Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the Biden administration plans to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond the May 1st deadline set by the US-Taliban peace deal that was signed last year.
“It’s a general feeling that May 1 is too soon, just logistically,” Smith said at a panel on Wednesday, according to Responsible Statecraft. Smith cited conversations he had with administration officials. “You cannot pull out ten thousand plus troops in any sort of reasonable way in just six weeks,” he said.
Smith said the Biden administration wants to “negotiate past May 1” with the Taliban. “Job one is to try to get back in to talk to the Taliban about at least giving us more time,” he said. Smith said the argument for staying is “purely logistical.”
While Smith claims May 1st is “too soon,” the Pentagon said on Tuesday that they are ready to meet the deadline if President Biden orders the withdrawal.
When asked by reporters on Tuesday if it is “logistically” possible to meet the May 1st deadline, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is confident that General Scott Miller, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, could get it done.
“I would point you back to what Secretary Austin said when we were in Kabul, which is that — that he’s confident that Generals McKenzie and General Miller, if a decision is made, to completely withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, that they will get it done in a safe, orderly, and effective way,” Kirby said.
February 8th marked the first full year since the war started in 2001 that no US troops died in combat in Afghanistan. The Taliban are expected to start targeting US soldiers again if President Biden chooses to stay beyond May 1st.
If we need one or two more weeks to gather up all the opium, I’m sure the Taliban will oblige; but, really, after 20 years pleading for more time is a little pathetic, is it not?
With apologies to 50 ways to leave your lover:
“Just get on the bus, Gus
No need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And set yourself free!”
A wonderful advice, but, The War lords won’t let him accept it.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
1984, a book by Eric Blair, a.k.a., George Orwell.
America an Oligarchy
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.
All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they cannot had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Is the United States of America any different, any better?
Are we not in a long line of and are we not the embodiment of …
God’s Chosen People
Saved in Jesus Christ
The New Soviet Man (Person) a.k.a. The New Man (Person)
The Master Race
American Exceptionalism*
The Earth’s Last Best Hope**
The Indispensable Nation***
The One Indispensable Nation****
*
The first reference to the concept by name, and possibly its origin, was by French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835/1840 work, Democracy in America:
“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.”
**
President Abraham Lincoln
Annual Message to Congress — Concluding Remarks
Washington, D.C.
December 1, 1862
One month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln sent a long message to Congress which was largely routine, but also proposed controversial measures such as voluntary colonization of slaves and compensated emancipation.
“… We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. …”
***
It is the threat of the use of force [against Iraq] and our line-up there that is going to put force behind the diplomacy. But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.
Madeleinee K. Albright,
U.S. Secretary of State (1997–2001).
Stated on NBC’s Today Show (February 19, 1998)
****
“The United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world. Now, sustaining our leadership, keeping America strong and secure means we have to use our power wisely,” Obama said in his address to the American Legion in North Carolina. August 27, 2014 ( not the first or last time he uttered these words )
Please note, President Obama
clarified and specified “… the one indispensable nation …”
The President, thus, closed the rhetorical door on any other nation being “indispensable.”
In meaning and use, “the,” definite article, acts as a function word to indicate that a following noun or noun equivalent is a “unique” or “a” particular member” of its class; i.e. “the” President as compared to “a” president.
In other words, President Obama’s use of “one” was an ungrammatical, non-literate rhetorical device intended to intensify and amplify doubly “America” as the “one,” as the “only” and as the exclusive, exceptional, “one.”
President Obama, of course, knew this being “ivory league” educated at Columbia University (B.A.) and Harvard University (J.D.)
“Repetition is necessary to catapult the propaganda.” President George W.Bush
[ “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — George Bush, “President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York,” May 24, 2005. ]
Why am I wrong?
dennis hanna
We display power the world over, and cloak it in idealism.
Peace with honor, as Nixon said about the desired end of the Vietnam fiasco. And what we said about Nixon — anybody remember that?. . .It started with: ‘Pull out Nixon, like. . . .’
Would have been out in ’68, perhaps, were it not for the treason by Nixon.
“It’s a general feeling that May 1 is too soon, just logistically”
An admittance that the US had no intention of ever honoring the May 1rst deadline. It was logistically feasible when the deal was agreed upon if action would have been taken as if we were serious about abiding by the agreement.
Recent diplomatic statements from China, Russia and Iran clearly show those countries, among many others, now fully realize that America NEVER negotiates in good faith and will always breach any contract or break any agreement.
The entire world now understands there is no point in working with Americans. If you do somehow manage to get Americans to sign an agreement, they will simply ignore their commitments yet demand the opposite party to the agreement continue to abide to the terms.
I hope the Taliban have realized this and know the US military will NEVER leave voluntarily and must be removed by force like Vietnam.
It is the only way.
To to the U.S. military and it’s endless alibis for needless abysmal failures all across the middle east: “If you knew what to do, you’d have done it already. If you could have, you would have; but you didn’t, so you can’t. Time’s up.”
Blinken’s speech to NATO. We came to Afghanistan together and we must leave together at the right time. He treats it like the right time is a mystery. Never acknowledges the t right time is the one written on the agreement they signed!!!!
No for them it’s some etherial mystery. Good luck selling that to the Taliban!!!! Better order the body bags now…
Maj. (ret) Danny Sjursen’s recent article is a must read.
Blinken has degrees in Social Studies and law, and practiced as a lawyer. We shouldn’t expect too much from him.
The US-Taliban agreement, the current puppet Afghan government not included, centers on the US leaving unconditionally and the Taliban guarantee for no threat to US security. It also assumes that the Taliban will form the new government in a return to power. PART TWO: 5. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan. . .here
Biden selected Austin as SecDef because he’s an expert on withdrawal. . .”General Austin got the job done. He played a crucial role in bringing 150,000 American troops home from the theater of war.”. . .here
Isnt it odd how its so easiy and quick to jump into another country with your miltary but it sure takes sooooooooo much time to leave. Get your shit and GTFO!
I once asked the late Dr. Ananda W. P. Guruge — formerly Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the U. S. and France — why his government declined the American military’s offer of assistance in dealing with that country’s Tamil insurgency. He replied simply: “If the Americans come, they will just draw an arbitrary line through a temporary problem and make it permanent.” And there you have it. American foreign policy since WWII.