RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/taliban-better-armed-nato-afghanistan/

It was quite the handover at Kabul airport this week. The last American troops to exit Afghanistan reportedly left facing an ‘elite unit’ of the Taliban. In a season finale that the most dystopian screenwriter would have struggled to invent, the elite Taliban unit was itself bedecked in US military kit. That is, they were not only wearing uniforms and protective kit provided by the fleeing US army, but were parading the airport with US-provided guns in US-provided vehicles.

This was the culmination of a two-week period that the White House is still trying to present as a success. One of the biggest airlifts in history, they insist. In reality the Biden administration has pulled off a feat few of us thought possible. A military-political defeat that gets worse the more you look at it.

Take the issue of the kit that the Americans have left behind. I’m sure by now everyone has seen the lists of armaments that the US left with the swiftly dissolved Afghan army that America and its allies struggled to train for two decades.

The Taliban inherited that defeated army’s kit in its entirety. That entirety includes 33 Black Hawk helicopters, 43 MD 530 helicopters, 32 Mi-17 helicopters, 23 A-29 light attack planes, at least 33 other attack planes and three gigantic Hercules aircraft thrown in for good measure. Thanks to the largesse of the American taxpayer, the Taliban now has more attack helicopters than the UK, and is better armed than almost every Nato country, apart from the US.

When these facts emerged this week, a portion of the commentariat tried to pretend this was no great shakes. These last defenders of the President insisted it didn’t matter that the Taliban had control of all these Black Hawks. For how could a group of goat-herders, who have barely learned to operate their rusty old Soviet motorcycles, be expected to retrain as helicopter pilots? As if they were listening, right on cue, the Taliban began flying one of their new Black Hawks over the skies of Kabul. That was quite the F-you: top kit, in new hands, only one previous owner, hardly used.

Perhaps aware this does not look great, the US military is claiming to have disabled some of the kit they left behind. On Monday, Gen. McKenzie said that before leaving Kabul airport the US military permanently disabled 150 vehicles and aircraft so they can ‘never be used again’. The rocket air defense system was reportedly kept online until the last minute and then demilitarized.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/01/is-our-military-woke-broke-or-both/

The fall of Kabul is not the end, as Joe Biden seems to think, of the Afghanistan nightmare. 

It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. 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 servicemen, 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 killing of Americans, the command sergeant major of the U.S. Army callously reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength in 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 airbase in the middle of the night without opposition?

Recently the Office of Naval Intelligence, in reaction to the Kabul news, warned all its active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize their Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership. 

That is true. And indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps just relieved from active duty a lieutenant colonel who posted a video accurately blaming the military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare. 

But until January 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander-in-chief with impunity.

Recently retired General Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific slur 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 the German death camps. 

Other generals and admirals in 2020 variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving to be removed from office sooner than later. None of these retired politicized four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democratic-norm-breakers-jan-6-committee-bennie-thompson-subpoena-call-records-house-republicans-11630532406?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Critics feared that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would be partisan, and the latest proof are subpoenas for the private phone records of House Republicans. This is a violation of political norms that Democrats will come to regret.

Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), chair of the House special committee, sent letters Monday to 35 companies, from AT&T to Facebook to Parler, asking them to preserve information about account holders charged with crimes related to, or “potentially involved with discussions” in planning, the Jan. 6 riot. The companies are requested to preserve emails, and voice, text and direct messages in preparation for subpoenas to come.

The letters contained a list of individuals whose names haven’t leaked. But CNN reports that nearly a dozen House Republicans are on the committee’s “evolving” radar, including Jim Jordan, ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Republicans are furious, and rightly so. Indiana Rep. Jim Banks noted in a letter to Mr. Thompson that this “authoritarian undertaking” would depart “from more than 230 years of Congressional oversight.” The move recalls California Democrat Adam Schiff’s public release of the call logs of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes in 2019.

At least Democrats claimed the collection of Mr. Nunes’s information was incidental to other records it targeted. The special committee is using its oversight power to snoop on political opponents. They’d gain access to information far beyond the events of Jan. 6.

Democrats say they need the call lists to see if Members of Congress fomented the assault on the Capitol. They hope to confirm their narrative that the riot was a planned “insurrection,” though Reuters reports that the FBI has found no such evidence in six months of looking. Conspiracy is a crime and matter for the Justice Department, not Congress.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/three_takeaways_from_afghanistan_for_us_at_home.html

First, remember our troops, living and dead, who served the United States in Afghanistan since 2001.  They are owed our gratitude for their steadfast presence in a difficult country and our help as they and their families, and the families of the dead, navigate the emotionally terrible terrain of a defeat inflicted not by the enemy, but by our government’s failure to plan properly for the end of their mission.  If it was time for the U.S. to leave, then so be it.  But there is nothing the civilians or the military higher-ups can say that will make Americans believe they knew what they were doing.  Resignations are in order.

