#us withdraw troops from afghanistan

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Vaughn Hillyard, and Mosheh Gains at NBC News:

The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.  Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said. “They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Matt Flynn, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, is helping lead the effort, the sources said. It is being framed as a review of how the U.S. first got into the war in Afghanistan and how the U.S. ultimately withdrew.

[...] President-elect Donald Trump has condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”  It is not clear, though, what would legally justify “treason” charges since the military officers were following the orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

A 2022 independent review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021. Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison. The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own. Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. lost the war and wasted billions of dollars. In his book “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth wrote, “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired. The debacle in Afghanistan, of course, is the most glaring example.”

[...] The transition team is looking at the possibility of recalling several commanders to active duty for possible charges, the U.S. official said.  It’s not clear the Trump administration would pursue treason charges, and instead could focus on lesser charges that highlight the officer’s involvement. “They want to set an example,” said the person with knowledge of the plan.

NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump’s transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former US military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan to face a potential court martial.

This is a fascistic insult to common sense.

[darkmaga-returns]

https://en.topwar.ru/253668-the-wall-street-journal-v-komande-trampa-gotovjat-ukaz-o-chistke-generalov-vinovnyh-v-begstve-ssha-iz-afganistana.html

The Wall Street Journal: Trump's team is preparing an order to purge generals guilty of US flight from Afghanistan

Today, 10: 1726

The team of the 47th US President is currently actively working on an executive order to establish a “war council” that will have the power to remove US Army generals and admirals from their positions. fleet. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal. The publication notes that the new body may include retired generals and officers.

As commander in chief, Trump would already be able to fire any officer he wanted, something presidents rarely do for political reasons. But an outside council would be able to bypass the system by signaling to the entire military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.

- notes the publication.

A draft order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal outlines that the military board will review active-duty senior military personnel, focusing on their leadership qualities and commitment to military excellence.

However, as the publication’s sources claim, the first to come under the new body’s scrutiny may be those generals whom Trump considers guilty of the shameful withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

It is assumed that the military council will have the right to send recommendations to the US president on the removal of a particular general or admiral from office. Such a recommendation, as the newspaper claims, will become a kind of black mark for the military. After the corresponding recommendation lands on Donald Trump's desk, the general or admiral will be dismissed from their position within 30 days.

Let us add that earlier American media already reported that Donald Trump has prepared a so-called black list of his enemies, with whom he intends to settle accounts during his presidency. According to the press, it includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and several other high-ranking current and retired US politicians.

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump's botched handling of the pandemic emergency spread COVID-19 throughout the United States. Perhaps memory loss is an unexpected side effect of Long COVID.

It's up to all of us personally to remind people of the horrors of the Trump administration. Don't rely on the media and political ads to do so.

Those who blame Biden for the chaos at the end of US involvement in Afghanistan conveniently leave out the fact that the Trump administration effectively handed over the country to the Taliban.

Senate Republicans, before they became full-time concubines of Trump, were alarmed by the timetable. This is from FactCheck.org

^^^ Li'l Marco should hope that nobody reminds Trump how critical he was of The Orange One's Afghanistan withdrawal.

Biden inherited a flawed deal from Trump. At the time Trump left the White House, US troop levels in Afghanistan were down to 2,500 as 5,000 Taliban prisoners were being released.

Of course not many people in the US were paying a lot of attention to Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Trump's January 6th coup attempt.

[gryficowa]

Isn't it fascinating to see liberals blaming everyone for feeling in four years what Palestinians have felt for 70 years?

Well listen, karma is a bitch, you treated genocide as a "minor issue", now at least you will experience it for yourself, don't blame the leftists, blame yourself, because the fault was your ignorance and the desire to maintain your privilege at the expense of others

This will last four years, what the Palestinians have been going through has lasted almost 80 years, ignorance is bliss but reality will hit you harder when it comes to you

It's not the leftists' fault, you're just dealing with the consequences of your ignorance

Recall that the US did not stop the holocaust when it started, and only two years after the Third Reich attacked Poland, think of all the people who could have been saved but were not because of America's ignorance, think of the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Yemenis what could have been saved, but the democratic party preferred to help Israel all year round

Think of the women of Afghanistan who wouldn't have had to deal with the Taliban now if Biden had stopped Trump's bill (instead of postponing it a year later) related to the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan

You ignored it because it was the blue party, now your love for them has bitten you in the ass and you're going to face the shit these people have been dealing with for much longer than you want to think

[simply-ivanka]

Kamala Harris on the Afghanistan Withdrawal

Three years later, she calls Biden’s decision ‘courageous and right.’

By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris is working hard to hide her policy views from the public, but now and then she opens a window on her worldview, and it isn’t reassuring. One example came Monday on the third anniversary of the terrorist bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 Americans trying to defend the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Vice President praised the dead servicemen and women. “Today and everyday, I mourn and honor them,” she said in a statement.

But if she has any regrets about President Biden’s policy, she isn’t sharing them. “As I have said,” Ms. Harris noted, “President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war.”

