Month: August 2021

“But her emails” helped Republicans sink Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations in 2016. They run the same play over and over as long as it keeps working. Naturally, they hope to Benghazi Joe Biden with Afghanistan and make it a symbol of his unfitness for office.

Speaking of unfitness for office, consider these Republican governors.

Gov. DeSantis (Fla.):

According to Kailey Tracy of First Coast News, the city of Jacksonville confirmed that the photo was real and was taken at a monoclonal treatment centre at the downtown library on Wednesday.

According to Ms Tracy, a woman who claimed her husband took the photo posted it to Reddit.

“Woman who posted picture to Reddit says her husband took it, saw people crying in pain. COJ says they were waiting for treatment, providing triple # of wheelchairs now,” she reported.

Gov. Abbott (Texas):

Gov. Parson (Mo.):

And Parson’s state, anyway:

It saddens my heart to share that this morning my best friend and beloved husband Steve Walsh was welcomed to Heaven’s glory into the arms of Jesus Christ his Lord and Savior. Arrangements pending. Thank you to everyone who has lifted us up in prayer. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/135IWfgC7s

— Sara Rachel Walsh (@SaraForMissouri) August 19, 2021

“Neither she nor her husband had been vaccinated against COVID-19.”

Glass houses dwellers will throw stones. Without shame.

People who can’t make up their minds shouldn’t be elected to positions where making decisions is a job requirement. Conservatives in and out of government are sending a lot of mixed signals lately. But they know what they think, by god, even if they make little sense.

Were Walter Becker and Donald Fagen thinking of this when they named Pretzel Logic?

So, just to get this right, you won't get the free vaccine because it's only got emergency authorization from the FDA, but if you get Covid, you totally want the expensive treatment that only has emergency authorization from the FDA. We are an incredibly dumb country.

— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) August 18, 2021

Sean Hannity believes President Biden has failed in not having already rescued every last American in Afghanistan. But he is not so single-minded about it that he cannot segue into an advertisement:

“How would you like to be in Kabul today, as an American, and you can’t get to the airport?” he asked listeners. “Where are you thinking your life is headed? If you’re one of those family members, I bet you’re not sleeping. I don’t even think MyPillow can do it.

“MyPillow.com. That’s where I go. I fall asleep faster, I stay asleep longer. These are going to be a lot of sleepless nights for so many of our fellow Americans. We’ve got to get them home.”

But not THEM! says Tucker Carlson. For god’s sake, don’t bring Afghan refugees here!

Tucker Carlson, already going there: "If history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade, and then we are invaded." pic.twitter.com/4ES5fz4reb

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 17, 2021

Hannity, Carlson, and their audiences are angry, very angry, that President Biden has not extracted from Taliban territory every American and Afghan ally who wants to leave. It’s just that they prefer that the Air Force fly the refugees out of Afghanistan and drop them off in some random country somewhere. In the middle of anywhere that’s not here.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1428501993811857415?s=20

We are a seriously confused people.

The only Afghan territory Americans control at this point is the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport.

So, I’m done with those condemning Joe Biden for not doing what we are in no position to do anyway. Pundits — the only ones being given air time are Biden critics — are long on criticism and short on remedies. The administration believed they would have more time to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. Well, they didn’t.

What do Biden critics propose we do now? Send gunships and ground troops into Kandahar? Into Bagram to secure the abandoned air base? Into Jalalabad? Do they propose Americans battle the Taliban in Kabul’s streets to secure an access corridor to the airport for civilians not killed in the crossfire? What?

You know the answer. They have none.

Instead of kicking the can down the road, Biden made the tough decision, one the public supports, and he’s sticking by it.

It’s getting hard to keep any of it straight. Was he lying about wanting to get out the whole time? Or did he lie just for the purpose of winning the election after which he planned to lie some more about staying in? Or, in this telling was he “playing” the Afghans in order to keep a counterinsurgency force in the country which he, of course, lied about wanting to do.

It’s exhausting. But I would certainly take anything this hack says with a grain of salt, no matter what it is. He’s nuts:

President Donald Trump’s top national security officials never intended to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, according to new statements by Chris Miller, Trump’s last acting defense secretary. 

