Xiden yesterday to the G7- “During a meeting this morning with the G-7 leaders, the president conveyed that our mission in Kabul will end based on the achievement of our objectives,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in an afternoon news briefing. “He confirmed we are currently on pace to finish by Aug. 31 and provided an update on progress in evacuating Americans who want to come home, third-country nationals, and Afghans who were our allies during the war.”
Full article, HERE.
It appears that the ONLY people to be evacuated in the next six days are US passport holders and SIV, nobody else, according to one report from State… WTF???
Meanwhile- the Veep was saying this- After fleeing to Singapore to let Joe Biden handle the criticism for the situation in Afghanistan, Kamala Harris bizarrely described the widely panned botched withdrawal from Afghanistan as ” a successful drawdown” of the embassy.
“There’s no question there will be and should be a robust analysis of what has happened, but right now there’s no question that our focus has to be on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us and vulnerable Afghans, including women and children,” Harris said.
Full article, HERE.
While the reality is that nobody seems to know how many Americans have actually been taken out, OR how many are left… And they punched the first load of military out yesterday…
And neither Baghdad Bob Kirby or Raggedy Ann Psaki will actually answer a damn question…
So fed up with this mess, the administration, and DOD. This is an embarrassment to every veteran who served, the USA as a whole, and has driven a wedge between us and our closest allies.
The blood of the STRANDED Americans and Afghan supporters will be on Biden, Harris, Austin, and Milley’s hands.
At least the retired folks, analysts, and ‘others’ are doing what they can to get people out any way, and anywhere they can! AND apparently having to fight with State if, big IF, they can get through the perimeter to the airport. Indications are State is not processing anybody that does not have ALL their paperwork…
And living conditions are in the toilet, literally, at the airport. Water/sewer are apparently out, food and water are running out, etc. Of course it’s only going to get worse when the Taliban/Al Qaeda/Haqqani kill all of those that ‘could’ run the power plants, water plants, etc. And their only income will be from smuggling, sales of $87B of military equipment, and ransoms on those they will be holding (see Tehran 1979)…
I don’t give a tinker’s darn about all the Afghans. They don’t belong here, don’t fit in here, and will never assimilate. State has already imported tens of thousands of them, and dumped them on unsuspecting cities and towns across America. Usually in “too White” and “too Republican” areas.
The only Afghans with any intestinal fortitude are already in the Taliban. (And most of them are technically Pakistanis!)
Only American citizens with full and complete paperwork will be allowed on airplanes. As opposed to just about any Afghan who shows up at the gate.
Last week it was “if you can get to the Airport we’ll get you out.” This week, a number of Americans have ran the gauntlet of Taliban checkpoints and gotten to the gates of the Airport, only to be turned away by State Department personnel. WTF!!!!
Just outrageous.
https://t.me/rtintl/10591
So, will the chicoms hit Taiwan before Xiden leaves office, or after?
If I was in Taiwan now , I would be getting ready to leave right soon if I had the means to escape.
FYI,
The WSJ published this in April.
Nobody in DC in the drawdown chain can legitimately say they didn’t know.
President Biden’s decision to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan ran counter to the recommendations of his top military commanders, who feared it could undermine security in the country.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, who leads NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all recommended retaining the current force of 2,500 troops while stepping up diplomacy to try to cement a peace agreement, U.S. officials say.
Zhiao Bi-Den may be remembered with even more contempt than Neville Chamberlin.
McC- Point… And yes, ISI has been funding/training the Taliban for YEARS!!!
Ed- IF they can get there…
NRW- Yeah, interesting, that…
LSP- Concur
RHT- Prior, I think they’ve moved their timeline up considerably!
Jet- Excellent points, and it’s interesting how ‘those’ people have been ignored.
T- He’s definitely working on it.
I remember reading, one time long ago in a fairy tale version of history (apparently,) that one of the functions of a country’s embassy was to keep track of all of that country’s peoples in whatever land the embassy was currently located in, so that, during times of civil unrest in the host country, or outright war, or space aliens, or bigfoot, or bigfoot space aliens from trans-dimensional space, that the orderly finding and evacuation of the people of the country that the embassy belongs to could be handled in an orderly fashion.
