Did ‘gender studies’ lose Afghanistan?

 The Spectator World

"Twenty years of war in Afghanistan are over. What comes next is 20 years, or even more, of recriminations and blame for why the war ended as it did. Scholars and partisans still argue over the reasons America lost in Vietnam, so why should Afghanistan be any different?

"On the plus side, the debate promises to be far more interesting. When it comes to Vietnam, partisans debate rules of engagement, bombing strategies, funding levels and the Tet Offensive. With Afghanistan, the question could be: did gender studies cause America to suffer its most humiliating defeat ever? Cockburn wishes he was joking.

"Traditionally, nations have waged war by mustering armies, defeating their enemies in battle, and despoiling their lands and cities. Only after total victory is the process of remaking a society feasible.". . . 

Biden throws his clueless vice president under the bus

 Harris can’t clean up the mess at the border unless her boss decides to clean up his policy mess — by reinstating some of Trump’s ideas. That’ll probably never happen, but in the meantime, Biden can deflect all questions to his clueless vice president.

 NY Post  "Kamala Harris is playing a historic role in 2021: the nation’s first black, Asian, female vice president to serve as a sacrificial lamb.

"Like many other women before her, Harris has been tasked with coming in late to clean up a mess made by her boss. Joe Biden probably wouldn’t do too well in a “Jeopardy!” contest, or even on a circle-a-word puzzle, but he’s smart enough to know that when you’ve got a problem you can’t solve, you should grandly announce a plan to deal with it by … fobbing it off on someone else....

..."Alas, unlike Barack Obama’s plan to cure cancer by announcing that Joe Biden would cure cancer (yes, that really happened), Biden’s buck-passing set up Harris for a spectacularly visible failure.

"When friendly questioner Lester Holt pointed out to Harris that she hadn’t visited the border once, she pulled her trademark move (whenever she gets busted) of breaking into that famously weird dismissive laugh and replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” as though an equivalent problem is coming out of Europe. Hordes of damp Irishmen desperately washing up on the shores of Maine, perhaps.

"The Biden administration created the border crisis with a “Yay, illegal immigrants” rhetorical style that was received in Latin America like an embossed invitation: “President Joe cordially invites you to El Norte.”

"During the presidential campaign, Biden generously offered to suspend deportations and end family separations. In 2019, both Biden and Harris vowed to give health care to illegal immigrants, and two years before that, she insisted that “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.' ”. . . 

Biden was so intent on reversing everything President Donald Trump did that he moronically reversed one of Trump’s biggest successes: the “Remain in Mexico” program that required asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while their claims were being heard. Unsurprisingly, there was a record-setting run on the border, and suddenly there was a serious human cost to all of the knee-jerk anti-Trumpism.

Joe Manchin Is Singlehandedly Destroying Biden's Presidency. Thank God.

  PJ Media

"The face of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is almost certainly haunting Joe Biden’s dreams these days. Manchin has become the Democrats’ ghost in the machine, disrupting and destroying their plans to spend America into penury and transform society into something strangely alien to most Americans’ idea of freedom.

"Manchin singlehandedly stopped the Democrats from imposing a $15-an-hour wage on American businesses. It didn’t matter that much since most state governments jacked up wages to $15, which forced any business that could to follow suit. But it was a sign that Manchin, hardly anyone’s idea of a rebel, was not going to roll over for the radicals.

"He has now enraged them even more by putting up his hand and yelling “stop” over the Democrats’ plan to spend $3.5 trillion on everything from climate change to Medicare expansion to assuring “equity” and “ending racism as we know it”—if you can believe in Democratic Party fairy tales.

"Since Joe Biden needs all 50 Democrats to vote for the package so that it can be passed using the reconciliation process, Manchin’s reluctance to break the bank for the radicals has liberals calling for his ouster from the party.

"Manchin’s objections to the bill are brutally logical and ridiculously simple: “I have always said if I can’t explain it, I can’t vote for it, and I can’t explain why my Democratic colleagues are rushing to spend $3.5 trillion,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.". . . 

More...Manchin is Singlehandedly Destroying Biden's Presidency – PJ Media

"Joe Biden is now an 'international embarrassment' '

Joe Biden is now an 'international embarrassment' - YouTube  "America will "keep paying the price" for electing Joe Biden for "perhaps decades to come," according to Sky News host Rita Panahi.

