Surprise! Surprise!

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others” – Otto von Bismarck

The Associated Press has never been characterized as a former President Donald Trump prop.

The lede graph in a recent AP story, Biden team, Murphy surprised by rapid Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, printed in The Day of New London, Connecticut, not a Trump prop, reads, “President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials were stunned on Sunday by the pace of the Taliban's nearly complete takeover of Afghanistan, as the planned withdrawal of American forces urgently became a mission to ensure a safe evacuation.”

Stunned! The President, who has at his disposal a Pentagon full of military personnel and intelligence resources, was stunned!

He was not alone. Connecticut’s junior U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, was surprised, according to the Day: "’Given how much we have invested in the Afghan army, it's not ridiculous for analysts to believe that they'd be able to put up a fight for more than a few days,’ Murphy said. ‘You want to believe that trillions of dollars and 20 years of investment adds up to something, even if it doesn't add up for the ability to defend the country in the long run.’”

Murphy acknowledged, according to the paper, a long standing misgiving: “He said it has long been known that Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban if the United States pulled out.”

That is to say, it has long been acknowledged by Pentagon Solons that armies engaged in combat cannot long survive without 1) accurate on the ground intelligence, and 2) necessary air support, both of which had been furnished by a considerably reduced American force in Afghanistan to America’s “friends” in the region, some of whom are pictured here in a transport plane after Biden had pulled the plug.

So then, it has “long been known” that an American pull out would be a death sentence to Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. No accurate on the ground intelligence, no necessary air support, no Taliban resistance. Betting on winners and losers, the resistance melted away after American support had been withdrawn, and those who pretend not to understand how this could happen are unfamiliar with the predations of the Taliban.

Biden and Murphy – and virtually all Democrats who willingly supported the ill-fated, poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan of a residual American support force – fully expected a Taliban victory. They were surprised only by the rapidity of the victory.

“’We've seen that force has been unable to defend the country, and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated,” a somewhat bored Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN, “referring to the Afghan military.”

Actually, “that force,” supported by American intelligence and air support, had successfully defended Afghanistan from the Taliban for 20 years, with increasingly minimal U.S participation.

Now, fingers are pointing at the culprits.  Biden quickly blamed Trump, a too convenient Democrat scapegoat. Trump blamed Biden. And even former President George W. Bush was set in a corner and made to wear a dunce cap.

Armed Taliban warlords occupied the presidential office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani – who left the country, Russian reports indicate, with “a helicopter full of cash” -- only a few days after reanimated insurgents had opened a salient against the abandoned Taliban resistance, weakened beyond repair by Biden’s ordering out of the country a residual American force. Biden had signaled the pull out and set a date positive last July.

Most military strategists regard military pullout end dates as suicidal because, unsurprisingly, the publication of such pullout dates gives enemies time to strategize and deploy. Any four year old child who knows anything about the weather in Afghanistan might have told Biden that a force pull out in Winter might be advisable. Presumably, all the generals and staff in the Pentagon are older than four years of age.

The Taliban commander who declared an Islamic state of Afghanistan from the vacated presidential palace in Kabul, Gholam Ruhani, was a GITMO prisoner released during the administration of President George W. Bush, the Daily Mail reported.

What a dunce! But Biden is not a dunce. He is a surprised and wide-eyed astonished President.

American diplomats who suppose, dunce like, that diplomatic tongue wagging, along with planeloads of cash, will convince the heirs and assigns of the godfather of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that the West is other than a “Great Satan” who must be plunged into the unquenchable fires of Hell – are not dunces.

There are diplomats roaming the earth who sincerely believe there are but two species of humankind on the planet: diplomats, and all others. In fact, the division is as simple but more profound.

Roughly speaking, there are two camps of humankind: those who understand the lessons of history, and those who, lacking understanding, are trampled underfoot by history – a look of surprise and astonishment on their faces as they are ground into the earth.

Our diplomats and politicians, we may be sure, are fully prepared to shed a tear for the victims of their own miscalculations.