Posts Tagged ‘Bowe Bergdahl’

LinkSwarm for August 28, 2021

Friday, August 27th, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Biden’s Afghan debacle continues to top the news:

  • At least 90 people, including 13 American soldiers, were killed in in a bombing at an entrance to the Kabul airport.
  • Un-Fucking believable: “U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate.”

    U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

    The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

    But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.

    “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

    “French officials gave the Nazi occupiers a list of Parisian Jews they wanted to remain safe…”

  • What is behind Biden’s inexplicable trust for the Taliban?

    It is becoming increasingly difficult to draw any conclusion other than that President Biden knowingly and willfully surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban.

    To be clear, this is different from concluding that Biden committed to a recklessly premature date for withdrawing all U.S. forces (which, practically speaking, would necessitate NATO’s departure, too) while being aware that the Taliban were capturing territory and that the Afghan security forces might be unable to hold them off over the ensuing months.

    That would be bad, but not as damning as what I am deducing.

    I now believe Biden long ago reasoned that the Taliban were going to take over the country inevitably and decided to treat them as the de facto government. Consistent with this — and with the progressive Democratic orientation that American military power is needlessly provocative, and that concessions are the preferred way to inspire rogues into good behavior — Biden determined back in the spring that he would set a firm deadline to pull our forces out, and then demonstrate to the Taliban that the deadline was real.

    Snip.

    Biden saw the Taliban as the regime in waiting, with whom his administration was energetically negotiating. If he proved to the Taliban that the U.S. really was leaving no matter what, then he figured the Taliban would allow — even facilitate — the evacuation of thousands of American civilian workers, contractors, and diplomatic personnel. Biden would pull out American troops and trust the Taliban, thus appeased, with the fate of the remaining Americans.

    This is mind-boggling, but not the half of it. Biden was also effectively administering the coup de grace to the Afghan government, and not only by elevating the Taliban to the sole Afghan party with which his administration would negotiate the terms of the U.S. departure. Biden would also pull out in a manner that undermined the Afghan security forces’ capacity to fight the Taliban. After all, if U.S. troops and contractors continued providing technical and logistical support to the Afghan ground and air forces, the Taliban might interpret that as an American commitment to continue the war. Biden would make sure the jihadists had no cause for doubt.

    In this, Biden had to know he would be leaving to the Taliban the fate of tens of thousands of Afghans who supported American combat, intelligence, training, and nation-building efforts over the last 20 years. Though many government officials, members of Congress, and influential commentators pleaded with the Biden administration to fast-track the visa process and evacuate the Afghans while American forces were still in control, Biden plainly rationalized that this could provoke the Taliban into retaliatory measures — potentially against Americans — that would put public pressure on him to maintain U.S. forces in the country. Biden’s priority was to withdraw them. Ergo, the Taliban — yes, that Taliban — would be trusted to deal benignly with America’s Afghan allies.

    Read the piece for Andrew McCarthy’s reasoning behind this conclusion, including the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and evacuating Bagram in the dead of night. My only quibble with his analysis is that his working assumption that Biden is making the decisions of the Biden Administration. I rather doubt it…

  • On the ground in Afghanistan: things are bad:

    “My phone is melting, and my inbox is jammed, from grown Afghan men pleading, crying to get out with their wives and children,” my reader begins:

    All of them used to work for our company. They are engineers, electricians, lab technicians, urban planners, CAD drafters, surveyors, concrete masons, welders — all skilled technical and professional people who enjoyed what we would consider a solid middle-class life. Some went on to become lecturers at university. These aren’t herders and farmers — they are civilized, educated, middle class tradesman and professionals who trusted their government to maintain the safety and security of the nation. Their average age of the parents is late thirties. Their average family size is seven. The youngest child among them is 10 days old. Inside of a month, their lives are uprooted by bloodthirsty barbarians. They are hunted because they helped the Americans.

    One of our families has been waiting in the Entry Control Point for four days straight – living in trash and filth, with no shelter, jammed among thousands of others. The parents know full well what awaits if they are fortunate to get out. They are willing to live the life of a refugee in a camp near a military installation. Essentially a one room United Nations Refugee Center shack, or group expeditionary tents, no indoor plumbing, no kitchen. They share public toilets and showers and live in a fenced compound in a sea of other shacks or tents surrounded by gravel — for at least 12-18 months while they wait for the State Department to process their visas. They are willing to walk away from their middle-class comforts and live in refugee camps for well over a year, possibly two, for the freedom and liberty of the United States. Amanullah asked me yesterday if I could get him to Mexico so he could walk to Texas so he wouldn’t have to live in a refugee camp. They know.

