Jonathan Turley Calls out Concerning Comments by Ashli Babbitt's Shooter

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley is raising questions about the shooting of Ashli Babbitt and making some of the same points that I made after I saw the interview on Thursday that Lt. Michael Byrd gave to NBC’s Lester Holt.

The media has largely ignored the questions about the propriety of the shooting, because they were against Babbitt’s political beliefs. But the same standards of whether an officer is justified when shooting should apply whoever the person shot is — be they Trump supporter or BLM person.

Just as an aside, I can’t recall even one BLM/Antifa person shot by a police officer in response to all the horribly violent things they did over the past year. As Turley points out, not one other officer who was present fired on any of the other rioters during the Capitol riot, despite other circumstances in which some were, in fact, attacked by rioters.

The question should be: is the person a threat justifying the use of deadly force? You don’t get to shoot someone for being an unarmed trespasser during a riot. In the case of Babbitt, she was unarmed, as far as we know, hadn’t attacked anyone, was standing outside the door with multiple other officers, who she had not attacked or hurt. She was climbing through a window when she was shot, not physically threatening Byrd or others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX3BS1eNWR0

Turley notes how the DOJ review was not saying that Byrd was clearly justified. Instead, it was saying he didn’t have a “bad purpose” behind his actions.

From The Hill:

I have long expressed doubt over the Babbitt shooting, which directly contradicted standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. But what was breathtaking about Byrd’s interview was that he confirmed the worst suspicions about the shooting and raised serious questions over the incident reviews by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and, most recently, the Capitol Police. [….]

At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.

The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

Translation: even if it was fear and poor judgement, too bad; they’re not going to go after him.

Byrd spoke to Holt after the internal reviews indicated that no one would be pursuing charges against him.

Turley continues:

Byrd described how he was “trapped” with other officers as “the chants got louder” with what “sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door.” He said he yelled for all of the protesters to stop: “I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

Byrd could just as well have hit the officers behind Babbitt, who was shot while struggling to squeeze through the window.

Of all of the lines from Byrd, this one stands out: “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.” So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window. Nevertheless, Byrd boasted, “I know that day I saved countless lives.” He ignored that Babbitt was the one person killed during the riot. (Two protesters died of natural causes and a third from an amphetamine overdose; one police officer died the next day from natural causes, and four officers have committed suicide since then.) No other officers facing similar threats shot anyone in any other part of the Capitol, even those who were attacked by rioters armed with clubs or other objects.

Additionally, as I previously reported, Byrd admitted he didn’t know whether she was armed or not, and that not being armed wouldn’t change his actions. That was a pretty stunning comment. So, he isn’t even arguing he shot her because he thought she was armed or could have been armed. Plus, as I previously said, there were tactical officers right behind Babbitt who had just come up the stairs, who likely were coming to replace the Capitol Police officers who had been in front of the door.

So no, Byrd didn’t even have to shoot her, since those officers would have been there to defend the floor literally within a second. He didn’t really “save lives,” since she didn’t appear to be threatening anyone, but he did take one. As a 28-year officer, is there no other way he’s learned to stop a small, unarmed woman trespasser — other than shooting her?

This interview really did him no favors, even if he thinks he is in the clear from any prosecution.

This is also an officer who has a bit of a history: leaving his service gun in a bathroom in the Capitol Visitor Center. It was later found by a security sweep later night, as Politico reported.

Byrd at the time said that with his rank as a lieutenant and his role as commander of the House chambers section, he told his colleagues that he expected to “be treated differently” in terms of consequences. Byrd did remain on the job in the days after his weapon was discovered.

Turley makes another point which is rather important, not just for this matter, but as a general point for the future.

If the DOJ and the Capitol Police are saying he was justified in shooting an unarmed trespasser, then are they saying that all the other unarmed trespassers who were there could just be shot as well, even without physically threatening an officer? That’s the logical extension of that conclusion — and that’s pretty troubling.

⸎

Red Pill news, and more-August 29

 

Here's to another week, folks! Here's tonight's news lineup:

Hurricane Ida: Thousands flee as Category Four storm bears down on Louisiana

 

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing the US state of Louisiana as Hurricane Ida closes in from the Gulf of Mexico.

Ida is now a Category Four hurricane, one below the highest level, with up to 130mph (209km/h) sustained winds.

