Have you too perhaps been eating a lot of chicken these days, despite Joe Biden’s assertions that Bidenomics is working really well and inflation is almost a monetary memory?
Like much of what’s said by Robert L. Peters, JRB Ware, or whatever fake name the 46th president is using these days, his economic claims are -- how to say this nicely on a Sunday? – an eight-letter barnyard epithet.
Almost a year ago, Donald Trump launched his redemption campaign, gifting us with the longest presidential campaign in U.S. history. We’re not even halfway.
I don’t know about you – unless you leave a Comment below -- but I’m ready for a change in reading diet too.
Unfortunately, this change of subject involves what appears to be an ominous regathering of ISIS underway in – wait for it – the same Afghanistan that experienced Joe Biden’s botched U.S. troop withdrawal two years ago, abandoning thousands of refugees.
Some may feel a sense of karma that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, which waged a successful two-decade insurgency against Allied and Afghan forces, is now facing another insurgency of its own, a vicious one by several thousand ISIS forces.
Until recently, the Taliban was more focused on suppressing women. But a shift in ISIS tactics from provincial assaults to terror attacks in the capital of Kabul has escalated the conflict.
Never mind that both groups are Sunni Muslims. They’ve divvied up the billions in sophisticated military equipment abandoned in Biden’s chaotic exit, and are fine killing each other and anyone in sight to spread a sense of terror and make the Taliban appear ineffective.
This is, of course, all tragic for the people of that misbegotten land that’s more of a collection of feuding fiefdoms and warlords.
The U.S. and NATO did their best for 20 years to create a nation. That failed because it isn't.
The main American interest in this perpetual bloodshed is that Afghanistan is becoming, once again, a lawless land that would make a hospitable home for bands of bearded terrorist killers to once again plan and train assaults on distant infidel Western countries.
But don’t worry. You won’t hear much about this from our watchdog media in the next 14 months because it reflects poorly on the Democrat in the White House.
That’s a key ISIS recruiting pitch. As part of the empty withdrawal agreement with the Trump administration, clumsily implemented by the Biden administration, the Taliban agreed to prohibit terrorist plotting there.
Yeah, right.
With an aggressive, reconstituted ISIS controlling increased areas of Afghanistan and weakening the regime’s urban authority, the Taliban can’t really prohibit much of anything beyond what unarmed women wear.
With no allied forces on the ground, the U.S. is essentially blind to what’s going on beyond satellite and aerial surveillance.
It’s another humanitarian tragedy that threatens to reach out and strike the West at some point, one of many global tragedies that would tax even a modern-day Alexander the Great. By the way, he couldn’t control the Afghans either. But who's got time to study history?
The initial downfall of ISIS actually began with the unlikely success of Trump’s first campaign.
He made numerous strategic and policy promises in 2015-16. Things like energy independence, tax cuts, and conservative court appointments, among others.
If you’re judging a president only by promises kept, Trump is right up there in vow fulfilments. That’s one big reason his hardcore supporters remain so stubbornly loyal, despite his juvenile behaviors and extracurricular activities.
Another big Trump promise to Americans and millions of Mideast residents was crushing the homicidal ISIS caliphate that had slaughtered uncounted thousands while conquering vast swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Hard to believe its atrocities are so quickly forgotten. Enlisting children to help with mass executions. Setting prisoners on fire. Pushing alleged gays from towers. Claiming women as sex slaves. All in the name of enforcing strict Islamic laws.
Wisely, Trump appointed former Marine General James Mattis as Defense Secretary with orders to erase the ISIS caliphate. He did, by unleashing the lethal might of the U.S. military.
It had been seriously constrained by the strict rules of engagement of Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who, for some reason, then dispatched U.S. forces to help overthrow Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi.
That created a lawless state where competing militias and various terror groups, including ISIS and al Qaeda, fought, murdered. looted, and trained for foreign subversions as they seep down into Africa. They also killed four Americans in Benghazi, and Obama vowed "swift justice" for them. We’re still waiting.
Mattis is one of the smartest, bravest, and meanest leaders of modern times, which means he starts and finishes whatever the assignment is. And you better not be in his way.
However, in 2019, Mattis, like many respected Cabinet members, came under public attack from Trump. The president speculated the general might be a Democrat (gasp) and said, “I think I know more about (NATO) than he does.” Marine Mattis was a former Supreme Allied Commander of the treaty organization.
When Trump decided to pull almost all U.S. troops out of Syria in 2019, Mattis resigned. The move would abandon to Turkish attack the Syrian Defense Forces and Kurds, who had been a major force behind tracking, unearthing, and killing ISIS troops. Mattis, who had told friends Trump had limited cognitive ability, saw it as a betrayal of loyal allies.
Trump saw it as impudence.
The absence of a significant number of U.S. special operators there and deflation of the SDF resulted in the escape of thousands of ISIS prisoners, many now back in action in Afghanistan.
Biden’s arrogant incompetence in changing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and ignoring Pentagon advice on troop deployments to cover evacuations produced a catastrophe, including the deaths of 13 service members by a homicide bomber.
The U.S. withdrawal was popular at home. And no one is suggesting U.S. troops return there now, which, of course, the Taliban and ISIS know.
Although, 13 months ago, the U.S. did reach into Afghanistan with a Reaper drone. When Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, walked out onto his balcony in downtown Kabul, he was greeted by two inert Hellfire missiles that deploy whirling blades. He did not survive.
Such an assassination timed to a target taking a final early-morning breath of fresh air on a specific apartment's balcony would indicate the U.S. had someone on the ground to determine al-Zawahiri’s routine and presence.
But there’s another mystery, and like much of Biden's foreign dealings, it smells. Since the U.S. withdrawal two years ago last week, Joe Biden, leader of the losing side in Afghanistan, has paid the victorious Taliban some $2.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars for something. WTH for?
Granted, for an administration that spent $5 trillion to launch our ongoing inflation, a billion here and a billion there seems like lunch money.
However, there is a congressionally-mandated inspector general in charge of monitoring such expenditures where 3,609 U.S. and Allied service members gave their lives.
But Joe Biden and the unidentified people pulling his strings refuse to tell the inspector what that fortune was spent on. This seems like a tempting issue for the GOP next year. You don't suppose Joe and Hunter have shell companies there too?
It's just another instance of Joe Biden and his political posse defying Congress and the law, and no one doing anything about it. So, no big deal, right?
