Daily Broadside | Biden Declares He’s Awesome for Massive Evacuation

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 11:19
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them;
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”

September 1 and the work roller coaster has hit the apex of mid-week and is ready to race down through Thursday and Friday to the weekend. Thanks for joining me again this morning.

We’re out. The last American flight left Afghanistan 24 hours before Joey B’s self-imposed deadline of August 31, as though he was over-delivering for the American people. Too bad he didn’t take those additional 24 hours to get the rest of our citizens out as he promised.

Nearly 500 or 600 Americans (not 100-200) are stranded abandoned in that hellacious country, although we’re assured that “the military phase is over, but our desire to bring these people out remains as intense as it was before. The weapons have just shifted, if you will, from the military realm to the diplomatic realm.” I don’t know about you, but the orderly and disciplined withdrawal that we’ve witnessed over the last couple of weeks has my confidence in this administration’s capability at an all-time high.

Yeah no.

Some associated news accompanying the end of our mission there:

An Afghan interpreter who helped save then-Senator Joe Biden’s life in 2008 after the helicopter that he, Senator John Kerry and Senator Chuck Hagel were riding in was forced to land in a snowstorm in a remote part of the country. Now the interpreter, known only as Mohammed, is pleading with Biden to get him and his family out of Afghanistan.

Mohammed’s attempt to get into the U.S. has been held up for months by red tape. Veterans, who served with the interpreter on the more than “100 firefights,” made appeal after appeal to to get him out. He got to the Kabul airport, but when he was told his wife and children would not be able to come with him, he left and went into hiding.

Now Mohammed is begging Biden to get them all out: “Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family. Don’t forget me here.”

Good luck, Mohammed. Sugar Cone Joey didn’t even care enough to get all American citizens out.

Did you know that this administration is importing Afghans to America by the hundreds of thousands?

And now, just like thirteen years ago, our rulers want to use a crisis they created as justification to ram through what they always wanted to do anyway. Which, in this case, is to resettle a hundred or two hundred thousand (the number varies depending on who’s speaking) foreigners with no tradition of liberty—who are indeed from a culture deeply alien, even hostile to, Western civilizational norms—in your communities.

The justification for this is already being trumpeted: we must save our “allies,” translators and such, who helped us throughout our twenty-year failed experiment. This argument, though offered in bad faith, is effective because the vast majority of American consider abandoning an ally to a deadly enemy dishonorable.

But does anyone really believe that America has, or ever had—even over the duration of two decades—200,000 “allies” in Afghanistan? That we ever employed even a fraction of that number as translators? The claim is risible on its face.

The regime has in any case already admitted that, of the roughly 111,600 Afghans (as compared to 5,400 American citizens) already evacuated, it has no idea who the vast majority of them are. Our masters tell us that we must save “allies” and “translators”—and then in the next breath admit that they’re indiscriminately taking anyone. People who act and speak this brazenly do so out of a deep reservoir of contempt and hatred. The message is “We can do and say whatever we want; we can lie and contradict ourselves within the same sentence, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, if you object, or even notice, we will use our power to crush you.”

As a believer, I welcome the opportunity to share the love of Christ with an Afghani. As an American citizen, however, I don’t trust the government rulers who are obviously seeking to overthrow the American experiment in freedom by dividing and conquering. Bringing Afghans here where it is unlikely the majority will assimilate but isolate themselves in communities closed to outsiders will continue to fracture our society. American culture is going the way of the dodo.

So now that our 20-year “war” in Afghanistan is over, what happens now? Nearly 90 retired generals and admirals signed a letter urging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should resign. Their reasoning is that the catastrophic failure in Afghanistan has enormous consequences “‘and will reverberate for decades beginning with the safety of Americans and Afghans’ left behind under Taliban rule.”

They argued that upon learning about President Joe Biden’s plan to close the Bagram Air Base, both Milley and Austin should have “recommended against this dangerous withdrawal in the strongest possible terms.” If the president went forward with it against their advice, they should have “resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.”

[…]

When Biden decided to hold firm with the Aug. 31 withdrawal date, the senior military leaders “had a choice” to make, Arbuckle added.

“They could either salute and go try to execute the orders as best as they can,” or they could’ve resigned and told Biden, “I cannot in all good conscience follow that order because I understand the serious implications coming from it.”

“We need to make it clear that the ultimate decision making in anything that has to do with conflicts of warfare is the president of the United States,” he continued. “He decides … all matters regarding warfare. So it all comes back to the political side.”

You know that your tax dollars and mine funded the 20-year war. Did you know the government gave billions to contractors?

Over the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. spent $89 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund the building and training of the Afghan National Army with an estimated $2.26 trillion in total operating costs funded by U.S. taxpayers.

Reminder: government doesn’t produce anything to collect its receipts, which it calls “revenue” — as though it were a business conducting transactions with the public. It simply decrees that it is allowed to take obscene amounts of money from you and me and then does it. I believe we fought a war of independence over excessive taxation.

Seven buses of “orphans, Christians and 25 American citizens” were turned away at the Kabul airport after former Recon Marine Chad Robichaux coordinated the rescue efforts. Here’s what he wrote to a friend:

“Our two guys on the ground spent all night rescuing 7 buses loads of people: 300 orphans, 100 Christians, 25 Americans,” the message read. “The families of the pilots that have been shuttling our flights.”

“After getting them on the airport and into a holding area, the Colonel over the 82nd had the whole group kicked off the airport and into the hands of the Taliban because he didn’t like the fact that we were out there rescuing people,” Robichaux claimed. “Essentially murdered them.”

An “update” from Robichaux said, “We have unofficial intel that they ended up in the hands of the Taliban.”

Finally, while some military working dogs have been evacuated from Afghanistan, a few dozen service dogs have been abandoned to the Taliban.

