SORRY, JOE:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: New evidence that Hunter Biden is a risk to US security.

TEXTS FROM A FRIEND WITH A LOT OF MILITARY EXPERIENCE:

Remember 2010? While the Obama admin was in the process of pissing away the win in Iraq, and giving that place to the Iranians, predictably precipitating the rise both Iran and ISIS, Biden was given the job of deciding what to do with Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was the war the lefties liked. But only to beat up on Iraq. They said all the resources should go to Afghanistan.

But when Petraeus put forward a surge/anti-corruption reform plan for Afghanistan, Biden, directed to look at that, dithered for six months. Or maybe it was nine, I forget. Then he cut the request in half.

Trump had the Taliban at the table. Biden dropped the ball on that.

Trump would not be leaving the people who helped us to be slaughtered by the Taliban.

It’s going to be a fucking blood bath, and all that blood is on Biden’s hands. But whoever is actually running the Biden admin is shrugging about that. All they care about is it will make Biden look like shit.

Their lapdogs in the media will cast it as Bush and Trump’s fault, though. They’ll say Biden just inherited it. So they aren’t too worried about it

They’ll also wring hands and point fingers at their pals in the intelligence community, throw some blame that way.

Hey, in fairness, maybe if those guys hadn’t been so busy cooking up bs vs Trump the last four years …
There’ll be plenty of blame to go around. Go being the operative word.

Locals would have be crazy to cooperate with us in hostile zones, given our track record. That’s like marrying a wifebeater. Going on a carefree roadtrip with a serial killer.

Hey hey, Big Guy
How many Afghans did you kill today
I’m nauseated.

It’s a debacle. But a sure sign that it won’t go well for Biden is that the military brass have already thrown him under the bus with “he didn’t take our advice” leaks.

And, from another knowledgeable friend:

For what it’s worth, my thoughts on the latest defeat in detail for the US and especially for the Uniparty:

Multiple things can be true at once.

—The decision to stay in AfPak 20 years ago (as compared to punishing those who perpetrated 9/11) was a bad one. This is the first and hardest leason.

—Having made it, the Powell Doctrine—“you break it you buy it”—only applies as long as there’s political will.

—Afghans cannot be governed the same way as Western traditions hold as a model. Whatever way works isn’t that.

—Pretending it can does not help. The mass delusion of everyone thinking it could, the “clap harder if you believe in fairies” model of wishcasting that has dominated the mission there, wasn’t as deadly as Ypres, but is just as dangerous.

—The last twenty years show the US intelligence and military communities are led by no one you’d want there. The last year, especially.

—Given the decision to stay, having attempted to help the Afghan peoples build a working government and army, at some point the Powell Doctrine expires. A decade was probably enough. I will stipulate “at some point” and leave it there.

So, then, two things can simultaneously be true in the above:

—Americans are tired of forever wars, and

—Americans assumed that the exit would look less like a complete hiding and defeat in detail, given the assurances to the contrary they heard from those in charge.

Ok, three: it IS a complete hiding and defeat in detail, with the news of mass murder and the usual Taliban slavery reinstated. Plus bonus gifts of an entire war machine given to seventh century mass murderers.

Then, on to the bonus round of things that are true:

—There have not been US official casualties for over 17 months in theatre. That’s not to say operators didn’t eat it or that the Vietnamization repeat, echoes of 1971-75, didn’t play out horrifyingly fast. Not even four months, let alone four years. That there was, that it happened exactly that way, shows the mass failure of the USG and the Afghani power structure.

—The Taliban didn’t even have to use a mass tank attack to make the Afghan “government” fall, a la Saigon. Does that mean the US should have kept propping up the wretched and corrupt Afghan government forever? I say “no”. Let’s say our lesson is: “insurgencies win when no one opposes them”, for now. What else we might learn from all this blood and treasure, I don’t know yet. But that, at least.

—The Taliban’s new buddies are the ChiComs. Belt and Road. Whether they will fare better in the Graveyard of Empires than anyone else in the last 200 years is yet to be determined. But they sure are going to look to make a buck there.

—As Africa, the West Pacific, and much of the ME show, the ChiComs don’t have to be world cops. World Ferengi works just fine for them. As HK, the Spratlys and Uighurs show, they don’t much care what anyone thinks or says.

—The free people of Taiwan now know the US guarantees aren’t enough. Whether they remain free through the end of the year is yet to be seen.

And, most ominously for anyone who thinks the USG should do better, we know one very troubling thing: those who are willing to fight and die for our freedom will think at least one more time before they enlist.

This is very convenient for the Chinese, of course.

And I want to emphasize this bit: “The last twenty years show the US intelligence and military communities are led by no one you’d want there. The last year, especially.”

Yes. After this record of failure, there should be mass purges and elimination of whole agencies. But no one will be fired.

