TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2021
•President Biden may decide to push back the August 31 deadline to complete withdrawal from Afghanistan as early as today, The Washington Post reports, citing “multiple” sources. The potential delay may be related to the WaPo’s own scoop (see below) that CIA Director William Burns met with the Taliban’s leader in Kabul Monday. About 5,800 U.S. troops are holding command of Kabul’s airport in an effort to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans and allies.
Budget Resolution, Infrastructure on a Road to Nowhere – House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, plans to run the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion budget resolution proposal – and, oh yeah, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act – through the House with moderate and progressive Democrats in concert went nowhere Monday night. The moderates flat refused to vote on the budget resolution without first passing infrastructure and delivering it to President Biden’s desk. The budget resolution vote would have been a procedural move, as the full bill hasn’t been written yet.
Although the moderates had warned about such a standoff for weeks, Pelosi did not even begin negotiating with the group’s leader, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, until last night, Punchbowl News reports.
The procedural vote would have “deemed” the budget resolution as having been adapted by the House, Roll Call reports, though as negotiations continued into Tuesday morning, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, ended the legislative session and announced the House would reconvene again at noon Eastern Tuesday following a caucus meeting and then a 10:30 a.m. classified briefing on Afghanistan.
Note: The “Unbreakable Nine” added a tenth, Blue Dog Coalition leader Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-FL, Monday (The Hill). No word from the Squad nor any other progressive Democrats who have been holding Pelosi to her plan to bring both to the floor for a vote together to guarantee “social infrastructure” spending was included in the bigger bill. They will have to be convinced that a procedural vote that would make sure the budget resolution progresses as infrastructure lands on Biden’s desk is the best they can count on to fulfill their conceived “mandate” from voters.
•••
CIA Director Meets with Taliban Leader, WaPo Reports – CIA Director William Burns met in Kabul Monday with the Taliban’s de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, as the U.S. military tries to secure flights for tens of thousands of Americans and allies at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in what President Biden calls “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history.” News of the meeting between Foreign Service veteran Burns and the Taliban leader was scooped up by The Washington Post.
Note: Obviously, the Biden administration is trying to negotiate more time past the August 31 deadline to safely evacuate Americans and allies. It’s apparent the Trump administration did not leave Biden much preparation from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s April 2020 negotiations with the Taliban, exclusive of talks with what was then the democratically elected Afghani government.
•••
Five-Month Sentence for Proud Boys in BLM Banner Burning – Proud Boys leader Enrique Terrio has been sentenced to more than five months in jail for destroying a Black Lives Matter banner at the Asbury United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., last summer and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the Capitol January 4, Politicoreports.
Terrio apologized for destroying the BLM banner: “What I did was wrong,” he said. He was arrested on charges of destroying the banner when he entered Washington two days before the pro-Trump Capitol riots.
•••
Capitol Officer Will Not be Charged in Ashli Babbitt’s Shooting – The U.S. Capitol Police department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has officially exonerated the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt in the January 6 pro-Trump attacks on Capitol Hill, according to The Hill. The OPR “determined the officer’s conduct was lawful and within department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury,” the Capitol Police said in a statement.
Note: The officer was not, and will not be, named of course, although there have been right wing media claims that his or her name is known among supporters of ex-President Trump and his Big Lie. This follows claims the January 6 rioters were at first pro-Antifa, then “tourists,” and ultimately not worthy of the need for a bipartisan 9/11-style congressional investigation.
•••
Side Effects Are Biggest Vaccine Concern — A recent Morning Consult poll finds that 37% of people who are “uncertain” about whether they’ll get vaccinated for COVID-19 and 25% of those who don’t plan to get vaccinated are concerned about side effects. The second-biggest concern is that “the vaccines moved through clinical trials too fast,” with the responses being 32% and 23%, respectively. The third largest concern: Respondents don’t trust the companies making the vaccine. But while 9% of those who are uncertain about getting a jab don’t trust them, 17% of those who don’t plan to get vaccinated don’t trust them.
