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Every American Life Saved After Chick-Fil-A Takes Over Kabul Airport Evacuation

 

KABUL—After the government spectacularly botched the evacuation of Afghanistan, Chick-fil-A scrambled to the rescue and was quickly put in charge of the operation. Within a few hours, every single American at the Kabul airport was comfortably seated on a commercial airliner and munching away at a delicious Chick-fil-A sandwich and sipping on a sweet tea.

Chick-fil-A employees took over operating the air traffic control tower, managing the crowd of people, flying the jets, and, of course, serving delicious Chick-fil-A food to everyone gathered at the airport.

"Oh, it's my pleasure," said one Chick-fil-A employee as he happily welcomed several hundred Americans on board an official Chick-fil-A airliner. "Welcome aboard! Will you be having the spicy chicken or the original today? And can I interest you in a frozen lemonade?"

While citizens and refugees who were evacuated by the U.S. government were forced to huddle together in massive cargo jets, Chick-fil-A's jets had first-class seating throughout, and yet somehow still miraculously held hundreds of people on each flight. The friendly employees tended to every need of the previously stranded Americans throughout the flights, offering complimentary food, beverages, back rubs, and trauma counseling to the people callously abandoned by the Biden administration.

Each jet also had a fun play area for the kids, and soothing Christian muzak was pumped into the cabin to the delight of all.

At publishing time, sources had further confirmed that all the Muslims at the airport had been led to Christ by the Chick-fil-A employees.

Let's face it, the average small-town Kiwanis Club could have done better than the Team Biden.

We are now the weak horse

 Mark Steyn in Corpsing with the Taliban

With respect to Afghanistan, the puppeteers waggling the dead husk that is Joe Biden have made a political calculation - that, on the home front, the fact of departure will count for more than the manner of departure. Joe's not a ubiquitous figure in the news cycle the way Trump was, so he can sit in the basement for a few more days - and, in electoral terms, America's total humiliation in its umpteenth unwon war in some krappistan no one can find on a map will ultimately work for the Dems.

The Taliban, for their part, seem happy to play along. The BBC reports that the female anchors are back on Afghan telly! They were hurriedly yanked from the screens on Sunday morning, presumably because the execs feared the ladies would be damned as whores of the infidels and taken off to Herat and Kandahar never to be seen again. But "Taliban 2.0" (as they're being called in all apparent seriousness) are playing a subtler game this time. So the Rachel Maddows and Joy Reids of Tolo News are back on air - and, with bare-faced cheek, quizzing the fiercely bearded jihad boys about their plans for the restored Islamic Emirate.

Even so, even in Kabul, why would the Taliban be giving cordial interviews to non-burqaed babes? Why aren't they getting back helter-skelter to the good old days of head-chopping and child sex-slaves and crushing homosexuals under walls constructed specifically for that purpose?

Short answer: They're not as stupid as we are....

This is What a Whole of Government Epistemic Failure Looks Like

 3 years and 2 months; 38 months. That is how long the Soviet trained Afghan Army and government lasted after the withdraw of the Red Army.

There is your benchmark. The Soviets were 38-times more successful in Afghanistan than we were, and they did it in half the time.

Let that soak in. Let the humiliation flow over you like a healing balm. Fear and shame – regardless of what modern minds try to tell you otherwise – are great motivators. Let this motivate you.

Almost exactly two decades after the attacks of 9/11, as a nation we are covered in disgrace. A global humiliation on a national scale. Accept that. Hold it close to you. Feel it. Smell it. Know it, because it will be attached to us for at least the rest of the decade – most likely longer.

Good people can agree or disagree about staying or going from Afghanistan, but no one can defend how we did it.

Everyone here who [was] given responsibility by the American people failed.

The president failed. . . . All our intelligence agencies failed their government and the people.

Our think tanks, the legions of foreign policy and diplomacy PhDs from all the right schools who populate the National Security State who like to tell everyone how smart they are – they all failed.

Study Finds 92% Of Taliban Are Happy They Voted For Biden

 

KABUL—According to a survey conducted by local media in Taliban-controlled Kabul, 92% of Taliban fighters are very thankful they decided to vote for Biden in the 2020 election. 

