Biden jokes with NBC correspondent about Americans stranded in Afghanistan
Joe Biden still isn't done congratulating himself on the great job he's claimed to have done on Afghanistan, and already he's cutting jokes about Americans left behind.
Here's the outrageous exchange, according to Matt Margolis of PJMedia:
But, when asked about the situation after a briefing on cybersecurity from NBC’s Peter Alexander, Biden treated it like a joke.
“What will you do if Americans are still in Afghanistan after the 8/31 deadline?” Alexander asked.
That’s when the White House cut off the audio feed.
But Biden’s response was heard by those who were in the room, and by Alexander, who said that Biden jokingly replied, “You’ll be the first person I call.”
What kind of answer is that? Where does this sarcastic jocularity come from? And does it disgust anyone that the White House tried to cut that feed off, the better to keep that perfectly authentic exchange from the public?
It follows from Kamala Harris' giggling response three days ago in Singapore to a reporter's question about Americans stranded in Afghanistan, suggesting that it's a prevalent view from the top.
Even from the point of view of saving their own political skin, it doesn't make sense. It's as if Jimmy Carter's failed presidency, which went down in smoking ruins in the Iran hostage crisis, was now a laughing matter for this merry bunch. One wonders when it's going to devolve into a full Vincent Price-style horselaugh amid the rubble and flames. As Margolis notes:
There’s nothing funny about Americans being left behind under Taliban rule. Nothing at all.
It's made all the worse now that news has gotten out about 20 schoolkids from El Cajon, California, traveling with parents on a summer field trip, are stranded, still unable to get through to the Kabul airport, with many in their county and community quite worried at this point. Some unknowledgable people have asked why the heck anyone would travel to Afghanistan at all, but that's a bad line of questioning. Joe Biden had assured for months that there was no danger of a Taliban takeover, to start. Two, based on local reports, they may have been Afghani immigrants, the area is loaded of Iraqi Chaldean Christian immigrants many of whom vote Republican, and for Afghani immigrants, that would be a very friendly area with shops that sell their favorite foods (even the local Walmart does). others who speak at least some of their language, and a general community that knows what war is. Blaming the victims in this case doesn't work, and the kids are in genuine danger now.
What kind of heartless president laughs that off, particularly with a chop-licking Taliban looking for someone to make an example of in its lifelong quest to humiliate America just a little more?
Biden, at best seems to be profoundly out of touch with reality. His "narrative" to the American public, after all has been that the airport access is clear, with the Taliban doing all it can to ensure its open access, and "any American who wants to go home, we will get you home." For the California kids and worried parents and community, those claims sound pretty hollow right about now. Could it be that he didn't know that these kids, among thousands, actually, are among the stranded? It seems plausible that someone would have briefed him on it, and he fell asleep or forgot about it as soon as he was told.
The worst that one can conclude is that Biden does know and couldn't care less.
That was evident enough in some of his early addresses, where, as I noted here, he was one cold, heartless bastard on the entire matter, blaming everyone but himself for the Afghanistan fiasco of his own making, starting with his insult to Afghani grunt soldiers all supposedly being cowards (someone should ask this sneering draft dodger about the tens of thousands of Afghani soldiers and police who have died fighting the Taliban over the past two decades). After that, he told terrified Afghanis who've just lost their country that he'd be sure to speak up for them at the United Nations, so never mind about the tangible protections they'd just lost with his setup for the Taliban takeover. Worst of all, he pretty well told America's veterans that they'd wasted their time and lives fighting for Afghanistan as they had in this war, but to cheer up: He was there as their hero now, ensuring that nobody would ever fight a war like that again, which was supposed to be their 'reward' for all that blood, sweat and tears over the past 20 years. It was repulsive, leaving America's Afghan war vets feeling a kindship with America's Vietnam veterans, spit on by hippies at America's airports.
Could Biden's making light of the grave situation be a function of his not caring, or a calculation that by joking about it, the public will laugh the whole thing off with him? If so, he's going to be in for a surprise.
