You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Joe Biden’ tag.
It happened, but it happened two years too late.
A third Telegraph journalist has come out against Joe Biden.
Earlier this month, Tim Stanley declared that Trump made the right assessment about Russia.
This week, Nile Gardiner asked whether Europe has finally awakened to the truth about Joe Biden.
Two days later, on March 30, 2022, Allister Heath wrote ‘Joe Biden is president in name only but the US establishment refuses to admit it’.
Heath details the chaos of the White House at home and abroad. Emphases mine below.
First, there were his pronouncements about Putin and Russia from last month to the present:
His embarrassingly downgraded role became obvious last week when he suddenly veered off-script during his keynote address in Poland, ad-libbing of Vladimir Putin that “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”. It was a dramatic escalation, a clear and simple message that no reasonable person could possibly misinterpret, and yet the White House appeared not even to ask him for permission before “clarifying” his statement. Biden’s people – who are supposed to work for him, rather than the other way around – immediately denied that he was calling for regime change. They claimed, within seconds of his speech, that the words he uttered didn’t actually mean what he obviously intended them to signify.
They were undoubtedly seeking to protect Biden from himself, and to look after US interests, by cancelling an intervention that could have provoked a furious Russian reaction. But it was an astonishing moment none the less, demonstrating that Biden’s role is now largely ceremonial: this is a collegiate administration, with an all-powerful Democratic Cabinet and federal bureaucracy. What Biden says should not be taken too seriously. He is not the fount of power, and has a habit of blurting out what colleagues might have been discussing in private.
Time and again in recent days, the President’s pronouncements have been “walked back” by those really in charge. Most notably, he wrongly told members of the 82nd Airborne Division that they would be “going to” Ukraine soon; he said America would respond “in kind” were the Russians to use chemical weapons.
His worst blunder came when he claimed prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that “it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do”. He was then asked whether he was “effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country”. Biden’s answer sent an even more catastrophic message to the Russians: “Good question. That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?”
Heath notes that the American media are, unsurprisingly, giving Biden a pass:
… the president isn’t really presiding and … America’s constitution is once again in deep crisis. It is a scandal.
Mainstream commentators were grumpy at the White House denials, but refused to ask the obvious questions about the president’s series of gaffes or to demand an investigation into why this may be happening. Had this been Trump, there would have been calls for the Cabinet to at least consider invoking the 25th amendment to the US constitution relating to whether a president could be considered unfit to remain in office …
There is no excuse for failing to scrutinise and hold to account any president, regardless of party.
Then there are Biden’s Afghanistan disaster as well as his intent to turn back the clock with Iran:
On foreign policy, he is seeking to turn the clock back to the time when he was vice president. Biden is proposing a disastrous surrender to Iran on the nuclear issue, and even to remove the Revolutionary Guards’ terrorist designation. His withdrawal from Afghanistan was right in theory but catastrophically executed, and helped signal to rogue regimes that the US had gone soft.
Biden has done no better domestically. He began rolling back Trump’s successes as soon as he was sworn in.
Now he is considering a radically left tax plan for Americans — taxing unrealised capital gains. Scary. This would affect many middle class taxpayers:
Biden’s shocking weakness also helps to explain the disastrous drift of US policy in all other respects. He was supposedly elected as a reasonable centrist, a liberal rather than a woke activist, a traditional Democrat rather than a neo-socialist.
Yet on economics, his latest tax proposal is far worse than anything Jeremy Corbyn dreamt up. Biden wants to tax unrealised capital gains, something that has never been attempted before in this way. He wants to tax wealthy Americans – in reality, not just billionaires but many other entrepreneurs and investors without whose contributions the US economy would collapse – on the basis of the paper increase in their fortunes. This would be a recipe for economic meltdown, a brain drain, capital flight and a massive recession.
Heath concludes that radical advisers behind the scenes are running the show:
The fact that Biden is in office, but not in power, has given his party’s hardliners free rein to wreak havoc. His presidency is turning out to be a catastrophe for America, and a calamity for the rest of the world. For how much longer will we have to put up with this travesty?
There’s no way back for the time being.
It is hard to imagine that voters preferred Joe Biden to Trump and his ‘mean tweets’ in 2020, but there we are.
Mid-term elections cannot come soon enough. All being well, Republican control will pave the way for further victory in 2024.
Over the past month, Neil Oliver has had some exceptionally good Saturday night programmes on GB News.
While his shows are a must in my household, for those who haven’t been tuning in, his shows over the past month have contained even more insight than usual.
This video is from February 26, 2022, the week when Russia invaded Ukraine:
Oliver’s editorial begins at the 5:00 point. He rightly wonders what the invasion is really about. He says that he cannot rely on mainstream media to tell the truth.
However, he also discusses the situation in the West and says that we do not realise how exceptional our era of individual liberty and freedom over the past few decades has been.
He points out that we are taking it for granted.
Unfortunately, the pandemic has seen Western governments become authoritarian. He points to Justin Trudeau, who condemns Putin when he himself has had the bank accounts of protesting truckers frozen because they protested against mandatory vaccinations. Oliver says that the sheer hypocrisy of it all is stunning.
He also lambastes the leaders in New Zealand and Australia for authoritarian measures during the pandemic, making the point that, given mankind’s natural inclination towards dictatorial policies, Western leaders are happily following along. Therefore, we need to keep an eye on what they are doing and call them out accordingly.
He says that we need to get serious: stop worrying about identity politics and pronouns. Instead, we have our freedoms to defend.
At the 21:00 point, he interviews a journalist to discuss what is really happening in Ukraine. The journalist said that China is also a player in this situation. Although it looks to most people as if Russia and China are enemies, they have a common goal: to bring down the West.
At the 23:00 mark, welcomes Sebastian Gorka to give his views.
Gorka says that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine would not have happened had Joe Biden not pulled out of Afghanistan last year. He says that President Trump would have managed Afghanistan much differently and that, consequently, the Ukraine invasion would not have happened.
Gorka also brings up energy independence, which Trump initiated in the United States and warned Europe about in 2017. (Everyone laughed. They’re not laughing now.) Gorka said that it was ‘moronic’ for Biden to reverse Trump’s energy policy in the US.
On Biden, I was heartened to see another article in The Telegraph which has been critical of him.
On March 28, the paper’s Nile Gardiner asked, ‘Will Europe finally wake up to the truth about Joe Biden now?’
He writes (emphases mine):
It is amateur hour on the world stage from the Biden Presidency. His visit last week to Europe was a train wreck, from his bizarre press conference in Brussels to the ad-libbed final words of his speech in Warsaw.
At times Mr. Biden looked dazed and confused, struggling to command his sentences, and drifting into incoherence. The messaging was muddled, forcing even the president’s top officials to disown their own leader’s comments.