It’s good to know what she thinks, but it doesn’t reflect well on her judgment as a potential Commander in Chief. The withdrawal decision was arguably the worst of Mr. Biden’s Presidency, as he ignored the advice of nearly all of his advisers that a date-certain, total retreat would likely result in the collapse of the Afghan government and a Taliban takeover. Keeping a few thousand troops in support of the Afghan forces could have prevented the catastrophe and its consequences.

Listen to retired Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who was in charge of Central Command at the time of the Afghan fiasco, speaking recently on the School of War podcast:

Host Aaron MacLean: “What do you think the consequences are broadly of the collapse and us not being there?”

Gen. McKenzie: “Well, I think on several levels, I think [Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was directly driven by this. I think the Chinese were emboldened as a result of it. I think that more operationally, I think ISIS-K flourishes now in Afghanistan. The attack in Moscow just a few months ago is only a sign of things to come.

“Our ability to actually look into Afghanistan, understand what goes on in Afghanistan, is such a small percentage of what it used to be that it is effectively zero. So we predicted these things will happen, these things are happening. Our ability to, again, apply leverage here is quite limited.”

Mr. Biden was indeed warned about all of this—and so was Ms. Harris if she was in the White House Situation Room as she likes to say she has been for all of this Administration’s major security decisions. The needless deaths of those 13 Americans were the worst result, but the withdrawal also marked the end of Mr. Biden’s ability to deter adversaries around the world.

That Ms. Harris now embraces this failure suggests more of the same ahead if she wins in November.

Appeared in the August 27, 2024, print edition as 'Kamala on the Afghan Withdrawal'.

[deadpresidents]

Random question, but something I've wondered for the last few years: concerning Afghanistan, should the US have considered leaving a few thousand troops in Kabul indefinitely while withdrawing troops from the rest of the country?

It seems like the capital city would've been relatively easy for American troops to defend, and their presence there could have blocked the Taliban from fully returning to power. A singular focus on protecting Kabul might've been one way to prevent the worst possible outcome.

When President Trump left office and President Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, there were only 2,500 American troops left in Afghanistan. The Trump Administration had made a deal with the Taliban to withdraw all American troops by May 2021, and Biden pushed that back by a few months, but if the U.S. wanted to defend Kabul we almost certainly would have had to commit to another surge of American troops and that simply wasn't going to happen. It would have required a bigger fight against the Taliban because we would have been pulling out of the deal that the Trump Administration negotiated and the Taliban was already in the process of rapidly regaining control of the country by that time.

Even when he was Vice President, Joe Biden strongly believed that the United States needed to get out of Afghanistan because the only other option was to be there forever. Twenty years of training and equipping Afghan troops still hadn't resulted in a national force that could stand on its own, so Biden had argued against troop surges since the earliest days of the Obama Administration. There was no way that Biden was going to surge the number of troops once he became President, and Trump was so determined to withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan before the end of his term that his Defense Department had to beg him to pump the brakes.

Just to defend Kabul would have required much more than those 2,500 American troops left in the country on the day Biden was inaugurated. And the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani was an unreliable partner that was corrupt and often seemed oblivious to what was actually happening throughout the country. You used the word "indefinitely" and that's exactly what Biden (and Trump, to be fair) wanted to avoid. We had already been in Afghanistan for 20 years, and things weren't heading in the right direction.

I certainly don't agree that we should have been there indefinitely. I think we probably should have bolstered the American forces in Kabul for a short and specific amount of time in order to ensure that the withdrawal was less chaotic. But it was always going to be an ugly end. There was never going to be a victory in Afghanistan, and I supported the decision to withdraw American troops. I wish we would have done a far better job at protecting the Afghan people who worked for ISAF/NATO and ended up left behind to fend for themselves as the Taliban took over once again. It's a tragedy that those final days were such a mess, but one of our leaders was going to have to make the difficult decision to definitively end the neverending war that we were never going to win, and I think history will eventually see President Biden's decisive action in a different light, much like President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is understood differently today.

[mariacallous]

In a series of farewell addresses during his final week in office, U.S. President Joe Biden is making the case that he’s left the United States in a much stronger position than he found it. During his four years, the country has far outpaced Europe, left Russia engulfed in quagmire, outperformed China economically, and hung on to its global leadership role in spite of the nation’s internal divisions.

In a speech at the State Department on Monday, Biden declared that “during my presidency, I have increased America’s power in every dimension.” He said that “thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide competition” and added that “our adversaries and competitors are weaker.” Washington’s No. 1 competitor, China, “will never surpass us,” Biden added.

And yet, in what has come to be all too characteristic of Biden, the outgoing president also avoided admitting any errors—though clearly, he’s made his share. In the end, it was this stubbornness that was perhaps the biggest pitfall of Biden’s presidency. (His hubris on foreign policy was aligned with his disastrous insistence on running for a second term even though his faculties were obviously failing at age 82, and despite most of his own party opposing the decision.)

No mistake was more impactful than Biden’s precipitous departure from Afghanistan only half a year into his presidency, a debacle that he never recovered from. Biden insisted that the Taliban wouldn’t simply take over, which they did in just two weeks. And then in subsequent years, right up until this week, Biden and his acolytes continued to insist that there was no better way to leave, though his military advisor had predicted havoc if a small contingent of U.S. troops wasn’t left behind, and the projection of U.S. weakness there was arguably a factor in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

Even at the time, some European diplomats told me that Biden’s ill-conceived withdrawal plan was brazenly unilateralist—that it was not vetted with major U.S. allies such as Britain, France, and Germany, nations that also sacrificed considerable funding and lives in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t the only time that Biden cost himself credibility with pronouncements meant to signal strength and leadership—but which often only led to policy confusion and flip-flopping.