" 'Not only did Biden's disastrous execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal see hundreds of American citizens abandoned in an Islamist hellhole," Ms Panahi said. " 'But he left the terrorists who now run that Islamist hellhole tens of billions in military equipment that they are now proudly parading. " 'The Biden administration only a few weeks ago assured the world that the Taliban wouldn't overtake the country."

Hindustan Times: Afghan withdrawal haunts Joe Biden; approval rating hits all-time low amidst Taliban takeover

US has ‘proved itself completely incompetent’ through Afghanistan withdrawal

. . . “With the debacle that is the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that’s emboldened every single anti-western extremist of every stripe whether it’s China, Russia, Jihadists, Islamists," she told Sky News host Gary Hardgrave. " 'It's totally emboldened them to come after the west. “ 'Because you know, America world police, the global super-cop, has proved itself completely incompetent and completely uncaring with this withdrawal of Afghanistan. “ 'I mean, for goodness' sake, to leave $83 billion worth of military equipment, just sitting there for the Taliban to pick up and use.". . .

Don Lemon Defends Joe Biden Saying We Don't Know If We Left Americans Behind In Afghanistan (VIDEO) (americanlookout.com) ..".Don Lemon is continuing his role as one of the most dishonest people in cable news."

"We know that Americans were left behind in Afghanistan. The Biden administration is saying maybe a couple hundred, but some people are estimating the number to be much higher.

"But CNN’s Don Lemon is rushing to Biden’s defense, because of course he is.". . . 

Calls Grow to Impeach Biden Over Exchange With Then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (legalinsurrection.com)

“This is the phone call, instead of the one between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that should lead to impeachment.”

. . . “ 'Was the president in any way pushing a false narrative in that call?” a reporter asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki Wednesday after the Reuters story broke.“I am not going to go into the ­details of a private conversation,” she replied.Hah! "That sure wasn’t the Democrats’ standard when they impeached Donald Trump last year over a leaked phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.                      "Jen Psaki’s about face on this would give you whiplash." . . .                                              

Biden Gave Up More Than Bagram

"It will take decades to rebuild America’s credibility and world leadership now, and we no longer have the resources to do it. We were already in danger of losing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. There are already rumblings about that."

The American Spectator

American blood now covers the hands of our disgraced president and his underlings.

"Earlier this week, as covered in a previous column in the American Spectator, the Democrat National Committee bragged about the “achievement” of this alleged president in his “best-run evacuation” of Kabul. Chief among the DNC’s arguments for such ludicrous praise was the lack of American casualties.

"The press flacks at the DNC, every one of whom would be fired if that organization had the slightest honor (its chairman, the failed U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Harrison, should similarly resign in disgrace before the weekend), were merely parroting statements the alleged president made about the absence of dead Americans at the time.

"Every single credible person with either operational military experience or a knowledge of Afghanistan was warning that casualties were already inevitable by that point. Even the alleged president, in a fit of congratulatory onanism, qualified the alleged safety of the “best-run evacuation” with the proverbial knock on wood.

"It was clear to anyone willing to see that an American president “knocking on wood” in hopes of avoiding an ironic national security cataclysm is only inviting such a disaster to our door. So on Thursday, when multiple suicide bombers attacked the Kabul airport and the Baron Hotel just outside its gates, killing an untold number of people (at last count before this column was turned in, the butcher’s bill was more than 90 dead, including 13 American military men: 12 Marines and one Navy Corpsman), absolutely no one should have been surprised.

"In fact, an alert went out to any American left in Afghanistan shortly before the explosion that they should stay away from the Kabul airport because of a “security threat.”

"Of course there was a security threat, and of course there would be a terrorist attack on the airport. By the very nature of waiting outside the airport for a chance to get on a plane and leave an Afghanistan governed by the Taliban, everyone there signaled themselves an enemy of fundamentalist Islam as practiced by the 7th century brutes now in control of that country. Of course they were terror targets."

"That includes any American and other Westerners. And of course, Afghans, especially after the Biden administration gave a list of green card and Special Immigrant Visa holders to the Taliban guarding the checkpoints around the airport. Boy, giving the Taliban a certified kill-list was a stroke of genius, wasn’t it? Aren’t you glad the Swamp is back in charge of the Swamp?". . .

