Free Republic

At a time of tectonic shifts in foreign policy alliances, with Russia and China forming a new pact and aggressively asserting themselves on the international stage, Washington’s national security community is splintered across the ideological spectrum on how best to counter the dual threats. Yet, even before Russia invaded Ukraine, a group of national security practitioners, military veterans, and scholars began trying to move beyond their policy differences to help repair the damage inflicted by the last U.S. foreign policy failure – the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan nearly seven months ago.

Joe Biden's dithering withdrawal from Afghanistan has been blamed for worsening the chaos on the ground and putting American lives at risk by a newly-declassified US intelligence report. Newly-released papers compiled in the aftermath of the August withdrawal found that deadly chaos was only made worse due to indecisiveness among officials with the Biden administration officials in Washington D.C. Their reluctance to close down the U.S. embassy in Kabul only added to the confusion and made the mission even more dangerous, according to the damning documents.

The U.S. military mission to evacuate American citizens and foreign allies from Afghanistan was hampered by continuous appeals for help from an array of advocates including White House officials, members of Congress, veterans of the war, media outlets and even the Vatican, according to the operation’s senior commander.

As Taliban forces advanced across Afghanistan last summer, senior Biden administration officials failed to recognize the gravity of the situation and were reluctant to prepare an evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies, according to testimony from U.S. military officers involved in the effort. The officers painted a grim picture of the final days of the U.S. military presence in interviews for an investigative report by the Army, describing chaotic scenes as desperate Afghans tried to enter Kabul airport to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The evacuation of Americans and Afghans, what the military calls a “noncombatant evacuation operation,” or...

Did Big Tech get a little smaller? The Washington Post reports on a “startling” loss of active subscribers at Meta/Facebook — enough of a loss for investors and advertisers to take a big notice. Whatever the reason, Facebook’s active-subscriber numbers are falling by mid-six figures a day globally. Has the social-media giant become passé? Facebook parent Meta’s quarterly earnings report on Wednesday revealed a startling statistic: For the first time ever, the company’s growth is stagnating around the world. Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history — falling by about half a million users in...

As many as 9,000 American citizens were left in Afghanistan when the U.S. military withdrew from the country Aug. 31, according to a report released Thursday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In public statements, Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, claimed that only 100-150 Americans remained in Afghanistan and had contacted the U.S. government with a desire to leave. The State Department and Defense Department officials stuck to that number, even as the government publicly admitted that large numbers of American citizens were still leaving the country. The report, signed by Foreign Relations ranking member Jim...

Ukraine is about to become Afghanistan 2.0 for Americans hoping to evacuate. Fox News Channel is reporting that the Biden Administration will not be able to evacuate U.S. citizens from Ukraine. “Given that the President has said military action by Russia could come at any time. The US government will not be in a position to evacuate US citizens. So US citizens, currently present in Ukraine should plan accordingly.” Arrange commercial flights,” a State Dept. official is quoted as saying on a phone call. The announcement is reminiscent of the administration’s feckless handling of the evacuation of Afghanistan — when...

The State Department has ordered families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine to begin evacuating the country as soon as Monday, U.S. officials tell Fox News. Next week, the State Department is also expected to encourage Americans to begin leaving Ukraine by commercial flights, "while those are still available," one official said.Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine, leading to fears of an invasion.

This guy has the nuclear codes. Joe Biden this week said the deaths of our 13 servicemembers in Afghanistan were inevitable and falsely claimed no one advised him on how to withdraw the troops safely. “Everybody says, ‘you could’ve gotten out without anybody being hurt.’ No ones come up with a way to indicate to me how that happens,” Biden said. Joe Biden also falsely claimed he was against the war in Afghanistan from the beginning. FACT CHECK: “Biden did not oppose the US invasion of Afghanistan. As a US senator from Delaware, he joined his Senate colleagues in a...

FIRST ON FOX: Records obtained by Fox News show the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) expressed opposition to the Biden administration's order to scrub once-publicly available information on weaponry and training that U.S. officials provided to Afghan security forces in the days leading to the U.S. final withdrawal out of Afghanistan on Aug. 31. Conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained 119 pages of documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request showing SIGAR John Sopko's opposition to the State Department's request to remove hundreds of pages... ,,,Clay, on behalf of the State Department, also requested the...