Miller said the president’s public promise to finish withdrawing U.S. forces by May 1, as negotiated with the Taliban, was actually a “play” that masked the Trump administration’s true intentions: to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to quit or accept a bitter power-sharing agreement with the Taliban, and to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan for counterrorism missions.

In a conversation this week with Defense One, Miller revealed that while serving as the top counterterrorism official on the National Security Council in 2019, he commissioned a wargame that determined that the United States could continue to conduct counterterrorism in Afghanistan with just 800 American military personnel on the ground. And by the end of 2020, when he was acting defense secretary, Miller asserted, many Trump administration officials expected that the United States would be able to broker a new shared government in Afghanistan composed primarily of Taliban officials. The new government would then permit U.S. forces to remain in country to support the Afghan military and fight terrorist elements. 

That plan never happened, in part because Trump lost his reelection bid in November. And at least one other former senior Trump administration official questioned Miller’s retelling. But in revealing it, Miller challenged recent assertions that Trump is to blame for setting up this week’s chaotic scenes unfolding across Kabul. Miller alleged that despite Trump’s frequent public pledges to end the Afghanistan war and bring home all U.S. troops, many senior national security officials in his administration believed a total withdrawal was not inevitable. 213Q

The spectre of Trump’s public comments has lingered into the new administration. On Monday, President Joe Biden asserted that Trump’s February 2020 deal with the Taliban and subsequent troop withdrawals, along with the American public’s growing desire to end the war, left the new president just two choices: send thousands of U.S. troops back into Afghanistan for a fruitless mission or completely and quickly withdraw. 

In December, Miller touched down in Afghanistan to formally discuss with Afghan leaders the end of the U.S. troop presence. The response of then-President ​​Ashraf Ghani surprised Miller. “I expected hostility,” he recalled in conversation with Defense One on Saturday. “Instead, he was gracious and respectful. He talked about the sacrifices of the Americans. He thanked the Gold Star families. He said, ‘You have done so much’.” 

But the tone of the discussions changed when Miller met with Ghani’s vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who had also served in key intelligence roles over the years. 

“He came in and just talked about the threat,” said Miller. “Essentially, the message was: ‘This is going to be bad. And if this happens, al-Qaeda is going to be back’.” 

The U.S. delegation and their Afghan counterparts didn’t talk strategy or go into any details about what lay ahead during the meetings, Miller said. The participants already seemed to know the bleak facts. “It would not have been appropriate to say ‘Is your Army going to collapse?’ But of course we were all thinking that.”

Insane…

Oy:

Sure, Don. Whatever you say.

You will notice he doesn’t mention the Afghans who helped America or the refugees. He’s been listening to Tucker.

Judd Legum’s newsletter asks an important question:

Yesterday’s newsletter detailed how the media is largely overlooking voices that supported Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Instead media reports are almost exclusively highlighting criticism of the withdrawal — often from people complicit in two decades of failed policy in Afghanistan.

We have reason to believe that this is not an accident. On Wednesday, Popular Information spoke to a veteran communications professional who has been trying to place prominent voices supportive of the withdrawal on television and in print. The source said that it has been next to impossible:

I’ve been in political media for over two decades, and I have never experienced something like this before. Not only can I not get people booked on shows, but I can’t even get TV bookers who frequently book my guests to give me a call back…

I’ve fed sources to reporters, who end up not quoting the sources, but do quote multiple voices who are critical of the president and/or put the withdrawal in a negative light.

I turn on TV and watch CNN and, frankly, a lot of MSNBC shows, and they’re presenting it as if there’s not a voice out there willing to defend the president and his decision to withdraw. But I offered those very shows those voices, and the shows purposely decided to shut them out.

In so many ways this feels like Iraq and 2003 all over again. The media has coalesced around a narrative, and any threat to that narrative needs to be shut out.

Who is on TV? As Media Matters has documented, there are plenty of former Bush administration officials criticizing the withdrawal.

Is it really about execution?