In 20 years in Washington, I have not seen a White House more disorganised, incompetent or mismanaged, in both the president’s and vice president’s office. It has a distinctly Monty Python-esque feel to it. Having visited the Trump White House on multiple occasions, and met with the former president several times, I can attest it was a model of efficiency compared to what we’re seeing now.
On no fewer than three separate occasions, Biden’s own staff had to clarify or even refute the words of their commander in chief. Biden officials had to explain to the world’s media that he was not calling for US troops to go into Ukraine, that the United States would not respond to Russia with chemical weapons if Moscow used them, and that the Biden administration was not seeking regime change in Moscow. These are big misstatements, not minor gaffes, with major global ramifications, and a direct impact on the war in Ukraine.
There is a major lack of discipline in messaging from the Biden administration, and clearly deep-seated divisions as well among policy staff. Biden himself has been stung by the charge from political opponents that he has been weak over Ukraine, as well as by sinking poll numbers, and is trying to overcompensate with tough rhetoric on Putin. His own aides are trying to rein him in. As a result, confusion reigns …
By contrast:
Donald Trump used to come under heavy fire from the French, Germans and European elites at Nato summits, and his message was not always popular. But he was far more effective than Joe Biden at getting results, increasing defence spending, and shaking up the complacent status quo in Europe.
True!
As Neil Oliver says, our leaders are not up to scratch.
Furthermore, we, the general public, must also stop being complacent about civil liberties and our Western freedoms. As we saw in the pandemic, our leaders can take them away instantly, without any qualms. Restoring them will take much longer.
No Briton in any position of influence likes President Donald Trump.
That outlook extends to 99% of the British middle classes.
Throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I couldn’t help but think that, were President Trump still in the White House, Putin never would have dared to try it.
Finally, a British journalist has spoken up, saying the same thing.
Enter The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley, a never-Trumper, who wrote ‘Trump was right on Russia. He could have been its deterrent’, published on Monday, March 7.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
Donald Trump is like one of those Roman emperors who everyone hated at the time but historians later admit was prophetic …
… Putin took Crimea in 2014, under Obama, and invaded Ukraine in 2022, under Biden, so it’s reasonable to guess that this invasion wouldn’t have happened under Trump because it didn’t.
Trump says this is because he told Putin he was ready to drop a bomb on Moscow (“he sort of believed me like 5 per cent or 10 per cent – that’s all you need”), which is embarrassing if a lie and terrifying if true, but it does fit with the substantive record of his administration.
This is a good contrast between the Obama and Trump administrations:
Obama resisted sending lethal aid to Ukraine; Trump did so. From 2017-19, the Trump administration carried out 52 policy actions against Russia, ranging from sanctions to military action against Putin’s client Bashar al-Assad. When Assad used chemical weapons under Obama, America did not reply with force. When he tried the same trick under Trump, Trump hit a Syrian airbase with 59 tomahawk missiles. Separately, US commandos engaged directly with Syrian soldiers and Russian mercenaries. The details were classified but the President bragged about it at a fundraiser.
Trump was also right about NATO:
Trump called out the bad; he mocked the pretensions of the good. At the 2018 Nato summit, he demanded that his allies spend more on the military and pointed out that they were buying energy from the very country, Russia, that they expected America to protect them from. The West wasn’t just sanctimonious, it was cheap and greedy, and its decadence was sapping its deterrence.
Contrary to what Trump haters say, he wanted NATO members to stump up their fair share of cash to keep it going. The US was — and still is — overwhelmingly funding NATO, although Germany has been doing better. Britain is in second place, after the US.
Although labelled as an isolationist, Trump went to the troubled areas and leaders of the world no other US president wanted to get involved with. He attempted to broker a deal with North Korea. He succeeded in the Middle East, with influential Arab countries and Israel. For all of his bellicosity, which these leaders respected, he was a man of peace, not war.
Stanley says:
Trump, despite being labelled an isolationist, stood in a long line of Republicans who asserted the best way to avoid a fight is to signal to your opponent that if they lay one finger on you, you’ll break their nose.
Stanley mentions the parlous state of affairs with Biden and other Western leaders:
… does anyone doubt that Biden’s incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan encouraged Russia to try its luck? Weakness escalates tensions; politicians typically try to extricate themselves from the resulting crises through over-reaction – to bomb North Vietnam or surge troops in Iraq – and now there is talk of imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. If we don’t do it, says Zelensky, we are complicit in the murder of citizens. His anger is righteous. But the same Westerners who tell us Putin is insane and desperate can’t then advise us to risk nuclear war with him. When a house is on fire, we try to put it out: we don’t show our solidarity by burning down the whole street.
Stanley points out that Trump did not have time for idealism:
Another common notion is that the Ukrainians are defending the universal principle of “democracy”, when what they’re really fighting for is their homes. That’s a noble cause and we’re right to back them, but Trump regarded such ideological abstractions as artificial, expensive and best avoided. All nations are in competition, he would argue, regardless of political system, and their goals are shaped by history and geography. Russia wants, and will always want, a buffer zone to the West. Trump had no problem with that, in theory, and it was a mistake to needle Moscow with the threat of Nato extension.
On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Stanley rightly concludes:
Given the obvious blow to Pax Americana that the invasion has inflicted, it’s hard to imagine that a second-term Trump would have tolerated it.
Too right!
Personally, I doubt that Trump will run again in 2024, although he might.
If he doesn’t, I hope that the Republican candidate adopts a similar position of toughness.
It’s the only language some world leaders understand.
Yesterday’s post was about the opening of COP26 in Glasgow and its attendant hypocrisy.
What our notional betters have done with coronavirus they will most certainly do with climate change.
Examples follow.
Coronavirus
On Monday, November 1, the day COP26 opened, Mark Dolan of GB News had an excellent editorial which bridged the gap between coronavirus and climate change tactics:
At around 5:15 in the full version of Dolan’s editorial (just over ten minutes long), he tells us of the mask theatre used with public appearances of politicians. They wear them for the photo op — outdoors — then take them off when they go indoors. Similarly, social distancing is also ignored:
Yes, the elites are laughing at us: ‘for thee but not for me’.
Climate change
Another commentator, Spiked‘s Brendan O’Neill, also says that the elites are laughing at us.
In writing about COP26 on Monday, he says (emphases mine):
It feels like the elites are just laughing in our faces now. So the other day we had the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, saying everyone will have to eat less meat and fly less if we are going to get a handle on this climate-change thing. A little later it was reported that around 400 private jets will fly into COP26, carrying world leaders and big-business execs to the plush surrounds in which they’ll wring their manicured hands over mankind’s carbon crimes. Ordinary people are guilt-tripped for taking one poxy flight a year to escape the trials and vagaries of life in capitalist society for a couple of weeks, while those who quaff champagne on airplanes that it costs $10,000 an hour to hire out get to pose as hyper-aware defenders of poor Mother Nature.
