On Afghanistan fiasco, even CNN points the finger straight at Joe Biden
Afghanistan is a disaster of untold dimensions. It's a story so big that it's actually drawing mainstream media interest, given the monumental scale of failure from our country's sorry leadership.
Nothing beats this analysis from a CNN contributor who blasts Joe Biden to smithereens in the most damning presentation of facts so far. That CNN would publish this is almost as newsworthy as the unfolding Afghanistan fiasco.
Peter Bergen is an old war correspondent who was onto bin Laden back in the 1990s and actually interviewed the monster. He knows his stuff.
In his analysis, he puts all of the blame squarely on Joe Biden.
His most important points:
One, Biden's sudden pullout from Afghanistan is identical to the sudden U.S. pullout from Iraq in 2011. That was when ISIS began its blitzkreig and almost toppled Baghdad. Who was behind that? Sure enough, Joe Biden, who learned literally nothing from that fiasco. As a matter of common sense, President Obama sent the troops back, bailing Biden out. But it made no impression on Biden. He went on to repeat his disastrous mistake in Afghanistan. Bergen writes:
Now Biden is presiding over a debacle entirely of his own making in Afghanistan — and one that has unfolded more swiftly than even the most dire prognostications.
Two, the ISIS blueprint is obvious. It's not just in the blitz with toppling regional capitals; it's in the strategy and tactics. It's obvious at least to everyone but Joe Biden. Bergen notes that the Taliban has been attacking prisons and releasing their inmates, who go on to join the Taliban and fight with them, giving them a big bank of recruits. The government says most are criminals. But that's significant. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, those are precisely the kind of people who seek to erase their ruined lives and become fanatics in charge of a revolutionary movement. Biden of course is clueless.
Three, Biden's current strategy of negotiating with the Taliban, hoping they'll turn into nice swamp creatures addicted to cocktail parties, foreign aid, and consultant contracts, is idiocy. The stupid approach did start with President Trump, but considering all the Trump actions Biden has thrown out, it's pretty amazing that Biden kept this one. This is how bad it's been:
Khalilzad traveled to Doha this week where he has led "peace" negotiations with the Taliban for the past three years "to help formulate a joint international response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan."
Good luck with that. During the last rounds of negotiations that started under the Trump administration, Khalilzad entered into agreements with the Taliban that stated in exchange for a total US withdrawal, they would break with al Qaeda and enter into genuine peace talks with the Afghan government. The Taliban have reneged on those agreements, according to the United Nations and the Afghan government.
The Taliban doesn't follow agreements any more than a wild animal would. Biden is clueless.
It gets worse. Bergen then gets into the prisoner issue again, and his conclusion is a doozy:
Meanwhile, Khalilzad agreed to pressure the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, several of whom simply rejoined their old comrades on the battlefield once they were released. It's hard to recall a more failed and counterproductive diplomatic effort. Maybe British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's attempt to reach a lasting peace agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 in Munich on the cusp of World War II?
Neville Chamberlain is about Biden's speed, except that Chamberlain was a reasonably honorable man and in the end understood his failure. Biden never learns.
Bergen forecasts some horrible things coming down the pike based on these idiotic decisions from the U.S.'s commander in chief.
One, the Taliban is going to dance around and carve out a "victory" for itself on 9/11 as Biden withdraws U.S. troops entirely. It's not been like Iraq, where troops were eventually kept there under another name, and ISIS was eventually destroyed by President Trump. Biden is staying his disastrous course and claims he has "no regrets."
Two, the Taliban, like Iraq, is going to make itself a magnet for "foreign fighters" and I suppose "Taliban brides," and all the other crap that came of that wretched era. President Trump shut it all down in a matter of months. But Biden is actually setting the stage for the whole thing to flourish all over again.
Bergen is a polite writer and scratches his head in his conclusion:
Why Biden chose one path in Iraq and another in Afghanistan isn't clear. But what is clear is that a predictable debacle is now unfolding under Biden's watch in Afghanistan.
Conclusion: Biden is a disaster as a leader, and he's the author and owner of the fiasco in Afghanistan.
Bergen may be scratching his head as to why Biden could be so foolish, but what many of our readers will be scratching their heads about is how this piece got published on CNN.
Perhaps they're looking for credibility these days, and they've easily got it in Bergen. Perhaps they're looking to go mainstream. The other thing is, the Biden clown show can't be ignored anymore — too many news agencies on it. It all might come down to their recent past, which got them in this predicament: turning themselves into a fourth-rate Democrat propaganda organ didn't work out so well for them ratings-wise. The network must know this and have concluded that their only recourse to draw back listeners is to publish credible analyses like this.
Image: Screen shot from CNN video via shareable YouTube.
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