Spare a moment, too, for the 182,071 soldiers in the Afghan Army and Air Force and the 118,628 members of the police and paramilitary security forces serving as of July 2021.  Yes, the Afghan force collapsed — but only after the U.S. withdrew its air power and intelligence capabilities, both of which the Afghans had relied upon under our tutelage.

Second, retire the word “privilege” as used in the U.S. to denigrate those perceived to have some inborn, unearned advantage.  Whatever your color, race, or sex; whether you are the sixth great-grandchild of slave or fifth great-grandchild of Chinese railroad slaves or the second-generation Vietnamese refugees or the remnants of the Holocaust — if you live in the United States today, you are privileged.  You have the advantages of freedom, liberty, and a Constitution.  You have access to education, food, medicine, and bathrooms.  If you doubt your privilege, watch CNN.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/02/above-all-do-no-harm-in-medicine-or-politics/
We’ve been betrayed by elected officials who follow the hypocritical path of pandering and self-interest.

Physicians are taught in their training the principle, “First, Do No Harm,” one of the primary precepts of patient care, and which is found in early versions of the Hippocratic Oath. By contrast, many politicians seem to abide by the hypocritical oath, treating inconsistency, irrationality, and harm as incidental and subordinate to their self-interest. Lately, this approach to public service has become, literally, lethal.

Two prominent issues illustrate how embracing the hypocritical oath can inflict serious harm. The first is the handling of the pandemic, and the second is the dangerous distortion of the criminal justice system in many parts of the country.

It was just last year that numerous Democratic politicians, including then-vice-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, stated unequivocally that a vaccine developed under President Donald Trump could not be trusted. It was as if she and others believed that the Trump administration’s career civil-servant regulators would cut corners and issue premature, risky approvals. Although there was pressure exerted on the FDA to act according to political timetables, nothing suggests that either product development or governmental review was inappropriately rushed.

Of course, after Joe Biden won the election, these same politicians could not pivot fast enough. Universal vaccination suddenly (and justifiably) became the mantra of the new administration. Unfortunately, some people seemed not to heed the volte-face, and the seeds of doubt planted last fall have borne fruit in the form of vaccine hesitancy. This is by no means an indictment of the vaccines. Rational people with no medical reason to hesitate should undoubtedly be taking the shot. The vaccines may not pose zero risk, but they are extremely safe; and for almost everyone, the risks of contracting COVID-19 are far, far greater, and prevention offers the added “bonus” of avoiding “long COVID” symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, and loss of taste or smell, that persist in between 10% and 30% of those who recover from even mild cases.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/02/u-s-in-more-trouble-than-at-any-time-in-its-history/

Candidate Joe Biden said last October that we were nearing the “most important election of our lifetime.” He was right. What made it so crucial was keeping him out of the White House.

President Joe Biden is visibly exhausted. His mental decline that began long before the 2020 election appears to have now gone straight over a cliff. The first seven months of his term have depleted him so thoroughly that the toll taken by eight years of the modern presidency look mild in comparison.

His errors and poor judgment continue and compound. Never in possession of an abundance of sound thinking, he’s been drained of what little wisdom he ever had. And he’s only going to get worse.

Biden’s record of failure is well-documented. He’s been a train wreck in progress for decades. Just added to his resume of misery is the ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan where Americans have been murdered and abandoned; historic inflation that threatens economic growth; a workforce that feels work is optional; dire conditions in which businesses can’t find enough workers; an open wound on our southern border; and a greenlighting of terrorism both in the U.S. and abroad.

President Ice Cream has also caused further political and social division, increased gasoline prices through perverse energy policies, and forsaken allies while inviting enemies and rogues to test American resolve. Given that his handlers often call a lid on his workdays before afternoon tea, he’s often been able to make a hash of things before lunch.

https://quillette.com/2021/09/01/welcome-to-cold-war-ii/

In early June, with little fanfare or press coverage, the US Senate passed a 2,400-page bill called “The United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).” Heralded as “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades,” the bill will pump over $200 billion into a diverse spectrum of R&D initiatives over the next five years with the sole purpose of bolstering “competitiveness against China.”

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the alarming extent of America’s dependence on foreign countries. Nowhere was this more apparent or more dire than in the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as medical masks. “Medical supply chains that span oceans and continents,” note Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman in an article for PBS Frontline, “are the fragile lifelines between raw materials and manufacturers overseas, and healthcare workers on COVID-19 front lines in the US. As link after link broke, the system fell apart.” Mendoza and Linderman’s joint coverage of the issue followed a months-long investigation and reveals just how vulnerable America allowed itself to become. As the world turned inwards and borders began to close, complex global supply chains were paralyzed. Locked-down countries had entire industrial sectors knocked out at the very moment they were most needed. It wasn’t until February 2020, nearly three months after COVID-19 cases began to appear, that China restarted its medical factories.