He continues:
According to one report, the private jets landing in Glasgow will spew out around 13,000 tonnes of carbon. That’s the same amount of CO2 that 1,600 Scots get through in a year … John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate envoy, will be in Glasgow to pull pained faces for the cameras over the possible heat death of the planet. Three months ago he flew in a private jet to Martha’s Vineyard for Barack Obama’s lavish 60th-birthday celebrations. It was the 16th private-jet jaunt his family had taken this year. Prince Charles, from one of his palaces, says COP26 is the ‘last-chance saloon’ for the planet. The royal family has collectively flown enough air miles over the past five years to get to the Moon and back. And then around the Earth’s equator three times. In short: 545,161 miles. Reader, they’re taking the piss.
O’Neill moves on to cars and Joe Biden:
Driving is viewed by greens, and by eco-virtuous political leaders like Sadiq Khan [London’s mayor], as one of the stupidest, most Gaia-destroying activities indulged in by the plebs. The Home Counties irritants of Insulate Britain have been winning plaudits from the commentariat over the past few weeks for blocking the paths of such terrible eco-criminals as mums driving their kids to school and deliverymen trying to deliver food and other essentials. And yet there’s Joe Biden in Rome for the G20 being whisked around in an 85-car convoy. His own armoured limousine, and its decoy version, generates 8.75 pounds of carbon per mile driven – 10 times more than normal cars. And greens want us to feel angry about the working-class bloke driving an HGV full of groceries and fuel? It’s insane.
When he’s done with Rome, Biden will fly to Glasgow in Air Force One. Four jets will accompany him. Combined, they’ll emit an estimated 2.16million pounds of carbon over five days.
O’Neill gives us other examples:
This is getting ridiculous. People will be perfectly within their rights over the next few days to ask why it is that those who live in the lap of luxury, who jet to every corner of the globe, who experience more luxury in a week than most of us can expect in a decade, should get to hold forth on humanity’s alleged suffocation of the planet with carbon and pollution. Like Joanna Lumley, famed, well-paid traveller of the planet, saying travel should be rationed. Or Dame Emma Thompson literally flying first-class from LA to London to take part in an Extinction Rebellion protest about the evils of CO2. Or Harry and Meghan attending a concert focusing on the ‘urgent need’ for climate action and then leaving on a private jet. What the green oligarchy lacks in moral consistency it more than makes up for with brass neck.
Ultimately, O’Neill concludes that, obvious hypocrisy aside, climate change has become the new orthodoxy of people rolling in money:
It’s the perfect ideology for our at-sea elites. It allows them to magic up a sense of urgent moral purpose – they’re saving the planet, no less! It lends itself beautifully, or, rather, terrifyingly, to the project of social engineering: lower your horizons, learn to live with less, reconceive of yourself as a destructive creature in need of top-down control rather than a creative being who might help to push humanity forward. It naturalises the limitations of capitalism, encouraging people to make their peace with austerity and downturn on the basis that economic growth is a bad, nature-exploiting idea. And it is a very difficult ideology to challenge. The marshalling of The Science to buoy up this ruling-class ideology means that anyone who questions it – anyone who demands more growth, more ambition, a bigger human footprint – can swiftly be written off as an anti-scientific scourge, as a ‘denier’ of the revealed truths of climatology. Its social engineering, its social control and its strict, censorious management of social aspirations are what make the green ideology so attractive to the new elites.
Oddly, the Left find this attractive. Then again, they have always been about control:
COP26 will help to consolidate this neo-aristocracy. And, bizarrely, the left will cheer it on. The left once said: ‘We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance… We do not call for a limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.’ (Sylvia Pankhurst.) Now it pleads with the super-rich to come up with more and more creative ideas for how to rein in the filthy habits and material dreams of the masses. What a disaster. It isn’t climate change that poses the largest threat to humanity in the early 21st century. It’s the bourgeoisie’s loss of faith in its historic project, and its arrogant generalisation of that loss of faith into a new ‘green’ ideology we must all bow down before. A revolt against environmentalism is arguably the most necessary cause of our age. Who’s in?
Well, we in the UK have just been silenced on any revolt.
Recently, The Telegraph ran two editorials proposing a referendum on climate change legislation from COP26. Today, November 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Commons at PMQs that there will be no referendum because the public haven’t the appetite for it.
Disgusting
At the VIP reception in the centre of Glasgow on Monday evening — which prevented people living nearby from entering their own homes — we saw that there were no masks and no social distancing. But these people are super clean and elite, so it’s okay for them.
Here’s the Duchess of Cambridge — Kate — laughing as she holds a jar of larvae for livestock feed:
Hilarious. This is the sort of thing that they want us to eat for dinner, along with insects:
Last week, Boris went one step further. He told a classroom of nine-year-olds that humans could be used as animal food:
Guido Fawkes has the video and two quotes, the relevant one of which follows:
recycling “doesn’t work“, he “wouldn’t put beetroot in lasagne“, and even that “feeding human beings to animals” might be a decent idea.
One thing is certain: neither Kate nor Boris will ever be deprived of meat on their dinner plates.
As for the rest of us, the jury’s out.
The elites despise us. They really do.
On Tuesday, September 21, 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Joe Biden at the White House:
He and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss arrived in the United States on Monday for discussions about trade and climate change.
The two spent a day in New York then travelled by Amtrak to Washington, DC:
New York
On Monday, Boris gave a speech at the UN Climate Roundtable in advance of COP26 to be held in Glasgow in November:
The full text of his speech is here.
This short video shows Boris summarising his message to world leaders:
COP26 will be the biggest single political event that the UK has ever hosted. I hope that Glasgow is ready:
The Prime Minister met with President Bolsonaro of Brazil and President Moon of South Korea. He also met with Martin Griffiths of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and, for whatever reason, with Jeff Bezos of Amazon:
There was speculation on what Boris and Bezos discussed:
In fact, they did discuss tax as well as the Bezos Earth Fund:
They discussed the upcoming COP26 Summit and agreed that there was an urgent need to mobilise more public and private money to help developing countries protect biodiversity, including through the LEAF Coalition.
The Prime Minister welcomed the Bezos Earth Fund’s commitment, announced tonight, to give $1 billion to protect forests and remove carbon from the air. The Prime Minister and Mr Bezos agreed to work together to see what more could be done in the run up to and at COP26.
The Prime Minister raised the issue of taxation, and hoped progress could be in implementing the G7 agreement on tax.
Beth Rigby from Sky News was in New York to interview Boris. They talked over each other for two minutes:
I wish he had mentioned her suspension from Sky for flouting coronavirus rules last December:
Boris’s interview for the Today show went much better. He was diplomatic about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, even when Savannah Guthrie pressed him on the subject:
Guthrie asked Boris about President Trump. Again, Boris was diplomatic, saying that prime ministers have to get along with US presidents. In fact, Trump was mentioned very little in Parliament, including by Boris. I do not get the impression that Boris was sorry Trump lost the election. In fact, he has said in the Commons — as he does in the clip below — that he considers Biden a ‘breath of fresh air’. Biden’s name gets mentioned quite a lot in Parliament, by the way:
Boris also discussed family life and his unwavering belief in American ideals:
The Sun‘s Harry Cole was on hand to broadcast for Sky News from New York:
He said that New York hasn’t yet bounced back from coronavirus:
The British press pack then travelled to Washington DC:
Washington DC
On Tuesday, the day that she and Boris went to Washington, Liz Truss’s office issued the following tweet about the special relationship between the US and the UK:
Hmm.
Truss held a press huddle on the train:
While Truss met with her American counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Boris met with Kamala Harris at the Eisenhower Building:
Downing Street issued this summary of their meeting. Topics included the new AUKUS alliance, climate change and humanitarian efforts. Boris also expressed his gratitude to the US military for their leadership in withdrawing from Afghanistan.
British journalist Hugo Gye objected to the Eisenhower Building’s architecture:
Then it was time to meet with Joe Biden.
Biden arrived by helicopter, no doubt from Delaware:
Unlike the Trumps, the Bidens do not greet their guests at the door:
Liz Truss accompanied the Prime Minister:
Hugo Gye has a summary of the meeting and brief press conference in the Oval Office. Anne Sacoolas is an American ‘diplomat’ who was in a road accident in England leading to the death of a young man, Harry Dunn:
My American readers will be very familiar with the Amtrak anecdote, which Biden used on the campaign trail last year:
In the end, the chances of a trade deal appear slim. Trump would have definitely been open to one.
Boris took two questions from the media, one from Harry Cole and the other from Beth Rigby.
Biden pointed to Harry Cole first:
Biden and Boris gave this answer on the Harry Dunn case:
Biden did not solicit questions, even though there were plenty of reporters in the Oval Office. When the session adjourned, they started shouting various questions at him. He apparently answered a question about the southern border, but the reporter could not hear the answer over the din. The reporters filed a complaint with Jen Psaki, who once again replied that the president takes questions ‘several times a week’:
Downing Street issued a summary of the private meeting which followed:
… The President and Prime Minister agreed that the new AUKUS alliance, announced last week, was a clear articulation of the UK and America’s shared values and approach to the world. They underscored the important role the alliance will play in promoting peace and stability around the world, harnessing British, American and Australian expertise to solve future challenges.
The leaders welcomed the close cooperation between our countries during the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Prime Minister expressed his condolences for the American servicepeople killed during the operation. The Prime Minister and President Biden agreed that the best way to honour all those who gave their lives to make Afghanistan a better place will be to use all the diplomatic and humanitarian tools at our disposal to prevent a humanitarian crisis and preserve the gains made in Afghanistan.
To that end, they discussed the progress made since the G7 meeting last month to coordinate international action on Afghanistan. They agreed that any international recognition of the Taliban must be coordinated and contingent on the group respecting human rights.
The Prime Minister welcomed President Biden’s leadership on the issue of climate, and his announcement today that the US would double its climate finance commitment. The leaders agreed on the need for G7 countries to deliver on the promises made in Carbis Bay, particularly with regard to phasing out the use of coal and supporting developing countries to grow cleanly. They agreed the Build Back Better World Initiative would be crucial in achieving this. The Prime Minister said he looks forward to welcoming the President to the COP26 Summit in Glasgow.
The Prime Minster and President Biden also agreed on the need to increase international vaccine access to deliver on the commitment made in Cornwall to vaccinate the world by the end of next year. They noted that the success of the British and American vaccine rollouts has been instrumental in allowing UK-US travel to resume. The Prime Minister welcomed the US announcement that they will allow double vaccinated British nationals to enter the country from November, a move which will allow families and friends to reunite and will help stimulate our economies.
The Prime Minister updated President Biden on the developments with respect to the Northern Ireland Protocol since they last met in June. The leaders agreed on the importance of protecting peace in Northern Ireland …
Not surprisingly, it is unlikely we will get a trade deal with the US. Biden is concerned about the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol disturbing the peace agreement between that nation and the Republic of Ireland:
Return to New York
The Telegraph reports Boris Johnson remained in Washington on Wednesday to meet with:
US politicians at Capitol Hill, including senators Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.
Afterwards, he visited Arlington Cemetery before returning to New York to deliver his climate change speech at the UN:
He will then travel to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, before returning to New York, where he will give his climate change speech to the UN General Assembly in the early hours of the morning UK time.
Liz Truss was in New York on Wednesday to address her counterparts on the UN Security Council:
Sky News reported:
She will chair talks with foreign ministers from the US, France, China, and Russia – the countries that, along with the UK, make up the five permanent members of the United Nations security council – in New York later.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is also expected to join the discussions.
Ms Truss’s aides say she will be promoting greater cooperation among the so-called P5.
This will include encouraging Beijing and Moscow to “act as one” with other international military forces to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a home for global terrorists following the Taliban’s takeover last month.
But “un peu riche” (a little rich) may be the French retort as the diplomatic rift deepens over a new security pact between Australia, the UK and the US that leaves France out in the cold and China smarting.
Trade might be off the table for now, but, no doubt, both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss will make progress in other areas.
We continue to find out more about what went on behind the scenes in Afghanistan.
Biden-Ghani telephone call transcript
Somehow, Reuters received recordings and transcripts of two telephone calls between Washington and Ashraf Ghani, the then-president of Afghanistan.
The fuller of the two transcripts comes from the July 23 call between Joe Biden and Ghani. Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
Biden told Ghani that the ‘perception’ in Washington and the Pentagon is that Afghanistan’s fight against the Taliban is not going well:
And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.
Biden suggested that Ghani implement a new strategy focused on major population centres. He also said that the Afghan army far outnumbered the Taliban:
You clearly have the best military, you have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well, we will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is and what we are doing. And all the way through the end of August, and who knows what after that.
We are also going to continue to make sure your air force is capable of continuing to fly and provide air support. In addition to that we are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows because it is clearly in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, that you succeed and you lead. And though I know this is presumptuous of me on one hand to say such things so directly to you, I have known you for a long while, I find you a brilliant and honorable man.
Ghani explained the situation at the time, which involved terrorists from Pakistan, insufficient pay for the Afghan army and the Taliban’s refusal to negotiate with his government:
Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this, so that dimension needs to be taken account of.
Second, what is crucial is, close air support, and if I could make a request, you have been very generous, if your assistance, particularly to our air force be front loaded, because what we need at this moment, there was a very heavily reliance on air power, and we have prioritized that if it could be at all front-loaded, we will greatly appreciate it.
And third, regarding procedure for the rest of the assistance, for instance, military pay is not increased for over a decade. We need to make some gestures to rally everybody together so if you could assign the national security advisor or the Pentagon, anyone you wish to work with us on the details, so our expectations particularly regarding your close air support. There are agreements with the Taliban that we [or “you” this is unclear] are not previously aware of, and because of your air force was extremely cautious in attacking them.
