op ed review 8/29
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
13 US service members and 170 Afghans killed in Kabul airport suicide bomb.
Probably because of this: The massacre at Hamid Karzai airport was the consequence of President Biden's decision to rely on the Taliban for security.
https://freebeacon.com/columns/biden-subcontracts-u-s-security-to-terrorists/
And this: The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
https://apnews.com/article/bagram-afghanistan-airfield-us-troops-f3614828364f567593251aaaa167e623
Here are the 13
Biden Blames Generals for Abandoning Bagram Air Base: Admits Admin ‘May Have’ Given Taliban a List of Stranded Americans
Taliban now hunting afghans with america’s biometric data.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/27/taliban-kill-squad-hunting-afghans-with-americas-biometric-data/
Marine officer relieved of duty after calling out senior leaders about Afghanistan
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/27/marine-us-fatalities-afghanistan-506999
Treachery or incompetence? 'KILL LIST': US officials gave the Taliban names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies.
White House's singular focus on domestic priorities contributed to Afghan chaos, former official says.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house-domestic-priorities-afghan-chaos
Biden presidency teetering amid calls to resign, potential investigations over US deaths in Afghanistan
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-presidency-afghanistan-kabul-investigations
Chartered Planes Leave Kabul with Hundreds of Empty Seats
Utter chaos in Kabul
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-chaos-biden-on-time
Taliban appear to take joyride in US-made helicopter.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/26/taliban-appear-to-take-joyride-in-us-made-helicopter-video/
Rep. Tenney: Biden Must Resign After Afghanistan Failure
The following GOP leaders are calling on Biden to resign for his dereliction of duty that left Americans dead at the hands of terrorists. Who is not on this list?
Biden jokes with NBC correspondent about Americans stranded in Afghanistan
British troops say the scene at Kabul airport now is the worst thing they've seen in their careers
No more UK military cooperation as long as Joe is president.
Sources say no one will be fired over Afghanistan disaster.
Images of a baby being thrown over razor wire give Biden's desertion a human face
Biden Admin tells Defense Contractors Told Not To Personally Assist ‘Friends And Former Colleagues’ Stuck In Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s Gay Men Know They’re Doomed as Taliban Judge OKs Stonings
https://news.yahoo.com/afghanistan-gay-men-fear-death-164601813.html
Biden Turns Afghanistan Into A Slaughterhouse, Taliban Into A Military Superpower
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/27/biden-turns-the-taliban-into-a-military-superpower/
Silver lining for the Left: AOC demands Biden resettle a minimum of 200,000 Afghanis in U.S. as quickly as possible. (and put them on a path to vote of course!)
Remember this slogan: “Everything woke turns to sh**” Trump’s big Alabama rally gave us a powerful phrase for the ages.
This Is How Trump Would Have Saved Americans in Afghanistan, But Biden Said No
https://www.westernjournal.com/remember-trump-saved-americans-afghanistan-biden-said-no/
Trump Wastes No Time Hitting Biden With Savage Ad Right Where It Hurts After Afghanistan Speech
Donald J. Trump Honors the Fallen Warriors, Reminds Us How Different Things Could Have Been
CNN Warns: 'Democratic Support for CA Governor Newsom Dwindling'
In response, press unloads on Larry Elder as Republican may be poised to oust Gavin Newsom
https://www.foxnews.com/media/press-unloads-larry-elder-republican-poised-oust-gavin-newsom
Potential jurors refuse to come to King County Courthouse in Seattle because county can’t protect them
https://mynorthwest.com/3108856/juror-safety-concerns-king-county-courthouse/
Portland police chief says officers won't intervene to protect residents from Antifa rioters
Good Samaritan Trying To Break Up Fight Is Shot Point Blank In The Head In Portland
Panicked Democrats switch from 'defund' to 'refund' the police
Probably coming here: UK police launch rainbow colored 'hate crime cars'
https://thepostmillennial.com/uk-police-launch-rainbow-colored-hate-crime-cars
Communist activist vandalizes memorial dedicated to slain Chicago cop Ella French
Business as usual in Chicago: At least seven people were killed and 41 others were wounded over last weekend
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9916607/At-seven-people-killed-41-wounded-Chicago.html
CBS Poll: Majority of Americans No Longer Believe Biden Is Competent
Majority Say U.S. Headed in the Wrong Direction
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/21/poll-majority-say-u-s-headed-in-the-wrong-direction/
Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal shows a disengaged, befuddled president
https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/bidens-afghanistan-withdrawal-shows-a-disengaged-befuddled-president/
Despite widespread job openings, Biden administration to extend jobless benefits past deadline.
Supreme Court Ends Biden’s Eviction Moratorium
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/us/eviction-moratorium-ends.html
Supreme Court Rules Against Biden, Reinstates Trump’s ‘Remain In Mexico’ Policy
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Does America Still Work?
Victor Davis Hanson 8/25
For nearly two years, Americans have engaged in a great woke experiment of cannibalizing themselves. American civilization has invested massive labor, capital, and time in an effort constantly to flagellate itself for not being perfect. Yet neither America’s resilience nor its resources are infinite. We are now beginning to see the consequences of what happens when premodern tribalism absorbs Americans. There are concrete consequences when ideology governs policy or when we take for granted the basics of life to pursue its trappings.
Who cares whether the blow-dried media is woke if it cannot report the truth and keep politicians honest? Once journalists became progressive poodles rather than the watchdogs of government, the Biden Administration had no fear of audit. It took for granted that its disasters from the southern border to the chaos in Afghanistan would be excused by toady reporters.
Government-engineered “equity” has replaced the goal of equal opportunity. But such utopianism birthed popular anger when personal initiative, excellence, and performance do not count as much as virtue-signaling groupthink.
The United States just suffered a terrible and shameful defeat in Afghanistan. The catastrophe reminds us that the Biden Administration weaponized its politicized military and bureaucracy mostly to fixate on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to root out supposed internal American enemies. So, our top brass and functionaries talked of redirecting the military to every possible woke agenda—except ensuring military superiority and the safety of the United States. The result is the horrific mess of a premodern Taliban army routing the most sophisticated military in the history of civilization. We shudder when America begs premodern tribes please not to murder our citizens whom we abandoned in full retreat.
Our airline CEOs vie to virtue signal their wokeness by damning voter ID laws—though such identification is required to board their own airplanes. As corporations preen to the media, their jet airliners lately don’t have enough fuel to reach their destinations. The new American airline normal is woke delays, woke cancellations, and woke anarchy in the skies.
Universities now subject their admissions, their hiring, and their very research to race and gender directives. There is less concern for the collective student debt of $1.7 trillion. College students may graduate woke, but they do so with far less impressive reading and writing skills than their less politically correct predecessors a half-century ago. Are college administrators really so virtuous when they boast of improving diversity, equity, and inclusion? Why then do they ignore indebted and poorly educated graduates—veritable serfs who cannot afford homes, put off raising families, and prolong their adolescence rather than becoming autonomous citizens?
We know from centuries past what policies ensure public safety and which guarantee crime. All laws must be enforced equally. Yet now suicidal critical race and legal theories govern which laws are enforced and which are ignored. If a state attorney prosecutes crimes—or chooses not to prosecute them—on the basis of ideology and race rather than on questions of impartial law, then who would obey, much less honor any of them?
The police must not just be monitored, but respected and supported. Today they are defamed and defunded. If those who commit crimes do not expect to be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished, then crime pays. And so we get more of it. Cries to empty the jails and prisons and pull back on police might sound neat on Twitter. But lots of innocent Americans will suffer the deadly consequences of someone else’s virtue signaling.
Before a country can conduct cancer research, explore outer space, or defeat its enemies thousands of miles away, its citizens must have access to affordable fuel, food, and shelter. But ideologues now restrict irrigation water, gasoline supplies, power generation, and timber production. They may seem woke and enlightened to each other. But otherwise, they are indifferent to the exorbitant cost of living, the growing shortages of necessities, and the hundreds of thousands of homeless living amid filth, excrement, and disease on the nation’s urban sidewalks and streets.
Social media fights, the cancel culture wars between celebrities and elites, the virtue signaling of academics, actors, and activists—all of it means nothing if Americans do not have safe roads, viable travel, affordable gas, food, and housing, and safety in their homes. Increasingly, they do not have these things. Woke leaders are losing the ability to do the hard and essential work of civilization, largely because they are obsessed with the dispensable.