    Don’t let anyone claim that Afghans who worked for America or international organizations will be fine.

    “Here’s a kick in the gut,” my reader continues. “Fawad — not his real name — called me crying last night after midnight. His brother-in-law was killed by the Taliban earlier that day. He had worked for an American contractor in Zabul [a southern province considered part of the Taliban’s heartland]. He was beaten in the street and then shot in the head so the villagers could see.”

  • More of that California ballot fraud that doesn’t exist. “300 recall ballots, drugs, multiple driver’s licenses found in vehicle of passed out felon: Torrance police.” I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Random X. Felon wasn’t working for Larry Elder…
  • Speaking of which: Democrats have the State of California investigating Larry Elder’s campaign.
  • Speaking of voting fraud, polls show growing support for voter ID.
  • Supreme Court upholds reinstatement of President Trump’s “stay in Mexico” policy for illegal aliens. Texas and Missouri were the lead plaintiffs.
  • The Supreme Court also struck down Biden’s eviction moratorium.

    “It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” the Court majority wrote in an unsigned opinion.

    “Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the opinion continued. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”

  • On his way out the door, disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo granted clemency to Weather Underground cop-killer David Gilbert.

    David Gilbert is the father of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. He had Chesa with his then-partner Kathy Boudin.

    David Gilbert was also a member of the Weather Underground, the domestic terrorist group responsible for the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in New York.

    Gilbert and Boudin dropped off infant Chesa with a babysitter before driving to the robbery.

    The terrorists, with members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force and Black Liberation Army, robbed the truck and wounded guard Joe Trombino and killed his co-worker Peter Paige. Police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady died in the shootout.

    A jury convicted Gilbert of three counts of second-degree murder and four counts of first-degree robbery.

  • Oh: They also took his Emmy away. The one they gave to him after we all knew he was a Granny-murderer…
  • Politico sells to German publishing giant Axel Springer for about $1 billion. Hopefully this will result in Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner firing some snowflakes when he insists they do actual reporting rather than waging social justice… (Hat tip: Director Blue.) (Previously.)
  • Emerald Robinson: “How I Murdered The Weekly Standard“:

    My modest proposal was that the 3% of Republicans who never approved of President Trump should stop pretending that they were spokesmen for the 97% of Republicans who did. In the corporate media, where 97% of that 3% were keeping a high profile on cable news, the distortions became preposterous. This seemed to me elementary logic. But for the tiny group of delusional Never Trumpers, my modest proposal fell on them like a ton of bricks.

    In the end, my essay ignited a kind of public war among conservative intellectuals that helped to bring down the neocons and the Never Trumpers in the media. Not only did the Weekly Standard shut down, but the National Review kicked out Jonah Goldberg, and the neocon’s peewee prince Bill Kristol went to work for Democrats – all in six months. How did that happen? They had no base of support outside of the Beltway, and they were in willful denial about their own unpopularity. This dynamic was obvious at all levels of media, but let’s take a high visibility example: the old panel at Fox New’s Special Report with Bret Baier. Now, Bret Baier is obviously a very quiet Never Trumper but if you stacked your daily panel with Stephen Hayes, A. B. Stoddard, and Jonah Goldberg and these were the “conservative” pundits you picked to defend President Trump’s policies then it’s obvious what Bret was doing.

    A week or so after my essay appeared, I got a very short and shrill phone call from one of Bret’s staffers – who was a rabid Hillary Clinton supporter, no less. When I picked up the call, she was angry and breathless and did not want to do small talk. She said: “You don’t know what you’ve done, you don’t understand the damage you’ve caused to this show.” I asked her to calm down, and be specific. She hung up instead.

    This bizarre exchange piqued my interest enough to watch Bret Baier’s show that night, which was an emotion I rarely felt for Special Report. Sure enough, Bret Baier ended the episode with an odd little “farewell” segment to Stephen Hayes. The gist of it was that Hayes was suddenly taking “a one year vacation to Spain” with the family. My first thought was: who does a video farewell when they take a vacation? The whole thing was pure baloney. It was now perfectly clear why Bret’s hysterical staffer had called. Apparently my essay had been a crucial factor in getting Stephen Hayes kicked off TV. Someone over at corporate had finally looked at the piss poor ratings Bret was getting and the light bulb went off: no one wants to listen to Hayes anymore. That was certainly true. (A few months later, the sour puss A. B. Stoddard also disappeared from the Special Report show – this time without a video farewell.)