Much of the criticism of Biden’s decision to withdraw has focused on the administration’s “execution.” The critics claim the withdrawal was poorly planned, chaotic, and unnecessarily put Americans — and their Afghan allies — in danger. 

Some of these claims may be true. It’s hard to know, for example, how many people have been left behind since evacuations are ongoing. But, with a few exceptions, the criticisms of Biden’s execution are being made by people who opposed withdrawal altogether. 

For example, in a scathing column published in the Washington Post, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticizes the execution of the withdrawal. But she also makes clear that she does not think the U.S. military should have left. 

Twenty years was not enough to complete a journey from the 7th-century rule of the Taliban and a 30-year civil war to a stable government. Twenty years may also not have been enough to consolidate our gains against terrorism and assure our own safety. We — and they — needed more time.

Rice’s argument for why the withdrawal was executed poorly is very similar. She says that waiting a few more months, until winter, would have made it more difficult for the Taliban to fight and “given the Afghans a little more time to develop a strategy to prevent the chaotic fall of Kabul.” 

But Rice’s argument makes clear that it is impossible to disentangle the execution of the withdrawal with the broader policy failures of the last two decades. It may be more difficult for the Taliban to fight in the winter, but the Taliban did not need to fight. Afghan security forces simply evaporated. 

The twenty-year effort to build up these institutions — touted by Rice and much of the national security establishment — was a total failure. An orderly evacuation would require some period of time between the end of U.S. military operations and the collapse of the Afghan security forces. What has transpired over the last week demonstrated that wasn’t possible. 

Absent functional Afghan institutions, it’s up to the U.S. military to facilitate an evacuation. That is largely what happened. Thousands of U.S. troops are in Afghanistan securing the Kabul airport and trying to get people out of the country. 

Was the status quo sustainable?

Another argument, advanced by former UK official Rory Stewart in the Washington Post, is that the U.S. military footprint was quite small and should have been retained indefinitely:

You would be forgiven for thinking the U.S. was getting itself out of another Vietnam War: fantastically dangerous and expensive, achieving nothing, and impossible to sustain. But in truth, U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014; troop levels had decreased to about 2,500; and there have been no American combat fatalities since February 2020.

When he became president, Biden took over a relatively low-cost, low-risk presence in Afghanistan that was nevertheless capable of protecting the achievements of the previous 20 years.

What Stewart ignores is that the low levels of violence in recent months coincided with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. military presence would end in 2021. If, instead, the Biden administration announced that it was staying indefinitely, the situation could have changed dramatically. 

The small U.S. military footprint also came with a high cost to Afghan civilians. With few troops on the ground, the military increasingly relied on air power to keep the Taliban at bay. This kept U.S. fatalities low but resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties. A Brown University study found that between 2016 and 2019 the “number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent.” In October 2020 “212 civilians were killed.”

Joe Biden is taking a tremendous beating in the press from all sides. It’s as if five years of pent-up discomfort over having to criticize a Republican is pouring out in intense relief against a Democrat. (I knew this was coming as I wrote many times. It’s just how this stuff works.)

Eric Boehlert’s Press Run had this on the subject this morning:

Feigning shock that the final chapter to a 20-year lost war in Afghanistan did not go as planned for the U.S. military, the media remain in overdrive, breathlessly presenting the U.S. troop withdrawal as a presidency-defining failure for Joe Biden.

Thankfully, the dire picture that the press painted over the weekend of the widespread death and destruction that the Taliban would soon unleash on Kabul has not materialized. Instead, the controversial U.S. evacuation has become more orderly and efficient, which is why cable news has pulled back on the story —  CNN mentioned “Afghanistan” 30 percent fewer times on Wednesday as compared to Monday, according to TVeyes.com.

Commenting on Biden’s Monday address to the nation and the cultural disconnect between the public and the press, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace observed, “”95% of the American people will agree with everything [President Biden] just said. 95% of the press covering this White House will disagree.”

The question is, why? Why is there such a chasm between the public and the press. (Prior to the withdrawal, Americans overwhelmingly supported Biden’s plan to bring U.S. troops home.) Why has the Beltway media covered the Afghanistan story with an unrestrained frenzy that so far outweighs the facts in play?

