It was good that Jimmy Carter lived long enough to see the Biden Administration demonstrate that he was not the worst president of all time. Even Jimmy Carter was starting to compare Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter.
I had minor surgery this week, so I submit a redux of an August 2021 column about one of the biggest embarrassments of the Biden reign: America cowered and ran from yet another country in which we should never have had a military presence. What is it going to take for us to limit the power of Washington in all matters of importance?
The chaotic images of our botched evacuation of Afghanistan should re-enforce what we all should know by now: We are not the world’s policeman. Watching what is going on in New York, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, etc., it’s clear we can’t even police our own cities.
The botched pullout from Afghanistan, and the disjointed and dishonest speeches about it, are what you get when you elect Joe Biden, a 78-year-old career politician with early-stage dementia. Rescuing Afghan translators who helped us was viewed as a must by Americans. We needed them in the White House because Jen Psaki and Secretary of State Blinken rotated daily trying to interpret what Joe Biden was attempting to say.
After Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan, when will we learn? We’ve slipped so many times. It is like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, walking through the Capitol Rotunda, see a banana peel 20 feet in front of them. They say, “Oh shoot, here we go again!”
Neither side of the aisle is clean on this one. Dick Cheney ushered us into war with non-existent yellowcake and WMDs. He overthrew Saddam Hussein, creating chaos and escalating war in the region. To Cheney, war is like love: It will always find a way.
The Taliban’s victory will only strengthen it. Had we left them alone they would not be this powerful or emboldened. The only thing spreading faster than COVID is Sharia law under the Taliban. The problem with America negotiating with these thugs under international law is that they use Sharia law while our “diplomats” seem to negotiate according to Murphy’s Law.
We had plenty of time to plan for a pullout that would have protected the folks there who helped us, plus not giving the Taliban 600,000 weapons, 75,000 military vehicles, $85 billion in funding and 200 aircraft.
Just think about this for a second. The Biden Administration and the Democrats are actively seeking to take or limit the guns of law-abiding American citizens while they hand over 600,000 of our assault weapons to the Taliban. The weapons we left behind will lead to more lethal wars in the Middle East.
Generals at the Pentagon and within the military industrial complex love war. When you have a hammer, you are always looking for a nail. Now Raytheon has a new customer, the Taliban, for weapons parts. But the good news is that voters no longer go along with a war in lands we do not have a strategic interest in or understand.
The images of the Taliban cavorting and traipsing through cities after we recently left should haunt us. They are laughing at us, riding bumper cars at a park, playing cricket, eating gelato at an open-air market and otherwise enjoying leisure time in Kabul as they enter. I find it personally troubling that they seem to have a better work/life balance than I do.
It is curious to watch the lamestream media, usually the spin doctors for Biden. Many suggest putting a mirror to his face over his inept handling of this crisis. ABC and NBC seem to be leading the way in this rare feat of journalism; CNN has yet to get on board. They are working diligently to pin the Jussie Smollett fake-hate-crime on Trump.
Contact Ron Hart, a syndicated op-ed satirist, author and radio/TV commentator, at @RonaldHart on X.