Afghanistan Comes to America
What Biden's Benghazi means for us at home.
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Conventional wisdom—correct this time—asserts that the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan makes the world a more dangerous place. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Islamic triumphalists everywhere are emboldened. Fuses burning over Taiwan, Israel, Ukraine and other hot spots grow shorter.
Less recognized is how our self-inflicted Afghanistan catastrophe may create or increase threats at home. Consider four, three military, one political:
*Suppose you are a general or admiral in the U.S. armed forces. You’ve just been required by your constitutionally superior civilian leaders to head the biggest American military debacle since the fall of South Vietnam. You’ve rescued more than 120,000 but abandoned somewhere between 60,000 and 200,000 more Afghan partners and their family members.
You know that as U.S. ground forces withdrew, the South Vietnamese army fought on, with massive U.S. air support defeating the North’s 1972 Easter invasion. Then a Democratic-controlled Congress cut off funds, fuel, ammunition and air support. You also recall the United States, during the Carter administration, restrained the Iranian military to ease out the Shah. That helped ease in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
And now, Kabul. If you’re still in uniform the next time civilians not just override your best advice, as is their constitutional prerogative, but do so in capricious arrogance, then attempt to deflect blame onto you, how likely will you be to snap to and salute? When President Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Jr. for insubordination over the latter’s conduct of the Korean War, MacArthur choose theatrically to “just fade away.” In a more ambiguous situation, fraught with national danger, will you?
*Suppose you’re not a flag officer but rather a colonel, lieutenant colonel or major. Imagine you implemented the orders to abandon Bagram air base at night and without notice to our Afghan allies, as well as to cut off air support for Kabul’s forces and even halt maintenance contracts for its planes and helicopters.
Further, assume you know about private efforts, like the Commercial Task Force of veterans, ex-diplomats and others that rescued a reported 5,000 or more Afghans from Taliban control. Private Americans, on short notice and from scratch, began doing what civilian leaders—with personnel, months of time and billions of dollars to prepare—proved either unserious or incompetent about doing.
How much will recent events cause you to reinterpret your oath to defend America and the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic because now you see domestic threats in high places?
*Finally, on the military side, suppose you are a member of the U.S. all-volunteer armed forces at any level, from private up. You served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, perhaps on multiple tours. You supported those in combat, or experienced it yourself, saw buddies wounded—sometimes grievously—or killed, leaving families bereft at home.
From experience you know that—despite the size of the armed forces budget—the military is stretched thin. It’s unable to fight and win the two potential, simultaneous medium-sized or larger conflicts planners worried about not long ago.
In the next crisis, and there will be one, will you obey what sound like suicidal orders to charge or to cut-and-run? Will “thank you for your service” in a humiliating effort offset contempt for national leadership?
*Politically, President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan mismanagement might have opened the door to former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The reactionary left base of the Democratic Party, cosmetically labeled “progressive,” applauds Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s fantastical budget concoctions; approves the unprecedented influx of illegal migrants along the southern U.S. border; and can’t be bothered by the anti-American (and, not coincidentally, antisemitic) incitement of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Squad-mates Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayana Pressley, et. al. This brightened Republican prospects for the 2022 congressional elections.
But the shame of Afghanistan is a double-edged political sword for Trump and pro-Trump Republicans. Although the previous administration’s accomplishments included historically low unemployment, “Operation Warp-Speed” development of anti-Covid-19 vaccines and the remarkable “Abraham accords” Arab-Israeli peace agreements, it began the ill-considered withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban.
Trump now indicts Biden for botching what he started. But talking with the Taliban over the heads of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, and continuing to do so though the jihadis kept up terror attacks on Afghan civilians might tarnish Trump—and potential GOP presidential candidates like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—as well as Biden.
Weakened American deterrence and further corroded U.S politics mean a more fragile world indeed.
Eric Rozenman is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and author of the forthcoming book From Elvis to Trump, Eyewitness to the Unraveling.
Biden Admin Seeks to Waive Sanctions on Assad
U.S. officials want to facilitate Lebanese energy deal that would provide Assad with financial lifeline
The Biden administration is expected to waive sanctions on Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad to facilitate an energy deal with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, according to congressional sources briefed on the matter.
The administration wants to waive portions of the bipartisan Caesar Act, which applied wide-ranging sanctions on Assad for his war crimes in Syria, to facilitate an energy deal with Arab nations that would provide the Assad regime with a financial and political lifeline.
Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa who was caught having an extramarital affair with a reporter in 2008 while serving as the Obama administration's ambassadorial nominee to Iraq, is pressing Egypt to sell gas to Lebanon via a pipeline that runs through Syria, congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon. The Biden administration would have to waive key sanctions on Assad in order for the deal to go through.
As Biden and Democrats in Congress signal a willingness to back sanctions relief, Republican foreign policy leaders say removing sanctions on Assad will embolden his Iranian backers as well as Hezbollah. Indeed, Hezbollah itself sees the deal as a victory in its fight against U.S. sanctions and efforts to expand the Islamic Republic's influence across the Middle East, saying it will loosen restrictions on all three countries involved: Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.
"Why in the world would the Biden administration lift sanctions on one of the most brutal human rights abusers in the world—the Assad regime?" Joe Wilson, a House Foreign Affairs Committee member and chair of the Republican Study Committee's National Security and Foreign Affairs Task Force, told the Free Beacon.
A congressional source tracking the matter said the deal will supply the Assad regime with much-needed hard cash.
"Assad is desperate for hard currency and that's what they are going to get from this via the transit fees," the source said. "The regime is literally starved for cash and Biden is saving them by the bell. A great new win for the human rights agenda after the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. So glad we have the geniuses in charge like McGurk."
Diplomats from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan met on Wednesday to finalize a roadmap for the energy deal and have signaled the Biden administration is prepared to issue the necessary waiver.