Either way, this is one unfit commander in chief. Anyone with that little concern for trapped American schoolkids in an atrocious hellhole, left behind by his own incompetence, doesn't deserve to be president. He ought to be thrown out, but he'd be replaced by a laughing hyena not all that different from him. Voters will just have to put a hostile Congress in front of him in 2022, or deal with more of these grotesque insults from a greedy, corrupt, bad-judgment monster who really doesn't feel anything human at all.
Biden's Afghanistan pullout is going to cost us
President Biden's feckless handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will have a significant impact on the future of the U.S.
President Biden claimed he had a choice "either to follow through on that (Trump's withdrawal) agreement, or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban."
He chose to follow through on the agreement, albeit without its tough conditionalities, which among other things included a requirement from the Taliban to share power.
The chaos that has resulted was not a result of the withdrawal itself but the inept way it was carried out. Pulling out troops first, abandoning the strategic Bagram airbase without telling the Afghani military, leaving civilians to fend for themselves without troops to protect their departure, and leaving billions' worth of military hardware for the Taliban to get its hands on, has led to this chaos. The president weakly claimed he wanted to avoid further bloodshed, as did the swiftly fleeing president of Afghanistan.
The way the withdrawal was implemented will only guarantee further bloodshed on a massive scale. The fall of Afghanistan is a historical disaster of epoch proportions. It may rival the fall of Constantinople. Afghanistan is not called the Graveyard of Empires for nothing. The Soviets left Afghanistan in 1988-1989 and the Soviet Union was officially dissolved in December 1991.
British MP Lord Forsyth of Drumlean claimed “It is very hard to overestimate the scale of the catastrophe following the Biden administration’s disastrous implementation of the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan." British MP Lord Blencathra believes "Biden may have condemned the world to Chinese domination in future and the end of western liberal democracy.” He continued, "This is not like Saigon; it is far worse. The Viet Cong had no agenda outside Vietnam but Afghanistan is now under the control of Islamist fanatics who want to wage war on every western democracy." Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated "America's retreat is imbecilic – and tells our enemies we don't have any interests or values worth defending. Friends and foes ask: is this a moment when the West is in epoch-changing retreat?"
How will the Biden administration deal with the massive hostage crisis we are about to witness? When not on vacation, its first response is to deny that there is a problem.
In her August 23 press briefing, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki indignantly stated, "I think it’s irresponsible to say that Americans are stranded. They are not." However, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told “Meet the Press” on August 22 that there are “several thousand” Americans still stranded in Afghanistan. On August 17, the Daily Mail reported 40,000 Americans were stranded in Afghanistan. No one knows the actual number. How do you plan an evacuation when you don't know how many people need to be evacuated? Press secretary for the Defense department, John Kirby, told reporters the U.S. military does not know how many Americans remain in Afghanistan.
The Iran crisis involved only 52 American hostages They were able to humiliate the Carter administration for 444 days. How will the Biden administration deal with hundreds and possibly thousands of hostages? The media will have a field day with heart-wrenching stories. As an example, there are more than 20 students and 16 parents from El Cajon, California who visited Afghanistan on summer vacation. They were unable to get to the airport. One reason Americans cannot get to the airport is Taliban roadblocks. John Kirby has acknowledged that some Americans have been beaten by the Taliban in Kabul. He reassured us that the Biden administration has “communicated to the Taliban” that the attacks are unacceptable. Even Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff believes getting all Americans out of the country by 8/31 is unlikely.
If it is necessary to reenter Afghanistan, the American military will be facing a well-equipped adversary. Between 2002 and 2017, the United States gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in weaponry. One U.S. official claimed, "Everything that hasn't been destroyed is the Taliban's now." This would include 40 aircraft UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones, 600,000 infantry weapons including M16 assault rifles, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 16,000 night-vision goggle devices. What kind of assistance can we expect from anti-Taliban Afghans?