One other implication: This makes an actual domestic insurgency (not some BS larping “insurrection”) somewhat more likely, because the government, being weak and inept, looks weak and inept, yet seems to be doubling down on making Americans dislike it, while treating its own troops with disrespect. Historically, that’s a very bad formula. You may hope that American civic institutions remain strong enough to prevent that — I do — but hope is not a plan, and our political class has spent the last few decades trying to tear down those very civic institutions. We’re not yet at the point where the United States could fall as quickly as Afghanistan, and we’re not even very close, but we’re getting steadily closer and the people running the country seem oblivious.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Since this posting quotes a couple of men with military experience, y’all might want to tell them that the US military is now in for a rather large drop in public esteem and reputation. The jig is up: the military is just another bunch of government grifters and babbling wokerati. From the 1980’s until last year, the US military came back from their humiliation in Vietnam and the attending ridicule and unvarnished public contempt to become the most highly regarded public institution in the US. Why? Because the military had standards, and they maintained them. Now the military is just as incompetent as the US State Department, only vastly more expensive.”

Oh, they know.

OPEN THREAD: Make my dreams come true.

FROM A FRIEND:

Could you please all add to your prayers those military members who had tours in Afghanistan, and are witnessing the reversal of their hard work, time, talent, tears, blood, etc? Many came home with PTSD and this is all terribly triggering for them (and I don’t use that word lightly). Of course the entire situation is beyond horrible and so many others are in need of intercession, but as someone hopelessly devoted to a 2-tour AFG vet, the past few weeks (and today especially) have revived in me an anger towards our military command that I thought I’d long since buried.

I won’t pretend to understand what our returned servicemembers are feeling, but if the number of “buddy check” calls my husband has participated in recently are any indication, many are feeling it very, very deeply.

Ugh. And yeah.

HE SHOULD’VE SPENT MORE TIME FIGHTING THE TALIBAN, LESS TIME FIGHTING WITH TUCKER CARLSON: Milley moves up terror threat to US after Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan.

Related:

THIS SEEMS LIKELY:

SPACE: SpaceX’s 1st private astronaut mission, Inspiration4, is just one month from launching into history.

BIG DEAL, THE CHINESE ARE PAYING PEOPLE TO SURRENDER OUR WHOLE COUNTRY: SHOCK: Taliban Is Paying Military Commanders to Surrender Cities, Journalist Embedded in Afghanistan Says.

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST:

“MY MOTHER SAYS WE SHOULD BUY A BURQA.”

HEADS SHOULD ROLL / CAREERS SHOULD BE ENDED: Don’t Ignore The CIA’s Intelligence Failure On Afghanistan.

Not only did the Central Intelligence Agency and other US intelligence agencies wildly underestimate the speed of the Taliban advance, but they also appear to have been blind to the extent of political dealings the Taliban had made as the withdrawal loomed and the military prepositioning the Taliban achieved to begin a near-simultaneous assault on provincial capitals. They appear to have missed the fact that Taliban shadow governors were already in place, alongside their staff, to take over provincial functions.

The question of what went wrong with US intelligence is not simply Monday morning quarterbacking. Both the Trump administration and then Biden’s team prefaced America’s withdrawal on the notion that US intelligence capabilities would enable the United States to maintain an over-the-horizon strike capability against both insurgents and terrorists. The CIA’s failure, however, shows that as US forces withdrew, they were essentially blind and that the White House built America’s post-withdrawal strategy on a rotten foundation.

Our intelligence community seems mostly good at playing domestic dirty tricks — and to be honest, they’re not especially good at that, either. But it’s not like there are consequences for screwing up.

ROGER KIMBALL: Afghanistan and the Cost of Having a ‘Normal’ President.

Consider this a letter of congratulations. I address it to Democrats everywhere who told us that Joe Biden would return the United States to a state of normality.

I address it also to those, many putative Republicans as well as Democrats, who fought tooth-and-nail against Donald Trump because—well, because he was not a “normal” politician.

Donald Trump issued mean tweets. He made fun of the media, often singling out reporters by name.

He was bombastic (more bombastic than President Joe Biden?).

He lied (again, did he lie more often than Biden?).

No thoughtful person believed there was anything to the fabricated gossip about Russian collusion in determining the 2016 election—which does not, of course, mean that that tissue of grotesque lies was not believed and assiduously circulated by many Big Names in the media.

Nor did it insulate Trump from being compared to virtually every tyrant in history (“literary Hitler,” remember?).

There is now a lot of hand-wringing about the performance of Joe Biden. I’ll give you a little then vs. now in a moment.

First, I want to raise the question of whether the people who helped put Joe Biden in office should have their hand-wringing licenses suspended.

There are several putatively conservative outlets—those that deserve Bill Kristol’s “elevated conservative” seal of approval—who worked overtime to disparage Trump.

They bought wholesale into the Jan.-6-riot-is-an-insurrection-threatening-“our-democracy” meme.

That is all looking as rancid as the Russian collusion delusion, but I haven’t heard any apologies.

Instead, we are treated to high-minded (by which I do not mean “intelligent”) analysis of Biden’s faults, blunders, mistakes.

I do wonder whether such people, who helped put Biden in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue deserve to be heard on the question of his liabilities.

I offer that for future consideration: should those who helped put Biden in office now deserve a hearing when they are complaining about his performance?

I confess that I do not listen to them.

Nor should you. They’re putzes.