Note: Anyone who has watched an ad on TV for any prescription medication has heard a litany of side effects that could be caused by said drug that makes those who don’t have the disease wonder why anyone would take the risk. While side effects are a real thing, they are also a small risk because otherwise the drugs wouldn’t be approved for human use, although they could be approved for horses. And what is remarkable is the concern about the vaccines moving through clinical trials too quickly. How many ordinary people know how quickly or not any drug on the market has gone through clinical trials? Of that 17% who do not trust the drug companies: How many of them take Viagra, a Pfizer product?
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
____________________________________
News & Notes -- MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2021
•Today is Andrew Cuomo’s last day as governor of New York, as the Democrat steps down after a state attorney general’s report alleges widespread sexual harassment. Cuomo’s replacement at midnight tonight is Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who intends to run for a full term in November 2022.
•Climate Change Mayhem: Hurricane Henri has been downgraded to a tropical storm, though authorities in southern New England fear potential flash floods as it slowly moves up the coast. Meanwhile, Politico reports, the death count had reached 22 Monday morning from flash floods that occurred in Western Tennessee after 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, Saturday.
•The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, The Hill reports. The Biden administration hopes full approval will persuade many of the vaccine-resistant to take the shots.
Budget Resolution vs. Infrastructure Program Face the ‘Unbreakable Nine’ – Despite President Biden’s standing on Capitol Hill being weakened by his lack of pre-planning of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, is still planning to take up a vote in the House of Representatives on the $1.2-trillion infrastructure package and the $3.5-trillion budget resolution package together, despite House Democrats’ lack of votes on the latter, according to Punchbowl News. The so-called “Unbreakable Nine” are holding firm on opposing the pairing of the budget resolution and the infrastructure bill, both already passed in the Senate.
Pelosi is walking a tightrope between progressives who want even more than Biden’s $4.7-trillion worth of roads and bridges and “social” infrastructure program proposals and the Unbreakable Nine group of moderate Democrats, who authored an opinion piece in The Washington Post, headlined “Let’s take the win. Let’s do infrastructure first.”
“While we have concerns about the level of spending and potential revenue raisers, we are open to immediate consideration of that package,” Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Carolyn Bordeaux of Georgia, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Jim Costa of California, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii and Vincent Gonzalez, Henry Cuellar and Filemon Vega of Texas, wrote of the budget reconciliation bill. “But we are firmly opposed to holding the president’s infrastructure legislation hostage to reconciliation, risking its passage and the bi-partisan support of it.”
Note: It’s possible Pelosi has enough votes from moderate Republicans for bi-partisan passage of the infrastructure bill alone, Punchbowl News theorizes, though that would mean some slight-of-hand on the speaker’s promise to group the bills together. We expect Pelosi, probably the most savvy leader on Capitol Hill, has some sort of plan to assure that Biden will get a much-needed win on infrastructure (his averaged poll numbers have dipped below 50%, Politico reports). Whatever Pelosi’s plan, it will almost necessarily involve tamping down progressive Democrats’ delusion that they have a “mandate” in the 117thCongress in order to be effective. The timing for a full reversal of Reganomics is not good.
•••
Taliban Will Not Extend August 31 Deadline – Taliban leadership says it will not extend the self-imposed U.S. deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, despite President Biden saying Sunday he would not rule it out, the BBC reports Monday. Biden said Sunday the airlift out of Kabul is accelerating, but the withdrawal remains “hard and painful.”
“The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started, when we began,” the president said in a national address Sunday afternoon (AP). “It would have been true if we’d started a month ago, or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television.”
Note: Biden already had moved up his initial September 11 withdrawal deadline to August 31. The president has had to increase the number of U.S. troops from the 2,500 left by the Trump administration to about 5,800 troops, and they’re barely holding the perimeter of Karzai International as Americans and allies try to get past Taliban security stops.