U.S. officials are also participating in the energy negotiations. Dorothy Shea, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, has been working to address the country's energy issues and confirmed in late August that she is in talks with the World Bank and Arab countries to finalize an agreement. Lebanon is also pushing the World Bank to finance the arrangement. Shea said she has also been in contact with the White House and Treasury Department as part of efforts to waive sanctions.
"There is a will to make this happen," Shea said in an interview with Al Arabiya English last month. "There will be some logistical things that need to happen too, but I think that it will all fall into place fairly easily."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), during a trip last week to Lebanon, signaled his party's willingness to back sanctions relief for Assad.
"The complication as you know is the transport via Syria," Van Hollen said of the energy deal. "We are [urgently] looking for ways to address that despite the Caesar Act."
Shea and other Biden administration diplomats believe the energy deal will weaken Iran and Hezbollah because Lebanon would receive energy shipments through Syria instead of Tehran.
But top Hezbollah officials refute this argument. A senior Hezbollah official gloated about the deal after Shea claimed it would undermine the terror group's grip on Lebanon.
"The stupidity of the U.S. ambassador was in her rush to react" to the situation, Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah's executive council, said on Monday. "With one stroke we broke the siege on three countries: We purchased the fuel from Iran, we transferred it through Syria, and besieged Lebanon benefited from it. This is a first step that we will follow with others."
The Biden administration began laying the groundwork for bypassing the Caesar Act in June when it removed sanctions on several businessmen tied to the Iran-Assad financial network.
Regional experts viewed this move and others—such as lax enforcement of sanctions on Iran's oil trade—as a sign the Biden administration intends to move forward with sanctions relief for Assad as part of the energy agreement with Lebanon.
The move also comes as the Biden administration works to solidify a revamped nuclear deal with Iran, negotiations that stalled even as senior administration officials show a willingness to waive a large portion of sanctions on the Iranian regime.
"U.S.-Lebanon policy is by definition pro-Iran," said Tony Badran, a veteran Lebanon analyst and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Under the pretext of ‘saving' Lebanon and ‘countering' Hezbollah, the U.S. is in fact propping up the Iranian order and Iranian clients."
"The conceit that wheeling gas and electricity to Lebanon through Syria somehow weakens Iran's position in Beirut or even Damascus is laughably absurd as well as blatantly dishonest," said Badran, who has been tracking the energy deal's developments. "It's simply a pretext for a pro-Iran posture."
Congressional sources told the Free Beacon that the Trump administration was presented with an opportunity to waive sanctions on Assad as part of a similar deal, but they declined due to concerns such a move would enrich the Syrian dictator as he commits mass human rights abuses.
A Treasury Department spokesman said the State Department has the authority to waive sanctions under the Caesar Act. The State Department did not respond to Free Beacon requests for comment by press time.
Koch-Funded Quincy Institute Joins Communists To Demand Biden Administration Lift Sanctions on US Enemies
The US Peace Council and the International Action Center are openly supportive of totalitarian regimes
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is joining a coalition of civil society groups that call for President Joe Biden to roll back sanctions against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Forty-six organizations, including two avowedly Communist groups, on Tuesday submitted a letter to Biden that urges him to implement "significant" changes to the United States' sanctions policy. The U.S. Peace Council and International Action Center are openly supportive of Communist and totalitarian regimes.
The U.S. Peace Council has cozied up to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and accused the U.S. government of launching coups in Ukraine and Venezuela. The International Action Center recently released a report that parrots the popular Chinese talking point that the coronavirus originated in a U.S. military lab in Maryland.
Sent in the wake of the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, a policy long backed by the isolationist-leaning Quincy Institute, the letter demonstrates the organization's ongoing efforts to push Biden's foreign policy to the left.
"We write to urge you to complete the administration's sanctions policy review as expeditiously as possible, to make its findings public, and to implement significant and structural changes to U.S. sanctions policy," the letter reads.
The signatories offer to provide "expertise" to the Biden administration during its sanctions policy review.
"We believe we have valuable insight to share, and your administration has said it seeks such input," they write.
The letter is the Quincy Institute's first known collaboration with the U.S. Peace Council and the International Action Center, two of the harshest critics of U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. Peace Council has been a reliable defender of America's adversaries since it launched in 1979 as an affiliate of the Soviet Union. In recent years, the group has cozied up with Assad and Nicolás Maduro, the disputed president of Venezuela.
The International Action Center has conducted similar "anti-imperialist" activism since its founding in 1992. Its founder, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, gained notoriety for defending war criminals Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein. Clark also represented two Nazi camp guards, Karl Linnas and Jakob Reimer, who faced war-crime charges after they immigrated to the United States.
The Quincy Institute did not respond to a request for comment. The International Action Center and the U.S. Peace Council did not return requests for comment.
Another signatory, CODEPINK, is waging a campaign called "China Is Not Our Enemy" to oppose the Biden administration's pending arms sales to Taiwan. Many of the group's arguments echo Chinese Communist Party talking points.
"Given China's overwhelming military superiority over Taiwan, more weapons will do nothing to enhance Taiwan's self-defense; instead they will further deepen Taiwan's military reliance on the U.S., making U.S. involvement in a future China-Taiwan clash increasingly likely," CODEPINK's campaign site reads. "Sending more weapons to Taiwan will surely upset Chinese leaders, further sabotaging opportunities for much-needed cooperation on climate change, pandemic relief, nuclear nonproliferation, and other issues of common concern."
CODEPINK and 47 other organizations signed a July letter that urges the Biden administration to prioritize cooperating with China on climate change rather than looking into Beijing's litany of human rights abuses. The Washington Free Beacon reported that several of the other cosigners take funds from left-wing billionaire George Soros.
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