I WOULDN’T CALL 11% EXACTLY “RARE.” IT’S NOT “FREQUENT,” BUT IT’S NOT REALLY “RARE,” EITHER. The COVID-19 vaccine rarely causes disease flares in people with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, according to a study published Wednesday by the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology. “Just 11% of adults with these diseases, which are autoimmune disorders caused by the immune system attacking healthy tissue in error, reported flares in symptoms that required treatment after vaccination, the data showed.”

LIBERALISM UNMASKED: Capital Research Center’s Michael Watson points to one consequence of the Pandemic that probably won’t be covered by the MSM.

IT’S ONLY A CRISIS WHEN THEY WANT IT TO BE A CRISIS: Cornell To Prohibit Faculty From Teaching Remotely Despite Rising COVID Cases. No Exceptions.

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. I was at the UT Hospital a couple of years ago waiting in the surgery lounge and tipped the maid ten bucks when she came in to clean. She seemed shocked that anyone would tip her and said “you don’t have to do that.” I replied, “no, but what you do is important.” She seemed almost as happy at that as at the money. But it’s true. Just spend some time in a place where they *don’t* clean regularly. I make a point of thanking cleaning people, and you should too. They don’t get enough respect.

‘IF THE TALIBAN FIND ME, THEY WILL KILL ME AND MY FAMILY,’ SAYS ABANDONED AFGHAN INTERPRETER.

BIDEN REJECTED ADVICE OF MILITARY GENERALS AHEAD OF AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL: REPORT.

Biden has his own advisors to choose from: Harris says she had key role in Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal decision.

BUT NO MEAN TWEETS: President Biden expected to address nation regarding Afghanistan in the next few days.

Related: Taliban Holds Press Conference From Presidential Palace While Biden Hides From Public.

(Emphasis mine.)

THEY’RE A NICE SNACK BEFORE TAIWAN: Xi Jinping Goes to War With Chinese Businesses.

Chinese regulators are cracking down on domestic companies, including technology, after-school learning, and real estate businesses. The crackdown is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s continued push to concentrate power and is consonant with President Xi Jinping’s efforts to deter domestic political opponents and business elites from challenging his authority. 

Perhaps nothing highlights the conflict between Xi and his opponents better than China’s decision to scrap Jack Ma’s Ant Group IPO and fine his company, Alibaba, $2.8 billion this past fall after the business mogul criticized Chinese regulators for suppressing financial innovation and economic progress. An investigation by Beijing revealed that some of Xi’s potential political opponents had invested heavily in Ant Group, which further incentivized the Chinese president to clamp down on the company. 

According to a July 29 roundup by Goldman Sachs, China has administered over 50 actions against domestic companies spanning cybersecurity, antitrust, financial regulations, and inequality since November. 

The increased regulatory scrutiny comes amid ongoing geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, who are engaged in what some have described as a new tech cold war. These developments are occurring in tandem: as leaders in Beijing seek to establish China as the dominant superpower on the world stage, the CCP is consolidating power at home. 

Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Covid-19 Infection High Among Vitamin D Deficient Black American Women.

But lockdowns probably make things worse: How Pandemic led to deficiency of Vitamin D, D3, and B12 amongst most Indians.

FLASHBACK: Taliban Poetry: Yes, They Write Poems, and They’re Surprisingly Diverse.

—Actual headline at the Atlantic, June 11, 2012.

So their authors and editors of the Atlantic are willing to defend the Taliban and their poetic brilliance, but got the vapors over Kevin Williamson. But then, as Mark Steyn has written, “our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.”

(Via Ben McDonald.)

Related:

U.S. EMBASSY IN AFGHANISTAN LOWERS FLAG AS TALIBAN PREPARES TO DECLARE ITS ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT. Updates: Taliban Take the Presidential Palace.

JOE BIDEN COMES FULL CIRCLE:

During a 2012 eulogy for George McGovern, Joe Biden recalled a confrontation he had with President Gerald Ford over pulling troops out of Vietnam. Ford had agreed to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which included then-freshman Joe Biden, to discuss the administration’s military funding requests during the fall of South Vietnam on April 14, 1975.

According to Biden’s account: “I said, ‘Begging the president’s pardon, but I’m sure if the president were in my position, the president would ask the president the following question.’ I swear to God, it’s in the transcript. And Ford looked at me very graciously, and he said, ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, you haven’t told us anything.’ They were talking about Sector 1, Sector 2, Sector 3, and with that the president turned and said, ‘Henry, tell them.’ And that was the first time it was decided that we were not going to try to sustain our presence [in Vietnam],” said Biden.

But Biden’s alleged statement, and the response from Ford, do not appear in the classified minutes of the meeting, which have been released by the Ford Library Museum. According to the transcript, Biden did speak up at the meeting to oppose military aid to help evacuate South Vietnamese allies alongside the U.S. troops. “I am not sure I can vote for an amount to put American troops in for one to six months to get the Vietnamese out. I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out,” said Biden, according to the transcript.

Found via Fred Bauer, who notes, “Biden has never made any secret of his tremendous admiration for McGovern, whom he views as a transformational and inspirational figure.”