Laser focused on blaming Biden for a military defeat two decades in the making, while wildly overplaying the evacuation story in terms of historical context, the press seems genuinely eager to echo GOP spin and denounce the White House, as well as demand weird public acts of contrition.

Anxious to prove they’re not part of the “liberal media bias” problem, the media are always on the lookout for ways to make that case. “The media will never admit it, but they’ve been waiting for an opportunity to harshly go after Biden to prove anew how “balanced” they are.

“See, it’s not just Trump!”” observed author Larry Sabato. (Yes, Politico called Biden’s Afghan speech on Monday “Trumpian.”) Writer Dave Roberts concurred: “Looking around, I gotta say the US political press seems practically tumescent over the opportunity to scold Biden for something, thus reestablishing its both-sides cred. It’s a frenzy out there.”

Biden is just going to have to withstand this and we’ll see how he endures. It’s part of the deal, as he well knows. There was no way that his relatively smooth honeymoon would last and this plays right into the media’s lizard brain. They love to show endless b-roll of foreigners running around in exotic locales while self-righteously proclaiming that everything has gone to hell in a handbasket.

This is the main reason why no president has withdrawn before. They all knew it would be a mess, the Taliban would take over almost immediately and there would be endless recriminations heaped upon the president who “lost Afghanistan.” It’s part of Biden’s legacy right or wrong. He seems to be YOLO on this one. It’s not something you see every day.

The bomb threat in Washington DC today is apparently coming from a deranged wingnut. I know you’re shocked:

Been watching videos created by capitol bomb threat suspect. Facebook account has been taken down. But I still have access. Explicitly references fall of Kabul, claims Biden gave mil equipment to Taliban, etc. Complains about being being shadow banned by FB, etc. etc.

2/ It appears he originally planned something for Labor Day. Tells “Biden and Nancy” they better leave unless they “want to hear people scream”. etc.

3/ “labor day weekend they gonna know the motherfuckin south was there”

4/ appears to say he’s from Earl, NC.

In Facebook video, Capitol bomb threat suspect repeatedly invokes Trump and the fall of Kabul. Attacks Biden and Pelosi. Says Trump will become President again after Biden is driven from office. Says Trump will then pardon everyone.

Originally tweeted by Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) on August 19, 2021.

Update — The Daily Beast Reports:

Federal authorities were trying to negotiate with a Trump supporter who parked his truck outside the Library of Congress on Thursday and made bomb threats while livestreaming anti-government rants on Facebook.

At about 9:15 a.m., Capitol police responded to reports of the black pickup truck parked on a sidewalk, mere feet from the Capitol and Supreme Court. The driver told police that he had a bomb and a detonator in his hand, prompting the immediate evacuation of surrounding buildings, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in a media conference.

“My negotiators are hard at work trying to have a peaceful resolution to this incident,” he said adding that officers were in communication with the suspect but no motive had been identified. “We do have a possible name and identity of the suspect.”

Manger would not disclose the suspect’s identity but CBS, MSNBC and WUSA9 cited law enforcement sources identifying him as Floyd Ray Roseberry, 49, from Grover, North Carolina.

Social media analyzed by The Daily Beast align with the few facts already known about the incident. A Facebook livestream posted to a now-deleted account matching the suspect’s name showed a man parked outside the Court of Neptune statues located on the west face of the Library of Congress across the street from the Capitol, where police have blocked off traffic.

In the video, the man holds a metal container of what he claims is tannerite, a binary explosive compound popular with firearms enthusiasts for its ability to detonate by gunfire. The man seen in the video matches the description and location of a photograph posted to Twitter by a passerby who wrote that the picture was taken while “casually seeing witnessing a bomb threat on the way to class.”

The man identified himself in the livestream videos and on Facebook as a Trump supporter who believes the Democrats must “step down.”

Old videos on his Facebook page show he participated in at least one rally to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. On Nov. 14, he uploaded multiple videos from a “Million MAGA March” in Washington, D.C.

