As Afghanistan has collapsed and been taken over by the Taliban, Kamala Harris is reportedly refusing to accept any responsibility.
A source reportedly told Kyle Becker at Becker News that Harris refused to be part of addressing the American people on Sunday after the terrorist group took over Kubal, the capital of Afghanistan.
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1/If you’re looking for an answer to how the shitshow in Kabul happened I think you have to start with the escape from Bagram AB in the middle of the night. There was no reason to leave Bagram the way US forces did unless they knew something.https://t.co/QHs6xUu4m7— dave (@bluetrader660) August 17, 2021
In remote, pine-clad valleys of Afghanistan’s Kunar province and in online jihadist chat forums there is jubilation at what al-Qaeda supporters see as “a historic victory” by the Taliban.
The humiliating departure of the very forces that temporarily expelled both the Taliban and al-Qaeda 20 years ago has come as a massive morale boost to anti-Western jihadists all over the world.
The potential hiding places for them now opening up in the country’s ungoverned spaces are a tempting prize, especially for Islamic State (IS) group militants looking to find a new base after the defeat of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Western generals and politicians are warning that the return of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan, in strength, is “inevitable”.
Aug 17 (Reuters) – It took just a few days for the Taliban to sweep across Afghanistan and seize territory they did not already control, sometimes taking major provincial capitals with barely a shot in anger.
While much has been made of the Afghan army’s military collapse, interviews with Taliban leaders, Afghan politicians, diplomats and other observers suggest the Islamist militant movement laid the groundwork for its victory long before the events of the last week or so.
‘It’s hard for me to properly present the extent of this foreign policy failure. This is a cascading national security failure.
‘There’s a document in the embassy called the F-77. I am told the F-77 of Afghanistan indicates there are 15,000 potentially, upwards of 40,000 Americans scattered around Afghanistan right now…”
After the fall of Saigon, the Soviet Union began five years of aggressive subversion around the world, culminating in the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. Henry Kissinger and the elites in the US and Europe all predicted a Russian victory in the Cold War. The fall of Kabul is worse: In Vietnam, we faced a well-trained and equipped North Vietnamese Army; we were humiliated by 75,000 rag-tag irregulars in Afghanistan.
The Taliban has given its first official news conference in Kabul since the shock seizure of the city, declaring it wants peaceful relations with other countries and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.
“We don’t want any internal or external enemies,” the movement’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said.
The insurgents seek no revenge and “everyone is forgiven” he said.
Mujahid said women would be allowed to work and study and “will be very active in society but within the framework of Islam”.
The Taliban would not seek retribution against former soldiers and members of the Western-backed government, he said, saying the movement was granting an amnesty for former Afghan government soldiers as well as contractors and translators who worked for international forces.
“Nobody is going to harm you, nobody is going to knock on your doors,” he said.
He said private media could continue to be free and independent in Afghanistan, adding the Taliban was committed to the media within its cultural framework.
“We intend to hold them to that commitment,” national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters amid a barrage of questions about the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
SULLIVAN: “The Taliban have informed us that they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment.”
“…We are talking to them about what the exact timetable is for how this will all play out.” pic.twitter.com/RhUtHbgwgr
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 17, 2021
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday his government won’t recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan one day after his foreign minister said it was too early to decide.
The Butcher of Benghazi must have some great advice for Trudy. https://t.co/Tvr7WcHzAZ
— Leslie-Ann Stoffel (@LA_Stoffel) August 17, 2021
To reprise a line from a decade-old column of mine:
Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you’re Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you’re Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America.
That’s the point to remember: if you’re an Afghan schoolgirl, today is the fall of Kabul; elsewhere, in the chancelleries of allies and enemies alike, it’s the fall of America. Even by their usual wretched standards, the world’s most somnolent media are struggling to stay up to speed on the story.
A university student tells of seeing all around her the ‘fearful faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women’
Early on Sunday morning I was heading to university for a class when a group of women came running out from the women’s dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me the police were evacuating them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul, and they will beat women who do not have a burqa.
We all wanted to get home, but we couldn’t use public transport. The drivers would not let us in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman. It was even worse for the women from the dormitory, who are from outside Kabul and were scared and confused about where they should go.
Locals in Istanbul were recently shocked to see hordes of young Afghan men in worn out uniforms, strolling aimlessly down neighborhoods that were already home to thousands of Syrian refugees. Later, Turkish police detained and expelled nine of the men. Hundreds of others are communicating with their relatives and friends in Afghanistan and Iran and most likely updating them on the illegal migration routes into Turkey — Afghans would typically pay smugglers $1,000 for the trip from Kabul to Van in eastern Turkey. With the victory of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government, hundreds of thousands may be crossing via Iran into eastern Turkey, finally seeking the least dangerous (and least costly) route into European Union soil.
‘Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building.’
President Biden stressed the purpose behind the US intervention in Afghanistan had “always been preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland” and “never supposed to be creating a unified centralised democracy”.
This clearly contradicts his previous positions on the US objective in Afghanistan.
At the outset of the conflict in 2001 when Mr Biden was a US senator, he outlined the long-term purpose of the American military intervention, saying: “Our hope is that we will see a relatively stable government in Afghanistan, one that… provides the foundation for future reconstruction of that country.”
And again, in 2003 – in another quote, tracked down by the Politico website – he said the “alternative to nation building is chaos, a chaos that churns out bloodthirsty warlords, drug traffickers and terrorists”.
Senility in action.
When President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.
In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.
h/t HallsOfMacademia
In the days before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a group of British defence and security officials took a top-secret trip to Moscow.
The plan was to ask their Russian counterparts for advice on operating in the country given the former Soviet Union’s doomed Afghan intervention that ended in defeat in 1989.