“As the country’s first national humane organization and largest certifier of animal welfare in the world, it sickens us to sit idly by and watch these brave dogs who valiantly served our country be put to death or worse,” Ganzert said.

Another group, Veteran Sheepdogs of America, said on Monday it was attempting to get 51 working dogs out of Kabul. On Tuesday, the group said it was able to raise $1.67 million to charter a 737 plane to evacuate the animals, but needed another $500,000 to replace an animal rescue operation that “fell through.”

It’s all so pathetic and humiliating. But leave it to president 45 to bring a sane American message to America.

https://youtu.be/gtuxITTXzT0

Daily Broadside | One Reason for 7 Months of Mayhem

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 5:15
“You will be a reproach and taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the Lord have spoken.”

Happy Tuesday, my Broadside friends and the last day of August. What if tacos didn’t start with a “T” but you still wanted to have them on Tuesdays?

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the demoralizing chaos we’re seeing in Afghanistan is an intentional act of sabotage and is an impeachable offense. There is no way that the United States is this incompetent. It’s true that there’s no ignition for Biden’s cognition, but there are supposed to be several checks and balances in place to limit the damage any one branch of the government can do.

Congress can demand answers, can close the checkbook, or can impeach the Resident if necessary. Trump was impeached over a phone call. Yet we hear nothing from the either side of the aisle that gives us any hope that they’re fighting this corruptocrat and his cronies on behalf of normal Americans.

The military is supposed to an apolitical civilian institution that is wise in the ways of war. Yet, it is clear that they are either following orders that are destructive to America’s reputation most likely because they’ve been overtaken by ‘woke’ leadership that started under Barack Hussein Obama, who replaced nearly 200 generals, colonels and flag officers in the U.S. military over five years with men and women who supported his socialist views in an unprecedented purge.

We were warned back then that Obama’s purge was a huge mistake. It wasn’t a “mistake.” It was the purposeful degradation of the greatest military the world has ever seen.

Add to the wreck that’s Afghanistan the invasion of illegals across our southern border and the ongoing population displacement; the Peking Lung Pox lock downs, mask mandates, the vaccination jab pressure campaign and vaccine passports; the shut down of the Keystone pipeline and high gas prices along with huge inflationary pressures; the unrestrained rioting in cities across the country with very few criminal charges or prosecutions; the January 6 breach of Capitol Hill being made more than what it was, and a black officer murdering an unarmed white woman during that breach who claims he “saved multiple lives” while being absolved of any crime; and the irrational spending campaign of $3.5 trillion dollar budget along with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill — and people are understandably alarmed at the near-anarchy that has engulfed the nation in just seven months.

The big question not being asked is, “Why?” Why is this administration allowing everything to go to hell?

Doug Wilson wrote a post on Monday that he described as “one of the more important things I have written. Not to overstate it, or to puff it up, or to give way to ungodly hype, but I do believe we are converging on a crisis moment in our nation, and the way we respond to that crisis moment when it comes will be critical.”

He goes on:

I saw a meme float by the other day that I thought summed up one part of our situation quite nicely. The sentiment expressed was pungent, provocative, and pithy. “You cannot screw up a country this bad in seven months unless it’s on purpose.”

That seems like a compelling observation, except for just one part of it. And that would be the question why? How would that benefit anybody? Cui bono? Who stands to benefit from a deliberate dismantling and degradation of the American way of life? Surely no elected official, right?

He then pivots to exactly what he thinks is the “why” behind the “what” (my emphasis):

I believe that middle America is being deliberately exasperated in order to provoke an unseemly and gaudy reaction sometime prior to the midterms. In other words, I believe that the ruling elites are picking a fight, trying to provoke unrest, and are doing so in order to be able to justify measures that are genuinely repressive. Repressive measures in the aftermath of some big incident could be trumpeted as “saving the republic” from her enemies. But if they do it without such an incident, the power grab would be just naked and kind of out there.

If that reaction finally happens—say a right wing protest at a federal building somewhere turns violent—it will be used as an excuse for emergency measures. The reaction from middle America will have to be violent enough to justify the emergency measures, but not violent enough to accomplish much of anything for the participants.

On top of that, the resultant emergency measures will need to be robust enough to alter or delay the results of the midterms. This is because the party in power almost always loses ground in the midterms, and if that pattern were to hold true in 2022, then the Democrats would lose both the House and the Senate. Now in the current climate, do you believe that they are in any frame of mind to lose the House and the Senate? I didn’t think so. Joe Biden is about as sharp as a pound of wet liver. Can you imagine a feckless Biden with a Congress controlled by the opposition? Sitting on top of a gigantic 300 million strong rugby scrum?

He then counsels caution.

And so the takeaway lesson for conservatives is: don’t take the bait. Under no circumstances should we take the bait. I think I may have mentioned before that we should not take the bait.

This is a hard bit of advice to hear, because I know people who are angry at the destructive nature of this administration and who suspect a puppeteer behind the scenes telling Biden when he can and can’t take questions and which reporters to call on.

We’re being scammed.

So the counsel to not act creates a tension between the fear that we’re losing our country and needing to wait until 2022 when we will (presumably) win back Congress and apply the brakes to the runaway train we’re riding. That is, if we can get a fair and honest election anywhere.

In the meantime, Joe Biden checks his watch during the “dignified transfer ceremony” at Dover Air Force base as the bodies of our murdered service members are brought home, and falls asleep (or, at a minimum, refuses eye contact) during a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister.

I know I’m not alone in my thinking that this is “malevolent incompetence” (Roger Kimball). There is something deeply disturbing about all of this, and I’m afraid that the reason isn’t something we will be happy to learn.

Buy ammo and keep praying that the Lord will intervene.