He telegraphed his entire policy on Ukraine by declaring at the outset that Putin wouldn’t have to worry about direct U.S. military involvement, before crossing his own red lines by gradually ratcheting up U.S. military aid. He initially described the Ukraine conflict as a war for democracy and then, without acknowledging the shift, turned it into a war over territorial norms.

Biden repeatedly inflamed relations with Beijing by coming closer than any other president to saying that he would defend Taiwan—only to have his own administration walk those comments back. He often looked ineffectual on the Middle East with what even his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, conceded were many “Lucy and the football” moments—a reference to the Peanuts cartoon—in which Biden repeatedly, and credulously, allowed both Israel and Hamas to endlessly string along negotiations.

When it came to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, Biden found himself in a state of continual self-contradiction over whether he should use real leverage, such as withholding U.S. weapons, in order to moderate Israeli behavior. He threatened to do so several times—but never did.

As a result, anti-American attitudes in the region are at a level not seen since the Iraq War, Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told 60 Minutes recently.

Much of the dysfunctional nature of Biden’s foreign policy can be attributed to the fact that he had very few naysayers around him.

During his presidency, the only senior official who might have been considered a peer was John Kerry, Biden’s erstwhile climate envoy. But in other respects—especially in making his longtime aide, Blinken, the secretary of state, and another former junior aide, Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor—Biden mostly hired his old staffers.

“He doesn’t surround himself with peers,” said one Democratic foreign-policy expert.

As a result, Biden developed a false sense of confidence about his record that likely contributed to his decision to run for a second term. Speaking to reporters the day after the 2022 midterm elections—when the Democrats performed far better than pundits had predicted, which was mistakenly ascribed to anti-Trump sentiment—Biden was asked what he might do differently to address voters’ concerns about the economy and the widespread sentiment that the country was moving in the wrong direction.

He replied, “Nothing.”

And in the subsequent two years, Biden rejected all internal advice that he was almost certainly going to lose in 2024, even as his approval ratings barely budged beyond 40 percent or so.

In his speech on Monday—which is to be followed by a final Oval Office address on Wednesday—Biden ticked off what he saw as his greatest triumphs, saying that he’d made the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history and beefed up the country’s industrial base. He also touted his leadership of an expanded NATO against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine as well as his shoring up of U.S. power in Asia, including in the form of an agreement between Japan and South Korea to expand security.

All this will benefit Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, even as the president-elect continues to deride the United States as a “disaster” and a “laughingstock all over the world.”

But Biden showed that he hasn’t learned much about adjusting positions to fit changing facts. He failed to come to any substantive deal with China on climate change or artificial intelligence. He boasted of Iran’s new weakness in the post-Oct. 7, 2023, Middle East without noting that his own diplomatic policies had little to do with it. Three years of failed talks with Tehran over resurrecting the 2015 nuclear pact came to nothing—along with so many other negotiations.

It is a mixed record at best, and a decidedly unfinished one, thanks in part to Biden’s unwillingness to change course.

[thewarfox]

Reagan gave the rich big tax cuts and Trump did too. The war in Afghanistan was still going when Trump was in office. He released 5000 Taliban prisoners including their leader. Now tell me that you paid less taxes and the world was safer under Trump. Denial ain't a river in Egypt, Cletus! Crawl back inside your Trailer. Your cousin is going to have another of your babies now.

... did an AI write this? I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to take this seriously. There's not even an indication of what provoked this. I don't recall saying anything about tax cuts or the 'world being safer'. When those tax cuts end soon and you have to pay through your ass on taxes next year, you tell me what situation you'd prefer, with or without them. As far as Taliban prisoners? If I recall correctly they were released as part of an Afgani peace deal that the US was brokering with the Taliban to try to end conflict. Said deal was to release 5000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1000 of the Taliban's prisoners. The point was that Trump was trying to arrange for the US to withdraw from Afganistan so that the various muslims of the region could solve their own problems and conflicts with one another. That Afganistan withdrawal was utterly and tragically botched by Joe Biden, who left tens of billions of dollars in military equipment, weapons, and money behind for the Taliban, got a lot of people killed, and for good measure he drone-bombed an entire family thinking they were attackers when they were actually US allies who had been providing our people water on the way out. The deal had been to be out by a certain date, giving our people time to remove our equipment, dismantle/destroy our bases, and evacuate our allies and troops without needing to fire a shot. Biden and his incompetent staff not only did not do any of the preparation needed to accomplish any of this, but he also tried to renege on the deal by pushing back the exit date for symbolic reasons(to September 11th, I believe). The Taliban had enough of our shit not sticking to the deal, and forced us out in humiliating and disastrous fashion.

