Daily Verse | Lamentations 3:22-23
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Good morning my friends. A new week and as the verse above says, the Lord’s compassions are new every morning and his faithfulness is great. That’s good news for those of us who watch in dismay the foolishness on display across the world.
The names of our dead in Afghanistan were published over the weekend. They are:
Rylee McCollum, 20
David L. Espinoza, 20
Dylan R. Merola, 20
Jared M. Schmitz, 20
Kareem M. Nikoui, 20
Maxton Soviak, 22
Hunter Lopez, 22
Humberto A. Sanchez, 22
Daegan Page, 23
Nicole L. Gee, 23
Ryan Knauss, 23
Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25
Darin T. Hoover, 31
The Epoch Times carried a short profile of each person, which you can read here.
Kathy McCollum, the mother of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum vented her grief at Joe Biden, who is absolutely responsible for the wreck occurring in Afghanistan (and don’t let him or his enablers tell you otherwise). Listen if you can bear it.
Sgt. Nicole Gee had posted a photo of her cradling an infant on Instagram a week prior to her death. Accompanying the picture, she wrote, “I love my job.”
This, to me, exemplifies the American military. We are strong, but we are also compassionate. We fight when we have to, but we aren’t unnecessarily cruel or heartless. Of course, there are exceptions like the boneheads at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but our shock at their behavior proves the rule.
The tragedy here is that these 13 deaths didn’t have to happen. They could have, they might have, but with another president in office, the chances that they would have were exceptionally small. The original plan (Trump’s) that the Biden administration abandoned had civilians out first rather than last. There wouldn’t have been the tightly packed crowds offering themselves as targets like the current situation with flights scarce.
It is so hard for me to understand the thinking behind the decisions that led to this outcome. I don’t know who’s doing the ‘thinking’ but I conclude that this is the preferred result for whoever is pulling Joey Ice Cream’s puppet strings. We aren’t this incompetent nor destructive.
Another thing that just short-circuits my brain is the massive amount of armament that Joey Sprinkles basically gifted to our enemies. The mind-numbing scale and sheer numbers are becoming increasingly clear. A graphic going around shows the enormity of the ‘error.’
I assume that these weapons were meant for the Afghan army which, as you can see, totaled some 300,000 troops. But that army disintegrated at the first sign of having to stand on their own two feet. 22,000 Humvees? 358,530 assault rifles? Helicopters? Airplanes?
It’s not just weapons that we used to arm Afghan forces and then fell into Taliban hands. It’s vehicles and equipment that, like Bagram air base, Biden simply ordered be abandoned. Left behind, like American citizens in the streets of Kabul.
The Biden retreat will have worldwide consequences for decades.
I’m not the only one who thinks this whole thing stinks to high heaven, and not just because of what looks like raging incompetence. Roger Kimball suspects it’s more than that.
The question that has not really been pressed about this rather awe-inspiring armory is, why?
Why did we leave it behind to be used by the Taliban?
I don’t believe that question has been addressed with anything like the determination it deserves.
Some people have suggested that it was just a matter of simple incompetence on the part of the Biden administration, particularly the State Department, which is overseeing the evacuation, and the president himself, who apparently chose to ignore advice from some of his advisors about the time table for the evacuation.
But I suspect there is something more insidious than simple incompetence.
What we’re dealing with here is politicized, and therefore, malevolent incompetence.
The U.S. has left American citizens, Afghan interpreters, allies and millions of people at the mercy of the Taliban. But we’ve also left something else behind that is ultimately more damaging:
