From the editor-in-chief of National Review:
This is a squalid act of betrayal of our countrymen, a moral failure to top off the gross ineptitude of Biden’s withdrawal https://t.co/j1WkwRG45J
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) August 30, 2021
To the extent that this is partisan blather, I guess I can ignore it. But I assume that much of it is a sincere sentiment, despite the fact that we evacuated something close to 99% of all Americans in Afghanistan. And there's still reason to hope that the remaining 1% will make it home too.
But if it's sincere, I wonder what people expected? Putting aside the difference of opinion on whether we should have withdrawn at all, how is it that 99% evacuation can be spun as either inept or morally deficient? When do we return to reality in this country?
"When do we return to reality in this country?"
The GOP left reality sometime in the last century and has shown no inclination to return since.
Memo to Lowry: War is hell.
Wingnuts are deeply invested in projecting all their own corruption, squalid failure, moral betrayal and ineptitude onto anyone else they can so their useful victims, one another, will stay motivated.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/30/politics/us-military-withdraws-afghanistan/index.html …
Benghazi!!!
The right is also in the process of fetishizing the 13 service members who died during the evacuation for partisan purposes. They see this as the next "Hilary lied. They died" trope about the four people who died in the Benghazi attack. We'll see if it plays but I guarantee you they are working on this. The 13 who died, along with all the other servicemembers involved in executing and planning this amazing feat deserve praise, no doubt. But it's weird how, to certain people the previous 2000+ US servicemembers who died in Afghanistan are forgotten and only the last 13 seem to matter.
Anyway we are out. All servicemembers have been evacuated. This is simply amazing and is cause for celebration.
When I first heard of the attack and the casualties John Kerry's famous and unsettling question came to mind: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?".
Those 13 were the last people to die for this mistake.
I would say they died helping to end the mistake.
Bingo! Bango! Let go my stale Eggo!
Silly question. Soldiers are asked to risk their lives, but they're not asked to die, except for the very rare suicide mission. My mother's brother was the last man in his division to be killed in WWII. It was April 1945 and uncle was the regimental sergeant-major. He and his CO were meeting the local German commander to accept the surrender of his forces when one fanatic Nazi decided he didn't want to surrender and shot my uncle. His own comrades promptly shot him, but the damage was done.
My uncle was not asked to be the last man to die, and the cause wasn't a mistake, but whether the cause is a mistake or not, somebody has to be the last to die if the war is going to end.
Its too soon for a true take away, but there was a time when actual external threats caused our amalgamation of a country to pull together.
One would have thought (a) a pandemic, (b) a threat of global climate change, or (c), a withdrawl from a 20 year war, or some combination of (a) (b) and (c), would cause some sort of state of affairs where other, partisan stuff is put aside.
But no, apparently not. I am actually pretty pleased that Trump managed to screw up the pandemic, which was the biggest gift any politician could hope for (i) a problem which he or she could not be blamed for, plus (ii) the opportunity to throw unlimited amounts of money at it, but nope.
I mean, he actually double screwed up: he didn't take any credit for addressing it because he was too busy trying to blame someone about it.
Maybe its better if everybody blames Biden instead of a bunch of guys living in caves who are willing to blow themselves up anyway.
Biden can handle it.
I am skeptical about "the country pulling together". Last time that happened we invaded Afghanistan (justifiably but stupidly) and Irak (not at all justifiable and so stupid that the English language has no words that accurately capture the depth of the stupidity)--both with significant support from Democrats--often in the name of "coming together".
So long as we do stupid things when we "come together" I prefer us to keep bickering and let the career public servants--the most competent people in government*--handle the problem that was supposed to make us "come together".
* the ONLY competent people during Republican administrations.
That is a really good point. Pulling together historically meant war with the "others."
I was referring to the part of pulling together which would have meant that partisan non-mask-wearing-ridiculousness-because-nobody-tells-John-Wayne-what-to-do would drop away.
This pandemic is on a low tier. Sorry, it's true. It's 1957-58 like. Not near strong enough to pull anything together.
They're all about personal responsibility. That's why they want the US government to indefinitely prolong a war in order to save a handful of people who decided to stay in a war zone long after having been clearly warned to get out.
