher with the caption: “Making the Taliban Great Again!”

Quality trolling. https://t.co/aWB6kcLGu8

— #Marcher󠁧󠁢 (@MarcherLord1) September 16, 2021

Giant ‘Making the Taliban Great Again’ billboard showing President Biden appears on Pennsylvania interstate https://t.co/yQ3JRs1wvG pic.twitter.com/WCdGnXLGzV

— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) September 14, 2021

And they’ve gotten plenty of attention.

Joe Biden “Making Taliban Great Again” Billboards Go Up in Pennsylvania… pic.twitter.com/NIOk8vheOY

— Covid-1984 (@NeverSleever) September 16, 2021

vDarknessFalls Telegram 😆

Joe Biden billboard –
“Making the Taliban Great Again!” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/2ka5ieXSIS

— Dark II Light (@SheLuvsTGA) September 14, 2021

According to the York Daily Record, Wagner purchased the signs for $15,000 through Trone Outdoor Advertising.

Wagner told the media outlet he blames Biden for the situation in Afghanistan which he sees as “an absolute mess and a tragedy.”

He was especially concerned about $85 billion of U.S. military vehicles and equipment left behind. He said, “I was watching an evening news show one night and saw the Taliban in American personnel carriers.”

“It’s like Vietnam, even worse,” he added.

Asked for a comment by WHTM News 27 in Harrisburg — the Pennsylvania capital — Wagner replied: “I saw the image [of Joe Biden]. I got it from a friend a few weeks ago. The picture tells the story.

“We pulled out of Afghanistan too quickly, and we left so much of American equipment. Joe Biden has made us look like a fool. I feel so bad, words can’t describe what I would say to someone who was wounded or someone’s family who had a soldier pass away in the country after all this happened.”

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Fritzi Schreffler responded to a WHTM inquiry in a statement that read: “The Department permits such outdoor advertising to private entities through an application process, bound by law and regulation. Specifically, the Outdoor Advertising Control Act of 1971 (Federal Law) and Title 67, PA Code, Chapter 445 (PA Commonwealth Regulation) do not regulate or control billboard advertising content. Generally, advertising content is protected by the First Amendment under the US Constitution.

“Therefore, if the advertising message is legal per State or Federal laws and regulations, recourse is not warranted. While we understand the message on the Interstate 83 billboard may be unpleasant to some, it is our understanding that the message is legal. As such, the Department has no basis to require this message be changed.”

According to PennLive, the billboards have been placed along “the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Interstate 83, and Routes 322, 11-15, and 15.”

They’ve have created quite a stir in the Keystone State, which was one of the keys to Biden’s still-questionable victory in the 2020 election.

Americans are angry about the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This sorry episode should not and will not be forgotten. To use Biden’s famous remark to former President Barack Obama after the passage of Obamacare in 2010, “This is a big f***ing deal.”

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban was a tipping point in U.S. history. In a rare moment of responsibility (with some exceptions), the mainstream media actually committed journalism. There really was no choice.

I would go so far as to say it altered the balance of power in the world. The biggest winners are the Taliban and China. The biggest loser, obviously, is the United States, the country Biden is supposed to be leading.

In addition to our nation’s diminished status on the world stage, the Biden administration’s many missteps left 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans dead. The Biden Pentagon’s “retaliation strike” against the terrorist group ISIS-K ended in the deaths of 10 innocent Afghan civilians including seven children.

I hope to see more billboards highlighting our current president’s profound stupidity pop up across the nation. Biden and his entire administration deserve to be humiliated.

Republicans must continue this messaging as the country moves closer to the 2022 midterms and into the 2024 presidential race.

I suppose the silver lining to the Afghanistan crisis and all of this administration’s other destructive policies is that it will (at least it should) deliver a blow to the progressive cause for years to come.

Biden ‘Making Taliban Great Again’ Billboards Pop Up in State Biden Won (westernjournal.com)

According to Fox News host Mark Levin, the Democrats are going to keep supporting Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley because they don’t want any backlash for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Friday night, Levin said Pelosi played “a key role in” undermining civilian control of the military under former President Donald Trump via a call she made to Milley in the days after the Capitol incursion.

While the details of the call were disclosed for the first time in excerpts from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s forthcoming book “Peril,” Pelosi had announced the conversation shortly after it happened on Jan. 8, saying in a letter to House Democrats she’d discussed “precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

CNN reported Woodward and Costa obtained a transcript of the call.

“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do?” Pelosi, who is second in line for the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris, said during the call, according to the book. “And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?

“You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time,” she added.

Milley reportedly responded, “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.”

That’s why, Levin said, “the Democrat Party will do everything they can to run interference for Milley” when the Joint Chiefs head appears on Capitol Hill on Sept. 28.

“They’re running interference for Milley because they’re running interference for Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi has a key role in this,” he continued.

“There’s a telephone conversation between Nancy Pelosi and General Milley in which she — who is absolutely nuts — accuses the president of the time. Trump, of being crazy, talks about nuclear weapons, and Milley says he agrees with her completely.

Mark Levin Flames Bob Woodward For Holding Information For Book Sales

“He goes back to the Pentagon, he calls in his subordinates and they talk about ‘what is our process?’ and ‘let’s go over it’ for using nuclear weapons,” Levin continued.

“President Trump never hinted ever about using nuclear weapons, there’s no basis for this whatsoever.

Mark Levin Reveals Why He Thinks Chuck Schumer, Not Donald Trump Should Be on Trial

“I might add, in a footnote, I don’t know who’s more loathsome, Milley, who is loathsome, or Woodward and Costa,” he continued.

“They sat on it for months and months when the American people should have known, when Congress should have known, and, of course, the people in the military should have known that we have a rogue general.”

While the exact order of events on Jan. 8 isn’t made explicit in reporting on the book, “Peril” reportedly makes it clear that Jan. 8 was a busy day for Gen. Milley and that much was precipitated by two conversations he had that day. One was with Pelosi and the other was with Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, Milley’s counterpart in China.

The most damning allegation from “Peril” is from a previous, Oct. 30, 2020 conversation Milley reportedly had with Li in which he promised that if the United States was “going to attack [China], I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” according to The Washington Post.

That flirted dangerously with the Constitution’s definition textbook definition of “treason” and has ballooned into an undeniable scandal. And even if there is a snowball’s chance in Hades that Milley would ever be charged with actual treason, it should be enough to precipitate his resignation.

In the Jan. 8 call, Woodward and Costa reportedly wrote that Milley told Li that despite the events of Jan. 6, “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”

Li was still concerned, however — and, on the same day, Milley talked with Pelosi. It’s unclear which came first — but Milley took action on the conversations.

“Milley … summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an ‘oath.’”

In other words, Pelosi had talked to Milley about undermining civilian control of the military — a key tenet of any democracy — and Milley had acted to undermine civilian control of the military. While “Peril” isn’t released until Tuesday, you can draw your own conclusions as to the level of influence this had upon the head of the Joint Chiefs.

Whatever the case, the White House is running interference for Milley, too.

According to CNN, President Joe Biden said Wednesday, “I have great confidence in General Milley.” Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “has complete confidence in his leadership, his patriotism and his fidelity to our Constitution,” calling him a “man of honor.”

When one imagines their reaction if it came out that Milley had tried to undermine civilian control of the military to prevent elements of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, one doesn’t see the same rhetoric being used.

If it turned out that this happened after a call from congressional leaders, no matter what their party but especially if it were the opposition, the whirlwind of opprobrium he would reap would be even more brutal — and those leaders would be reaping it, too.

And yet, because of their party affiliation, no one seems to acknowledge the dangerous precedent this sets, particularly if Milley’s actions were precipitated by Pelosi’s call.

If this happened as the book laid out and the House speaker played a “key role” in it, she needs to face scrutiny for her actions, as well.

Mark Levin: Pelosi Had ‘Key Role’ in Gen. Milley’s Undercutting of Trump’s Military Authority (westernjournal.com)

CORONA DEL MAR, Calif.—As Americans around the country continue to hold ceremonies in honor of the thirteen fallen soldiers killed during the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan on Aug. 26, members and guests of the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club (BCYC) held a solemn remembrance on Sept. 15, using time-honored maritime and military traditions.

In the days after the tragedy, BCYC volunteers and staff created a fallen soldier tribute with a reserved sign at one of the seats of the club’s bar, with a framed photo of the thirteen fallen soldiers flanked by a glass of beer at the ready, a traditional gesture symbolizing their loss.

A ceremony was then organized and led by BCYC Port Captain, Mark Jensen, himself a veteran who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War.

Jensen was in Portugal at the time the American warriors were killed, and upon hearing the news, he sent an email to BCYC Vice Commodore Kari Konapelsky to whom he reports, requesting that the club fly the national ensign (American flag) at half staff for the next 13 days to honor the fallen soldiers. He also asked if he could organize a special ceremony during the club’s nightly retiring of the colors on Sept. 15.

“I know that a lot of other military personnel have been lost in that (Afghanistan) war,” Jensen told The Epoch Times. “But nevertheless, these were the last. I felt strongly that we needed to do something to honor these soldiers, because those men and women made the ultimate sacrifice at the end. It didn’t need to happen that way, but it did and they deserve our appreciation and respect for their service.”

Konapelsky responded with a photo of the club’s American flag already at half-staff and a thumbs up approval of the remembrance ceremony when Jensen returned home.

BCYC Commodore, Rhonda Tolar, who attended the tribute, told The Epoch Times, “BCYC has long had a proud history of upholding dearly held American maritime traditions. We felt this was an appropriate tribute, particularly because we are so blessed with the freedoms all Americans enjoy each day, thanks to the service and sacrifice of those who died in the name of our country, like the 13 who perished far from home in Afghanistan on August 23rd.”

The Tradition of Colors

The tradition of colors began with the British Royal navy and has continued with the U.S. Navy. Cannons or guns are fired, or a ship’s bell rung, at sunset when the flag is taken down, as a sign of respect.

In the days when sailing ships were armed with cannons, it could take as long as twenty minutes to load and fire a gun. When a ship fired her guns in salute, she rendered herself powerless for the duration. By emptying their guns, the ship’s crew demonstrated to shore batteries and forts that they were no threat.

Over time, this gesture became a sign of respect, with both shore and ship gun batteries firing volleys.

‘Attention on Deck’

BCYC has observed the time-honored naval tradition of the colors—the daily raising and lowering of the American Flag—ever since the club’s founding in 1958.

Tradition calls for the colors to be hoisted smartly each morning and lowered ceremoniously at dusk. Colors is a tradition observed at many yacht clubs throughout the U.S., and at all military bases throughout the world.

During colors, members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute, and any service person present in uniform should render a salute.

Each evening at BCYC, as the sun sets over the harbor and the Pacific Ocean, a ship’s bell is rung, and the command “Attention on Deck” is announced to staff, members and their guests. All those on club property in sight of the flag stand and face the flag in silence, with their hands over their hearts, until the flag is fully lowered. Many veterans stand at attention and salute the flag as it is lowered each evening.

At sunset on the 15th, Jensen, with the help of BCYC Tradition’s Committee Chair, Elizabeth Barden, asked members and their guests to rise and silently face the flag. Barden began the remembrance with what is referred to as a death knell, the ringing of a ships bell twice three successive times during the silence.

“This is a solemn occasion for this evening during our colors ceremony,” Jensen told the crowded room after the bells tolled. “Tonight, we remember and honor our 13 fallen American Warriors.”

Jensen then read the names of the fallen soldiers after a single bell toll was rung for each.

“These are the 13: Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20 of Rio Bravo, Texas. Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, of Roseville, California. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, 31, of Utah. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, or Corryton, Tennessee. Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, California. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyoming. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamunga, California. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20, of Norco, California. Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, of Omaha, Nebraska. Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Indiana. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, of Wentzville, Missouri. Navy Hospital Corpsman and Marine medic Max Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio.”

Jensen finished the brief but moving remembrance. With tears in his eyes and choked voice, “Please remain silent and at attention while the colors are retrieved.”

He then gave the final command concluding the ceremony when the flag is raised from half-staff to full and then brought down. “Raise the colors to full staff. Retrieve the colors,” and a final two ship’s bells rang out among the silent crowd.

Local Tributes to Fallen 13 Emphasize Importance of Tradition (theepochtimes.com)

As many as 10 civilians were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, last month, the U.S. military said Friday.

Additionally, the strike does not appear to have killed anybody with or linked to the terrorist group ISIS-K, U.S. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told reporters during a press conference.

The revelations were informed by an investigation directed by McKenzie after the Aug. 29 strike, which was carried out in retaliation for a suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members.

U.S. military leaders had repeatedly portrayed the strike as a successful attack, even as family members of the deceased insisted there was no connection between them and the ISIS offshoot.

“At this point, we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike,” Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington on Sept. 1.

That stance was shifted on Friday, when McKenzie revealed the results of the probe, which found that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, “were tragically killed in that strike.”

“Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or were a direct threat to U.S. forces,” he added. “I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport. But it was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology. As the combatant commander, I am fully responsible for the strike and this tragic outcome.”

The stunning admission drew criticism from members of Congress, including Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who highlighted how President Joe Biden was headed to Delaware for a weekend vacation as McKenzie delivered his remarks.

“Biden’s Pentagon admits that they killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, not the targeted ISIS-K terrorists. Meanwhile, Biden is taking a vacation on the beach, shirking off responsibility, holding no one accountable. Biden is a disgrace,” Biggs wrote on Twitter.

“It’s an unbelievable tragedy that 10 civilians including an aid worker & 7 children were killed by a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan. My heart is with the families. We need more transparency and oversight to ensure this does not happen again,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a written statement that he was briefed on the findings of the probe on Friday morning.

“On behalf of the men and women of the Department of Defense, I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed, including Mr. Ahmadi, and to the staff of Nutrition and Education International, Mr. Ahmadi’s employer,” he said, referring to Emal Ahmady, who said he translated for an American company for three years starting in 2011.

“We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed. We apologize, and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”

The strike was rushed because U.S. military officials believed there was an imminent threat to American service members, who at the time were holding Kabul’s airport to facilitate evacuations of U.S. citizens and others out of Afghanistan, according to McKenzie. The strike was based on intelligence conveying a threat from a white Toyota Corolla, but the investigation found the military struck a car that posed no threat.

“We struck under the theory of reasonable certainty. Probably our strikes in Afghanistan going forward will be under a higher standard,” McKenzie said.

Ahmady told news outlets shortly after the strike that five children and five adults among his relatives were killed in the strike.

He said he had been seeking a Special Immigrant Visa, given to those who helped U.S. troops during the decades-long war in Afghanistan but that he is no longer seeking to emigrate to the United States.

“My message for the USA and other countries is that they should try and avoid making mistakes in Afghanistan. Do not try to target civilian people. Because Afghan people like members of their family a lot. And when they lose a father or brother or son [it’s] very difficult for them,” Ahmady, also spelled Ahmadi in some reports, told Euro News.

Photographs and video footage from the scene showed the white Toyota pulverized and a red SUV next to it charred from the explosion.

U.S. Central Command initially said that the strike was followed by other explosions, claiming that “indicat[ed] a large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties.”

McKenzie said Friday that it took a while to uncover what had actually happened. He said the investigative report is a classified document that won’t be released at this time.

US Military: Up to 10 Civilians Killed in Airstrike in Kabul (theepochtimes.com)

My career has taken me around the world, including the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. These travels have helped me appreciate how fortunate I am to have been born in America—home of the free because of the brave.

On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people across our nation gathered in remembrance of the lives lost and the heroes who selflessly gave their lives to save others. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., and saw the hole in the Pentagon. Later, I traveled to New York City and saw the massive hole where the Twin Towers once stood. Those are images I will never forget.

In 2002, I was recruited into government service to lead necessary change and transformation in the intelligence community (IC), including better integrating our imagery and signals intelligence enterprises—America’s eyes and ears. I was sworn in as a senior executive in defense intelligence and was a civilian peer to general and flag officers. After the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established, I was sworn in as the first IC deputy chief information officer at ODNI. In that role, I worked across the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. IC and regularly met with the leadership of both the IC and the Department of Defense.

Through my 25 years of service in the national security community and study of history, I have become aware of the techniques, tactics, and procedures that our enemies use. Though the Cold War ended 30 years ago, our nation is still in a war that has been brewing for decades—a war for America’s soul.

Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, openly predicted the destruction of the United States and said that it would happen in the way that every society eventually collapses. He said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” Khrushchev was talking about an entire system of Marxist indoctrination and takeover that they had refined and executed in country after country during the 20th century.

Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, and high-level Russian propagandist, escaped to the West in 1970. He warned America about the KGB tactics used to subvert a nation that he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union. This is a planned process of altering the way people think for a particular purpose, which is to affect a regime change. It’s effectively the brainwashing of society—a slow, methodical transformation. Those who conduct this ideological subversion are very patient to employ the tactics over decades.

Ideological subversion has four stages and follows the Hegelian dialectic, a tactic long exploited by Marxists and Fascists to control people.

• Stage 1: Demoralization. This is the destruction of faith in the government and society. Believing that society is broken, systems are failing, and patriotism is evil are three key beliefs that are promoted to create guilt. This leads to the acceptance of radical new ideas because the current structure is believed to be harmful. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality, classical education, and American patriotism are discarded.
• Stage 2: Destabilization. With the decision-making ability of Americans negatively affected through demoralization, the next step takes a foothold—destabilization of the nation’s foundations. Destabilization causes citizens to believe the worst of what they hear about their nation and form of government. Supporters of traditional values and foundational structures in the nation are ostracized and even demonized.
• Stage 3: Crisis. The altered values of Americans cut to the root of the current systems. Upheaval presents opportunities for change. Once a society is destabilized, it begins to collapse into chaos. At this point, citizens want the government to provide stability. We saw this recently as a demoralized and destabilized society responded with fear and panic when a “pandemic” faced our nation. Americans are willingly trading civil rights and freedoms for authoritarianism and overreach that they believe will keep them safe. Messaging in all of this is key. The mainstream media and their tell-a-vision programming play a key role in framing the prescribed narrative as truth.
• Stage 4: Normalization. The “new normal” is a term we have heard constantly lately, and it’s an accurate description of what the normalization stage is all about. When the government and societal structures have changed to restrict liberty, citizens are told the radical transformation is “the way it has to be.” Ironically, it’s described as normal when it’s not normal at all. Normalization creates a new baseline for what a nation will accept, value, and promote. The cycle is complete.

These steps are repeated over and over, bringing a greater result with each cycle until there’s a controlled collapse. America could be on the verge of collapse right now unless we collectively wake up to reality and take a stand to stop tyranny.

The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding people’s thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead them to a predetermined solution. The enemies of America are using this tactic to create fear, turn citizen against citizen, and divide our nation. A house divided cannot stand. If people do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes their perceptions of the world, then they do not know how they are helping to implement the agenda, which ultimately is to advance humanity into a dictatorship—whether by the fascists, the communists, or the globalists and their New World Order. We must step outside the dialectic so that we can be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

The most important thing about America is liberty. America is what has stood between power-hungry people and their goals of world domination. The true enemies of America are trying to convince us that we are each other’s enemies and that big government and control of the lives of the many by a few is the solution to cure what ails us. We must all recognize that they are weaponizing the crisis and this narrative is a lie. Government bureaucrats are now labeling anyone who thinks they have overstepped their constitutional bounds as enemies of the state—“patriot terrorists.” What liberty-loving people are now combating is pure evil.

All it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. As we reflect back on Sept. 11, 2001, one thing that stands out about that time following the terrorist attacks is that we forgot the things that divide us. We united as Americans. There’s no better example than what we saw in New York City. We were united together in support of one another fighting a common enemy.

So many have sacrificed so much to secure our liberty and preserve it for future generations. Many of us have lost a loved one on a foreign battlefield or from a service-connected illness after they returned, or in the line of duty here at home. How do we honor their sacrifice and that of so many others in our nation’s 245-year history? We stand and fight to uphold liberty and our unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents. If liberty is to be lost, it won’t be on our watch.

We Are in a War for America’s Soul (theepochtimes.com)

Questions are being asked about the Biden administration’s vetting of tens of thousands of Afghans who have been brought into the country after it became known that two men who arrived in the U.S. had been previously deported after committing violent crimes.

One man, a convicted rapist, was deported several years ago and found his way back into the U.S. amid the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last month.

The Washington Times reported that a second man, who was also deported for a different crime, was found among refugees at Washington Dulles International Airport.

That man, who was not named in the Times story, was previously convicted of aggravated robbery. He had been deported in 2017. The report did not state when it was discovered that a known and violent felon was discovered among refugees by customs agents.

The startling report follows another report of a convicted rapist being allowed into the country after leaving Kabul last month — after having also been deported in 2017.

Trending

ISIS Leader Responsible for the Deaths of 4 Americans Just Paid the Ultimate Price

The Times reported a man named Ghader Heydari, 47, was intercepted at the same airport in Washington on Aug. 26 after arriving from a connecting flight in Germany. The man was among other Afghans who had left Kabul on military flights.

ICE officials sent him to a facility in Virginia while it is determined what to do with him.

According to the Idaho Department of Corrections, Heydari was paroled in 2015 and was under supervision until he was deported. He was convicted of rape in 2011 and had not been scheduled for release until 2028.

The sheriff in Canyon County, Idaho, where Heydari was convicted of rape, slammed the Biden administration for allowing him back in.Should the U.S. spend more time vetting Afghan refugees?

“This guy’s a threat. And the United States — the Biden administration — brought him here,” Sheriff Kieran Donahue told the Times.

“We’re going to pay for this for some time, possibly for decades, and as law enforcement, we’re kind of that first line of defense out here,” Donahue added. “These people are coming into the country without a thorough vetting process, and I don’t believe there is one being done thoroughly. We stand to have a whole bunch of law enforcement respond to tragic events, up to and including terrorist activity, on our soil.”

The fact that two men who were previously deported from this country after committing violent crimes were able to get back in amid the chaotic exit from Kabul is raising questions about how federal officials have vetted tens of thousands of people.

Having already seen felons, as well as a number of individuals with measles make it through the vetting process, @GovLauraKelly must ensure ALL refugees stepping foot in KS have been vetted to the highest degree in a third country to safeguard our national and state’s security. https://t.co/9jjSYYo9Ss

— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) September 16, 2021

Related

Here’s How Many Afghan Refugees Are Headed to Each State in the US

I have advocated that we should try and settle these individuals in other countries around Afghanistan that share their values and culture, especially if we can not ensure proper vetting.

— Matt Rosendale (@RepRosendale) September 16, 2021

The traditional vetting process for these individuals is a 14-step procedure, that takes well over a year. The mass evacuation of over 100,000 Afghan nationals in a matter of weeks has made proper vetting of these individuals near impossible.

— Matt Rosendale (@RepRosendale) September 16, 2021

Of course, some have been asking raising questions about terrorism concerns since flights began departing Afghanistan. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has defended how the Biden administration is vetting Afghan nationals.

Fox News reported Mayorkas last week described the process of vetting tens of thousands of people.

“We have no information to suggest ISIS has come into the United States through the Afghan national population that we have admitted under our legal authorities,” Mayorkas said at a National Press Club event.

“We have a multi-layered, multi-agency screening and vetting process to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he added.

“We screen and vet individuals before they board planes to travel to the United States and that screening and vetting process is an ongoing one and multi-layered.”

Some analysts, according to the Times article, are concerned that the men’s criminal past was not discovered until the two reached U.S. soil, because that “creates a series of rights and erects significant hurdles to getting rid of them again.”

Officials Discover Major Felons Among Refugees Vetted by Biden Admin and Brought to US (westernjournal.com)

TheNebulator, [14.09.21 21:17] on Telegram

Not only is General Mark Milley “woke,” he also apparently (https://on.rt.com/bgoh) conspired with the CIA, NSA, Nancy Pelosi and even China (!) to undermine President Donald Trump. This is according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa – who, it needs to be noted, are sworn members of the anti-Trump #resistance – excerpts of which were leaked to the Media-Democrat Complex today.

Milley denies having done anything improper, mind you. But his actions, as detailed by Woodward and Costa, are pretty damning. While most Republicans are following the white rabbit of Milley calling his counterpart in China to say he’s give them advance warning of any US attack (not that any was in the cards, but consider the implications), far worse to my mind is the whole thing about telling the NSA and CIA to spy on Trump for signs of anything “crazy or illegal” (as defined by Pelosi, apparently). If this isn’t treason, then what is?

Ah, but Orange Man is Bad, which means anything goes. Milley is the Who, Trump is the Whom, and thus the “logic” of moral relativism is satisfied. The aforementioned MDC was marching in lockstep defending his reported actions all day.

Mind you, I think the Woodward/Costa book is spin – they’re reporting what happened, but imputing evil motivations to anything Trump did or may have thought of doing, while ascribing the purest noble motives to anyone working against him. Think of it as a sequel to that Time article about the “fortifiers” of 2020: they want to tell everyone what they did, because in their Narrative, they’re heroes, not villains.

Milley’s actions appear to corroborate my analysis from June 2020, when I found it odd that Biden was so confident the military would be on his side, right after Milley uncharacteristically offered a groveling apology to the woke scolds for doing his job. Today’s revelations also reinforced what I wrote back in January, when I argued that the Resistance and the MDC, in their obsession with ousting Trump, had thoroughly discredited what Darren Beattie would later label the Globalist American Empire (both links are in the piece linked above, don’t want to clutter this post).

You’d think I would be happy about that, but… that might also mean I was right about other things, other patterns I’ve observed and extrapolated from. About things that I think might be coming. Trouble is, they’re not pretty.

TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:35]
[In reply to TheNebulator]
Update on Milley: it’s worse than I thought. I had somehow missed that he made two phone calls to China, one on January 8 (amid conspiring with Pelosi) but the other four days prior to the election, suggesting even more strongly that he was part of the “fortification” already. Moreover, he apparently “suggested” PACOM cancel some exercises to reassure China, and they did so. This is according to the Washington Post, mind you.

The Pentagon’s response today was to double down and say Milley did nothing wrong, while the White House praised his commitment to Our Democracy. As I said, it doesn’t matter what is done, only Who is doing it to Whom. I actually went on News Views Hughes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoXB_dsN0-w&list=PLagVUKF7CUTTtjJqFw6JvO14pG6Z1RBmv&index=1&t=94s) today to discuss the whole situation. But it’s bad, folks, really bad.

TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:43]
You get two posts tonight, though, because I simply have to comment on the sheer irony of Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, far better known as Nicki Minaj, becoming the unlikely hero in the fight for common sense against the Branch Covidian cult (as Eric D. July so memorably calls it).

Everything about that story is just perfect: from the original tall tale of “her cousin’s friend in Trinidad” getting his wedding called off because his testicles swelled up ( the symptom is more commonly associated with some STDs, but that was obvious from the get-go) — to her point that people should make the decision for themselves instead of getting bullied into it, to the shrieking response of everyone from her fandom to pundits to Big Tech and the government of Trinidad…

Is there a better way to expose the sheer absurdity of the System, than a rapper with millions of social media followers not giving a damn? When facts and arguments don’t help, because people offering them get censored or smeared, it’s down to the jesters — and entertainers are the biggest jesters of all, aren’t they?

Years from now, when the Davos set has failed in their attempt at a neo-feudal Great Reset, we’ll look back and try to figure out the exact moment the tide turned. It’s entirely possible this will be it.

TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:07]
So, special counsel John Durham finally indicts someone in his probe of the Trump-Russia probe… and it’s not a nobody, but a partner in the DNC law firm that was behind the Steele Dossier. Michael Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI, by telling them he wasn’t representing anyone — while in fact representing a tech executive coordinating with the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to spread the lie about Alfa Bank being a “secret conduit” for candidate Trump to Russia.

Normally this would be a very big deal, except the DOJ already leaked it to the New York Times earlier today, which pre-shaped the narrative to minimize Sussmann’s culpability… (to be continued)

TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:26]
(continued) What’s the big deal, you might say. Only in that for five years the weaponized FBI, DOJ and the intelligence community went after Trump for alleged “Russian collusion,” bankrupted his aides and allies with legal fees, jailed some for unrelated charges in hopes they’d agree to implicate him, and deterred decent people from taking jobs in his administration while letting neocons and various double agents infiltrate instead. Yet despite the proven, documented wrongdoing of the highest echelons of the FBI and DOJ, CIA and NSA, only one person involved was ever charged — and given a slap on the wrist.

Kevin Clinesmith, who literally falsified evidence to enable the FBI to spy on Trump via Carter Page (by altering a document that said Page was a CIA source to say he wasn’t) got… 12 months’ probation, some community service, and just got his DC bar license back. The regime protects its own, you see.

Earlier this week, we found out that JCS chairman General Mark Milley was back-channeling with China and conspiring with Democrats , CIA and NSA against Trump. But the entire media-political complex came to his defense, calling him a hero. Meanwhile, retired General Michael Flynn was illegally unmasked, charged with lying to the FBI on absolutely zero basis, and dragged through the courts for something like three years — even had his family threatened — before he was eventually pardoned, because the activist federal judge in DC refused to accept the DOJ dropping the case.

That judge, Emmett Sullivan, just ruled this evening that illegal immigrants can’t be sent back to Mexico under a rule intended to protect public health. Get that? Vaccine and muzzle mandates for you, but not for people just walking across. A Fox News crew in Del Rio, Texas has used a drone to film thousands of people (mainly from Haiti) crossing over from Mexico. The regime’s response? Judge Sullivan’s ruling — and a FAA ban on all drone activity. On grounds of “security,” you see.

Even so, some intelligent but apparently still clueless people are harping on the hypocrisy of the What, not realizing that the republic in which it mattered no longer exists. It has been replaced by Our Democracy, in which the only thing that matters is Who/Whom. Do you understand yet?

TheNebulator – Telegram

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should open an official investigation into reports that Gen. Mark Milley held secret calls with a Chinese general, a group of House Republicans said on Sept. 16.

In a letter to Austin, the group asked Austin to open an Army Regulation 15–6 investigation into the calls, which Milley’s spokesman appears to have confirmed took place.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and 26 other Republicans said they’re “gravely concerned” with “Milley’s ability to exercise his duties and responsibilities as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“In this recent case, our specific concerns involve reports from 14 September 2021, which indicate that Gen. Milley blatantly disregarded the concept of civilian control of the military, and gave aid and comfort to America’s principal adversary, the Chinese Communist Party,” they wrote.

John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told The Epoch Times in an email that the Department of Defense is aware of the letter and will respond to the members directly.

“General Milley retains the trust and confidence of Secretary Austin,” he added.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t return a query.

According to anonymously sourced reports, Milley told Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng across conversations in October 2020 and January that the United States wasn’t going to attack China and suggested that he would tip off China if an attack were about to occur.

Republicans say those remarks, if accurately reported, amount to treason, and have called on President Joe Biden to fire Milley, or for Milley to resign.

Biden offered his support for Milley on Sept. 15, without commenting on the veracity of the reporting. Austin is an appointee of Biden, while Milley was appointed by President Donald Trump.

An Army Regulation 15–6 investigation can be formal or informal. The members of Congress are asking for a formal probe.

While Milley hasn’t personally commented, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sept. 15 that Milley “regularly communicates with Chiefs of Defense across the world, including with China and Russia” and confirmed that Milley spoke with the Chinese in October 2020 and January.

The calls “were in keeping with these duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” the spokesman said.

But the calls were unauthorized, Christopher Miller, who headed the Pentagon when the second one took place, said on Sept. 15.

“If the reporting … is accurate, it represents a disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination by the Nation’s top military officer,” Miller said.

House Republicans Ask Defense Secretary for Probe Into Gen. Milley’s Calls With China (theepochtimes.com)

What happened to the weapons, fuel, drones, planes, and other resources the United States provided to the now-defunct Afghanistan government? What happened to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police officers who abandoned their posts? What happened to the Afghan women and girls, and the others who supported the failed nation-building project?