It is expected to make landfall on Sunday evening, bringing a "life-threatening" storm surge. It could be stronger than Hurricane Katrina, which devastated much of New Orleans in 2005.

Traffic jams clogged motorways as residents heeded orders to evacuate.

Governor John Bel Edwards warned the storm could be one of the biggest to hit the state in 150 years.

"Your window of time is closing," he warned residents on Saturday.

"By the time you go to bed tonight you need to be where you intend to ride the storm out and you need to be as prepared as you can be, because weather will start to deteriorate very quickly tomorrow."

The governor of neighbouring Mississippi has declared a state of emergency.

President Joe Biden said Ida was "turning into a very, very dangerous storm" and the federal government was ready to provide help.

 

 

The National Hurricane Center said that, at 06:00 GMT on Sunday, Ida was about 105 miles south-east of the mouth of the Mississippi river and was moving north-west at about 15mph. While still over water, it has the capacity to strengthen even further.

Ida earlier battered part of Cuba, bringing down trees and tearing off roofs, while Jamaica suffered heavy rains. No-one was reported killed.

Sunday marks the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans after making landfall as a category three. Katrina flooded 80% of the city and killed more than 1,800 people.

With stronger storm defences now in place, there's hope that levees in New Orleans will be able to withstand the impact of the hurricane.

But experts warn that if storm surges hit at a time that coincides with high tides, sea water could flood the New Orleans levee system and enter the city again.

"Please understand this, there is the possibility that conditions could be unliveable along the coast for some time and areas around New Orleans and Baton Rouge could be without power for weeks," the National Weather Service wrote on Saturday.

"We have all seen the destruction and pain caused by [Hurricanes] Harvey, Michael and Laura. Anticipate devastation on this level and if it doesn't happen then we should all count our blessings."

Alessandra Jerolleman, a senior fellow in emergency management at New Orleans' Tulane University, told the BBC as she fled in her car: "I am absolutely devastated thinking about those communities under mandatory evacuation orders.

"They can expect to see catastrophic and substantial damage... streets can be expected to flood, vehicles can be expected to be lost."

 

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58372746

 

 

 

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/elements-of-intelligence.php?

Elements of intelligence

President Biden bears responsibility for the epic humiliation of the United States in Afghanistan. He proclaims it a great success consistent with his strategic genius. He nevertheless seeks to turn our attention elsewhere on a daily basis. 

Yesterday Biden remarked on the investigation into the origins of COVID-⁠19 by our so-called Intelligence Community. The Key Takeawayshave been posted in unclassified form. I found this paragraph in Biden’s statement more illuminating than the Key Takeaways document:

Critical information about the origins of this pandemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, yet from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it. To this day, the PRC continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even as the toll of this pandemic continue to rise. We needed this information rapidly, from the PRC, while the pandemic was still new. Since taking office, my administration has renewed U.S. leadership in the World Health Organization and rallied allies and partners to renew focus on this critical question. The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them. Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics.

Add to these observations this undisputed fact adduced by Senator Tom Cotton:

This virus didn’t emerge in some rural village next to a mountain cave full of bats. It emerged in a city larger than New York a few blocks down the road from labs where they just happened to research dangerous coronaviruses.

Using the IC jargon, the Key Takeaways document refers throughout to IC elements, yet the element of common sense is lacking. 

The Key Takeaways document also states as a fact that China’s obstruction of any investigation reflects its “own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead as well as its frustration the international community is using the issue to exert political pressure on China.” That is stupid.

Contrast the Key Takeaways with Senator Cotton’s April 2020 Wall Street Journal column on the origins of COVID-19 (posted here by Senator Cotton):

The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party denies the possibility. “There is no way this virus came from us,” claimed Yuan Zhiming over the weekend. Mr. Yuan is a top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. He is also secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee. He accuses me of “deliberately trying to mislead people” for suggesting his laboratory as a possible origin for the pandemic.

Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan “wet market,” where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

Both labs collect live animals to study viruses. Their researchers travel to caves across China to capture bats for this purpose. Chinese state media released a minidocumentary in mid-December following a team of Wuhan CDC researchers collecting viruses from bats in caves. The researchers fretted openly about the risk of infection.

These risks were not limited to the field. The Washington Post reported last week that in 2018 U.S. diplomats in China warned of “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the Institute of Virology. The Wuhan CDC operates at even lower biosafety standards.

