Is the Fall of Kabul the Fall of the Left?

 

Does the chaos in Kabul mark an inflection point?

It seems to me an inflection point is due, and overdue. And current events in Afghanistan are surely shocking enough to burn for some time in collective memory. Someone needs to be blamed for thiis, and someone needs to be punished. “Never again.”

It looked as though we were already hitting an inflection point in 2016; first we had Brexit, and then we had Trump elected. Both seemed miraculous, a turning of the tide. The cognoscenti, the clerisy, the managing elite, did not want either. Moreover, the elite predicted with confidence that neither would happen. It was as though the common man was rising up and refusing to do as he was told.

We should have expected a response, even a hysterical response, and for the past four years we have seen it. 

Realizing that a wave had swept over the gunwale, it was all hands on deck for the brass-polishers of the regular navy. So we got cancel culture, deplatforming, critical race theory, an openly partisan press, lots of fake news, multiple impeachment attempts, and branding at least half the country, or respective countries, racist and fascist. They didn’t manage to reverse Brexit; the voters remained adamant, dramatically endorsing Nigel Farage, and dramatically rejecting Jeremy Corbin. But they did manage in America, with or without the help of electoral tricks, to frighten enough ordinary folks back into their habitual cap-doffing to their betters. For the moment.

But now they have demonstrated their incompetence in the most dramatic terms. People are dying. Biden was their guy; now they own him. Covering his own away-from-the-mirror parts, Biden insists constantly he was following the advice of the experts. He ran promising to do so, and has claimed all along to be doing so. 

So it is natural and proper to hold the elites responsible for the unfolding Afghanistan disaster. They can’t tag it on Biden personally, because Kamala Harris is on record as saying she signed off on the decision. Nancy Pelosi insisted it was wise at the time. Blaming Biden and pressuring him to resign would only pass the presidency on to one of them.

it now looks possible, in the shadow of Kabul, that Gavin Newsome will be recalled, and replaced by Larry Elder—not just a Republican as governor of the ultimate “blue” state, but a libertarian Republican. If California falls to the “fascists,” who on the left is going to feel safe? Who on the right who has been cowed until now into silence won’t feel emboldened?

It now also looks possible that, in defiance of expectation, and also in the shadow of Kabul, the Liberals might fall to the Conservatives in Canada.

And this might look to all like a swelling wave, encouraging others to resist and to speak out. 

We seem already to be seeing it at school board meetings across the US.

In a few years, the fashionable leftist positions of today may look as bad as Joe McCarthy did by the 1960s, or Chamberlain and isolationism did by 1945. 

A Day that Shall Live in Infamy

 

The actual situation in Afghanistan is rapidly looking worse. Geraldo Rivera, who is Fox’s representative for the Democratic Party viewpoint, is condemning Biden’s handling of the matter in unambiguous terms. Kamala Harris is nowhere to be seen. It is all looking bad enough that other Dems do not want to be associated with it. They are starting to turn in order to hang it all on Biden.

This is, I think, a historic debacle. The fall of Kabul is something everyone will remember for generations, as a watchword for incompetence. People will remember it the way they remember 9/11, or Kennedy’s assassination, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are now hearing that on top of perhaps 40,000 Afghans and their families who have legitimate claims to US protection after having aided the US and allied forces, perhaps 10,000 or more American citizens are stranded in Afghanistan. Are they all now abandoned to their fate? People are angry.

The Taliban may turn out to be a bunch of softies. But that is not the lesson of history. When an army conquers, the first troops in are usually well-disciplined and well-behaved, but after a few days, realizing victory is won, discipline breaks down and the troops are inclined to celebrate, rewarding themselves as they see fit. Even if the Taliban leadership wants to act nice to the Americans—which is unlikely—I doubt they will be able to control their ragtag forces. A series of atrocities is more likely.

Biden is now trying to blame the Afghan army and the intelligence agencies. Bad idea. People are going to feel pretty sorry for the Afghans who supported the US and were abandoned. Blaming them looks monstrous. Someone has pointed out that the Afghan army lost 60,000 soldiers in the fight with the Taliban—more than the US in Vietnam. And everyone in the military and intelligence now has an urgent need to leak to the press how it was all Biden’s fault, to cover their own stern parts. If Biden were a little more intelligent, he would have chosen one fall guy. Now it has to be him.

I think this has to end with Biden’s resignation or removal under the 25th Amendment; failing that, impeachment. Incompetence can’t be the charge, but between Hunter’s laptops and Biden’s extraconstitutional eviction moratorium, there are obvious grounds on which he could be impeached if necessary.