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August 16, 2021

Videos: Yes, Joe, it's like Saigon

By Monica Showalter

Joe Biden made a big deal about his rigid, hasty, ill-planned, badly executed Afghan pullout not being another Saigon, a reference to the disgraceful final pullout of the U.S. presence in Vietnam in 1975.

“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army,” Biden assured. “They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.”

“There’s going to be no circumstance where you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” he added. “It is not at all comparable.”

The more he says it, the less true it gets. His dishonesty is palpable. He seems to think that by making this claim, the press will repeat it ad nauseum and it will become standard wisdom.

But images don't lie, and here are the pictures and videos of horror rolling out this morning:

Those are people so terrified of what will happen to them under the Taliban they can't think straight. They're desperate to get out. They have no place to go. They know the Taliban will rule forever and they will be as powerless as Cubans to stop it. There's no safe haven even in Kabul anymore, they know that the Taliban is going rule with an iron hand erasing all freedoms, all means of getting them out of power, and will torture, rob, maim, and kill them. The Taliban never keep their word on anything, ever, and these people know it. 

There's also this: Fear. In the city, outside the airport, no one wants to come out. They are terrified. The State Department urged Americans who were still in the city to "shelter in place" and not come to the airport. The Afghanis who live in Kabul didn't need to be told.

The scum the U.S. is leaving the country in the hands of are not only some of the world's foulest terrorists, but they're also actual criminals, emptied out from the country's prisons. Their leaders are Gitmo's finest, actual former Gitmo inmates who somehow got let out during Joe Biden's vice presidency and went on to march into Kabul and take over the presidential palace and $700 million American embassy. For Afghans themselves, they're reportedly already starting the stadium executions. 

It's very much the same terrifying thing we saw in South Vietnam with terrified, powerless Vietnamese flooding the airports and attempting to escape by any military aircraft they could, in utter chaos, and then taking to the open seas in rickety boats in shark- and pirate-infested waters, sailing miles and miles to any refuge they could find. The horror is known yet unimaginable. That's what we're seeing right now, and it's very much another Saigon.

It follows from this deja vu scene yesterday:

The Daily Mail has more horrifying pictures of the bedlam at the airport here. So much for Joe's disgusting, dishonest claim that this won't be another Saigon. This is Saigon cubed.

The Wall Street Journal -- never a Trump-friendly outlet -- has a stellar, insightful, lead editorial pinning the blame for this kind of humanitarian crisis straight onto Joe Biden:

Note that Mr. Biden is more critical of his predecessor than he is of the Taliban. The President has spent seven months ostentatiously overturning one Trump policy after another on foreign and domestic policy. Yet he now claims Afghanistan policy is the one he could do nothing about.

This is a pathetic denial of his own agency, and it’s also a false choice. It’s as if Winston Churchill, with his troops surrounded at Dunkirk, had declared that Neville Chamberlain got him into this mess and the British had already fought too many wars on the Continent.

Mr. Trump’s withdrawal deadline was a mistake, but Mr. Biden could have maneuvered around it. He knows this because his Administration conducted an internal policy review that provided him with options. The Taliban had already violated its pledges under the deal. Mr. Biden could have maintained the modest presence his military and foreign-policy advisers suggested. He could have decided to withdraw but done so based on conditions on the ground while preparing the Afghans with a plan for transition and air support.

Instead he ordered a rapid and total withdrawal at the onset of the annual fighting season in time for the symbolic target date of 9/11. Most of the American press at the time hailed his decision as courageous.

The result a mere four months later is the worst U.S. humiliation since the fall of Saigon in 1975. The Taliban is saying it wants a “peaceful transfer of power” in Kabul, but the scenes are still redolent of U.S. defeat. The scramble to destroy classified documents. The helicopters evacuating U.S. diplomats. The abandonment into Taliban hands of valuable U.S. military equipment.

Worst of all is the plight of the Afghans who assisted the U.S. over two decades. Mr. Biden said Saturday that the 5,000 U.S. troops he is sending will help in evacuating Afghans and Americans. But there are thousands of translators, their families, and other officials who are in peril from Taliban rule and didn’t get out in time. (See nearby.) The Biden Administration was far too slow to get them out of the country despite urgent warnings. The murder of these innocents will compound the stain on the Biden Presidency.

With Biden in charge, America's enemies can rest comfortably and carry on their evildoing. But for the people fleeing, whether Americans evacuating the embassy, or actual Afghans engaging in desperate bids to freedom, it's the same horror and it's on Biden.

Image: Screen shot from Telegraph video, posted on YouTube

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