Whether or not Biden liked the deal orchestrated by his predecessor, it was still his duty to see it through, as he's responsible for treaties and military action and whatnot. If you want to talk about what has left the world less safe, $85 BILLION in weapons, armor, helicopters, and other equipment in Taliban hands certainly didn't make things safer. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that Hamas in Israel were funded and equipped through this massive transfer of wealth and spurred them into attacking last October.

You're a brainwashed stooge who doesn't know anything about the world, nor do you understand anything about it. And you know what? I will say I paid less taxes under Trump. And I will say that I think the world was trending towards being safer under his leadership, bravery, and guidance. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize(FOUR TIMES) for a reason. Fuck off with your shit, scumsucker.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

As I witnessed the despair and incomprehension of liberals worldwide after Donald Trump’s victory in November’s U.S. presidential election, I had a sinking feeling that I had been through this before. The moment took me back to 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, signaling the beginning of the end of Soviet Communism and the lifting of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since the end of World War II. The difference was that the world that collapsed in 1989 was theirs, the Communists’. Now it is ours, the liberals’.

In 1989, I was living within a Warsaw Pact nation, in my final year of studying philosophy at Bulgaria’s Sofia University, when the world turned upside down. The whole experience felt like an extended course in French existentialism. To see the sudden end of something that we had been told would last forever was bewildering—liberating and alarming in equal measure. My fellow students and I were overwhelmed by the new sense of freedom, but we were also acutely conscious of the fragility of all things political. That radical rupture turned out to be a defining experience for my generation.

But the rupture was even broader—on a greater global scale—than many of us realized at the time. The year 1989 was indeed an annus mirabilis, but one very different from the way Western liberals have framed it for the past three decades. The resilience that the Chinese Communist Party demonstrated in suppressing the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square turned out to be more consequential than the fall of the Berlin Wall. For Russians, the most important aspect of 1989 was not the end of Communism, but the end of the Soviet empire, with the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. It was thus the year that Osama bin Laden proclaimed the jihadists’ victory over the godless U.S.S.R. And 1989 was also when nationalism began to reclaim its political primacy in the former Yugoslavia.

The return of Trump to power in the United States may prove another such instance in a period of enormous political rupture. If liberals are to respond effectively to the challenge of a new Trump administration, they will need to reflect critically on what happened in 1989, and discard the story they’ve always told themselves about it. The means of overcoming despair is to be found in better comprehension.

From a liberal point of view, comparing the anti-Soviet revolutions of 1989 with the illiberal revolutions today might seem scandalous. In Francis Fukuyama’s famous phrase, 1989 was “the end of history,” whereas Trump’s victory, many liberals assert, may portend the end of democracy. The year the Berlin Wall fell was viewed as the triumph of the West; now the decline of the West dominates the conversation. The collapse of Communism was marked by a vision for a democratic, capitalist future; that future is now riddled with uncertainty. The mood in 1989 was internationalist and optimistic; today, it has soured into nationalism, at times even nihilism.

But to insist on those differences between then and now is to miss the point about their similarities. Living through such moments in history teaches one many things, but the most important is the sheer speed of change: People can totally alter their views and political identity overnight; what only yesterday was considered unthinkable seems self-evident today. The shift is so profound that people soon find their old assumptions and choices unfathomable.

Translated to this moment: How, just six months ago, could any sane person have believed that an aging and unpopular Joe Biden could be reelected?

Trump captured the public imagination not because he had a better plan for how to win the war in Ukraine or manage globalization, but because he understood that the world of yesterday could be no more. The United States’ postwar political identity has vanished into the abyss of the ballot box. This Trump administration may succeed or fail on its own terms, but the old world will not return. Even most liberals do not want it back. Few Americans today are comfortable with the notion of American exceptionalism.

In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, some political commentators grimly looked back to the 1930s, when fascism stalked the world. The problem is that the 1930s are beyond living memory, whereas the 1990s are still vivid to many of us. What I learned from that decade is that a radical political rupture gives the winners a blank check. Understanding why people voted for Trump will be little help in apprehending what he will do in office.

Political ruptures are achieved by previously unimaginable coalitions, united more by their intensity than a common program. Politicians who belong to these coalitions typically have a chameleonlike ability to suit themselves to the moment—none more so, in our time, than Trump. American liberals who are gobsmacked that people can treat a billionaire playboy as the leader of an anti-establishment movement might recall that Boris Yeltsin, the hero of Russia’s 1990s anti-Communist revolution, had been one of the leaders of the Communist Party just a few short years earlier.

Like the end of the Soviet era, Trump’s reelection victory will have global dimensions. It marks the passing of the United States as a liberal empire. America remains the world’s preeminent power, yes, and will remain an empire of sorts, but it won’t be a liberal one. As Biden’s spotty record of mobilizing support to defend the “liberal international order” in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, the very idea of such an order was for many critics always a Western fiction. It existed as long as the U.S. had the power and political will to impose it.

This is not what Trump will do. In foreign policy, Trump is neither a realist nor an isolationist; he is a revisionist. Trump is convinced that the U.S. is the biggest loser in the world it has made. Over the past three decades, in his view, America has become a hostage, rather than a hegemon, of the liberal international order. In the postwar world, the U.S. successfully integrated its defeated adversaries Germany and Japan into democratic governance, international trade, and economic prosperity. This did not apply to China: In Trump’s view, Beijing has been the real winner of the post-1989 changes.