And the last point, I just spoke again to Dr. Abdullah earlier, he went to negotiate with the Taliban, the Taliban showed no inclination. We can get to peace only if we rebalance the military situation. And I can assure you…
Biden appeared to be talking at the same time, as his reply is recorded as ‘crosstalk’.
Ghani continued, ending on an optimistic note about the strength of the resistance to the Taliban:
And I can assure you I have been to four of our key cities, I’m constantly traveling with the vice president and others, we will be able to rally. Your assurance of support goes a very long way to enable us, to really mobilize in earnest. The urban resistance, Mr. President is been extraordinary, there are cities that have taken a siege of 55 days and that have not surrendered. Again, I thank you and I’m always just a phone call away. This is what a friend tells a friend, so please don’t feel that you’re imposing on me.
Biden responded:
No, well, look, I, thank you. Look, close air support works only if there is a military strategy on the ground to support.
Was Biden indicating, consciously or otherwise, that he was going to pull US troops out within three weeks?
On August 31, Reuters issued further information about the phone call, allegedly the last conversation between the two men:
The men spoke for roughly 14 minutes on July 23. On August 15, Ghani fled the presidential palace, and the Taliban entered Kabul …
Reuters reviewed a transcript of the presidential phone call and has listened to the audio to authenticate the conversation. The materials were provided on condition of anonymity by a source who was not authorized to distribute it …
I wonder about the first sentence below:
The American leader’s words indicated he didn’t anticipate the massive insurrection and collapse to come 23 days later. “We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows,” said Biden.
The White House Tuesday declined to comment on the call.
After the call, the White House released a statement that focused on Biden’s commitment to supporting Afghan security forces and the administration seeking funds for Afghanistan from Congress.
Well, the Biden administration would say anything, because:
By the time of the call, the United States was well into its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Biden had postponed from the May date set by his predecessor, Donald Trump. The U.S. military had closed its main Afghanistan air base, at Bagram, in early July.
As the two presidents spoke, Taliban insurgents controlled about half of Afghanistan’s district centers, indicating a rapidly deteriorating security situation.
By August 9, it became clear that the US was leaving matters in Afghan hands:
In a little over two weeks after Biden’s call with Ghani, the Taliban captured several provincial Afghan capitals and the United States said it was up to the Afghan security forces to defend the country. “These are their military forces, these are their provincial capitals, their people to defend,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on August 9.
That said, US intelligence indicated that Kabul would not fall into Taliban hands for at least 30 days, possibly 90:
On August 11, U.S. intelligence reports indicated Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan’s capital in 30 days and possibly take it over within 90. Instead, the fall happened in less than a week.
I wonder if Britain received the same briefing (see below).
Pakistan took exception to Ghani’s allegations that they were fuelling the insurrection by the Taliban:
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington denies those allegations. “Clearly the myth of Taliban fighters crossing from Pakistan is unfortunately an excuse and an afterthought peddled by Mr. Ashraf Ghani to justify his failure to lead and govern,” an embassy spokesman told Reuters.
Ghani could not be reached for comment:
Reuters tried to reach Ghani’s staff for this story, in calls and texts, with no success. The last public statement from Ghani, who is believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, came on August 18. He said he fled Afghanistan to prevent bloodshed.
Military call with Ghani
Reuters’ August 31 article says that the second call with then-President Ghani also took place on July 23, after his conversation with Joe Biden:
In a follow-up call later that day that did not include the U.S. president, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, General Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie spoke to Ghani. Reuters also obtained a transcript of that call.
In this call, too, an area of focus was the global perception of events on the ground in Afghanistan. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Ghani “the perception in the United States, in Europe and the media sort of thing is a narrative of Taliban momentum, and a narrative of Taliban victory. And we need to collectively demonstrate and try to turn that perception, that narrative around.”
“I do not believe time is our friend here. We need to move quickly,” McKenzie added.
A spokesperson for McKenzie declined to comment. A spokesman for Milley did not respond by publication time.
US armoured vehicles move from Afghanistan to Iran
On September 1, The Gateway Pundit reported that US vehicles captured by the Taliban have been seen in Iran (emphasis in the original):
The Taliban was filmed this week moving captured US military vehicles to Iran.
Thanks to Joe Biden and the woke US Generals.
The article includes the following tweets.
The first comes from Asaad Hanna, a journalist:
Comments to Hanna’s tweet included another photo:
The second tweet in The Gateway Pundit‘s article is from Al Arabiya News:
The Gateway Pundit‘s article includes a long list of American military equipment that was left behind in Afghanistan.
Here is the summary:
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier on Sunday — Joe Biden left 300 times more guns than those passed to the Mexican cartels in Obama’s Fast and Furious program.
A more complete list was created with public information and help from other intelligence sources. The list does not include all the extra kinds of nonlethal equipment, everything from MRE’s, Medical Equipment, and even energy drinks.
The big story might be the pallets of cash the Taliban have been posting videos of pallets of weapons and stacks of $100 bills they have seized …
If the Taliban has 208 military aircraft then according to the NationMaster list the Taliban now ranks #26 of all countries in the number of military aircraft.
The Biden administration would rather the public not know; the information has been scrubbed. Imagine if President Trump had done this:
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab appears before Parliamentary committee
On Wednesday, September 1, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, comprised of a cross-party group of MPs.
I watched the proceedings and thought that he acquitted himself well.
One of the difficulties in anticipating Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal of troops, he said, was weighing up America’s ‘intent’ versus their ‘capability’.
It also appears that the UK gave Raab the same aforementioned erroneous intelligence from the US about the Taliban seizing control of Kabul within 30 to 90 days:
Andrew Gimson wrote for Conservative Home about the session which lasted just under two hours. I found his article rather unfair, especially considering the US was displaying the same lack of intelligence.
However, it does provide a précis of two main points of the hearing:
Tom Tugendhat (Con, Tonbridge and Malling), the chair of the committee, sought to establish how much attention ministers had been paying not only to Afghanistan, but to neighbouring countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, through which evacuation by land might or might not be permitted …
Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) reminded Raab that the Foreign Office’s travel advice for British nationals in Afghanistan only changed on 6th August.
Bryant also pressed Raab about why he went on holiday and did not return until after August 15, the day when Kabul fell to the Taliban. Another Labour MP asked the same question, as did an SNP MP who did not give Raab time to respond.
As for his lack of discussions with ambassadors in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries, Raab said that his department’s procedure is to receive regular reports from them then collate them into one report that provides a detailed meta view of the situation on the ground.
When asked why he had not been to Pakistan lately, Raab replied that the pandemic made it nearly impossible.
Tugendhat asked Raab why the UK wasn’t using a safe passage to Uzbekistan as the Germans were. Tugendhat said that it was an ‘effective’ route. Raab countered, saying that it was ‘effective’ until Uzbekistan closed its border.
Raab took great pains to point out the positive aspects of the past fortnight, e.g. evacuating 17,000 people at short notice.