Those are just a few of the questions that Special Inspector General for the Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko intends to investigate before his office closes in about a year, he said on Sept. 14.

Sopko and his SIGAR agency are the authors of what has been dubbed the “Afghanistan Papers”—a previously secret history of the war, akin to what the Pentagon Papers were for the Vietnam War. His work revealed in December 2019 that U.S. officials had falsely told the public about alleged progress in Afghanistan for years while acknowledging in private that the nation-building efforts were failing miserably.

Sopko spoke with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on Sept. 14, saying his work isn’t finished.

“We have a number of indictments and investigations and audits that we’re finishing up,” Sopko told POGO. “But then there’s other questions we think need to be answered.”

Sopko said that along with the questions mentioned above—“and many more”—he also intends to investigate the future of the Afghan narcotics trade. His 2018 report states that illicit narcotics account for 60 percent of the Taliban’s annual revenue.

“I directed my staff today to investigate what has happened to the narcotics trade since then, and what can we predict is going to happen?” he said. “We spent billions on fighting narcotics, and I think the American people would like to know about that.”

Sopko doesn’t have much time to find the answers to his questions. SIGAR is set to expire along with the Afghanistan reconstruction project, and the inspector general said he thinks he has about a year left to complete the task.

During the wide-ranging interview with POGO, Sopko also spoke about why he thought the Afghanistan reconstruction project was such a dismal failure.

He said U.S. officials were overly optimistic because that’s the way they could advance their careers—“people who made their career on happy talk,” he described it. The special inspector general also said the U.S. government demanded signs of progress on too short of a timeline.

To illustrate his point, Sopko spoke about what he called perhaps the “dumbest” project throughout the 20-year war.

“They brought in sexy white Italian goats to breed with the Afghan goats and improve the wool production. … We talked to the woman who they bought the goats from, who was tearing out her hair over how stupid it was—because they wanted to show success in a year or two,” Sopko said.

“She said, ‘This takes 10 to 20 years to do this!’”

All the Italian goats eventually died, according to Sopko.

“You could not make up some of the programs we had over there,” he said.

POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian asked Sopko why his work has had such an impact on discourse when so many other inspector generals have been relatively ineffective.

“Many IGs are acting under a conflict of interest because the administration dangles an appointment in front of their face, so they kind of lose some of their ardor for oversight,” Sopko said. “And we’ve had too many IGs who are fat, dumb, and happy.”

Sopko didn’t just focus his ire on U.S. security officials or his fellow IGs; he also criticized The Washington Post for trying to ascertain the identities of the Afghans he interviewed for his various reports.

“The Washington Post sued us for not divulging their identities. They said, ‘You have to tell us who your whistleblowers are,’” he said. “Isn’t that ironic? This is the same Washington Post that for 30-some years defended someone’s name and never revealed it. I think the name was ‘Deep Throat’ or something like that.

“You have to defend whistleblowers. Anyone in this town should know that. Especially reporters.”

Afghanistan Watchdog to Investigate Unanswered Questions (theepochtimes.com)

Republicans concerned aid money was ‘ransom payment’ to get stranded Americans home safe

A coalition of Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress is demanding that the Biden administration turn over all internal documents and communications related to plans to provide the Taliban with cash assets, a move the coalition says would incentivize the terror group’s taking of American hostages.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in Congress, is spearheading a probe that requires the Biden administration to disclose if the Taliban has insisted on U.S. financial aid in exchange for allowing Americans stranded in the country to return home. The State Department announced last week that it is sending $64 million in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, generating concerns that the Biden administration has agreed to a quid pro quo in which the terrorist group gets aid dollars in exchange for providing safe passage to those still stranded in the country.

“We have serious concerns about negotiations with the Taliban leading to the payment of ransom—whether marketed as humanitarian assistance or sanctions relief—which will give the Taliban resources that could be used to attack the United States or our allies,” a group of 21 RSC lawmakers wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and sent Tuesday to the State Department. “The payment of ransom to terrorists, likely including the September 13 announcement of $64 million dollars in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provided without guardrails, will only further place Americans in harm’s way by incentivizing the Taliban, and other terrorist groups, to kidnap more Americans.”

The latest investigation is one of several helmed by Republicans in Congress who want to know why the Biden administration pulled U.S. forces from Afghanistan without a plan to stop the Taliban from regaining control of the country. The Biden administration is under intense criticism for leaving Americans and vulnerable Afghans behind in the country as the Taliban angles to use them as leverage in negotiations with U.S. diplomats. The State Department still “has not presented a plan before Congress illustrating how it will ensure that Americans will not be left behind through diplomatic negotiations,” the RSC wrote in its letter.

The State Department has 10 days to provide Congress with detailed internal information about negotiations with Afghanistan’s recently formed Taliban government that could see economic sanctions on the group lifted, according to a copy of the investigation documents obtained by the Free Beacon. The investigation is backed by 21 GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Tracey Mann (Kan.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Banks, the chairman of the RSC, told the Free Beacon that any deal that gives the Taliban access to hard currency will send the message that “holding Americans hostage is an effective way to make money.”

The lawmakers say they want detailed information about any plans the Biden administration has to unfreeze billions of dollars in assets held in U.S. accounts on behalf of the former U.S.-aligned Afghan government. This includes “any sanctions relief, or financial assistance to the Taliban in exchange for providing them safe passage of American citizens or lawful permanent residents out of Afghanistan,” according to the document request letter.

They also want the State Department to provide copies “of all documents and communications” related to the administration’s ongoing dialogue with Taliban leaders regarding frozen funds.

Mann told the Free Beacon that “the American people deserve to know whether the United States has provided any financial assistance to the Taliban in exchange for the release of American citizens, or whether the Taliban has requested such assistance, which amounts to ransom.”

The State Department’s failure to inform Congress about its ongoing discussions with the Taliban has fueled GOP concerns that money will be exchanged for concessions from the Taliban, including the release of Americans and vulnerable Afghans still inside the country.

“The Biden administration’s lack of planning and execution created the conditions for the Taliban to hold Americans and our Afghan allies hostage and allows the Taliban to use them as bargaining chips to unfreeze assets, withdrawing sanctions, or gain international recognition,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas), who signed the letter, told the Free Beacon. “We cannot negotiate with terrorists and we certainly cannot acquiesce to their demands.”

GOP Lawmakers Probe Biden Admin Humanitarian Aid to Taliban (freebeacon.com)

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe told voters Thursday night that he would not repeal qualified immunity. In April, McAuliffe pledged to “end” the policy.

During a Thursday night debate against his Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin, McAuliffe said that he “would not end” qualified immunity, a legal shield that protects police from most lawsuits while they’re on the job. The statement is a reversal from McAuliffe’s position during the Democratic primary, when his campaign said he would end qualified immunity as part of his plan to “increase police accountability.”

“Terry believes Virginia must increase police accountability and transparency in incidents of misconduct, improve training, expand body-worn camera programs, and end policies like qualified immunity that can prevent accountability when heinous acts are committed against Virginians,” McAuliffe spokesman Jake Rubenstein told the Virginia Mercury on April 13. One month later at a May 6 Democratic debate, McAuliffe again said he supported ending the policy.

McAuliffe’s flip-flop came just hours after he lashed out at a local sheriff who questioned his record on police funding. When Montgomery County sheriff Hank Partin noted that McAuliffe accepted an endorsement from a group that supports defunding police, the gubernatorial hopeful asked Parin if he was “out of his mind.” Partin responded by calling the answer “unbelievable,” to which McAuliffe said, “I don’t care what you believe!”

Youngkin said McAuliffe “completely recanted” his position on qualified immunity during Thursday’s debate.

“This is why the law enforcement community doesn’t trust him,” Youngkin said. “Standing up for Virginians is more than just rhetoric and political statements—it’s about actions.”

McAuliffe is not the only statewide Democratic candidate to spar with police in recent months. Virginia attorney general Mark Herring (D.) wrongly touted the endorsement of two local sheriffs who actually backed his Republican opponent due to the Democratic Party’s push to defund police.

Terry McAuliffe Flip-Flops on Qualified Immunity (freebeacon.com)

General Milley is captured on camera lauding the brutal, oppressive, genocidal regime.

General Mark Milley – who participated in secret phone calls with Chinese military leaders while pledging to not carry out then-President Donald Trump’s orders – revealed he “hesitates” to call China an enemy, insisting he trusts the Chinese Communist Party to be forthright with its military ambitions in remarks unearthed by The National Pulse.

Milley – who used a treasonous backchannel to inform Chinese Communist Party officials that he would alert them ahead of U.S. military actions – divulged his view of the regime while speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference in 2017.

“I would hesitate to call China an enemy. Some would say adversary. Others would say enemy. Some would say hostile. I think they are what the slide implies.”

– General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017

The slide referenced by Milley reads: “The Modernisation of Land Forces to Deliver Land Power Decisively in an Era of Constant Competition.”

“They’re a competitor and the competition between the United States and China has a military dimension to it, but that is a far cry and that’s a long leap between that and enemy,” he added, before concluding, “there is a lot of time between now and any time the United States and China would become quote-on-quote an enemy where armed conflict were to be pursued.”

RUSI, an establishment British think-tank, summarized Milley’s speech by noting “China and the United States are competitors, not enemies” in a tweet from the event.

Gen Milley at #RUSILWC; China and the United States are competitors, not enemies. But, that competition does have a military aspect.

— RUSI (@RUSI_org) June 27, 2017

Speaking about his worldview regarding China, Milley admitted “that is a construct, though, that we use, that I use within the United States Army” at the event which he noted had Chinese Communist Party military officers in attendance.

MUST READ:  EXC: Biden’s National Security Council China Director Is Former Fellow At Chinese State-Funded Group Advising Communist Officials Sanctioned For Human Rights Abuses.

“There’s a lot of commonality, areas of common interest.”

In addition to his rejection of the belief that the Chinese Communist Party is not an enemy of the United States, Milley also reveals he takes the regime “at their word” concerning their military ambitions:

The Chinese military is clearly and unambiguously developing a very modern, capable military. Why are they doing that? The Chinese have their own reasons, but they have clearly published it in unclassified documents. I believe them. I take them at their word. I believe the declaratory policy, that they want to assert themselves and be a co-equal partner with the United States on the global scene and they want to dominate the region in general and assert their historical rights.

The Chinese Communist Party has run influence operations across the United States and Europe for decades, culminating in the bribery of public officials, as well as outright propaganda successes.

WATCH: Gen. Milley’s Shocking Admission About ‘Commonalities’ With the Chinese Communist Party. (thenationalpulse.com)

Plenty of people have pointed out what went wrong in Afghanistan, but far too few people have asked who should now be held accountable for this national disgrace.

The debacle in Afghanistan should be setting off alarm bells in Washington. We surrendered the country that we’d been defending to a seventh century tribe, which had endured immense casualties and was unable to defeat the United States on the battlefield. But the Taliban was able to defeat America politically and psychologically.

In a healthy country, the Taliban takeover would be a real crisis—one that causes a fundamental rethinking within the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community about how they’ve been operating.

How can we have spent 20 years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars and then lose to a band of medieval thugs with no air force? This is the kind of question the generals, diplomats, and analysts should be asking in the halls of government.

It’s troubling how unphased many of our leaders appear to be, especially the principals of the Biden administration. What they don’t seem to understand—or perhaps worse, don’t recognize the importance of—is that what happened in Afghanistan isn’t just about Afghanistan.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, other jihadists—they’re all taking note of what’s transpired over the past several weeks. The world now sees America as completely unreliable. We need to show that we’re both reliable and dangerous.

Accountability is absolutely crucial to come to grips with how big a problem this is and to reestablish respect among allies and enemies. The leaders who, through their shameless incompetence, threw away two decades of sacrifice in a matter of days, left Americans behind enemy lines, betrayed our Afghan allies, and left Afghanistan to reemerge as a terrorist haven must be held responsible.

Someone who’s trying to hold these people accountable is retired Maj. Gen. Joseph Arbuckle, a decorated veteran who first entered the Army in 1969. Currently, Arbuckle is the founder and spokesperson of Flag Officers 4 America, an organization of retired military officers dedicated to supporting and defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Flag Officers 4 America just organized an open letter from retired generals and admirals regarding Afghanistan. The letter, signed by Arbuckle and 160-plus retired military leaders, demands accountability for the botched withdrawal and for both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to resign for their handling of the situation.

Arbuckle told me why he wrote the letter and analyzed the scene in Afghanistan last week on my podcast, “Newt’s World.” As the general explained, this was a difficult decision, but accountability is a foundational principle of the military. President Biden’s military advisers knew the fiasco that would ensue by not extending the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline. When Biden decided to push ahead with his plan, Arbuckle said, Austin and Milley had two choices: resign in protest or follow the order and take responsibility for the outcome.

Unfortunately, no one is taking responsibility—not Biden, not Austin, not Milley. And the nation will suffer as a result, with its leaders refusing to learn lessons from their failures. This should be unacceptable to the American people.

For those interested, Flag Officers 4 America recently partnered with the Committee to Support and Defend so that civilians and veterans who are non-flag officers can also have a voice and sign onto similar letters to the one organized by Arbuckle.

As Arbuckle and I discuss, with our military leadership focusing on critical race theory rather than warfighting, the country is in trouble. Holding leaders accountable is the first step to getting us back on track—and earning back the respect of the rest of the world that was lost in Afghanistan.

From Gingrich360.com.

Time to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for Afghanistan Fiasco (theepochtimes.com)

Credit Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) with posing the critical question during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Sept. 14 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

After declaring he was not speaking on a partisan basis and that “there is not enough lipstick in the world to put on this pig (the Afghanistan withdrawal),” Risch asked a nervous Blinken: “Who is responsible? Who made the decisions on this? Was it the president of the United States?”

“Ultimately, the president makes the decisions,” Blinken replied. He quickly added a string of qualifications. “Hundreds and thousands of decisions …,” Blinken opined, “… go into a situation as complex as this one.” The president makes “big strategic decisions,” but “tactical and operational decisions are made by different agencies, agency heads and agency officials.”

Risch is the committee’s ranking minority member. He didn’t need to hear a truism-packed sermon on trickle-down bureaucratic decision-making calculated to appear to take responsibility without really doing so. But that’s what he got.

As I scanned a transcript of his testimony, I noticed Blinken sidestepped discussing decisions (made by unnamed individuals) that on-the-ground action in Afghanistan had proved to be utterly wrongheaded and destructive.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Blinken that if he were just reading Blinken’s prepared testimony, then he would think the withdrawal “was a smashing success. But I do read the news, as most Americans do, and we realize this is a complete debacle … what concerns me the most … is the detachment from reality …”

In the Biden administration, political “optics” overrule reality. Blinken repeats, with premeditation, the Biden administration’s most grievous strategic error: focusing on managing political perception instead of executing policy actions that address on-the-ground facts.

On Aug. 31, Reuters confirmed that harsh truth when it published the July 23 telephone exchange between Biden and Afghan then-President Ashraf Ghani. Biden told Ghani that “… the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan … is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

Biden knew his poorly planned and incompetently executed withdrawal was failing, but perhaps he could fool the public. Now Blinken continues to wage perception warfare against American citizens, attempting to hide a planning failure that amounts to dereliction of duty.

The debacle’s principal component was a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO). By U.S. doctrine the State Department serves as the lead agency in a NEO. However, withdrawal from a combat zone requires military forces to maintain security, which means the State and Defense Departments must constantly coordinate with allies in planning the evacuation and in all phases of its execution. Moreover, in a complex situation like Afghanistan, the U.S. president must be willing to send military reinforcements to respond to surprises—like unanticipated enemy attacks.

An experienced planner can sketch a basic NEO plan in 10 minutes, one designed to set conditions favorable to a successful evacuation.

The following are some of the key elements. Identify and secure evacuation corridors. In a landlocked territory (like Afghanistan), secure multiple airports, even if that means temporarily sending in more troops. Stock the air bases with food and medical supplies. Alert and begin staging airlift assets, to include commercial and contract aircraft. State Department consular teams (protected by security units if necessary) seek out American citizens. The State Department surges Special Immigrant Visa processing and arranges for third-country safe havens for SIV and noncitizen evacuees. What processing cannot occur in-country, safe havens can handle.

Many of these suboperations could have begun April 14, the day Biden gave the withdrawal order.

Common-sense advice: Don’t set firm dates for completing the evacuation if you can avoid it—tipping off the enemy is a bad idea. Withdraw security forces based on the threat. As the evacuation nears completion, the military begins to “shrink the perimeter” while maintaining punitive strike-back capability.

The sad thing is the United States has the institutional resources and experience to conduct a successful evacuation. But the tragic results tell us Biden administration senior leaders had no clue how to organize them, much less use them.

Biden Administration Strategic Errors Led to Afghan Debacle (theepochtimes.com)

Milley is a threat to our Constitution, our democracy, and our country’s national security.  He is, in a word, dangerous.

Gregg Jarrett joined ‘Hannity’ to discuss the growing controversy surrounding Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley. If the reporting in the soon-to-be-released book Peril is accurate, Milley should be relieved of duty pending a thorough investigation.

An independent and bipartisan commission is a good idea; the military is also duty-bound under the Military Code to conduct its own probe.  If there’s credible evidence, Milley should face a general court martial.

The charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice Milley could face would include:

• Usurping Authority of the President…known as sedition
• Aiding the Enemy…providing advanced intelligence
• Possible Espionage…conveying top secret and classified military information to a foreign adversary

Milley didn’t seem to understand that he has no authority whatsoever.  None.  As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he’s an adviser to the president and the security council.  Nothing more.  He is not in the chain of command, meaning he’s prohibited by law from having any operational command authority.

Yet, Milley allegedly convened a covert meeting of top Pentagon officials and instructed them that no one was to act on orders for a military strike —even from the president— without his approval.  Milley was seizing presidential power and actively subverting the elected civilian leadership embedded in our constitution.

Furthermore, he then advised the Chinese that there would be no surprise attack against them.  His office admits this.  But he also reportedly vowed that he would warn the Chinese in advance of any attack.  Good Lord!  What if the Chinese had decided, “This is great information; we can now launch our own devastating preemptive attack against the U.S. because there’s a power vacuum in there!”

No amount of rationalization by Milley can justify his lawless and treacherous actions.  He claims he thought Trump might attempt a coup after losing the election. Milley’s dishonorable response was to mount a coup of his own against the president.

In our democracy, we don’t let one man decide all on his own, “I think the president is unstable…so I’m taking over control.”  That’s not his judgment to make.  He’s not remotely qualified.  Nor is the Joint Chiefs constitutionally authorized.  He is nowhere in the chain of command.  The White House janitor has as much power as Milley.

It’s insane that Biden is defending Milley.  Will the general at some point (tomorrow, next week, next month) decide that Biden is mentally deficient or unstable and once against try to seize presidential powers and control over the military?

Biden better think about that —to the extent that he’s alert and conscious— before continuing to support  Milley. Milley is a threat to our Constitution, our democracy, and our country’s national security.  He is, in a word, dangerous.

General Milley Seized Presidential Power and Subverted Leadership Embedded in Our Constitution | Gregg Jarrett (thegreggjarrett.com)

Former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, who briefly led the Pentagon from late 2020 until January 2021, said he did not authorize an alleged phone call between Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and his Chinese Communist Party counterpart.

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer whose sole role is providing military-specific advice to the president, and by law is prohibited from exercising executive authority to command forces,” Miller said in a statement to Fox News, referring to allegations contained in a forthcoming Bob Woodward book that Milley made two secret phone calls to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army in late October 2020 and two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, respectively.

“If the reporting in Woodward’s book is accurate, it represents a disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination by the Nation’s top military officer,” Miller’s statement added, saying that Milley’s alleged “histrionic outbursts and unsanctioned, anti-Constitutional involvement in foreign policy prove true, he must resign immediately or be fired by the Secretary of Defense to guarantee the sanctity of the officer corps.”

When he led the Pentagon, Miller recalled that he didn’t and wouldn’t “ever authorize such conduct.”

The Woodward book, co-authored by Robert Costa, asserted that Milley became concerned that former President Donald Trump was unstable and would spark a war with China. That prompted him to arrange two secret phone calls with Li, it claimed, adding that Milley told his Chinese counterpart that the United States wouldn’t strike and said he would tell his counterpart if Trump ordered an attack.

Following publication of the alleged phone call, Milley’s spokesman, Col. Dave Butler, told news outlets that his communications with Li were part of his normal responsibilities and duties and that Milley did not break protocol in how he spoke to Li.

“All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense,” Butler said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other Biden administration mounted a defense of Milley, saying they believe he is still suitable to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Milley “is somebody who has fidelity to the Constitution,” she said, adding that Biden “has confidence in [Milley’s] leadership and the role he has played in his experience with him.”

Later, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said he cannot verify the claims in Woodward’s book but added he “see[s] nothing in what I’ve read that would cause any concern.”

But Miller said that if the allegations are correct, an investigation is warranted because “a lesser ranking officer accused of such behavior would immediately be relieved of duty.”

“Any accusations that President Trump was intent on starting a war with China are completely unfounded,” Miller also said in his statement. “President Trump absolutely believed and advocated for a more aggressive approach to China, but he was elected to end our Nation’s wars, not start new ones. I was proud to play a small role in achieving those goals.”

The Department of Defense hadn’t responded to a request for comment as of this article’s publication.

Former Trump Pentagon Chief Says He ‘Did Not’ Authorize Mark Milley–China Calls (theepochtimes.com)

In a special briefing Tuesday, the Biden administration detailed its plan and efforts to relocate and settle Afghan refugees across the country in the near future.

The teleconference was held by the spokesperson office of the Department of State.

“The Department of State works with nine resettlement agencies and their networks of more than 200 local affiliates across the country to resettle Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and Reception and Placement Services,” one senior official said during the briefing.

Non-SIV holders, such as SIV applicants and other vulnerable Afghans who have entered as parolees, are transferred to one of eight domestic military installations for additional immigration processing and medical screenings before they’re resettled, the official continued.

“Afghans granted parole will receive State Department-funded assistance through these resettlement agencies via the Afghan Placement and Assistance Program, the APA. Through the APA Program, individuals will be placed in communities across the country to begin to rebuild their lives,” the official added.

The Department of State reported that more than 124,000 individuals had been evacuated from Afghanistan, including 6,000 American citizens.

On Sept. 3, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said nearly 40,000 people had arrived in the United States, about 20 percent of them are American citizens or permanent residents.

Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are still being processed in overseas bases such as in the Gulf area and Europe. It’s unclear how many more will come to the United States in the coming months.

During Tuesday’s teleconference, a senior official said that “a core tenet” of the settlement program is family unification.

“As with traditional refugee and SIV resettlement, placement of individuals will prioritize reunification with U.S.-based family and friends and will consider the needs and characteristics of each case,” the official said.

Other factors in determining where Afghans will be relocated include reasonable housing, job opportunities, and community capacity, the official added.

Between October 2001 and August 2021, over 97,000 Afghan refugees and SIV recipients have settled in the United States, U.S. News reported, citing data from the State Department.

According to the data, over 80 percent of Afghan refugee and SIV recipients were resettled in 10 states since 2001. The 10 states are California, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, and Missouri. California alone admitted 31,695 Afghan refugees, almost one-third of the total.

During the teleconference, officials said HHS would provide vaccines, “short-term emergency health insurance,” and “time-limited cash and medical assistance” to refugees and all other eligible populations, among other services.

HHS has requested additional funding to support these new arrivals from Afghanistan, the official added.

In August, President Joe Biden authorized an extra $500 million for relocating Afghan refugees, including applicants for SIVs.

Last week, the Biden administration requested Congress to provide $6.4 billion in the fiscal year 2022 to support processing Afghan refugees, provide resources for new and future Afghan arrivals, and for other humanitarian needs.

Biden Administration Details Plan to Relocate Afghan Refugees Across the Country (theepochtimes.com)

Six confirmed, 17 suspected cases is a “major public health threat” and “has the potential to seed countless U S community outbreaks,” CDC chief warns in private letter obtained by Just the News.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a private warning to the chief of Afghan evacuation operations that measles is spreading among refugees and poses a “major public health threat” that includes the potential for “larger imminent outbreaks” in U.S. communities already reeling from the coronavirus.

CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky’s memo Tuesday night urged Operations Allies Welcome senior official Robert Fenton to take “urgent public health action” that includes mass vaccinations of refugees, revealing there are now six confirmed cases of measles in Afghan refugees, 17 suspected cases and hundreds of exposures in U.S. hospitals.

“The large number of unvaccinated Afghan evacuees as seen already has the potential to seed countless U.S. community outbreaks,” Walensky warned in the four-page memo obtained by Just the News.

“These outbreaks represent a major public health threat and rapid mass vaccination and expanding quarantine and isolation capacities are essential,” she stressed.

You can read the memo here: CDCMeaslesWarningFinal.pdf (Alternate Location)

She also wrote the current cases are “an indicator of potentially much larger imminent outbreaks” that could already overwhelm hospitals fighting the deadly surge of the Delta coronavirus variant.

“Immediate implementation of CDC public health standards is imperative to prevent introduction of measles into US communities and to respond to multiple concurrent measles outbreaks,” Walensky wrote.

She added, “Health care facilities are already at limited capacity as they battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which requires tremendous workforce in laboratory assets.”

Measles was declared eradicated from America decades ago after an aggressive vaccine campaign, and its reintroduction to U.S. communities could prove deadly to those it infects who aren’t vaccinated, officials warn.

Walensky’s memo used stark language to describe the consequences if the outbreaks aren’t thwarted soon through quarantine and vaccination campaigns.

“Failing to swiftly execute the measures outlined above will likely result in increased exposure to evacuees and personnel supporting OAW operations, including safe havens,” she wrote. “Further, evacuates who have not been vaccinated (41% of children under five years old are not currently protected against measles) pose a public health threat.”

The imminent fears of large outbreaks comes less than a week after the first measles case was detected in an Afghan refugee patient at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. 

EXCLUSIVE: CDC warns Afghan refugees pose threat of ‘larger imminent outbreaks’ of measles in U.S. | Just The News

Excerpts from the new Bob Woodward book reveal a partisan coup at the heart of the U.S. government.

Through secret backchannels unbeknownst to then-President Donald Trump, General Mark Milley informed leaders from the Chinese Communist Party and Democratic Party that he would not carry out “any kind” of military action ordered by Trump.

The revelations represent a stunning admission of an effective coup d’etat at the top of the U.S. government, with U.S. officials colluding with the Chinese Communist Party in order to limit Donald Trump’s powers.

Backchannels.

General Milley – who controversially defended teaching Marxist “critical race theory” in the military – telephoned his Chinese Communist Party counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, twice in the final months of the Trump administration.

Milley’s calls – according to Bob Woodward’s and Robert Costa’s new book entited Peril – were aimed at restricting the President of the United States’ abilities to wage kinetic war against China. Stunningly, Milley even secretly pledged to inform Beijing ahead of any potential U.S. military action.

On the first call on October 30th, 2020, just four days before the U.S. election, Milley assured his Chinese Communist Party friends that the U.S. would not attack China:

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

– Gen. Milley

“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” he added. “Li took the chairman at his word,” The Washington Post notes.

The second call between the two generals, of which Milley did not inform Trump, took place on January 8th, 2021.

“Things may look unsteady,” Milley posited to Li, adding “but that’s the nature of democracy, General Li. We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.” In response, Li suggested that the Chinese Communist Party felt that the United States government was unstable during the hour and a half phone call.

Milley believed that Trump would attempt to create a crisis in an effort to seize power, “similar to Hitler’s exploitation in 1933 of an arson fire at the German Reichstag to help institute emergency powers,” according to The Washington Post.

In reality, it was the anti-Trump establishment that turned a small fracas at the Capitol on January 6th into a full-blown “insurrection” – a framing which an increasing number of Americans now reject.

To address these unfounded fears, Milley spoke to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, informing her that he would prohibit Trump from using “any kind” of military force.”

Partisan Military Leadership.

As The New York Times recounts:

Later that day, General Milley spoke to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was growing increasing concerned Mr. Trump would lash out and use military force.

“This is bad, but who knows what he might do?” Ms. Pelosi said. “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”

“Madam Speaker,” General Milley said, “I agree with you on everything.”

General Milley, who as the president’s top military adviser is not in the chain of command, tried to reassure Ms. Pelosi that he could stop Mr. Trump.

“The one thing I can guarantee is that as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I want you to know that — I want you to know this in you heart of hearts, I can guarantee you 110 percent that the military, use of military power, whether it’s nuclear or a strike in a foreign country of any kind, we’re not going to do anything illegal or crazy,” he said.

“Well,” Ms. Pelosi said, “what do you mean, illegal or crazy?”

“I can give you my word,” General Milley said. “The best I can do is give you my word and I’m going to prevent anything like that in the United States military.”

Afghan Failures.

The report from Peril also reveals Milley’s partisan deference to Joe Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal, a series of decision that led directly to the deaths of American servicemen, Afghan civilians, and the continued abandonment of hundreds of Americans in the country.

“You’re dealing with a seasoned politician here who has been in Washington, D.C., 50 years, whatever it is,” Milley told the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That seasoned politician later went on to call the Afghan withdrawal an “extraordinary success,” before openly showing his disdain for dead Americans arriving at Dover.

COUP: General Milley Secretly Pledged to Warn Chinese Communist Party if Trump Planned a Strike. (thenationalpulse.com)

The announcement comes as DHS continues to respond to the crisis in Afghanistan and the damage caused by Hurricane Ida

Karen Olick, the chief of staff for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, announced today that she’s leaving her position.

Olick is said to be pursuing a new, unspecified opportunity and will leave the department by the end of the month.

In an email to DHS staffers, Mayorkas said, “We are grateful to Karen for her service during the critical first nine months of the new Administration.”

POLITICO: Department of Homeland Security chief of staff resigns

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) September 13, 2021

Olick led the ballot initiative practice for a Democratic strategic communications firm before joining the federal government. Additionally, she worked on political campaigns for Joe Biden and former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu. She previously served as an aide to Senator Barbara Boxer for over ten years including serving as chief of staff until 2007. On January 20, 2021, Olick was appointed to the chief of staff position with DHS. 

In a message to DHS, she wrote, “Though too often underappreciated by our fellow citizens, I am continually struck by how many millions of Americans sleep in safety every night because so many at DHS do not sleep.” 

According to Politico, “Employees and senior officials at DHS have also been working non-stop on other crises that their department is taking a lead on including responding to the impacts of Hurricane Ida and helping vet tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who the U.S. evacuated from Kabul in August.”

Earlier this year, Mayorkas was under fire for his handling of the southern border. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called on the DHS secretary to change his policies or resign.

In a statement, Graham said the Biden administration has “lost control of the border” and that Mayorkas “doesn’t have either the will or capability to fix the problem.” 

During his testimony to a House committee, Mayorkas “admitted his department released illegal immigrants into communities without testing them for the coronavirus. Local officials say up to 25% of the migrants are COVID-positive,” per The Washington Times.

The chief of staff position will be temporarily filled by Jennifer Higgins, the associate director of Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. She has worked for the federal government for over 20 years.

Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Resigns | TIMCAST IRL

During a Monday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accusations flew from partisans on both sides of the political aisle. Democrats, hoping to defend President Joe Biden’s unpopular handling of the withdrawal, blamed the Trump administration for the catastrophe. Republicans, riding the wave of increased apprehension toward Biden after the fiasco, went on the offensive, blaming Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for their handling of the situation.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement that “disentangling ourselves from the war in Afghanistan was never going to be easy.”

