Biden Finally Cuts Our Losses in Afghanistan

By Karen

I support Joe Biden 100% in pulling out of Afghanistan now, and I’m glad he’s not apologizing for it. It’s been 20 years, and it’s hopeless. The only thing we actually managed to accomplish was a temporary reprieve for girls and women so they could get educated and hold jobs without being butchered for being female by twisted fundamentalist fanatics.

Even that small normalcy is probably dead now with the Taliban back in power.

It only took the Taliban 10 days to show us that all we thought we had “built” — a functioning government, a military 300,000 strong — were illusions.

Afghanistan is just as corrupt and chaotic as ever. Prolonging our presence a month, a year, a century won’t change that.

Afghanistan is a landlocked hellscape, suitable mostly for growing poppies for opium, of roughly 40 million inhabitants. 56% still live in poverty and fear, even though the U.S. has poured $2.6 trillion into defense and infrastructure.

Our two-decade occupation has been a clusterfuck. But rather than blaming Biden for it all, let’s refresh our memories that it was the brainchild of these three clowns…

Obama tried a troop surge, and then a draw-down after he killed Osama Bin Laden, who put the bull’s eye on Afghanistan in the first place by using it as al Qaeda’s base for planning 9/11.

As for Trump, investigations will probably reveal eventually that he saw an opportunity skim a cut of all that sweet U.S. aid for himself by “doing a deal.” So in 2019, he sent his stooge Mike Pompeo to work out the details with the Taliban.

In exchange for virtually nothing but the Taliban’s promise to be good, Trump freed 5,000 of their fighters, including their co-founder, Mullah Abdul-Ghani Baradar, who is Afghanistan’s new president this week. The chickenshit president we were propping up fled to the UAE as soon as he saw his army laying red carpet for the Taliban. Pompeo looks so pleased with his handiwork…

Trump’s deal included removing all American troops by [UPDATE: May 1, 2021. Biden delayed that to September 11, but then accelerated the pull-out to beat his new deadline]. The Taliban had only to mark the “Retake the Country” date on their calendars.

Biden accelerated the pull-out, apparently unaware that an Afghan military isn’t really a thing. Not only did Afghan soldiers not fight back, they handed the Taliban billions of dollars’ worth of the weapons and equipment we paid for.

Scenes of the scramble at the Kabul airport to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghans who helped us have been sickening. Those people don’t have a single Afghan policeman or soldier to escort them and protect them. It’s entirely up to us to get them out of there. while the Taliban stands at the airport gates, whipping, beating, and shooting at them.

I blame our State Department and Immigration. They KNEW there would be a need for evacuation. For months, they could have been quietly running a clearance operation for evacuees. Instead, they’re gift-wrapping them in pointless red tape and handing them back to the Taliban for execution.

Our betrayal of those people who WERE brave enough to fight for their country is the shame the United States will never live down.

PS: Earlier this year, CBS launched a sitcom called The United States of Al, about an Afghan interpreter who comes to live with the Marine he helped. It’s been renewed for a second season, which starts in October. But right now, with interpreters being hunted and killed by the Taliban, making jokes about it feels like bad timing and terrible taste.

Chapter 28: COVID Chronicles

By Karen

Day 45

A Socially Distanced Birthday Party

Woke up this morning to find this little present on my bed…

It’s a weird furry bird. Roc thought he saw it move so, just to be safe, he killed it again…

Must share this effervescent new parody by Randy Rainbow of Trump’s ridiculous “prescriptions” to combat COVID…

I love classic show tunes. Seeing them performed by Randy so brilliantly makes them fresh all over again. It’s the only time I can laugh at Trump without wanting to cry.

Today was my father’s 83^rd birthday, so last night I made him a loaf of bread in his Mr. Loaf bread machine (which I borrowed because it was languishing in their attic). I hear yeast is hard to come by now with everybody making their own bread. Mine must have lost its zing because I was bummed that this loaf didn’t rise a few more inches…

Naturally, as soon as I took it out of its pail and put it on the cooling rack, the food inspector had to show up…

Today I couldn’t get chicken for lunch from the newest Zaxby’s in town because they’re closed, even with a drive-thru. Plan B supported a local business. Nuccio’s Express is on my route to my parents, so I got a Nuccio’s Special pizza to go, of which my father said, “This may be the best pizza I’ve ever eaten.”

Everything tastes better when you haven’t had someone else cook for you in over a month.

My sister brought a Baskin-Robbins cherry ice cream and chocolate cake that was quite a treat.

We ate outside on the deck at a huge table even though it was an overcast 60 degrees. My father couldn’t make a wish and blow out the musical candle on his cake because if he’d sprayed all over it, none of us womenfolk could have had any.

Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam, MD, just said he won’t relax lockdown until we have 14 straight days of declining numbers, which can’t start until we have adequate testing, which we don’t. And he expects Phase 1 reopening (masks, distancing, etc.) to last up to TWO YEARS. I’m already wondering how women in the Middle East live with their entire bodies in masks. If I have to cover half my face for two years, I’ll never be the same.

BONUS: I just found this John Morgan video. He does a spot-on George W. Bush and recorded this song right after the 2016 election. It’s not a knee-slapper, but it makes me miss when we had a kinder, gentler idiot in the White House…

Why the GOP is Like the 4th of July

By Cole

Here’s a riddle: What do the misfits and intellectually-challenged opportunists vying for the Republican nomination have in common with Independence Day?

Fireworks. One by one they have been catapulted by their gullible followers to the heights of the polls. They hover for a time, all sparkly and beautiful and full of promise, and everybody “Oohs” and “Aahs” at their brilliance.

But then their flash is exhausted, they’ve got no substance to keep them aloft, and they fall back to earth.

Last week it was Rick Perry’s turn to flame out. After making an ass of himself almost every time he opened his mouth until he swore off debates altogether, they pulled him back in. That tells you right there he’s not cut out to tangle with whichever foreign despots we haven’t killed off.

And Perry obliged by really stepping in it. Herman Cain owes him a big one for deflecting the heat.

Don’t you just love listening to buffoons bragging about all the government agencies they’ll unilaterally wipe out — and then in the next breath reveal they have no idea what they’re talking about?

Poor Herman seems to be showing signs of early-onset dementia in his inability to remember any of the women who clearly remember him groping dissing them.

And now Rick Perry’s making George W. Bush look like Demosthenes.

And yet Perry and Cain act like they should get a pass for their inability to convey articulate or honest thought. After 8 years of Bush, and the U.S. declaring open season on heads of state we don’t like, it’s hard to imagine the rest of the world taking yet another mush-mouth in the Oval Office in stride.

Next up in the fireworks display: Newt Gingrich. He’s been one of those stealth types, but they’re running out of options so he’s he’s approaching his zenith and will have to show us what he’s got. It’s almost a certainty that some news hound will drag yet another skeleton out Newt’s walk-in closet, and he’ll end up on the ash-heap with the rest.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney quietly lies in the shadows, waiting for his party to put away the garlic and the crosses, open his lid, and beg him to suck the life out of Obama.

Haiti’s Lucky Bill Clinton’s on the Case

By Yul

Reports from Haiti should make everyone jump up from their comfy sofas and make a donation to the relief efforts. Obama seems on top of the situation, but his reaction reminded me of the android Data on Star Trek: Next Generation.

While I’m glad the cat keeps cool in a crisis, a little unscripted human response to such widespread suffering wouldn’t have been amiss.

And although Obama says the U.S. will continue to help Haiti as long as needed, who knows what he’ll do if Republicans balk? I could hear them whining that Haitians should be able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, and to provide them free medical care right now would lead to socialism.

I could see Obama giving up on his monetary pledge in exchange for a truckload of blankets and still claiming his relief effort a big success.

For the sake of Haiti, thank goodness Obama tapped Bill Clinton to head up fund-raising and aid, with George W. Bush as his token sidekick.

Bill’s the only one I’ve seen on TV talking about Haiti. Bush is probably having a Katrina moment in Texas while Laura tries to pound into his head that Haiti’s in REALLY BIG trouble.

Clinton — talking off the cuff to NBC and CBS — came across so strong, reassuring, AND empathetic. Nothing dry or clinical about his descriptions of the suffering. He totally gets the urgency of finding survivors and stabilizing life for the now-homeless. But he’s also hopeful about how quickly Haiti will recover with continuing help, because he says they were already on the right track when they were knocked flat.

I hope Obama has been taking notes.

PS: The William J. Clinton Foundation Web site makes it very easy to help. The Red Cross is also accepting donations.