Free Republic

Indeed, the Taliban captured essentially all the necessary ingredients to fully equip both an army and an air force, spanning the gamut from 600,000 rifles and machine guns; 76,000 vehicles, such as high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, armored trucks, and pickups; radios, night vision googles, and drones; and 208 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

VIDEOYO! Straight outta Brooklyn! My Man! Hip Hop artist Chuck Schumer performing the Kabul Rap!

In this installment of their weekly Sunday Six conversation, PF Whalen and Parker Beauregard of The Blue State Conservative examine the six most troubling consequences resulting from the disastrous decision by President Joe Biden to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. #6: The humanitarian impact for the Afghan people is truly heartbreaking. PF: Before we get to the sickening ramifications of Biden’s fiasco, it’s worth asking the question: Why? Why did he make this decision? It’s all about politics. Biden bailed on Afghanistan to satisfy his far-left base, and nothing more. We haven’t had a single combat death in over eighteen...

Democrats had high hopes that a surge in turnout could deliver them victories up and down the ballot and give them a foothold in the Arizona state government. But as the night wore on, it quickly became clear they would fall short, leaving the state legislature solely in GOP hands. “It was definitely a roller coaster,” Alston said. “We were looking good with early returns. And then of course, the crushing heartbreak of losing was very sad for me.” Now, Democrats are licking their wounds and looking to cobble together a new strategy for success in state legislative races after...

From Tweets sent by Jane Ferguson - PBS reporter 1. The #BritishMilitary here at #KabulAirport have shown breathtaking levels of toughness, professionalism and - rare in war times I must say - compassion. I've been moved to tears by their actions, diving into dangerous crowds to pull visa-holders into the base.... 2. ...guarding sleeping women and children, helping them find the right transportation to the US air strip for their flights, pulling their own food out of their pockets and handing it to refugees in need, sleeping out on the cement, little supplies, parched in the sun... 3. ....there are...

The post-pandemic era is a great point to take pivots, try out new methods of recovery, and experiment. The faults in our economy have been exposed when everything came to a standstill and our way of life has been changed permanently. This is the chance to reflect and take stock and audit our way of life. Do we decide that we should make it better and adapt keeping all possibilities of a halt in mind or does America decide that we are not complying with the corruption and decay introduced by the rot from the global and national political swamp?...

Tony Blair’s condemnation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan – based, he wrote, upon an “imbecilic political slogan about ending the ‘forever wars’”, which just happens to be what Joe Biden ran on in 2020 – marks the complete transformation of elite perceptions of the Biden presidency. The establishment consensus, desperate to be rid of Donald Trump, was that the veteran Democrat would be a return to stability. Instead, the haunting scenes of chaos at Kabul airport have led to denunciation even by Left-wing admirers – by almost every faction in the foreign policy debate, in fact, from those who think...

The World Economic Forum (WEF), that gave us the “Great Reset” concept, is at it again, “glimpsing” into the future, this time trying to predict the consequences of the response to the pandemic.The WEF went to the trouble of creating a video to illustrate a write up on its site that talks about what the organization calls long-term effects of the COVID pandemic, divides these into five categories, and stresses the central role of “digital transformation” affecting economies, people, and governments.A new, innovative form of invasive mass surveillance features in passing in one of the categories of these long-term effects.The...

Instead of simmering down, the crisis in Afghanistan is getting worse by the day. It has been likened to the fall of Saigon but that is not a good analogy. The airport at Saigon was controlled by the US military. In Afghanistan the Taliban control everything thanks to Joe Biden's galactic incompetence. Biden has been reduced to begging the Taliban for favors. He's "asking" for their help. He looks pathetically weak and he can't stop lying. And that is a real big problem. He said unequivocally that the timeline and manner of the Afghanistan withdrawal was his decision. https://rumble.com/vl8uwp-biden-timeline-and-manner-of-afghanistan-withdrawal-was-my-decision.htmlYet he...