•••
GM Recalls All Bolt EVs — General Motors has added the 2019-2022 model year Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV models, some 73,000 units, to its recall of the electric vehicles, meaning that all of the Bolts built have now been recalled by the company. The recall is based on a concern of battery fires. According to the automaker, “In rare circumstances the batteries supplied by GM” — they are supplied by a Korean company, LG — “may have two manufacturing defects . . . present in the same battery cell, which increases the risk of fire.”
Note: This is a particularly significant recall, based on the Biden Administration’s recent goal of having 50% of light vehicle sales being electric by 2030. GM is in the process of investing $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles between now and 2025 and it is shooting for a goal of having all of its vehicles electrified by 2035. GM is still the biggest automaker in the U.S. and the Bolt fires could put a dent in (1) consumer willingness by buy an EV and (2) GM’s transformation efforts.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
__________________________________
News & Notes -- FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2021
•President Biden will address the nation 1 p.m. Eastern time today on the crisis in Afghanistan. The Pentagon says it has evacuated more than 7,000 Afghans so far, and expects to evacuate another 6,000 shortly (NPR), but multiple reports say approaching Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul continues to be dangerous for Afghans, with Taliban checkpoints on the periphery.
•Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency says the death count from last weekend’s earthquake is at nearly 2,200 (AP).
Three More Senators have Contracted COVID-19 – Sens. Roger Wicker, R-MS, John Hickenlooper, D-CO and Angus King, I-ME, announced Thursday they have tested positive for COVID-19, The Washington Post reports. All three are vaccinated and have reported mild symptoms. Earlier in August, Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
•••
Man in Custody after Threatening Attack on Washington, D.C. -- A man from North Carolina who U.S. Capitol Police say claimed to have an explosive device in his pickup truck that could destroy two blocks of Washington, D.C., was taken into custody Thursday, The Washington Post reports. The man, identified as Floyd Ray Roseberry, 49, of North Carolina, held off police for approximately five hours before surrendering. Homes and congressional office buildings in the area were evacuated, although it should be noted that neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate were in session this week.
Prior to that he was posting to Facebook Live, railing against the Biden administration and other Democrats. There was no bomb in his vehicle, although authorities say there were materials that could be used to build one on board.
Note: The man parked his vehicle near the Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest cultural institution and the largest library in the world. Books. Coincidence that the man parked there? What is more damning is that Rep. Mo Brooks, R-AL, released a statement that is interpreted as being supportive, as in: “Although this [alleged*] terrorist’s motivation is not yet publicly known, and generally speaking, I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial Socialism (sic) and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of American society. The way to stop Socialism’s (sic) march is for patriotic Americans to fight back in the 2022 and 2024 elections. I strongly encourage patriotic Americans to do exactly that more so than ever before.” When did voting become equated with fighting?
(*: We add “alleged” to Brooks’ statement, as the man in custody has yet to face trial. –Ed.)
•••
Texas Has a Quorum for Voter Bill – Almost six weeks after Democrats in the Texas state legislature hightailed to Washington, D.C., to avoid a quorum for a controversial Republican bill that would regulate voting rights in the name of voting “security,” a sufficient number of legislators has returned to Austin for a quorum, The Texas Tribune reports. State officials counted 99 members present (including Rep. Steve Arison, a Republican from San Antonio, isolated in a side room of the Capitol after he had tested positive for COVID-19), and 49 absent.
Note: Amid reports that Republicans quietly began negotiating with some Democrats on the voting regulations, the Texas Democrats fractured and some remain in Washington, according to the Tribune, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, plans to conduct a procedural vote involving the John Lewis Voting Right Advancement Act on Monday. Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland has indicated that the Justice Department will aggressively challenge what it determines are states’ voting regulations that are meant to suppress voting rights. It’s far from over for the Texas legislature.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
________________________________
News & Notes -- THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2021
•Is the Biden administration an irrevocable failure following the president's withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Taliban swiftly took over the country? Our columnists respond to that question in the right and left columns, and we’d like to add your comments as well. Email your opinion on the matter to editors@thehustings.news
•Federal health experts now recommend a booster shot for Americans who have received two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer shots, eight months after the second shot.
•Pockets of resistance to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan remain, with protesters attempting to fight back in scattered cities, according to the Associated Press. A United Nations official warns of severe food shortages in the country, which relies heavily on imports. The country also is reportedly short on cash under the Taliban.
Biden Uses Purse to Push COVID Mitigation — In remarks from the White House yesterday, President Biden said that he is taking efforts to protect students and seniors from COVID-19. On the first, he stated, “I am directing the Secretary of Education . . . to take additional steps to protect our children.”
This includes using all of his oversight authorities and legal actions, if appropriate against governors who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials and educators. In addition, “if a governor wants to cut the pay of a hardworking education leader who requires masks in the classroom, the money from the American Rescue Plan can be used to pay that person’s salary — 100 percent.”
On the seniors front, he stated, “If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated.” He added, “I’m using the power of the federal government, as a payer of healthcare costs, to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors.”
Note: With moves like these, Biden is putting the pressure of the purse on those obstreperous state and local officials as well as the operators of nursing homes and senior care facilities. Look for more actions of this type going forward because the pandemic isn’t getting any less virulent.
•••
Biden Remains Committed to August 31 Afghanistan Withdrawal – President Biden told George Stephanopoulos Wednesday he expects Americans remaining in Afghanistan – estimates are 10,000 to 15,000 left – to be evacuated by the August 31 withdrawal deadline set before the Taliban began to overtake the country, but he will extend that deadline if necessary. He was confident, though less resolute, about the remaining Afghani allies who have worked with U.S. and NATO forces for the last two decades would be evacuated.
The U.S. military holding the Karzai International Airport in Kabul are expected to ramp up their evacuation to 5,000 to 7,000 per day, Biden said in an exclusive interview with ABC News. The president said an estimated 50,000 to 65,000 Afghan allies and their families remain, lower than the 80,000 estimate cited by Stephanopoulos.
“The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone that should come out,” Biden said. “And that’s the objective. That’s what we’re doing now, that’s the path we’re on. And I think that we’ll get there.”
Biden was unapologetic about the mayhem over the U.S. evacuation efforts caught on camera the past few days, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday they knew of no U.S. intelligence that predicted the swift fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. They have been called upon to testify before Congress on the matter.
Note: While the U.S. military holds Kabul’s airport, Americans and allies trying to make their way there have to pass through checkpoints the Taliban have set up. Ultimately, those checkpoints will determine how many allies remain stranded – particularly those without American visas.
•••
Pelosi Plans Biden Agenda Trifecta Next Week – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, will begin the House of Representatives’ early return from August recess next Monday with a procedural vote grouping the $1.2-trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill, President Biden’s $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act together. Only one of those items, the infrastructure bill – which passed the Senate last week with nine more Republicans than it needed – would have an assured chance of passing on its own.
Such groups as No Labels will demonstrate next Monday on Capitol Hill to urge Pelosi to disconnect the three bills, as advocated by nine moderate Democrats in the House last week. Conversely, progressive Democrats had pushed for Pelosi to couple bi-partisan infrastructure and the big “social infrastructure”-intense budget reconciliation bill together. Pelosi cannot afford to lose more than three Democrats on the vote, according to myriad news sources.
Conversely, Punchbowl News indicates Thursday that there are a sufficient number of Republicans to make up for progressive Democrats who might vote against a singular infrastructure bill.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, has pressed his party’s leadership to take a standalone vote on infrastructure, and if he can achieve that next week, “there’ll be as many as two-dozen Republicans who cross the aisle to support the public works package.” Punchbowl News says this is possible if Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, who expects Republicans to win the House majority in the midterms next year, and is eyeing Pelosi’s job, chooses not to whip his caucus to vote against infrastructure.
Note: The White House desperately needs a victory right now. If Pelosi does not disconnect the three bills and get the infrastructure bill to Biden’s desk for a signature this month, infrastructure languish until well into autumn.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
News & Notes -- WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2021
•Has the seven-month-old Biden administration been mortally wounded by the president's poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan? Email your comments on the situation to editors@thehustings.news
Taliban Promises ‘No Reprisals’. No One Believes Them – Taliban officials promised “no reprisals, nor revenge” for Afghanistan citizens as the fundamentalist Islamists continued to take over the country yesterday, NPR reports. Spokesman Suhail Shaheen described the current Taliban as different – kinder, gentler – than the organization that took over Afghanistan in 1996 with an especially brutal interpretation of Sharia law, though when pressed by Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition said it would be up to judges to determine whether Afghanis convicted of theft would have their hands cut off and nailed to a wall, for instance.
Women would not be prevented from attending school or going to work, but the hijab already has been mandated.
“Global jihadists are electrified” by the return of the Taliban to the Afghani government, international security expert Asiandyar Mir of Stanford University told Inskeep in a separate segment. Afghanistan is filled with jihadist groups like Al Queda and ISIS, but also more localized groups.
With Afghanistan taken, Pakistan may be the first target of Al Queda and ISIS; Mir believes the U.S. will be at a disadvantage without local airbases.
Meanwhile, about 11,000 people still stuck in the country have identified themselves as Americans, The Washington Postreports, and the Taliban is blocking routes to Hamid Karzai International Airport. Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have urged Biden to hold up U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan until all the allies, estimated to be more than 80,000, have been able to evacuate.
The Taliban has agreed to allow “safe passage” for civilians struggling to reach the airlift, Biden administration national security advisor Jake Sullivan says, but the U.S. has yet to reach agreement with the Taliban on the timetable for the airlift. Kosovo and North Macedonia have agreed to accept Afghani refugees.
Note: Seven months into Joe Biden’s presidency, there’s an argument going around Capitol Hill that it already has failed. Former Vice President Mike Pence, clearly setting himself up as 2024’s Ronald Reagan, writes in a commentary in The Wall Street Journal : “The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a foreign-policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.”
Biden’s defenders say the failure was inevitable from the moment former President Trump had proposed last year hosting Taliban leaders at Camp David and began the shutdown of Bagram Air Force Base. But there’s no getting around the lack of preparation in removing American personnel, journalists, and Afghan allies who qualify for special immigration visas (SIV).
The White House’s only hope now is to issue as many SIVs as possible, and evacuate as many personnel and allies as possible, with or without visas. Whether the Biden administration is mortally damaged probably will depend on the messaging of the Fox News crowd vs. the MSNBC crowd, and to what degree the general public weighs Biden’s economic policy versus his foreign policy (which was considered one of his strengths). However, given the unexpected decline of 1.1% in retail sales in July and the lowest reading of consumer confidence (70.2) since 2011 according to the University of Michigan, the economic policy may not be working in his favor.
•••
Democrats Introduce Beefed-Up John Lewis Voting Rights Bill – Rep. Terri Sewell, D-AL, introduced a beefed-up version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act Tuesday in order to take a full vote on it next week, Roll Call reports. The new version of the bill seeks to strengthen provisions that would counter the Section 2 provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, in Shelby v. Holder.
Section 2 of the ’65 law requires that certain states, chiefly in South, must receive federal approval for new laws that could crack down on minority voting rights. The Lewis Act would reinforce the U.S. Justice Department’s ability to challenge voting laws, such as the new laws imposed in Georgia and Iowa.
Sewell’s bill faces virtually unanimous Republican opposition in the House of Representatives, where Democrats have a thin majority, and in the Senate, where a filibuster almost certainly will sink it.
•••
Abbott Positive for COVID — Texas governor Greg Abbott has tested positive for COVID-19, according to the AP. The Texas governor was vaccinated in December.
Note: Although the AP received word from the governor’s office that he “is in good health and experiencing no symptoms,” the governor’s spokesman, Mark Miner, also released a statement saying that Abbott is receiving monoclonal antibodies.
Although Abbott has been vaccinated, it is not entirely surprising that he’s been infected. The vaccination protects people from serious illnesses. What’s more, a vaccinated person can carry the virus in his or her respiratory system and pass it on to other people, which is the reason why mask recommendations have been made by major medical organizations, physicians and epidemiologists.
Abbott, no friend to mask wearing, is running for reelection in 2022. Which means that he is spending time on the campaign trail, meeting with supporters.
Arguably, those campaign stops could be COVID hotspots.
•••
Pope Makes Appeal for Vaccines – Pope Francis said that getting a COVID-19 vaccination is “an act of love,” in a video message delivered in Spanish on Twitter, Wednesday, Politico reports. He said that vaccine shots should be made widely available in the face of disparities between the developed, and developing world.
•••
Ex-Rep. Paul Mitchell Dies – Two-term representative from Michigan Paul Mitchell died Monday of cancer at age 64. A member of the House of Representatives’ Problem Solvers Caucus, Mitchell was first elected as a Republican for Michigan’s 10th District in 2016. He chose not to run for a third term in 2020 in order to spend more time with a son who has special needs, Roll Call says. After last November’s presidential election, Mitchell left the GOP for the remainder of his term and registered as an independent, because, he said, of the Republican Party’s behavior after Donald Trump’s failed re-election campaign.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
____________________________________
News & Notes -- TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2021
•The Taliban have issued “amnesty” across Afghanistan and are “urging” women to join the new government, the AP reports. Many are skeptical, of course, of a reformed Taliban that says it’s “kinder” and “gentler.”
•Federal health officials are looking to recommend COVID-19 booster shots for persons of all ages, regardless of physical condition, eight months after the initial shots (AP). An official announcement is expected this week.
Biden Stands Firm on Afghanistan Withdrawal – Afghanistan’s president-in-exile, Ashraf Ghani, refused to negotiate with the Taliban after the Biden administration announced in April that U.S. troops would leave the country by September 11, the president said, in his attempt to explain in a televised address Monday his rationale for our rushed departure there after nearly 20 years. Interpreters and other U.S. allies wanted to remain in-country until it became inevitable the Taliban would take over, he said.
President Biden referred to ex-President Trump’s February 2020 talks with the Taliban to put an end to the longest war in U.S. history, nearing 20 years when embassy staff in Kabul began burning sensitive documents on its way to Hamid Karzai International Airport, where chaotic scenes of refugees clinging to aircraft wheels replayed on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC for much of the day.
Under the Trump administration, whose secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was the first to meet with Taliban leaders, U.S. troops in Afghanistan – now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – drew down from 15,500 to 2,500, Biden said.
“The Taliban was at its strongest since 2001,” because of the U.S. troop reduction prior to Trump’s planned May 1, 2021 withdrawal, Biden said. “There would have been no ceasefire after May 1. There would have been no protection for our forces after May 1.
“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Biden continued. “After 20 years, I learned the hard way … there was never a good time to withdraw.” … . The U.S. “should not fight in a war that Afghanistan wasn’t willing to fight itself,” he said. But the reluctance apparently came from Afghani military and political leaders. John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction, told NPR’s Morning Edition that the country’s security forces were willing to fight, but were overcome by overly technical, sophisticated U.S. arms.
Biden did concede that that U.S. forces were overwhelmed and surprised by the speed of the Taliban’s conquest: “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than anticipated.”
But there already are calls for an investigation into a potential failure of our intelligence resources on this account.
On the MSNBC side of cable news networks, Nicole Wallace suggested that 95% of the American public are supportive of Biden’s withdrawal, and 95% of news media are against it.
Guest pundit Matt Zeller, a military veteran of the Afghani war, former CIA analyst and former Democratic congressional candidate who helped found No One Left Behind told MSNBC he was “appalled” by Biden’s speech. He described the administration’s efforts to secure Afghans who worked with U.S. and alliance troops, contractors, and journalists essentially non-existent, and that the White House has neglected to respond to the group’s pleas for help for allies who face almost certain death at the hands of the Taliban.
Critics say the Biden administration’s disorganized withdrawal has jeopardized Afghani allies who helped U.S. and NATO forces, and journalists, are the main concern. The State Department is preparing special military visas to relocate as many of such allies as possible. Many have been hobbled by bureaucratic paperwork that has prevented them from emigrating from Afghanistan for years.
NBC News special foreign correspondent Richard Engel, speaking from Kabul confirmed Zeller’s criticisms, saying the U.S. response has been too little, too late, as the Afghan allies must fill out English-language paperwork to obtain visas. Mediaitereports that Fred Ryan, publisher of The Washington Post has emailed National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to plead to the Biden administration to get journalists and their families out of Afghanistan.
Fox News, where the home page of its website helpfully explains in a headline that “Biden points fingers for Afghan horror despite campaign vow to take responsibility as president,” interviewed Bush 43 campaign aide Karl Rove, who called Biden’s withdrawal “appalling” ahead of the president’s speech.
Rove began his response to Martha MacCallum’s question by catching this mistake, without apparent irony; “Look, he sent out his spokesman this weekend, who said, ‘we had a successful operation in Iraq … actually in Afghanistan …”
Note: Rep. Liz Cheney, R-WY, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton separately took to the airwaves to criticize both the Biden and Trump administrations’ sloppy plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, leading us to wonder whether a re-uniting of Bush administration neocons might be what it takes for traditional Republicans to take their party back from the MAGA populists. The one common thread unifying all the political analysis and punditry, however, is that 20 years of Afghanistan quagmire has left a mark on all four presidents involved – there is a gravestone being carved in the cemetery of empires.
Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, The Washington Post and Mediaite.
•••
Pelosi Plans Vote on Budget Resolution Next Week – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, plans to bring the $3.5 trillion budget resolution to the House of Representatives for a vote next week, but Punchbowl News says she doesn’t have enough Democrats to get it passed. A group of nine moderate Democrats last week demanded that the budget reconciliation bill be separated from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, but that faces progressive Democratic representatives who want even more than the reconciliation bill’s provisions. Pelosi cannot afford to lose more than three Democratic votes to get both the infrastructure bill and the budget resolution passed.
•••
House Could Take Up Voting Rights Act Next Week – Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee met over the weekend to prepare for a vote next week on the Voting Rights Act, Roll Call reports, although the proposed legislation faces strict Republican opposition. Voting rights will backslide if redistricting based on the U.S. Census results released last week proceeds without such a law, said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
•••
Harris to Asia This Week — Vice president Kamala Harris will travel to Singapore and Vietnam this week The Washington Post reports. Harris will depart on Friday and arrive on Singapore on Sunday (Singapore is 12 hours ahead of Washington; while most commercial carriers stop on the way from Washington, D.C., if Air Force Two does it as a nonstop, it takes 19 hours, 49 minutes to go from Washington to Singapore, according to travelmath.com). When the vice president arrives, she is expected to give a speech about “the future of the U.S. relationship with a region increasingly under pressure from Beijing” the Post reports.
Note: The Chinese Embassy reportedly remains open in Kabul. Imagine how the people in places like Vietnam — especially in Ho Chi Minh City — are going to feel about the U.S. commitment vis-à-vis China and their existence. Picture how the people in Taiwan must feel as the country to their west is talking “repatriation. This is Harris’s second international trip, with the first being to Guatemala and Mexico, where the issue was immigration, which is working about as well for the Biden administration as the images from Afghanistan.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
___________________________________
MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2021
UPDATE: President Biden will address the nation from the White House on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Monday at 3:45 p.m. Eastern time.
•Death toll from Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti reached more than 1,300 as of Monday morning, The Washington Post reports. A forecast tropical storm now threatens rescue efforts.
The Fall of Kabul – The Taliban have captured Afghanistan’s capital after little more than a week of spreading throughout the country and taking over provincial capitals with swift efficiency. The U.S. military still hold the perimeter of Kabul’s chaotic airport, where American diplomats and thousands of Afghanis desperately try to fly out of the country.
It’s the Saigon 1975 airlift that President Biden promised would not happen,
Over the weekend, the Biden administration announced 3,000 U.S. troops would return to Afghanistan to help airlift American diplomats as well as locals who were interpreters and other aides during our nearly 20 years fighting the Taliban there, then upped the number of troops a couple of times before doubling it to 6,000.
It’s the sort of troop count that neocons would have preferred been made permanent, like our presence in Europe and Japan after World War II and near Seoul since after the Korean conflict, but Biden, in rare agreement with his predecessor, Donald Trump, campaigned for an end to this endless war.
The U.S. spent nearly $1 trillion “rebuilding” Afghanistan in its image over two decades, and when plans for a withdrawal by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack that prompted the Bush 43 administration to invade and remove the Taliban from power in the country and occupy it through the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, was announced by President Biden, then moved up to the end of August, the Taliban moved quickly.
By Sunday, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul for a nearby Asian nation in the region according to media reports.
Observers have expressed surprise over the way Afghanistan’s 300,000 American-trained security forces quickly surrendered to about 75,000 Taliban fighters. But this lack of will to defend themselves has been a recurring feature of the security forces through four American presidents.
Afghan security forces trained by the U.S. over all these years “did not have the will to fight,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee told NPR.
Monday, Trump’s former national security advisor and veteran of the Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, John Bolton, told NPR’s Morning Edition he still sees an opportunity “to find ways to see if there’s any way to revue this disaster and get them [the Taliban] out.”
But the Taliban already have cracked down on Afghanis who were seen as aiding the American and NATO efforts there and have begun “forced marriages” with soldiers and keeping young women and girls from an education. It is considered only a matter of time – short time, considering what has happened in the last week – before Al Queda gains a foothold in Afghanistan.
Note: Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley briefed members of Congress on the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan Sunday, Politico reports, “some of whom have railed against what they called a lack of preparedness by the Biden administration.”
The White House says Biden, who spent the weekend at Camp David, will speak to the nation in a few days, an apparent lack of alacrity that contrasts with Afghanistan’s swift fall to the Taliban. The quick takeover already has cast a pall on Biden as having a failed administration – and that might chill Democrats and never-Trumper Republicans who worry about the former president’s heavy hints he will run again in 2024, except that he is being blamed equally for the ugly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But the country has long been known for defeating, even destroying, regimes, most recently the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Now, under the Taliban, it has the opportunity to build up a regime: Afghanistan is a key corridor in China’s “Silk Road” project to build up a large portion of the third world, according to Saeed Kahn, who teaches and lectures in the Department of Near East & Asian Studies at Wayne State University, in Detroit. He spoke last Friday in The Hustings Week in Review on Clubhouse.
Sources: This News & Notes on the fall of Afghanistan is based on reporting from NPR, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico.
The Hustings Home Page Debate – To read our April 22 home page debate on President Biden’s original announcement about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, go to: https://thehustings.news/page/7/
The left column, “Biden’s Afghanistan Plan is not ‘America First’, by David Amaya: https://thehustings.news/left-columnist-argues-for-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
The right column, “The Afghanistan Departure,” by Stephen Macaulay: https://thehustings.news/conservative-take-on-afghanistan-withdrawal/
•••
Canadians to Visit Polls Early — Although Justin Trudeau’s time in office was expected to run until October 2023, the Canadian prime minister asked the Governor General, Mary Simon, to dissolve Parliament so that there will be an election held September 20, 2021.
Note — Trudeau heads the Liberal Party, which has 170 seats in Parliament, which gives the party a plurality but not a majority. It is thought that Trudeau wants to take advantage of the current popularity of the party with hopes of gaining a majority. Obviously Trudeau is rolling the dice, given the months he would otherwise have guaranteed in Ottawa.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
__________