MALAKAL PASSAGE, REPUBLIC OF PALAU: The littoral combat ship USS Jackson sails through the Malakal Passage with three Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships. The task force includes the helicopter destroyer JS Kaga. Destroyer? It’s a jumpjet aircraft carrier. Photo taken September 2 — and it’s a good one, the sea, ships and sky. Here’s a 2017 StrategyPage Naval Air update about Japan’s carrier force. The post mentions the Kaga. The 2017 post is good background but it is a bit dated. Japan is now definitely buying F-35B vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

LET’S GO TO THE VIDEO: Blinken Firing Blanks, Day 2. Powerline’s Scott Johnson posts a video summary of Blinken’s very bad day before the Senate Armed Services Committee. I watched a lot of the hearing live on C-SPAN. Scott’s collection captures several of the more salient moments.

BIDEN TO DESECRATE 9/11: Part One and Part Two (remote desecration).

MOVING AN AIR FORCE SUPER BIG GUY: Good photo of an airman directing a C-5M Super Galaxy transport prior to takeoff. Photo snapped Aug. 21, 2021, at Travis Air Force Base, California.

OILY ANTONY AND JAW DROP JEN MIMIC “THE BIG GUY” BIDEN: Biden Administration Word Games Cannot Hide Prolonged Hostage Crisis — but they’re trying.

Blinken and Psaki mimic President Joe Biden’s repugnant 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.

My latest Creators Syndicate column (bumped).

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: Singapore confronts China.

BIDEN, BLINKEN AND PSAKI WORD GAMES IN LIEU OF ACTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY: At the bottom line:

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.

Read the entire essay.

BIDEN BUGS OUT: A few of Scott Johnson’s 12 thoughts and observations:

• Biden is spent. His remarks were pathetic and stupid. He gives human form to our humiliation. He embodies it. Anyone can see that.

• Charles Lipson rendered this concise verdict after the attack but before Biden’s remarks: “This deadly fiasco didn’t just happen on his watch. It happened because of his decisions, a series of fundamentally bad ones, taken by the President himself.” Anyone can see that too.

• Our political system does not offer an appropriate remedy for the epic failure of the Biden administration. Has any president ever stood so exposed in the opening months of his administration? Have we ever had a more ridiculous vice president than Kamala Harris standing next in line? Next in line after Kamala Harris is Nancy Pelosi. Next in line after Nancy Pelosi is Patrick Leahy.

• Biden vowed: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget.” His vow made me reflect on Biden’s literal memory issues. He can’t even remember the name of his Secretary of Defense — you know, the General.

• It is hard to take Biden’s vow seriously in the context of our retreat and surrender. It has a Monty Python quality to it.

There’s more…and Scott gets bonus points for recognizing a good title when he reads one.

THE FACE OF HUMILIATION: Behold, your Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.

THIS IS JUST A VERY GOOD A-10 PHOTO: Warthog On The Road. A Michigan Air National Guard A-10 Thunderbolt II prepares to land on a public highway in Alpena, Michigan. Photo taken August 5, 2021.

THE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF BIDEN’S BUGOUT:

Biden’s humiliating blunder has deadly consequences for those left behind, including American citizens and deserving Afghans promised protection and safe harbor for their service to U.S. and NATO forces.

Mid-term, democracies worldwide will confront reinvigorated militant Islamist terrorist organizations (now armed with U.S. equipment). Communist China is already arguing Biden’s bugout demonstrates American promises are unreliable. Long-term, Taiwan and South Korea take note.

No-Brainer No. 1, Biden: Don’t leave a war zone until you’ve secured every American citizen. As of Aug. 24, U.S. citizens remain in Helmand province, the city of Kandahar and in Kabul — but you don’t know how many.

No-Brainer No. 2: The military withdraws last, after you evacuate citizens and eligible foreign nationals. No-Brainer No. 3: When altered ground conditions threaten American lives, even a subpar president demands flexibility and backs the demand with power. A third-rate piker president would have told the Taliban, “We tell you when we withdraw, you don’t tell us.”

No-Brainer 4, Joe: I just gave you an alternative Course of Action. To avoid fourth-rate failure status, you could still take it, even after your absurd Aug. 24 speech.

It’s my latest Creators Syndicate column. Unfortunately there are a couple of minor editing errors, and those do get through occasionally. No Brainer #5 (also directed at White House resident Joe) is mislabeled as 3. The typo will be corrected. Slow Joe needs a complete correction, but I don’t see that happening.

UPDATE: How about that. Insta-corrections!

THE LATEST STRATEGYTALK TALKS TURKEY: From Ottoman Empire To Erdogan Empire. Recorded the morning of August 6. An MP3 version is available here. The webmaster asked me to add this to the instapost: if you like StrategyTalk on YouTube, please subscribe. Since the recording Turkey faces a wave of Afghan refugees, though there were signs that problem was developing. Jim Dunnigan and I recorded a StrategyTalk episode on Afghanistan yesterday. I’m not certain when it will be available but I suspect its production will be fast-tracked.

MY LATEST CREATORS SYNDICATE COLUMN: Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Didn’t Have To Happen. I wrote it Tuesday. StrategyPage had it up very early Wednesday, so I linked to it. Glenn bumped it yesterday. Powerline also linked to it (thanks guys). As time passes it becomes crystal clear the last sentences are tragically accurate: “There was time. Incompetent, arrogant and oblivious White House leadership compounded by obscenely bad interagency planning created the horror we witness and the slaughter to be.” Time for what? A systematic and coordinated (with allies) withdrawal of deserving Afghan civilians, U.S. equipment and U.S. military personnel The column also briefly discusses the planning time line for a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) for an area as large as Afghanistan. And it deplores the abandonment of Bagram.