He continued: “And for my friends who presume a clean solution for the withdrawal existed, I would welcome hearing what exactly a smooth withdrawal from a messy, chaotic, 20-year war looks like. In fact, I’ve yet to hear the clean withdrawal option, because I don’t believe one exists.”

Meeks accused Biden’s critics, who have come from both major parties since the fall of Afghanistan, of “inject[ing] domestic politics into foreign policy.”

Starting a trend continued throughout the meeting by his Democratic colleagues, Meeks shifted the blame to former President Donald Trump, referencing a 2020 deal that would have fulfilled one of the president’s campaign promises to get the country out of the war.

The former president has been heavily critical of Biden’s handling of the withdrawal. In discussions of the situation, Trump has been open about the deal that he and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made with the Taliban, but has remained insistent that this deal would have been reliant on the Taliban meeting several conditions and that his administration would have handled the situation much differently.

Afterward, ranking minority party member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) spoke for Republicans in his opening statement, shifting the blame to Biden’s handling of the situation.

He began, “This did not have to happen, but the president refused to listen to his own generals and the intelligence community who warned him what would happen if we withdrew.” The outcome of the situation, he said, was essentially “an unconditional surrender to the Taliban.”

He roasted Blinken and Biden for their “betrayal” of U.S. allies in the region after promising them that they would be evacuated safely. In the wake of this betrayal, McCaul said, “a dark veil of shariah covers Afghanistan,” leaving not only longtime allies to the Taliban’s retribution but also “stripp[ing] away in a matter of weeks” all efforts to bring rights to women and girls in the country.

McCaul said, “We’re here today to better understand how this administration got it so wrong.”

Blinken Defends Biden Administration Handling

In his own opening remarks, Blinken defended the efforts of the administration and downplayed critics’ accusations.

He began by saying that the United States had two main goals in going into Afghanistan in the first place: “bringing justice to Al Qaeda” for its role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and ensuring that the country could not be used as a launching point for another such terror attack. These goals, said Blinken, were “completed long ago.”

Still, Blinken indicated that the current administration felt forced into conforming with the deal made by Trump with the Taliban. Biden had two choices when he came into office and inherited this deal, Blinken said: “ending the war or escalating it.”

Blinken then pointed to the successes of the administration during the crisis.

He said that in March, just weeks after Biden took office, the State Department was telling Americans to leave the country and offering to help them do so. At the same time, he claimed, the administration worked to speed up the processing of special immigrant visas (SIVs), a usually long and arduous process under standing law; the Trump administration, he added, had done little on this front.

Repeating an often-stated refrain, Blinken said that the rapid decay of the country’s political and military situation defied all predictions. Blinken said that “even the most pessimistic prediction” did not indicate such a quick collapse.

Later, Blinken was asked whether the Trump administration left behind information on Americans in Afghanistan or on its plans for U.S. withdrawal.

Again pushing the blame to Trump, Blinken responded curtly that the administration “inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan.”

Democrats, Republicans Hurl Accusations

During a heated part of the debate, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) accused the president of lying about the situation since it began. Wilson cited claims by the president that there would not be a collapse of the country to the Taliban, that there would not be Vietnam-like scenes of evacuation, and that there would be significant air support for fleeing Americans and Afghans, among others; about each of these, Wilson claimed, Biden lied.

In an equally-heated retort to Wilson, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) snapped at him and other Republicans, accusing them of being “selective” in their concerns about terrorists, again pointing to the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban.

In another showdown, Blinken was asked a question about a phone call from Biden to the now-former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani obtained by Reuters. In the call, Biden is alleged to have told Ghani to lie about the severity of the situation. Blinken refused to comment, neither confirming nor denying the call’s veracity.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) defended the administration’s handling of the crisis. At the height of the evacuation, Sherman said, the Kabul airport was experiencing a constant “stampede.”

“There is simply no way the administration can have an orderly or successful stampede,” Sherman ruled.

Republicans Grill Blinken on Afghanistan, Democrats Blame Trump (theepochtimes.com)

The future darkens as differences between the West and China’s techno-dictatorship rapidly vanish

In 1992, historian Francis Fukuyama wrote that the fall of the Soviet Union signaled “the end of history.”

Capitalism Won Over Marxism

There were nuances to Fukuyama’s theory, but essentially it held that in the battle between Marxism and Capitalism, Marxism had lost. Communist countries from Cuba to China and everywhere in between were all abject economic failures, murderous regimes and horrendous polluters that were absolute hellholes. The top-down, anti-God, oppressive communist system had failed to deliver on its promises in every way.

Conversely, free capitalist nations of every stripe performed relatively well in virtually every way that mattered—in living standards, in freedom for people in all its forms, in technological innovation, artistic and political expression, human rights and even in lowering pollution. All that remained, according to Fukuyama, was the technical management of absorbing the failed Marxist nations into the capitalist global economy.

Making China in Our Image–or Vice Versa?

But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the “end of history.” A decade before the fall of Soviet communism, the West—led by America—decided that engaging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would not only be a counterweight to the USSR, but would also result in China becoming more like the free, capitalist West.

The thinking was that by giving money, factories, technology and markets to the communist Chinese, we could remake the world’s most populous nation into a society that resembled our own. We thought we were succeeding, but the 1989 slaughter of 10,000 young students in Tiananmen Square ended that delusion.

After that cruel display by the CCP, the United States doubled down on China. First, the United States responded with weak sanctions and then in 2000, invited the CCP into the World Trade Organization. From 1980 to 2020, China went from a backward agrarian nation unable to feed itself, to rivaling the United States in technology, economic power and global influence. Over those years, what China didn’t get legally in terms of intellectual property and technology, it stole from the West, one way or another. That practice continues today.

Social Credit System Emerges

Not too ago, the CCP gained the technological capabilities—from facial recognition, to cameras, recording devices, GPS locators and other items—to create a digital surveillance system to monitor, track, identify, arrest, detain, and dispose of those individuals who may or could possibly pose a threat to the State. China’s social credit system was born.

Then, the CCP bundled their surveillance technology, marketed it as “smart city” technology, and sold it to other authoritarian regimes around the world. The CCP certainly didn’t invent smart tech surveillance, the UK has been among the most surveilled societies on Earth for decades. But China has perfected it.

CCP Virus Brings Totalitarianism

As for censorship and propaganda, the U.S. media and academia fought the Trump administration and its supporters to a degree we hadn’t seen before. Negative events were magnified and even invented out of whole cloth, while any positive ones were simply underreported, distorted, or not reported at all.

But all of these developments were only the precursor to what was to come with the debut of the CCP virus (commonly known as the novel coronavirus) in 2019.

As it turns out, we in America have our own homegrown strain of totalitarians who have been ready to be triggered into action. It has become evident that for America’s Big Tech moguls, great wealth isn’t enough.

They want great power, and indeed, they have it.

Medical Authoritarianism

Sadly, the tech moguls’ coordination with the federal government to censor any ideas that contradict the official narrative regarding the CCP virus in America resembles the relationship between the CCP and the state media in China. Social media companies, along with the federal government are using the CCP virus to justify infringing on our Constitutional rights under the guise of “safety.”

It’s as if the Bill of Rights—which not only guarantees our civil rights and freedoms as individuals, but also restricts the authority of the federal government—has itself succumbed to the virus and has been replaced by medically-induced authoritarianism.

That’s because it has.

The Power of Fear

Sadly, this bothers far too few people in America. Of course, who can argue that relinquishing our rights in the name of medical safety isn’t wise or legal? Very few, because if you do, you’ll be censored. Publicly excoriated. Unemployed. Cancelled.

The reality is that we’ve been spoon-fed fear day in and day out for 18 months now, we all need to accept that we’re too vulnerable, too weak, too afraid to face the world, to face a disease with a 99 percent survival rate, without living under the protection of the State.

And where is China in all of this?

Everywhere.

China Gaining Control Over America

In fact, over the past several years, China has been buying up much of American industry—from agricultural farmland and our largest meat processing plants to AMC movie theaters and major media outlets. The consequences of this are chilling: The CCP is gaining great influence on what we put into our bodies and in our minds. That’s just the kind of power the CCP likes to have.

What’s more, all of these tech giants have made billions of dollars in China and remain deeply connected to the communist regime. Another coincidence. But can anyone really hold that against them? After all, the same could be said of the Biden family.

But where does that leave the American people?

A Return to Empires of Old?

For decades, the oppression of the Chinese people by the CCP was regarded the world over as a dismal historical aberration—a dreary dystopian stepchild of the old Soviet dictatorship. The assumption that it would evolve into a more Western-style country has been proven foolhardy. Rather, current trends show that China is a growing empire with global capabilities and ambitions, disdaining the very Western nations that enabled its rise.

From today’s perspective, perhaps it is the America that is disappearing before our eyes that is the historical aberration. Is history, marked mostly by the brute force and tyranny that defined empire after empire, now returning to form?

CCP Virus Remaking the World in China’s Image (theepochtimes.com)

Shares in Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom pushed higher on the Moscow exchange after the company announced that the final sections of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline have been completed.

Gazprom stock increased in value by 1.48% to more than 329 rubles ($4.52) per share shortly after the news was revealed. In opening trading, the shares gained 0.81% to 327.2 rubles per note.

On Friday, the chairman of Gazprom’s management committee, Alexey Miller, announced during the company’s morning briefing that the construction of the gas pipeline had been fully completed at 8:45am Moscow time.

ALSO ON RT.COM

Nord Stream 2 has finally been completed, Russia’s Gazprom announces, despite US efforts to block major European gas pipeline

Earlier this month, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said that gas pumping via Nord Stream 2 is expected to start by the end of this year.

The project consists of two pipelines aimed at boosting annual deliveries of natural gas up to 55 billion cubic meters from the Siberian fields in Russia via the Baltic Sea, straight to Germany. The $12 billion pipeline is set to improve Berlin’s energy security and lower gas prices by making the process less dependent on third-party countries transiting the fuel.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project encountered numerous roadblocks, with the US government threatening companies and states involved in the construction with sanctions. The White House repeatedly slammed the German government, claiming that the project would undermine Europe’s energy security and stability.

EU member states such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary also persistently expressed disapproval of Nord Stream 2. Ukraine, which used to benefit from the transit of gas from Russia to Europe, is also opposing the project, as its successful implementation will inevitably deprive the country’s budget of transit fees.

In July, Washington and Berlin reached a new deal, with the US offering to drop sanctions and cease its interference in the final stages of the pipeline setup. In exchange, it asked Germany to invest in Ukraine and help Kiev maintain its supposed right to transit fees for Russian gas, a hefty proportion of which is currently delivered to Europe via a Soviet-era pipeline going through Ukraine’s territory. 

Meanwhile, Brussels approved new amendments to the EU Gas Directive in February 2019. The rules require companies that produce, transport and distribute gas within the bloc to be separate to ensure fair competition in the market and to prevent companies from possibly obstructing competitors’ access to infrastructure. 

In August, a Gazprom subsidiary involved in constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline lost a court battle over exclusive access to the project’s infrastructure. The ruling may force the company to sell the pipeline to an EU-based operator.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT’s business section

Gazprom stock surges in Moscow as Nord Stream 2 construction completed — RT Business News

Laura Loomer has had street art of Jack Dorsey plastered all around Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.

The posters feature Dorsey as a member of the Taliban, as they allow them to remain on Twitter while banning conservatives — including Loomer.

The art was designed by Loomer and drawn by Bosch Fawstin, a former Muslim who won the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” that was attacked by ISIS in Garland, Texas.https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9jScXWr8BQ?feature=oembed

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“For years, I have been raising awareness about Twitter’s alliance with Islamic terrorist organizations and their willingness to platform enemies of America. This is a concept I have referred to as Silicon Sharia, as Twitter has shown they have no problem banning millions of Americans for their constitutionally protected speech, including myself and sitting President Donald Trump during our elections, while they happily provide a platform for recruitment and propaganda for actual terrorists,” Loomer said in a statement provided to the Gateway Pundit.https://www.youtube.com/embed/CQNmpVU4xw0?feature=oembed

“OPERATION TaliBANNED was created to highlight this absurdity and how Big tech tyrants like Jack Dorsey continue to wage digital jihad on free speech in America with widespread bans rooted in the false Left-wing notion that conservatives and Trump supporters are the real terrorists,” Loomer continued. “Twenty years ago, Twitter did not exist, but it would have been unfathomable to every American that someday in America, the leader of one of the most powerful tech companies in the world would aid and avert Islamic terrorists in the digital public sphere. Jack Dorsey has made it clear that thanks to people like him, Americans are less safe than they were 20 years ago.”

Fawstin pointed out that the issue, for him, is not that Twitter bans people — but who they ban and who they don’t.

“The issue with leftist-run tech companies like Twitter is not about whether they have the right to ban people from their platform, it’s about who they consistently target for banning and why, and who they don’t ban, no matter what. They banned a sitting president, Trump, over the lie that he was the leader of an ‘insurrection’, which the FBI now admits there was no proof of,” Fawstin said.

Fawstin said that Twitter acts “in full accordance with Shariah blasphemy laws” by banning critics of Islam from the platform.

“Twitter bans Islam critics like me and Laura, acting in full accordance with shariah blasphemy laws, while allowing Islamic terrorists who murder Americans to spread their propaganda on their platform. That’s evil, whether or not they have the technical ‘right’ to ban whomever they want. And I do wonder that if our government ever were to officially declare war on the Islamic terrorist enemy, if this aiding and abetting of an enemy in a time of war that Twitter engages in would be legally recognized as such.”

Those who wish to contribute to Loomer’s activism can do so here.

TaliBANNED: Laura Loomer Has Street Art of Jack Dorsey Plastered All Around Twitter HQ (VIDEOS) (thegatewaypundit.com)

Robert O’Neill, the former Navy SEAL credited with killing Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, said that the biggest threat to America comes not from outside but from internal strife and division.

O’Neill made the remarks in an interview with Fox News on the eve of Sept. 11, as the nation prepared to honor victims of the terror attack on the World Trade Center 20 years ago that killed at least 2,977 people and injured thousands more.

“My biggest concern is the division in this country,” O’Neill told the outlet. “Most people are good to each other. But the anger and the division gets the ratings, and that’s what people hear. A lot of people know if they keep people divided they can stay in power and it’s wrong.”

“We can disagree with each other but we’re on the same team when it all comes down to it,” O’Neill added.

O’Neill was part of the 2011 raid in Pakistan targeting the Al-Qaeda leader and says he was the one who fired the fatal shot.

In a separate interview with CBS News, O’Neill recounted the daring mission that left bin Laden dead.

“When I turned the corner, I saw Osama bin Laden standing there,” he said, adding that he thought the Al-Qaeda leader may have been preparing to detonate an explosive.

“He’s a threat, he’s going to blow up, I need to treat him like a suicide bomber and that’s why I had to shoot him in the face,” O’Neill said.

O’Neill said the mission to get bin Laden was a testament to the ability of people holding different political views to join forces to counter threats against the homeland.

“We proved that we can work together,” he said, adding that he hopes events like the anniversary of 9/11 are seized as an opportunity by both the right and the left to bridge divisions in the pursuit of common objectives.

“When all is said and done, we’re all Americans and we should be on the same team,” he said.

O’Neill’s remarks about the need for Americans to bridge political and ideological divides was echoed by President Joe Biden, who in a recorded video released on Sept. 10 recalled the heroics seen in the aftermath of the terror attacks and how America saw “a true sense of national unity.”

Biden, who on Saturday was set to visit three sites attacked on 9/11, added in the video that “unity makes us who we are” and called for people to “have a fundamental respect and faith in each other and in this nation.”

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News that he planned to visit Ground Zero in New York City on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

Navy SEAL Who Shot Bin Laden Says Internal Division Now Biggest Threat to America (theepochtimes.com)

President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has ruined, perhaps for decades, America’s most important bilateral relationship of this era.

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately—and perhaps most adversely—affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

New Delhi was one of the staunchest supporters of the American-backed Afghan government and was working alongside Washington in the war against the Taliban and other insurgents. For instance, Indian intelligence was instrumental in breaking up an Afghan ring of Chinese spies working with the Haqqani Network. The Trump administration believed that the Chinese members of that ring, taken into custody last December, were, among other things, offering cash to kill American troops in-country.

India saw the Afghan government as a friend in blunting extremism in neighboring Pakistan, which has always defined itself as India’s enemy. Islamabad continually foments trouble in India-controlled Kashmir and has continually backed insurgents targeting India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who attacked targets in Mumbai in November 2008, for instance, came from Pakistan and relied heavily on Pakistani government resources.

The fall of the Afghan government was, therefore, a blow to New Delhi. Worse, the inability of the Biden administration to orchestrate an orderly withdrawal resulted in compounding the damage to Indian interests.

“The U.S. left behind reinvigorated jihadist networks, tens of billions of dollars in weapons and communications systems, critical strategic infrastructure, and even, reportedly, intel not only on who was working with the U.S. but some who were working with India,” Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone. “Physically, the closest target for this massively armed and confident jihadist resurgence is India. As a result of decisions taken in Washington, India is dramatically less secure today than it was a few months ago.”

To obtain security, New Delhi had been looking toward the United States. Consequently, Russia’s and China’s friends in Indian policy circles were losing influence, a trend especially evident after the Chinese incursions in Ladakh beginning in May of last year. Russia’s friends were delegitimized by that event because Moscow had assured New Delhi that the movement of Chinese forces in Tibet, which occurred immediately before the invasion, was only a drill.

As a result of Ladakh and other incidents, the government of Narendra Modi had been working fast to build military ties with the United States. In the wake of the fall of Kabul, however, relationships with Washington have been put on ice. “Indian strategists who have been saying that the way forward is working more closely with the U.S. are being openly taunted by those who have a more pro-Moscow bent,” Paskal, also associated with Chatham House, reports.

“There is a reassessment going on,” she added. “One possible outcome is that Delhi works more closely with Tokyo, and possibly Canberra and Taipei.” Japan, Australia, India, and the United States form what is known as the Quad, which up until the fall of Kabul was coming together as an effective grouping. Now, all bets are off.

Another scenario is that New Delhi decides to work more closely with Russia, reviving decades-old ties. Russia, of course, is increasingly aligned with China.

In the wake of the fall of Afghanistan, Taiwan has become the critical test of American resolve, especially as President Biden has justified the withdrawal as a strategic move to counter Russia and China. “The world is changing,” he said to the American people on Aug. 31. “We’re engaged in a serious competition with China. We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia.”

It is significant, therefore, that on Aug. 27 USS Kidd, an American guided-missile destroyer, and USCG Munro, a Coast Guard cutter, transited the Taiwan Strait. The transits come on the heels of Vice President Kamala Harris’s welcome comments in both Singapore and Hanoi on China’s “bullying” in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration may in fact be willing to defend Taiwan, but that is not all that counts at this crucial time. What also counts are perceptions, and the perceptions that especially count are those in Beijing. Chinese propagandists promoted two narratives as Kabul fell: The United States will not defend Taiwan and an America unable to deal with the Taliban cannot hope to stand up to China.

Those two narratives appear to in fact reflect Chinese thinking, especially because the withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled to Beijing a complete failure of the U.S. intelligence community, the Pentagon, and the White House national security apparatus. Chinese exercises in areas adjacent to Taiwan in August and an Aug. 13 simulated attack on Taiwan with a short-range missile are, in this context, ominous.

The other perceptions that count are those in New Delhi, which had been inching toward closer cooperation with Taiwan. Indian thinkers realized that they needed to challenge China in its peripheral seas as China was challenging India in its nearby waters. India’s close ties with Vietnam are an indication that India perceives its security as dependent on an open South China Sea and even East China Sea. Taiwan, which sits at the intersection of those bodies of water, is essential in keeping sea lanes there open.

America more than ever needs India’s help in ensuring peace in the ring of countries surrounding China and its surrounding waters. Now, however, India could desert America as America has just deserted India. Said Paskal, “To say there is a crisis in trust in current U.S. policymaking in New Delhi is an understatement.”

From the Gatestone Institute.

Chaotic Afghanistan Pullout Puts Important Relationship With India in Peril (theepochtimes.com)

For 20 years since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. presidents have been saying their anti-terrorism policies have worked, as evidenced by no new attacks on America. While we should be grateful another attack hasn’t occurred, past performance is no guarantee of future success. Fanatics are nothing but patient, as we have seen in Afghanistan.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has said the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to civil war and the possible “reconstitution of al Qaeda.” That should come as no surprise as the goals of our enemies in the Middle East have been expressed openly for decades. Their actions have proven a commitment to killing Americans and destabilizing democracies and their economies.

Underestimating one’s enemy is always a fatal error as we saw on 9/11. President Obama once dismissed al-Qaeda as the “JV team.” In fact, they are the varsity. It is difficult to deter or destroy an ideology whose adherents are willing to die for its cause, especially when they believe they are carrying out orders from their god.

In its March 2015 issue, The Atlantic noted a New York Times story about confidential comments made by Major General Michael K. Nagata, at the time the Special Operations commander for the U.S. in the Middle East. Gen. Nagata reportedly admitted he had yet to figure out the appeal of one of many terrorist organizations. About the Islamic State, he said, “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.” Whose fault is that?

With their win in Afghanistan, terrorists by whatever name, can only be further motivated to conduct new attacks. What might those look like? From experience we know they prefer the big event, such as crashing airliners into buildings and blowing up high value targets. There are other options when big targets are not vulnerable.

Lone suicide bomber incidents can also strike fear into a nation, especially if they are sustained and coordinated.

In 2003, Tom Clancy wrote a novel called “The Teeth of the Tiger” about terrorists who sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border and in coordinated attacks shoot up suburban shopping malls. Fear of terrorists slipping over the border is not fiction, but of growing concern.

Small-scale attacks, undetectable in advance, have been occurring since 9/11.

Two recent incidents demonstrate what we’re up against.

On the Sunday before the last American military planes left Kabul, a gunman shot and killed a Lyft driver in Garland, Texas. He then drove to a nearby police station and began shooting at people inside. The gunman was identified as Imran Ali Rasheed. Police killed him.

The FBI said Rasheed “may have been inspired by a foreign terrorist organization to commit these crimes.” Ya think? Suspected terrorists are crossing our southern border at “unprecedented level,” according to the outgoing U.S. Border Patrol chief. In New Zealand, a man named Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen stabbed seven people inside a store where he had bought a knife. Police shot and killed him. Authorities drew the obvious conclusion, calling it a “terrorist attack.”

Who knows how many—if any—terrorists are among the thousands of Afghan refugees now pouring into America? The Biden administration claims the vetting system should weed out anyone who means us harm, but there are no guarantees and the radicals can be expected to lie and perhaps even have forged papers.

After turning back German General Erwin Rommel’s forces in what Winston Churchill called “The Battle of Egypt,” Churchill famously said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Given the commitment and resourcefulness of this modern enemy, I’m not sure we are even at the end of the beginning.

The Next Terrorist Attack (theepochtimes.com)

Interview with the Antichrist is a must-see film, especially for Christians. In the movie, the Antichrist interviewee made a warning that soon he would take all lukewarm Christians to Hell, instead of being saved by God. Who is this guy? And who are the lukewarm? Could this happen in the real world, and how to prevent it? You will get an answer to these questions after watching this feature.

Director Timothy A. Chey shared he was an atheist until in his 30s. Since then, he has become very spiritual and committed to making faith-based films. Chey does not think the movies he made are merely fictional or for entertainment. “My one and only goal is to bring people true salvation in Christ in these very last days,” Chey said, “the Lord is coming sooner than we think.” And what he is most interested to illustrate is the battle of Armageddon described in the book of Revelations—the destruction of humanity by the Antichrist before God returns and how mankind would go through this great tribulation.

“I believe the Antichrist is alive right now,” Chey stated, “so it intrigued me to show a live broadcast with the Antichrist to ask him every question under the sun.” That is why, in the film, the Antichrist is peppered with stark questions including media domination, the battle between pastor John MacArthur and the California governor, the ACLU, Netflix and couch potatoes, the 9/11 terrorist attack, mass shootings, radical left movements, communist China, the evils of political correctness, pandemic lockdowns, and other mandates.

In the movie, the Antichrist mocks Pope Francis’ Interfaith Unity movement and lukewarm Christians spending more hours watching food channels than reading the Bible. Is even the Pope lukewarm? Some churchgoers may be shocked.

Lukewarm is neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm Christians are people who claim they have faith in Lord, but in the real world, are on and off. Are you lukewarm? Maybe you’re thinking, “No, I’m a devout believer of God.” That is remarkable. But wait for a minute. Is this your resolution or actual daily practice?

When the apostles worried about their clothes and bread, and when frightened by the storm, they were called “ones of little faith.” Peter denied his identity three times, even though he was the first disciple to acknowledge the Messiah.

Like water being cooked, every molecule of water in the pot is lukewarm until it boils. So lukewarm might not be name-calling, but a description of certain status or phase in the spiritual journey. And a person’s spiritual level is not static throughout one’s life; shifts in both directions are possible.

Viewer Joan Enderman agrees this movie is a wake-up call because she has found herself “slipping,” “being a Christian and sealed by the Holy Spirit does not give us immunity from sin and slipping backward.” Another viewer Christine Kenyon notes, “it now becomes harder and more of a spiritual battle because our eyes and hearts have been opened.” The movie talked about people being deceived or attached to worldly desires. For example, the lure of pornography is everywhere, from movies to TV shows, from advertisements on the street to the internet.

The Antichrist in the film is an anthropomorphized character. Through the dialogue between host Alex Carter and the Antichrist, the film conveys that the Antichrist is alive and is everywhere, as many politicians and influential figures believe more in the power of man than in God. This is exactly the spirit of the Antichrist.

Undoubtedly, communism or Marxism has been a collective representation of the Antichrist for the last hundred years. Opposing capitalism and preaching common prosperity through violence are just the political slogans of communists. But anti-God and anti-humanity are their hidden intentions.

The communist regimes have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people simply because of their spiritual beliefs. Affirmed by the China Tribunal, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has committed forced organ harvesting for years on a significant scale, “an unprecedented evil on this planet.” The reason the communists denigrate and eliminate all traditional beliefs and values is that they want humans to worship them as god or savior.

If you were thinking the Antichrist would only appear in the Western world, that might be a mistake. Revelation 14:9 reads that the worshippers of the beast will receive “the mark on his forehead or on his hand.” Think about the communist posture of raising their hands to take the oath, and then you may understand the verses better.

Likewise, Revelation 17:1-2 says, “The great whore… With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Who better to be called the great whore than the CCP that has lured the leaders on earth with money and coaxed the inhabitants of the earth with poor quality and low-priced goods?

Stressed in the movie, the Antichrist and his secular agents are most adept at creating and exploiting various forms of crisis to panic people into ceding their rights to the government and totalitarians. Hence, many people fear that America might become like a communist country.

If you are someone who wants to take your faith seriously, or is concerned about the future of America, or cares about the health and well-being of yourself and your family, I suggest you watch this film. It is available on EpochTV, a streaming platform for exclusive programming that includes investigative news analysis, in-depth interviews, and award-winning documentaries and films.

Lukewarm Christians, Watch This Before It’s Too Late (theepochtimes.com)

Paul Shinkman of U.S. News wrote the other day:

“China is considering deploying military personnel and economic development officials to Bagram airfield, perhaps the single-most prominent symbol of the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

“The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram, according to a source briefed on the study by Chinese military officials, who spoke to U.S. News on the condition of anonymity.”

As Moon Unit Zappa used to say, “Gag me with a spoon!”

Feasibility study? You don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out how that’s going to turn out, assuming it hasn’t been done already and this is just a masquerade.

Why wouldn’t the Chinese take over Bagram? It’s sitting there.

And no real estate could be more apt for their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road), essentially a large-scale bait-and-switch operation. The Chinese—in reality the Chinese Communist Party—lends the poor country—in this case the impoverished Taliban—money to modernize their infrastructure with the caveat that, if they don’t pay off the loan in a certain amount of time, guess who owns said infrastructure?

Well, we know the answer to that. The Chinese are in essence buying the world with the help, note well, of some of the most prominent American firms (pdf) busy enriching themselves with more money than most of us can compute.

(If you’re interested in how successful the BRI has been, here’s a helpful map from the Council of Foreign Relations.)

What has occurred in recent days is that China has achieved something absolutely free for which the Soviets and the United States wasted decades of personnel (tragically dead or wounded), matériel and trillions of dollars, not to mention ended up by disgracing themselves in the eyes of the world.

Effectively, the Chinese own Afghanistan, the important parts of it anyway—airbases, ports, mineral rights, and so forth—or will shortly.

As for internal Taliban affairs, the Chinese communists aren’t about to lift a finger about the horrifying level of women’s rights or the extensive drug growing and dealing the terror group engages in, especially if they send as much of it as possible to America.

As long as the various Islamic terror organizations leave the Chinese alone, the Chinese will let them do as they wish. Yes, some—al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, one we haven’t heard of yet—may make a fuss about the treatment of the Uyghurs and make their violent presence known, but I would imagine they ultimately see the Chinese forces as much more ruthless than the Americans (now especially) and this will be at best a temporary sideshow of little global importance. Realpolitik will be at play on both Chinese and Taliban (Islamic) sides as they benefit each other, at least for now.

So how did we get here? If this is all so obvious—and it is—wasn’t our State Department and our military aware of how this would, or certainly could, turn out? (Wouldn’t they at least leave a small NATO force guarding Bagram and destroy our weaponry?)

I imagine many of our officials were—how could they not be—aware of this eventuality. And that’s highly disturbing.

Why then did the USA cede Afghanistan—a territory bounded by Iran and Pakistan, among other states, not to mention control of much of the world’s rare earths and other key resources—to the increasingly totalitarian China of Xi Jinping?

For an answer, it’s hard not to think back to those days when, shortly before declaring for the presidency and reversing himself on the topic, our current president told us “The Chinese aren’t our enemies, folks.”

Was he covering up for his own activities and connections that could have been recorded on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop, much of which is as yet unseen? Do the Chinese, in the crudest sense, have something on him? Unfortunately, considering the operations and governance of our FBI and Department of Justice, we may never know.

We can, however, make our own surmises. But whatever they may be, they’re only a part of a more depressing overall zeitgeist.

I have believed for some time—and our extraordinarily rapid and ill-conceived evacuation of Afghanistan, leaving behind not only Bagram but enough U.S. weaponry to make the Taliban’s army nearly equivalent to the Italian’s, not to mention putting our advanced military technology in the hands of the Chinese and the Russians, only underscores this—that a large percentage of our Democratic Party leadership as well as a tragically significant percentage of the Republican have long believed the Chinese regime are winning the battle between China and America for global hegemony. They are therefore, overtly or covertly, consciously or subconsciously, throwing in with the Chinese side for their own economic—and to a lesser extent survival, though the two interact—advantage.

Our globalist-leaning corporations, like the giant law firm linked above, that deal extensively with China are similar. They’re going with what they think is the winning side.

And globalism is not democracy. For the globalist, people voting has been irrelevant, even retrograde, for decades. It’s the one-party state gone world-wide.

So, to be overly colloquial, “bugging out” on Afghanistan to them is no big deal. And China taking over, well, to them it’s just part of the game.

Why Did the USA Hand Afghanistan to China? (theepochtimes.com)

A couple of weeks before the completion of the catastrophe of the American presence in Afghanistan—or, if you believe President Joe Biden, the “extraordinary success” of the American evacuation—a Russo-British comedian named Konstantin Kisin published a brilliantly funny thread on Twitter headed: “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

The “let me help you” megathread, as he called it, consisted of example after example of so-called “expert” opinions that have turned out to be completely wrong—beginning with the British vote for Brexit and the American vote for President Donald Trump in 2016, both of which elections the top experts at the time confidently assured us would go the other way.