Trump’s second coming will clearly be different from the first. In 2016, Trump’s encounter with American power was like a blind date. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted, and American power didn’t know exactly who he was. Not this time. America may remain a democracy, but it will become a more feral one. Under new management, its institutions will likely depart from the safety of consensual politics and go wild. In times of rapid change, political leaders seek not to administer the state, but to defeat it. They see the state and the “deep state” as synonymous. Illiberal leaders select their cabinet members in the same way that emperors used to choose the governors of rebellious provinces: What matters most is the appointee’s loyalty and capacity to resist being suborned or co-opted by others.

In Trump’s first administration, chaos reigned; his second administration will reign by wielding chaos as a weapon. This White House will overwhelm its opponents by “flooding the zone” with executive orders and proclamations. He will leave many adversaries guessing about why he is making the decisions he does, and disorient others with their rapidity and quantity.

In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by promising normalcy. Normalcy will no longer help the Democrats. In the most recent example of an antipopulist victory, Donald Tusk triumphed in Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections and returned to be prime minister, not because he promised business as usual but because his party, Civic Platform, was able to forge a compelling new political identity. Tusk’s party adopted more progressive positions on such controversial issues as abortion rights and workers’ protections, but it also wrapped itself in the flag and embraced patriotism. Tusk offered Poles a new grand narrative, not simply a different electoral strategy. Civic Platform’s success still depended on forming a coalition with other parties, a potentially fragile basis for governing, but it offers a template, at least, for how the liberal center can reinvent itself and check the advance of illiberal populism.

The risk for the United States is high: The next few years could easily see American politics descend into cruel, petty vengefulness, or worse. But for liberals to respond to this moment by acting as defenders of a disappearing status quo would be unwise. To do so would entail merely reacting to whatever Trump does. The mindset of resistance may be the best way to understand tyranny, but it is not the best way to handle a moment of radical political rupture, in which tyranny is possible but not inevitable.

Back in 1989, the political scientist Ken Jowitt, the author of a great study of Communist upheaval in that period, New World Disorder, observed that a rupture of this type forces political leaders to devise a new vocabulary. At such moments, formerly magic words do not work anymore. The slogan “Democracy is under threat” did not benefit the Democrats during the election, because many voters simply did not see Trump himself as that threat.

As the writer George Orwell observed, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” The challenge of apprehending the new, even when the fact of its arrival is undeniable, means that it may come as a shock to liberal sensibilities how few tears will be shed for the passing of the old order. Contrary to what seemed the correct response in 2016, the task of Trump opponents today is not to resist the political change that he has unleashed but to embrace it—and use this moment to fashion a new coalition for a better society.

[rockyp77mk3]

Grocery stores have been gouging customers since 2020. Trump was in office then. Why didn't he do something about the prices then? Why didn't he pull troops out of Afghansitan then? He said he got rid of Isis but that's bullshit. Wake the fuck up! He's a pile of bullshit!

If you look at the data, neutral and unbiased data that is, gross profit margins of grocery stores have been relatively flat since 2018. A sharp and sustained rise in gross profits would be how you judge gouging. Gross profits refer to the money left in company coffers after paying the direct cost of producing and stocking goods. So, inflation, increased fuel costs, wage increases, cost of production, increases in governmental regulations, and quite a few other things all contributed to increased cost of food. But of course these prices really took off in the last two years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Trump was getting us out of Afghanistan, the right way. The right way wasn't the cut and run remake of the fall of Saigon produced and directed by the Biden-Harris team. Trump had set goals for the Afghani government and Taliban to meet in order for the US to withdraw in a metered and orderly fashion. Biden-Harris rushed a poorly planned mass exit that not only left billions of dollars worth of military hardware behind but cost the lives of 13 servicemembers, not to mention leaving many of our allies in the lurch. Biden-Harris screwed up, just admit it.

Trump had ISIS to the point where it didn't have two suicide vests to clack off together. No nation no matter how failed would give them a secure base from which to operate. Their funding was drying up, their support was slipping away. In other words they were defeated. Then a president with the spine of a chocolate eclair took the Oval Office and the pressure was taken off the shattered remains of ISIS. In fact the pressure was taken off just about every terror group. In the absence of that pressure the terror groups made something of a comeback. Once again not Trump's fault. You have to blame the Biden-Harris team again.

The only pile of bullshit brought to this this discussion was delivered by you.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava Trump believes fight against DAESH achieved goal [UPDATES]

According to reports by Reuters and numerous American media, the US military troops are to be withdrawn from Syria…

RELATED UPDATE: Mattis resigns after clash with Trump over troop withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-announces-mattis-will-leave-as-defense-secretary-at-the-end-of-february/2018/12/20/e1a846ee-e147-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html

RELATED UPDATE: Top U.S. envoy in the fight against ISIS resigns

RELATED UPDATE: Journalist Houda-Pepin: We betrayed the Kurds

RELATED UPDATE: Chief Pentagon spokeswoman announces resignation

RELATED UPDATE: Bolton’s visit to Ankara: Yellow vests, 944 and more

RELATED UPDATE: Trump Says ISIS Is Defeated. Reality Says Otherwise.

