A Day Later…

A DAY LATER – AND I FEEL THE SAME

Many comments from yesterday’s blog as I reacted to the events in Afghanistan. I have to admit upon reflection I feel EXACTLY the same.

THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS – AND THEN HEADS BACK

I watched the President say “the buck stops with me” — and then proceed to blame everyone else.
Trump had this plan, the Afghan army was to fault, the Afghan leader mislead me, blah, blah, blah.

Hey, Mr President, you ran for election on your foreign policy experience and expertise. You told us that over and over, that you were the most experienced of all.
Now, many of us thought Secretary Gates was right about you.
You have now proven he was and your self grandeur was misplaced.

By the way, you mislead and lied in your talk.
You played to pity by asking how many more woman and men must come home in body bags before this war ends. That was so misleading. No American warrior has been killed in 18 months.
They were bringing stability to the area. You weren’t greeting cargo planes bringing bodies home, there weren’t any. You were asleep.

However, there were bodies yesterday. Did you see the two that fell from the plane?
There were at least eight bodies by mid day, and many reports of what was going on inside the country as the Taliban took control.
You see, Mr. President, those bodies, sons and daughters themselves, are real too.
You own their deaths and the thousands (yes, I said thousands) to come.

YOUR FRIENDS ARE TURNING ON YOU TOO

Even some of your friends are turning on you. CNN wasn’t supporting you last night. (Don’t worry MSNBC still had your back.) Did you see this Axios headline?
“Rarely has an American president’s predictions been so wrong, so fast, so convincingly as President Biden on Afghanistan.”
These are your friends who have your back, even they can’t on this one.

BUT MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAID….

You see in your speech you said you were prepared for this contingency. Really?
On July 8th you assured us all would be well with the Afghan army and people. It would seem to me if you were prepared you would have followed President Trump’s plan then. You know, the one you inherited.
That plan called for people out of the country, then equipment, bases and other material destroyed, then the military goes.
How come when you mention what you inherited his plan you don’t say you didn’t follow the plan?
A minor detail I guess for a life long politician like you.

Let’s take a look at a few of your comments (drawn no doubt from your vast experience).
Here’s one you (almost) delivered on:
“We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely.” Okay.

How about this one:
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” I see.

Both you and your incredible Secretary of State both said this is not like “Saigon.”
Well Kimberley Motley,( an international human-rights attorney who has worked on Afghanistan issues for 13 years) told The Wall Street Journal: “This is like Saigon on steroids.” I think she is more right than you two.

How about this:
You said, “We were clear-eyed about the risks.” Really? With who? Certainly not the American people.

One more. This is a doozy. You said:
“We planned for every contingency.” Oh you did? But then you said, “The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”
Oh “every contingency” but not this one because it “unfolded more quickly…” I see. Others saw it, said it, wrote it and warned of it, but you and the administration didn’t. Yet you planned for “every contingency.” I get it.

PASSING ON TO A FIFTH PRESIDENT

Your supporters jumped on this as leadership. You didn’t want to pass this on to a fifth President. I see.
Five months into your first term you are worrying about passing this on? In other words you had no idea on what to do, except immediate surrender?
Let’s see this too.
President one was Bush 43. You voted in the senate to send these troops in. Then later voted again to send troops to Iraq. You voted for upheaval in the area.

President two was Obama. I seem to recall you were VP. What happened? Oh yea, you did leave Iraq, which led to the birth of ISIS and how many were killed and beheaded?
Then you drew that red line in Syria and backed down letting ISIS expand. Hmmm.

President three was Trump. You’re following his plan right?
Except, as pointed out above, not exactly as he planned it. Just a MAJOR difference.

So in you come as President and after sending the troops to war, seeing terrorism grow on your watch, watching people be decapitated on live television, you are going to end it.
Mr. President, you had a hand in this from day one. In fact your were in the senate when Bin Laden built his terror organization and killed Americans. You own the whole mess as much as anyone.

So now you think we will have stability? I say you’re wrong.
I think you opened the door to the point where in two years terrorism has its base back, ISIS reappears, the world becomes unstable and people die. You’ll add to this too by engaging back in a deal with Iran.

Let me ask you this.
If we left Korea in 1970 (after 20 years) what would that country look like today? What would that region look like? We have soldiers their to keep the peace. They’re not fighting and dying you say? Remember I told you that for the last 18 months we had no deaths in Afghanistan either.
We were a deterrent to what you allowed to happen this week. Like in Korea.
In fact, go back and look at the debate that took place 20 years ago in the senate. You may recall some senators saying if we go and stay we’ll be there 100 years — like Korea.

Think about Europe after WWII.
Why did we have troops there when the war ended? Yup ,stability. The exact thing we no longer have in Afghanistan.

Was the mission wrong twenty years ago? Yes. I wrote it then. The mission was to get Bin Laden and his team. We needed to make him and his team pay. The mission was to get those who attacked us, not take over a country that no one could ever tame. You voted for a different mission. Once you did, then it was Korea II and not surrender one.

One final thought. Mr President did you see that one of the leaders in the President’s office yesterday was a released (8 years ago) prisoner from Guantanamo Bay? He was back in the fight and leading the effort to get Americans. Who wants to close that base and release those terrorists? And who was President and VP 8 years ago when he was let go?

HAVE A GREAT DAY.
REMEMBER YOUR VOTE COUNTS. THE FUTURE OF THE NATION IS AT STAKE.