Actually, Kisin’s spiel could be considered as a belated gloss on one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Brexit referendum, that of the Brexiteer and veteran government minister Michael Gove who said: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”

I think that Trump was striking the same responsive chord with Americans when he disparaged what he called “political correctness”—still ravaging the county after four years of his administration—which was also the product of that breed of experts who call themselves “intellectuals.”

If people were fed up with experts in 2016, think how much more reason they have to be so five years later! Kisin does, and he goes ruthlessly through the whole catalog of errors from Russian collusion to “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” to “toxic masculinity” and the abolition of sex in favor of the nebulous idea of “gender.”

And of course we mustn’t leave out the conflicting and often mendacious pronunciamentos of “the Science” on the coronavirus, which have culminated in the distrust, not so much of the vaccines themselves, but of “the experts’” attempts to demonize those who remain skeptical about them.

And all this was before the collapse of the Afghan government and army under the onslaught of the Taliban gave us what may be the best reason ever for thinking that we, too, have had enough of experts in this country.

“Afghanistan: the graveyard of experts,” wrote Tim Black at Spiked Online.

“US ‘experts’ who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice,” wrote Rebekah Koffler for The New York Post—though of course they won’t be. They never are. They’re the experts.

A writer on Substack named Richard Hanania compared the galaxy of American Ph.D.’s (including the now-deposed president of Afghanistan himself, Ashraf Ghani, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia) who got us into Afghanistan with the madrassa-educated Taliban and wrote that, “It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.”

Unsurprisingly, there were a great many negative comments appended to Kisin’s bonfire of the experts, most of them to the effect that, just because some people have been wrong about some things it doesn’t mean that other people are going to be wrong about other things—especially when those things include vaccines which, as there are sound scientific reasons for believing, can be life-saving.

Nor should we neglect to consider that the lives saved are not only of those who receive the vaccines but also those of the immunosuppressed and other vulnerable people who come in contact with them.

They have a point. But so has Kisin. The latter is certainly right in thinking that the experts, particularly those who write for the partisan media, have taken too little care of their own credibility in the past, instead expecting to be trusted and believed as right, just because of who they are. When they then turn out to be wrong, they have no one but themselves to blame if people don’t believe them the next time.

Some people are always going to be wrong about almost everything, but the case is altered when the people who are wrong have set themselves up in the profession of being right. These are the people we call “experts” solely because they have the recognized credentials of experts—advanced degrees from top universities or awards for their expertise from other experts—whether or not they have any real-world experience or expertise.

Their authority is what the anthropologists call “positional”—like that of the parent who answers a child’s question of why? by replying: “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m your mother.”

The experts treat us all like those children—and then they wonder why they are resented and distrusted.

They are the people who identify themselves with their beliefs to the extent that they can never admit it—and so never learn from their mistakes—when those beliefs turn out to be wrong.

That’s how you get to Biden’s calling an obvious disaster of the first water an “extraordinary success”—with no more than an occasional raised eyebrow from the compliant media.

Much publicity in the last week or so was given to a Reuters report of a conversation between Biden and Ghani in the dying days of the latter’s government, as the Taliban were closing in. What he had to worry about, said the American president to the Afghan one, was the “perception” that he was losing the war, not the fact that he actually was losing it.

All he had to do to get American help, said Biden, was change this perception, “whether it is true or not.”

I think a lot of the criticism of this extraordinary conversation was misdirected. The problem wasn’t that Biden told Ghani to lie. Lying to the enemy has a long and honorable tradition in the history of warfare.

No, the problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could lie in that situation: that he (or Ghani) could get away with spinning the enemy as he himself was used to spinning the American media—as, of course, he would go on to do again with the claim of an “extraordinary success.”

A man whose self-assurance and self-absorption is such that he believes reality can make no claim against him that he can’t pay off with the experts’ counterfeit currency of interpretive ingenuity and rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a man who can only lead his country and himself into more disasters.

Bonfire of the Experts (theepochtimes.com)

Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump counselor, posted a fiery message to  President Joe Biden Wednesday, after receiving an email from the administration telling her to resign from the U.S. Air Force Academy board or be fired.

“President, Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should,” Conway posted to Twitter, captioning a letter she wrote to POTUS.

President Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should. pic.twitter.com/HuRYM4bLYP

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

“Your decision is disappointing,” Conway wrote in the letter, “but understandable given the need to distract from a news cycle that has you mired in multiple self-inflicted crises and plummeting poll numbers, including a rise in new COVID cases, a dismal jobs report, inflation, record amount of drugs coming across the southern border, and, of course, the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan that left hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies stranded under Taliban rule.”

In a follow-up post reacting to criticism on left-wing social media site Twitter, Conway suggested her foes “get some fresh air” and “make a friend” offline.

“Since I’m not the Conway on Twitter regularly,” she wrote, referencing her husband George Conway, “I’d forgotten how left-wing it is and how nutty some people are. LOLOL. I’m WORRIED for you. Get some fresh air, folks. Wear pants that button and zipper again. Get a hobby that doesn’t involve a keyboard. Make a friend.”

Since I’m not the Conway on Twitter regularly, I’d forgotten how left-wing it is and how nutty some people are. LOLOL. I’m WORRIED for you. Get some fresh air, folks. Wear pants that button and zipper again. Get a hobby that doesn’t involve a keyboard. Make a friend. https://t.co/k1mR2JVLON

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

Conway was not alone in her defiant message. Trump-era White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced Wednesday that he will not be resigning from the Naval Academy Board and will instead join a lawsuit against the Biden administration.

“All Trump appointees, including myself, have been kicked off the boards of the United States Naval Academy Air Force Academy in West Point in an unprecedented move by the Biden administration,” Spicer announced his Newsmax show, “Spicer & Company.”

“I’m announcing tonight for the first time that I will not be submitting my resignation and I will be joining a lawsuit to fight this,” he told viewers.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested Conway, Spicer, and others from the past administration are not “qualified” to be on the board and do not “align” with Biden administration “values.”

“The President’s objective is what any president’s objective is — to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values,” Psaki said at the presser. “And so yes, that was an ask that was made.”

“I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the President’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration,” she added.

The Daily Wire on Wednesday reported on the unprecedented move by the administration to remove Trump era officials:

The Joe Biden administration is purging the federal government’s constellation of advisory boards and commissions of Donald Trump appointees, even though such people are typically appointed to fixed terms and are not removed by new presidents.

Officials received a curt letter, one dated today, saying “Please submit your resignation to me by the close of business today. Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight. Thank you.”

The removals range from highly credentialed experts at obscure entities where politics are unlikely to be an issue, such as the Arctic Research Commission, to military service academies.

In some cases, the Biden administration initially opted to refused to convene the commissions, including the National Board for Education Sciences — meaning the Biden administration chose to suspend a board dedicated to science in education during a year defined by schools’ attempt to grapple with how they should respond to the coronavirus, seemingly to ensure that no one tied to Trump would have a voice.

Related: Sean Spicer: ‘I Will Not Resign’ From Naval Academy; Suing Biden Admin For Kicking Him Off Board

‘I’m Not Resigning, But You Should’: Kellyanne Conway Fires At Biden Over Military Academy Board Removal | The Daily Wire

Karl Eikenberry – a former Ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden – now collaborates with several Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups seeking to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” to the regime and works for a state-run university in China, The National Pulse can reveal.

The sole political appointee to fill the role in the Obama-Biden years, Eikenberry served as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. His appointment followed his service as a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army focusing on Afghanistan, overseeing the training of the now-defunct government’s army and police forces.

Since his departure from the role, Eikenberry has affiliated with several Chinese Communist Party-run institutes and initiatives.

In addition to serving as a senior advisor to the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense, he doubles as a Visiting Professor at Schwartzman College housed at Tsinghua University. The alma mater of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, Tsinghua University has a history of launching cyberattacks against the U.S. government.

Tsinghua also has a “clear connection between them and the state administration for technology and industry in discussions on what [they] can do to help the national security,” according to former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department Official Nicholas Eftimiades.

Similarly, Eikenberry is an International Security fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). The National Pulse has previously highlighted the center’s deep collaboration with several Chinese military and government-linked entities, including those flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for espionage and blacklisted by the U.S. government.

Eikenberry is also part of a working group based at the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) 21st Century China Center, which is predominantly funded by the co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. The China-based firm has close financial and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its military. It has been flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond academia, Eikenberry has also participated in dialogues at the East-West Institute sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). The organization was founded by the Vice-Chairman Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”

Another event sponsor – the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) – has been flagged by the U.S. government as a United Front group operating under the auspices of China’s military.

“CAIFC has additional ties to the Ministries of State Security, Civil Affairs, and Foreign Affairs, and it is a platform for deploying undercover intelligence gatherers,” the federal commission’s report adds.

Despite these ties, Eikenberry participated in a 2018 military-to-military dialogue – the Sanya Initiative – alongside Chinese Communist Party counterparts sponsored by CUSEF and CAIFC.

“Retired American and Chinese senior flag officers and executives of the hosting organizations met in Beijing to discuss critical issues of mutual concern and interest impacting the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship, including North Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea, emerging technologies, as well as other regional security challenges,” an event summary notes.

Foreign Policy magazine noted how the Chinese regime effort aims to subvert former American military leaders into advocating on behalf of Beijing and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA):

• One of those PLA projects is the Sanya Initiative, an exchange program that brings together U.S. and Chinese former high-ranking military leaders. On the Chinese side, the Sanya Initiative is led by a bureau of the PLA that engages in political warfare and influence operations, according to Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute.

• Sometimes the results of such high-level exchanges aren’t subtle. In February 2008, PLA participants in the Sanya Initiative asked their U.S. counterparts to persuade the Pentagon to delay publishing a forthcoming report about China’s military buildup, according to a segment excised from the 2011 annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

• The U.S. members complied, though their request was not successful.

Obama-Biden Afghan Ambassador Is Now A China-Funded Academic Tied To Influence Groups ‘Neutralizing’ Beijing’s Enemies. (thenationalpulse.com)

One anonymous 4Chan user suggested Afghan refugees might vote for Democrats

Refugees fleeing the Biden-induced human rights catastrophe in Afghanistan are streaming into Washington, D.C., and flowing into the area’s hospitals amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the district’s emergency management agency has issued a stern warning about the threat of online extremism.

The District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency warned law enforcement officials earlier this week that “extremist rhetoric has risen online following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.” According to an intelligence assessment obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the agency assessed that “the increase in extremist rhetoric may presage targeted violence against Afghan refugees.” The evidence cited to support that assessment, however, was rather scant—just a handful of examples from “known online forums,” such as 4Chan, Free Republic, BitChute, and the official QAnon Telegram channel.

The report, dated Sept. 7, quotes an anonymous 4Chan user who responded to a series of posts about the resettlement of Afghan refugees. “Hello…don’t yall [sic] see the democratic strategy here?” the anonymous poster posted. “[The refugees] arent [sic] going to strong blue states but the key electoral swing states.” It goes on to note that the deranged North Carolina man who precipitated a standoff with law enforcement outside the U.S. Capitol Building last month had “shared frustration with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan on Facebook.”

Additional evidence includes “open-source comments” on Free Republic containing “implied threats” against President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and a post suggesting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) wants to bring in “200,000 [evacuees], that is 4000 new terrorists…per state.” The assessment also cites two comments from “identified” BitChute users who referenced “replacement theory” and “white genocide” in response to posts about refugee resettlement, and another from the QAnon Telegram channel describing the resettlement of Afghan refugees as “an enemy invasion.”

There are a couple posts that could realistically be defined as vague threats against refugees, such as one from a QAnon Telegram user who urged Americans to “Arm yourself!…citizens should storm the airports and blow up the runways.”

The report did not elaborate as to whether any (or all) of the posts were written by law enforcement agents and informants, nor did it discuss the amount of taxpayer dollars and government manpower the agency devotes to perusing online forums.

Amid Afghan Refugee Influx, DC Govt Warns of Dangers of Online Extremism (freebeacon.com)

Sound familiar? [US Patriot]

The Taliban on Sept. 8 announced a ban on all slogans, demonstrations, and protests that don’t have official approval in yet another signal that the Islamic terrorist group is taking a hardline and repressive approach to government.

A decree was issued on Sept. 8 by the head of the Taliban’s new interior ministry, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is a member of the Haqqani network that has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The department also has a $10 million bounty on Haqqani’s head, while the United Nations has Haqqani on a sanctions list.

Haqqani’s decree said that protesters without the Taliban’s permission to stage demonstrations in a stated time and location will face “severe legal consequences.”

Approval must also be given for any slogans that might be used during the protest.

The decree also accused Afghans protesting in Kabul and other provinces in recent days of “disrupting security, harassing people, and disrupting normal life,” telling citizens that “no one should protest and cause concern to the citizens” without permission from the Ministry of Justice.

It claimed, “The Islamic Emirate addresses the legitimate demands and rights of all citizens and must be given time to take the necessary steps to address other issues once security is restored.”

The announcement comes amid multiple protests in the country between Taliban fighters and demonstrators—including one protest led by local women in Kabul.

On Sept. 7, members of the terrorist group were seen firing shots into the air in an effort to disperse a large protest being held outside the Pakistan embassy in Kabul, while several reporters were arrested as they attempted to document the demonstration, according to reports.

Thousands of Afghan men and women took to the streets to protest against the Taliban and what they characterized as Pakistani intelligence’s interference in the affairs of the Middle Eastern nation and for allegedly being the guiding hand behind the Taliban’s return to power.

Demonstrators allege that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supported the Taliban’s latest offensive that routed resistance fighters in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul—the last area where anti-Taliban resistance fighters have held out against the terrorist group. Islamabad denies this.

Some of the protestors carried signs reading “ISI stay away.” Others shouted slogans such as “Azadi [freedom or liberty]” and “Death to Pakistan.”

On Sept. 7, the Taliban announced its new government for Afghanistan, challenging claims to rightful government by former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who says he is the “legitimate caretaker president,” according to the country’s constitution adopted in 2004. The Taliban’s cabinet notably doesn’t include any women or non-Taliban figures, despite the militant group vowing to form an “inclusive government” as part of the Doha Agreement.

The group named Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund as the country’s interim prime minister and co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as second in command, while Mullah Yaqoob will be the defense minister.

The international community has expressed concern over the lack of diversity within the Taliban’s so-called government, with the United States previously stating it wouldn’t recognize a Taliban-led government if it wasn’t inclusive.

“We note the announced list of names consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates and no women. We also are concerned by the affiliations and track records of some of the individuals,” a spokesperson for the State Department said in a statement following the Sept. 7 announcement.

“We understand that the Taliban has presented this as a caretaker cabinet. However, we will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson echoed U.S. concerns over the Taliban’s proposed government and the distinct lack of diversity.

“We would want to see, in any situation, a diverse group in leadership which seeks to address the pledges that the Taliban themselves have set out, and that’s not what we have seen,” a spokesman for Johnson said. “We will continue to judge the Taliban on their actions.”

EU spokesperson Peter Stano said the new government “does not look like the inclusive and representative formation in terms of the rich ethnic and religious diversity of Afghanistan we hoped to see and that the Taliban were promising over the past weeks,” in a statement to media outlets.

Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the exclusion of groups outside the Taliban, coupled with the violence perpetrated by Taliban terrorists against protesters and journalists in Kabul “are not signals that give cause for optimism.”

“It must be clear to the Taliban that international isolation is not in its interests, and especially not in those of Afghanistan’s people,” Maas said.

Taliban Declare Ban on Slogans, Protests That Don’t Have Its Approval (theepochtimes.com)

The Biden administration has forced out nearly a dozen Trump administration appointees from their positions on the advisory boards of U.S. military service academies, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a press briefing that the administration was seeking to ensure that the advisory board members were “qualified to serve” and “aligned” with President Joe Biden’s values.

Shortly afterwards, White House spokesman Chris Meagher said that all of the Trump appointees “either resigned” or have been “terminated from their position.” Eighteen members of military service advisory boards, including 11 officials appointed by former President Donald Trump, were asked to resign or be fired.

These included former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway; the former president’s first White House press secretary Sean Spicer; Trump’s second national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster; and Russell T. Vought, a former White House Office of Management and Budget director under Trump.

“The president’s objective … was to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with our core values,” Psaki said on Wednesday. “I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified or not political to serve on these boards.”

The duties of the boards are “to inquire into the state of morale and discipline, the curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters relating to the academy which the Board decides to consider.”

Members typically serve the entirety of their three-year terms.

Several of the officials posted screenshots on social media of the letters they said the White House sent them on Wednesday, asking that they either resign by 6 p.m. that day or be fired.

“On behalf of President Biden, I am writing to request your resignation,” White House Personnel Director Cathy Russell wrote to the appointees. “Please submit your resignation to me by the close of business today. Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight. Thank you.”

Conway shared a letter addressed to Biden, saying that she wouldn’t resign from her advisory position at the Air Force Academy.

“President Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should,” she wrote on Twitter.

“Three former directors of presidential personnel inform me that this request is a break from presidential norms,” Conway wrote in her letter to the president. “It certainly seems petty and political, if not personal.”

Vought posted on Twitter a copy of the letter from Russell, saying he wouldn’t resign as a member of the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy.

“No. It’s a three year term,” Vought wrote on Twitter.

“Instead of focusing on the stranded Americans left in #Afghanistan, President Biden is trying to terminate the Trump appointees to the Naval Academy, West Point and Air Force Academy,” Spicer said on Twitter.

Spicer said on his show on Newsmax that he and other appointees intend to file a lawsuit challenging the decision.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for additional comment.

Biden Forces Out Trump Appointees From Military Academy Advisory Boards (theepochtimes.com)

What’s Happening:

News came out recently that, despite pulling our troops out, Americans were still stranded in Afghanistan. Doing what Biden refused to do, private citizens raised money to fly home those left behind.

We were told the Taliban was trying to block these flights. But, as it turns out, many of them can’t get clearance. Why?

Because the State Department is ignoring them.

Now, even Biden-supporting Democrats are getting “furious.” From Fox News:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is “furious” over the Biden administration delaying flights with Americans trying to escape Afghanistan after President Biden’s botched troop withdrawal.

The senator from Connecticut issued a press release on Monday eviscerating the Biden administration for delaying flights…

Blumenthal – who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has sons who have served in the military – expressed he has been “deeply frustrated, even furious” at the U.S. government’s “delay and inaction” in rescuing the people left behind in Afghanistan after Biden’s deadly troop withdrawal.

A leading Democratic Senator blasted Joe Biden for failing to help Americans get out of Afghanistan.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal took the lead to arrange flights for stranded families. But the Biden’s State Department reportedly will not give them clearance to leave.

He even arranged a place for the flights to land, in Doha, saying they are “already been cleared to land.”

The only hold-up? Biden apparently won’t give the go-ahead.

Blumenthal blasted the administration saying he’s “deeply frustrated, even furious.”

He criticized Joe Biden because he expected his administration “to do everything in their power – absolutely everything – to make this happen.”

But it looks like Joe is not doing that. Not even close.

Some people have previously claimed the State Department is refusing to give the green light, out of embarrassment.

They failed to get out all Americans and Afghan allies. So, they are refusing to let these flights happen, to avoid calling attention to their failure.

If that’s the case, wow. Biden is abandoning Americans because he wants to save face?

No wonder even Democrats are ticked off.

Key Takeaways:

• Democrat Sen. Blumenthal blasted Biden for refusing to help stranded Americans.
• The senator claims Biden’s State Department won’t give clearance to flights.
• Blumenthal said he was “deeply frustrated, even furious” at the president.

Source: Fox Business

Biden’s Democrats Tell Joe They Are “Furious” With Him – Leading Democrat Blumenthal Accuses Joe Of Delaying Escape Flights (thepatriotjournal.com)

A radical left-wing activist group organizing a pro-abortion protest outside the home of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh had some interesting advice for prospective attendees. An addendum to the notice announcing the protest urged activists “to be as inclusive as possible in your language” while making a ruckus outside Kavanaugh’s home in Washington, D.C.

“Women and girls are not the only people who can get pregnant and need abortions,” the organizers from ShutDownDC wrote. That’s going to be rather inconvenient for anyone who was planning to reuse old signage about stopping the “war on women,” but at least they’ve been given a few days to prepare. Alas, “Stop the war on people who can get pregnant” has far too many syllables to incorporate into a catchy chant.

Additionally, the protest organizers cautioned attendees to “please avoid comparing U.S. abortion-restricting politicians to the Taliban” because it would be unfair to the Taliban. (No, seriously.) “The former are a distinctly homegrown phenomenon and ignoring that in favor of such comparisons is Islamophobic,” they explained.

Since the Taliban’s rapid takeover in Afghanistan, even prominent Democrats have delighted in comparing people they don’t like to the militant Islamist group. “Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions are between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here?” wrote Arne Duncan, an Islamophobe who served seven years as former president Barack Obama’s secretary of education.

The protest is scheduled to take place on the evening of Monday, Sept. 13. ShutDownDC, a left-wing activist group that purports to use “strategic direct action to advance justice and hold officials accountable,” said they intend to “make our voices heard” by calling for Kavanaugh’s resignation and telling him to “keep your oppressive ideology out of our bodies.”

Earlier this year, ShutDownDC organized a small gathering outside the Virginia home of Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), where protesters used a bullhorn to yell at his wife. (The senator wasn’t there.) They also left a copy of the U.S. Constitution on his doorstep. It was very sad.

Lib Activist Group Warns Protesters: Men Can Have Abortions Too, Comparing GOP to Taliban is ‘Islamophobic’ (freebeacon.com)

Inflation threatens Biden’s credibility on economics as he attempts to pivot to domestic issues

President Joe Biden is working to pivot away from the Afghanistan crisis to focus on his domestic agenda, but polling suggests American voters are sensing a looming economic crisis.

Ninety percent of registered voters reported paying more for goods they regularly purchase, according to a survey of 1,200 people commissioned by Heritage Action, a conservative group. Only 29 percent said their personal finances are better off today than they were a year ago, and 65 percent believe that Biden’s multitrillion-dollar plan will worsen inflation.

The Biden administration has made a concerted effort to pivot to domestic policies this week. The White House press briefing on Wednesday opened with a discussion of plans to tackle inflation and an explanation by Biden’s top economic aide Brian Deese that the spike in grocery prices was overblown. The administration also released a plan that it said will alleviate the rising costs of meat, which it believes is driving inflation concerns.

Biden’s pivot to domestic issues comes in the wake of the administration’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left hundreds of Americans—including dozens of elementary school students—stranded. Polling suggests, however, that prioritizing trillions of dollars in social spending is already unpopular with voters, who fear it will exacerbate inflation even further.

The Heritage Action poll is one of many showing Biden faces headwinds as he seeks to pivot to his multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better agenda.

The American Action Network, a conservative outside group closely aligned with House Republicans, also polled seven swing House districts held by Democrats and found that Biden’s personal image and political agenda are deeply unpopular.

Across the seven districts, AAN found that Biden’s job approval is 43 percent. The swing-district Democrats they polled, including Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) and Josh Harder (D., Calif.), “are all hovering at or near 45 percent in a head-to-head congressional ballot.”

The Biden administration also faces political challenges advancing the president’s domestic agenda through Congress. Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) this week repeated his opposition to Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion in social spending, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who crafted the spending plan, indicated there would be no flexibility on the overall price tag.

Voters polled by AAN across the seven districts opposed the spending plan by a 54 percent to 36 percent margin.

Voters Concerned Trillions in Domestic Spending Will Fuel Inflation, Polls Show (freebeacon.com)

Blinken and Psaki said prisoners posed no threat

When President Barack Obama struck a deal with the Taliban in 2014 to free several high-ranking terrorists being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, his defenders argued their release would do little to harm U.S. national security. Now, four of those terrorists are serving in senior roles in Afghanistan’s newly formed Taliban government.

The Obama-era deal’s prominent defenders include officials now serving in senior posts in the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House press secretary Jen Psaki. They claimed there was no indication these terrorists, known as the Taliban Five, would return to the battlefield, let alone rise to senior leadership positions in the Taliban government following the United States’ much-criticized evacuation from Afghanistan. The prisoners were swapped for Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was later charged with desertion.

Blinken, who was then serving as deputy national security adviser, told NBC that “any threat they would pose to the United States [and] to Americans has been sufficiently mitigated.” Blinken also claimed the terrorists would be “very carefully monitored” by Qatar, which helped facilitate the trade and provided safe haven to the five detainees after their release. “There will be restrictions on their travel, on their activities,” Blinken said.

Jen Psaki, who served as the State Department spokeswoman at the time of the deal, hailed it as a signature achievement by the Obama administration. “Was it worth it? Absolutely,” Psaki said in 2015.

Biden himself, who was vice president at the time, also celebrated Berghdahl’s release on Twitter.

The ascension of these former prisoners is a sign the Taliban has no interest in moderating its behavior since the United States fled Afghanistan and allowed it to reclaim control of the war-torn country. With Americans and vulnerable Afghans still stranded in the country, these prisoners-turned-leaders could play a central part in the Taliban’s efforts to arrest, detain, and kill those they accuse of aiding America during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan.

After Kabul fell to the Taliban last month, the former prisoners flew to Afghanistan to join the new government.

Former detainee Khairullah Khairkhwa is now the acting minister for information and culture, according to national security expert and Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Thomas Joscelyn. Norullah Noori now serves as acting minister of borders and tribal affairs, while Abdul Haq Wasiq is the acting director of intelligence and Mohammad Fazl is the deputy defense minister.

Haq Wasiq was a senior intelligence official for the Taliban prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and worked with al Qaeda as it plotted the strike that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Fazl was the Taliban’s deputy defense minister in 2001 and now resumes that role. He also worked with al Qaeda and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant.

Before he was arrested, Khairkhwa inked an agreement with Iran to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan post-9/11.

Top Biden Officials Backed the 2014 Bergdahl Deal. Now, the Terrorists Released Are Taking the Reins in Afghanistan. (freebeacon.com)

With our political and military establishment spending twenty years waging war in the mountains of central Asia, Americans now know that the old saying about Afghanistan and imperial ambition is a lie. A great nation with a keen pride in its own identity and the destiny defined by it doesn’t risk blood and treasure to convince primitive tribes to adopt its style of governance. Only a failing power that has lost all sense of what once made rivals shrink would spend the lives of its young men and women to plant its flag on a pile of inconsequential rocks. Afghanistan is not the graveyard of empires. Rather, it is where failing regimes go to be euthanized.

The Soviet Union was already crumbling when Leonid Brezhnev sent troops to prop up a Communist regime in 1979. Months after Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the last Soviet soldier in February 1989, the Berlin Wall was toppled. Russia survived and so will America. It is only the end of our ruling class, the curators of the new world order—globalism—that rose with the end of the Cold War. The impending collapse of this deracinated elite, like that of the Soviet Union, has simply been accelerated by its loss in Afghanistan.

It was not inevitable that what began in the wake of the Sept. 11 as an act of retribution would end in a theatre of self-pity. With lower Manhattan still smoking, Americans entrusted their political and military leadership with their safety and continued prosperity. Many of the most high-spirited among us offered America their service and some gave their lives.

But as the leadership class foundered in Afghanistan—Osama Bin Laden had escaped, Afghan democracy proved to be a fantasy, neither its army nor national police force could stand on its own, and so on—it saw that the failures prolonging the war in fact created opportunities for personal advancement. They used Afghanistan as a financial instrument to launder their spoils and purchase the power and prestige that are naturally owed victors. Like all habitual losers, America’s ruling class escapes the shame and humiliation it merits by forcing others to bear responsibility for the crimes it alone committed.

And that’s the context in which to understand the massive airlift for which the Joe Biden administration keeps congratulating itself. Never mind the thousands of Americans sent to their death for no strategic purpose and the trillions of U.S. taxpayer money wasted on the fantasy of turning Afghanistan into a democratic state. The message is: We’re good guys—we’re rescuing Afghans from the clutches of the Taliban.

The ruling class’ phony atonement comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. No one knows how many Afghans will be coming to the United States. Tens of thousands have been settled already, with others reportedly on their way, totaling according to some reports around 120,000. Government sources say that after refugees start bringing over family still in Afghanistan the final tally will likely reach a quarter of a million, maybe more.

The resettlement abuses the generosity of Americans, most of whom don’t understand that the Afghans sent to their communities are not the Afghans who helped Americans. The media, local political, social, and religious organizations have misled them to believe these are the interpreters and others who assisted US troops and other agencies. But according to reports, the Biden team left many of those Afghans behind. So, who are these people?

No one really knows. The problem is not that they are unvetted but that they are unvettable. The biometric information collected by U.S. authorities—and has now reportedly fallen into the hands of the Taliban—documented the Afghans who worked for them. Those among the warring tribesmen who opposed the U.S.-led coalition are undocumented, unless they are so notorious for shooting at Americans that they wound up on terror lists. Those Afghans are known. There are also records of those who committed crimes during earlier stays in Western countries and were deported. As for the rest, they pushed their way into Kabul airport, forced their way on to planes and now they’re here.

Gen. HR McMaster famously showed Donald Trump a 1970s photograph of young Kabul women in miniskirts to dissuade him from withdrawing forces. Trump’s advisor was trying to show that just underneath the country’s primitive violence was an open-minded and liberal core just waiting to be liberated.

But the type of people in those pictures are not part of this wave of Afghan migrants because all those open-minded and liberal Afghans left for the West years ago. The people coming now are poor and illiterate. They support strict Islamic law. Some of the tribal elders brought child brides with them. That is normal in traditional Afghan culture. So is raping young boys, which the Afghans call “bacha bazi.”

These Afghans can hardly be expected to assimilate American values and norms. And yet in one significant respect, these Afghans were shaped by their recent experience with Americans. The two-decade-long occupation trained them to be dependent on U.S. handouts. Thus, it is not entirely accurate to say the Afghans are fleeing the Taliban. Rather, they are following their source of income.

In this light, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Hamed Ahmadi, the 28-year-old Afghan refugee who tweeted out a picture of the meager meal he and other immigrants were served when arriving at Fort Bliss. Many commentators called him an ingrate, but see it from his perspective. He was eight when American forces landed. The only world he knows is the one in which the Americans give you money just so you won’t take up arms against them. The way he sees it, the Americans have no choice but to keep paying.

What Afghanistan Teaches Us About Our Ruling Class (theepochtimes.com)

On Sept. 7, Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a news conference in Qatar declared he was “unaware” of any “hostage-like situation” in aircraft waiting to take off from Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport.

Blinken was responding to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). On Sept. 5, McCaul told Fox News Sunday that six planes at Mazar-i-Sharif transporting American citizens and Afghan interpreters had been denied departure. The State Department “has cleared these flights and the Taliban will not let them leave the airport,” he said. He added: “We know the reason why (they are held) is because the Taliban want something in exchange.” McCaul speculated the Taliban wanted U.S. diplomatic recognition.

McCaul is the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s ranking Republican.

Mazar-i-Sharif is 190 miles northwest of Kabul. Several private organizations have tried to arrange chartered flights from Mazar-i-Sharif with the aim of evacuating stranded Americans and Afghan nationals who possess or deserve a U.S. Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV.

McCaul described a hostage situation quid pro quo. In exchange for releasing Americans held against their will, the Taliban want diplomatic recognition, which might give the Taliban access to frozen Afghan financial assets.

Blinken’s oily response was a nondenial. Claiming he is personally “unaware” doesn’t mean no one in his State Department knows otherwise. Note Blinken adds cheap spin with the weasel term “hostage-like.”

Blinken’s waffles followed White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s Aug. 23 Alice in Wonderland reply to a reporter that “Americans aren’t stranded” in Afghanistan. On the fly, Psaki redefined “stranded” to mean something it doesn’t. She contended citizens denied entry to Kabul’s airport weren’t stranded because they had cellphone contact.

They follow their leader. Blinken and Psaki mimic President Joe Biden’s example. On Aug. 31, Reuters published a July 23 telephone exchange between Biden and Afghan then-President Ashraf Ghani. Biden told Ghani that “… the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

The Reuters report has decisive historical importance. Biden knew his clumsy, incompetent, and haphazard withdrawal was failing. However, instead of assisting the Afghan government in order to safely and successfully evacuate U.S. citizens, Biden wanted Ghani to use word and image perception gimmickry to conceal Biden’s real-world leadership, policy, and battlefield failure.

Blinken’s Sept. 7 performance included some subtle but ugly admissions. Flights from Afghanistan were denied exit because people with valid travel documents are grouped with people lacking proper State Department paperwork.

Biden announced his withdrawal on April 14. He craved the optics of exiting Afghanistan by 9/11’s 20th anniversary. But Biden’s presidential order failed to prod the State Department to act to meet his withdrawal deadline.

On Aug. 16, the Washington Examiner reported that the State Department had a SIV “processing backlog” for 18,000 Afghan allies and 53,000 Afghan dependents.

That “backlog” testifies to the life-threatening wages of the State Department’s ingrained institutional defects. I’ll list a few: paper shuffling, bureaucratic 9-to-5 inertia; lack of accountability; and focus on perception, not policy execution and results.

Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) is Pentagonese for “the departure of civilian noncombatants and nonessential military personnel from danger in an overseas country to a designated safe haven …”

By doctrine, in a NEO the State Department is the lead government agency. The State Department identifies who should be evacuated, processes their paperwork, and arranges for safe havens. The State Department constantly coordinates with the Pentagon, so the military is prepared to safely conduct the evacuation.

Biden and Blinken at best gave a nod to a haphazard planning process. Then they mismanaged the withdrawal’s preparatory action phase and utterly botched its execution phase.

We confront our appalling moment: Biden and Blinken’s leadership failures and the State Department’s ineptitude have created a prolonged hostage situation. The failures and ineptitude also spurred the chaos that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. military personnel.

Biden Administration Word Games Cannot Hide Prolonged Hostage Crisis (theepochtimes.com)

From Fox News:

The State Department refused to grant official approval for private evacuation flights from Afghanistan to land in third countries, even though the department conceded that official authorization would likely be needed for planes to land in those nations, an email reviewed by Fox News shows. 

Furthermore, the State Department explicitly stated that charter flights, even those containing American citizens, would not be allowed to land at Defense Department (DOD) airbases. U.S. officials have pointed to possible security threats from landing charter planes at military bases, saying that they lack the resources on the ground to fully verify flight manifests.

The Biden administration’s delaying of private evacuation efforts has been a widespread source of frustration, infuriating rescue organizers and even a prominent Democratic senator. 

Eric Montalvo, who organized a series of private flights evacuating those stranded in Afghanistan, shared that email and others with Fox News after his evacuation efforts were repeatedly hampered by the federal bureaucracy. 

A Sept. 1 email that a State Department official sent to Montalvo underscores the extent to which private evacuation efforts have run into bureaucratic roadblocks. 

“No independent charters are allowed to land at [Al Udeid Air Base], the military airbase you mentioned in your communication with Samantha Power. In fact, no charters are allowed to land at an [sic] DoD base and most if not all countries in the Middle Eastern region, with the exception of perhaps Saudi Arabia will allow charters to land,” the official wrote.  

“You need to find another destination country, and it can’t be the U.S. either.”

The official noted that though some third countries “may require” official approval from the State Department before accepting the private charter flights, the department “will not provide” that approval. 

“Once you have had discussions with the host/destination country and reached an agreement, they may require some indication from the USG that we ‘approve’ of this charter flight. DOS will not provide an approval, but we will provide a ‘no objection’ to the destination country government via the U.S. Embassy in that country.”  

Read the full report here.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘State Department Obstruction of Private Rescue Flights from Afghanistan Revealed’ | Sean Hannity

Joe Biden’s disastrous handling of U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan is an impeachable offense for a president if there ever was one. Despite trying to impeach Donald Trump twice for far less, Democrats are not calling impeachment.

But some Republicans are. Forbes reported Thursday, “Nearly two dozen House and Senate Republicans on Thursday called for President Joe Biden to resign or be removed over a terrorist attack in Kabul that killed at least a dozen U.S. service members, as tensions between Biden and Republicans in Congress have worsened amid the U.S. withdrawal of troops from the region.”

Two dozen is not enough. All Republicans should be calling for impeachment. In no particular order, some of these House and Senate Republicans include Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Rice, Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lindsey Graham and Mary Miller.

Do you know if your representative is calling for impeachment?

I’m not counting on useless Never Trumpers who are probably about to be voted out of office anyway.

If dereliction of duty is not an impeachable offense, what is? Biden badly botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan because he did not have an exit strategy. Well, he did have one – don’t follow Trump’s exit strategy.

The former president’s deal with the Taliban included a May 1st withdrawal that Trump repeatedly warned Biden to stick to. Former vice president Mike Pence blames Biden for breaking the deal his administration brokered with the Taliban.

For Biden, there was no deal, no plan and no strategy. It was a dereliction of duty of the grandest scale.

We could throw in Biden’s dereliction of duty on our southern border as well, but for our purposes here let’s stick to one colossal Biden failure at a time.

The Democrats spent four years calling for Donald Trump’s head over nothing. Every Republican should be calling for the removal of Joe Biden from the White House for inaction that has cost lives and more.

So, where does your congressman stand?

About two dozen Republicans have called for Biden to be impeached. What about your congressman? (foramerica.org)

Sirajuddin Haqqani has $5 million bounty for killing a U.S. citizen in 2008

A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday announced the appointment of a terrorist on the FBI’s most-wanted list to a cabinet-level position in its new government.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is a senior leader in the al Qaeda-aligned Haqqani network of terror groups, will serve in the Taliban’s government as minister of the interior. He is wanted by federal authorities for his involvement in a 2008 bombing in Kabul that killed Thor Hesla, a U.S. citizen. The State Department is offering up to $5 million for information leading to Haqqani’s arrest.

Haqqani authored an op-ed in the New York Times in February 2020, which expressed the demands of the Taliban ahead of talks with U.S. officials in Qatar.

The Taliban leader said his organization would work to protect human rights for all Afghans and work toward “mutual respect” with foreign powers. The claims run counter to reports of atrocities the Taliban have committed against Afghans, many of whom assisted the United States during its 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Haqqani’s op-ed ran four months before a now-infamous New York Times editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that argued federal forces should be deployed to quell violence and restore order in America’s cities during the summer’s riots. Whereas some employees said Cotton’s views put black journalists at the newspaper “in danger,” no Times employees said publishing a known terrorist’s words in their opinion pages put any subgroup of U.S. citizens at risk.

United Nations-sanctioned terrorist Mohammad Hasan Akhund will lead the newly installed Taliban government. A 2020 report from the United Nations Security Council said the Taliban’s senior council of 20 members—including Akhund—maintained close ties with al Qaeda during negotiations with the West.

Taliban Taps Terrorist Wanted by FBI for New Government (freebeacon.com)

A U.S.-Afghan interpreter with family stuck in Afghanistan has spoken out against what she describes as unforgivable negligence by the U.S. government. Amidst reports that the Taliban is conducting online surveillance operations against American allies in a possible revenge campaign, The Epoch Times has chosen to withhold the names of the interpreter and her family. This is their story.

During her roughly six-day ordeal escaping Afghanistan last month, a U.S.-Afghan interpreter was harassed by the Taliban, nearly trampled by stampeding crowds, and subjected to wildly inhumane conditions.

She expected that kind of treatment from the Taliban.

What the interpreter didn’t expect, however, was receiving similar treatment from her own government. She didn’t foresee being misled by her president, cursed at by Marines, or lied to by State Department officials.

She didn’t expect to have her family betrayed.

Now, the interpreter wants the American people to know how their taxpayer-funded officials turned their backs on countless allies and others in desperate need of help.

Chaos

“I don’t like spotlights. I don’t want attention. I just want the American people to know the truth—that, I’m sorry, but our president is standing there, and the words coming out of his mouth don’t match what he did,” she said. “And I was there, I saw it, and it’s not okay. Someone has to be held accountable.”

A native of Afghanistan who moved to the United States following the Soviet Union’s invasion in 1979, the interpreter wanted to serve the country that provided her refuge.

Afghanistan provided her with that opportunity. During her time there, she worked with village stability teams operating out of Camp Vance in Bagram in 2012 and 2013, assisting U.S. troops and security contractors on numerous projects.

She told The Epoch Times that she was the first female to help coach then-Afghan commandos at the Afghan Special Security Forces ANA Special Operations Command— “I think that was the proudest thing for me, and I have a lot to show for on that,” she said.

After her stint in Bagram, the interpreter returned home to Idaho. But when the Taliban began retaking the country earlier this year, she knew she had to get her family out of danger.

Arriving in Kabul on Aug. 7, the interpreter thought she had until the end of the month to arrange for her sister and others to travel back to America.

Like so many others—including the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus—she was wrong.

“I told her to hurry up and go to Afghanistan in August and it would be safe—but to hurry up,” said George McMillan, a security contractor who worked with the interpreter. “And then the Afghan Army in the Pashtun-dominated areas just surrendered.”

Chaos ensued.

Sister Gives Up

The interpreter’s primary mission became getting herself and her older sister—who was the family matriarch following the death of their mother, as per Afghan cultural norms—on the soonest plane back to the United States.

Making their way through the streets of Kabul, they arrived at one of the security checkpoints outside of the Kabul airport. There, they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The interpreter said they spent some 48 hours in line, standing under the scorching sun with no food or water, sleeping in garbage and feces, and dealing with the all-to-real threat of being trampled by throngs of would-be refugees. There were times when the interpreter passed out in her sister’s arms from exhaustion, and vice versa.

Finally, they made it to the gate, where the interpreter presented her American passport to a U.S. Marine.

Instead of letting them through security, the Marine “told me to [expletive deleted], go wait in the back of the line, and that he didn’t give a [expletive deleted],” she said.

At that point, the sister fainted. When she woke up, the sister asked to go home—where she remains to this day. Unlike the interpreter, the sister has lived in Afghanistan her whole life, and she gave up hope on ever making it to America.

“She said, ‘Just take me home.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to be here; just take me home,’” the interpreter said through her tears. “She was really sick; she was dehydrated.”

Adding insult to injury, the Marines allowed an influx of refugees to enter the airport about 10 minutes after the sisters were booted to the back of the line. Few, if any, had documentation, according to the interpreter.

The interpreter’s heart-breaking journey wouldn’t end there. Nor would the abject horror.

Non-Americans Board

After dropping her sister home, she made her fifth attempt to catch a flight. This time, she was with two cousins, one of them an Afghan national who works for the United Nations, and the other a former U.S. embassy employee. The Marines let them inside the gate, but they were not allowed to board the flight, she said.

A State Department employee told the cousins that “only American citizens were allowed aboard.” Therefore, it came as a shock to the interpreter when she boarded the plane to find “hundreds” of non-American Afghans.

“How are you going to sit there and lie to my face like that? A plane full of Afghans—none of them with the proper documents—yet you’re turning away an active employee of the United Nations,” she said. “He still had his badge. The other [cousin] was an active employee of the U.S. embassy. The State Department’s website says, ‘U.S. citizens plus their family’ [are allowed to board].

“But they were turned around, right there in front of the plane … I wish to God that I would have taken the name of that [State Department official] lady.”

Not only were the cousins replaced by non-American citizens on the flight home; the interpreter said she thinks a Talib may have been aboard as well.

She said she helped serve as a translator when the plane left Kabul, assisting those who couldn’t speak English. One man stood out to her in particular—and not for good reasons.

“He was there, and I saw it with my own eyes that he had two different passports—one was an American passport and the other one was an Afghan passport. And he did not speak one word of English, not one word. So, it’s like, how the hell somebody can have American passport and not speak one word of English? It is beyond imagination.”

The interpreter said the man was questioned by authorities upon reaching the United States, but was still allowed in the country—where he’s likely at-large in America.

She took a brief video of the man on the plane and sent it to her former colleague McMillan, who shared her assessment about the person’s likely allegiance to the Taliban.

“He spoke only Pashtun, so it is impossible that he worked for the United States in any capacity,” he said, noting that the man was from the Khost Province. “Khost is almost exclusively Pashtun and therefore Taliban in the mountain range on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.”

Some two weeks after her hellish ordeal, the interpreter is still bruised and battered.

“I’m not normal. I’m not. I’m really going through PTSD,” she said. “It’s, it’s, it’s—I don’t think I can recover from this.”

She wants answers, and for people in power to be held to account.

Meanwhile, the cousins and sister are still in Afghanistan, living in danger from a revenge-driven Taliban.

The interpreter talks to them on a regular basis.

“They’re trying to survive. As you know, their biometrics and pictures, IDs and passports are all in Taliban’s hand. I know everybody likes to believe this fairy tale that the Taliban won’t do anything to these people,” she said. “Yeah, they’re going to do something to these people. They’ll be the first to be slaughtered.”

The interpreter is working with private groups to extract them, but she isn’t holding her breath. She’s certainly not counting on the U.S. government to help her.

She fears that last month was the last time she’ll ever see her sister.

“I don’t know,” she said through more tears. “I hope not.”

‘Get to the Back of the Line’: Interpreter Feels Betrayed by US Government (theepochtimes.com)

Top Republican says Taliban is limiting travel to strong-arm Biden administration

The State Department says there is little it can do to help Americans and at-risk Afghans whose planes are reportedly grounded at an airport as the Taliban prevents them from leaving the country.

At least six chartered planes are attempting to evacuate these Americans and others from Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport, but the Taliban is reportedly preventing them from taking off. Since it evacuated U.S. military forces and diplomatic personnel from the war-torn country, the Biden administration has not had the resources necessary to ensure that flights chartered by nonprofit groups and others can depart Afghanistan.

“We do not have personnel on the ground, we do not have air assets in the country, we do not control the airspace—whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region,” a State Department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. “We understand the concern that many people are feeling as they try to facilitate further charter and other passage out of Afghanistan.”

While the State Department says it has little to no information about the situation but is pressing the Taliban to make good on its promise to allow Americans to leave the country, Republican lawmakers are now raising the alarm that the Taliban is grounding planes as leverage to extract concessions from the Biden administration.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who has received classified briefings on the matter, told Fox News on Sunday morning that there are hundreds of American still trapped in Afghanistan and that the “Taliban want something in exchange” for letting these people leave.

McCaul has been tracking the situation and says the State Department cleared these flights to leave, but that the Taliban is responsible for stopping them. The State Department reportedly confirmed to Congress that flights from Mazar-i-Sharif are being held until the Taliban gives its approval.

McCaul says the planes have been stuck at the airport for the past several days and include American passengers, as well as Afghans who are trying to flee the Taliban, which has been trying to detain those citizens who worked with the United States and other coalition forces during the 20-year operation there.

“What we are seeing right now in Mazar-i-Sharif—this didn’t have to happen,” McCaul told the Free Beacon. “If the president had listened to the bipartisan pleas from Congress, his own generals, or the intelligence community, he would have properly planned for this withdrawal, including evacuating Americans before he pulled out the military. Instead, Americans are trapped in a country run by brutal terrorists, who are currently not allowing them to leave.”

The State Department said Sunday that it does not have a “reliable means” to get information about the passengers on the charter flights.

“Given these constraints, we also do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights, including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other priority groups on-board, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where they plan to land, among many other issues,” the spokesman said.

As Taliban Grounds Planes Out of Afghanistan, Biden Administration Says There’s Little It Can Do (freebeacon.com)

In the afterglow of the shambles of American and NATO policy in Afghanistan, it is probably a good time to review American strategic thinking in the Mideast and South Asia generally.

While the Cold War was in progress and the Nehru-Gandhi Congress party was in power in India, it made some sense for the United States to prop up Pakistan, as a partial counterweight to India, a contact bridge with China (which facilitated the reopening of relations between the U.S. and China), and as a friendly Muslim power.

The dynamics of these relationships changed after China, under Deng Xiaoping, opted for economic growth and a strenuous, stylized version of state-led capitalism, and India sloughed off the Nehru-Gandhi pretension to being the world’s moral arbiter (partly because of its vast poverty), and set out after economic growth also.

The People’s Republic gradually emerged as a challenger to the United States as the world’s most influential country and it has treated the mountainous India-China border as a convenient skirmishing place in order to claim to be clearly preeminent over India also—it’s only demographic rival in the world.

American relations with India have steadily improved for nearly 40 years and presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump particularly emphasized that progress with very successful visits to India.

Update Pakistan Relations

Throughout the 20-year NATO involvement in Afghanistan and for some years prior to that, the Pakistani military and intelligence services, which have derived much of their operating budget from the largesse of the United States, have been funneling a substantial amount of it into Afghanistan and particularly to the Haqanni Taliban, a large Taliban faction that has been intermittently bedeviling and killing NATO forces throughout their sojourn in Afghanistan.

Given the vigorous activity of the Pakistani-sponsored Taliban faction in Afghanistan to frustrate and harass the NATO effort there, and especially in light of the pitiful ending of that effort, the status of American relations with Pakistan really should be brought up to date.

In 1971, in the India-Pakistan War in which India succeeded in politically separating East Pakistan 1200 miles distant from West Pakistan and effectively dividing that country in half, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Pakistan was drastically weakened, losing half its population in a way that presaged the disintegration of the Soviet Union 20 years later.

The United States had attempted to assist Pakistan at that time. It is a tough region: the Pakistani president in 1971, Yahya Khan, was deposed; his successor Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was executed; his successor Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq was assassinated, and his eventual successor-Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, was also assassinated.

The Indian Premier Indira Gandhi and her successor, her son Rajiv Gandhi, were both assassinated, and the founding leader of Bangladesh, Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated with his family (and the family dog) in 1975. It is, politically and otherwise, a rough-and-tumble area.

The United States appears to have been somnambulating through these years with Pakistan mindlessly continuing a relationship which has subsidized Afghan terrorist activity and outright war with NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Pakistan has throughout that time never shown the slightest solidarity with American interests. The current Pakistani leader, former star cricketer Imran Khan, celebrated the American defeat in Afghanistan with ululations of good riddance.

All the neighboring countries have their protégé factions in Afghanistan: Russia, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran. And however mistakenly and unceremoniously, the West has renounced the policy of developing and financing a pro-Western faction, dominating the cities and assuring that Afghanistan does not become again a breeding ground and launching place for sophisticated international terrorists.

In these circumstances, the United States should sever all assistance to Pakistan, a primitive, fragile, truncated, and often politically insolent country that has never ceased to swindle and confound the United States and assist its enemies these last 40 years.

It knowingly harbored Osama bin Laden and periodically suspended overland American access to its expeditionary forces in Afghanistan, irritatingly confident of its ability to spite the United States with impunity. It should at least be disabused of that practice. If Pakistan blows up, then as Henry Kissinger said of Bangladesh on its independence day in 1971: “It’s not our basket case.”

Rebuild American Credibility

The United States has just committed on behalf of NATO a spectacle of astonishing self-humiliation. It will require radical changes of personnel and policy to rebuild American credibility as an ally and as an opponent, but it can certainly be done and almost certainly will be done.

It took President Kennedy, who admitted error frankly and made radical changes of personnel and policy, 18 months after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to regain his stature and reestablish the preeminence of the United States even in its own hemisphere, in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And his failure was only in giving arm’s-length support to an inadequately strong rebel group—there was no humiliating departure by the Armed Forces of the United States from Cuba.

I doubt that anyone now visible in the Biden administration is remotely qualified to do what needs to be done, but that is essentially to lead NATO into association with the alliances that the United States has in East Asia, South Asia, and Australasia and convert it all into an alliance of democratic states.

Unless Pakistan is prepared to take drastic steps of political and foreign policy reformation and play it straight and bear the burdens as well as receiving the benefits of being an American ally, the West can step back slightly and allow the vaunted Chinese Belt and Road to go through Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iran.

China as Bully

China is not fundamentally nearly as strong a country as the United States, and the greatest danger that it poses to us is if we push Russia into its arms so that there is an infelicitous combination of unexploited Siberian resources and surplus Chinese population. China is a newcomer to great power politics since its last turn as a major power was many centuries ago, and its interest was then effectively confined to the bullying of its neighbors.

It seems not altogether to have outgrown those habits and even the dogged colonels of Myanmar tired of Chinese overlordship and threw the Middle Kingdom out, bag and baggage. Any Chinese success or major Western failure such as Afghanistan seems to propel the People’s Republic to greater outrages—Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, incursions into India, and threats against Vietnam.

Eventually China will irritate all those whom it seeks to bully or dominate and all of the money that it is investing in Africa will eventually be seized by the locals, and the Chinese will be sent packing. Their Belt and Road is nonsense but if they want to hurl money at the underdeveloped countries we should welcome that, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because it will not lead to significant geopolitical inconvenience for the West.

On one point the hapless Joe Biden is right: Afghanistan is strategically useless, a primitive landlocked country inhabited by fierce and inhospitable people. If it possesses resources in rare-earth, that is a very recent discovery that reminds me of Marxist Herbert Marcuse’s theory that the United States was in South Vietnam in pursuit of oil (which has still not been discovered).

Not much can be expected from the deflated, excuses-addled Biden foreign and strategic policy team in terms of an imaginative foreign policy such as that pursued by President Truman and General Marshall and Dean Acheson or by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger. But even Biden might be up to giving Pakistan a good and well-deserved kick in the shins.

US Can Move Beyond Afghanistan Shambles With Alliance of Democracies (theepochtimes.com)

The Taliban terrorist group has been accused of killing an 8-month pregnant policewoman in front of her family over the weekend, according to witnesses.

The incident comes amid mounting concerns and reports of repression against women in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule.

A spokesperson for the group denied the accusations while speaking to the BBC, adding that an investigation into the murder is ongoing.

“We are aware of the incident and I am confirming that the Taliban have not killed her, our investigation is ongoing,” spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said.

Relatives of the victim, who has been identified by her sister as Negar Masoomi, said she worked at a local prison in Ghor, a central Afghan province.

On Sept. 4, three armed Taliban terrorists reportedly forced their way into the house where the family lives, tied everyone up, and searched the house before executing Masoomi with a knife.

“They killed our mother before our eyes. They killed her with a knife,” Mohammad Hanif, the son of the victim, told a local CNN reporter in Ghor. The motive for her death is currently unclear.

The Taliban has previously promised they would not seek revenge on former enemies and assured they will respect women’s rights and grant amnesty to those who fought them in the past.

Mujaheed repeated the terrorist group’s amnesty promise for those who worked for the previous administration and shifted the murder down to a “personal enmity or something else.”

When the Taliban was in power last time between 1996 and 2001 prior to a U.S.-led military operation two decades ago that ousted the group, they banned women from the workplace and nearly all women were mostly confined to their homes. They also forbid women from leaving the home unaccompanied and forced them to cover their entire bodies.

In recent weeks, the Taliban has urged employed Afghan women to temporarily stay indoors until fighters of the terrorist group are trained in “respecting and dealing with women.”

“Our security forces are not trained [in] how to deal with women—how to speak to women,” a spokesman for the group, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters at a press briefing on Aug. 24, referring to some fighters in the group.

Over the weekend, Taliban terrorists in camouflage fired weapons into the air, bringing an abrupt and frightening end to a protest in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, by women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.

The women’s march—the second in as many days in Kabul—began peacefully. Demonstrators laid a wreath outside Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry to honor Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban before marching on to the presidential palace.

As the demonstrators reached the presidential palace, a dozen Taliban terrorists ran into the crowd, firing in the air and sending demonstrators fleeing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Taliban Accused of Executing Pregnant Afghan Police Officer in Front of Family (theepochtimes.com)

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When President Joe Biden was elected in November under hotly contested circumstances, he was supposed to be the most popular presidential candidate in our nation’s history, receiving more than 81 million votes.

The magic of this remarkable achievement wore off pretty quickly once he took up the post of commander-in-chief, however.

In less than a year, his administration has overseen crippling inflation, a horrific humanitarian crisis at the border and a return to pre-9/11 conditions in Afghanistan as the Taliban retook the nation with ease before our troops — and our civilians — had withdrawn.

It’s been a mess and a disaster. And now, the people who voted for and against the most popular presidential candidate in U.S. history want answers.

It’s not just Republicans, although they’re certainly making the most noise. Last week, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton was joined by over two dozen of his colleagues who demanded answers on what went wrong in Afghanistan.

Trending:Afghan National Stabs Woman Working Outside Because He Didn’t Think It Was an Appropriate Job for Women

A solid majority of voters believe that Congress should investigate the withdrawal.

Yes, Biden is turning out to be quite the historical president — although more so for his administration’s quickly-earned notoriety than succusses at this rate.

A Rasmussen Reports survey released last week found that while less than one-third of likely voters believed the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success (those are some optimistic likely voters), nearly two-thirds believed that the handling of the withdrawal should be investigated.

The national online and phone survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Aug. 30-31, as the last of the U.S. troops were pulling out of the nation and Americans, including schoolchildren, were left stranded in the Taliban-controlled nation.

The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

Sixty-two percent of those surveyed responded affirmatively to the question, “Should Congress investigate how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled?”

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed opposed a congressional investigation (imagine opposing government accountability at a time like this), while 10 percent were not sure.

Here’s the thing: the refrain from the Democrats over the last month has been that what happened in Afghanistan was the fault of former President Donald Trump, who negotiated a peace treaty with the Taliban and set a withdrawal date for May of this year before leaving office.

It certainly stands to reason that any voter would want Congress to investigate what happened regardless of who was to blame.Related:Apprentice Winner & Major Star Predicts Possible End of Biden’s Presidency

Yet it was under the command of Biden’s military leaders that the United States appeared to completely abandon the Afghan national army to the mercy of the Taliban and left billions of dollars worth of equipment in their hands.

It is these same military officials — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — on whom over 100 retired military officers have called to resign.

It is Biden who appeared to advise the now-deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to give the public impression that the Taliban wasn’t winning in July if he wanted to receive more U.S. aid, according to Reuters.

It is Biden who was running things when thousands of Americans were scrambling to evacuate and when hundreds were abandoned in the country after we withdrew.

It is the Biden administration that was facilitating the chaotic evacuation and that gave the Taliban the names of Americans and U.S.-allied Afghans as the terror group appeared to control the entrance to the Kabul airport in the final days of the withdrawal.

And it was Biden who was commander-in-chief when Islamic State group terrorists detonated a suicide vest and opened fire upon the crush of desperate civilians trying to flee Afghanistan in an attack that killed 13 U.S. service members, the worst single-day casualty event our forces had seen in 11 years.

The American people are right to want answers — and it is from President Joe Biden that they must be demanded.

Bad News for Biden: It Looks Like Voters Aren’t Going to Let Fatal Afghan Withdrawal Be Forgotten (westernjournal.com)

The sister of fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum is speaking out against President Joe Biden after her brother was tragically killed in the suicide bombing near the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, making him one of the last American casualties of the War in Afghanistan.

Cheyenne McCollum courageously spoke with Newsmax’s “Wake Up America” on Monday to discuss meeting with the president at the dignified transfer of her brother’s remains.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say I stayed to meet him. I stayed to support Rylee’s wife because I didn’t want her to sit alone, and she wanted the chance to look him in the eye, so I sat beside her to do that as well,” McCollum said.

“I stayed, and when he came up to us about 15 seconds in I ended up having to walk away. It was so insincere, and he didn’t look us in the eye, he gave her a pat on the knee and said, ‘I know what you’re going through — I lost my son.’ Which, he didn’t lose his son serving.”

She noted that the interaction was roughly three minutes long and spoke about how the president tried to relate it to his own son’s death from cancer.Trending:Afghan National Stabs Woman Working Outside Because He Didn’t Think It Was an Appropriate Job for Women

“He just said, ‘There’s nothing I can say,’ and would just go on to talking about his son. … I don’t even think he knows Rylee’s name, to be honest. … He didn’t know or say anything personal. It was very scripted,” she added.

“Everything felt fake, if I’m being honest.”

McCollum’s wife is pregnant with their first child, making the emotions run even higher for the family.

Two GoFundMes set up were set up to support his wife, Gigi, and their unborn child’s education fund. The two campaigns have raised over $875,000 combined.

“He was so excited,” his sister said about how he was going to become a father. “He was gonna be such a good dad.”

The establishment media has painted Biden as an empathetic figure, but this interview suggests otherwise.

While it is hard to know what was going through the president’s mind during the dignified transfer, some in attendance were clearly upset with his cold behavior.

If the Biden administration properly accounted for the threat of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate while withdrawing troops, this tragedy could have been prevented.Related:Apprentice Winner & Major Star Predicts Possible End of Biden’s Presidency

The McCollum family is just one of the 13 families that lost a service member, so it is reasonable for them to be upset with the president.

For those on the left who would like to create a false equivalency to the lives lost to coronavirus, they must be reminded that this was the result of policy, not a pandemic.

These service members sacrificed their lives to protect freedom and democracy overseas, only for their families to be passively glanced over by their commander in chief.

Gold Star Sister: I Had to Walk Out of Meeting with Biden After 15 Seconds Because I Was So Disgusted (westernjournal.com)

The top-ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that the Taliban terrorist group will not allow Americans to leave from an airport in the northern part of Afghanistan, while the White House chief of staff estimated that about 100 Americans still remain in the country.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that six airplanes carrying Americans and Afghans are sitting at the Mazar-i-Sharif airport in Afghanistan but cannot depart because the Taliban is “holding them hostage for demands.”

“In fact we have six airplanes at Mazar-i-Sharif airport, six airplanes, with American citizens on them, as I speak, also with these interpreters, and the Taliban is holding them hostage for demands right now,” McCaul told Fox News on Sunday. The Department of State “has cleared these flights, and the Taliban will not let them leave the airport,” he added.

The top Republican lawmaker did not elaborate the specific demands the Taliban have made to the United States, but he said it is “turning into a hostage situation” and said the Taliban is “not gonna allow American citizens to leave until they get full recognition from the United States of America.”

“Well, they are not clearing airplanes to depart. They’ve sat at the airport for the last couple days, these planes, and they’re not allowed to leave,” McCaul said. “We know the reason why is because the Taliban want something in exchange.”

Late last month, the U.S. military completed its final evacuation mission at the Kabul airport while Biden administration officials declared an end to the 20-year-long military conflict in Afghanistan. However, possibly hundreds of American citizens still remain inside the country.

For how his administration handled the pullout and chaotic evacuation, President Joe Biden has received unprecedented bipartisan criticism. During remarks to the press and in speeches, Biden repeatedly defended the pullout and blamed the Afghan army for not being willing to fight the Taliban, although neither he nor top generals could explain why the Afghanistan government collapsed in just 11 days and acknowledged their intelligence didn’t predict such a scenario unfolding.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that about 100 Americans remain in the country.

“Obviously, we’re hopeful that, in the coming days, the Qataris will be able to resume air service out of Kabul. And, if they do, we’re obviously going to look to see if Americans can be part of those flights. We are going to find ways to get them … the ones that want to leave, to get them out of Afghanistan,” he said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of State regarding McCaul’s comments.

Taliban Holding Americans Hostage at Afghanistan Airport: Top Republican Lawmaker (theepochtimes.com)

My first encounter with Afghanistan was many years ago through Eric Newby’s “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.”

The book is a hoot, partly because Newby made it quite clear that no walk in the Hindu Kush is short, but mostly because of its dramatization of the encounter between a modern Westerner and the harsh, primitive tribalism of a society caught in the past like a bug in amber.

I think my next virtual trip to Afghanistan was through Peter Hopkirk’s riveting book “The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia.”

Hopkirk’s account of Maj. Gen. William Elphinstone’s disastrous withdrawal from Kabul in 1842—out of a party of 16,000 precisely one European, William Brydon, an army surgeon, made it out alive—made a deep impression on me.

“Where’s the army?” he was asked when, badly wounded, he wobbled into the British garrison in Jalalabad, some 90 miles East of Kabul.

“I am the army,” was his reply.

Miraculously, Brydon lived on for another twenty years. The pony that bore him into the fort was not so fortunate. He lay down directly and never rose.

There is a reason that Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of Empires.”

The Russians know a thing or two about that, though they at least managed their withdrawal in an orderly fashion.

Unlike the United States, whose departure, though not as sanguinary as Elphinstone’s, may well have bigger global repercussions.

I should say for the record that I strongly supported America’s entry into Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11.

Indeed, it might be said that I supported it more strongly than our leaders since I thought the rules of engagement we followed hampered the effective prosecution of the assault.

Early on, for example, we had a clear shot at the Taliban bigwig Mullah Omar, but permission to take him out was denied for fear of collateral damage.

I should also say that I supported Donald Trump’s plan to extricate the United States from what had become America’s longest war.

Was his deal with the Taliban, the so-called Doha agreement, a good one?

Maybe not.

Trump had promised to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of May, 2021, provided that the Taliban upheld their end of the bargain, which prominently included a promise that they would engage in “intra-Afghan dialogue” in order to to achieve a “permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” that would yield a “political roadmap” for the country’s future.

As a recent story in The Wall Street Journal notes, “Trump administration officials emphasized the conditional nature of the U.S. commitment when the Doha agreement was signed.”

Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, noted in March 2020 that Doha “is a conditions-based agreement.”

If “we assess that the Taliban is honoring the terms of the deal,” he said, “including progress on the political front between the Taliban and the current Afghan government,” the United States will “reduce our presence toward a goal of zero in 2021.”

“If.”

Should progress toward that goal stall, he warned, then “our drawdown likely will be suspended, as well.”

I mention this minutia to answer critics of Trump’s plan, in and out of the Biden administration.

The administration’s whining that the evacuation was Trump’s plan, and therefore it was bad, but nonetheless that it was “extraordinarily successful” is especially risible or, to be more strictly accurate, is pathetic.

The Taliban did not abide by the agreement. They took the country by force, and they did it in such short order that General Mark Milley didn’t even have time to complain about all the “white rage” on view.

That said, Biden’s mistake was not in withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

His mistake was twofold: not holding the Taliban to their word, and utterly bungling—bungling that rises to the level of criminal negligence—the evacuation.

Memo to the “experts” in the State Department: the next time you have to withdraw from a hostile country, do not, I repeat, do not abandon your chief strategic airbase before evacuating American citizens and our allies.

Also, do not leave behind hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware for the enemy to hoover up and use against its own population and, in due course, the West.

Finally, do not listen to anything that Antony Blinken says.

I stress again, however, Biden’s mistake was not in leaving Afghanistan.

That was long overdue.

His mistake was the way he left.

Writing at The Spectator World, Daniel McCarthy got to the nub of the issue. “Biden deserves censure for a thousand reasons,” McCarthy notes.

“But the public deserves an honest accounting of the war itself, which was never winnable in the way that those who sold the conflict to America at the outset had promised.”

Twenty years and $2 trillion on, we all know that (well, maybe not Bill Kristol or David French, but everyone who matters).

McCarthy underscores the hard truth of the situation: “Afghanistan is a disaster not primarily because of Biden but because our leadership class, in politics and the media alike, cannot confront uncomfortable truths,” above all the uncomfortable truth that Afghanistan was always an unlikely candidate for the institution of liberal democracy and all the nonsense about “diversity,” “gender equity,” and the like that accompanies the American variety of liberalism like a limpet.

No, we should have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11, devastated al-Qaeda and anyone harboring them.

Then we should have left.

We didn’t, and the result is this sucking mess that is destroying the Biden administration and will likely have very serious implications for America’s status on the international stage.

Again, Daniel McCarthy was absolutely correct: “Afghanistan was lost the minute the mission became democracy-promotion and nation-building. A humiliating end was written in failures right at the start.”

Afghanistan: the Mistake Was Not Going In, It Was How We Left (theepochtimes.com)

National Fraternal Order of Police

Honoring the 13 Fallen Service Members 🇺🇸

Last night, Jefferson County (TN) Law Enforcement held a 13 car memorial caravan that traveled across Jefferson County to honor the 13 service members who were targeted and murdered in Afghanistan. We will never forget these heroes. Please pray for their families!

The event was organized by Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Coffey and each Jefferson County agency was represented.

Fraternal Order of Police, Tennessee Lodge 61 – Jefferson County

The 13 cars forming the number 13 are in honor of the fallen hero’s listed below:

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah

Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.

Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, Calif.

Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif.

Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha, Neb.

Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Ind.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Mo.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyo.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif.

Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn.

National Fraternal Order of Police – Honoring the 13 Fallen Service Members | Facebook

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was in a plane circling the U.S.-held airport in Kabul with Special Forces last week on a mission to rescue Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

Mullin had learned American citizens were stuck in the Taliban-controlled country and wanted to help get them out before U.S. troops withdrew before President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.

But the attempt failed, the congressman said on Friday.

“They would never let us in Afghanistan,” he said on Fox News, blaming Biden administration officials.

The 20 Americans the flight was aimed at rescuing haven’t been in contact since, Mullin said.

The secretive trip led to reports that Mullin’s whereabouts were unknown and claims he threatened staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Tajikstan as he tried to enter Afghanistan for a rescue mission.

Mullin and a spokesperson issued brief statements earlier this week saying he was safe, but the television appearance was the first-term representative’s first time getting into detail on what unfolded.

The chaos in Kabul, where tens of thousands of Afghans and thousands of Americans tried to brave Taliban checkpoints before convincing U.S. troops and other personnel to let them into the airport, unfolded over 17 days after the terrorist group barreled through U.S.-backed Afghan forces and assumed control of the country.

Some Americans reported being unable to reach the airport, with reports of scattered beatings being confirmed by the Pentagon. That led to appeals to outside parties, including Mullin, to carry out rescues.

Mullin said people started calling him to ask for help evacuating Americans and Afghans. One phone call concerned 20 U.S. citizens who needed a State Department or another government entity, such as a member of Congress, to sponsor a flight. That’s how he ended up on board a plane that was set to touch down in Kabul before taking off with more passengers on board.

Mullin and those with him were aware of the danger. “We felt like we probably had a 50–50 chance of coming back,” he said.

But he feels no regrets about the attempt, which did not culminate with a rescue.

“How do you say no when you have the option to do something?” he wondered. “I’d do it again tomorrow.”

Mullin targeted Biden and other top officials, saying that they lied when they said all Americans who wanted out would be evacuated before U.S. troops left.

The withdrawal ended on Aug. 30, leaving behind between 100 and 200 Americans, according to administration officials. A chunk of those were schoolchildren from California.

Mullin, who said his flight received a humanitarian plan from the Federal Aviation Authority, accused the State Department of interfering with the mission.

The authority told The Epoch Times via email that any operators flying into the airport were told Aug. 18 that they must obtain permission from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Department of Defense and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The congressman also denied the anonymously-sourced report that claimed he threatened American staffers in Tajikstan. He said he did have a large sum of cash, because of the prediction money might be needed to get through Taliban checkpoints. He said the U.S. ambassador in Tajikstan refused to help.

Two other members of Congress did make it into Afghanistan, but they went to oversee the evacuation, not carry out a rescue mission.

Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) reached Kabul on Aug. 24 and spent several hours at the airport before leaving, Pentagon officials have confirmed.

House of Representatives leaders from both parties said the trip shouldn’t have happened, though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he understood why it did.

“They’re both veterans, they’re both frustrated, they have an administration that won’t tell them the answers to how many Americans are left,” he told reporters in Washington.

‘I’d Do It Again Tomorrow’ Congressman Says After Attempt to Rescue Americans Stranded in Afghanistan (theepochtimes.com)

As Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 reach grim milestone

President Joe Biden promised the American people the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan would not in any way resemble the humiliating end to the Vietnam War. He broke that promise.

“The Taliban is not the south—the North Vietnamese army. They’re not—they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” Biden said during a press conference on July 8. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Several weeks later, American forces were scrambling to evacuate diplomats and staff from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Kabul as the Taliban advanced toward the capital. Chaos ensued as thousands gathered at Hamid Karzai International Airport, where 13 American service members were killed in a suicide bombing attack, and hundreds of American citizens and Afghan allies were left behind. Earlier this week, Biden hailed the disastrous withdrawal as an “extraordinary success” that went exactly “as designed.”

Meanwhile, back in the United States, another human-rights disaster has been unfolding on Biden’s watch. More than 235,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since Biden took office in January. That is more than quadruple the number of Americans who died during the Vietnam War (58,220) from 1964 to 1975. On average, COVID-19 has killed more than 1,000 Americans every day that Biden has been president.

The horrific death toll marks another broken promise for Biden, who insisted during the 2020 presidential campaign that he would “shut down the virus” in the United States. In fact, the number of COVID-19 deaths on Biden’s watch is even greater than the American death toll was on October 22, 2020, the date of his final presidential debate against former president Donald Trump.

“Two-hundred twenty-thousand Americans dead,” Biden said. “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America. We’re in a situation where there are a thousand deaths a day.”

Once again, Biden promised that electing him president would halt the deadly pandemic in its tracks. “The way this president has responded to this crisis has been absolutely tragic,” he said. “So, folks, I will take care of this. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.”

Fact check: He did not.

Biden’s Other Vietnam (Times Four) (freebeacon.com)

Afghans are tested after arrival in the United States

Afghan refugees coming to the United States did not receive COVID-19 tests before departing Kabul, the State Department told the Washington Free Beacon.

The State Department’s disclosure comes amid increased scrutiny of the Biden administration’s handling of more than 100,000 Afghans, who fled the country following the Taliban’s takeover. The agency requires COVID tests before it allows foreign travelers to arrive in the United States, but it waived the requirement for those who evacuated from Afghanistan.

“Given the extraordinary circumstances, a blanket humanitarian exemption was issued for the requirement of pre-departure COVID testing for all individuals the U.S. government transported by aircraft from Afghanistan,” an agency spokeswoman told the Free Beacon on Friday. 

Reports indicate other significant lapses in the State Department’s handling of the Afghan evacuation efforts. The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are investigating cases of Afghan men bringing their child brides into the United States. “Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families,” a document obtained by the AP says. “Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”

Both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have defended the refugee-vetting process that has been criticized for leaving behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan translators and allies. Special Immigrant Visa applicants, who spent years waiting on agency background checks and other bureaucratic hurdles, were stranded as others boarded flights at the Kabul airport on a seemingly first-come, first-serve basis under the supervision of the Taliban. Republicans, as well as DHS officials, say the sheer number of refugees coming into the country makes it impossible for comprehensive background checks to take place.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and 26 other GOP senators sent a letter to the White House on Thursday demanding specifics on the refugees who are arriving in the United States, citing the high number of SIV applicants left behind in Afghanistan. Cotton estimated more than 57,000 of the Afghans evacuated were not green card holders, visa applicants, or U.S. citizens.

“Joe Biden cynically used the plight of those loyal Afghans who served alongside American troops to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who had no right to be in the country and is now bringing them into the country to the tune of thousands every day, with no ability to vet whether or not they’re a security threat at all,” Cotton said.

Afghans received COVID tests after their arrival at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Philadelphia International Airport. The State Department official declined to elaborate on the quarantine procedures for those who test positive.

Afghan Refugees Not Tested for COVID Before Landing in US (freebeacon.com)

Republican Congress members are disputing the numbers the Biden administration is quoting of Americans left behind in Afghanistan after the last U.S. troops left the country on Monday, citing the calls their offices are getting from citizens stranded in a country now under Taliban rule.

President Joe Biden said in an address Tuesday: “Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave. Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan,” adding, “The bottom line: [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.”

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a Green Beret, told Fox News on Tuesday: “I think we’re all somewhere on the spectrum between rage and grief at any one given moment, but just this morning, literally just a few hours ago, we were in touch with American citizens and their children that were denied access to Kabul International.”

Republicans have been urging the Biden administration to continue rescue efforts in Afghanistan as their offices receive calls from those still stranded in Afghanistan.

At least 24 students from Southern California are stuck in Afghanistan, officials said this week. The students, as well as some parents, are stranded in the Central Asian country after going there for a summer trip, a spokesman for the Cajon Valley Union School District confirmed via email to The Epoch Times.

The group was visiting relatives in Afghanistan when they found themselves stranded after the Taliban took over the country in mid-August.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday said his office is helping get people out of Afghanistan. “Nasria, a pregnant American citizen, has braved beatings and harassment by the Taliban trying to get past their checkpoints to return to the US. This is one of the individuals we continue to help. All should know the Americans left behind in Afghanistan by President Biden.”

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Toria Nuland told reporters at a Sept. 1 press briefing that the United States is committed to getting Americans out by air and by land.

“As I said, we are working on trying to get that—supporting those partners on the ground who are trying to get that airport open. And we are also looking at land routes. I think on land routes, I don’t want to be any more specific because, as you know, it is a long journey with lots of dangers and we don’t want to further endanger folks who might be involved in that,” said Nuland.

Since the U.S. military’s total exit from Afghanistan on Aug. 31, private groups and former military personnel have stepped up to raise funds and get citizens and allies out. They estimate the U.S. citizens still there to be in the thousands, not hundreds.

Glenn Beck, one of the founders of The Blaze news network and of the Nazarene Fund, told Dave Rubin on The Rubin Report on Friday he believes the number of U.S. citizens still in Afghanistan to be a few thousand, given the original number Biden quoted of 16,000 U.S. citizens in Afghanistan. Beck has been leading the Nazarene Fund to charter planes to get citizens and allies out of Afghanistan.

Beck has been in the Middle East helping to coordinate the evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies via the Nazarene Fund since mid-August. “Let’s just put it this way. I don’t think anybody knows the American number, but it’s not 300 or 200. It’s not anywhere close to that,” said Beck.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said his office is also getting calls from American citizens still inside Afghanistan. “@SecBlinken and @StateDeptSpox: I am in contact right now with US citizens in Afghanistan who tried to leave but couldn’t. Now they have what they need to leave except clearance from State. DM me please,” Crenshaw wrote on Twitter the day the U.S. military left Afghanistan.

The State Department has also said they can only estimate the numbers of citizens, claiming that, of the about 200, some do not want to leave.

“We’re trying to determine exactly how many. We’re going through manifests and calling and texting through our lists, and we will have more details to share as soon as possible. Part of the challenge with fixing a precise number is that there are longtime residents of Afghanistan who have American passports and who are trying to determine whether or not they want to leave. Many are dual citizen Americans with deep roots and extended families in Afghanistan who resided there for many years. For many, it’s a painful choice,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told MSNBC on Aug. 31 that the Biden administration had to pull troops out when they did because of the terrorist threats.

“I mean there was a very credible, very specific, increasing threat stream by ISIS that was making the entire operation more perilous, and we had to make some decisions in the last couple of days to make sure that we could get everybody out as safely as possible and not imperil civilians any more than they already were.”

As Reports Come in of US Citizens Still in Afghanistan, GOP Reps Question Numbers Quoted by Biden Admin (theepochtimes.com)

Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the foolishness of a political leader like President Joe Biden who is so ideologically rigid, so thoroughly self-identified with his beliefs about the world that, when those beliefs turn out to be wrong, he can never afford to acknowledge the truth.

This week, Biden provided yet another illustration of this foolishness by an address to the nation, occasioned by what anyone could see was America’s worst military disaster in nearly half a century.

Yet not only did he fail to acknowledge the disaster, he treated it as if it were a triumph.

“Last night in Kabul,” he began, “the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were [sic] possible. No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it, and we did it today.”

Then he continued: “The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.”

Even allowing for the fact that he knew he could rely on a sycophantic media to back up or rationalize this patently false claim to “success,” or least decline to notice its falseness, it was a powerful testimony to the capacity for self-delusion of the modern ideologue—both of him who made the claim and those millions who are presumably still willing to support him in that self-delusion.

A few weeks earlier, right around the time that Biden was assuring us that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” I also wrote of how the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military services, General Mark Milley, had also become a prisoner of ideology, since he appeared to have acquiesced in the hard-line Democratic ideologues’ view of Trump supporters as a threat to national security.

This delusion, presumably shared by other senior officers in the armed forces, was potentially even more dangerous than that of Biden about the Taliban, but it also turned out to have foreshadowed it.

You could tell by the transparently political happy-talk briefing given by General Hank Taylor and Pentagon press secretary John Kirby a week before the curtain fell on the American military presence in Afghanistan. (We still don’t know, as of this writing, how many other Americans were left behind there when the last military transport took off.)

“I’m pleased to report our best departure results since evacuation operations began have happened in the last 24 hours,” burbled General Taylor. “Where 37 US Military aircraft, 32 C-17s, five C-130s departed from Kabul with approximately 12,700 personnel. On top of that, 57 coalition and partner aircraft left Kabul aircraft with 8900 personnel.”

He was speaking before the deaths of 13 American service personnel in the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport on Aug. 26. That tragic event caused General Milley to feel “pain and anger” but no regrets for anything he had done.

The “pain and anger,” he said, “comes from the same as the grieving families”—which seemed to rule out the possibility that some of the anger of the grieving families was directed at himself.

“This is tough stuff,” he explained. “War is hard. It’s vicious. It’s brutal. It’s unforgiving.”

No kidding! Don’t look to him to take any responsibility for those 13 deaths, however. “War” was to blame, not he.

In the olden days, losing generals would expect to be relieved of their command—and be thankful they weren’t living in Roman times when they would also have been expected to fall on their sword to atone for the dishonor of losing.

As late as 1757, the British put Admiral Byng up before a firing squad for a relatively trivial loss in the Seven Years’ War. Voltaire responded by saying that it was good to kill an admiral from time to time, “pour encourager les autres”—to instill a bit more intestinal fortitude in the surviving admirals.

Yet apparently in our age of ideology, when no one with the “right” political views can ever be wrong, no American general will even lose his job or his general’s pension over the military debacle in Afghanistan—though a lowly lieutenant colonel, who thought and said publicly that somebody higher up ought to pay a price for the disaster, was relieved of duty and forced to resign his commission.

It shouldn’t be necessary to say it, but someone who can never admit to his mistakes can never learn from them.

That’s presumably why we’ve been making the same mistake in waging our American wars since Korea—the mistake of not realizing that if you’re not winning, you’re losing.

General Douglas MacArthur warned us against this mistake when he was fired by President Harry Truman for believing that he had been put in charge of UN Forces in the Korean war to win it, not to create bargaining chips for politicians to trade away in negotiations with the enemy.

“In war,” as General MacArthur put it, “there is no substitute for victory.”

But the lesson of his dismissal for all our generals since, down to General Milley, has been that you can never get in trouble, no matter how badly you screw up, for agreeing with the civilian leadership, only for disagreeing, never for being too cautious or complacent, only for being too bold.

Only, that is, for wanting to win. For it is boldness that wins wars. Not caution. Not complacency.

With leaders who can never admit they were wrong, we can expect to do a lot more losing.

Afghanistan Brings Disaster, but no Responsibility is Taken (theepochtimes.com)

Some 40,000 people airlifted from Afghanistan have arrived in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.

U.S. troops flew or facilitated the flight of more than 120,000 people from the airport in Kabul during about two-and-a-half weeks through Aug. 30, when the troops withdrew from Afghanistan completely.

Approximately 13 percent of the evacuees that have entered the United States have been U.S. citizens, according to Mayorkas. Another 8 percent were lawful permanent residents. The rest were Special Immigrant Visa holders or applicants or other Afghan nationals deemed vulnerable to Taliban terrorists if they had not been evacuated.

Mayorkas has been using his powers of parole to let in some Afghans who lack a visa, the Department of Homeland Security revealed last week. Mayorkas declined to say how many Afghans have been granted parole.

The evacuees were initially flown from Kabul to U.S. military bases in third countries, such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

After vetting by a team of hundreds of government workers, including FBI officials, the cleared evacuees were flown to the United States. Most have been landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia or Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania.

They are then shuttled to one of eight military bases scattered across the country, including Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.

Approximately 25,600 Afghans were being housed at the military bases as of Sept. 3, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

The military has a capacity across the eight installations for about 36,000 but is working to increase that to at least 50,000. No more bases are expected to be needed to house the evacuees.

About 1,000 Afghans have been resettled, or moved off of bases, according to U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.

Mayorkas said the number of evacuees is expected to come in above 50,000.

“The number is something I don’t want to estimate because—as I’ve mentioned before—our commitment is an enduring one,” he said. “This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal of Operation Allies Welcome.”

U.S. officials pledged to Afghans who helped U.S. troops in the war in Afghanistan that they would be evacuated before troops withdrew. Some were not. Between 100 and 200 Americans were also left behind.

Governors from each party have said they will welcome refugees to their states.

“The Afghans fleeing the Taliban regime served alongside America’s military forces and fought for freedom. We’re grateful for their efforts and Arizona wholeheartedly welcomes our fair share of the refugees in our state,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, both Republicans, said in a joint statement last month.

But some officials have expressed concern about the influx of refugees, arguing they could pose security problems.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) said he visited Fort McCoy last week and discovered all Afghan nationals there were on parole.

“The Biden administration has circumvented the SIV process,” he said.

Afghans are also being allowed to leave the base at will, he added.

40,000 From Afghanistan Airlift Have Entered United States: Official (theepochtimes.com)

The Afghanistan withdrawal is worse than you think. Whatever level of incompetence you think was at play, however poorly you think the planning was, however avoidable you think this disaster should have been, it’s honestly so much worse. If you know anyone who thinks there was no way to pull out of Afghanistan without the country devolving into utter chaos, or if you know anyone who thinks Trump couldn’t have done any better, it is your duty to sit them down and make them watch the premiere of Season 2 of “Kash’s Corner.” I don’t care how you do it. Tie them to a chair. Tape their eyelids open. Offer them twenty bucks. Just make them watch “We Knew This Would Happen in Afghanistan and We Had a Strategy to Prevent It,” because they’re wrong.

Obviously it’s impossible to say with absolute certainty that the exit from Afghanistan would have gone better under former President Trump, because he isn’t the president and we don’t have access to alternate timelines. However, Kash Patel worked on Afghanistan under both the Obama and Trump administrations and the insight he provides into how those administrations tackled the problem of our longest war versus our current administration makes it difficult to believe Trump’s plan would have ended in such a catastrophe. The episode was clearly filmed before the worst day of the entire withdrawal, when 13 members of our armed forces—the bulk of them well under the age of 30—were killed by a suicide bomber, along with nearly 200 civilians.

The episode lasts just under 50 minutes, allowing Patel and Jekielek plenty of time to discuss in depth the steps President Trump had undertaken to ensure a successful withdrawal; the same steps President Biden completely ignored. Anyone not wholly consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome likely knows that President Trump’s deal to withdraw was conditions- based, and that the Taliban knew full well that if they didn’t meet the conditions then the deal was off. Trump wanted to remove our troops sooner than the agreed-upon May 1st deadline, but had already delayed withdrawal once and was willing to do so again if necessary. He’d already proved to the Taliban that he wouldn’t pull our soldiers out on a fixed deadline if they weren’t holding up their end of the bargain, which was a strong incentive for them to do just that.

Patel’s explanation of the Trump administration’s handling of Afghanistan goes far beyond outlining the conditions and is infuriating. Trump ran on a platform that included ending the never-ending wars in the Middle East, with Afghanistan at the top of the list. However, he wanted to finally leave Afghanistan in such a way to hopefully allow for some modicum of peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which was the whole point of a conditions-based exit. The only way we were leaving was if both parties met these conditions, and since both the Taliban and Afghan government wanted us gone they were highly motivated to do so. The Taliban was required to renounce Al-Qaeda and come to the table with the Afghan government to negotiate an interim government, which they’d repeatedly done. We agreed to keep special forces in the country specifically to combat terrorism, and we made sure they knew we’d wipe anyone off the map who killed an American citizen or harmed an American interest.

This plan was already in place and working well when President Biden took office. As with many of Trump’s policies that Biden dismantled, all the incoming administration had to do was keep everything in place and the mission could have been, if not a rousing success, at least not a total failure. Patel says that he and his colleagues were instructed to share anything and everything they had on Afghanistan with the incoming administration, and in fact gave the Biden administration the most materials from the Department of Defense of any administration in transition history. Only the incoming administration wanted nothing to do with any of it. They refused to meet with the outgoing members of the Department of Defense. They weren’t interested in hearing about the intel the Trump administration had on what was happening on the ground. The best the outgoing staff could do was make sure the career military members they worked with had everything the Biden administration would need and hope for the best.

Patel goes on to explain that Afghanistan was a high priority for President Trump in ways that it clearly hasn’t been for President Biden. Trump took daily briefings on conditions on the ground, listened to his military commanders, and was willing to pivot to a different strategy on a moment’s notice. The Biden administration took a completely different tactic, deciding that the intelligence focus should be on the white supremacy boogeyman within the Department of Defense. Rather than looking outward, U.S. intelligence agencies were looking inward, so when Biden finally got around to getting back to Afghanistan, months had passed since the last time anyone had paid much attention to what was happening on the ground.

The idea that there was no way to know the Afghan army would immediately collapse is one that Patel completely refutes, as the intelligence they were collecting (which the Biden administration was not) was very clear that if we did something like, oh say, leave in the middle of the night, the country would collapse. Based on the daily briefings, President Trump believed it would happen in a matter of days, leading to the plan to withdraw based on conditions. All of this intelligence that led Trump and his administration to this conclusion was and still is readily available for the new administration to look at any time they want, but clearly they didn’t want to or they wouldn’t have been shocked when Afghanistan collapsed over the course of a weekend.

Biden deciding that he wasn’t going to be held to Trump’s timeline also damaged our ability to leave Afghanistan in one piece. Patel makes a point that isn’t widely discussed about Biden moving the deadline and how the Taliban interpreted that as the United States breaking one of the conditions. Since the incoming administration immediately scrapped the withdrawal date everyone had agreed to, the Taliban no longer saw any reason to continue negotiating with the Afghan government in good faith. Perhaps we should have sent a strongly-worded letter that they’d better hold up their end of the bargain even though we had no intention to hold up ours. Then we might have avoided this whole thing.

Jekielek then asks about the media’s role in this whole debacle, marveling at the fact that suddenly the media remembered to do their job. Patel agrees that the shift in tone is quite drastic from their previously glowing coverage of Biden’s Afghanistan plan to covering the breakdown of the country honestly, which just goes to show how bad the situation is. If the media can’t find some way to ignore it, gloss over it, or interest the American public in what kind of pudding Biden had for dinner, you know it’s truly a disaster.

That’s a 500 foot overview of just the first half of the episode. Patel also talks about just how unconscionable it is that Biden’s DoD went into the withdrawal with no plan on how to get Americans and our allies out beyond giving them a phone number, the plans Trump had in place to actually extract the Americans who are now stuck, and how monumentally boneheaded it was to let go of Bagram Airfield. Trump even had a plan to get our weapons and machines out after the civilians but before the military—the exact opposite of what the Biden administration did. Every subject Patel and Jekielek touch on made this reviewer want to bang my head on a desk until the list of stupid, ego-filled, politically-driven decisions by the current administration stopped. But the list doesn’t stop for nearly an hour, and it never gets any better.

No matter what the media says, or how White House talking heads try to spin it, Patel makes it very clear that the Biden administration’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan was very clearly, “Whatever Trump was going to do, we’re not going to do that,” and that’s it. That’s literally it. That’s why it’s so egregious that President Biden continues to throw out straw man arguments to deflect the public’s anger on this withdrawal, by suggesting that Americans are upset that we left, not how we left, or somehow insisting we either had to get out or send in more troops indefinitely. It’s also appalling that Biden continues to try to blame President Trump for his utter surrender to the Taliban, and that he thinks he can simply walk away from the press without taking questions or shame the public for being outraged about the way this war ended. Every American should see this episode and share this episode, especially with blind partisans who still somehow buy the lie that the blood spilled in the last week in Afghanistan isn’t solely on Biden’s hands. It is, and everyone needs to know it.

“Kash’s Corner” premiers every Friday at 8 p.m.—exclusive on EpochTV.

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Epoch TV Review: You Can’t Blame Trump for This (theepochtimes.com)

It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.

In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.

On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women’s Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity—unity—our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?

The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI’s active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.

Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.

Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.

Recently retired Gen. Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan, where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to Nazi death camps.

Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later. None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s missing laptop might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.

Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford and retired Adm. Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability. OK. But they should have issued a similar warning earlier, when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning.

Think of the irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.

Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes.

Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.

The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?

Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban—a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?

Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?

Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people—along with the wars it fights abroad.

There’s a Problem in the Upper Reaches of Our Military (theepochtimes.com)

How does a leader decide what to do?

The most logical response is: “Cui bono?”—”Who benefits?”—from the decision.

If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.

If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.

I’d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan—conservative or liberal—would give to the question, “Cui bono?”

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21, and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America—as an ally and as a strong country—is not easily overstated.

The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn’t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump—whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO—was alleged to have done.

On the other hand, “Cui bono?” has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.

In the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:

“The West’s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.

“The West’s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.

“The West’s routine appeasement of Russia.

“All speak to the unwillingness of the West—and the West’s leader, the United States—to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.

“Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally …

“China’s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, ‘From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.’

“Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn’t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years …

“Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.”

The effects on Americans’ perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that’s the goal.)

It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.

There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world’s real evils.

Cui Bono? Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal? (theepochtimes.com)

State Department official ‘haunted’ by failure to assist special immigrant visa applicants

The majority of Afghan special immigrant visa applicants who aided U.S. forces did not safely exit Afghanistan before the Biden administration withdrew, the State Department said on Wednesday.

A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Politico he and his team are “haunted” by the failure to assist applicants, many of whom were translators and aides for U.S. forces for decades in Afghanistan, often in life-or-death situations. The United States opened up 34,500 slots for SIV applicants, but an estimated 50,000 Afghans were interested in applying.

“There were days it did not work well,” a State Department official said. “We had a couple of instances where buses were a mix of foreign nationals and Afghan local employees of other missions, and the Talibs would only let pass the foreign nationals, and they turned away or they held at that location the Afghan citizens who were on that particular movement.”

Taliban checkpoints at the Kabul airport and nearby—as well as brutal killings of Afghans suspected of working with the United States—hindered the evacuation of some translators.

One Afghan interpreter who was left behind had rescued President Joe Biden during a 2008 visit to Afghanistan. Biden and former senators Chuck Hagel (R.) and John Kerry (D.) landed in a dangerous valley during a snowstorm and required evacuation with the assistance of the translator. He is now hiding out in Afghanistan with his wife and four children.

“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” the translator told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “Don’t forget me here.”

Another translator who was unable to secure a safe exit from Afghanistan expressed fear to the Washington Free Beacon that he would be killed if spotted by the Taliban. Up to 200 Americans, including dozens of children, also remain in the Taliban-controlled country.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) ripped the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal in a Tuesday statement.

“President Biden prioritized political considerations over American lives and national security,” Cruz said. “He imposed an artificial deadline untethered from conditions on the ground, and refused to adjust or adapt even as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and catastrophes mounted. He met his artificial deadline but broke all the promises he made to the American people. … And he dragged our nation into a crippling, humiliating defeat that has shaken our allies and emboldened our enemies.”

Majority of Afghan Allies Not Out of Afghanistan, State Department Says (freebeacon.com)

Facebook and Instagram removed Shana Chappell’s posts criticizing Biden

A Republican congresswoman is pushing Facebook and Instagram to explain why they censored posts critical of President Biden by the mother of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri to explain why the social media sites removed posts by Shana Chappell that criticized Biden for the debacle in Afghanistan and his allegedly callous behavior at the transfer of her son’s remains.

Chappell’s Instagram account was suspended and one of her Facebook posts was hidden, although both were later restored. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said Chappell’s Instagram account was “incorrectly deleted.” When asked for clarification on why Chappell’s Instagram account was removed, a spokesman said the platform does not “comment on how enforcements occurred.”

Tenney wants the companies to explain their behavior. “Our Gold Star families and the American public deserve better than this,” she wrote. “After sacrificing so much for the safety and security of our Nation, their speech should not be stifled by faceless Silicon Valley censors.”

Facebook and Instagram have come under fire for unclear or partisan content moderation. Facebook has “downranked” articles that argued COVID-19 escaped a Chinese lab. Tenney serves on the House GOP’s “Tech Task Force,” which is preparing a legislative package to tackle the power of major tech companies.

In the letter, Tenney expressed concerns about politically motivated censorship. “I am aware that the White House acknowledged it would be flagging for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, posts it deemed ‘problematic.’ Weaponizing the power of the Executive Branch against an open public discourse is wholly un-American, and it would be a crucial error for Instagram to assist in this.”

Biden has not shied away from exerting leverage over Facebook. In June, he accused the platform of “killing people” by allowing “misinformation” about COVID on the site. Multiple former Facebook executives serve in the Biden White House.

According to a Facebook spokesman, Chappell’s “tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies.” Chappell said that after she posted about her son, Instagram began flagging her older posts and warned that her account would be deleted if she continued posting. It is unclear what triggered the warnings on older posts.

GOP Congresswoman Asks Facebook To Explain Suspension of Gold Star Mother (freebeacon.com)

Sen. Hagerty: ‘We have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of Biden’s incompetently planned withdrawal”

Pentagon strategy chief Colin Kahl is in the hot seat over his role in the Biden administration’s bungled Afghanistan withdrawal, four months after Senate Republicans unanimously opposed his nomination and warned that his appointment would be disastrous for national defense policy.

Kahl, the civilian head of policy planning at the Department of Defense and third highest ranking department official, has been a key player in planning for the Afghanistan withdrawal and the day-to-day policy decisions on the ground. While several Biden administration officials have been publicly defending the president’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, Republican foreign policy leaders say Kahl is the behind-the-scenes player largely responsible for the botched evacuation of Afghanistan and decision to leave Americans stranded in the country. The GOP lawmakers, who also have criticized Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, now say their fears about Kahl’s lack of fitness for the role are coming to pass.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that Kahl “should never have been nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate” and should be held responsible for the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan, including for the hundreds of Americans who have reportedly been left behind. “In Kahl, we have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of President Biden’s incompetently planned and disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), another member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon that Kahl and Pentagon leadership “are more worried about woke messaging than combat readiness. And the entire White House national security team is being bullied by a band of medieval terrorists. They are overseeing America’s decline, and it is an absolute disgrace.”

The criticism of Kahl comes as lawmakers are demanding the resignation of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley over the handling of the Afghanistan exit, which led to a Taliban takeover of the country and a chaotic and deadly evacuation effort. While senior State Department and Pentagon officials have come under the microscope in the wake of the Biden administration’s evacuation from Afghanistan, Kahl has largely avoided public scrutiny. Leading GOP foreign policy voices and national security establishment insiders, however, say that Kahl was not prepared for a senior Pentagon job and that this lack of preparation contributed to the administration’s failure to plan for the Taliban’s rise. The Biden administration rammed Kahl’s appointment through Congress this year, even in the face of significant Republican opposition. As Afghanistan fell apart in the past several weeks, Kahl’s opponents began to lay blame for the crisis on his office, which is tasked with providing day-to-day policy advice to the Pentagon’s military leaders.

As undersecretary of defense for policy, Kahl has played a leading role in crafting the withdrawal strategy. During a strategy call last week, military commanders warned Kahl and other Pentagon leaders about an imminent “mass casualty” attack expected to take place near Abbey Gate last week, according to notes from the classified session obtained by Politico. Kahl and the other officials reportedly declined to close the gate due to concerns that it would impede the evacuation process. The next day, a suicide bomber killed 13 service members in the same location.

On the call, Kahl and other officials were also reportedly told that the United States would not be able to evacuate every American from the country, an outcome that the Biden administration had promised to prevent. Kahl expressed concern about the optics, reportedly worrying that “history will judge us by those final images.”

Kahl “owns the [Department of Defense’s] failure to plan and implement a withdrawal that wouldn’t dishonor our veterans, our military, and our values,” said Josh Block, a foreign policy scholar at the Hudson Institute and former Clinton administration State Department official.

Block said Kahl is “unqualified for his job, a liability to American national security” and “needs to be removed or made to resign.”

Calls for Kahl’s resignation come just months after his bruising confirmation battle, during which he faced scrutiny for his Twitter attacks on Republicans, his advocacy for the Iran nuclear deal, and his record of inaccurate foreign policy predictions.

Kahl was confirmed in a divisive, party-line vote after he apologized for his years of inflammatory tweets, including blasting the GOP as the “party of ethnic cleansing” and a “clown show.”

Kahl, who served in the State Department under President Obama, was a top advocate of the nuclear deal with Iran and has spoken at multiple events hosted by the National Iranian American Council, a pro-Iranian regime lobbying group.

He opposed a 2017 bill to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the nexus for Iran’s global terrorism operations. Kahl also protested the Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian terror chief Qassem Soleimani, which he described as “the equivalent of another country taking out the director of the CIA, secretary of defense, and shadow secretary of state all rolled into one.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), in a speech he made this spring in opposition to Kahl’s nomination, said the nominee was “wrong about nearly every important foreign policy decision of the last decade.”

Cotton noted that Kahl in 2010 dismissed concerns about a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, which he said was “very unlikely to trigger a dramatic uptick in violence”—a prediction that was proven wrong after terrorists seized a large portion of Iraq. Kahl also predicted that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would prompt a third intifada and that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and later assassination of Soleimani would spark a war with Tehran.

“Mr. Kahl’s inability to accurately assess these events almost defies probability,” said Cotton.

Republicans Blame Pentagon Planner Colin Kahl for Bungled Afghanistan Strategy (freebeacon.com)

A reconfigured global elite are shaping up around a new kind of vision for transforming our world. They’ve called their neo-socialist and multilateral vision the Green New Deal.

Joe Biden’s White House team are core players in this vision, as they seek to reinvent Roosevelt’s original 1930s New Deal into a contemporary twenty-first century Democratic Party platform.

But there are also other important players pushing this neo-socialist dream.

One has been the European Union’s large and well-organised green lobby. Another has been Klaus Schwab (economist and founder of the World Economic Forum), who has used Davos to push his vision of a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

Those getting on board with the Green New Deal are the usual advocates of state interventionism, big government, and multilateral globalism. But surprisingly this new elite is a mix of left-liberals, socialists, Greens, bureaucrats, and university researchers/experts. More surprising is that sections of the business elite are also climbing on board what they believe will be a gravy train.

It appears business is motivated by two factors. First, they are afraid of activist pressure. Second, their marketing departments are telling them there are great public relations kudos to be had in signing up to the now fashionable narratives of saving victims, saving the planet, and distancing themselves from left-leaning stereotypes of greedy uncaring capitalists.

So now we have woke businesses greenwashing their brands plus learning to make profits out of the Green New Deal’s neo-socialist strategy to tear up our old infrastructure and replace them with new ones at great expense to the taxpayer. Who knew socialism could be profitable.

But one of the most fascinating features of this trend is how enthralled legacy media journalists are with the green narratives underpinning this emergent global elite.

Journalists who would normally ask questions about self-interest, crooked narratives, and obvious propaganda now meekly buy into the trendy narratives. Indeed journalists are now being told that applying the journalistic principle of balance is a bad thing when reporting on issues like climate change.

Instead, journalists are being taught that it is fine to advocate for green climate change messages. We even have global media like the BBC instructing their journalists not to be balanced on climate change.

In a climate when green activism is now normalised in media newsrooms, it is hardly surprising that we see journalists treating green experts as media darlings, and as a result, those same green experts are no longer challenged by probing journalistic questions.

Instead, what emerges is a de facto partnership between the media, climate change scientists, and activists wherein journalists start to construct pro-green (propaganda-like) stories.

One way of explaining this partnership is to see it as part of the phenomenon of an emergent global elite for whom left-wing “progressivism” has become a kind of secularised religion, built around saving the many kinds of victims we apparently have today.

These victims can be those conventionally beloved by socialists—the poor. They can also be the new victims beloved by identity politics—LGBTQI, Indigenous or ethnic minorities. Or victims beloved by feminists—women persecuted by the patriarchy. Or the victims can now even be non-human—whales, polar bears, coral reefs, nature, or the planet.

What binds all these victims is that they need to be saved by a self-selecting elite of people who have married elements of the narratives of left-liberalism and neo-Marxism.

This elite first emerged in the United States and then spread to the rest of the western world. And now, like a virus, it is also spreading to places like the European Union (EU).

It is an elite who have proven highly susceptible to catching the green virus. Significantly, enormous progress has been made in capturing western universities, the global media, the education system, and the many bureaucracies across the Anglo world and EU.

The result has been the growth of an alliance between left-liberal, progressive politicians; academics; journalists; and bureaucrats.

Once the universities were captured by this progressive-left, universities were used to teach a new “way of seeing” and a “new way of speaking about” the world.

Thus, universities become the source of what is termed ‘woke’ and green narratives; while the media and internet are used to disseminate their tales. In addition, as universities produced more of these progressive and Green “experts,” journalists rely on them to justify their own work—creating an ongoing cycle.

Importantly, since universities teach journalism, public relations and marketing the communication industries are filled with those taught the woke discourses beloved by the globalised elite.

Not surprisingly, the resultant spread of progressivism within the communications industry means progressives are also becoming well placed—and more skilled—at spreading their own ideologies, while shutting down opposing views.

Indeed the Left are so successful that much of the world in the Biden era is starting to feel a bit like a mixture of the hard authoritarianism of George Orwell’s 1984 and the soft authoritarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The proliferation of both discourse around the Green New Deal, and the expanding power of a medical autocracy calling the shots over COVID-19, are two indicators of the way the global elite are becoming successful at promoting only their views while undercutting all others.

The universities have also given birth to “experts” who believe that secular science can fix everything thereby removing the need for religion or traditional knowledge.

At a deeper level, German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw this rot beginning when Western thinkers “killed God” in the 19th century, and from that wrong turn has evolved the secularist, social engineers of today.

But at a more institutional level, I think American conservative philosopher Paul Gottfried was correct that the problem lies in today’s overly interventionist governments imposing social therapy measures upon their citizens.

His argument was that this began during the post-second World War era in the United States—specifically with Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in the 1940s to 1950—and in the growth of the 1960s U.S. government-led social engineering policies (for example, affirmative action new migration laws).

And today, we see the modern manifestation of such a long-running trend in state-run welfare systems, the Green New Deal, and the COVID-19 medical autocracy.

Significantly, Lazarsfeld’s behavioural science was built on the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s idea of an “Authoritarian Personality”—a personality type that is submissive and obedient to authority—as well as the notion that experts should learn to manage and control the population better (using psychology, behavioural sciences, public opinion research, public relations, and spin-doctoring). This, in turn, can help stop the re-emergence of “bad ideas” like nationalism or traditionalism.

Lazarsfeld founded an American tradition of academic thinking about how the media could be used to promote “good” (progressive) ideas and shut down “bad” ideas.

Lazarsfeld’s centre employed many Frankfurt School members and so opened the door to the merging of left-liberal and neo-Marxist ideas, which has further contributed to the growth of the progressive elite.

With Biden in office, this elite now has a great base to work from to disseminate their preferred ideological narratives including the virtues of big government, green activism, and multilateral interventionism to save its so-called “victims.”

And because the 2000 anti-Trump crusade helped cement the alliance between left-leaning politicians, activists, mainstream liberal media journalists, U.S.-owned tech giants; and the university sector, we can now expect to see a period of intensified dissemination of “progressive” narratives plus simultaneous attempts at discourse closure aimed at closing-down and disrupting narratives that the Left loves to hate.

Global Elite Latches Onto Neo-Socialist Vision: The Green New Deal (theepochtimes.com)

With the United States completely withdrawn militarily from Afghanistan since the nation’s involvement after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and with the Taliban terrorist group having seized troves of U.S. weapons, Afghans living in New York hope that by force of miracle, stabilization can come to their home country.

The Epoch Times reached out to members of the Afghan community in New York to get their thoughts on the situation.

Fakhrudin Fakhrudin works in an Indian beauty salon, owned by his wife, who is originally from India.

His family cannot come to the United States, they have told him over the phone that the situation is “very bad.”

“One hundred percent bad. because you can’t find f0od, you can’t find anything. They’re scared of Taiban because they work with the government,” he told The Epoch Times.

His sister’s husband and son worked for the now overthrown Afghan government.

Fakhrudin said that the Taliban are systematically looking for people that worked for the government.

“Now they are looking [for the people who worked for the government] door to door,” Fakhrudin said.

“One girl worked with the police. She’s a neighbor of my sister. They took her eyes off with a knife, twice. The Taliban, I swear to God.”

Fakhrudin has been in the United States for 50 years. He wants to tell the U.S. government as a citizen that the Afghan people need help.

“[Afghan] people need help, they need help very badly because a lot of them worked with the government, and now they are hiding.”

“There’s nothing that we can do, people are just suffering over there,” he concluded.

Karimullah Faizy’s parents were born and grew up in Afghanistan and moved to the United States in the 90s. He runs a restaurant that is owned by his father in Long Island, New York.

“The U.S. government, the way they just left and they left everybody and they left their weapons, just for the Taliban to use it. And now they’re obviously using it against us,” said Faizy.

“Twelve soldiers just died. And it was a very bad decision for [America] just to leave, leave all their Blackhawk Hawk helicopters … And now we just left.”

Faizy’s father is gathering some money to send to his uncle in Afghanistan, whose house was bombed two weeks ago and only half of it remains.

He shared a video with The Epoch Times that shows the ruins of the home.

“They just surrendered, and now the Taliban are taking over the soldiers and using our own equipment. And sooner or later, they’re going to have to go back,” said Faizy.

“People and soldiers dying, and all the money being spent on this … is just very sad and tragic, especially for the people living there, the innocent civilians, and you can see they’re just leaving in helicopters … it’s sad [in] our hearts and we’re praying for them.”

Salimi Popal, originally from Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been living in the United States for 13 years, working 12 hours a day in his food cart in Flushing, Queens.

It was reported recently that the Taliban banned female voices and music from airing on the radio in Kandahar.

His brother, cousin, grandfather, and children all live in the United States. Any extra money he has, he sends to his family in Afghanistan.

He believes in peace and says all the people of Afghanistan are his family, and hopes that the situation can be stable in his home country.

“So bad,” he said, of his family’s situation, “there are no more doctors available.”

Nevertheless, he has hope that things might not go downhill.

“Now it’s too early, because I don’t know what will happen with this new regime,” Popal said.

He emphasized that “maybe,” gradually it would be ok.

“[Let’s] wait. He [the leader] said that ‘I don’t want to kill anybody, free everybody,’ everybody is ok now, the country is ok now, the cities are ok now, everybody is quiet, people are very happy now, because [people] like that nobody dies.”

“Afghanistan people are not terrorists, they are people like you, like me,” Popal asserted. “Taliban speak the same language, how could I think they are different people.”

“Let’s wait, everybody says ‘wait,’” he said. “Everybody, different countries are waiting to see what will happen—later.”

‘They’re Looking for Them Door to Door’: Afghans in New York React to Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan (theepochtimes.com)

Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles spoke with Sean Hannity Tuesday night on the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, saying he has never seen a President or administration turn its back on the American people like Joe Biden’s White House.

“In my history of government service, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a constellation of officials from the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, President, and Vice President who have turned their backs on Americans,” said Charles.

“Some resignations are in line,” he added.

Charles’ assessment is not un-common. New polls show sagging support for Joe Biden and his administration.

A new survey from Morning Consult spells more bad news for Joe Biden, with roughly 6 in 10 saying the country has “seriously gone off on the wrong track.”

“The study, conducted from Saturday to Monday, found that 61 percent of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track, compared to just 39 percent who say the country is ‘going in the right direction,’” reports The Hill.

“The survey also found a record-low overall approval rating for Biden at 47 percent, with 49 percent saying they disapproved of the president’s job performance overall,” adds the website.

6 in 10 say US has “seriously gone off on the wrong track”: poll https://t.co/nX5L22jmkL pic.twitter.com/d3bahrBc88

— The Hill (@thehill) September 1, 2021

The poll reflects a series of scandals, mistakes, and outright failures of the Biden administration in recent months.

Watch the former officials’ comments above.

EX STATE DEPT OFFICIAL: I’ve Never Seen an Entire Admin ‘Turn Their Backs on Americans’ | Sean Hannity

One small business owner in Florida has had enough with the Biden Administration and its supporters, posting an emotional message on the door just hours after more than a dozen US troops were murdered in Afghanistan.

Angie Ugarte, owner of the DeBary Diner, said felt compelled to make the statement after the deadly terror attack and President’s inept response.

“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere,” stated the signage.

“God bless America and God bless our soldiers,” concluded the note.

The message was added to the door the same day a suicide blast killed 13 US Service Members at Kabul’s International Airport.

The owner of DeBary Diner, posted the sign.

“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless , inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House… please take your business elsewhere.”https://t.co/rogEyWFo7Q

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 31, 2021

“I was just angry. I was just let down. I felt like one of those mothers, or wives, or sisters who were gonna get that knock on the door,” said Ugarte.

“If you really, really still stand behind what’s allowed this to happen and the way it happened – which was unnecessary then I really don’t want to be associated with you in any way and I certainly don’t want your business,” she added.

‘TAKE YOUR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE’: Diner Posts Fiery Message to Biden Supporters After Kabul Terror Strike | Sean Hannity

The White House issued a major clarification in the transcript from Joe Biden’s address on Afghanistan Tuesday afternoon; stating the actual number of Americans that got out of the country was 98%, not 90% as said by the President during the speech.

“Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave.  Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan,” said Biden.

“The bottom line: Ninety [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” states the transcript on the official White House webpage.

President Biden defended his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan during the address, labeling the effort an “extraordinary success.”

“No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will to do it, and we did it today. The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill and bravery and selflessness courage of the United States Military,” said the President.

The US Embassy in Afghanistan posted a dire message on its official webpage Tuesday, saying the office has “suspended operations” and Americans can no longer rely on “United States government assistance.”

“The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021.  While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar,” states the memo.

“The Embassy will continue to provide information via the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), the Embassy web page, Travel.State.Gov, and Facebook and Twitter.  Consular services remain available outside Afghanistan.  To locate the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate click here,” adds the warning.

“Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance,” warns the message.

Read the full report at the NY Post.

CLUELESS JOE? White House ‘Corrects’ Biden’s Claim 90% of Americans Got Out of Afghanistan | Sean Hannity

Biden pressured Ghani to ‘project a different picture’

President Biden stressed the need for changing the “perception” of the Taliban’s progress in Afghanistan, “whether it is true or not,” during a phone call with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani less than four weeks before Kabul collapsed, according to a new report.

According to a transcript of the July 23 presidential call reviewed by Reuters, Biden didn’t anticipate the Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan, which ended when they stormed Kabul on Aug. 15 and Ghani fled the presidential palace. Instead, Biden focused much of the 14-minute call on the Afghan government’s “perception” problem, Reuters reported.

BIDEN BREAKS PROMISE TO ‘STAY’ IN AFGHANISTAN UNTIL EVERY AMERICAN EVACUATED

“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

At the time of the call, the Taliban controlled about half of Afghanistan’s district centers. Biden urged Ghani to hold a press conference with other prominent Afghan leaders to outline a new military strategy, which he argued would “change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think,” Reuters reported.

“We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows,” Biden said.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed similar concerns in a follow-up call with Ghani later that day, which did not include Biden, Reuters reported.

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“The perception in the United States, in Europe and the media sort of thing is a narrative of Taliban momentum, and a narrative of Taliban victory,” Milley reportedly said. “And we need to collectively demonstrate and try to turn that perception, that narrative around.”

The White House on Tuesday declined to comment on the call when reached by Reuters. 

Biden pressed Afghan president to change ‘perception’ that Taliban was winning, ‘whether true or not’ | Fox News

Throughout his long political career, President Joe Biden has interacted with countless people both at home and abroad. It would be impossible to remember each and every one of them, especially given his declining cognitive abilities.

However, you would think that a man who rescued him from a snowy valley 13 years ago might stick in his mind. If Biden does remember, his actions certainly don’t show it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an Afghan interpreter named Mohammed assisted in the rescue of then-Sens. Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry in February 2008. Now Biden has stranded him in Afghanistan.

Mohammed, his wife and his four children have been trying unsuccessfully for years to safely leave the country.

When the last United States plane left Afghanistan on Monday, he and his family were left behind.

The family is now hiding from the Taliban as they hope to be rescued even after the U.S. effectively handed the country over to the radical extremist group.

“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who did not use his full name due to safety concerns, told The Wall Street Journal. “Don’t forget me here.”

Mohammed was 36 years old in 2008 and was working as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. During a trip to Afghanistan that year, two Black Hawk helicopters carrying Biden, Kerry and Hagel were forced to make an emergency landing due to a severe snowstorm.

“As a private security team with the former firm Blackwater and U.S. Army soldiers monitored for any nearby Taliban fighters, the crew sent out an urgent call for help,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“At Bagram Air Field, Mohammed jumped in a Humvee with a Quick Reaction Force from the Arizona National Guard working with the 82nd Airborne Division and drove hours into the nearby mountains to rescue them.”

Thanks to Mohammed, the three U.S. senators escaped. One of them is now the president of the United States, and another serves in his administration. But when it came time for the American politicians to return the favor, they failed to do so.

Mohammed was trying to get out of Afghanistan well before the Taliban takeover. According to The Wall Street Journal, he originally applied for a special immigrant visa in June.

“His selfless service to our military men and women is just the kind of service I wish more Americans displayed,” Lt. Col. Andrew R. Till wrote in support of Mohammed at the time.

However, when the defense contractor who employed Mohammed lost necessary records, Mohammed’s visa application became one of many stuck in limbo.

Once the Taliban took over, Mohammed made his way to the Kabul airport to try to escape that way. U.S. forces then told him he could be allowed in the airport, but his wife and children could not.

“If you can only help one Afghan, choose [Mohammed],” said Shawn O’Brien, an Army combat veteran who served with him in 2008. “He earned it.”

Biden himself has attempted to use the 2008 incident as a political talking point.

“If you want to know where al-Qaida lives, you want to know where [Osama] bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” he said on the campaign trail in October of that year.

“Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down … in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”

While Biden did not hesitate to reference the incident for political gain, he has conveniently forgotten about one of his rescuers in that hero’s darkest hour. It’s just another example of the utter lack of compassion in Biden’s heart.

Afghan Interpreter Who Rescued Biden from Snowy Afghanistan Valley in 2008 Gets Left Behind by US (westernjournal.com)

President Joe Biden waived a mandate in June that would have forced the Pentagon to provide a detailed report to Congress about the risks of leaving Afghanistan.

Under the federal statute, the administration was barred from reducing troops in Afghanistan below 2,000 without first briefing Congress about the expected impact on U.S. counterterrorism operations and the risk to American personnel. Biden waived the mandate in June, arguing that providing this information to Congress could undermine “the national security interests of the United States.”

The Biden administration spent months assuring Congress that the U.S.-trained Afghan forces would be able to forestall a Taliban takeover when American troops left the country on a pre-determined deadline. That assessment was proven wrong days after the withdrawal, when the Taliban overran the Afghan National Army and seized control of Kabul, forcing a chaotic evacuation of U.S. personnel and allies.

National security experts and Republican lawmakers told the Washington Free Beacon that the waiver blocked Congress and the public from reviewing the administration’s internal national security assessments prior to the withdrawal—details that could have been used to prevent or minimize the catastrophe currently unfolding in the war-torn country.

“If we had answers to these questions we might not be in the horrible debacle we’re in now,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who in April wrote about the statute and the likelihood that the administration would try to dodge it.

“I think the fact that they used the national security waiver to refuse to answer these questions in the light of day tells me their answers could not have stood up to scrutiny,” Bowman said.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration should be held accountable for withholding this information from Congress.

“It is increasingly clear that President Biden never had a plan in place to safely withdraw from Afghanistan, so it is no surprise he never shared it with Congress like the law requires,” said Tenney. “As we work to complete the critical mission of bringing every American and Afghan ally home, we must also be pressing for answers and accountability. I am calling on Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi to begin the impeachment process in the House immediately to determine how this crisis became such a catastrophe and to hold Biden accountable for his failure to lead.”

A senior congressional aide said Biden’s waiver showed a “blatant disregard for conditions on the ground,” noting that a State Department cable in June warned about the potential for an imminent Taliban takeover of Kabul after the United States pulled out.

“Against the advice of the military, the [intelligence community], and our diplomats—as evidenced by the dissent cable—the Biden administration continued its blind rush to the exits without regard for the consequences,” said the aide. “Apart from the collapse of the Afghan government and the humanitarian catastrophe at the airport, we are just now seeing the long-term implications of this rushed withdrawal, to include a renewed terror threat against U.S. interests, the proliferation of captured equipment, and the loss of hard-earned rights for Afghanistan’s women and girls.”

The law, which was instituted as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, prohibited the Department of Defense from using its budget to reduce troop levels without first providing Congress with a report about the impact a withdrawal would have on the “ongoing U.S. counterterrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated forces; the risk to U.S. personnel in Afghanistan; and the risk for the expansion of existing or the formation of new international terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan.”

The Pentagon was also required to provide details on “the threat posed by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations in Afghanistan” and “the capacity of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to effectively prevent or defend against attacks by the Taliban.”

Biden said he would waive the requirement because he “determined that a waiver of the limitation under subsection 1215(a) is important to the national security interests of the United States” in a June 8 letter to Congress.

“We will withdraw responsibly, deliberately, and safely, in full coordination with our allies and partners,” wrote Biden. “Our NATO allies and operational partners, who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us for almost 20 years and who have also made great sacrifices, will now withdraw alongside our forces as we stand by our enduring principle of ‘in together, out together.'”

Biden Waived Congressional Mandate for Report on Afghanistan Withdrawal Risks (freebeacon.com)

On the heels of what sounded like a disastrous meeting between President Joe Biden and family members of those killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul last week, GOP members of Congress said that one of their Democratic colleagues blocked the names of the 13 deceased service members from being read on the floor Tuesday.

While members of one Gold Star family walked out of a meeting with President Joe Biden before he even got a chance to speak with them, one Democrat shut down Republican veterans who wanted to read off the names of those lost.

This is all terrible.

During a pro forma session, a group of Republicans gathered on the House floor to introduce a bill to demand accountability from the Biden administration over its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

On Monday, the last troops pulled out of the country, ending the 20-year war in which several of the GOP members served. The Taliban appeared to mark the occasion by hanging a person by the neck from one of the Black Hawk helicopters that Biden left behind.

Trending:Biden Sounds Like He Has a Bout of Dementia When Trying to Talk: ‘I’m Here, Uh, Uh, Uh, Eh’

The GOP contingent of Republican veterans said House leadership refused to recognize their attempt to read the names of the 12 Marines and one Navy corpsman who lost their lives in an ISIS-K suicide bomb attack outside an entrance to the Kabul airport on Thursday in the final days of the chaotic evacuation.

“We gaveled in, had a prayer, said the Pledge of Allegiance, took a moment of silence with pretty much all Republican veterans, then asked to be recognized to read names and bring up Afghanistan legislation. They did not acknowledge us and just closed the House down,” Florida Rep. Brian Mast, himself a combat veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan, told The Floridian on Tuesday.

Fox News reported that the bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and would have required the Biden administration to establish a plan to bring the Americans still trapped in Afghanistan safely home. The State Department said Monday the number of Americans left behind when troops withdrew is in the “low hundreds.”

Yet when the group of roughly 30 Republicans tried to get recognition to introduce their bill and read the names of the deceased service members, they were gaveled out by Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who was presiding over the chamber.

“How can you not read the names?” one member shouted, according to the Washington Examiner. “Turn your back on our country,” another yelled.

Illinois Rep. Mary Miller called Dingell’s move “shameful” on Twitter.

Democrats just shut down the House Floor when Afghanistan veterans stood up to speak.

Shameful.

— Congresswoman Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) August 31, 2021

“Don’t you think our military deserves better?” Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida tweeted.

How badly do Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats want to cover up this Afghanistan debacle?

They just blocked Members of Congress from reading the names of the service members who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan last week.

Don’t you think our military deserves better?

— Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) August 31, 2021

Related:‘Blood on Your Hands’: Biden Slammed by Furious Relatives of Abandoned Afghans in WH Protest

“We had hoped to have an opportunity to be recognized to move a bill by veteran Mike Gallagher. It’s very simple what we’re requesting,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said at a news conference later in the day, according to Fox. “What is the plan to bring Americans home safely? Not some, but every single American?”

“Speaker Pelosi, now is not the time to act like you could not see us on the floor,” he added. “Now is not the time to hide. We are a co-equal branch.”

The Examiner noted that while Republicans had expected their bill to be blocked on the floor, they “hope that bipartisan support can grow for the bill as they start on a variety of actions to hold the Biden administration accountable for the chaotic withdrawal” and they have something else up their sleeve.

“The next opportunity is a committee markup session for the annual spending bill that funds the U.S. Military, the National Defense Authorization Act. Proposed Republican amendments include requiring an accounting of what equipment was left behind, an explanation for why Bagram Air Base was abandoned, and regular congressional briefings on the groups that will form because of the withdrawal,” the outlet explained.

These are all certainly pressing issues — and it doesn’t bode well for the Washington Democratic establishment that Pelosi’s cohorts in the House responded to this demand for accountability by not only ignoring the members who wished to speak, including veterans who served in the very war that Biden so disastrously ended, but also ignoring a request to read the names of those last 13 lives lost in the conflict.

It’s unthinkable that Americans were abandoned to the hands of a murderous terrorist regime, and you’d think that there would easily be bipartisan support for a bill demanding the Biden administration come up with a plan to recover them.

Will the Democrats just ignore the names of American civilians killed when the harrowing stories of what the Taliban has done to them start trickling in, like they ignored the names of our honorable service members on the House floor?

Dem Congresswoman Blocks Names of 13 Dead Service Members from Being Read on House Floor (westernjournal.com)

On Saturday, The Washington Post published a detailed account of events that occurred on Aug. 15, the day the city of Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Six writers collaborated on the article, which they inform readers is the result of “nearly two dozen interviews with U.S. and Afghan officials, a Taliban commander and residents of the city.” Most of these sources wished to remain anonymous.

Buried deep down in the lengthy piece came this startling revelation: “In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including [Gen. Kenneth] McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.”

According to the U.S. official, Baradar said, “We have a problem. We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

“Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind,” the Post reported.Trending:Biden Sounds Like He Has a Bout of Dementia When Trying to Talk: ‘I’m Here, Uh, Uh, Uh, Eh’

“McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.

“On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.”

So, according to three U.S. officials, the Taliban offered U.S. military leaders the chance to secure the Kabul airport as they evacuated Americans and Afghan allies, and they declined. This is remarkable.

Although the Post did not report that President Joe Biden made this decision, I can’t imagine that McKenzie would have signed off on something so monumental without the authorization of the commander in chief.Do you think the Biden administration should have accepted the Taliban’s offer to control the airport during the evacuation?Yes No
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Given the opportunity to bring in the additional troops that would be necessary to control the city during the evacuation period, the Biden administration chose to rely upon terrorists to provide protection.