“I love this land,” the man said in one of his livestream videos on Thursday, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast before it was removed. “We got a few options here, Joe. You shoot me, two-and-a-half blocks go with it. And then you’re talking about revolution? The revolution’s on. It’s here, it’s today. Told my wife I’d be home by Sunday. I’m looking for all my other patriots to come out and help me. Cause I got it standing. I got the foundation built, people.”

The man said he had a wife and two kids, but that they didn’t know he was there.

Citing law enforcement sources, MSNBC reported that the man was negotiating with police by writing messages on a whiteboard. Police couldn’t immediately confirm that the bomb was in fact operable or that he had a detonator.

In the video, the man indicated several times that there were four other explosives, “sittin’ around this town,” but that he didn’t know where they were because “we all came in different ways.”

What looked like a bomb can be seen in his lap when he turned the camera to his face at one point. He claimed his toolbox is full of ammonium nitrate.

“When this bomb goes off there’s gonna be four more right behind it, and then the patriots are gonna come, because you don’t know where them four are sitting one of them might be sitting at your backdoor—better, better talk to me, Joe,” he said at one point, referring to President Joe Biden, who he appeared to be speaking to throughout the rambling videos.

Throughout the videos he expressed anger about the chaos in Afghanistan and said he was “taking a stand” for the people there as well as “the American people.”

“This ain’t about politics. This ain’t got nothing to do with politics, I don’t care if Donald Trump ever become president again don’t matter to me,” he said. “ I think y’all Democrats need to step down.”

In a video he began streaming an hour earlier, the man can be heard yelling out from the truck: “Hey! Tell ‘em to come out here and clear the Capitol! I’ve got a bomb in here! I don’t want nobody hurt!”

He then tossed a handful of money out of the window and invited a group of passersby to “pick it up and take it with you. You get all you want. It’s yours. Cause I done tried to call Joe Biden. Joe Biden wouldn’t talk to me. But they don’t understand that if this window breaks, this fuckin’ truck goes up. They think it’s a fuckin’ joke. Ain’t no joke, people. I’m here.”

The man described himself as “an American patriot,” and that he had “cleared my conscience with God.”

“It’s love for America, buddy, I have no fear,” he said at one point, fighting back tears. “None. The cracking in my voice is the passion I have for the land I love. It’s coming. Somebody needs to tell Joe Biden, ‘We here.’ The fucking revolution starts today, Joe Biden. And before you go cracking any pops on me, you better get your military experts out and ask them motherfuckers what a seven-and-a-half pound keg of gunpowder and a two-and-a-half pound of [explosives] on top of that can do.”

Please tell me what the difference between this guy and some random Jihadi?

Update II: he surrendered

Trump lies about everything so his current insistence that he had demanded “conditions” before the US Troops would be withdrawn is as fatuous as everything else he says. He was promising to withdraw all troops before Christmas! He didn’t do it of course because he was obsessed with whining about the election. But let’s not forget that he was the guy who negotiated the deal with the Taliban for the US to be fully withdrawn before May and complained that Biden had extended the date.

Now he’s caterwauling about Biden’s withdrawal, of course, and his minions are defending him with more lies. No surprise there:

Former National Security Director John Ratcliffe on Thursday revealed that former President Donald Trump knew that the Afghan military would fall to the Taliban within 48 hours but negotiated a deal to pull U.S. troops out of the country anyway.

Ratcliffe made the remarks during an appearance on Fox News.

“We had that intelligence when I was DNI,” he explained. “All of the discussions including with some of the same military leaders that are still there was if we don’t follow these conditions and the Afghan forces are left on their own, how long will this last and the consensus with everyone in the room was not very long.”

“And I remember President Trump saying, ‘I don’t think they’ll last two days,'” he added. “And that’s why those conditions that [Fox News host Bill Hemmer] mentioned are so important.”

Under the original conditions that the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban, U.S. forces would have withdrawn from Afghanistan in May. President Joe Biden extended that exit until August.

Ratcliffe’s admission that Trump believed the government would fall in 48 hours is telling. I’m sure he did. He did not care then and he doesn’t care now. All the rest is lies.

