I’ve been following the American (and NATO) withdrawal from Afghanistan and while it’s certainly a Biden administration created debacle, President Biden keeps insisting there was no way to withdraw that wouldn’t have been this chaotic. There have been all sorts of foreign policy and military experts critiquing and doing Monday morning quarterback takes on the situation, but I’m more interested in the timeline of events rather than fancy debates over the “Biden strategy.” Nothing Biden or his top advisers have said thus far sounds like the chaos unfolding is a strategic failure. To be a strategic failure would require there to be a coherent plan and what happened is the Biden team wasn’t concerned with a planned withdrawal, but was “planning” a media event for the 20 year anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan – just another spin sideshow to sell their narrative.
Timelines matter so, while all the important details of what happened with the Biden team “withdrawal plan” aren’t known yet, many have begun to emerge and I’m going to focus on that.
As the Taliban sped across Afghanistan taking control of province after province with their offensive, the Biden White House kept urging the Taliban to stop their military offensive and work for a negotiated settlement, even as the Taliban moved to surrounding Kabul. The week before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Biden went on vacation. As the weekend of August 14th to15th approached, it was obvious the Taliban was moving to surround Kabul and that Kabul would fall, but still the Biden White House kept insisting they didn’t think that would happen.
The US embassy in Kabul was rushing to destroy sensitive documents and even as the US embassy in Kabul was evacuated by helicopter to the airport, the Biden spokespeople were insisting everything was running smoothly and they had the situation well in hand. On Sunday, August 15th, the White House released a picture from Camp David of the president seated a long table doing a teleconference with top advisers, insisting they had everything under control.
By Monday, August 16th, the president returned to the White House in the afternoon, delivered a speech, took no questions from the press, then resumed his vacation back at Camp David.
Here’s the State Department message to the Taliban on August 16th:
The White House has continued talking about the Taliban as seeking to become a “legitimate” government continuously and “Taliban legitimacy” has been a key point the Biden team keeps selling, while assuring America everything is going fine with their evacuation efforts in Kabul, because the Taliban is cooperating fully with the efforts.
Across the pond, as Kabul was poised to fall to the Taliban, British prime minister, Boris Johnson, on Saturday August 14th was trying to go on vacation too:
“Johnson, who attempted to head for a holiday on Saturday only to return as the Taliban closed in on the Afghan capital, was accused of “careless leadership” by opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/pm-johnson-says-britain-will-do-all-it-can-prevent-afghan-crisis-2021-08-18/
It’s been reported since that Boris Johnson tried to speak to Biden for over 36 hours and could not get through to him.
Those 36+ hours hold the key to what really happened inside the Biden White House. It’s been reported that at the G-7 earlier this summer Biden promised our European allies that the US would secure Kabul for evacuations when they pulled out. Obviously, Biden failed to live up to that promise and while Kabul was falling, the Biden White House kept the president out of the loop with talking to our closest allies.
The smoke and mirrors spin routine by the Biden team in the past week has so many echoes of the Obama team’s Benghazi spin disaster, which eclipsed the disaster of the US facility falling under attack and the loss of lives there. None of this should be surprising, because the Biden team is pretty much the same Obama team. Following the spin word games closely will lead you to the truth, as they keep trying to deflect, deny, and most of all deceive the American people at every turn.
While the Biden team was avoiding talking to our NATO allies, who had stuck with America in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, the Biden team was in constant contact with the Taliban working out a deal.
I believe the Biden team panicked once Kabul fell and the disturbing images of the US embassy in Kabul evacuating by helicopter and the chaos started appearing in the media. I believe that during those 36+ hours the Biden team cut a deal with the Taliban and offered them “legitimacy” (unfreezing Afghan financial assets/ recognition) in exchange for cooperating with the US evacuation from Kabul.
Those missing hours, where Biden was tucked away at Camp David on vacation, his team was working out a deal with the Taliban and it’s imperative to find out who in the Biden WH made those decisions. What the exact details of that deal have not been disclosed, but gauging by how often Biden and his State Department talk about the Taliban seeking “legitimacy,” I think it’s a safe guess “legitimacy” was the biggest carrot the Biden team dangled. It’s obvious that Biden only reads the scripts these people hand him and is not pouring over details.
It looks like the Biden plan is more a spin effort to keep talking about the Taliban as a trustworthy and responsible partner in our evacuation effort and a “legitimate” government. We’re being massively duped by another Obama team media narrative, while Biden is rolled out only to read prepared scripts and do ice cream run photo-ops.
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08/24/2021: I wanted to add a few more thoughts. It’s not only timelines that matter in figuring out what happened here, but the weekend Kabul fell, with Biden at Camp David on vacation and his administration working out some deal with the Taliban, while not taking calls from British prime minister, Boris Johnson OR calling and coordinating with our NATO allies does speak volumes.
I often feel like I’ve been studying the Dem/liberal media spin information war more closely and longer than anyone I can think of, because it affected me personally and since 1998, I have been worried about corruption at the highest level of our government and the willingness to corrupt the US military chain of command for partisan political reasons. That said, the ways in which top Dems manage and bury major crises are very predictable and often repeating the same spin playbook. This Biden WH deal with the Taliban is a repeat of John Kerry’s 2016 Iran playbook. My gut feeling is this Biden team debacle in Afghanistan is going to me 100X more humiliating for America than the US sailor incident in 2016 and may lead to so much domestic and foreign fall-out that no amount of crappy spin (lies) will be able to contain it. We might be very close to a tipping point in American history.
In 2016, Iran captured US sailors. John Kerry negotiated the release of the sailors and just as John Kerry was taking a victory lap waxing on about the new era of diplomacy with Iran this release represented, Iran released embarrassing hostage video of US sailors on their knees and sailors crying. Every American adversary knows exactly who this Biden team is, because it’s the same corrupt, weak, fools who made up the Obama team:
“There is no truth in reporting that Secretary Kerry apologized to the Iranians,” Kerry spokesman John Kirby told reporters, later tweeting that the claim had “zero” validity. “As the Secretary said in his statement this morning, he expressed gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation in swiftly resolving this matter, and noted that the peaceful and efficient resolution of this issue is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong.”
The White House said that its approach was vindicated with the rapid return of the sailors.
But several Republicans criticized President Barack Obama for not addressing the incident during his State of the Union on Tuesday night, which came shortly after the sailors and their two ships were taken.
“At the White House we reached the conclusion that further elevating the situation by including it in the State of the Union address would not be the most effective way for us to ensure the safe return of our sailors,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “And I think the outcome, which is the release of the sailors just hours after the President completed his address, is a pretty powerful endorsement of that strategy.”
Another video of the captured sailors showed them on their knees with their hands on their heads.
The video was aired just as Kerry credited diplomatic strength and newly developed ties with Iran in helping secure the quick and safe release of the sailors.”
https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/13/politics/iran-us-sailors/index.html
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