Daily Verse | Jeremiah 45:5
Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not.
Happy Thursday, Broadsiders! I splurged on a waterproof encyclopedia for my shower.
The outrage taking place in Afghanistan is almost beyond belief. In my opinion, the situation is the consequence of what was deliberately intended. But it buggers belief to see the extent to which our government has gone to completely screw us over.
I mean that just as it’s written. Our federal government has screwed us, the American people.
The withdrawal process was performed completely backwards from what our military planners know works, resulting in American citizens being stranded in country without the U.S. military conducting evacuations. In essence, if you’re in Afghanistan, it’s up to you to evacuate yourself to the Kabul airport, dodging the Taliban along the way and at the airport. Same if you’re an Afghan ally — you’re on your own unless you get to the airport (on your own).
Just as bad, there’s the staggering amount of deadly weapons that we’ve essentially abandoned to the Taliban and whoever their allies will be (most likely the Russians and Chinese). Have you seen the list?
I think the numbers she cites, plus several others, are in this article in Forbes magazine. You might want to sit down in a soundproof room before clicking that link and reading about the loss that you and I funded.
I can’t confirm the following compilation posted on Facebook by Jon Thompson, who didn’t provide a source for his list. It seems to align, though, with the broad numbers Mollie Hemingway cites above.
The Taliban has seized US weapons left in Afghanistan worth billions — possibly including 600,000 assault rifles, some 2,000 armored vehicles, and 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks, according to reports.
The US gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in weaponry between 2002 and 2017 — including seven brand new helicopters delivered to Kabul just a month ago.
The war chest also included the supply of at least 600,000 infantry weapons — including M16 assault rifles — as well as 162,000 pieces of communication equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles.
In just two years from 2017 to 2019, the US gave 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, The Hill noted, citing a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
I’m sputtering with anger. This isn’t just incompetence. This is a massive, indefensible failure of the greatest magnitude, with ramifications for not only America, but for our allies and most of the rest of the world.
Not only that, but billions of American tax dollars were redirected to fund lavish lifestyles for those in power (emphasis mine):
[Dostum] remained an integral part of the government that the U.S. was propping up, and so when Taliban jihadis filmed themselves walking around his unbelievably opulent residence, it was hard not to think about all the rusting bridges, trestles scrawled with graffiti, and pothole-laden roads in America, and wonder if our taxpayer money might have been put to better use …
How could this dedicated military officer and public servant possibly have amassed the funds to pay for his Disneyland dream palace? Why, you and I paid for it, along with all the other American taxpayers. And that’s by no means all that we bought. Dostum wasn’t the only Afghan official who got a luxury home …
In sum, “the waste of taxpayers’ money was astonishing, with ‘ghost’ schools and military forces, counter-narcotic efforts that backfired, dodgy construction and fuel deals siphoning off billions, and cash and gold smuggled out through Kabul airport.”
If president Trump were in office and this happened, Nancy Pelosi would be drawing up her third or fourth set of articles of impeachment by now and marching them over to the Senate in some kind of somber parade — we all know that. The fact that she isn’t tells you all you need to know about her partisanship and the fact that she isn’t a champion of We, the People.
But the media-ocracy has created a terrible situation for the American people. It arranged to install an unqualified cypher as “president” with a cringy and completely unqualified “vice-president” in Kamala Harris. Neither of them should be anywhere near the top of our political structure.
“Biden is a media-made mediocrity.” Yet here we are.
If we boot Joe Biden out of the White House (where he is fraudulently squatting), we get Kamala. She would not be an improvement. So we keep Joe Biden?
No one is going to be held accountable for the callous irresponsibility this administration has shown. Biden is merely a sock puppet. He’s a doddering fool and has lost his mental acuity (not that there was much there to begin with). That’s not an insult; that’s the truth.
You should be furious over the humiliating spectacle that is Afghanistan. That’s money that was taken from you and me through profligate taxation and wasted over twenty years in a stone-age country while enriching contractors and the men at the top. It’s always been that way and always will be that way. How do you think Biden became a millionaire while in Washington for 50 years?
The junior commies in Washington are wrecking this country and putting us all in grave danger. They need to be thrown out, and soon.