In addition to the problems arising in Afghanistan, the withdrawal will inspire forces throughout the world to challenge the U.S. President Biden claimed that we got rid of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Almost immediately after he made this claim Defense department press secretary John Kirby stated “We know that al-Qaida is a presence as well as ISIS in Afghanistan." These terrorists may be headed to the U.S. The Defense department’s Automated Biometric Identification System has flagged up to 100 of the 7,000 Afghans evacuated as prospective recipients of Special Immigration Visas as potential matches to intelligence agency ties-to-terrorism watchlists. Vladimir Putin has rejected the idea of airlifting people from Afghanistan to countries near Russia, or even in Russia. He claims he did not want "militants showing up here under cover of refugees."
John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing). He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University. He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. He is featured on the BBC's program "Things We Forgot to Remember:" Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany
Women and girls hardest hit in Afghanistan
For Afghan girls and women who must remain in Afghanistan, it doesn't matter what the USA does now. What the USA did is the issue.
Many voices are sounding off on this reality, but their words do not matter much to everyday women in Afghanistan. It is all sound and fury now.
Had the government of Ashraf Ghani and the army of Afghanistan stayed in place and continued to operate and govern after the U.S. military pulled out, Afghan women and girls might have had a chance, might have had futures, even if fighting with the Taliban continued. Now their prospects and even their lives are over. Oh, sure, many will live on, but their lives will be torturous.
It seems President Biden just waved his hand and said get our troops out of Afghanistan now. Did he understand what would happen to girls and women in Afghanistan with that directive? When he chose to "go to zero" suddenly, pulling our military out completely, did he even consider Afghan girls and women? Doubt it.
Why? Aren't the Democrats always hyper-focused on the plight of women? Did Biden have room in his heart only for American women?
It doesn't matter now. The consequences of the poor planning and careless actions of the Biden administration have been devastating to Afghan women and girls. Even now there are reports of young girls being forced to "marry" Taliban, of a woman who was burned for fixing food that was displeasing to Taliban, and of multiple women being beaten and killed by Taliban. CBN reports that one young girl watched the Taliban cut off the arms of her father and slaughter her family before she was handed over to their leadership.
Sadly, we saw similar consequences in Iraq when President Barack Obama pulled U.S. troops out of there. Girls and women were victimized horribly by ISIS as those thugs filled the void in that country. No Democrat seemed to care about what was happening. Did Democrats ever express regret about it or sorrow after it? Don't think so.
Republicans did, and Trump did, and he acted. He expressed sorrow over American Kayla Mueller, who was victimized and killed by ISIS, and then he killed their leader. Trump destroyed ISIS in Iraq, and the families of the ISIS victims lauded Trump.
Currently, the Independent Women's Forum, a national women's organization and nonprofit, has criticized the decision and the actions of President Joe Biden. In an August 19, 2021 article, Carrie Sheffield writes, "President Biden's failure to prevent the catastrophic, lightning-speed collapse of Afghanistan into Taliban control now imperils the lives and freedoms of more than 18 million Afghan women and girls. ... For Afghan women their prospects now range from bleak to horrendous."
An opinion piece by Andrea Boltner, also of the Independent Women's Forum (August 23, 2021), expresses disappointment that the Biden-Harris administration broke its commitment to Afghan women and damaged U.S. credibility as a leader in women's rights.
Prominent feminist groups were strangely silent just after Biden pulled our troops, and then they wrote a letter to the Biden-Harris administration on August 18, which urged the leaders not to abandon Afghan women and girls. One hundred feminist leaders and advocates signed the letter.
It reads, "Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris, We are heartbroken by the devastating news coming out of Afghanistan about Taliban's advances and are writing to you with our plea for your administration to take actions to protect Afghan women and girls and to address this unfolding human rights and humanitarian catastrophe."