Here’s a reality check on the conditions Trump is now insisting would have been fulfilled leading to an orderly withdrawal if only he had been in his rightful place in the Oval Office:

First, the “peace accord” that Trump’s emissaries signed with the Taliban in February 2020, in Doha, imposed only a few conditions—and the Taliban are violating none of them at the moment. The Taliban merely agreed not to allow any “individuals or groups, including al-Qaida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.” The accord did not bar the Taliban from fighting Afghan government troops or from capturing Afghan provinces on its own.

Second, Trump’s claim that he had “discussions with top Taliban leaders” is overstated. A few days after the signing of the accord, on the phone, through an interpreter, he had a discussion with a leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was the Taliban’s delegate to the Doha talks. Afterward, Trump said he had a “very good” relationship with Baradar, lauded the Taliban for “killing terrorists…some very bad people,” and said of the war, “They’re looking to get this ended and we’re looking to get this ended.” A statement released by the White House said that Trump “emphasized the need to continue the reduction in violence” and “urged the Taliban to participate in intra-Afghan negotiations.” The statement said nothing about Barader’s reply, if any.

In other words, there is no evidence that a withdrawal under Trump would have been “much more successful” than it’s going under Biden. Trump’s swift withdrawal of a small contingent of peacekeeping troops from Syria in Oct. 2019, leaving Kurdish allies open to Turkish slaughter, suggests that Trump would have been no more discerning about protecting Afghans. (The Kurds had been instrumental in helping U.S. troops crush ISIS in northern Syria.)

The falsehoods notwithstanding, Trump’s statement will no doubt be parroted by congressional Republicans and conservative pundits in the coming weeks and months. When Biden first announced his withdrawal in April, his critics were nonplussed. Trump, after all, had long called for a pullout; in fact, he initially supported Biden’s decision. Even as the Taliban began routing Afghan security forces and taking over whole provinces earlier this summer, critics remained unsure of how to respond, especially since polls showed a vast majority of Americans agreed with Biden’s move.

Now, however, the critics have received the word from their leader-in-exile: withdrawal isn’t a bad thing, but withdrawal under Trump would have been “conditions-based”; it would have been “much more successful.” When things worsen in Afghanistan, as they almost certainly will, this will be their mantra for attacking Biden’s foreign policy—and for absolving themselves of complicity.

First, the “peace accord” that Trump’s emissaries signed with the Taliban in February 2020, in Doha, imposed only a few conditions—and the Taliban are violating none of them at the moment. The Taliban merely agreed not to allow any “individuals or groups, including al-Qaida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.” The accord did not bar the Taliban from fighting Afghan government troops or from capturing Afghan provinces on its own.

Second, Trump’s claim that he had “discussions with top Taliban leaders” is overstated. A few days after the signing of the accord, on the phone, through an interpreter, he had a discussion with a leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was the Taliban’s delegate to the Doha talks. Afterward, Trump said he had a “very good” relationship with Baradar, lauded the Taliban for “killing terrorists…some very bad people,” and said of the war, “They’re looking to get this ended and we’re looking to get this ended.” A statement released by the White House said that Trump “emphasized the need to continue the reduction in violence” and “urged the Taliban to participate in intra-Afghan negotiations.” The statement said nothing about Barader’s reply, if any.

In other words, there is no evidence that a withdrawal under Trump would have been “much more successful” than it’s going under Biden. Trump’s swift withdrawal of a small contingent of peacekeeping troops from Syria in Oct. 2019, leaving Kurdish allies open to Turkish slaughter, suggests that Trump would have been no more discerning about protecting Afghans. (The Kurds had been instrumental in helping U.S. troops crush ISIS in northern Syria.)

The falsehoods notwithstanding, Trump’s statement will no doubt be parroted by congressional Republicans and conservative pundits in the coming weeks and months. When Biden first announced his withdrawal in April, his critics were nonplussed. Trump, after all, had long called for a pullout; in fact, he initially supported Biden’s decision. Even as the Taliban began routing Afghan security forces and taking over whole provinces earlier this summer, critics remained unsure of how to respond, especially since polls showed a vast majority of Americans agreed with Biden’s move.