A few MPs, including Conservatives, asked him about the evacuation phone number in the Foreign Office that was inoperable and the emails that went unanswered. Their in-boxes were full of complaints about it. Raab said that most phone calls were answered in under a minute. He said that his staff were responding to a great number of emails.
However, this was one of several tweets from the middle of August indicating there was a problem. Sir Laurie Bristow was the UK ambassador to Afghanistan:
A Labour MP, Neil Coyle, asked why the portrait of the Queen remained in the Kabul embassy. Raab said he was unaware that it was still there. According to Coyle, the Taliban posed in front of it.
The best part was the final question from Claudia Webbe (Lab). She asked why the UK had been in Afghanistan for the past 40 (!) years:
Raab gave her a withering look and reminded her of the two decades prior to 2001, which included Soviet occupation.
Guido Fawkes said (emphasis in the original):
Claudia Webbe was back for yet another Foreign Affairs Select Committee appearance this afternoon, once again taking Dominic Raab to task with the hard-hitting questions no one else is brave enough to ask. Raab’s look of total bemusement at “What is your understanding of civil wars in Afghanistan” was one particular highlight. “Claudia, this is just nonsense” was another…
It seems as if Guido Fawkes’s readers have a better reading of Raab’s performance than the pundits. A selection follows. Unfortunately, Guido’s system does not have URLs to each comment.
Overall (emphases mine):
What was there to discuss? Pushing to ask what date he went on holiday and whether he considered resigning through to whether picture of the Queen would have been abandoned. There would have been far superior questions asked by people on any high street.
This thread had two notable comments. Here’s the first:
And here’s the second, about the phone call to his Afghan counterpart that was never made. The first sentence is tongue in cheek:
Raab would have made a phone call which would have resulted in the immediate surrender of the Taliban.
Though I prefer to be controversial and think that it would have made zero difference. Raab is a leaver and a Tory so the blame for the Afghan farce lies squarely with him and Trump, in the eyes of the loons.
The final comment is about Tom Tugendhat, which is probably true:
Tugendhat is an opportunistic @rsehole who is trying anything to advance his own position out of this crisis.
The back-stabber was even quoting from leaked FO documents at yesterday’s hearing to attack Raab.
Raab left the session promptly in order to travel to Qatar where he discussed various issues relating to Afghanistan:
Raab is spending the weekend in Pakistan for talks with his counterpart from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There will be a discussion about the UK’s £30 million aid package; one-third will go to humanitarian organisations and the rest to countries taking in Afghan refugees.
Two other political journalists reviewed Raab’s performance. Madeline Grant, writing for The Telegraph, gave him a thumbs-down. However, The Times‘s Quentin Letts reminded us that select committee hearings are often about political point-scoring:
As Westminster cynics know, select committees are not really about policy. They are vehicles for the ambitions of the MPs who run them and they can be used to give legs to a juicy hoo-hah …
Raab’s own performance? The left shoulder twitched. That is always a sign he is under pressure. He kept fiddling with his nose, too. But he is one of the grown-ups in the cabinet and it was not immediately apparent he had been seriously damaged by his self-serving scrutineers.
At Conservative Home, James Frayne did not think the public will be bothered by the select committee hearing or by Raab’s perceived neglect of the Afghan situation:
While unnamed Government sources are seeking to apportion blame to particular politicians (Raab, most obviously), the public don’t and won’t think along these lines; within reason, they think of the Government as an entity, rather than as being devolved in any meaningful way.
This means there’s a limit to what “damage control” the Government can do by throwing particular politicians and officials under a bus. It will all land at the door of the PM where public opinion is concerned.
Will there be enough stories, cumulatively, to provoke a general backlash against this Government at last? Time will tell (I have no idea what’s coming out) but I doubt it. Hard as it is for many commentators to understand or believe, for most of its supporters, this Government has a lot of credit in the bank on questions of judgement and competence.
I fully agree. Dominic Raab could not have prevented the Taliban taking over Kabul. He’s not one of my favourite MPs, but he is doing a good job in very difficult circumstances.
————————————————————————————
The next few weeks should be interesting. What new revelations about Afghanistan will appear?
The short answer is that they think they can work with the Taliban.
Sure. Pull the other one.
American and British troops have left Afghanistan. The countries’ embassies there are now closed.
Yet, they pledged at the weekend that evacuations would continue. How?
British general criticises withdrawal
General Lord Dannatt, who once commanded the British army, criticised the withdrawal, according to the Times on Monday, August 30 (emphases mine):
General Lord Dannatt, the former head of the army, called for an inquiry into the handling of the withdrawal, accusing the government of being “asleep on watch” despite having had months to prepare. He told Times Radio: “We should have done better.”
He accused ministers of putting Afghanistan on the back burner only to find “when the Taliban took over the country in the precipitate fashion in which they did, it fell off the cooker straight on to the kitchen floor”.
The deaths of 457 British military personnel were not in vain, he said, because progress had been made in Afghanistan. He said, however, that “the precipitant decision by Joe Biden to end the operation of all international forces quickly meant that the gains we had made crumbled pretty quickly”.
Meanwhile, the same article said that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab continues to come under fire for having been on holiday in Crete during the weekend of August 14 and 15. He appeared before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, September 1. I haven’t watched the hearing yet; it can be found here:
Senior government sources predicted that Raab would lose his job in the next reshuffle because of his handling of the crisis. They said the foreign secretary was a “control freak” who struggled to entrust work to officials despite controversy over his decision to stay on holiday in Crete as Kabul fell to the Taliban.
However, Raab’s allies defended him:
insisting that it was “laughable” to blame him alone for the hurried retreat from Afghanistan.
They blamed the Ministry of Defence for failing to anticipate the speed with which Kabul would fall and hit out at the Home Office for failing to finalise details of the Afghan resettlement scheme. The absence of clear criteria was hampering Britain’s ability to negotiate with other countries over refugees, the sources suggested.
The UK government plan to rescue refugees
I do not see how the British plan to rescue more refugees will work in the cold light of day, especially with a terror threat clearly looming.
The Times article says that foreign aid will be part of the plan:
Britain’s key initial demand is that the Taliban allow thousands of refugees safe passage out of Afghanistan but the focus is likely to shift soon to preventing the country from becoming a haven for terrorists, as it was in the late 1990s.
Aid will be used to encourage good behaviour. Ministers see Afghanistan as a first test of their decision to abolish the Department for International Development so that aid could be better aligned with foreign policy goals.
Officials believe that the Taliban see the looming humanitarian crisis as a threat to their legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans and think that western aid will be needed to mitigate it.
Sir Laurie Bristow, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, thinks the embassy in Kabul can be reopened:
Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, was among those who returned home yesterday. On the runway at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire he promised to reopen an embassy as soon as possible and to “do everything we can to protect the gains of the last 20 years”.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is nearly ready to make a deal with the Taliban. Some think that there could be a Taliban embassy in London in future. Good grief:
Warned that the risk of terrorism would increase, he promised to “use every lever we have — political, economic, diplomatic — to help the people of Afghanistan and to protect our own country from harm”.