While the Chinese government denies the possibility of a lab leak, its actions tell a different story. The Chinese military posted its top epidemiologist to the Institute of Virology in January. In February Chairman Xi Jinping urged swift implementation of new biosafety rules to govern pathogens in laboratory settings. Academic papers about the virus’s origins are now subject to prior restraint by the government.

In early January, enforcers threatened doctors who warned their colleagues about the virus. Among them was Li Wenliang, who died of Covid-19 in February. Laboratories working to sequence the virus’s genetic code were ordered to destroy their samples. The laboratory that first published the virus’s genome was shut down, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported in February.

This evidence is circumstantial, to be sure, but it all points toward the Wuhan labs. Thanks to the Chinese coverup, we may never have direct, conclusive evidence-intelligence rarely works that way-but Americans justifiably can use common sense to follow the inherent logic of events to their likely conclusion.

Circumstantial evidence and common sense are powerful tools. The apparent failure of the IC to apply them to the case is lacking in intelligence.

A Lesson for Joe Biden

With an assist from Fyodor Dostoyevsky and H. G. Wells.

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

On Thursday night, Joe Biden delivered himself of brief remarks about the slaughter perpetrated earlier that day by Islamic terrorists at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan. At least 170 people were murdered, including 14 U.S. servicemen. Many more were injured. The commentator Scott Johnson spoke for most candid observers, I believe, when he wrote at Power Line that the president’s remarks were “pathetic and stupid. He gives human form to our humiliation. He embodies it. Anyone can see that.”

That is correct. And I think Fox News reporter Peter Doocy raised a question that was on many people’s minds when, near the end of Biden’s press conference, he said this: “there had not been a U.S. service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020. You set the deadline, you pulled troops out, you sent troops back in, and now 12 Marines are dead. You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?”

Biden’s answer? “Yes, but . . .” It giveth and it taketh away. The strophe: “I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened.” The antistrophe: “Donald Trump.” It was Trump who made a deal with the “tally-bahn,” you see, so, really, it’s not my fault, but his. 

Does anyone, even the most thoroughgoing NeverTrump enemy of the former president, think anything like this would have happened on Trump’s watch? 

There were so many horrible things about Biden’s cringe-making press conference, from the president’s body language—had he been supine, you sense that he would have curled up into the fetal position—to the gradually emerging realities that surrounded his talk. 

At the conclusion of his prepared remarks, it was time for questions. Biden then looked down at a piece of paper and said, aloud, “The first person I was instructed to call on . . . .” You would think his handlers would make some minimal effort to disguise their puppet’s subservience and incapacity. 

Did you know that when we stole away from Bagram Airfield at night we left behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grade-A military hardware, including 23 A-29 combat aircraft, three C-130 transport planes, 33 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 170 armored Humvees, thousands upon thousands of rockets and grenades, nearly a million rounds of .50 caliber ammunition, and tens of thousands of rifles? In a stroke, we made the Taliban the best-armed radical Islamic organization in the world. 

Did you know that the United States is soon to be home to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, many—if not most of them—Islamic fundamentalists? Did you know that, in its partnership with the Taliban (sounds odd doesn’t it?), the Biden Administration actually gave the Taliban the names of Americans and our Afghan allies. Yes, you read that right. “In a move no one can grasp,” Politico reported, “U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies, believing the Taliban would allow them to enter the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport. Lawmakers and military officials are outraged.” 

How about you? 

Why would the United States do that? No, it’s not that the people we elected to govern us trust the Taliban. Joe Biden made that clear. He doesn’t think the Taliban are nice people. But he is appealing to their “self-interest,” you see. We’ll partner with them, we’ll ask them to set up and man the checkpoints on the roads coming into the airport, and we feel confident in doing so because, after all, it is in their interest to play fair. They will do what they say they are going to do—and, more to the point, they won’t do what we fear they might do, things like attack Americans—and we will do what they want, i.e., leave Afghanistan. 

Have you ever heard anything so preposterous? In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky treated this liberalizing naïveté to some portion of the contempt it deserves. “Oh, tell me,” Dostoevsky wrote, 

. . .  who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else. . . . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!

Joe Biden apparently thinks, or says he thinks, the Taliban will make nice because it is in their interest to do so. 