A Full-Court Press for Biden

 American Greatness  "The fallback defense position of the embattled Biden Administration is taking shape. It consists of his die-hard media supporters blaming all problems on former Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush and even occasionally Barack Obama. They repeat with tedious persistence the usual bunk about “taking the tough and courageous decision required,” to clean up the mistakes of the past. "...

. . . "It is little wonder that Biden and his administration embra
ce the alleged perils of climate change so fervently. It is the ultimate faddish cause, embraced by the entire Left as the most imaginative blunt instrument that they have yet discovered for assaulting capitalism. It incites fear almost as surely as does a pandemic but more distantly, enabling governments to exceed their normal powers. And it is a marvelous distraction at critical times. Last year it justified Biden’s basement campaign, competing with Canadian geese as he tried to fumble through his teleprompter and left the irrationally Trump-hating media to conduct his campaign for him.

. . . "The regime’s enthusiasm for climate change and its potential for frightening the nation has served the Biden phenomenon well; but it cannot be relied upon indefinitely. The administration’s allies among professional health administrators and virologists have been seriously discredited by their contradictory statements, reluctance to accept the likely origin of the coronavirus in the Wuhan Virological Institute, and their evident enthusiasm for exercising absurdly excessive authority in the imposition of needless inconvenience and economic hardship on millions of people. The famous anti-COVID masks are now shown to be of questionable utility other than as a placebo to quiet the wearers with the notion of doing their parts in restraining the virus. As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pointed out, it is unseemly for an administration that is allowing scores of thousands of COVID carriers illegally across the southern U.S. border every month and spreading them around the country to claim that a compulsory masking of schoolchildren is a public health necessity. Children rarely have serious symptoms from the coronavirus, are not very effective spreaders of the virus, and there isn’t much evidence that these masks achieve anything medically useful for them, anyway.". . . 

Admin officials to Reuters: Heads won't roll over Afghanistan debacle because it would mean admitting failure – HotAir  ..."In other words, Jim Webb’s warning from earlier this week has become prophecy. An anonymous administration official told Reuters that no one should expect any accountability from within the White House over Joe Biden’s catastrophic retreat from Afghanistan and abandonment of American citizens, legal permanent residents, and Afghan allies to the Taliban. Firing anyone would contradict Biden’s bizarre declaration of victory from earlier this week:"...

AOC's dumbest tweet ever gives conservatives a field day holding her to her rhetoric -

 

American Thinker   ...On Wednesday, she made an utter fool of herself by tweeting out a nice-sounding bit of rhetoric that she failed to understand knocks out any legitimacy for affirmative action and any of the other racial double standards that the left insists on....

I particularly like this one:

So you're expected to defer to me, or you'll be branded a racist and a sexist? Finally! https://t.co/4hDfMdCxAm

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) September 1, 2021

Pelosi’s Contemptible Fraud

 American Greatness

 Surely when this nauseating and redundant slanderfest bombs out, unreasoning Trump-hate will be a harder sell.  

"It is depressing to consider that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives committee of inquiry into the events of January 6 will probably not be generally exposed as the contemptible fraud that it is by the tainted and corruptly partisan national political and social media. It has already been adduced beyond challenge that President Trump advised his followers on January 6, if they went to the Capitol, to “demonstrate peacefully and patriotically.” On listening to his speech again, it is completely unexceptionable, and he gives clearly his complaints about the voting and vote-counting procedures. 

"A moron could deduce that where there are 44 million mailed and “dumped” ballots floating around, strange things are likely to happen in an election where a flip of 50,000 votes in three states would have changed the election result. It is an incontestable fact that the Trump Administration and campaign had nothing to do with what went on after the president addressed his followers near the White House on January 6. It is equally clear that almost none of the intruders at the Capitol were armed. There is not one scintilla of truth in any claim that President Trump or his collaborators had anything to do with promoting any intrusion at the Capitol or any physical threat to anyone, or any disturbance of the normal lawful processes of government. It has also been clearly established that President Trump, several days before the intrusion at the Capitol, offered 10,000 National Guardsmen as supplementary reinforcements in recognition of the fact that some of his supporters might be in a hostile mood on January 6."...

It is inconceivable that Pelosi’s one-party Star Chamber, pre-confected smear job of the former administration will produce anything of any probative value. The huge crowd that the president addressed on the morning of January 6 had come to Washington to demonstrate their outrage at what they believed—with considerable reason, despite totalitarian attempts to suppress all discussion of it—was a tainted election...

