America Surrenders

Brian Kennedy, of the Claremont Institute, asks a salient question. What if the Biden surrender of Afghanistan was not merely a blunder? What if it did not signal the incompetence of a senile old fool? What if it was intentional?

Intentionally what, you may ask. Well, consider this, Kennedy writes, what if the Biden administration was simply acting on a premise that America is a bad country, led by bad people, an organized criminal conspiracy led by white supremacists? What if the Biden administration and its satraps in the government bureaucracy believe that America needs to be punished for being such a bad country? What if the Biden administration is wedded to the hate-America rhetoric of people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar?

If such were the case, then the actions of the Biden administration become perfectly rational. They represent a strain of anti-Americanism that the radical left has foisted on a brain dead Democratic Party. We are watching it play itself out in Afghanistan, in real time.

After all, no one is even trying to explain how the botched exit from Afghanistan is in America’s national interest. The people running the country have no use for such outmoded ideas. They are, as they have so thoroughly explained, fighting the good fight against white supremacy, and, oh yes, against the weather.

Kennedy explains the situation thusly:

The notion that there was a single incompetent decision made to abandon Afghanistan defies both logic and common sense. It was a matter of high government policy that the United States depart Afghanistan, abandon military equipment, and leave both Americans and our allies to the tender mercies of the radical Islamic Taliban.

Kennedy continues that our exit from Afghanistan represents an abandonment of even the pretext of being a world leader. This suggests that the current administration does not want to be a world leader, in any sense of the word. It is retreating behind the walls of fortress America, but it has failed to notice, for example, that it is leaving a massive amount of lithium in the hands of the Taliban and of the country that controls most of the rare earth minerals supply. That would be China.

What does the surrender of Afghanistan mean? Well, Kennedy argues that it means that the sacrifices have been in vain, that the war on Islamist terror was illegitimate and that American civilization is not worth defending:

The exit from Afghanistan, then, appears designed to accomplish two things: first, to demoralize the American military and the American people. Over 22,000 American service personnel have been killed or injured in Afghanistan. Every American knows someone who served there. Knowing full well that the Afghan military would not defend the country, there could be little doubt that the United States was turning the country over to the Taliban. Moreover, the US did so with the appearance of being run out of the country in shame and defeat. One can only assume this was meant to demonstrate to American servicemen that their sacrifice had been in vain, and to the American people that our cause of defending America from the scourge of radical Islam was not just.

America is weak and resistance to Islam is futile. That is the lesson the Biden Administration has made possible. It is one for which radicals such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have signaled their approval throughout their tenure in Congress.

Worse yet, the Biden administration has shown no concern whatever for the credibility, the integrity or the prestige of the country. People rail when you suggest that the American left has no real sense of patriotism and that many of them hate the country, but what other rational conclusion can you draw from the Afghanistan surrender:

Even the most serious isolationist would not have left Afghanistan the way we have. A minimum requirement would be to preserve the prestige and credibility of the United States with our allies and to ensure that our enemies would not be emboldened by our fecklessness.

One remarks, almost as a sidelight, that a nation lacking in pride will also be producing a great deal of clinical depression. And that people who are depressed will most likely not be motivated to work to advance themselves or their country.

We are operating under conditions that are more characteristic of group therapy than of effective policy. We want to feel empathy for the grievances of the oppressed of the world. We imagine that they will all like us more. In place of patriotism we have become a great mother state:

There is a new world order and America has chosen a new place in it. Whereas we were comfortable “leading from behind” during the Obama administration, today the United States is merely one of many other nations doing our best to cooperate in what some have termed a Great Reset. Defending human freedom may have been fine for earlier generations, but what matters today is understanding the grievances and ambitions of other peoples, be it the Islamic world and their deeply held religious convictions or the Communist Chinese and their struggles to find their place atop the world order.

So, we have overcome all concerns about the national interest. Witness the abandonment of the Bagram Air Base. Kennedy continues:

Political leanings aside, what of self-interest? There is no clearer evidence of this rejection than the abandonment of Bagram Air Base. Right now, if it were adequately fortified, the United States could have an expeditionary force poised to strike at anyone in the region who meant the US harm. Claremont Institute scholars Mark Helprin and Angelo Codevilla argued for something like this nearly two decades ago, as opposed to the nation-building efforts that proved so painfully misguided. Such a base of operations would not be part of some “forever war,” but rather a forward outpost of US military power capable of defending the American homeland. No nation building, no lectures on LGBTQ rights, just straight national defense.

Leaving Bagram Air Base, and the billions in advanced equipment that was there, with the Afghan military will be seen rightly as an act of submission by the Biden Administration to a global order headed by Communist China. Certainly China, and apparently also Biden, would prefer an America in retreat and withdrawal from the world stage. What better way to demonstrate America’s intentions to the PRC than withdrawing from the region and allowing our most advanced armaments to be taken by America’s enemies?

So, the Biden administration feels good about itself for its efforts to fight climate change. It feels good about itself for fighting the coronavirus pandemic. It feels good about itself for making Americans feel guilty about their prosperity and their successes. It feels good about itself for fighting white supremacy. A philosophy that appeared to be an outlier, that appeared to be a deviant set of opinions held by a few crackpots and cranks is now American policy.

As for the real question: who is really in charge? We suspect that Joe Biden is a Trojan horse, an empty vessel filled with social justice warriors. Or perhaps he is a marionette. For now we are not so clear about who is pulling the strings.