Something truly momentous occurred over the last week in Washington, D.C. Just twenty years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the American president, Joe Biden and key members of his administration, took the airwaves to parrot Taliban talking points. Never in my life would I have ever believed leaders of the world’s only remaining Superpower; of a country that had been in an existential war against Islamists in Afghanistan–notably the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies–would be praising the Taliban as those same American leaders preside over the worst, most humiliating American move in our country’s history: the withdrawal from Kabul.
In the wake of the murder of 13 US servicemen in a suicide bomb attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, President Joe Biden bumbled through yet another presidential address on the unfolding daily disaster that is his Afghanistan exit.
In his press conference, which most sycophantic media outlets had described as “defiant” (in fact, “clueless” is the right word here), Biden doubled-down (or, is it quadrupled-down on this point) on his absurd commitment to ending US evacuation operations from Kabul by August 31, 2021. This will, undoubtedly, leave countless American citizens stranded in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as well as many more third-party foreign nationals and America’s Afghan allies.
Malcolm Nance, that paragon of virtue and wisdom from the Intelligence Community who is now featured regularly on MSNBC and Bill Maher’s show, tweeted “#DealWithIt” after a dozen Marines, one Navy Corpsmen were killed by IS-K militants at the Abbey Gate of the Karzai International Airport last week. Many other American military personnel were wounded (with at least four of the survivors being in critical condition). Nance’s grotesque argument mirrors the mood of the president on the matter.
For the record: the Biden Administration took credit for a random, successful drone attack in Afghanistan on the two people they claim were responsible for the airport attack last week. A couple of terrorists for countless Americans being murdered at the airport just seems insignificant, when the larger image is of America in terminal decline as it jogs toward any exit it can find in Afghanistan.
Besides, given how weakened America’s intelligence network is now in Afghanistan, it strains credulity that we would have suddenly figured out the culprit of the attack. Even if we did, the larger, strategic context is that the Americans have lost the fight for Afghanistan.
Anyway, the Biden Administration has made its decision and it is sticking to it–no matter how significantly the facts on the ground change. To reinforce this point, the Biden team has literally been parroting Taliban talking points to the press. They even defended the Taliban’s purported “security” around the Karzai International Airport…you know, the security cordon that let an IS-K suicide bomber through to kill more than a dozen US servicemen…?
Again, I digress.
We Take the Terrorists At Their Word…WHY?!
When the suicide bomb attack occurred on the Abbey Gate last week that resulted in all of those dead Americans, the State Department and Pentagon issued official narratives that painted the Taliban in a positive light.
These members of the Permanent Administrative State insisted that the Taliban were unaware of the IS-K attack on the Abbey Gate; that the Taliban security forces around the airport are part of the Taliban’s elite military units (chosen because, according to the US government, these elite forces follow their orders better than ordinary, freewheeling Taliban forces do) and have stopped other security risks before they could reach inner cordon of the airport, where Americans were spasmodically seeking an escape from the airport to another, safer country.
This is, of course, exactly what the Taliban have been saying to the international media.
What few people realized was that the Taliban had entered into a partnership with the Haqqani Network, a band of Afghan pirates who would sell you their own mother and kill their own children, if it meant they could make a buck. The Haqqani Network also loathes the Americans, their foreign allies, and the Afghans who supported the US military’s mission in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.
Part of the Taliban’s partnership with the Haqqani Network included a deal to jointly secure Kabul in the wake of the US withdrawal from the country. While it is true that the Taliban hate the IS-K, it is not correct to state that the Haqqani Network hates IS-K (anymore than they hated the Taliban, al Qaeda, or any other group the leaders of this criminal syndicate believed they could make money and gain power from).
Guess whose forces were securing the outer cordon of the airport where the IS-K suicide bomber got through? The Haqqani Network.
And I suspect the Biden Administration knows this to be true, which is why the Pentagon and intelligence services have been beating the drum daily about the prospect of many more terrorist attacks on the airport the closer to August 31 we get. What’s shocking is that, even now, Mr. Biden did not tell the world the truth: that the Taliban is either not capable or is willing to live up to its end of the tentative deal they struck with the US government last year in Doha.
Islamists are known liars, no matter which group one is specifically referring to, especially when it comes to dealing with foreign adversaries. The Taliban want the Americans out. This attack happened right after Mr. Biden and his administration indicated they might have been willing to extend their August 31 deadline to September 11. And whatever the Taliban say, just remember they have 20 years’ worth of American blood on their hands.
What’s more, they don’t want the Americans around in their new (old?) conquest. The Biden Administration are a pack of fools for having taken the Taliban at their word.
Whatever animosity may exist between the Taliban and IS-K, the fact remains that all of these Islamist networks in Afghanistan share a common enemy: the Americans and their foreign allies. By playing up superficial organizational differences between the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and IS-K, the Biden Administration is whitewashing the fact that the Taliban is essentially having its bloody cake and eating it: they get their pals in the Haqqani Network to facilitate a devastating attack on the fleeing Americans in Kabul by IS-K.
A Pattern of Deceit
It’s also not the first time an Islamist group has claimed not be involved with a horrific attack on Americans but looked the other way when another, similar group, did allow for an attack to proceed. For example, as the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and his rabid followers were swarming Tehran during the tumultuous days following the Shāh of Iran’s abdication and escape, there was another group challenging the Islamists for control of Iran’s future: the communists.
It was, in fact, communist guerrillas who had surrounded the US embassy in Tehran shortly before the infamous Iranian Hostage Crisis commenced in 1979. Iranian communists initiated the harassment of the US embassy. Once their agitations ginned up the denizens of Tehran, only then did the Islamists of Iran effectively co-opt the angry protests and capture the embassy. But the attack on the embassy was initiated by a group totally apart from the Islamists of Iran.
As it turned out, both the communists and Islamists in Iran, while vying for control after the fall of the Shāh, both benefited from humiliating and pushing out US power from Iran. Thus, the two divergent groups washed each other’s hands on that shared goal. The Taliban, Haqqani, and IS-K are probably all doing something similar in Afghanistan.
This is key because the Taliban and the Islamists of Afghanistan are also trying to keep their separation from each other a viable appearance for the Americans. It’s a lie. And it’s a politically convenient one for both the Taliban and the Biden Administration to maintain because, as so many from the Biden team have said, the Taliban and the US right now have a “common goal.”
Can you believe this naive garbage coming from Washington?
Sure, the Taliban want us out. But they also want to humiliate the US superpower in similar ways to how the Taliban believe they and their pals humiliated the Soviet Union in 1989, when the Red Army went gang rushing out of the country after having fought in Afghanistan for a decade. It’s not just about getting the Yanks out. It’s about giving those foreigners the classic Kabul Farewell: a rancid grin followed by a stab-in-the-back and a kick-in-the-ass as the foreigners leave out the door.
The Taliban get to keep the prestige of being the only Islamist group in Afghanistan that the Americans are recognizing as the legitimate successors to the failed US-backed Ghani regime. Yet, they are double-dealing in a classic Afghan fashion. They are not directly attacking the US military presence at the airport.
Instead, the Taliban is looking the other way while their Haqqani Network allies let IS-K fighters through supposedly secure checkpoints outside of the Kabul airport to get near enough to the Americans on the ground to murder and maim them. This, in turn, creates a wave of chaos in the airport and further hampers the attempts of those Afghans and foreigners seeking to evacuate the country before August 31.
In response to the convenient attack on the airport last week by IS-K, elite Taliban forces (armed with advanced American tactical equipment they confiscated from the now-defunct US-backed Afghan National Army), sealed off the roadways leading into the airport.
Now, even fewer are able to get through. So, the chaos at the airport might slow down over the final few days of the evacuation. But that’s because the Taliban are now stopping any person from getting to the airport. In effect, after their Haqqani Network allies let an IS-K suicide bomber through to the airport last week, the Taliban are now using that as a convenient excuse to further hamper American evacuation efforts before August 31.
Think about it: today is August 28. In three short days, the US effort at the airport is to be over. If no one else comes to the airport over the next few days, the Biden Administration will have no excuse but to fold up their haphazard evacuation operation at the Karzai International Airport by August 31, as was planned.
The Biden team can then claim to the press that everyone “who wanted to leave did leave” even though you and I know that this is a pack of lies. The Taliban are effectively helping Biden politically. And Biden, of course, is helping the Taliban by removing US forces from Afghanistan and giving the Taliban leadership legitimacy as the next rulers of Afghanistan.
This gets us to the final, disturbing point of the Biden foreign policy toward the Greater Middle East; the point that has wider strategic implications for America in the long-term. As I note in my forthcoming book, The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy, beginning with the Carter Administration, a succession of Democratic Party leaders have sought to normalize relations with Islamists all across the Greater Middle East.
It was Jimmy Carter who erroneously believed he could work with the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. As I document, there is ample evidence suggesting that the Carter Administration quietly pushed for the Shāh and those loyal to him to abandon their bid for power and leave the field open to the Islamists, who the Carter team believed was preferable to the communists in Iran at the time.
We know how that ended.
Flash forward to the Arab Spring, when President Barack Obama believed he could have a better relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt than the longtime pro-American autocrat, Hosni Mubarak. If not for the Egyptian military’s resolve to stop Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from doing to Egypt what the Grand Ayatollah had done to Iran in 1979, then Egypt today would be another Iran.
Obama further believed he could work with the Islamists of Syria fighting Bashar al-Assad as well as the Islamists in Libya fighting Muammar Gaddafi. In those cases, too, Mr. Obama was proven to be wrong. We are still paying the price for that stupidity today.
Yet again, in 2021, another Democrat (who was a senator when Carter fell in love with Khomeini and vice-president when Obama danced with the Islamists), President Joe Biden is enthralled with another Islamist movement. This time, the Taliban of Afghanistan. Carter’s flirtation with Islamists in Iran resulted in the Iranian Hostage Crisis and 40 years of undying enmity between Washington and Tehran. Obama’s love affair with the Islamists caused Egypt to become a partner to Russia, resulted in the Benghazi consulate attack on September 11, 2011, and eventuated in Syria becoming the hot mess that it is today.
In keeping with the “best” practices of the Democratic Party establishment from 1979 onward, Mr. Biden has replicated that succession of failures with the Taliban today. Leftists in the United States have great fun in calling their rivals on the Right, “American Taliban.” But never once has a Republican Party leader ever carried water for the actual Taliban. That is a Democratic Party specialty.
As America tucks its tail between its legs and is beaten with the ruddy shoes of jihadis as it scurries away into the night, remember this is precisely what the Democratic Party believes is right and just–not only for America in Afghanistan today…but for the United States on the world stage in general.
Joe Biden got played by the Taliban. His presidency is the greatest reign of incompetence this country has experienced since James Buchanan let the South secede from the Union shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. We will never forget.
Be sure to secure your copy of the book that Dennis Prager calls, “Truly important”…
THE WEICHERT REPORT 