We live in a world of cell phones, Skype, and Zoom. But high tech has become a mere veneer pasted over medieval urban streets, Depression-era highways, and Third-World airways. It is more dangerous to walk the nighttime streets of Chicago than it is those of war-torn Kabul or Baghdad. Until our officials can ensure a humane and sustainable standard of living, we have no business lecturing others abroad, much less conducting endless witch hunts of our own at home.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/25/does-america-still-work/
Sometimes there really is a conspiracy to theorize about. Long list of “coincidences”. “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you”
None Dare Call It Conspiracy
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/none_dare_call_it_conspiracy.html
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TUCKER
“The question is why we're being fed this lie saying that Afghanistan must collapse and America must take in tens of thousands of people who completely believe in sharia law…. Tucker Carlson surmises that resettling Afghans in America isn't fallout from Biden's disastrous Afghanistan retreat. Instead, he believes it's one of the reasons the administration is throwing its hands in the air and saying nothing can be done.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/mustsee_video_in_afghanistan_the_fix_is_in.html
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ISLAM
Taliban set woman on fire for 'bad cooking,' Afghan activist alleges
https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/taliban-set-woman-on-fire-for-bad-cooking-afghan-activist-alleges/
AP is slammed for calling Hamas terrorists 'activists'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9923905/AP-slammed-calling-Hamas-terrorists-activists.html
Why don’t Muslim countries accept Afghan refugees?
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PROGRESSIVE WATCH
Former NSA and CIA Director suggests sending unvaxxed Trump supporters to Afghanistan
Fury as Andrew Cuomo grants commutations to five MURDERERS including Chesa Boudin's dad
Former George W. Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said on CNN’s “OutFront” that President Joe Biden has “done an extremely good job” on Afghanistan.
Scholars Insist Preschoolers Must Be Taught 'Antiracism' 'Throughout the Day'
Penn offers course on ‘White Nationalism in the Age of Climate Change’
https://www.thecollegefix.com/penn-offers-course-on-white-nationalism-in-the-age-of-climate-change/
New Harvard chief chaplain is an atheist.
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JAN 6
Capitol Police officer officially exonerated in Ashli Babbitt shooting on Jan. 6. The shooting of the unarmed Trump supporter was “lawful”.
Then he brags about killing Babbitt on national interview with Lester Holt.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/so_why_did_the_capitol_hill_cop_come_out.html
Ashli Babbitt's Husband Appears on Tucker Carlson to Respond to MSNBC Interview With Her Killer
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COVID
Anti-mask states could face civil rights investigations, secretary of education says.
Washington State public school forces unvaccinated student athletes to wear ankle monitors. ??
Horowitz: 15 studies that indicate natural immunity from prior infection is more robust than the COVID vaccines
After a swanky maskless party for Democrat donors, GOP Rep dubs Speaker ‘Gestapelosi’ over 'unbelievable' House mask mandate.
The Good News—A COVID-19 Update
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_good_newsa_covid19_update.html
The Bad And The Ugly About COVID In America
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_bad_and_the_ugly_about_covid_in_america.html
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ARTICLES
Unfit to Serve, Undeserving to Lead
https://townhall.com/columnists/matthewbetley/2021/08/21/unfit-to-serve-undeserving-to-lead-n2594498
Guns, Germs, and Feelz….. “I wonder whether a future sociologist might one day sum up Western civilization's demise as the natural consequence of Guns, Germs, and Feelz, or rather, how hysterical fear-mongering over self-defense and microorganisms and a new world order based on feelings ended up dooming the West.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/guns_germs_and_feelz.html
Are We in A Revolution and Don’t Even Know It?: “The collective madness that ensued from the pandemic, the quarantine, the self-induced recession, the George Floyd killing and subsequent months of exempted riots, the election year, and the resurgence of variants of the Chinese-engineered coronavirus, all ignited the fuse of formerly inert socialist dynamite. And the ensuing explosion of revolutionary fervor in just a few months has made America almost unrecognizable.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13716
Prager: “Imagine No Big Cities”
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/08/24/nis-prager-n2594620
A 40-Year-Old Warning on How Humanity’s 'Unbound Confidence' in Science Can Undermine Reason—and Lead to Collectivism
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OTHER STUFF
Trump Web Ad: Biden Is Surrenderer-In-Chief
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/24/trump_web_ad_biden_is_surrenderer-in-chief.html
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