No wonder the Taliban are busy trolling the Biden Administration, posing with ice-cream cones, re-enacting the iconic flag-raising at Iwo Jima in American uniforms but with a Taliban flag, vowing to battle “climate change” and ensure women’s rights “under Islamic law.” Ha ha ha. That’s the playful side of an ideology whose dark purpose was summed up by an Islamic radical in the aftermath of 9/11. “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something,” he said. “We are fighting to eliminate you.” 

Accordingly, the proper response to this ideology is not to offer it partnerships in the hope that you can make a mutually satisfying deal that caters to everyone’s “self-interest.” On the contrary, the proper response is to understand, as Benjamin Netanyahu put it, that we are dealing here with “a war to reverse the triumph of the West.”

Our leaders, from a mentally compromised president through the puffed-up woke triumvirate of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd “stand down” Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark “white-rage–I-read-Karl-Marx” Milley, are constitutionally incapable of taking that reality on board. They are figures fit to lead the Eloi, not patriotic Americans. 

More and more people understand this, including some rank-and-file military personnel. One exceptionally brave Marine, Lt. Colonel Stuart Scheller, epitomizes the gathering sea change in a brief video that’s gone viral. Speaking to his commanders, Scheller noted:

We have a secretary of defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Forces could withstand the Taliban advance. We have [members] of the Joint Chiefs . . . who’s supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people are supposed to advise. . . . I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say ‘hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say ‘we completely messed this up?’

He went on to explain “the reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down [but] . . . because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability.” Scheller was not surprised that he was relieved of his command for posting the video. The 17-year veteran knowingly put his career and his reputation in jeopardy to bring attention to the dereliction of duty by his senior officers. “My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do . . . if I were in their shoes,” he wrote. 

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration just announced it conducted a drone strike that may have killed two people who might have been ISIS-K “planners.” We don’t really know, however, because the Pentagon will not release the names of the targets.  In other words, as the commentator Raheem Kassam observed, “Joe Biden gave a list of Americans to the Taliban but won’t give the names of the terrorists he claims to have retaliated against to the American public.” I suppose the attack was in fulfillment of the little currant of tough talk someone inserted into Biden’s remarks: “We will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Want to bet?

White House Says Woke Generals Will Not Be Asked...

 White House Says Woke Generals Will NOT Be Asked to Resign in the Wake of the Kabul Bombings

Robert Spencer for PJ Media

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

In any sane and patriotic American administration, the generals who enforced diversity and wokeness upon the U.S. military all summer instead of planning the details of a safe and orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan would have already been fired and be facing trials for dereliction of duty and worse. But this is the Biden administration, and that means that Milley and company will probably just have to find space on their already crowded uniforms for a few more ribbons and medals.

On Friday, Al Jazeera English correspondent Kimberly Halkett asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki: “Does [the president] believe he was given bad advice? And will he ask for any resignations of his generals given the high cost of American and Afghan lives?”

Psaki’s response was unequivocal: “No to both of those questions. I think that what the president looks at the events of yesterday as is a tragedy and one that was felt viscerally by the leaders of the military as well. Losing members of your men and women working for you from the service branches is devastating. It is a reflection on all of them and the people on the ground that they are continuing to implement this mission even under difficult and risky circumstances.”

So the White House is now on record: Old Joe Biden was not given bad advice. It was a terrific idea for the U.S. to abandon Bagram Air Base in the dark of night, without informing our Afghan allies. This made the commercial airport in Kabul the only option for getting Americans out of the country and set the stage for the bombings Thursday. Also setting the stage was the fact that Biden’s handlers decided to heed another bit of good advice, and didn’t prioritize getting Americans out, preferring instead to bring 30,000 Afghans to the U.S., vetted only by woke officials who fervently believe that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. Terrific idea! Most of them will likely vote Democratic, and that’s what matters, right? The advice was all good!

And so no generals will be held responsible for the wrongheadedness and mismanagement that led to the murder of thirteen Americans on Thursday. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will not be asked to resign even though he admitted that he saw none of this coming, saying on August 18: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”

Why didn’t Milley or anyone else see the Taliban takeover in the offing? One key reason is that they were too busy fashioning a woke straitjacket for U.S. service members. “I want to understand white rage. And I’m white,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee in June, defending the use of critical race theory in the military.