The letter also urged the administration not to agree to a deal that will recognize and support a Taliban regime, and it begged the administration to take action to save women's rights and human rights leaders and advocates and to evacuate them to the United States. (Well and good, but what happens to all the other women, and now without their leaders?)
Before Biden's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, some of the same voices criticized the presence of the USA in Afghanistan as being a negative for women and girls there. The Nation published an article that decried the problems for women brought by war and seemed to yearn for a paradigm shift in foreign policy. Reminder to be careful about our wishes?
Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel laureate and Pakistani who was shot in the head by Taliban in 2014 for advocating for education for girls, is urging countries to open their borders to Afghan refugees. She said, "I think every country has a role and responsibility right now."
She knows firsthand about the Taliban, and we must take her advice. Unfortunately, doing what she advises will not help most Afghan women and girls anymore.
C.S. Boddie writes for Meadowlark Press, LLC.
A brief review of the Biden family's financial dealings in China begs the question of a compromised or even installed presidency.
With Biden in the White House, President Trump predicted, China would “own the United States.” There’s also something to Trump’s charge that the Bidens are an “organized crime family.” LLOYD BILLINGSLEY
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
IMAGES OF JOE BIDEN’S MANSIONS:
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
Report: Despite Chip Shortage, Biden Administration Approves Sales to Huawei
U.S. officials have approved licenses for China’s Huawei to purchase hundred of millions of dollars of chips for its auto component business, a report from Reuters said Wednesday.
The report cites two unnamed sources.
From Reuters:
Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, has been hobbled by trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on the sale of chips and other components used in its network gear and smartphones businesses. The Biden administration has been reinforcing the hard line on exports to Huawei, denying licenses to sell chips to Huawei for use in or with 5g devices.
But in recent weeks and months, people familiar with the application process told Reuters the U.S. has granted licenses authorizing suppliers to sell chips to Huawei for such vehicle components as video screens and sensors. The approvals come as Huawei pivots its business toward items that are less susceptible to U.S. trade bans.
Not everyone is a fan. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who has been deeply critical of Huawei in the past, said in a statement, “It’s unacceptable for the Biden administration to ease the pressure campaign against Chinese spy companies like Huawei.”
Critics of the Biden administration’s kowtow to China on the Huawei chips say it will weaken efforts to get allies across the globe to ban Huawei products from critical information infrastructure.
Just over a year ago, the U.S. government announced new sanctions against Huawei that sought to block its supply of semiconductors.
Breitbart News’ John Hayward reported:
The new sanctions essentially finish the job of cutting Huawei off from its supply of Kirin chips, a custom-designed advanced processing chip supplied until now by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Huawei began seeking alternative suppliers after restrictions imposed by the U.S. in May, but Monday’s order from the Commerce Department comprehensively blocked all Huawei entities from purchasing the chips from any other viable sources.
“Huawei and its foreign affiliates have extended their efforts to obtain advanced semiconductors developed or produced from U.S. software and technology in order to fulfill the policy objectives of the Chinese Communist Party. As we have restricted its access to U.S. technology, Huawei and its affiliates have worked through third parties to harness U.S. technology in a manner that undermines U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. This multi-pronged action demonstrates our continuing commitment to impede Huawei’s ability to do so,” explained Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Huawei is the top mobile phone maker in China. Beijing considers it a “national champion” and it is central to the country’s “Made in China 2025” scheme to dominate high-tech manufacturing. As one of China’s few truly global brands, it has become something of a symbol for the nation around the world. The company is also the central actor in China’s bid to dominate next-generation 5G telecommunications technology.
Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei, was a high-ranking intelligence officer with the People’s Liberation Army, according to U.S. officials. Two years ago, a federal grand jury indicted Ren’s daughter—who was also Huawei’s chief financial officer—Meng Wanzhou, charging her with fraud and violations of Iran sanctions. She was arrested in Vancouver, Canada, and remains there under house arrest while fighting her extradition to New York for trial.
No comments:
Post a Comment