The gravity of this miscalculation cannot be overstated.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, fearing a grisly execution at the hands of the Taliban, had already fled the presidential palace, and lawlessness was spreading throughout the city when this fateful meeting took place. The unthinkable had happened. The U.S.-backed Afghan government, which the Biden administration had expected to hold on for at least six months, had surrendered to the terrorists without a single shot being fired.

Afghanistan was engulfed in crisis, and thousands of American lives were in danger — and an even larger number of Afghan lives.

Still, the arrogant, stubborn and senile U.S. president chose the easier, softer way — the path of least resistance.Related:Dem Congresswoman Blocks Names of 13 Dead Service Members from Being Read on House Floor

When historians look back on pivotal events, they identify crucial decisions made at key moments that changed everything. This will be one of those.

The Biden administration’s previous blunders, such as withdrawing troops before evacuating U.S. and Afghan citizens and abandoning Bagram Airfield, had brought us to this point. The administration was fully aware the evacuation was going to be dangerous and messy, yet it foolishly turned down the chance to take control of the city.

Thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives Thursday after the Taliban allowed an ISIS-K suicide bomber through a checkpoint outside the airport, something that likely wouldn’t have happened if U.S. troops had controlled the city.

Retired U.S. Army General Don Bolduc joined Fox News’ Steve Hilton on his Sunday night show, “The Next Revolution.”

https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6270115931001&loc=westernjournal.com&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.westernjournal.com%2Fbiden-turned-offer-taliban-allow-us-control-kabul-airport-aug-31-report%2F&_xcf=

Hilton asked Bolduc to weigh in on this story. Bolduc said, “It’s complete and utter incompetence. … What a difference it would have made for us to have Kabul. They wouldn’t have been able to get close to the airfield. We wouldn’t have had this explosion. We wouldn’t have had these 13 deaths. We wouldn’t have Kabul, a city that was thriving, now is an utter cesspool.”

“If that was offered and the decision was not to accept that, then that is not only incompetence, but it’s absolute bad military judgment.”

Biden Turned Down Offer from Taliban to Allow US to Control Kabul Airport Until Aug. 31: Report (westernjournal.com)

The United States shared lists of names with the Taliban, U.S. officials confirmed on Aug. 29, as they disputed accusations that the terrorist group was given the identity of many Americans and Afghans trying to flee Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed the information was shared with the Taliban.

Blinken said there were certain times when the Taliban was given lists of people on buses that were en route to the U.S.-held airport in Kabul and needed to get through Taliban checkpoints.

“You’ll share names on a list of people on the bus so they can be assured that those are people that we’re looking to bring in,” Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And by definition, that’s exactly what happened.”

Sullivan disputed a report that the United States gave a list of names to the Taliban but indicated that some identities were shared.

“We have given no list of all of the American SIV holders to the Taliban or any other kind of big list,” he said, referring to Special Immigrant Visas, which are given to Afghans.

But he didn’t deny that other lists were handed over and appeared to suggest that, in some cases, they had been.

Sullivan spoke about situations in which buses of Afghans and others were headed to the airport but had to go through Taliban checkpoints.

“That is the type of coordination we’ve done with the Taliban. That has resulted in journalists and women and pilots and other SIVs being able to get through and get on planes and out of the country,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

President Joe Biden last week didn’t deny that his administration shared lists of American names with the Taliban, telling reporters: “There have been occasions where our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said: ‘This bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through.’”

Biden also said he couldn’t confirm whether there’s been a list.

“There may have been, but I know of no circumstance. It doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, that, ‘Here’s the names of 12 people; they’re coming. Let them through.’ It could very well have happened.”

Asked about those remarks on Aug. 30, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there may be cases in which commanders on the ground are sharing names with the Taliban.

“I think we can all agree there’s a big difference between providing the list of people who want to depart proactively and working at the moment on the ground in a coordinated tactical way to get people out and evacuated and save their lives,” she said.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), on ABC’s “This Week,” denounced the sharing of names with the Taliban.

“They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closest allies, people who fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban, relying on them, thinking they could trust on them. It was stupid then. It’s insane now. And their plan still seems to be ‘Let’s rely on the Taliban,’” Sasse said.

The U.S. military is leading an effort to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans and nationals from various countries from Afghanistan before the military withdraws, a pullout currently slated to take place on Aug. 31.

U.S. troops hold the airport in Kabul, but the Taliban controls everywhere else in the city, making it a necessity to pass through Taliban checkpoints to reach the facility.

Asked if the United States would continue coordinating with the Taliban after the withdrawal, with an eye toward combating ISIS, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declined to answer on Aug. 30.

“I don’t think it’s useful to get into hypothetical operations, future operations one way or the other,” he said.

US Officials: Lists of Names Were Shared With Taliban (theepochtimes.com)

As the world watches events in Afghanistan unfold, many have started to wonder what the Taliban rule means for the future of the country’s opium production.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of the opium poppy, which is the raw material for heroin, one of the world’s deadliest drugs. The country accounted for nearly 83 percent of global opium production between 2015 and 2020, according to estimates of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). And it’s a key supplier for heroin markets across Europe and Asia.

The U.S. military presence failed to curtail opium production throughout the Afghan countryside. For two decades, opiate economy, which includes cultivation of the poppy, processing into heroin, and trafficking, has been a major source of cash for Afghanistan.

Despite its anti-heroin rhetoric, the Taliban has benefited greatly from this opium poppy economy and become a major player in the world’s drug trade.

In its first official press conference in Kabul, the Taliban pledged to end opium cultivation in Afghanistan, in an effort to gain acceptance from the international community.

“Today, when we entered Kabul, we saw a large number of our youth who was sitting under the bridges or next to the walls and they were using narcotics. This was so unfortunate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters on Aug. 17.

“From now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, but it needs international assistance,” he said, adding that foreign aid is needed to help Afghan farmers switch to alternative crops.

Afghanistan is noted for its high-quality fruits including pomegranates, grapes, and melons. Various international organizations in the past have helped Afghan families grow pomegranates, for example, as an important alternative to opium.

Despite its agriculture sector and rich mineral resources, the country has been critically dependent on foreign aid, which has dried up with the Taliban takeover.

International donors had been providing 75 percent of the Afghan government’s operating budget, Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a Chatham House report.

The Biden administration froze nearly $9 billion in Afghan government reserves that were held in the United States. The International Monetary Fund also blocked Afghanistan from receiving nearly $440 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent earlier. And the German government announced a suspension of $300 million in development aid budgeted for this year.

Financial sanctions will also make it difficult for international organizations to provide humanitarian aid to Afghan families.

Hence, the country is expected to drift into a humanitarian and financial crisis soon, according to experts, which may lead the new regime to increase illicit activities, including drug trafficking.

“The immediate effects of the financial squeeze in place is that cash liquidity in Afghanistan may drop, which will drive up inflation—including food prices—while disadvantaging Afghanistan’s poorest and the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people,” Felbab-Brown wrote.

As in the past, she noted, those who attempt to ban poppy cultivation in rural areas can “find themselves facing significant losses of political capital and violent opposition.”

Gretchen Peters, executive director at the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, believes the Taliban shouldn’t be trusted when it comes to its promises to eradicate the poppy trade.

“They pulled a maneuver like that back in the ’90s. They did actually succeed in banning farmers from growing poppy for a year,” she told NPR.

“But the secret was the Taliban were actually sitting on these huge, vast stores of opium. The price of opium went through the roof, and they sold it and made a lot more money than they had the year previous.”

According to Peters, the Taliban will now have full access to the capacities and institutions of state, including its banking system, airlines, and border crossings, which would make its drug trafficking a lot easier.

Recently, poppy cultivation has expanded in most regions of the country, soaring 37 percent in the past year alone, according to UNODC.

Amid Sanctions, Taliban Expected to Double Down on Drug Trafficking (theepochtimes.com)

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday acknowledged that Americans were stranded in Afghanistan despite earlier comments to the contrary made by White House officials. He said it’s not clear how many remain.

“Right now I think the tools we have available to us and that we’re going to use as a U.S. government is going to be more in the diplomatic, economic lanes, and we don’t really see a military role right now,” Kirby told MSNBC on Tuesday morning when asked if the U.S. military would play a role in rescuing those individuals.

When asked about whether the State Department could help evacuate Americans from the country amid Taliban terrorist rule, Kirby said that it will be similar to how the United States extracts its citizens from other countries.

“It’s not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world. We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time and we do everything we can to try to facilitate safe passage,” Kirby said, which appeared to contradict comments made by White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Aug. 23 when she said it is wrong to refer to Americans stuck in Afghanistan as being stranded there.

During an exchange with a reporter last week, Psaki said, “I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are stranded. They are not. We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home.” Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, during an ABC News earlier this month, vowed that the United States would evacuate every American who wanted to leave the country.

Also in the interview, Kirby said that the United States has “leverage” over the Taliban to “hold them to account,” adding “it’s going to be a whole-of-government effort, but I don’t see a military role at this time.”

Some Americans who remain in Afghanistan said they attempted to evacuate but weren’t successful.

“The last flight is gone and we’re left behind,” a U.S. citizen using a moniker said on Monday during a CNN interview.

Abound 6,000 U.S. citizens were flown out between Aug. 14 and Aug. 31, but “under 200, and likely close to 100,” are still in the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday.

“We’re trying to determine exactly how many. We’re going through manifests and calling and texting through our lists, and we will have more details to share as soon as possible,” he said. “Part of the challenge with fixing a precise number is that there are longtime residents of Afghanistan who have American passports and who are trying to determine whether or not they wanted to leave.”

The remarks come as the final U.S. military flight out of Kabul was carried out on Monday, effectively leaving most of the country under Taliban control.

Pentagon Acknowledges Americans ‘Stranded’ in Afghanistan After Pullout (theepochtimes.com)

On August 18th 2021, The National Pulse exclusively reported that President Biden’s State Department had killed off plans for a “Crisis and Contingency Response” bureau which may have had “profound consequences,” according to a stunning new report by Vanity Fair published Monday.

“In July, at Antony Blinken’s State Department, bureaucratic decisions affecting the Afghan withdrawal, one insider said, were ‘slightly more organized than a Choose Your Own Adventure novel’,” the article begins, before detailing how newly minted Crisis and Contingency Response (CCR) bureau director Dr. William Walters had resigned on July 9th of this year.

Crisis and Contingency Response.

As the Taliban took Kabul, The National Pulse reported that a bureau green-lit by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration had been canceled by Biden’s pick for the role, Anthony Blinken.

Following our reporting, a number of left-wing outfits such as Politifact and Media Matters sought to discredit our reporting.

Now, a new report from Vanity Fair sheds more light on the “turf wars” inside the State Department that led to the rushed and botched evacuation from Afghanistan at departmental and political levels.

The Vanity Fair report also notes that while Biden’s State Department is claiming the CCR never existed, it is also making moves to inform Congress of the bureau’s abolition, as required by U.S. law:

A week later, on August 19, State’s Ned Price would tell reporters, in a sort of semantic jujitsu, that CCR was never actually created, which begs the question: Why have Price’s colleagues at State been preparing to notify Congress of a decision to “abolish” something that never existed?

The academic debate over CCR’s existence, however, obscures a far more elemental issue, which, at this date, remains unresolved: Why did Antony Blinken and his lieutenants rejigger and possibly degrade State’s in-house crisis planning and response capabilities on the eve of ending the longest war in American history?

Profound Consequences.

While publicly refuting the claims that the CCR had been canceled, and simultaneously claiming no competencies were lost in the move, Antony Blinken lauded Dr. Walters’s work in running CCR’s predecessor and his team known as “Op-Med”. In May, while setting up to destroy the Trump-era plans for a formal response unit inside the State Department, Blinken told Vanity Fair the unit was a “lifeline for the Department of State and the American people. Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis.”

Shortly after, “Blinken approved a recommendation against upgrading OpMed into a bureau. A unit distinguished by its ability to blow through bureaucratic wickets would instead be forced to play ‘Mother May I,’ answering to a series of administrators: a director, an acting undersecretary, and on up to the deputy secretary for management and resources (DMR). To outsiders, this might seem like a low-stakes game of Jenga in reverse. But the move, which blindsided many, appeared to have profound consequences.”MUST READ:  Joe Biden Must Resign.

It was at this point Walters chose to step down.

“I am resigning,” he told Blinken, face-to-face, explaining that the destruction of CCR bureau would “marginalize” his team and hinder State’s ability to respond to threats to U.S. citizens abroad.

“Sir, you deserve to have leaders who can get behind the decisions you make. I can’t do that. So I’m leaving,” he said.

Meta-Ignorance.

One source told Vanity Fair‘s Adam Ciralsky that the State Department was plagued by “pathologic optimism.” Other State Department sources said the problem was hubris.

Eliminating CCR and degrading OpMed, without clearly defined alternatives, was evidence, they said, of meta-ignorance (known in psychology circles as the Dunning-Kruger effect); America’s diplomats, in the view of these insiders, were ignorant of their own ignorance.

So while the Taliban captured city upon city, and Team Biden began plans for the evacuation of U.S. troops, civilians, diplomats, and those eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), his State Department was hindering a potential response.

Never-Trumpism Kills.

“Though it was founded during Obama’s second term, OpMed found its footing during the pandemic, much of which coincided with Trump’s frenzied final year in office,” Vanity Fair asserts.

In fact, President Trump explicitly stated in a comment to The National Pulse:

“My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”

By September 2020, Secretary Pompeo had advanced the plans for a dedicated bureau to “synchronize Department capabilities including aviation, logistics, and medical support to disasters abroad, both natural and man-made, including the outbreak of infectious disease.”

Never-Trumpism inside the State Department, coupled with Team Biden’s skepticism of anything Trump-related appear to have been the concoction that brought down the CCR:

The move to make OpMed a bureau continued right up until Trump left office. An Executive Resources Board met and approved establishing the position of CCR coordinator as well as Doc Walters’s promotion to the civil service’s senior executive ranks. An action memo, which Pompeo approved on January 15, describes Walters’s new role as follows, “The CCR coordinator is an assistant secretary-equivalent position responsible for the development, resourcing, deployment, maintenance, and oversight of the Department’s medical, aviation, and logistics support capabilities to address contingency planning and crisis preparedness and response in accordance with applicable laws and Presidential policy in those instances where traditional mechanisms are not available or cannot address the need.

Another source close to Pompeo put it this way, “We needed to have a world-class organization that was ‘fit for purpose.’ What we had been doing previously was playing pickup games. What the secretary recognized is [that] if we’re going to be agile and have the ability to proactively respond…we’ve got to have a unit that could do operational planning and contingency scenarios and have the right capabilities and skill set, all in one, so that we can go to them when the decision is made and they can execute the hell out of it and we we can do it well.” Pompeo, said the source, wanted to eliminate silos and create an outfit with “a clear chain of command on who’s got the operational execution.”

In discussions shortly after the Biden inauguration, Trump-era official Brian Bulatao would even warn his Biden-era counterpart Brian McKeon: “CCR needs to endure… There are those in the building that are going to tell you that it’s not necessary, that it’s redundant because they’re envious of [OpMed’s] capabilities and they want to protect their turf. But they don’t know how to do it [themselves].”MUST READ:  CORTES: Mass Migration Was Never Part of America’s $2 Trillion Afghan Debacle.

The warning was not heeded, and neither Blinken nor McKeon have yet answered for, let alone resigned because of this decision.

‘Choose Your Own Adventure’.

A call hosted on July 14th 2021 saw Larry Padget, director of the Bureau of Medical Services, break the news that CCR would not be proceeding as planned by the Trump administration.

Tiffany Reeser, a senior policy official, explained: “I think there was an impression, given [Blinken’s] decision, with [McKeon’s] recommendation… that there was going to be a 25-point plan dropped on all of us for how this decision was going to be implemented. That’s not the case. This is, I would say, slightly more organized than a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.”

Manmeet Thind, an OpMed-adjacent attorney, warned: “Now, suddenly, you have more layers of bureaucracy, and as we all know, that’s going to slow response. And at the end of the day, that’s going to affect lives.”

It did.

The whole debacle led Texas Congressman Michael McCaul to tell Vanity Fair: “Call it OpMed, or CCR, or whatever you want… the point is the Department had these people, and their experience was a huge asset. We chose not to draw upon them until it was almost too late—after the Taliban had overrun the country, and tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated in a matter of days. We should have started sooner, and we should have used our A-team. The tragedy we’ve seen unfold—people stranded, American lives lost—reflects…disorganization, mismanagement, and, worst of all, utter neglect.”

‘Meta-Ignorance’ with ‘Profound Consequences’ – U.S. Govt’s Crisis Response Director Resigned After Biden’s State Dept Canceled ‘Lifeline’ Group Over Trump Links. (thenationalpulse.com)

‘It is now time for a reckoning,’ Rep. Chip Roy says

Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas) called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) to reconvene Congress for hearings on President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Madam Speaker, you have a duty to call Congress back to Washington and begin hearings immediately,” Roy wrote. “America does not run away. We do not leave our brothers and sisters behind. We do not aid and abet the enemy.”

Pelosi has stalled efforts to apply congressional accountability to the Biden administration for its missteps in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Democrats blocked an oversight measure authored by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) on Tuesday, leaving questions unanswered for Republicans demanding transparency regarding the Afghan withdrawal. The House of Representatives has been out of session since July 30.

Pelosi did not return a request for comment.

The Texas Republican also called for the resignation of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as senior national security staff for “effectively abandon[ing]” military service members who risked their lives in Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal.

Roy joins a growing chorus of Republicans and some Democrats who have expressed outrage over the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis. As many as 200 U.S. citizens remain stranded in the country. The terrorist group has held another American—Navy veteran Mark Frerichs—hostage for more than a year.

“We do know that the Taliban is now stronger than ever before; they now have access to the sensitive biometric database of our Afghan allies and now control billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military equipment,” Roy wrote. “We know that 13 U.S. service members were killed in the process. … With an arbitrary and unnecessary deadline imposed by the commander-in-chief having come and gone, it is now time for a reckoning.”

“The president made the morally indefensible decision to leave Americans behind,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said. “Dishonor was the president’s choice.”

House Republican Demands Pelosi Reconvene Congress for Hearings on Biden’s Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal (freebeacon.com)

Emergency evacuations operations coordinator resigned over decision

The State Department’s decision to abolish a crisis response bureau, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, “mucked up America’s exit from Afghanistan” and prompted the resignation of the department’s top physician, according to a new report in Vanity Fair.

The Free Beacon reported earlier this month that the State Department moved in June to dissolve the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), a Trump-era project that was meant to coordinate the evacuation of Americans from hotspots overseas. The decision was made just months before the Biden administration pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and sparked a chaotic rescue effort that sources inside and outside of the State Department said could have been bolstered by the CCR.

The Biden administration’s decision to scuttle the CCR bureau prompted the resignation of William Walters, the State Department’s top physician and coordinator of emergency evacuation operations, according to Vanity Fair.

“I am resigning,” Walters reportedly told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, saying that Blinken’s “decision not to move forward with the establishment of the CCR bureau, which Walters had been slated to lead, was a mistake.”

“Given simmering tensions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Walters said, he believed that throwing out plans for the new unit … would impact State’s ability to respond to threats to U.S. diplomats and citizens abroad,” Vanity Fair wrote.

These concerns came to fruition months later, as the State Department scrambled to evacuate Americans stranded in Taliban-controlled Kabul, where many Americans remain trapped after the Biden administration’s decision to not keep troops in the country past Aug. 31.

Blinken originally expressed support for the CCR bureau before delegating responsibility for it to his deputy, Brian McKeon, according to Vanity Fair.

The Free Beacon obtained a memo signed by McKeon authorizing the CCR bureau’s termination.

While the “fact checking” website PolitiFact attempted to downplay and undercut the Free Beacon’s reporting, the Vanity Fair article provides confirmation about the CCR bureau’s fate.

State Department Decision to Abolish Crisis Response Bureau ‘Mucked Up’ Afghanistan Exit, Report Says (freebeacon.com)

posted by Hannity Staff – 8.31.21

A recent interview with Joe Biden went viral on social media Tuesday showing the Commander-in-Chief vowing to keep troops in Afghanistan until all Americans can be evacuated from the country.

Despite the pledge, hundreds of Americans remain in the country after the President removed all US forces.

“Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to get out, gets out?” asked ABC News George Stephanopoulos two weeks ago.

“Yes, yes!” insisted Biden. “If there’s American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out!”

Flashback … from two weeks ago:

Biden pledges to stay in Afghanistan until every American is out; “we’re going to stay to get them all out.” pic.twitter.com/94IKhNGMHR

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 31, 2021

The US Embassy in Afghanistan posted a dire message on its official webpage Tuesday, saying the office has “suspended operations” and Americans can no longer rely on “United States government assistance.”

“The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021.  While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar,” states the memo.

“The Embassy will continue to provide information via the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), the Embassy web page, Travel.State.Gov, and Facebook and Twitter.  Consular services remain available outside Afghanistan.  To locate the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate click here,” adds the warning.

“Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance,” warns the message.

Latest security alert on US Embassy In Afghanistan website: “Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance.” pic.twitter.com/d2DujvpSZ2

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) August 31, 2021

Read the full memo below:

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021.  While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar.

The Embassy will continue to provide information via the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), the Embassy web page, Travel.State.Gov, and Facebook and Twitter.  Consular services remain available outside Afghanistan.  To locate the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate click here.

The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.  U.S. citizens still in country should:

• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP)

to receive security updates and ensure you can be located in an emergency.

• Review your personal security plans.
• Be aware of your surroundings and local security developments at all times.
• Keep a low profile.
• Notify a trusted person of your travel and movement plans.
• Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance.
• Monitor local media.
• Please review, “What the Department of State Can and Can’t Do in a Crisis.”

Resources for U.S. citizens in Afghanistan:

• State Department – Consular Affairs Afghanistan Call Center
  833-741-2777 or 606-260-4379
• AfghanistanACS@state.gov
• Embassy Citizens’ Services Page
• Afghanistan Country Information
• Afghanistan Travel Advisory
• Visit the Department of Homeland Security’s website on the latest travel restrictions to the United States.
• Refer to our website for the latest Alerts and Messages for U.S. citizens.
• Consult the CDC website for the most up-to-date information related to COVID-19.
• Visit our Embassy webpage on COVID-19 for information on conditions in Afghanistan.
• Visit the COVID-19 crisis page on travel.state.gov for the latest information.
• Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to ensure you receive Alerts and other information

FLASHBACK 2 WEEKS: Biden Says ‘We’re Going to Stay’ Until All Citizens Are Out of Afghanistan | Sean Hannity

Almost 100 generals and admirals wrote a letter calling for the resignations of Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Mark Milley after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“The hasty retreat has left initial estimates at ~15,000 Americans stranded in dangerous areas controlled by a brutal enemy along with ~25,000 Afghan citizens who supported American forces,” the letter said. “What should have happened upon learning of the Commander in Chief’s (President Biden’s) plan to quickly withdraw our forces and close the important power projection base Bagram, without adequate plans and forces in place to conduct the entire operation in an orderly fashion?”

“As principal military advisors to the CINC/President, the SECDEF and CJCS should have recommended against this dangerous withdrawal in the strongest possible terms,” the letter continued. “If they did not do everything within their authority to stop the hasty withdrawal, they should resign. Conversely, if they did do everything within their ability to persuade the CINC/President to not hastily exit the country without ensuring the safety of our citizens and Afghans loyal to America, then they should have resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.”

“The consequences of this disaster are enormous and will reverberate for decades beginning with the safety of Americans and Afghans who are unable to move safely to evacuation points; therefore, being de facto hostages of the Taliban at this time,” the letter added. “The death and torture of Afghans has already begun and will result in a human tragedy of major proportions. The loss of billions of dollars in advanced military equipment and supplies falling into the hands of our enemies is catastrophic. The damage to the reputation of the United States is indescribable. We are now seen, and will be seen for many years, as an unreliable partner in any multinational agreement or operation. Trust in the United States is irreparably damaged.”

The letter warned that America’s primary adversaries would be strengthened by the withdrawal. “China benefits the most followed by Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and others,” the letter said. “Terrorists around the world are emboldened and able to pass freely into our country through our open border with Mexico.”

Generals And Admirals Call For Resignations Of Milley And Austin | The Jeffrey Lord

The deletion of an Instagram account belonging to a mother whose Marine son was killed in Afghanistan last week was a mistake, parent company Facebook said Tuesday.

Shana Chappell raised an alarm on Facebook on Monday after she said her account was removed.

Chappell said she believed the deletion was “because [I] gained so many followers over my [son’s] death due to Biden’s negligence, ignorance and him being a traitor!”

She was referring to President Joe Biden.

The post in question described “my heart break [sic] over my son,” according to Chappell.

Facebook acknowledged the account was deleted but said it has now been restored.

“We express our deepest condolences to Ms. Chappell and her family. Her tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson told news outlets.

“While the post was not removed, her account was incorrectly deleted and we have since restored it,” the spokesperson added.

Chappell did not respond to a request for comment and had not posted about the development as of Tuesday afternoon.

Chappell is the mother of Kareem Nikoui, who was one of 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the suicide bombing attack on the Kabul airport on Aug. 26.

Steve Nikoui, the father of Kareem Nikoui, 20, also blamed Biden for the death.

“They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security,” Steve Nikoui told The Daily Beast. “I blame my own military leaders … Biden turned his back on him. That’s it.”

Read the remarks during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there were “no words that I can say, that I think anyone can say, to assuage the grief that a parent is feeling at the loss of their child—nothing.”

“And if I were in his shoes, probably I would feel exactly the same way,” he added.

Facebook: Deletion of Marine Mother’s Account a Mistake (theepochtimes.com)

In a short pro forma session on Tuesday, House Democrats blocked a Republican-sponsored bill that would put new obligations on the White House and military leaders as the Afghanistan crisis continues to unfold.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), requires the White House and military to send daily reports to Congress on the number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan. It also commits U.S. troops to Afghanistan until every American who wants to leave has been able to escape the country. It would also urge the president not to recognize the Taliban terrorist organization as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Last Thursday, 13 U.S. troops died in an attack claimed by the terrorist organization ISIS-K, the highest American death toll in over a decade.

On Tuesday, the House met in the first session since these deaths in Afghanistan; legislative business is usually not conducted at pro forma sessions. Still, in the wake of the deaths in Kabul, some members of the House GOP caucus made a desperate bid to use the session to consider Gallagher’s bill.

Democrats silently shot down the motion by refusing to recognize Republicans to speak about the legislation. Over loud objections, House Democrats quickly adjourned the meeting.

This was the bill’s second failure in the House.

On Aug. 24, the House met in an emergency session to vote on two pieces of expansive Democratic legislation: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) $3.5 trillion budget resolution and Rep. Terri Sewell’s (D-Ala.) “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”

Early in that session, Gallagher put forward a motion to suspend considerations on these pieces of legislation and to instead consider his bill. Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) quickly shot the proposal down, explaining that acceding to this request would “hand the floor over to the Republican conference,” an unacceptable move given the “extremely important” legislation on the House docket for the day.

Democrats later pushed forward party-line votes on both pieces of legislation, a move that drew the ire of Republicans. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made a fiery speech excoriating Democrats for shooting down Gallagher’s bill at the first session of Congress since the fall of Kabul to Taliban terrorists.

In a brief press conference after the pro forma session Tuesday, Gallagher and other Republicans discussed this second failure of the bill.

Gallagher first referenced the House’s emergency meeting on Aug. 24, saying “Just last week we had an opportunity to come together as Democrats and Republicans, and pass a bill that would have prevented the administration from withdrawing troops on the arbitrary August 31 surrender date until we had gotten all of our Americans out.”

He continued: “Behind closed doors, this is exactly what many Democrats said they wanted. They pushed back on the administration, they begged and pleaded the president to abandon the Taliban’s surrender day.”

In fact, many Democrats—especially those in vulnerable seats—have distanced themselves from the president in recent days. Several Democrats across various congressional committees promised to investigate the administration’s failures in Afghanistan and pushed to extend the withdrawal deadline. But despite this positioning, Democrats rejected Gallagher’s bill to push the withdrawal date forward indefinitely until all Americans were out safely.

With this rejection, the future of Gallagher’s bill is uncertain, leading Republicans to strategize a path forward for the bill.

McCarthy said at the press conference that in light of Democratic opposition to the bill, the House GOP would consider using a discharge petition. A discharge petition is a U.S. parliamentary procedure that can expedite the consideration of a bill by immediately moving it out of committee and onto the floor for a vote.

There are some hurdles that GOP leadership would have to overcome before moving the bill on, however. For one, a discharge petition must get 218 signatures to advance; because the GOP only controls 212 seats, advancing the petition would require that at least 6 Democrats sign on with Republicans.

But even if the bill got through the House with this technique, it would still face stiff opposition from Democrats in the Senate, who may kill the bill with a filibuster.

House Democrats Block GOP Afghanistan Withdrawal Transparency Bill (theepochtimes.com)

Afghan man who helped the US on the ground: ‘I have no idea how to leave’

Horrifying audio of distant gunshots appears to confirm reports of “house-to-house executions” as the Taliban asserts control of Kabul and Afghanistan after the U.S. military’s departure on Monday evening. 

An Afghan man who worked with Americans on the ground provided Fox News with the chilling audio featuring distant gunshots.

“I think there’s a conflict between the Taliban, I have no idea where I’m located. From everywhere I hear the sounds of shooting, gunfire. I have no idea how to leave,” the Afghan man said in the audio clip, recorded around the time the final U.S. plane left Kabul.

Distant gunshots rang in the background in the audio clip.

TALIBAN BRAGS: US TROOPS LEFT KABUL, AFGHANISTAN ‘GAINED FULL INDEPENDENCE

Taliban militants were carrying out “house-to-house executions in Kabul” after the U.S. departure, a senior U.S. source told Fox News Investigative journalist Lara Logan.

President Biden did not deny a Politico report, confirmed by Fox News, that U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies in an effort to grant them entry to the airport which resulted in outrage from military officials behind the scenes. The president said “there may have been” such a list. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” one defense official told Politico.

Hours after the departure of U.S. troops, the official Taliban Twitter account celebrated the withdrawal. 

“The last American soldier left Kabul airport at 9pm Afghan time tonight and our country gained full independence. Thank God and blessings,” the Taliban account tweeted. 

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles told Fox News that the Taliban should not get too comfortable. 

“Be careful what you ask for,” Boles said. “Now they have to show they can govern a nation and people that are very different than when they left power. Will the Taliban go forward to the future or pull Afghanistan back to the past? The answer will be in their behavior… behavior is believable.”

“From everywhere I hear the sounds of shooting, gunfire. I have no idea how to leave.”— Afghan source who worked with Americans on the ground.

Last Wednesday, a former translator for a high-ranking U.S. Army Ranger told Fox News the Taliban had started executing allies of the U.S. in public, in provinces away from the media attention of Kabul.

“They are not doing really bad stuff in Kabul right now because there’s a lot of media focus on Kabul, but they already started public execution in other provinces where a lot of media is not available or covering it,” the interpreter said.

What’s more, in holding to his Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, President Biden appears to have broken his promise to stay in Afghanistan until every American has been evacuated.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, admitted Monday evening.

On Aug. 18, Biden had told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. military’s objective in Afghanistan was to get “everyone” out, including Americans, Afghan allies and their families.

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“That’s what we’re doing now, that’s the path we’re on. And I think we’ll get there,” he said. “If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out.”

Yet a senior State Department official told Fox News that a “small number” of Americans remained in Afghanistan, putting the number at “below 250.”

Taliban commit ‘house-to-house executions’ in Kabul after US exit as chilling audio demonstrates Afghans’ fear | Fox News