Now, however, the critics have received the word from their leader-in-exile: withdrawal isn’t a bad thing, but withdrawal under Trump would have been “conditions-based”; it would have been “much more successful.” When things worsen in Afghanistan, as they almost certainly will, this will be their mantra for attacking Biden’s foreign policy—and for absolving themselves of complicity.

The “conditions” were unenforceable bullshit. Of course Trump is insisting that the Taliban were terrified of his great big hands so they would have done whatever he told them, but that’s right up there with the nonsense that he won the election in a landslide. There were no conditions.

AP/NORC has a new poll on America’s view of its forever wars:

A significant majority of Americans doubt that the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, even as the United States is more divided over President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and national security, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Roughly two-thirds said they did not think America’s longest war was worth fighting, the poll shows. Meanwhile, 47% approve of Biden’s management of international affairs, while 52% approve of Biden on national security.

The poll was conducted Aug. 12-16 as the two-decade war in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban returning to power and capturing the capital of Kabul. Biden has faced bipartisan condemnation in Washington for sparking a humanitarian crisis by being ill-prepared for the speed of the Taliban’s advance.

The president has stood by his decision to exit the country, insisting that he will not allow the war to continue indefinitely and betting that Americans agree with him.

Mark Sohl is among those who do. The 62-year-old Democrat from Topeka, Kansas, said “it wasn’t worth losing more American lives over a mess.”

Sohl added: “After 20 years, you got to cut loose.”

Others felt more conflicted after seeing grim scenes in Afghanistan even if they opposed the war overall. In one image likely to endure, Afghans clung to U.S. military planes in a desperate bid to flee the country

“I don’t believe we should have been in there to begin with,” said Sebastian Garcia, a 23-year-old Biden voter from Lubbock, Texas, who said he had three cousins serve in Afghanistan. “But now that we’re leaving, I do feel we probably should stay after seeing, I guess you’d say, the trouble we’ve caused.”

Roughly two-thirds also suggest the Iraq War that coincided with Afghanistan was a mistake. Republicans are somewhat more likely than Democrats to say the wars in both countries were worth fighting. About 4 in 10 Republicans do, compared with about 3 in 10 Democrats.

Deborah Fulkerson of Pueblo, Colorado, believes it would be wise for the U.S. to remain in Afghanistan.

“I feel like us having a presence there just keeps things more neutral and safer there for those people and for us,” said the 62-year-old, who describes herself as “more conservative,” particularly on social issues.

Fulkerson acknowledged that she does not follow Afghanistan that closely, saying she is more concerned with gas prices and local news.

Joe Biden is taking a tremendous amount to grief for his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. But I give him credit for at least having the guts to rip that band-aid off, even if I fervently wish that it wasn’t causing the pain it’s causing for the Afghan people. None of his predecessors could bring themselves to do it even though they knew they should.

And the American people seem to be pretty clear on the real threats to the country at this time and it isn’t coming from the Taliban. It’s coming from inside the house.

Even 45% of Republicans see the threat coming from within. Of course they probably think it’s Antifa, but at least they aren’t looking for another foreign war in the immediate future.

The new Confederates are mad. And not in the angry sense. In the lost-their-minds sense. And desperate. Desperate enough to risk their children’s lives as well as their own in a bid to hang onto power and demonstrate fealty to their tribe. They have, as David Frum warned in January 2018, rejected democracy.

At the risk of going all Ken Burns, here is something Paul Waldman wrote on Wednesday:

So in state after state, far-right Republican governors are waging war on their own cities. Sometimes it’s about public health (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trying to keep school districts from requiring masks). Sometimes it’s about elections (Georgia Republicans moving to take over elections in the county that includes most of Atlanta). And sometimes it’s about GOP legislatures imposing far-right laws that even many Republicans disagree with but are especially unpopular in liberal cities (the new Texas law allowing anyone to carry a handgun with no training or license).

In every case, the message to Democrats and the places they live is the same: It doesn’t matter if you’re the majority. We have the power, and we’re going to make you live under Republican rules. Forever.

In Georgia, Republicans continue their efforts to take over elections in the state’s largest Democratic county:

Georgia’s State Election Board inched forward Wednesday in a process set in motion by Republican lawmakers using a controversial provision of the state’s sweeping new election law that could ultimately lead to a takeover of elections in the state’s most populous county.