On the leadership of Joe Biden and Democrats

 The Cynical, Despicable ‘Stuttering’ Con Unravels; The American Spectator..."Last week, like the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen fable, Fox News Host Rachel Campos-Duffy had the gumption to say out loud that Emperor Joe was wearing no metaphorical clothes. In addressing the collapse of leadership in Washington, Campos-Duffy asked, “Who are the people responsible for putting someone this incompetent and frankly this, you know, mentally frail in this position?”

"Having dared to ask the obvious question, Campos-Duffy gave the obvious answer. “No one knew better his state of mind than Dr. Jill Biden,” Campos continued. “And if you ask me, the most patriotic thing Jill Biden could have done was tell her husband — to love her husband — and not let him run in this mental state that he’s in.”

"In the Andersen fable, the boy’s fearful father tries to shame the boy into silence. Campos-Duffy got a dose of that. The shaming started at the top. “This is disgusting,” tweeted Dr. Jill’s press secretary. Singling out Fox News and Campos-Duffy, he concluded, “They can do better and their viewers deserve better. I hope they’ll apologize to the First Lady and leave this kind of talk in the [trash] where it belongs.”

20 States Sue Biden for Forcing Schools to Allow Transgenders in Female Sports | Neon Nettle  

Biden’s transgender mandate is tied to schools and effectively allows biological boys who "identify" as female to use locker rooms, showers, and bathroom facilities in accordance with their preferred “gender identity” instead of their biological sex, among other issues. 

Florida diner owner who turned away Biden voters for troops says she's been inundated with support | Daily Mail Online   

"The Florida diner where the owner posted a sign turning away Joe Biden voters after 13 US troops were killed in Afghanistan has had to shut its doors—because so many people called to buy meals for veterans that the small business ran out of food. 'I've gotten so many people calling me from all over the world, from Europe, trying to purchase meals for veterans, which I still haven't been able to organize,' said Angie Ugarte, who posted the sign in the window of the DeBary Diner in the central Florida city of DeBary. 'I think that the veterans will be fed for the rest of the year."

Biden Pushes Congress To Pass Spending Plans After Manchin Opposes Democrats’ Massive $3.5T Bill | The Daily Wire  "As The Daily Wire reported on Thursday, “A far-left activist group aligned with Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) is pushing to eliminate the U.S. Senate in an effort to ram through Democrat President Joe Biden’s partisan $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.”

Bad Moon Rising for Biden—and Us

This piling on of the president is surely in part payback for what the Democrats did to former President Donald Trump.

 Intellectual Takeout  "April is the cruelest month," wrote T. S. Eliot in the opening line of what is regarded as his greatest poem, "The Waste Land.” For President Joe Biden, the cruelest month is surely August of 2021, which is now mercifully ending. When has a president had a worse month?   

"On the last Sunday in August, Biden watched solemnly, hand over heart, as the coffins of the American dead in the Kabul airport terrorist massacre of Thursday were carried off the plane at Dover. The American dead had been carrying out an evacuation of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from America's lost war, a defeat dealt to us by the same Taliban we ejected from power in 2001 for providing sanctuary for the al-Qaida terrorists of 9/11.

"We have lost our longest war, and the triumphant Taliban are now back in power and presiding over and assisting our departure from Kabul. When the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete Tuesday, the fate of the hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghan allies we leave behind will be decided by the jihadists we have been fighting for two decades. Throughout the Biden presidency, we will be reading of, hearing of, and being witness to the evidence of their fates.". . . 

Dallas mayor and city council sucked in by citizen mocking them in hilarious parody of mandatory vaccine policies

 Thomas Lifson   "Whoever the man is in the video below, addressing the Dallas mayor and city council by video in an open microphone session, he is one gifted comedian.  He pretended to be a resident of the very expensive Highland Park neighborhood, fully supportive of mandatory vaccinations, and then took the logic farther and farther, all the while parodying the mentality of rich, white liberals who seek to force the lower orders into compliance with their diktats.

"The escalating hysteria he embodies in his performance deserves an Emmy more than ex-governor Andrew Cuomo ever did.  It is not clear when the council members realized they were being mocked, but the man was cut off with "time's up" while he was in full parody mode.

"Sundance of The Last Refuge found the recording and deserves the hat tip:"...

