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.

DON’T REWARD IRANIAN VIOLENCE BY ENDING ECONOMIC SANCTIONS: The column begins with a look at the Navy’s recent seizure of a “stateless” dhow smuggling weapons via the Arabian Sea.

To quote the U.S. Navy’s official announcement, on May 6 the cruiser USS Monterey “seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea.” The list of weaponry aboard the dhow included advanced Russian-made anti-tank missiles, around 3,000 Chinese assault rifles, several hundred light machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers and “advanced optical sights.”

On a battlefield, those weapons set could arm a light infantry brigade of 4,000 soldiers — or guerrilla fighters.

More:

Smugglers prowl the north Arabian Sea (an arm of the Indian Ocean), moving narcotics, stolen electronics, even Persian rugs. But smuggling a calculated weapons mix like the USN seized?

Iran’s dictators scream plausible deniability but their corrupt state planned, assembled and shipped the weapons.

Why? The junta is intrinsically violent.

Read the entire essay.

BLUE ANGEL SUPER HORNET: The Blue Angels perform during the Wings Over South Texas Air Show. The 2021 show season is Blue Angels’ first year flying the Super Hornet. Photo taken May 2, 2021.

WARTHOG PRE-FLIGHT: The business end of the A-10.

ON THE NAVY’S RECENT “ROBOT AND DRONE” FLEET BATTLE PROBLEM: U.S. Navy Must Win Wars, With Robots and Perhaps Without Them.

…Navy Fleet battle problems have a remarkable history for testing technology, training sailors, developing organizations and informing long-term decisions that have greatly benefited the United States. I’m referring to the 1920s and 1930s battle problems, which always had a trans-oceanic campaign against Japan as their strategic backdrop.

Prescient? Yes. And the battle problems were rigorous in execution and detailed in evaluation.

2021’s fleet problem, under wartime-like operational conditions, tested gee-whiz military and communications technology, specifically unmanned warships and unmanned aircraft, some remotely controlled, some autonomously or semi-autonomously controlled.

Check it out.

REVIVING OBAMA’S IRAN “NUCLEAR DEAL” MEANS WAR, NOT PEACE: But Slow Joe seems Hell bent on reviving Obama’s so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).

Incorporating “comprehensive” in the JCPOA’s name was reprehensibly dishonest, for the Obama deal was not comprehensive. Follow the JCPOA’s timeline and you discover the Obama administration gave Tehran’s bad guys billions in cash before they officially agreed to the slimy deal.

The ayatollahs used Obama’s payoff cash to wage war in Yemen and Syria.

In May 2018, I wrote that the JCPOA failed to penalize the Iranian regime’s violent troublemaking and its criminal operations, a grievous flaw. I wrote that column a week after Israel released an information trove documenting the regime’s failure to comply with key JCPOA nuclear weapons development provisions.

The economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration frustrated Iran’s ability to finance war and terror. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was the predicate action that made the Abraham Accords possible — Nobel Prize-worthy peace treaties between Israel and the UAE and other Arab states.

It’s my latest Creators Syndicate column.