"Of course I voted for Biden! Didn't everyone around here?" said Abdul Mohammed Mohammed Abdul Mohammed, a local infantry warrior who just finished storming the capital. "It was very easy. The American soldiers were just leaving garbage bags full of absentee ballots around, so we just filled them out and sent them back! Allah be praised!" 

There is wide agreement among the Taliban that Biden was the right man for the job—that job being to give up the country of Afghanistan and let the Taliban take it over without a fight. 

"Yes, we like Biden very much around here, and even his henchwoman, Kamil Harris," said another local militant. 

The Taliban reports being in very good spirits after taking over an entire country in one day, and are looking forward to voting in America's 2022 election. 

I've Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe's Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling.

From Cheryl Bernard in The National Interest.

Afghans stand out among the refugees committing crimes in Austria and elsewhere. Why?

In 2014, when waves of refugees began flooding into western Europe, citizens and officials alike responded with generosity and openness. Exhausted refugees spilled out of trains and buses to be met by crowds bearing gifts of clothing and food, and holding up placards that read “Welcome Refugees.”

This was a honeymoon that could not last. Some of the upcoming difficulties had been anticipated: that the newcomers did not speak the local languages, might be traumatized, would probably take a long time to find their footing, and had brought their ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts with them, causing them to get into battles with each other. All of these things happened but—as Angela Merkel promised—were manageable. “Wir schaffen das.”

But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men. ...

This is not an article that has been fun for me to write. I have worked on issues related to refugees for much of my professional life, from the Pakistani camps during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to Yemen, Sudan, Thailand, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Lebanon, Bosnia, Nicaragua and Iraq, and have deep sympathy for their plight. But nowhere had I encountered a phenomenon like this one. I had seen refugees trapped in circumstances that made them vulnerable to rape, by camp guards or soldiers. But for refugees to become perpetrators of this crime in the place that had given them asylum? That was something new.

The initial reaction by European officials was denial; a cover-up, until it became too common to deny.

These are crimes carried out in broad daylight, in crowds, in public. What's going on?

It's not too much alcohol or necessarily a clash of cultures.

This brings us to a third, more compelling and quite disturbing theory—the one that my Afghan friend, the court translator, puts forward. On the basis of his hundreds of interactions with these young men in his professional capacity over the past several years, he believes to have discovered that they are motivated by a deep and abiding contempt for Western civilization. To them, Europeans are the enemy, and their women are legitimate spoils, as are all the other things one can take from them: housing, money, passports. Their laws don’t matter, their culture is uninteresting and, ultimately, their civilization is going to fall anyway to the horde of which one is the spearhead. No need to assimilate, or work hard, or try to build a decent life here for yourself—these Europeans are too soft to seriously punish you for a transgression, and their days are numbered.

And it’s not just the sex crimes, my friend notes. Those may agitate public sentiment the most, but the deliberate, insidious abuse of the welfare system is just as consequential. Afghan refugees, he says, have a particular proclivity to play the system: to lie about their age, to lie about their circumstances, to pretend to be younger, to be handicapped, to belong to an ethnic minority when even the tired eye of an Austrian judge can distinguish the delicate features of a Hazara from those of a Pashtun.

I see his point. In the course of my research, I encountered thirty-year-olds with family in Austria who were passing themselves off as “unaccompanied minors.” I met people misrepresenting an old traffic injury as proof that they had been tortured. I learned of an Afghan family that had emigrated to Hungary two decades ago. The children were born there and attended Hungarian schools. When the refugee crisis erupted, enticed by news of all the associated benefits, this family decided to take on a new identity and make their way to Sweden on the pretense of being brand-new refugees. Claiming to have lost their papers during their “flight,” they registered under new assumed names and reduced the ages of their children; the mother declared herself a widow. Now ensconced in comfortable free housing along with their hale, hearty and very much alive father—whom they pass off as an uncle—with a monthly welfare check, they are smug parasites leeching off the gullibility of Sweden’s taxpayers.