Fulton County, a Democratic bastion that includes most of the city of Atlanta, has long been a target of Republicans who complain of sloppiness and say they want to ensure state laws are being followed. Former President Donald Trump fixated on Fulton after the November general election, claiming without evidence that fraud in the county contributed to his narrow loss in the state.

Democrats and voting rights activists have said the takeover provision in the new law invites political interference in local elections and could suppress turnout.

Those Black people in Fulton are gettin’ all, you know, uppity. Voting in large numbers and all that. Confederates mean to show them who’s boss.

Observing that “multiple Republican governors and legislators are ghoulishly competing to undermine immunization efforts, endangering the lives of children in their states,” Daniel Schultz (@pastordan) observes at Alternet:

It’s tempting to see this division not as issue-based but simply spoiling for a fight, and in some ways, that’s right. Particular issues aren’t as important as the battle, and they don’t make sense without the bigger context. At the same time, people aren’t itching for a fight just to have a fight. The little fights are simply means to picking the big fight. Every time you hear someone railing against tyranny or socialism, mentally replace their words with “Put Black and brown people back in their place!” Likewise, every time someone talks about freedom or Trump saving America again, you should hear “Put white people back on top!”

It’s not a civil war over preserving slavery they want. Slavery is gone forever. It’s the legacy caste system they want to preserve, with them on top. And they’ll sacrifice democracy and their own sons and daughters to do it.

So many disasters, so little time. Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban have pushed other disasters, natural and manmade, below the fold if not off front pages.

In Haiti, it was another major earthquake five days ago. Over 2,000 dead; 12,000+ injured; tens of thousands lost homes. Neighbors tried for days to recover a man buried by a landslide before his cries for help stopped amidst rains from Tropical Storm Grace. “It is as if we are cursed,” Rev. Lucson Simeon said among the remnants of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in L’Asile. “We just keep getting beaten down. I ask myself, how can this be?

Perhaps 30 people are reported (not confirmed) missing after Tropical Depression Fred tore through western North Carolina on Tuesday. Heavy rains flooded roadways, washed away bridges, cars and homes, and flooded businesses across several counties. Search and rescue efforts continue hampered by high waters.

Six-hundred students are under quarrantine in Pickens County, S.C. Cases have jumped 100 percent there in just nine days. Gov. Henry McMaster’s (R) ban on mask mandates has created superspreader classrooms. Two teachers are hospitalized and on ventilators. There is an understanding, teacher and parent Emmett Major told NBC News, “that children are going to get sick … and there’s a sense of helplessness that there’s just nothing we can do about it.” Another mother laments, “My daughter and the other kids are just the collateral damage” to the governor’s political statement.

Joining Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, Orgeon’s hospitals are near-overflowing with Covid patients, “shattering its COVID-19 hospitalization records day after day.” Alabama has run out of ICU beds.

So, just to get this right, you won't get the free vaccine because it's only got emergency authorization from the FDA, but if you get Covid, you totally want the expensive treatment that only has emergency authorization from the FDA. We are an incredibly dumb country.

— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) August 18, 2021

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called out states for failing to protect schoolchildren:

In an escalating battle with Republican governors, President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered his Education secretary to explore possible legal action against states that have blocked school mask mandates and other public health measures meant to protect students against COVID-19.

In response, the Education Department raised the possibility of using its civil rights arm to fight policies in Florida, Texas, Iowa and other Republican-led states that have barred public schools from requiring masks in the classroom.

Biden directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “assess all available tools” that can be used against states that fail to protect students amid surging coronavirus cases.

Pundits dispense easy recriminations over U.S failure to anticipate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the Biden administration already rescued every American and local ally in Afghanistan? Meanwhile, U.S. politicians in state after state fail to protect their own children. Mask and vaccine protesters refuse to protect themselves or their communities. Some threaten violence.

Maybe if we called it the Taliban virus?

Historians are not the only ones who will be studying this period for centuries. Psychologists as well will have their hands full analyzing our mass psychosis.