He hinted yesterday that the Taliban could win diplomatic recognition if they kept terrorism in check and allowed western allies still in Afghanistan to leave. “If the new regime in Kabul wants diplomatic recognition . . . they will have to ensure safe passage for those who wish to leave the country, to respect the rights of women and girls, to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming an incubator for global terror.”
His words raise the prospect of a Taliban embassy in London, which officials said would happen only as part of a joint approach with G7 allies after a new government was formed.
The UK government accepts that it will have to deal with a new Afghan government dominated by hardliners and has adopted a carrot-and-stick approach now that troops have left.
International plea for release of Afghans
On Sunday, August 29, in a joint statement, 90 countries asked the Taliban to commit to releasing more Afghan citizens:
Britain was among 90 governments that released a joint statement yesterday saying that they had a “clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that [Afghan allies] can travel to our respective countries”.
The Daily Mail has more on the statement:
The statement said: ‘We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.’
I cannot see that happening, even though I hope it does.
I am not alone:
… many senior figures in the West fear the Taliban will fail to live up to the pledge amid concerns the number of Afghans left behind who may be eligible for resettling is actually far higher than initial Government estimates.
Too right. The Taliban will agree to anything then renege.
How evacuation schemes work
There were three evacuation programmes in place in Afghanistan during Britain’s Operation Pitting, which ended at the weekend. Approximately 15,000 people had been evacuated over the past fortnight.
Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly MP explained to Sky News how the evacuation schemes worked:
Asked how many people were left behind, Mr Cleverly told Sky News: ‘Well, that’s an impossible number to put a figure on. We had three methods by which, or vehicles by which, people could leave Afghanistan.
‘Obviously British nationals, we have a much better idea of how many British nationals were in Afghanistan. The vast, vast bulk of British nationals have now left Afghanistan.
‘The Arap scheme, those Afghans, interpreters and others, who had worked directly for us and with us, have their scheme.
‘But also we extended to Afghans who were at risk of reprisals and there was no set number of people in that third group.’
He admitted that many people were not evacuated:
Mr Cleverly did not deny reports that hundreds of emails sent to the Foreign Office from people trying to get out of the country had been left unopened.
He said: ‘Well, you have got to remember that when we extended our evacuation efforts to Afghan nationals we of course received a flood of requests and those were worked through and they will continue to be worked through.
‘But I know my own inbox had a huge number of emails came through, some duplicates, and of course we focused on the people who were at the airport who were being processed and who we felt that we could get out through Kabul airport whilst we still had security of Kabul airport.
‘We will of course continue to work through applications from people who have contacted us, people who are still trying to get out of Afghanistan.’
Cleverly told Sky News that the UK government is sceptical of the Taliban but is committed to working with them:
‘Well, we have always said, I think the Prime Minister has said very recently, that we will judge the Taliban by their actions,’ he said …
‘Obviously we are sceptical about those commitments but we will continue working with them to an extent, based on their conduct, to try and facilitate that further evacuation and repatriation effort.’
The American approach
On Sunday, Joe Biden looked at his watch while the coffins of 13 American servicemen from last week’s bombing at Kabul’s airport arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware:
The Daily Mail reported:
President Joe Biden is under fire after appearing to look at his watch just seconds after a salute honoring the return of the 13 US servicemembers killed in Thursday’s ISIS-K suicide bombing in Kabul.
The president made the unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday morning as the caskets of the 13 service members killed in the attack were brought back to the United States.
He stood in silence, his right hand to his chest, as a succession of flag draped transfer coffins were carried past him from a C-17 Globemaster plane.
But during the ceremony, Biden appears to jerk his left arm up and look down at his watch.
The 13 killed on Thursday were Navy corpsman Max Soviak, Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss, and Marines Hunter Lopez, Rylee McCollum, David Lee Espinoza, Kareem Nikoui, Jared Schmitz, Daegan Page, Taylor Hoover, Humberto Sanchez, Johanny Rosario, Dylan Merola and Nicole Gee.
Biden’s stupidity rightly attracted a barrage of criticism from military veterans and Republican politicians.
After a US drone strike killed two ISIS-K men, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is currently co-ordinating international efforts for the days ahead. This began with a virtual meeting on Monday, August 30:
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host a virtual meeting to discuss a coordinated approach for the days ahead, as the U.S. completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country.
The meeting will also include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the European Union and NATO.
Biden stuck with his decision to have a full withdrawal by Tuesday, August 31.
US-led evacuation flights took more than 114,000 people out of Afghanistan. Troops and diplomats followed.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan:
pledged the US ‘will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident’ after Tuesday, as well as for ‘those Afghans who helped us’.
Air strikes will continue:
He said the US would continue strikes against IS and consider ‘other operations to go after these guys, to get them and to take them off the battlefield’.
He added: ‘We will continue to bring the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan to make sure they do not represent a threat to the United States.’
There are no plans to reopen the embassy in Kabul, although there are plans for some diplomats to be present:
The administration’s plan ‘is not to have an ongoing embassy presence in Afghanistan’, Mr Sullivan said.
‘But we will have means and mechanisms of having diplomats on the ground there, be able to continue to process out these applicants, be able to facilitate the passage of other people who want to leave Afghanistan.’
————————————————
I will be most interested to see how American and British plans work out. I cannot see the feasibility at the moment.
Following on from yesterday’s post about Britain’s presence in Afghanistan, today’s entry has more.
On Tuesday, August 17, Strategic Culture posted ‘Afghanistan: Whatever the Future Brings, One Thing Is for Sure, Britain and the U.S. Should Stay Out’.
While I disagree with the general premise, the article did have interesting historical information about the UK’s involvement in Iraq and Libya based on questionable intelligence by a security chief who promoted the Russian dossier nonsense during the 2016 US presidential election. Emphases mine below:
All the blood and treasure spent, yes that is a tragedy, but not because of how it is ending, but rather how the War on Terror was started.
That is, that the Iraq and Libya wars were both based off of cooked British intelligence, which resulted in the attempt by the British people to prosecute Tony Blair as a war criminal for his direct role in causing British and U.S. troops to enter an illegal war with Iraq. This prosecution was later blocked by the British High Court claiming that there is no crime of aggression in English law under which the former PM could be charged. It seems there is no law against being a war criminal in Britain.
And it was none other than MI6 chief (1999-2004) Sir Richard Dearlove who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something “credible” to American intelligence.
In addition, the Libyan invasion of 2011 was found to be unlawfully instigated by Britain. In a report published by the British Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2016, it was concluded that it was “the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi”. The report concluded that the Libyan intervention was based on false pretence provided by British Intelligence and recklessly promoted by the British government. This is the real reason why David Cameron stepped down.