A Rebel in Dallas Throws Sand in The Machine - The Last Refuge (theconservativetreehouse.com)

A free-range citizen made it through the filtration process and appeared on livestream before the Dallas City Council.  His rigorous advocacy for the totalitarian mandates and forced vaccines was welcome amid the tribe…. until he started helping them a little too much.  WATCH:

Watching America – Discover What the World Thinks of U.S.

 

Watching America

Biden’s presentation was a gross distortion of the facts. The U.S. suffered no losses over the past 18 months. The choice was between more of that and squandering everything U.S. forces in Afghanistan accomplished over the past twenty years.   Caroline Glick;Israel

Biden told Afghan president to lie about strength before Taliban takeover | World Israel News

Joe Biden's Catastrophic Judgment - CarolineGlick.com (Israel)  ..."In the last two years of the Trump administration, Trump reduced the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 15,000 to 2,500, without inducing panic or emboldening the Taliban. He quietly evacuated U.S. civilians again without inducing panic or demoralization.

"Biden in contrast, removed the military forces without giving the Afghan government or military a heads-up, demoralizing them. He and his advisors repeatedly said that there was no reason to fear a Taliban takeover, so at-risk civilians had little sense of the urgency of the situation or the need to leave the country as quickly as possible.

"In a conversation with Israel Hayom, a former senior Trump administration official noted as well that unlike Biden, Trump was willing to listen to argument, and change his positions to align them with the situation on the ground when necessary."...

Phyllis Chesler (phyllis-chesler.com)  ..."It’s Biden’s war now. He has shamed and dishonored our country in a breathtaking way. He brought it on himself, on our NATO allies, and on all the Afghans who came to believe in Western post-Enlightenment values. Biden shut the airports down and left military equipment behind before the very last soldier, the very last Afghan ally, dissident, gay, feminist were safely—very safely out.  Biden (his character, his flaws, his stubbornness), his administration, and whoever is pulling their strings are to blame."...

Brazil;Joe Biden’s Massive Mistake in Afghanistan..."Why was the enormity of the events in Afghanistan produced by so many serial errors? Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Afghanistan under the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president, wrote, “There is one overarching answer: our lack of strategic patience at critical moments, including from President Biden. It has damaged our alliances, emboldened our adversaries and increased the risk to our own security. It has also flouted 20 years of work and sacrifice.' ”

I’ve watched US policy pave the way for the terror attack in Kabul | The Independent  The US president has been determined to end involvement in Afghanistan quickly as possible, seemingly impervious to the consequences of that"

Afghanistan US retreat: Implications for Taiwan | The Manila Times   ..."Kurt Campbell, US coordinator for Asia-Pacific Affairs, made it clear in early July that the United States" does not support Taiwan's independence." This is the first time that the Biden administration has publicly expressed its position on the Taiwan independence issue. The United States keeps a distance from "Taiwan independence," and will not directly engage with China. It has also shown to its global allies that it will not return to its failed military interventionism. This is already the United States' national policy to shape its future from failure."

Four US mistakes lead to bankruptcies (iol.co.za) ..."The defeat in Afghanistan and passing the buck to the Afghan government dealt the reputation of the US government a double blow. All US media are criticising this troop withdrawal drama. It is believed that not only does it show the poor management of the Biden Administration, but it also shows that America will never build a functioning nation."...

Warning from Moscow: Lessons for Post-Soviet Eurasia from the Fall of Kabul  ..."Finally, neither the U.S. nor other Western powers are willing to engage in socioeconomic development, let alone social modernization, of friendly regimes."...

Biden told Afghan President they needed to 'change perception' of the Taliban's rapid advance | Daily Mail Online  

UK MPs criticise 'out of his depth' Joe Biden over Afghanistan withdrawal | Daily Mail Online

Mother of dead Marine calls Biden 'piece of crap' as president meets families of the 13 dead troops | Daily Mail Online ..."The mother of a Marine killed in the Kabul airport attack called President Joe Biden a 'dementia-riddent piece of crap' as the president meets with families of the 13 fallen service members on Sunday.  'My son was one of the Marines that died yesterday,' Kathy McCollum said in a radio interview on Friday of her 20-year-old late son Rylee.

" '[He was] getting ready to come home from freaking Jordan to be with his wife to watch the birth of his son,' McCollum said. 'And that feckless, dementia ridden piece of crap just sent my son to die.'