RELATED UPDATE: Report Warns ISIS is “Resurging” in Syria After Trump Ordered a Partial Troop Withdrawal

RELATED UPDATE: The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore

FURTHER READING:

[misfitwashere]

Friends,

What might otherwise be considered a minor error of judgment can blow up into a big issue in a political campaign when the error evokes a candidate’s deeper flaws. 

Yesterday, the U.S. Army issued a stern rebuke to the Trump campaign over his visit on Monday to the Arlington National Cemetery, where Trump sought to score political points by marking the third anniversary of a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan as American forces withdrew from the country. Thirteen American service members were killed in the attack at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate.

A video of the visit posted by the Trump campaign on TikTok shows Trump visiting grave sites, with audio of him blasting Biden’s “disaster” of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The Army said in its statement that participants in the ceremony “were made aware of federal laws” which “clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.” The statement also noted that an Arlington National Cemetery official “who attempted to ensure adherence” to these rules “was abruptly pushed aside.” 

Reportedly, when the cemetery official — a woman — tried to prevent Trump and his staff from entering the prohibited area, Trump’s staff verbally abused her and pushed her out of the way so Trump could enter. 

The Army statement went on to say: “It is unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The incident has blown up into a big issue, but not because the Trump campaign erroneously held a political event at the Arlington National Cemetery. 

It’s blown up because it’s a microcosm of Donald Trump’s moral squalor. 

Trump has repeatedly shown contempt for military heroism. He claimed that the late John McCain, who had been a prisoner of war, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” 

When General Mark Milley invited a wounded, wheelchair-bound soldier to sing “God Bless America” at Milley’s welcoming ceremony as Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump admonished him, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

On a trip to France in 2018, Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where more than 2,200 U.S. service members are buried. “Why should I go to that cemetery?” he asked staff members. “It’s filled with losers.” 

According to Trump’s then-chief of staff John Kelly, Trump called the Marines who died at Belleau Wood “suckers” for getting killed.

Trump recently said that the Congressional Medal of Freedom he’d awarded to Republican donor Miriam Adelson was “much better” than the Medal of Honor because Medal of Honor recipients are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead.”

It’s not only Trump’s disdain for military heroism that’s brought to mind by what happened at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s also Trump’s disdain for the law, suggesting other occasions when Trump and his henchmen have disregarded legal rules, including their attempt to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. 

Verbally abusing and pushing the cemetery employee who was trying to enforce the law, after she notified Trump and his staff that it was illegal to stage political events at the ceremony, recalls other instances when Trump and gang have pushed people aside, using violence to try to get their way. Think January 6, 2021. 

That the employee in question is a woman brings to mind the multitude of ways Trump has employed violence against women, from grabbing their genitals to raping them to stirring up his followers to threaten them. She declined to press charges because, according to military officials, she feared retaliation by Trump supporters. 

The entire incident is also a microcosm of Trump’s utter disdain for morality, honor, and patriotism — the public virtues, the common good. The cemetery is a sacred, hallowed ground. It is considered to be a national shrine. Trump sullied it to achieve his personal goal of the moment: to get a news clip in which he could bash Biden and, indirectly, Kamala Harris. 

The incident rings the warning bells, rekindles the dark memories, revives the fears. 

What happened at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week was much more than an erroneous photo op. It was Trump on full display.

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It was a crime.

[septembriseur]

“In August 2021, the world watched with dread as the Taliban swiftly regained control of Afghanistan while U.S. forces exited the country. In those early days, it became clear that an ominous fate awaited America’s most committed Afghan allies. Women and men who fought shoulder to shoulder alongside U.S. troops were left facing inevitable retribution from the Taliban. As the challenges of the U.S.-led operation to evacuate vulnerable Afghan allies became painfully clear, it also became obvious to many of us that some of the most at-risk Afghans were likely to be left behind.

In fact, despite the large number of Afghans evacuated during the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, a report from the Association of Wartime Allies (AWA) in February 2022, showed that of the estimated 81,000 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants in Afghanistan that had visa applications pending as of Aug. 15, 2021 — the day Kabul fell — some 78,000 were not evacuated in this effort. At least 96 percent of the SIV population remained in Afghanistan and in grave danger of reprisal by the Taliban.

…As with most government programs, the Afghan SIV program is complicated and requires oversight and maintenance. Most acutely, the program does not have an unlimited number of visas available and relies on congressional reauthorization of visas to allow America to continue to bring those left behind in Afghanistan to the safer shores of the U.S. Based on the rate of issuance, there are likely less than 7,000 visas remaining available for Afghan allies, with some 140,000+ SIV applicants waiting to receive one. At the current pace, this supply of visas will be exhausted as early as mid-August of this year.”

[head-post]

UK Starmer arrives in Ukraine for security talks with Zelensky ahead of Trump’s inauguration

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Ukraine on Thursday on an unannounced visit to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“100-Year Partnership” treaty and additional aid

A “100-Year Partnership” treaty is expected to be signed. It will cover defence, science, energy and other areas.

Starmer will also announce more aid for Ukraine amid fears that the US will scale back support for Kyiv after Donald Trump returns to the White House. The British prime minister believes that Kyiv and London are now “closer than ever.”