Why in the Truck didn’t our embassy/state department/other governmental agency have the least idea of the numbers, names, usual locations, family back in the States, contact numbers or addresses, parent corporations (for those working on contract in said foreign land for some corporation) or other stuffs and use said lists to check off who’s safe and who’s not?
Well, of course not in this Mongolian Cluster Fruck of an administration.
Quite frankly, if this was the only dumb move by the selected officials that this should be enough to tear the whole fabric of the current government down, from the President Select, to the VP select, to senior State Department officials, Pentagon officials, Congresscritters, bureaucrats and other unelected ‘officials.’
What the heck?
As to the evacuation of Afghan ‘civilians,’ I remember reading and talking to evacuated Vietnamese where the man of the family and the oldsters often laid their life down to make sure the women and children got out. Whereas all I see of the Afghan ‘refugees’ is the same damn thing I see every time something goes wrong in the Muddled East, military age men and no women or children, running away like women or children, but no actual women or children.
Simple rule from now on, Womens and Childrens first, and if you aren’t accompanied by women and children related to you, or women and children who actually want to leave said hell-hole you are leaving, then the only thing you get is a boot in the butt, and maybe a round in the head.
So tired of the Religion of Pieces attitude towards women and children last.
Because some of us prefer not to check in, or tour groups don’t check in and provide the info. I never notified State when I was in Western or Central Europe.
Instead, I kept track of several news sources, local and otherwise, so I could get my and my group out of the way if trouble erupted or looked as if it was about to get interesting.
I’m quite familiar with our treatment of our faithful Montagnard allies.
This? Montagnard 2.0, on steroids.
And the tragedy is, this virtually guarantees more money and lives will be spent when we have to return.
History?
“We don’ need to know no stupid history.”
My one glimmer of hope is the Specialist Four mafia, aided by suddenly blind NCOs, are leaving much of the equipment with “maintenance” issues. As to the senior officers, you are a bunch of spineless s**tbags.
@ OldNFO
The two main sources of funding, through ISI, is Saudi money (you know, those allies with whom GWB held hands during a walk through the Garden of the Waco White House) and US foreign aid earmarked for other projects … which is where they got their atomic weapons funding, as well. And meanwhile, Pakistan is selling US technology to the Chicoms, but that money is going to the retirement accounts of leading Pakis. I keep wondering why the US is kissing so much Paki ass. Do we have an affinity for curry ass, or what?
In hindsight, Pelosi is a big wheel in this, and motor voter makes it look like this has been in the cards for a while. If Democrats in congress have known for thirty years that they were working towards this, then funding Pakistan and other regimes makes sense as a way to support whatever it is they think they are pulling domestically.
OTOH, I figured that the DNC email leaks were plausible as having come through the possible Pakistani intelligence assets that the DNC was employing as IT workforce. If the Democrats were doing stuff on purpose, why the own goal?
I don’t know.
Just doesn’t get any better, eh?
Beans- TXRed is correct. Lots of folks don’t ‘trust’ the embassy. I never checked in with one either.
GB- Oh yeah…
WSF- Agreed! Miscreant E-4s for the win!
Mustang- True… sigh
LSP- Oh yeah, it does… wait until my Friday post…
At least the Tallies might crack down on the opium and heroin….in which case, where will the replacement supply come from? Anything brewing in Africa or South America? Large DoD purchases of tropical kit?
Drug trade seems to have taken a hit when the PRC reduced their supplying of precursors to South America.
If the PRC has influence with the Taliban, the Taliban will not crack down.
My intuition is that this is one of many things that vindicate my view that we should be killing the druggies here in the US. Of course, I would think that.
I think the ‘drug war’ model of service behavior is not so excellent that we should expect service leadership to have triaged already and be moving on a ‘replacement war’ so rapidly that we can already see the signs of it.
I think we must have at least four groups of active duty officers. 1) Folks who are scum enough that the Democrats trust them to be in on Democrat scheming. HRC definitely would not trust any of them, but Pelosi and Obama may be different. 2) Folks who were blind sided enough by this that they were not able to act to preserve their career and reputation. 3) Folks who are currently engaged in the problem of getting people out. 4) Folks who don’t have anything they must do, and haven’t figured out the implications of what this means going forward.
These are very large bureaucracies, and this shakes a core assumption about leadership ability to forecast operating conditions.