The result of this indoctrination was predictable. As Daniel Greenfield has noted, in July, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander David Eisenbeck wrote at the U.S. Naval Institute website: “I am a leader in the U.S. Navy, and I am unconsciously biased—that is, I subconsciously harbor bias as a result of my societal upbringing and collective life experiences. I do not think or feel I am biased against those who are unlike me, and I am not aware of any actions I have done or words I have written or said that could have been perceived as biased. But this does not remove the fact that I am a member of the dominant group in a society suffering from institutionalized and historically ingrained bias.”

So this summer we had military leaders indulging in racist propaganda and scapegoating, and engaging in Maoist self-incrimination, all while they could have been studying what was happening in Afghanistan and formulating strategies for a withdrawal that wouldn’t turn into a rout and a propaganda victory for the forces of the global jihad.

But no one will be held responsible, which means that none of the obvious lessons will be learned. The military will not stop being crippled by wokeness. The generals responsible will keep on forcing critical race theory on the troops and working to make them become reliable Leftists, not a reliable fighting force. Psaki’s answer to Halkett indicated that Biden’s handlers are determined to stay the course. They’re not going to reexamine their utopianism, their internationalism, their socialism, or their contempt for ordinary Americans. All of it will remain in place, and will lead to further disasters down the road. The Kabul bombings were just the beginning.

Afghanistan: The Big Con

Are we ready for the 20th anniversary of September 11? 

Our enemies certainly are. 

by Sebastian Gorka for American Greatness

Twelve Marines, a soldier, and a Navy corpsman are dead. Murdered in a god-forsaken hellhole that has been called the “Graveyard of Empires.” For what did they die? And why did they die? Nothing and no good reason are the true answers to those questions. So how did we get here? Here’s my answer based on my time in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. 

It was five years after the 9/11 attacks. For some reason, out of the blue, I was approached by an official at NATO headquarters in Brussels. NATO was inviting a small group of security policy professionals and journalists to Afghanistan and they wanted me to be one of them. Somehow, I convinced my wife this was a good idea, got on a civilian flight to Qatar, where I was issued ceramic-plate body armor and a helmet, and boarded a military flight to Kabul. 

During our trip, we would be handed off from one NATO partner force to another. We would be escorted, hosted, and protected by American commanders and their troops, Italians, Turks, and even Macedonians who guarded the International Security Assistance Force base with a contingent they hoped would win them big brownie points back in Brussels and D.C. 

But the wake-up call arrived right after we landed and we were met by the Brits. 

Before we embarked in our soft-skinned Land Rovers, the small female corporal driving my vehicle came over to me. She laid the old-school map on the hood, ran her finger along the route from the airport to ISAF HQ, then stopped and indicated to her chest rig and the attached comms equipment. “If we are ambushed or hit an IED and I’m incapacitated,” she told me, “hit this big button here, give them our convoy call-sign and call for a QRF [quick reaction force] rescue.” 

I had served in the British Territorial Army but never in a war zone, and this was very different from what I had done in the Intelligence Corps for a few years back in the UK. Needless to say, we made it safely to the headquarters and were very happy when we transferred thereafter to Turkish armored personnel carriers for our later convoys. 

Our putative mission was to tour all over Afghanistan, from Kabul to Herat to Wardak Province and beyond, to see all the “amazing” things NATO was doing and how taxpayer dollars were transforming this benighted land that had previously defeated Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the Soviets. 

Some of it was impressive indeed—especially the windowless building at the center of the Italian base we visited, which hid an authentic trattoria where the Italian commander fed us a dinner worthy of Trastevere in Rome. That’s not a joke. It was rather surreal to be eating mozzarella and fresh pasta in the Iranian-influenced province of Herat, in Western Afghanistan, surrounded by soldiers in uniform. 

Surrealism was a theme throughout. It was present in the medieval conditions we saw outside of the capital, and it was present in the tragic scene I witnessed on the military side of the Herat airfield. 

We were waiting for our flight back to Kabul, just waiting and waiting. A simple chain link fence separated the military zone of the airstrip from those waiting for civilian domestic flights. On the other side of the fence was an utterly adorable little girl dressed head-to-toe in pink, playing with a doll, and just being an innocent child. Then she toddled over to her mother, sitting on the ground against an adobe wall. No pink terry cloth hoodie for her. Her mother was in a head-to-toe black niqab with a grille that hid even her eyes. That girl would live a free and innocent life until one prepubescent day, when she would be put in a black bag and likely married off to a much older lecherous man. This was the country we and our allies were “nation-building” to the tune of more than $60 million per day for 20 years. Then there was the last splinter of reality.