China is “the real winner” of the foreign policy “disaster” currently unfolding in Afghanistan after the Taliban terror group seized full control of the country earlier this week, China’s state-run Global Times argued on Thursday.“The real winner of this disaster is China,” Michele Geraci, the current Undersecretary of State for Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development, posited in an editorial published by the Global Times on August 19. Geraci, considered an expert in Chinese economics and also as a columnist for the Beijing-based financial news site Caixin, said the West had perpetrated a “betrayal” against Afghan citizens by allowing Afghanistan to...

Afghans stand out among the refugees committing crimes in Austria and elsewhere. Why? In 2014, when waves of refugees began flooding into western Europe, citizens and officials alike responded with generosity and openness. Exhausted refugees spilled out of trains and buses to be met by crowds bearing gifts of clothing and food, and holding up placards that read “Welcome Refugees.” This was a honeymoon that could not last. Some of the upcoming difficulties had been anticipated: that the newcomers did not speak the local languages, might be traumatized, would probably take a long time to find their footing, and had...

Editor’s Commentary: We’ve entered a dangerous phase in Pandemic Panic Theater. The good news is that most who have chosen not to get injected with the Covid-19 drugs are very unlikely to change their minds willingly. The bad news is that the few who are sitting on the fence are being bombarded by media, government, family, and friends telling them to ignore whatever concerns they still have and just get the jabs. This week, the FDA will be approving the Pfizer “vaccine.” This milestone will be used to push as many hesitant unvaccinated people as possible. Even worse, those who...

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “surrender agreement with the Taliban” led directly to the unfolding situation of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan as the U.S. military withdraws. Cheney said, “We know the Taliban has never renounced al Qaeda. This is one of the things that was such an indefensible step by the Trump administration. When President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo designed to sign a surrender agreement with the Taliban.”

Former Congressman and Texas GOP Allen West has always had a contentious relationship with the press. Leftwing media tends to despise his pro-America, pro-freedom attitude even more than they dislike most Republicans. He’s a patriot and a conservative who is running against a RINO, Greg Abbott, for governor of Texas. That means he’s a target. Mainstream media went even lower than usual when reporting on West yesterday and today. Reports that his wife was arrested for a DWI with children in her car was a bombshell that was simply too juicy for them to pass up. But while they generally...

The question is a crucial one since it is one of the main political subjects in Europe, which is about to stage a number of national elections. It is the unwritten question in the ongoing debate between Turkey and Germany over Turkish politicians’ desire to address communities from Turkey in Germany (and other countries with Turkish residents like France, Austria and the Netherlands) over the April 16 referendum about a possible shift to an executive presidential model as sought by President Tayyip Erdoğan. This is because it involves an agreement between Turkey and the European Union over the control of...

Kabul, Afghanistan — The Taliban on Sunday blamed the United States for the chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans and foreigners from the capital, one week after the hardline Islamist group returned to power in a rapid victory that stunned the world. The United States has warned of security threats and the European Union admitted it was “impossible” to evacuate everyone at risk from the Taliban, who have vowed a softer version of their brutal rule from 1996-2001. But terrified Afghans continue to try to flee, deepening a tragedy at Kabul airport where the United States and its...

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Ore., reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so. To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute...

As Afghanistan continued to “burn” and thousands of U.S. citizens remained trapped in the Taliban-controlled hellhole, the leader of the U.S. Senate decided to bust out some moves like a dancing clown. All that was missing was a clown suit and the iconic “honk honk.”

Former President Donald Trump criticized the “woke” generals in the United States military on Saturday at a rally in Alabama, contrasting them to World War II Gen. George Patton. Prior to his rally, the former president played a clip of a six-minute speech delivered by actor George C. Scott from the movie Patton. “We’re getting tired of the woke generals that we have right?” he asked, pointing to the failure of President Joe Biden and the U.S. military to properly withdraw from Afghanistan. The president also criticized Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, recalling when he walked...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, was caught on camera dancing around outside with Stephen Colbert, the late-night talk show host. In a clip over 20 seconds long, Schumer is seen dancing with a mask on and Stephen Colbert. The clip was posted to Twitter on Saturday by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Press Secretary Bill Neidhardt: Schumer, while it seems he is having a fun time dancing with the late-night talk show host, is not in Washington, DC, where he could be potentially looking for ways to get the stranded Americans and Afghan allies...