This, as it turned out, was a problem unknown to many Americans. Even prior to the coronavirus, China manufactured well over half of the world’s masks. It has since “expanded production nearly 12-fold since then,” Keith Bradsher and Liz Alderman report in the New York Times. Moreover, China “bought up much of the rest of the world’s supply,” importing 56 million respirators and masks following the January lockdown in Wuhan. China’s medical dominance also accounts for over 60 percent of global antibiotics and sedative exports.

China—like any country—looked after its own citizens first. Rushing to contain COVID-19 domestically, medical supplies leaving the country shrank overnight. In February 2020, the Associated Press found a 55 percent drop in N95 imports to America as well as a 40 percent decline in hand sanitizer and swab imports. “The critical shortage of medical supplies across the US, including testing swabs, protective masks, surgical gowns and hand sanitizer, can be tied to a sudden drop in imports, mostly from China,” Mendoza and Linderman wrote in March 2020.

Once the scale of the pandemic and the importance of basic medical supplies became clear, many countries adopted a “Beggar Thy Neighbour” approach reminiscent of the Great Depression, scrambling to protect themselves at the expense of others. It wasn’t only China looking after its own interests; American allies including South Korea, India, Taiwan, France, and the United Kingdom all imposed export restrictions on a host of coronavirus-related products. The US was no different. President Trump invoked the Korean War-era Defence Production Act and demanded that 3M halt exports of N95 masks to Canada and Latin America.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-job-approval-underwater-in-most-swing-states-amid-afghanistan-fiasco/

According to a new national poll conducted by Civiqs, President Joe Biden’s job approval rating is underwater in most swing states. The military withdrawal and chaotic civilian evacuation from Afghanistan overseen by Biden left the country in Taliban control and led to the deaths of 13 American soldiers and countless Afghans.

In six hotly contested battlegrounds during the 2020 election — namely Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas — Biden’s approval rating is underwater by ten or more percentage points.

In Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin too, more Americans disappointed in, rather than satisfied with, Biden’s job performance, but by a single digit margin. Biden beat Trump in each of these states in 2020.

Biden’s net approval rating has dropped from a positive five percent when he assumed office in January to negative eight percent in August, Civiqs calculated.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/01/dr-scott-atlas-science-killed-itself-over-covid-19/

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American people have been told to “follow the science.” Yet for a year and a half, they’ve heard contradicting messages from self-appointed prophets of “the science” like Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

We learned that politicians who claimed their decisions were science-driven often ignored scientific findings that didn’t fit certain political narratives. We discovered that scientists are fallible human beings, and some would let personal interests and political views cloud their judgment.

Is science itself one of the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic? I asked Dr. Scott Atlas at the 13th annual Freedom Conference hosted by the Steamboat Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization. Formerly a professor and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, Atlas is now a senior fellow in health policy at the Hoover Institution.

Atlas has been under constant attacks by the left and the corporate media since he served as a special adviser to former President Trump and a member of the White House coronavirus task force from August to November 2020. The New York Times and the Washington Post ran hit pieces on Atlas, questioning his qualifications despite his distinguished career and scholarship.

Google-owned YouTube also removed a 50-minute video of Atlas’s interview with the Hoover Institute. Twitter took down his tweet that questioned the effectiveness of masks.

‘Science’ Destroyed Its Own Credibility

Atlas has refused to be silenced. He has a lot to say about how the scientific field and Americans’ trust in it have been tremendously harmed during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Science has been not just a victim,” he told me, “but actively participated in the self-destruction of its credibility.”

To prove his point, Atlas referred to the now infamous letter published in Lancet, which denounced the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy” that created “fear, rumors, and prejudice.” Facebook “fact-checkers” used the letter to censor discussion of the lab-leak theory for more than a year.

It then surfaced in The Daily Mail that Peter Daszak, president of Eco Health Alliance, orchestrated a group of scientists to write the letter without disclosing the EHA’s close financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Now many scientists accept that the WIV lab-leak theory is just as probable as the natural origin theory.

Atlas also faulted leading scientific publications such as Nature and Lancet for playing “important roles in enabling, encouraging, and enforcing the false narrative.” In June, journalist Ian Birrell cited one source who estimated the publisher of Nature had sponsorship agreements worth millions of dollars from Chinese institutions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/31/biden-administration-erased-afghan-weapons-reports-from-federal-websites/?sh=3cd7779f16ba

The War in Afghanistan has always been a black box, but the Biden administration just made matters worse.

According to an admission obtained from the State Department, Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.

The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles.

Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly 1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers.

The State Department admitted to removing the reports but justified the move as a way to protect Afghan allies. According to a spokesperson:

“The safety of our Afghan contacts is of utmost importance to us. The State Department advised other federal agencies of to [sic] review their web properties for content that highlights cooperation/participation between an Afghan citizen and the USG or a USG partner and remove from public view if it poses a security risk.”

It’s worth noting that the Biden administration already put these partners at risk when officials provided lists of Afghan nationals to the Taliban in a misguided attempt to clear them for evacuation. The Taliban, a known terrorist organization with a history of murdering Afghan citizens working alongside U.S. forces, should never have been trusted with those names.