Before I left for good, I was given a command brief from a U.S. Army major named Strong—yes, really his name—back at the military training academy we built right outside the Soviet tank graveyard in Kabul to educate the soldiers of the Afghan National Security Forces. The PowerPoint deck was slick. Great graphs and figures, pictures of the locals receiving the best small-unit tactics any military has to offer, and the graduation ceremonies after the months of invested time and money. But it all seemed too slick. Too picture perfect. 

So, I decided to do my own due diligence. 

the author

I convinced my NATO minders I needed to get outside the wire to roam free before flying back home. Things were relatively stable in 2006, but I was still forced to sign a waiver just in case I was blown up or shot, which I did. What did I find out, as I poked around for myself? One metric tells it all. Of all the Afghan officers, enlisted men, and NCOs we trained at the U.S.-funded academy, more than 40 percent of them simply disappeared back to their tribal regions and militias upon graduation. In other words, the U.S. government paid to train our enemies. 

That is why anyone who was surprised that Kabul and the “host nation” government fell in just 10 days after America spent more than $2 trillion to build the “New Afghanistan” is an imbecile. 

The post-9/11 mission in the hellhole that is Central Asia was supposed to be about just one thing: to destroy al-Qaeda’s ability to use that territory to plan and execute mass casualty attacks on U.S. soil. Nothing else. Not hospitals, not schools. Not “nation-building” or building a “modern” Afghan national Army. 

Now, thanks to Joe Biden, those who hate us and want to kill us don’t just control the whole of Afghanistan with forces that we ourselves have made more capable than ever. They have more American weapons than any Jihadi force in history. And 12 good Marines and one young corpsman are dead. 

Are we ready for the 20th anniversary of September 11? Our enemies certainly are. More than they have ever been.

Joe Biden Overruled the Military Advice and Ordered Kabul Not Bagram to Be Used for Evacuating Afghanistan

streiff reporting for RedState

One of the persistent fictions about the botched and shameful withdrawal underway in Afghanistan is that the airport used as the focal point for our evacuation, Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), was a better choice from any point of view than the US military hub at Bagram airport.

This is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark “Gimme Some White Rage” Milley from Congressional testimony on August 18.

GEN. MILLEY: On your question of Bagram, securing Bagram, you know how big Bagram is. You’ve been there many times. Securing Bagram is a significant level of military effort of forces, and it would also require external support from the Afghan Security Forces.

Our task given to us at that time, our task was protect the embassy in order for the embassy personnel to continue to function with their consular service and all that. If we were to keep both Bagram and the embassy going, that would be a significant number of military forces that would have exceeded what we had or stayed the same or exceeded what we had.

So we had to collapse one or the other, and a decision was made. The proposal was made form CENTCOM commander and the commander on the grounds, Scott Miller, to go ahead and collapse Bagram. That was all briefed and approved, and we estimated that the risk of going out of HKIA or the risk of going out of Bagram about the same, so going out of HKIA — was estimated to be the better tactical solution in accordance with the mission set we were given and in accordance with getting the troops down to about 600, 700 number.

Some cracks in this story appeared almost immediately. Milley claimed that the local commander made the recommendation. But, to date, he has not acknowledged having a role in the decision. This is from former Ambassador to Germany and Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell:

This is not idle Monday morning quarterbacking. The evacuation fiasco is a direct result of choosing HKIA.

Kirby’s description of the size of Bagram, which American forces substantially expanded after 2001, underscores exactly why it could be so useful for supporting evacuation flights. The facility, which U.S. forces are intimately familiar with after having used it as a major hub for operations for nearly two decades, has two large runways and a host of other supporting infrastructure. Bagram, which is situated some 30 miles to the North of Kabul, also has the benefit of a much larger and more readily defensible perimeter that isn’t inside an urban area.

If Bagram could be opened and operated in a secure manner, even in a contested environment, it could be possible to shuttle in evacuees from Hamid Karzai International Airport, offering an immediate way to relieve the current logistical strains imposed by conducting evacuations flights from a single airport. In addition, the base could present a valuable fall-back location to continue evacuation operations should the security situation in Kabul continue to erode, and that could be maintained after Aug. 31.

