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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Withdrawal

Published by digby on September 2, 2024

Since Trump is determined that we are going to talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal let’s talk about it. Kevin Drum has the best discussion that I’ve seen:

Regular readers know that I’ve long been annoyed by the relentless use of the word chaotic to describe the Afghanistan withdrawal. Of course it was chaotic. It’s like saying the D-Day landings were chaotic. There’s no way anyone conducts an airlift of 100,000 people in a neat and orderly way from a city that’s just been overthrown by the Taliban.

In any case, since it’s back in the news it’s worth reviewing how the Afghanistan withdrawal played out:

  1. In early 2020 Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban for a withdrawal date of May 1, 2021, and the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government.
  2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced the US presence to 2,500 troops.
  3. When Joe Biden took office, he moved the withdrawal date out to September 11. Trump criticized the change. “We can and should get out earlier,” he said.
  4. In July Biden changed the withdrawal date to August 31. At this point, the Taliban was fighting but hadn’t yet taken over a single province. The broad assumption was that when the US withdrawal eventually took place the Afghan government would still control the country. The US, naturally, was committed to protecting the government through the withdrawal.
  5. That changed suddenly because the Afghan army collapsed faster than anyone expected. On August 15 the Taliban took over Kabul and the president of Afghanistan fled the country. With only two weeks to go, this made a large-scale evacuation imperative.
  6. The withdrawal started chaotically, but within a few hours the Army restored order. Meanwhile, despite the Trump administration’s longtime policy of delaying visa requests, which left a huge backlog of unprocessed applications, the State Department worked heroically to process visas for Afghans who wanted to leave the country.
  7. In two weeks, the Army evacuated about 90% of Americans in Afghanistan and nearly 100,000 Afghan nationals. By any kind of historical standard, this was a superb performance under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

    The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon concluded that there wasn’t really anything that could have stopped it.

    Everyone processes grief differently, and I can’t bring myself to reproach the families that blame Biden for the deaths of their children. But the fact remains that Biden wasn’t at fault; the Army wasn’t at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war.

    The withdrawal wasn’t handled perfectly, but there weren’t any huge mistakes. Nor was it really possible not to withdraw given the situation Biden inherited: the Taliban’s takeover was inevitable as soon as Trump signed the withdrawal agreement with them. It might well have been inevitable even without that. After 20 years it was as clear as it could be that there was simply no more the US could do, and Biden showed a lot of political courage in facing up to that.

    In the end, despite everything, the evacuation and airlift were considerable successes—and it’s remarkable that the only serious casualties came from a single al-Qaeda suicide bomber. The blame for that rests squarely on al-Qaeda and no one else.

    One hopes that Trump’s need to cast blame and the media’s egregious coverage of the event doesn’t mark it otherwise historically but I think Kevin gets it right. It could never have been anything but a nightmare. Biden was the only president who had the nerve to face that..

    The comments over at Kevin’s place are interesting too if you’re of a mind to pursue this.

    Oh and by the way, here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know:

    About Vanky’s Millions Of Jobs

    Published by digby on September 2, 2024

    During Trump’s very weird event with Moms for Liberty last week he lied many times as he always does. And this particular lie is one he keeps telling and it keeps not being true. After telling them that he had wanted to make Ivanka “UN Secretary” (which would not have been possible) he said this:

    “Daddy, I just want to help people get jobs….” Yeah right.

    Reality (from 2019)

    Trump signed an executive order creating the National Council for the American Worker, co-chaired by Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. One of the council’s priorities is asking companies across the US to sign the Pledge to America’s Workers. The pledge involves “committing to expand programs that educate, train, and reskill American workers from high-school age to near-retirement,” according to the White House.

    Two hundred companies have agreed to the pledge, with each providing different numbers of training opportunities. This brings the total number of opportunities pledged to just over 6.5 million. (See the full list.)

    CNN’s Senior Economics Writer Lydia DePillis checked out a similar claim made by Ivanka herself last year as she discussed the pledge. “We’re up to 6.3 million new jobs,” Ivanka said last October. That claim, DePillis found, was rather exaggerated.

    First, the pledge does not translate to millions of immediate training opportunities. In a press release from the administration, the pledge is described as a commitment to “new opportunities over the next five years.” Secondly, these are better understood as training opportunities, not necessarily “jobs.” In the same press release last year, the White House described these opportunities as “apprenticeships and work-based learning, continuing education, on-the-job training, and reskilling.” These opportunities can be for current employees.

    Lastly, many of these opportunities pledged were already planned by the companies. As CNN previously reported, Walmart’s pledged amount over five years would just about match the rate that its program Walmart Academies has trained since it started in 2016. The Associated Builders and Contractors provides a similar example as it pledged to provide roughly as many opportunities in five years as it trains in one year.

    In sum, it’s inaccurate to suggest that the number of training opportunities pledged are “jobs.” The timeline for these opportunities spans five years. And many of them match existing company goals and numbers. It’s simply not true that Ivanka Trump has “created millions of jobs,” as her father claimed.

    She claimed it too. But then she’s a Trump. They all lie as easily as they breathe.

    Even More Corrupt Than Ever Before

    Published by digby on September 2, 2024

    The Republicans have spent the last four years caterwauling about the “Biden Crime Family” and its alleged connections to foreign countries, especially China. They called it the greatest corruption scandal in American history. There was no evidence of this, of course. But they just repeated it relentlessly and pushed hearings and investigations until the old “where there’s smoke, there must be fire” dynamic kicked in.

    Well, here’s a raging, out of control conflagration and nobody cares:

    [W]ith Trump running for the presidency once more … foreign governments — including brand-new regimes that weren’t involved in Trump’s first whirlwind in the White House — have only spied new opportunities to burrow into his pockets and into a second administration.

    Many of these networks are already known, if forgotten. Trump’s financial links with regimes in places like China, Kazakhstan, or Indonesia were already reported in detail during his presidency. Even after Trump left the Oval Office, the revelations about his subterranean financial links as president with foreign regimes continued spilling out; it was only this year, for instance, that congressional investigators revealed that the first two years of Trump’s presidency included countries as far afield as Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, and many more patronizing Trump businesses. Any of these details on their own would be exceptional — can you imagine how much any other presidential candidate’s secret Chinese bank account would dominate a news cycle? — but they’ve been subsumed in the broader morass of Trump’s scandals. They’ve become, to an almost shocking degree, normalized.

    They are completely normal. The media didn’t even really care about the bombshell Washington Post report by some of its top investigative reporters about the 10 million dollar gift (bribe) by Egypt to Trump’s campaign back in 2016. Why would it care about the ongoing bribes Trump is taking from Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries much less the dubious deals Jared Kushner is making with authoritarian despots all over the globe he reports in the article.

    Trump exists on a different dimension than everyone else. They succeeded in making the fact that he is always awash in scandal, corruption and criminality into such a mundane story that he’s no longer held responsible for any of it. It’s quite a trick.

    Trump and Labor

    Published by digby on September 2, 2024

    It’s labor day and the blue-collar billionaire, friend of the working man has quite the record:

    Here’s something he said just a couple of weeks ago that ought to make his union fans think twice, but it won’t:

    That’s illegal, of course. But as we know, the law means nothing to Trump. Or Musk, for that matter.

    How about this one?

    Happy labor day to all the suckers and losers who work for a living.

    Trump and Mark Levin’s Lovefest

    Published by digby on September 2, 2024

    I was going to deconstruct Trump’s inane interview on Fox last night but Tom addressed it well earlier and I came across this and thought it was well done.

    Trump ran through most of his greatest hits, mangling them like an aging crooner who forgot the words. And Levin sat there like a potted palm.

    (I know that Steve Schmitt is an asshole — at best — but when he’s right, he’s right. Especially about Mark Levin.)

    It’s Not Just Project 2025

    Published by digby on September 2, 2024

    Trump is cooking up some plans of his own too

    He’s going to let the foxes right into the henhouse and one fox in particular:

    Behind closed doors, former president Donald Trump and his advisers have been talking for months about forming a commission led by prominent business executives to comb through the government books to identify thousands of programs to cut.

    Lately, one particularly famous candidate has made clear he’d be up for it: Elon Musk. And he may have much to gain personally from the endeavor.

    On several occasions, including on X, the social media platform he owns, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has expressed interest in being part of a “government efficiency commission” aimed at eliminating wasteful regulations and spending. Musk in August posted an apparently artificial intelligence-generated image of himself behind a lectern labeled “Department of Government Efficiency,” with the acronym DOGE — a meme-based cryptocurrency Musk has previously embraced.

    Musk’s potential involvement in a government regulatory and spending commission has sparked concerns from ethics experts who point to conflicts of interest that could emerge between such a post and his business empire. But Trump advisers are eager to bring in prominent corporate leaders to compile a high-profile list of federal excess, reprising efforts similar to those led by President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who once published an annual “Waste Book” on allegedly frivolous spending.

    Trump last week downplayed the idea that Musk would join his Cabinet — but also said Musk might be a helpful consultant to the federal government.

    “He wants to be involved, but look, he’s running big businesses and all that … so he can’t really” be in the Cabinet, Trump said on the Shawn Ryan Show. “He can sort of, as the expression goes, consult with the country and give you some very good ideas.”

    Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

    Musk has increasingly used X as a megaphone to support Trump and bash his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. But as the two billionaires have moved into a closer political alliance, scrutiny is mounting over the potential financial benefits a potential second Trump administration could deliver to Musk.

    Scrutiny is mounting? Really? Gee, that’s good to know.

    It’s not just Musk, although I can see why they chose to focus on him. It’s the idea itself. “Open the books to see what programs to cut” is such a ridiculous concept I don’t know where to start. This is the government we’re talking about not a grocery store chain.

    I don’t have the energy to get worked up today about yet another completely insane Trump notion. Suffice to say that there is no end to it. (And if he wins, Elon Musk can do whatever he pleases.)

    Destination: Dystopia

    Published by Tom Sullivan on September 2, 2024

    Let The Brotherhood Of The Damned be your tour guide

    Kamala HQ flagged this clip of tech bro “thought leader” Curtis Yarvin advocating an American Caesar as the next step for America. This is the guy incels and billionaire tech autocrats like Peter Thiel (J.D. Vance’s mentor) look to for envisioning a future with them running the world and getting laid, like, anytime they want. Gaze upon Yarvin, all ye who dream big.

    TPM’s Josh Marshall quipped, “Amazing that this college sophomore level thinker is a major force in Silicon Valley.”

    I’m reminded of the formulaic pap The Sphinx (Wes Studi) spouted as wisdom in Mystery Men (1999). Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell) gazes on in wonderment (or is it befuddlement?) and remarks, “It’s cool, isn’t it? It goes right up to the point of being, like, confusing.”

    Shallow and stupid or not, don’t think they won’t attempt something like this. Marcy Wheeler predicts they’ll try. Violently, preferably.

    https://mstdn.social/@lolgop@journa.host/113068278494067131

    Vote like you mean it.

    ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

    It’s Labor Day. If counties have not begun preparations for the general election by now, it’s too late for this little guide to help. I’ll stop posting this link after today.

    For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

    The Joker For President

    Published by Tom Sullivan on September 2, 2024

    The Clown Prince of Grievance

    Every time one thinks Donald Trump cannot possibly get more demented, he surprises.

    It’s as if Mark Levin were interviewing The Joker. Except The Joker sports a wide, lipstick-red smile.

    Trump: “Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it.”

    Who ever heard you get indicted for embezzling billions from the U.S. Treasury when (immunized by “conservatives” on the U.S. Supreme Court) you “have every right to do it”?

    Think “the short-fingered vulgarian” won’t plunge his stubby mitts into the national cookie jar if reelected? That is, if he hopes to impress Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and get richer doing it?

    No one more sentient than mold slime doesn’t know that’s exactly what Trump will do. Maybe even before sending troops into the streets to apprehend and throw into concentration camps anyone brown and migranty-looking .

    For context, Trump was commenting on the superseding indictment filed last week by special counsel Jack Smith in the stolen documents case. It’s Trump’s fourth indictment, on four federal charges this time. He has pleaded not guilty to purloining the hundreds of national security documents FBI agents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club after Trump left the White House.

    Former U.S. Attorney and Sisters-in-Law podcast co-host Joyce Vance responded to Trump’s statement on FKA Twitter:

    There’s no right to “interfere” with a presidential election. This is the banality of evil right here—Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost. And, he will do it again. We must vote against him in overwhelming numbers.

    “Criming and then confessing to the criming. That’s a Trump specialty,” MSNBC’s Katie Phang (“The Katie Phang Show”), also an attorney, responded on FKA Twitter.

    In a later comment to Levin, Trump accused Vice President Kamala Harris of treating his vice president, Mike Pence, horribly. (What he meant, if anything intelligible, is unclear.)

    Harry Dunn, the former United States Capitol Police officer bloodied and called the N-word by rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, responded to Trump, “You sent a mob to kill him,” meaning Pence.

    If Republicans expect to lead in the 21st century they might first try living in it, Trump’s stuck in the 1950s.

    This question by Levin leaves one asking which universe Levin inhabits.

    Harris and the Democrats came out of their August convention exuberant about the bright future they hope to create for America. Trump and his MAGA base inhabit Gotham City, dark corrupt, and plundered by clownish sociopaths in bad makeup.

    Alfred Pennyworth: “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

    And then there’s Donald Trump.

    ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

    It’s Labor Day. If counties have not begun preparations for the general election by now, it’s too late for this little guide to help. I’ll stop posting this link after today.

    For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

    Apropos Of Nothing …

    Published by digby on September 1, 2024
    It hardly got a mention that the RNC actually printed up these signs and they were shown on national TV.

    Zach Beauchamp at Vox wrote this sometime back:

    On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.

    Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.”

    But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler’s appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):

    He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the “Hakenkreuzler.” So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.

    But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

    A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”

    Hey, you’ve gotta placate the rubes, amirite?

    Except it turned out he meant it.

    Why would we think any differently about Trump?