Starmer may discuss the issue of providing security guarantees to Ukraine, including talk of sending “peacekeeping” British troops to Ukraine after the end of the conflict. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky has previously said that security guarantees for Ukraine would only be effective if provided by the US.

The amount that the British government is spending on aid to Kyiv is one of the largest in comparison with the rest of European countries. That said, the UK’s role is insignificant relative to the amount of US supplies, the fate of which is unknown after Trump takes office as president.

Keir Starmer first travelled to Ukraine as prime minister. In 2023 he came when he was still the leader of the opposition.

Earlier, the head of the British government announced plans to persuade Donald Trump, who will soon take office as President of the US, to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine. Keir Starmer is expected to travel to Washington in late January – early February.

Relations with China

Another important topic of the meeting will be relations with Beijing. Kir Starmer does not support the idea of Donald Trump to raise tariffs on Chinese goods. At the same time, he shares the view that China is challenging the national security of the US and the UK.

Last November, a member of the Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence of Ukraine David Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Istanbul, said that Kyiv’s decision to refuse Moscow’s conditions in the spring of 2022 was influenced, among other things, by the advice of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He said at that time:

“When we came back from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we will not sign anything with them at all. And let’s just go to war.”

Arakhamia led the Ukrainian delegation in the negotiations with Russia in 2022. The first round of talks took place on February 28, 2022 in Belarus, and the second in late March in Istanbul. By early summer, the talks were halted and the sides accused each other of derailing the agreements.

Trump reconsidered his promises on Ukraine

The new US President Donald Trump changed his mind about ending the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours, contrary to previous promises. The future administration wants to avoid the mistakes of outgoing President Joe Biden in withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan.

According to media reports, Trump’s associates are forced to reconsider their approach to the Ukrainian conflict. Now they are discussing the continuation of support for Kyiv, but mainly through European allies.

Last week, Trump announced new deadlines for ending the conflict. He expressed hope that he could put an end to the fighting in six months. Trump admitted that he could understand Russia’s “feelings” against Kyiv joining NATO.

At the same time, the future special envoy of the US President-elect for the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said that on a “personal and professional” level he would like to achieve peace within 100 days. He believes that Trump will not make concessions to Russia. Before that, Kellogg noted that Washington under the new head of state will not allow a repetition of the Minsk agreements.

On Wednesday, US media reported that Trump wants to make a “deal of the century” on the Ukrainian issue, but he does not care about the fate of Ukraine. Sources said Trump would not support Ukraine’s accession to NATO. However, European officials want the issue to be discussed at the talks.

US Senator Marco Rubio, the president-elect’s nominee for secretary of state, said that sanctions and their lifting could play an important role in negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, The New York Times reports.

Marco Rubio said:

“So, it’s very difficult to reach an accord or an agreement that begins with a ceasefire and ends with a peace agreement, unless both sides have some leverage. Now, there is some leverage that exists beyond military capabilities as well. We have a significant number of sanctions on the Russian Federation, and they continue to grow and expand, and other nations do as well, and that will have to be part of this conversation in terms of bringing about a peaceful resolution.”

Read more HERE

[beardedmrbean]

NBC’s Kristen Welker "incorrectly implied" that Vice President Kamala Harris was in attendance at the dignified transfer of U.S. troops killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., appeared on NBC’s "Meet the Press" Sunday and criticized President Biden and Harris for ignoring the families of the fallen soldiers. 

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — where were they? Joe Biden was sitting at a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, D.C. She was four miles away — ten minutes. She could've gone to the cemetery and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women, but she hasn't. She never has spoken to them or taken a meeting with them," Cotton told Welker. "It is because of her and Joe Biden's incompetence that those 13 Americans were killed in Afghanistan."

"They did meet them during the dignified transfer. They were with them at the dignified transfer," Welker interjected.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS, GOLD STAR FAMILIES FLOOD HARRIS' X ACCOUNT AFTER ARLINGTON ATTACK: ADMIN 'KILLED MY SON'

NBC posted a correction on the show's X account after the show. 

"On our broadcast this morning, we incorrectly implied that both President Biden and Vice President Harris attended the dignified transfer of 13 American service members killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal,"  NBC wrote on their "Meet the Press" X account.

"Biden was in attendance but Harris was not," the statement continued.

GOLD STAR FAMILIES SLAM KAMALA HARRIS FOR 'PLAYING POLITICS' OVER TRUMP'S VISIT TO ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

President Biden was at the event, photographed "repeatedly checking his watch" during the proceedings.

Former President Trump, who attended the Arlington National Cemetery at the request of Gold Star families, commemorated the third year anniversary of botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. service members killed. 

"The Trump team is very, very respectful and cognizant. They wanted to be respectful to everyone there," Christy Shamblin, mother of fallen U.S. Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, one of the Fallen 13 from Afghanistan, told "The Sacramento Bee." 

"The big news stories that the mainstream media covers about the [Fallen] 13 aren’t stories of honor and respect. It’s hard to understand why. There are always stories about some kind of conflict that didn’t happen... The Trump team worked diligently with us and with Arlington to make sure there weren’t any disruptions to services, or even to any school groups," Shamblin continued. 

Gee’s mother also went on to tell "The Bee" that she was "confident" that a second term for the Trump Administration would be "better for veterans and their families." 

The families of the 13 service-members have said they have yet to hear from Biden or Harris, despite having made attempts to reach out to the administration.

"At least Biden sent us a form letter," Shamblin added. "I think one of the most devastating parts of having the administration really just ignore this and not speak their names and speak to us, is that you start to feel like your loss is really in vain."

[opencommunion]

"Since October 7, more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza have died; more than 8,000 have been injured; more than 340,000 have been displaced; and thousands of buildings, including homes, universities and hospitals, were destroyed. Al-Alam and Press TV journalists have been assassinated, and several media centres in Gaza have been destroyed. Eleven UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) staff members also lost their lives in the shelling. Some died in their homes with their families.

The notorious Israeli intelligence often thwarted resistance well before it started, and/or the perpetrators were swiftly captured or assassinated. The sophistication of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, which has succeeded in roping multiple Palestinian forces, has resulted in groundbreaking sustainability of resistance. The aggression is being rivalled to such measures that after 48 hours of battle, all flights to and from Israel had to be stopped.

The US could have chosen to be a peace broker by empathising with the conditions that led to the large-scale resistance. Instead, President Joe Biden deviated from his stance that he had in his younger years and vehemently denounced the rights of Palestinians to resist. While ironically emphasising apartheid Israel’s right to self-defence, implying that Palestinians’ lives were less important, he pledged more military assistance for Israel, which already receives $3.8 billion a year in US military aid.

Demonstrating this commitment, a plane carrying ammunition and equipment to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Furthermore, the US navy dispatched the USS Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. The strike group is comprised of the USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78), with its eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft, the Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers (DDG 51), USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Carney (DDG 64), USS Roosevelt (DDG 80), and thousands of soldiers. The carrier group is being augmented with the Air Force F-35 in addition to the F-15, F-16 and A-10 fighter aircraft and the approximately 30,000 troops already in the region. A second carrier stands ready to be deployed.

This exaggerated show of force by the US in the region is cause for concern. Hamas’s offensive is asymmetrical. Unlike Israel, it has no air force, navy or military.

The blatant, excessive US presence is unjustifiable and prompts the question of why? The Biden administration has put much effort into influencing dynamics in the region. They shifted from the overt, post-9/11 militaristic approach of the Obama and Trump administrations. The withdrawal from Afghanistan and the initial engagements with Iran around its nuclear programme are demonstrations of this shift in tactics. However, protecting their primary ally in the region remained essential. Therefore, they prioritised building on Trump’s Abraham Accord and focusing on normalising diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states, namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Morocco.

... Even as the Biden administration sought to shift its approach to the Middle East from militaristic to being more developmental, it retained a presence in Iraq and Syria.

In addition, it continued to engage in joint military exercises with Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain in the Red Sea. January saw the second iteration of Red Sands training exercises between the US and Saudi Arabia, which included employing various kinetic and non-kinetic techniques to destroy or disable Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). From August 31 to September 14, the US Central Command and Egypt facilitated Bright Star 2023, the oldest multilateral military exercise in the Middle East and Africa, having first occurred in 1980.

Despite US efforts, they have not been able to gain control over the region. Relations between Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been re-established with Syria. In May this year, Syria was readmitted into the Arab League. In August, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were invited to form part of BRICS plus. Operation al-Aqsa Flood makes a mockery of their interventions related to Israel. And within the broader geopolitical sphere, the US-Nato-Ukraine-proxy war is a failure. The emergence of a multi-polar world order is becoming increasingly probable, thereby increasing the volatility and desperation of the US.

It is feared that Operation al-Aqsa Flood might provide the US with the long-desired opportunity to deal with the “Axis of resistance” once and for all. Any such aggression will definitely ignite a conflict of global proportions.

Already, there are efforts to provoke Lebanon and Syria into joining the conflict. Biden’s warning about external interference and the heavy presence of the US military imply that they will intervene should Lebanon and Syria come to the assistance of Palestine. The Nato defence ministers, through Jens Stoltenberg, have also pledged that Israel will not stand alone, inferring a willingness to engage in military combat.

The millions of corpses in the region testify to the devastation that the US-Israeli-Nato alliance can sow. Therefore, Hezbollah has been careful in its response to date, only acting within occupied Lebanese territory. Likewise, Syria has primarily relied on its air defence to manage the Israeli attacks from occupied Golan, including the bombing of Damascus and Aleppo airports this month. Neither country wants to be drawn into further war.

However, both have vigorously defended the right of the people of Palestine to resist and indicated a preparedness to fight should the US enter the conflict more prominently.

The primary target of the US and Israel, namely Iran, also wishes to avoid a war in the region. However, it is already participating in plans for an emergency session for the heads of the councils of member states of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation. The meeting will discuss the repercussions of the apartheid-Israel aggression on Gaza and how best to provide humanitarian support. ... We have witnessed the human, social and economic costs of the Ukraine-Russian conflict. An extension thereof is undesirable. We, particularly the world’s leaders, must wake up to what the US is dragging us into and make greater efforts to resist it."