    Hayes getting axed left me surprised. How was I to know that Fox executives could read? How was I to know that Baier and Hayes were roommates in college? Did Hayes sail to Spain on one of those idiotic cruises that he was always pushing on his subscribers? Jonah Goldberg had been taunting me from the pages of the National Review that the Never Trumpers were all doing fine – and then suddenly none of them were doing fine. In his video farewell, Hayes wanted everyone to know that he’d be back in a year, and that he was still the chief editor of the Weekly Standard magazine. Both of these statements actually turned out to be false.

    Five months later, I got a call from an insider that all the employees at the Weekly Standard were being asked to prepare for the worst. Had anyone run with this story yet? No they hadn’t. Had it somehow fallen to me to be the first to announce the end of the celebrated neocon magazine where Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes had regularly taunted the American working class? Yes it had. The Lord had delivered them into my hands

    Honestly, it was less of a murder than documenting a suicide…

  • Snopes co-founder and owner caught plagiarizing dozens of articles and Snopes went ahead and fact-checked it for us.”
  • Communist purges communists:

    Like the Soviet Union under Stalin, Current Affairs is the private kingdom of one man, in this case the dandy communist Nathan Robinson. For five years, Robinson has been all over Current Affairs like a cheap suit, while a small team of deluded volunteers has labored in his salt mine, generating content for the greater glory of the revolution, and their leader, the Potemkin page-turner. But even five-year plans go awry.

    Lyta Gold, who was hired to generate ‘Amusements’, is not amused. Gold claims that when the staff attempted to form a workers’ co-operative, Robinson fired them all.

    It would take a heart of stone not to laugh… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x More Effective Than Vaccines At Stopping Delta.”
  • “Large CDC Study Doesn’t Support Mask Mandates in Schools.” This is the sort of science Democrats don’t want settled. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • In an administration that sucks, Jen Psaki stands out for really sucking hard.
  • Speaking of sucking, here’s Spanish-language media omitting embarrassing information in their translation:

  • Texas Wins Preliminary Victory Against Biden Administration in Medicaid Lawsuit. The district court’s order temporarily suspends the Biden administration’s revocation of Texas Section 1115 Medicaid waiver.” The Biden Administration retroactively denied a waiver issued by the Trump Administration in an attempt to force ObamaCare down the state’s throat.
  • Texas election integrity law finally passes the Texas House, meaning Democrat’s quorum-busting stunts got them Jack and Squat.
  • Herschel Walker is running for the U.S. Senate.
  • Germany Schnitzels Itself After Ditching Nuclear, Coal Power For Green Pipe Dreams.” Keep enjoying the highest energy costs in Europe, Deutschland…
  • Samsung tops Intel as world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer.
  • Not news: Vultures eating dead cows. News: vultures eating live cows.
  • The Shat at 90.
  • Who should you back with your Go Fund Me money, Brett Butler or Spinal Tap’s Viv Savage? (I did toss a little money Brett’s way, as I knew her a little back in my standup comedy days…)
  • “Americans At Mercy Of Taliban Just Glad We Don’t Have A President Who Posts Mean Tweets Anymore.”
  • LinkSwarm for December 18, 2015

    Friday, December 18th, 2015

    It’s a week before Christmas, and I hope everyone is having a better week than I am (I’m sick and my dog’s sick).

  • Former FBI counterterrorism agent says that we haven’t gotten squat in terrorism leads from “moderate Muslims,” and we probably won’t as long as we keep using Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR as our only go-to groups for them. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Swedes are stocking up on guns.
  • Given that the French political establishment continues to ignore widespread French desire to stem Islamic immigration, is it any wonder Marine Le Pen’s National Front did so well in early voting?
  • DNC cuts off voter info access to Bernie Sanders campaign over data breach?
  • Environmentalists are a much more serious threat to human well being than climate change—even catastrophic climate change.”
  • The Fall of Rahm Emmanual.
  • Media Matters mouthpiece David Brock says that Ted Cruz is the biggest threat to a Hillary coronation.
  • “FitzGibbon Media, a prominent progressive public relations firm, abruptly shut down on Thursday amid allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the company’s president. Trevor FitzGibbon and his team worked with some of the biggest progressive organizations, including NARAL, MoveOn, the Center for American Progress and the AFL-CIO, as well as Wikileaks, Chelsea [i.e., Bradley] Manning and The Intercept.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • How The New York Times continually revised a story to help Obama look better.
  • Remember that ACLU board member that called for murdering Trump supporters? Turns out that calling for the assassination of political opponents is just a tad too extreme for the ACLU.
  • So we saved Kuwait’s bacon, and they can’t even be arsed to pretend they don’t hate Jews?
  • How Obama celebrated a deserter in the Rose Garden.
  • The cocked fist culture.
  • Nothing says “rational” and “reasonable” quite like calling Ted Cruz Satan incarnate. Thanks for proving that Hollywood celebrities aren’t overwrought drama queens, Cher…
  • The 25 most Florida things that happened in 2015.
  • More Bergdahl Swap Fallout