Any American who was still in Afghanistan after Aug 1 was either planning on staying or so willfully ignorant that I'm not sure anything could have helped them.
I have a bit of sympathy for these guys. In addition to the end of the Afghan war after 20 years, the "government" levees held in New Orleans yesterday, while other areas were flooded.
Their whole worldview, which they've had for at least 50 years (really 75 if you assume it's essentially a Cold War worldview) has crumbled. They got nothing and are probably wondering how long they'll have jobs.
If even one American is discovered there in a few weeks, imprisoned, executed, or hiding in the desert, the media recriminations will reignite and the crackpots will be screaming for Biden's resignation. Very little of the current backlash has any basis in reality. Going forward, reality need not be invoked, either.
Lindsay Graham has already said that's grounds for impeachment.
They really have no shame.
Afghanistan is not owned by President Biden or Mr. Lowry. That's why it wasn't easy to get everyone out. Regarding morality, having a crowd of sitting ducks outside the airport wasn't looking like the best humanitarian move anymore. How does Rich Lowry not see that?
Because Rich Lowry is paid NOT to see it.
That's probably it.
Another point: I don't think we should even try to distinguish what is false propaganda and what is sincerely felt. The GOP has long ago acquired the ability so sincerely believe in their own lies. They believed the most improbable stories during the Clinton administration so long as they were damaging to the Clintons. By the time Trump came to power they were believing that Democrats are all pedophiles.
The question is only how far this will go.
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
Hannah Arendt - 1951
"People for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist" is the most concise definition of Trump supporters that I have heard.
When do we return to reality in this country?
Part of it left for an epistemically closed paranoid funhouse many years ago, and since they see no reason to leave, I don't see any reason to expect they will.
As for the rest of us, I actually think that when the dust settles -- and it will settle fairly quickly, because most Americans basically do not care about people in other countries, most especially not Islamic girls -- and Biden can say "Obama got Bin Laden and I got us out," most Americans will -- some overtly, some covertly -- agree fully.
Remember all of their behaviors (ours too for that matter) are performative, deflection. The loudest are highly embarrassed - that they made such poor judgements, valued an American Exceptionalism that didn't exist, and one of the axioms of their identity (a just war) was a lie.
So give them a break. I just wish they'd shut up though.
One 20 year long war is finally over. I’m happy. As an anti-war, military-hating peacenik, I’m thrilled. In a month, no one will even care.
Oh sure, partisans will beat each other over the head with it, but most people will shrug and watch the NFL or some silly tik-tok videos.
Of course we all know that the CIA or US military will occasionally drop some bombs in Afghanistan. This is all they know how to do. And none of you will care about that either.
For today, though, I’m happy to see the end of this moral abomination.
Partisan hacks like Lowry would vilify any Democratic president no matter what they did. The Republican Party was also bitterly divided over the wisdom of Trump's decision to pull out. Senators like Sasse, Graham and McConnell himself would probably have been just as censorious of the former guy as they are of Biden.
But presidents shouldn't be making foreign policy decisions with an eye to opinion polls or the election cycle. There's a good argument for the Filipino system: presidents get to serve a single, six-year term, with no ability to run again.
A law or a political norm is only as good as the people who uphold it. George Wallace served extra terms as governor of Alabama. Putin is maximum leader for life. And apparently so will Duterte be.
https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/philippines-duterte-to-run-for-vice-president-in-2022/ar-AANGakW
Lowry's tweet gives the phrase "bad faith" a bad name. What a goddamn hack. He knows perfectly well had this gone down on Trump's watch, Afghan interpreters and others who had helped the US forces, along with many (Afghan-born) citizens, would have been left to rot, per Obergruppenfuhrer Miller's instructions. And he would have been tweeting about how we can't be expected to save every person who helped us, and besides, what about the risk that a terrorist slips through? Etc. etc.
To those who thought we had the logistical capacity to airlift all our equipment out of Kabul:
In the case of anti-rocket/mortor gizmos i suspect there is also an element of "if we wreck the thing rather than packing it up for air transport we can keep it turned on until five minutes before we leave instead of five hours before."
I'm sure more than a few of the Lowry's in the world conform to Churchill's fanatic - A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. We shall be hearing about this until the next Benghazi! comes along to destroy the Biden presidency. yada yada yada
Like anybody cares. I could care less with anybody who stayed. If they did and get in trouble, so be it. Too me, they are traitors. Killing them would be a blessing.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-ground-troops-leave-afghanistan-20-years-americans/story?id=79728572
seems like the war lovers lost. and that is a good thing!
I wish we could sent them to the front to experience the loveliness of war.
You know equal parts hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and colloidal silver, with Dr. Pepper would be the wingnut cocktail you could sell them on.
It would taste something like the radium dial on an old glow in the dark clock mixed with cough syrup.
Obviously medicinal.
You may snark, but read Paul Krugman's column in the Times today about snake oil and the GQP crowd...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformation-supplements.html
Seems that the wingnut crowd has been buying up literal "snake oil"; that is, "miracle" cures and nostrums for a long time now. This rejection of science and reality itself is, sadly, not new on America's Right (yet still Wrong) Wing.
I often find myself thinking I could make a fortune selling insane crap to wingnuts but I can never bring myself to actually do it.
Right wing media wants to paint Democratic administration in as negative a light as possible so as to increase the chances of Democratic Party political losses.
News at fucking eleven.
The "liberal" MSM have been falling in with Republican propaganda in effectively comparing Biden with some hypothetical perfect President who would somehow have been able to see beyond the failure of the military and intelligence to predict what would happen, and who would have somehow been able to convince everybody to get themselves out before the actual final collapse, whenever that would have occurred.
There is no such person. The actual alternative was Donald Trump, who was the one who set up the pullout for an even earlier date. There is no possibility that he could have done the pullout better. If Biden is defeated in 2024, the replacement is likely to be Trump again. The MSM seem to have no realization of the most likely consequences of tearing down the Biden presidency.
> There is no possibility that [Trump] could have done the pullout better.
Word. Also true on every alternative Earth in the multiverse.
They expected that the war would continue.
They demanded that the war continue.
They insist someone must pay for the war ending.
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It's blather because nothing from Mr. Lowry is sincere. If Trump were President NR would be highlighting all the successful rescues which demonstrates what a leader he is to bring the U.S. out of Afghanistan. The Trumpists aren't upset the U.S. is leaving, they're upset its not their man doing so, so of course they will highlight all the shortcomings to say their man would have done it better.
To understand the Right (which is the term we should use not "conservative" because they wish to conserve nothing) let former National Review board member Austin Bramwell explain the true meaning of their "ideology"
"But “conservatism” has no mystical essence. Rather than a magisterium handed down from apostolic times, it is an ideology whose contours are largely arbitrary and accidental. By ideology, I mean precisely what Orwell depicted in 1984. I do not mean, of course, that conservatism is totalitarian. Taken as prophecy, 1984 has little merit. Taken as a description of the world we actually live in, however, it is indispensable. 1984 reveals not the horrors of the future but the quotidian realities of ideology in mass democracy. Conservatism exemplifies them all.
First, like Ingsoc, conservatism has a hierarchical structure. Like Orwell’s “Inner Party,” those at the top of the movement have almost perfect freedom to decide what opinions count as official conservatism. The Iraq War furnishes a telling example. In the run-up to the invasion, leading conservatives announced that conservatism now meant spreading global democratic revolution. This forthright radicalism—this embrace of the sanative powers of violence—became quickly accepted as the ineluctable meaning of conservatism in foreign policy. Those who dissented risked ostracism and harsh rebuke. Had conservative leaders instead argued that global democratic revolution would not cure our woes but increase them, the rest of the movement would have accepted this position no less quickly. Millions of conservative epigones believe nothing less than what the movement’s established organs tell them to believe. Rarely does a man recognize, like Winston Smith, his own ideology as such."
Lowry and NR are basically trying to survive the tides. They can go from Never Trumper to full MAGA and back and so forth because they wish to stay in business and Mr. Lowry wishes to continue to draw a salary. That's means attacking any Democrat regardless of whether they were carrying out a commitment signed, sealed and delivered by the very man they still continue to honor. Thus, do not be surprised if privately Lowry and others on the Right are more than happy to see this little episode end because has done more to split the Right than foreign policy particularly an interventionist foreign policy. There's what they say in public to the "base" and what they truly believe. Never forget this.