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| Blumenthal |
U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, usually seen in a white hat at garage door openings, has a problem, and it is the same problem that shortly will torment President Joe Biden – Afghanistan, or rather what may be left of Afghanistan after the victorious Taliban has finished toying with it.
“I’ve been known,”
the ubiquitous Blumenthal once said, “to make appearances at garage
door openings.”
Taliban leaders, after
capturing Kabul and routing the Afghan government, still claim – implausibly --
they will respect the terms of a Taliban-US pledge fashioned by former
President Donald Trump and implicitly reaffirmed by Biden when he made a
decision to end American support involving intelligence and air power to the
U.S. recognized Government of Afghanistan. The withdrawal of air power
assistance and reliable on the ground intelligence was the trigger that has led
to the catastrophic end result now apparent to all.
The Trump-Taliban
deal – Trump loves making deals – was designed to force a reluctant Afghan
government to enter into a power sharing agreement with the Taliban. By
withdrawing American airpower and intelligence that had enabled the Afghan
government to keep the Taliban at bay for more than two decades, Biden doomed
both the Trump prospect of power sharing and a successful 20 year resistance to
a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Now that the Taliban
has overthrown the government military in a victorious putsch, the need to negotiate
with the American backed government has disappeared. Indeed, for all practical
purposes, the Afghan government has disappeared. Not only had Biden thrown the
Afghan government to the wolves, he has now destroyed any possibility of power
sharing between the vanquished government and the victorious Taliban. To the
victors belong the spoils, and the spoils in this case include the prospective
power sharing agreement.
Biden delivered on his campaign pledge to end the war in Afghanistan, and did so by pressing the
crown of victory over the brow of the Taliban.
Every student of war
knows what happened in Afghanistan, including Blumenthal, a Marine. Connecticut
Republican Party Chairman Ben Proto said recently in a press
statement that Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
have "‘failed a test of leadership at this critical moment in history.
“’The colossal
disaster unfolding in Afghanistan demands an investigation and accountability
of the Biden administration,’ Proto said. ‘Lack of leadership from Biden
and his Democrat allies has led to a humanitarian, foreign policy, and national
security catastrophe.’”
The “mother of
parliaments” in Great Britain has strongly censured Biden, though the President
claims he has heard no untoward remarks from any foreign leaders.
Despite his vow that
he would leave behind no Americans, some of whom have been prevented by a
Taliban encirclement from reaching the airport in Kabul, and the often repeated
assurances of his Secretary of Defense that the United States believes in
verification rather than trust, Biden’s hasty, ill-considered and reckless
withdrawal leaves the United States with no reliable means in Afghanistan to verify the malevolent actions of the
Taliban after the pullout, and no effort has yet been made to provide an
American military supported avenue of retreat for those wishing to leave the
Taliban controlled country.
The remaining
victims of Taliban aggression must trust the Taliban because the twenty year
trust they had placed in the US has now expired.
The Talibanization
of Afghanistan will change the balance of power between the United States and
its enemies: Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, Iran and Pakistan,
which for years has served as a safe haven for Al-Qaeda. There are, even now as
the United States tiptoes towards its painful 20th year remembrance of Al-Qaeda’s
9-11 attack on the American home front, elements of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
And the white flag Biden has waved over Afghanistan is certain to improve the recruitment
of Salifist insurgents who still wish to push Israel into the sea.
China, determined to
reestablish a new silk road of trade into Western Europe, will send mining
engineers to north Afghanistan to extract Rare Earth Minerals (REM), so that it
might capture almost entirely the world market in REMs, essential minerals in
the hardening of metal used by militaries across the world and in all computer
operations.
The calamitous U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan, more than merely embarrassing, will confirm in
anti-democratic authoritarian states the world over that US and allied nations
have faltered fatally on the world stage, always good news to Iranian mullahs
and communist dictators in South America.
In the face of all
these dreadful possibilities, Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators and all the members
of the state’s all-Democrat U.S. Congressional Delegation have preserved a
telling silence when, with a little courage, they might have risen to the level
of The Mother of Parliaments by showing their disapproval of Biden’s hapless Afghan
withdrawal.
Having promised in
the recent past that Connecticut would joyfully receive the overload of illegal
immigrants streaming across our now semi-permeable southern border, Blumenthal,
up for re-election in 2023, has vowed to open Connecticut’s heart to receive the
victims of Biden’s inept withdrawal of support for a vanishing Taliban
resistance in Afghanistan, provided the untrustworthy Taliban does not revert
to its default post 9-11 character and choses, despite its recent public
avowals, to throw its lot in with the now reanimated enemies of the United
States.
One wonders what plausible
platform Democrats in their upcoming election will be running on: “Vote for us.
We’ve given you a US border in disarray, a new withering recession, a Bernie
Sanders socialist budget, and a prospective deja vu all over again 9-11
future.”
Pronto reckons that
message will not draw many votes. But white-hatted Democrats like Blumenthal
appear to have locked themselves into their barred cells, trusting for support,
as always, from a non-contrarian media.
The moment seems
inauspicious, but memories are short. And “there will be time,” as Prufrock
supposes the T.S. Elliot poem, “to prepare a face to meet the faces you will
meet” in upcoming elections.
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