    Saturday, June 7th, 2014

    I was queuing up a LinkSwarm for Monday when it occurred to me that I have more than enough links on the fallout from the Bergdahl swap to put up a separate post, so here it is:

  • The entire Obama Administration seems shocked at the fact that those bitter, gun-clinging freaks from Jesusland who make our military actually have values. “The bitter criticism of Kerry in 2004 and Bergdahl today would carry no force if it came from mere ‘right-wingers.’ It comes, instead, from servicemen and veterans who see the two men as having behaved dishonorably. Once again the left is being undone by its failure to comprehend the centrality of honor to military culture.”
  • “Instead of just bringing Bergdahl back, they had to do the full kissy-huggy announcement with mom and dad figuring this good news would push the VA mess off the front page.”
  • For many in the military, the stupidity of thinking behind the Bergdahl swap (and how it was accomplished) was the last straw. “They have lost all respect for their commander in chief.”
  • “Perhaps President Obama stumbled into an announcement of the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl that was ignorant and insulting to those who serve our country in uniform, but his subsequent reaction to the criticism it has provoked is a disgrace.”
  • “Millions for defense, but not one red cent in tribute…except for paying off the Taliban for hostages.”
  • Taliban commander released in the Bergdahl swap says of course he’ll go back to fighting Americans.
  • What role did Pakistan play in the Bergdahl swap? Never forget that the Taliban are a creation of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence.
  • The eight stupidest things being said about the Bergdahl swap.
  • For a dissenting opinion on the right, Charles Krauthammer says he would have done the Bergdahl deal. Though I doubt he would have had the Rose Garden photo op, or been as sanctimonious about his own unerring judgment.”
  • The Bergdahl Blunder

    Wednesday, June 4th, 2014

    If you want to see how quickly consensus wisdom can change as the facts come to light, take a look at the 180º turn in opinion on the five Taliban leaders for Bowe Bergdahl exchange.

    First “President Obama hailed Bergdahl’s recovery as a triumph of years of high-wire diplomatic efforts” in a Rose Garden ceremony with Bergdahl’s parents.

    UN Ambassador Susan Rice also hailed the exchange, saying that Bergdahl’s poor health was a factor in making the swap and that he had “served the United States with honor and distinction.”

    All in all, it seemed like the perfect media event to distract public attention from the VA scandal. Republicans were criticized for complaining that swapping five high value Taliban commanders for one soldier was a mistake.

    Then it came to light that Bergdahl was not universally loved among his comrades in arms, to put in mildly. “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”

    The revelation of Bergdahl’s desertion seemed to blindside the Obama Administration. It shouldn’t have. Never mind that it should have been able to find that out before the swap from its own internal military reports. (If not, then there’s a “thermocline of truth” in the chain of command even more serious than previously suspected.) For an Administration that claims it first learns of its own scandals from the media, it should have learned about Bergdahl’s desertion no later than June 7, 2012, when Rolling Stone published an extensive profile on Bergdahl and his status as a prisoner of war:

    Bowe Bergdahl had a different response. He decided to walk away.

    In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment?

    Yes, his team leader responded – if you took your rifle and night-vision goggles, that would cause problems.

    Bowe returned to his barracks, a roughly built bunker of plywood and sandbags. He gathered up water, a knife, his digital camera and his diary. Then he slipped off the outpost.

    Even those notorious right-swing shills at The New York Times report that Bergdahl “slipped away from his outpost.”

    Soldiers say that after Bergdahl was captured, “over the next couple of months, all the attacks were far more directed.”

    Now stories have come to light that soldier’s in Bergdahl’s unit were instructed to lie about how he came into the Taliban’s hands.

    No wonder there was such an outrage among our troops over the exchange.

    Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)

    As for Rice, Ralph Peters noted “At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.”

    Then footage emerged of the Taliban handing over Bergdahl, which did not seem to indicate he was in particularly frail physical health. (Mentally? Well, Blinky McDeserter obviously has some issues…)

    Even Obama’s usual defenders in the media are questioning the exchange:

    Now Obama’s State Department (and liberal Administration defenders) are saying that “there are a ton of conflicting reports”. This is such a general purpose cop-out I’m surprised we don’t hear it from the Obama Administration more often. “Did the IRS target conservative groups?” “There are a ton of conflicting reports…”

    The fact that liberal opinion has swung from “This was a triumph for Obama and Republicans look petty for raining on his parade” to “we don’t have enough information to judge yet” tells you all you need to know about the optics…

    Also: Oh, nice job Mad: