The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Pentagon is now saying that there were 12 members of the US military were killed and 15 more were injured in the attack. The last America troops killed in Afghanistan were in February 2020.

[N.E. Brigand]

Awful.

Apparently it was two suicide bombers, and then their detonations were followed by an attack from ISIS gunmen. Some of those Americans now reported as injured may yet lose their lives. The general conducting the press briefing today said that they do expect ISIS will attempt further attacks. The Taliban, for the moment, appear to be working with the U.S. to try to maintain security.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says that the attack shows that the United States needs to stay past August 31, the current deadline for departure, in order to ensure that every American is evacuated. Because what we need is even more opportunities for attacks like this, I guess. But that's a measure response compared to some others on the right:

Liz Peek, who works for Fox News, said, "I cannot imagine any other president in my lifetime who could lose servicemen & not bother to talk to the country." And she called for Biden to be impeached. (Trump certainly didn't speak regularly about American deaths in Afghanistan. Biden is scheduled to speak in about 45 minutes.)

And Todd Starnes, a conservative commentator who worked for Fox News until 2019, said this today: "For every American who is killed, a city in Afghanistan should be wiped off the face of the earth."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Total number of deaths from the attacks is currently estimated at 60, with 140 injured. I suspect those numbers will increase significantly.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, Biden's consistently robust positive approval rating it all but gone.

[N.E. Brigand]

And Biden's rating had dropped to that break-even point prior to today's events. I have no idea how the bombings will affect his approval. All politicians nowadays are less popular than politicians regularly were not so very long ago. Yesterday an NBC poll found that Kamala Harris's net approval vs. disapproval rating is negative 9%. The past five such polls of vice presidents' net approval in their first year in office found Mike Pence in 2017 at negative 1%, Joe Biden in 2009 at positive 3%, and both Al Gore in 1993 and Dick Cheney in 2001 at positive 28%. And that 2001 Cheney poll happened before 9/11, which boosted the approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney administration to astronomically high levels. Was there a good reason for Dick Cheney in June 2001 to be 25 points more popular than Joe Biden in July 2009? Obama/Biden had won election much more decisively than Bush/Cheney had.

- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, I thought this piece by Josh Marshall, published before today's tragic news, made some good points:

A week and a half ago reports had numbers in the range of 70,000 to 80,000 Afghan nationals needing to be evacuated – mostly so-called SIVs and their families. A greater number of people have now been flown out of the country, though a small percentage of those are US citizens and some large percentage is third country nationals. Today however The New York Times reports new numbers based on analyses of Pentagon records by an advocacy group called the Association of Wartime Allies. They find that as many as one million Afghan could be eligible for expedited immigration status and that a minimum of 250,000 are yet to be evacuated.

I will say that the Biden administration didn't give out a firm number prior to the start of the mass evacuations. Possibly they just hoped to get as many as they could before August 31. And I agree with Marshall that the U.S. ultimately would benefit from an influx of a million or more Afghans. (I'm a fan of Matt Yglesias's One Billion Americans.) We have the capacity, if not the willpower. But we've already achieved what looked like the goal just ten days ago.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Pentagon is now saying that there were 12 members of the US military were killed and 15 more were injured in the attack. The last America troops killed in Afghanistan were in February 2020.

It is probable that the reason there had been no such deaths since February 2020 is that was when the U.S. and Taliban agreed to the withdrawal of U.S. forces by May 1, 2021, provided the Taliban met certain obligations.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is probable that the reason there had been no such deaths since February 2020 is that was when the U.S. and Taliban agreed to the withdrawal of U.S. forces by May 1, 2021, provided the Taliban met certain obligations.

I think you could remove "it is probable" from that sentence.

[N.E. Brigand]

Back in April, Joe Biden pushed back the deadline for U.S. withdrawal of forces in Afghanistan from May 1 (which was what the U.S. and Taliban had agreed to in early 2020) to August 31, and he explicitly said that the troops would be out of that country before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

In light of that looming anniversary, I want to note a rather shocking thing about 9/11 that Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said in an interview today. She said that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS who was killed by U.S. forces in 2019, and Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military leader who was killed by U.S. forces in 2020, were each "bigger by many, many times than Osama bin Laden" because "Osama bin Laden had one hit, and it was a bad one, in New York City, the World Trade Center, but these other two guys were monsters."

Oh, wait, my apologies. That's not correct. It wasn't Rep. Ilhan Omar who said that today. (I wonder how the American public would respond if she did, though.)

It was Donald Trump.


- - - - - - - - - -
On April 13, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri responded to Joe Biden's announcement of the August 31 deadline by saying, "President Biden should withdraw troops in Afghanistan by May 1, as the Trump administration planned, but better late than never." Today, Hawley says that today's tragedy shows that Biden has "neither the capacity nor the will to lead" and should therefore resign. Some people are sharing those two statements as an example of hypocrisy, but I suppose that if the withdrawal from Afghanistan had indeed concluded by May 1, they wouldn't have been any U.S. troops in that nation for ISIS to kill today.

[River]

No. If we had stuck with the May 1 withdrawal, today's events would have happened in April.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But worse.

[N.E. Brigand]

Back in April, Joe Biden pushed back the deadline for U.S. withdrawal of forces in Afghanistan from May 1 (which was what the U.S. and Taliban had agreed to in early 2020) to August 31, and he explicitly said that the troops would be out of that country before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

In light of that looming anniversary, I want to note a rather shocking thing about 9/11 that Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said in an interview today. She said that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS who was killed by U.S. forces in 2019, and Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military leader who was killed by U.S. forces in 2020, were each "bigger by many, many times than Osama bin Laden" because "Osama bin Laden had one hit, and it was a bad one, in New York City, the World Trade Center, but these other two guys were monsters."

Oh, wait, my apologies. That's not correct. It wasn't Rep. Ilhan Omar who said that today. (I wonder how the American public would respond if she did, though.)

It was Donald Trump.

I've been watching Donald Trump being interivewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News, and it's an incoherent mess, despite Hannity's efforts to make Trump seem consistent. Trump repeated this statement about al-Baghdadi, Soleimani, and bin Laden. Naturally Hannity didn't follow up on that claim.

Nor did he follow up when Trump said that he's felt from the start that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was the worst day in the history of the United States. Trump specifically called out George Bush. I still remember conservatives saying in early 2009 that liberals would someday miss Bush. Is this what they meant?

Trump at some points in this interview says that the U.S. would have been out of Afghanistan long before now if Biden had only followed his plan (which had the U.S. exiting by May 1), and at other points in the interview, he says that we should stay past Aug. 31 and that we're only leaving because the Taliban won't let us stay longer.

And Trump said that the U.S. should have kept Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan even after the withdrawal, as a base to act as a check on China.

Trump did agree with Voronwë when he said that "even Biden admitted today" that the reason no American troops were killed from March 2020 through July 2021 was that the Taliban were abiding by the deal they struck with the U.S.

At one point, Trump referred to ISIS-K (who carried out today's attack) as "ISIS-X," then he caught himself and said that there will someday be an ISIS-X, which will be worse than any currently existing ISIS group.*

Finally, asked how today's events will affect the standing of the U.S., for example as relates to China's aggression toward Taiwan, Trump said "I had a very good relationship with President Xi until the China virus came along and I changed my mind about a lot of things." Apparently he's forgotten about our trade war that he boasted about so many times during his presidency.

Oh and just now, Laura Ingraham began her show (before turning to a segment titled "Biden's Body Bags" because the Biden administration "failed to build an Afghan army" that could stand up to the Taliban) by crowing about how the Supreme Court just dealt "another blow" to Joe Biden tonight by striking down (6-3) his administration's eviction ban. I guess no struggling renters watch her show!

*Edited to add: Maggie Haberman of the New York Times says that it sounded to her like someone on the line told Trump he's misspoken when referring to ISIS-K as ISIS-X. I suspect he had a note in front of him and he just misread the "K" as an "X". Because of course he has no idea about any of this.

[N.E. Brigand]

On the first page of the Supreme Court decision blocking the CDC's eviction, the unnamed author writes, "The case has been thoroughly briefed before us—twice."

A number of people have already observed that that statement is a lie.

My question is: if they're right, how should others respond to the lie?

Should the Biden administration say, "The Supreme Court is lying, and therefore we're going to ignore their decision; we'll listen to the Court when it tells the truth"?

Or should some renter file a new suit on the grounds that the case hasn't really been decided since there's no honest decision regarding it? Could a lower court judge determine that the argument has in fact not been thoroughly briefed yet and reinstate the rule?

If the Supreme Court rules on the grounds that the sun revolves around the earth, you don't have to abide by the ruling, do you?

I know, I know: that way lies a slippery slope. Afer all, if you could ignore the Court every time they lied, they wouldn't be able to lie any more. And then where would we be?

[N.E. Brigand]

I thought this piece by Josh Marshall, published before today's tragic news, made some good points:

A week and a half ago reports had numbers in the range of 70,000 to 80,000 Afghan nationals needing to be evacuated – mostly so-called SIVs and their families. A greater number of people have now been flown out of the country, though a small percentage of those are US citizens and some large percentage is third country nationals. Today however The New York Times reports new numbers based on analyses of Pentagon records by an advocacy group called the Association of Wartime Allies. They find that as many as one million Afghan could be eligible for expedited immigration status and that a minimum of 250,000 are yet to be evacuated.

I will say that the Biden administration didn't give out a firm number prior to the start of the mass evacuations. Possibly they just hoped to get as many as they could before August 31. And I agree with Marshall that the U.S. ultimately would benefit from an influx of a million or more Afghans. (I'm a fan of Matt Yglesias's One Billion Americans.) We have the capacity, if not the willpower. But we've already achieved what looked like the goal just ten days ago.

The work did continue today. Since August 14, more than 100,000 people have been evacuated.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is one of the photos shared by the U.S. Defense Dept. just over a week ago of U.S. troops comforting infants at the Kabul airport:



According to reporter Melissa Chan, the standing woman holding a child is Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, who shared that photograph on her Instagram feed with the caption "I love my job."

Gee was one of those killed in Thursday's explosion.

[N.E. Brigand]

The evacuations seem to be slowing down. Only 2,000 people were flown out of Kabul in the past 24 hours, bringing the total evacuated since August 14, the day this effort launched, to 114,000 (and another 5,000 had been evacuated since late July).

Stephen Miller, who served as a top advisor in the Trump administration, argues that we've evacuated too many.

[N.E. Brigand]

Lots of conservatives are sharing a deceptively-edited video they claim shows that President Biden fell asleep during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete.

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump today called for the U.S. to invade ("with unequivocal Military force") or at least bomb Afghanistan.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

STFU
(needless to say, not directed at you, N.E.B.)

[River]

Former U.S. President Donald Trump today called for the U.S. to invade ("with unequivocal Military force") or at least bomb Afghanistan.

You expected anything else? Imagine he still had a Twitter account.