“Well isn’t this interesting,” Sen. Melissa Melendez (R-Calif.) said Friday, tweeting out video of 2007 presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) warning against the danger of pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq before first removing the “billions of dollars of weapons” the U.S. military had in the country. At an August 12, 2007 campaign event in Winterset, Iowa, Biden warned that the billions of dollars of weapons left behind – such as those left behind by the U.S. military’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan this year – would end up being used against America: “It will take a year to get...

Joe Biden and the Woke Generals abandoned THOUSANDS of Americans in Afghanistan and as many as 14,000 during their quick escape from the terrorist-controlled country.And then they left the Taliban with $80 billion in US arms.New figures released by the State Department reveal as many as 14,000 Americans were left to fend for themselves when Biden and the woke generals quickly fled the country due to their artificial timeline.Nearly 100,000 Afghans were able to flee the country in August – most of them were unvetted.The Biden administration has continued to lie about this number to the American public.Foreign Policy reported:The...

Sen. Josh Hawley revealed this week that President Joe Biden ordered his administration to fill up American evacuation planes from Afghanistan with as many of the country’s citizens as possible, even if they were not vetted. “This email was shared w/ me by an American official present in Afghanistan during the evacuation who was shocked by Administration’s failure to vet Afghans before they were evacuated. Email details orders from Joe Biden to fill up the planes – even without vetting,” said the Missouri Republican. “Total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available. Err on the side...

A U.S. government watchdog on Friday accused the State Department and Pentagon of suppressing information that lawmakers and the public need to understand the collapse of Afghanistan's former government and military and the chaotic U.S. troop pullout. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), spoke out on Friday after it emerged that many of the routine documents had now been marked as classified.... ...After a review, his agency found only four items meriting redaction, and left the remainder accessible. Noting that Congress tasked him with investigating the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and military, he said...

A U.S. delegation will meet with Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar Saturday and Sunday in the first in-person meeting between the U.S. and Taliban since the late August withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The meeting, first reported by Reuters, will include the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Tom West and USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance assistant to the administrator Sarah Charles. While it is not clear who will be attending as part of the Taliban’s delegation, senior administration officials told Reuters that cabinet-level members of the Taliban would be in attendance. A State Department spokesperson confirmed...

The U.S. military’s killing of Afghan children Another point of contention surrounds the horrifically bad call on the part of the U.S. military to drone-strike a vehicle that turned out to contain only innocent civilians. Left behind Among those whose biometrics were left behind were Afghan Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams or CTPTs. “[The U.S.] trained and used 30,000 of them and their families,” says a source. As for the regular Afghan National Army (ANA) that quickly folded when the Taliban moved in: “They hadn’t been paid in a year,” says a source. Although U.S. taxpayers have generously funded the ANA soldiers...

""Breaking: Lights at Bagram Airbase Turned On – Chinese Military Planes Reportedly Seen Landing at Abandoned US Airbase in Afghanistan #BidenEffect"" For the first time since Joe Biden and General Milley withdrew all US forces from Bagram Air Base and left the Taliban with billions in US military weapons, the lights at Bagram were turned on last night.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. After Biden evacuated tens of thousands of Afghan “translators”, refugee resettlement groups are desperately looking for translators to translate to the translators. Why do Afghan translators, who were supposed to be able to translate from English to their native language, need help from translators? It’s because they’re not translators. In the last two years, Front Page Magazine ran multiple articles like How the 'Interpreter' Scam Brought 75,000 Iraqis and Afghans to America and 'Saving Afghan Interpreters'...

In Case You Missed It: The Colossal Screw-up that was the Afghanistan Withdrawal - by Clint Roberts - How to Read a News StoryLate Summer of 2021 was full of headlines and news stories about Afghanistan. It’s been hard to keep up with and to keep straight. The short story is that it was an unmitigated disaster of our inept government’s making.In case you’ve gotten lost in all of the details since this debacle started, here is a list of the events, in chronological order, with plenty of links to sources.April 2021: Biden says he’s committed to pulling everyone out...

Since leaving Afghanistan, everyone who was on the gates has their own stories about the horrors they saw. American soldiers and Marines were placed under very strict orders not to interfere with anything that happened outside of the gates. Every inch of the city, right up to the walls, was controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban set up checkpoints on the roads leading to the airport, tightly controlling the movement of people and vehicles to and from the vicinity. We heard reports of all sorts of atrocities committed by the Taliban. I listened to reports about sniper teams observing the...