Sunday, September 19, 2021

Farewell Afghanistan — The Final Look

Afghanistan might have faded completely from the ultra short American memory by now but for the Republican Party hammering the President mercilessly for doing what The Donald had promised to do. The liberal media doesn't give the President a pass, either. They will gladly pound Mr. Biden for his terrible Afghanistan performance.

A president can't be on top of everything, and if that's the case, perhaps Mr. Biden should fire the mediocre advisers in his midst, beginning with the most famous Obama Administration retread, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who seems clueless even in the most friendly environments.

The Republicans are ceaseless in their suggestions that the President might be mentally impaired. I take everything they say with a grain of salt; blind support of Donald Trump is itself a suggestion of mental impairment, so they are in no position to judge. But on the serious side, we might look back to FDR's performance at Yalta, where he gave away the store (or rather, Eastern Europe). The President was said to be very sick by the time Yalta rolled around, and it was no secret to his doctor that he shouldn't have run for a fourth term. I keep that in mind as I watch Joe Biden's decision making, which seems to me to be very much sub optimized. I'll say no more on that issue. If the Republicans are on to something concerning the President's decision making ability, it's an accident.

Still, we're lucky. We were permitted to leave Kabul as we wished. The British had to walk out through Khurd Kabul, and it wasn't pretty.

We'll be hearing about the poor Afghans for a long time, especially as they open their restaraunts around our country. But may we not hear about their country again. Like Iraq and Vietnam, it's another mess, a place where the politicians thought a war would work for them, and it would be the generals' fault if it didn't. Gosh — another bunch of stupid sons of bitches who wouldn't take democracy and run with it when we offered it to them, a billion dollars at a time, complete with support contractors to keep it in tune.