Posted on 08/16/2021 10:10:48 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too
From the floor of the Senate. Transcript from The Congressional Record:
Quote: "Biden takes the easy way out of Afghanistan. The likely result is disaster." This is the morning's lead editorial from one of the Nation's most liberal newspapers.
The administration has decided to abandon U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, which have helped keep radical Islamic terrorism in check, and bizarrely, they decided to do so by September 11. Apparently, we are to help our adversaries ring in the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by giftwrapping the country and handing it right back to them.
Here is what this administration's own national intelligence threat assessment says will happen:
The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.
This is a quote from this administration.
In 2019, the Democratic leader and the now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee expressed outrage that the previous administration considered hosting Taliban officials for discussions around the date of September 11.
But now a Democratic administration is going to skip the negotiations and just surrender an entire country back to the Taliban on the very same date? Our President should remember what happened when the Obama administration let political considerations rush a retreat from Iraq-- total chaos and bloodshed and ISIS.
Two years ago, I wrote a bipartisan amendment that warned a Republican administration against recklessly withdrawing from Afghanistan or Syria. A supermajority of Senators right here voted for it. A supermajority of Senators voted for it, warning that the terrorist threat had not abated. Where are the Democratic voices today?
I hope we will hear from some of them.
Unfortunately, this mistake in Afghanistan is one of several instances of this new administration's surrendering leverage without making America, our allies, or our interests more secure.
In January, President Biden extended the New START agreement with Russia by Executive order for 5 years--no strings attached, no concessions secured, not even a shorter term extension to keep up pressure on Russia to cooperate on a better agreement. Just a gift--a gift.
And then there is Iran. Senior administration officials have gone from denigrating the former administration's ``maximum pressure'' strategy to simply begging for direct talks with Iran, to proactively offering to remove sanctions that are ``inconsistent with the JCPOA.''
So which sanctions exactly are inconsistent with the JCPOA? Our sanctions on Iran's terrorist organizations or its ballistic missile program?
Most Republicans would be thrilled if President Biden could actually secure a better deal that holds Iran accountable. Giving up the leverage of sanctions before we even get to the table--before we even get to the table--or just return to a bad deal is certainly not a good sign.
It would be hard to support any deal that isn't part of a broader strategy that also confronts the nonnuclear threats Iran poses to America and to the region.
On China, the administration's tough talk has been welcome, but its proposal to cut defense spending after inflation suggests there is less interest in walking the walk. We will not keep pace with China and Russia by cutting defense spending to placate fringe parts of the far left.
The American people need and they deserve a foreign policy that puts our security, our partners, and our interests ahead of the reflexive desire to break with the last 4 years at any cost--at any cost.
If this administration wants a successful legacy on the world stage, if they want accomplishments that will endure, they need to put American strength back at the center and come back to a bipartisan mainstream.
Yep.
Two completely different topics. You can’t go back in time and change what was done in the past. Making disastrous decisions on the manner in which you withdraw has nothing to do with that.
And you were wrong then, and you are wrong now as to the issue that was at hand. Al Qaeda had its own country to gather assets and have training camps to carry out their terror attacks - that was the issue - not just getting the single person Osama Bin Laden.
Guess what? They once again have the same. Again, we all knew it in the beginning. We all knew what was going to happen once we decided to withdraw. A previous poster mentioned the fact that we no longer fight to win, and that was certainly the case in Afghanistan. The whole place should have been turned into a glass parking lot.
I posted at the time that I agreed with the "Bush Doctrine" of fighting Islamic terrorists as a military action over there instead of fighting them as a police action over here.
Just look at how the Left has "progressed" to defunding the police today. Imagine how they would have reacted to engaging terror cells running rampant across America in 2001-2004 and beyond? We even had liberal defense lawyers smuggling messages to jailed terrorists back then.
It was best to pick a ground, whether it be Afghanistan or Iraq, and let that be the magnet for drawing the enemy in, instead of waiting for them to make the second move in Boston or Chicago or Miami or Los Angeles, or Indianapolis or Dallas or Salt Lake City or Tulsa.
-PJ
Then what does Bush do? Brings thousands of Muslims here who eventually became radicalized, if they already weren't before they came here.
That said, remember that they were already here. Bin Laden's people tried once before to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 during Clinton's watch, and the 9/11 terrorists had been here for several years training before the attack in 2001.
But yes, fight them over there. I don't remember Bush mass-migrating Muslims here. I know a lot of Somalis were brought over, but I don't recall Syrians, Iranians, Iraqi, or Afghanis coming here.
-PJ
The problem with that statement is that the Taliban come from Pakistan, are not mostly Afghani,
and are funded by Zero's friends whom he financed in Iran with planeloads of American cash.
Secondly, Afghanistan are a tribal people, and have little , or nothing to do with the Pakistanis
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