In short, Bagram has more facilities, is more secure, and is easier to keep secure than HKIA. At Bagram, the mob scenes at ingress points to HKIA would have been avoidable. The 30-mile separation between Kabul and Bagram would have enabled much better management of refugees and provided much more physical security than being located close to a major city. A second runway would have allowed for more planes in and out, and it would provide a staging area for air assets to defend the airfield.

None of this is rocket science. And yet, here we are. Some answers may have been provided on Laura Ingraham’s show yesterday. The guests were three Republican Congressmen, Mark Green of Tennessee and Mike Waltz and Brian Mast of Florida.

INGRAHAM: Congressman Green, we have 13 American families. The larger American family obviously is grieving. But we think of the 13 American families, all of their friends, all of their fellow service members who are grieving tonight. And yet Joe Biden actually says that Bagram – when they look back, well, we didn’t really need Bagram Airbase watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I asked for their best military judgment. What would be the most efficient way to accomplish the mission? They concluded the military. The Bagram was not much value added. It was much wiser to focus on Kabul. And so I followed that recommendation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Is it just me or was Joe Biden speaking at like three paces too slow? It’s too slow today it was weird. It just comes across as weird. Like he’s totally disconnected from the content of what he’s saying. But Congressman Green, given all your experience, how critical of a mistake was it for us to abandon Bagram Airbase?

REP. MARK GREEN (R-TN): Well, thanks for having us on, Laura. It was a huge mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in our nation’s military history. But it was Joe Biden, who made that decision. I know for a fact that the military advised him not to leave Bagram.

He said we’re going to downsize to 600 Marines. And the leadership told him we can’t hold Bagram with 600 Marines. He said, I don’t care go to 600. He arbitrarily picked a number out of the sky. And they couldn’t hold that base with 600. So they collapsed to Kabul.

This is Joe Biden, and his incompetence that made that decision. And that decision is what cost those lives today. The perimeter around that base is a street wide. That’s it. But out of Bagram, you had kilometers of range that you can see the enemy coming. But not when it’s just a street in the middle of an urban area.

It’s a horrible decision. It’s 100 percent Joe Biden’s and that’s not the first lie this guy has told or I should say he’s totally disconnected from the truth, many, many other lies, and it just he needs to step down. He needs to resign or the cabinet needs to do something.

WALTZ: Laura, can I just jump in that on that point —

INGRAHAM: Congressman Waltz.

WALTZ: Yes.

INGRAHAM: Yes, go ahead.

WALTZ: –on that Bagram point because we were just briefed by the military yesterday on the Armed Services Committee, that when we went back in to evacuate the embassy, they were once again presented Joe Biden with the option of taking Bagram. And he once again didn’t choose to do so.

So, on the one hand, he didn’t listen about shutting it down too fast. By the way, 5000, hardened ISIS, Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are now on the loose, and then he didn’t listen when they had to go back in to evacuate our Embassy after the after the collapse of Kabul.

And now he’s tying the hands of our special forces who are chomping at the bit to go out into the city and outside of the city to get our Americans that are stranded. He won’t let them do that either. Their hands are being tied. So this is just incompetence. And it’s just outrageous.

What they are saying they were told by Defense in briefings is that the military wanted to use Bagram. That would entail deploying additional troops from the US to Afghanistan to secure a much larger perimeter. Biden vetoed the recommendation and imposed an artificial limit of 600 troops. Six hundred may sound like a lot, but 600 men can barely defend themselves, much less secure checkpoints and process refugees when you are deep inside of enemy territory.

Congress really needs to get to the bottom of this. If Biden did make the decisions that led to Americans being killed and left behind, he needs to be held to account.

Be all that as it may, nothing Joe Biden did gets the military off the hook. Because the senior military leadership is as woke as your typical liberal arts college gender studies department, they went along with Biden. Yesterday, a Marine battalion commander torched his own career to protest the lack of integrity, loyalty, and candor on the part of the senior leadership of the Marine Corps and the US military (see This Marine Battalion Commander Probably Burned Down His Career to Demand Accountability for Chain-of-Command Failures in Afghanistan). LTC Stu Scheller had this to say:

And I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, “Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone.” Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, “We completely messed this up?”

A lot of senior officers knew this was a craptacular decision. I’ll bet that if you could listen in on the secure calls between them right now, they’d all be saying, “I told him that was going to happen.” And yet, when push came to shove, when it came down to nut-cutting time, when the time came to make that choice between career and the safety of troops, they all took career. That’s shameful. As a nation, we deserve better.