RELATED: A photo from 2012 of a USAF C-17 taxiing at Bagram Airfield. Good picture. Bagram was/is an impressive facility. If we’re serious about evacuating 80,000 people we need to regain control. I visited Bagram twice, the first time in 2005 the second in 2007. During the 2005 trip I spent three or four days there, in my foreign correspondent embed role. One day during the stint I accompanied a U.S. Army MP platoon on a motor patrol. The patrol’s purpose was “presence” –check out routes for signs of suspicious activity and meet and greet the locals. In at least two small villages the platoon leader and the interpreter spoke with local leaders. Just remembered this: the medic on the patrol checked out a sick child. All told the patrol took maybe six hours. The interpreter was outstanding and unusual: an Afghan who was a naturalized U.S. citizen. He’d been living in California for 30 years and if I recall correctly, owned a chemical engineering firm. He told me he was a wealthy man and could be home in California. But the Afghan people deserved better and now (2005) they have a chance. He didn’t need to expand on a chance for what. I knew what he meant.

C-17 BRINGING A CHINOOK TO AFGHANISTAN: Photo taken June 16.

REMEMBER WHEN TURKISH ARMY TROOPS WERE SUPPOSED TO GUARD THE KABUL AIRPORT?: That was under discussion just three weeks ago. Turkey is still interested in guarding the airport. But — no surprise– tt’s a complicated mess.

BIDEN’S AFGHANISTAN DISASTER DIDN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN: Joke Biden — a wretched, murderous joke. Read the whole thing.

(Bumped.)

A LOOK AT THE HAGUE ARBITRATION COURT’S 2016 RULING AGAINST CHINA: A column of mine published July 20.

In blunt language, the Court concluded China’s communist government had robbed the Philippines and launched a slow, calculated and highly illegal invasion of the SCS. The ruling dismissed Beijing’s ridiculous “Nine-Dash Line” claim to own roughly 85% of the SCS’ 2.2 million square miles.

The ruling is very valuable. But: “Ultimately, navies enforce maritime law, not courts.” Read the entire essay.

CATCHING UP WITH POSTS: How Politicians Fiddle With The Military. The focus is on American politicians. It’s another StrategyTalk that should have been posted two weeks ago.

STRATEGYTALK: To Train The Fleet. Jim Dunnigan and Dr. Al Nofi discuss Al’s now classic naval history To Train The Fleet. The books is especially relevant now.

BAMBI TRAINING: A USN MH-60S Knighthawk conducts aerial firefighting training at Naval Station Norfolk. The collapsible Bambi Bucket was developed in the 1980s. It turns a helicopter into a firetruck.

CUBAN FREEDOM REBELLION SHAKES CUBAN, CHINESE AND AMERICAN SOCIALIST ELITES: A relevant quote-

The communist regime believes the protests and the demands are coordinated. By whom? Cuba’s foreign minister claimed — without evidence — the U.S. had financed the protests. Typical communist narrative warfare — blame the U.S. The CCP blamed the U.S. for inciting Tiananmen’s and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.

Fidel Castro had charisma. International “progressive” leftists — sad cases like Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY — still venerate Fidel and excuse the regime’s vicious tyranny.

Diaz-Canel has minus personality, so 2021’s regime suffers from a severe charisma deficit it cannot blame on America. He just isn’t capable of jiving mass audiences with “hope” and utopian rhetoric. However, he is as long winded as Fidel. The BBC reported he gave a four-hour-long televised rant calling protestors “counter-revolutionaries.” He stated, “The order of combat is given, the revolutionaries take to the streets.”

More narrative warfare: “Revolutionaries” translated from Commie propaganda means “armed thugs the regime provides with food and toilet paper.” Diaz-Canel was ordering his security forces to attack the demonstrators. He hopes repression works.

Read the entire essay.

CHINA LIED, PEOPLE DIED, PLANET-WIDE: There’s the world’s new bumper sticker, summarizing the pandemic the Chinese Communist Party created when it let the Wuhan/CCP virus spread world-wide and kill en masse. From the Creators Syndicate column I wrote last week but just now got around to posting on Instapundit.

HOLDING ISLAMIC STATE TERRORISTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE YAZIDI GENOCIDE IN IRAQ: It appears the perpetrators some of the most hideous crimes against humanity committed in the last decade may be punished. But justice is slow. A new UN report updates the international investigation of the genocide ISIS thugs committed against Iraqi Yazidis in 2014.

Genocide is the correct word. If it describes the 1994 campaign of mass ethnic murder waged by radical ethnic Hutus against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda, then it definitely describes the mass murder and rape Islamic State monsters committed against the vulnerable Yazidis. ISIS’ mass murder and campaign of rape against the Yazidis had both ethnic and sectarian (religious) dimensions. It is deeply regrettable that political propagandists have used the word to shock and manipulate, labeling speech they dislike as “genocidal.” Real genocide is an unspeakable physical horror.

Read the entire essay.

ASSAULT SHIP PHOTO-OP: The USS Makin Island viewed through the clouds.

STRATEGYTALK: Israel and Iran face-off. The latest StrategyTalk podcast from StrategyPage. If you like it, please subscribe.

VERY RELATED: The column I wrote eight days ago: Don’t Reward Iranian Violence By Ending Economic Sanctions.