One of the oddest things about the last couple of weeks has been the realization by some in the news media that they are supposed to actually be journalists. After eight months of knee bending to the Biden administration, the chaos and death following the Afghanistan withdrawal had finally encouraged them to actually do, you know, their jobs. CNN, of all places, had one of the best on the ground reporters in Clarissa Ward directly countering the White House’s false narrative.
But as I warned earlier this morning, with the pullout of those journalists giving direct reports (Ward evacuated over the weekend), the administration has newfound room to obfuscate, and it’s just a matter of time before the media get on board.
Well, I didn’t have to wait long. White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain, who spent the last week retweeting Joy Reid and Jennifer Rubin, has sent out the latest talking points. And like clockwork, they are being repeated by the usual suspects.
Klain’s brag, repeated by Biden stenographer John Harwood, completely absconds from the fact that this disaster was preventable. You don’t get to set the house on fire, call the firefighters, and then brag about how good they are at putting the fire out. Biden’s senile and incoherent decision-making led to this situation, which now entails thousands of trapped Americans who can’t even get to the airport to evacuate.
Further, notice what’s not in either of those statements and that Harwood inexcusably doesn’t point out in his squee-session — how many of those 37,000 were Americans?
Remember, there were over (perhaps way over) 10,000 Americans stuck behind enemy lines, not just in Kabul, but throughout Afghanistan at the beginning of the collapse. How many have been rescued? We can actually get a decent idea given that last week the Pentagon announced 6,000 people had been airlifted out on one day. Of those 6,000, only a “couple of hundred” were Americans. Given those ratios, it’s safe to say that thousands upon thousands of Americans are still in harm’s way.
Lastly, let’s talk about how gross it is that Harwood notes there have been no US casualties while not bothering to mention that dozens of people have still been killed around the airport. In fact, thousands of American allies have likely been killed as well as the Taliban have advanced. Whether actual American citizens have been killed or not is something we won’t find out for some time. There’s too much of a blind spot on the ground as far as intelligence goes right now. It’s almost certain we’ll be facing a hostage crisis soon, though.
For the White House to send out talking points as if this is all going well is obscene, yet completely expected. The myth of Biden being a bastion of empathy has been fully exposed. He’s a sick old man who simply doesn’t care what’s happening. In fact, he and his administration are naive enough to think this will just all blow over. But I’ve got bad news for them: People aren’t going to forget this.