This is what caused the United States to enter both wars, due to, what has now been officially acknowledged as fraudulent or deliberately misleading evidence that was supplied by British intelligence.
Now onto Afghanistan. After the horrifying weekend of August 14 and 15, Britain’s Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, tried to enlist NATO allies’ help to fill the gap from Joe Biden’s withdrawal:
UK Defense Secretary, Ben Wallace, has been actively trying to call on NATO allies to join a British-led military coalition to re-enter Afghanistan upon the U.S. departure! Wallace states in an interview with Daily Mail:
“I did try talking to NATO nations, but they were not interested, nearly all of them…We tried a number of like-minded nations. Some said they were keen, but their parliaments weren’t. It became apparent pretty quickly that without the U.S. as the framework nation it had been, these options were closed off…All of us were saddened, from the prime minister (Boris Johnson) down, about all the blood and treasure that had been spent, that this was how it was ending.”
This has left the UK in a tailspin, although, as of August 26, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Britain would remain in Afghanistan to complete evacuation efforts.
However, some of our brightest commentators are fumbling to come up with reasonable solutions to America’s withdrawal. Andrew Neil said that we should ask France to partner with us. Hmm:
Meanwhile, Biden acts as if everything is fine.
On August 20, he said that the US gave the Afghans ‘all the tools’ they need. This is the tally over the past 20 years:
Nigel Farage has disparaged Biden in recent days:
It’s not so much the withdrawal itself but how it is being done that is the worry. Troops should be the last to leave:
As if that is not bad enough, the Biden administration has supplied the Taliban with the names of people who helped the US effort. One could not make this up:
Johnny Mercer MP (Con), himself a veteran, posted the video:
But, then, according to his fellow Conservative MP, Tom Tugendhat, the British did the same thing. How is this even possible?
Foreign Office staff left documents with the contact details of Afghans working for them as well as the CVs of locals applying for jobs scattered on the ground at the British embassy compound in Kabul that has been seized by the Taliban.
The papers identifying seven Afghans were found by The Times on Tuesday as Taliban fighters patrolled the embassy. Phone calls to the numbers on the documents revealed that some Afghan employees and their families remained stranded on the wrong side of the airport perimeter wall days after their details were left in the dirt in the haste of the embassy’s evacuation on August 15.
The fate of Afghans who worked alongside western diplomats and troops, and who may face reprisals after being left behind, has become an emblem of the West’s retreat from Afghanistan.
Such was the British surprise at the speed of the capture of Kabul that the embassy’s evacuation protocols, necessitating the shredding and destruction of all data that could compromise local Afghan staff, their families or potential employees, appear to have broken down.
The article mentions Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was on holiday in Crete on August 14 and 15. He was supposed to make an important phone call, which he delegated to Lord Goldsmith. On the face of it, that wasn’t a bad idea, because Goldsmith is close to Carrie Johnson and could have had direct access to Boris through her. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the phone call was never made. I’m still not sure whether it was as crucial as the media make it out to be, because the media are anti-Boris anyway. More will emerge in the weeks to come, but this is what we know for now:
The discovery of the documents comes after Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, rejected a request to speak with his Afghan counterpart to discuss the evacuation of interpreters who worked for Britain two days before the fall of Kabul. It suggests that staff at the British embassy were careless with the lives of Afghan employees in the rush to save their own.
Labour now have a real issue with which to attack the Conservatives:
Labour said foreign secretary Dominic Raab has “serious questions to answer” and that the destruction of sensitive materials should have been a “top priority”. Lisa Nandy, his opposite number, called on the government to “urgently assess” the individuals who may have been identified by the breach and whether operations may have been compromised. The Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee is now set to launch an inquiry.
I hope that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is committed to sorting this out:
Reacting to the revelations this morning, Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said the blunder was “not good enough” and would be investigated. Wallace said that the prime minister “will be asking some questions” about how the documents came to be left on the ground.
Wallace gave an interview to Sky News Friday morning. Contrary to what the British public understood yesterday from Boris about the evacuation efforts continuing, they will be coming to a close shortly, possibly by the time you read this:
Tom Tugendhat chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, so my expectations for the upcoming inquiry into this security breach are high:
Tugendhat spoke about the American withdrawal:
Sorry, but the withdrawal debacle is a military defeat.
I feel very sorry for British — and American — troops. They are still heroes, as Johnny Mercer, who served in Afghanistan, says:
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Priti Patel visited a refugee centre:
She is preparing the British public. We will be taking in 20,000 or 25,000 Afghan refugees over the next five years. However, the British are also concerned about the number of illegal immigrants coming in from France across the English Channel:
Nigel Farage urges caution over the refugee programme:
The Daily Mail article says that Ben Wallace was satisfied that the man on the ‘no fly’ list was not a threat. However, the Mail states that some security checks have been taking place once the military plane is in the air:
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace today insisted security checks at Kabul airport are working after it emerged a person banned from Britain under a ‘no-fly list’ was able to travel to the UK as part of the Afghanistan airlift.
In a potential security breach, the individual was cleared to board an RAF plane before checks in mid-air revealed they were barred from coming to this country.
In a sign of the challenges facing British soldiers at the airport – who are already on high alert amid fears of terror attacks – it emerged last night that a further four people on the no-fly list tried to board mercy flights to the UK, but were stopped before the planes took off.
Mr Wallace defended the security checks, telling Sky News: ‘The watch list, or the no-fly list, pinged and the individual was identified so that is a plus side that it worked.
‘I wouldn’t be as alarmed as some of the media headlines are about this individual and I would also take some comfort from this process is working and flagging people.’
It came amid fears that more than 1,000 heroic Afghan translators, staff and their families could be left behind by the frantic evacuation operation.
Ministers have outlined plans to extract a further 6,000 UK nationals and eligible Afghans, but sources said there were 7,000 who Britain would ideally like to rescue.
The Home Office said yesterday a ‘security assessment’ of the individual who arrived in the UK revealed they were no longer considered a threat by the security or law enforcement agencies. Sources said there would be no further action taken against the person, whose nationality is unclear.
But the development raised concerns over security relating to the airlift.
That was the state of play on August 23.
On August 26, another report emerged, this time from The Telegraph. The British public will not find this reassuring:
The Twitter thread received comments of astonishment and concern, such as these:
The men coming across the English Channel are also unlikely to have their papers, creating one terrible mess in the months and years to come.
In closing, today’s main story in the UK is that the British evacuation in Afghanistan will end this weekend:
Ben Wallace always maintained that some Afghans would be left behind. Where possible, more will be airlifted:
What a terrible ending after 20 years.
Parliament returns in early September. Both Houses will have a lot of questions for the Government.
Churchmouse Campanologist 
Raab was working on intelligence assessments, not his own thoughts on what would happen.
It is about optics. It looks bad if you want it to, but the facts are that the collapse was quicker than anticipated, and the UK still managed to airlift 17,000 people out in a very short time frame, for which they should be commended.