A disturbing thing is that

these young men are “ours.” They grew up during the years in which we were the dominant influence and paymaster in Afghan society. Since 2001, we have spent billions on an Afghan school system that we like to cite as one of our greatest accomplishments. These young men either attended these schools, in which case the investment in their education has been worse than useless, or did not have access to a school, in which case the money must have been fraudulently diverted. We have also invested many, many millions of dollars on gender programs and rule-of-law programs to convey notions of female equality and human value, and regard for law and order. We have funded radio programs and entire TV stations devoted to this goal, launched poster campaigns and sponsored at enormous cost a large number of civil-society groups purporting to disseminate these values. And here, now, are our “graduates,” rampaging across Europe like the worst sort of feral beasts.

It turns out that we need to be very careful who we allow into the country.

The Trump plan is needed. Read the whole thing.

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1972 - Nothing-to-do-with-Islam

Kabul, Afghanistan 1972

Will you look at that.

No burkhas.

No hijabs.

Miniskirts.

And no bearded thugs with automatic weapons driving around in pickup trucks.

It looks like this is an American city.

I've seen similar photos of Tehran from prior to 1979.

Also Beirut. Did you know that Beirut used to be called "The Paris of the Mideast"?

Yes, it did.

But then, something must've happened in that part of the world.

Something terrible.

Something absolutely devastating and soul-crushing.

We may never know what it is, though.

It's a complete mystery.

Missing Afghans Raise Terrorism Fears - Seven military students fled training in U.S. this month

Could the Obama Administration be training Afghan terrorists to attack U.S.?

Several Afghan nationals undergoing military training in the United States disappeared from U.S. military bases this month, according to Pentagon and Homeland Security officials.

“During the month of September, seven Afghan students were considered absent without leave (AWOL) during international military student programs,” Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said.

Three of the Afghan military trainees fled from a Pentagon training program two weekends ago during the bombing spree in New York and New Jersey by Afghan-born bombing suspect Ahmad Rahami, raising concerns among security officials that the missing Afghan students may be linked to terrorism or plans for attacks in the United States.

Perhaps the most tragic thing about Afghanistan is that the president picked a useless objective and made the decision to lose it at the greatest possible cost.

But if debacle it becomes, it is necessary to qualify it by noting that the Armed Forces did not lose the fight. The men in uniform thrashed the Taliban every single time they met. It is the men in the suits who appear to have been beaten like a drum. Political leadership, not military prowess, is America’s Achilles’ Heel. Keith Nightingale writing in War on the Rocks tried to examine the question of why America keeps losing at the end of a unbroken string of tactical successes. ”Why is America tactically terrific but strategically slipshod?”

This is a puzzle I have always wondered about since I was a lieutenant on my first Vietnam tour and experienced consistent strategic failures through the several desert wars. How come the finest fighting force on the planet seems to be strategically bereft? In retrospect, we are always tactically overwhelming and strategically underwhelming.

One obvious answer is that strategy is the province of politicians. But there is more than ineptitude behind any answer to Nightingale’s question. It’s a question of incentives. Politicians often decide at some point it is wiser and indeed often “virtuous” to lose. Losing is their ticket to office, their qualification for a Nobel Peace Prize. It is a pathway to media sainthood.

Once they embrace those incentives operations are defunded, the logistics trail is taken apart, a “decent interval” is negotiated and things are allowed to run their course. Defeat follows not as defeat but as the successful outcome of strategy, however perverse that may sound....

The Special Forces might beat back the Taliban in Kunduz. But they’re not getting with the program. ”Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study the federal budget.”

Who said the Taliban were stupid?

Richard Fernandez on Obama's Strategic Blindness

The Ten Ships  (this was written in 2010)

To jump from the correct idea that defeating the forces which ‘attacked American on 9/11″ were an existential threat to the idea that ergo Afghanistan was a war of necessity was a huge non sequitur. Afghanistan happened to be the place from which Osama Bin launched his attack on September 11. Admiral Nagumo launched his infamous attack on Pearl Harbor from a nameless patch of ocean 200 miles North of Oahu. But Admiral King had the sense to understand that the location itself had little significance. It was the Kido Butai, the ten carriers which made up the Japanese Fast Carrier force which momentarily occupied that ocean waste that he had to destroy. While the Kido Butai existed it could move across the vast spaces and attack at a point of its choosing. While it survived every patch of ocean was dangerous. Once it had been neutralized all the oceans of the world were potentially safe. As John Adams in his book If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War wrote: “sink ten ships and win the naval war”. Both the Nihon Kaigun and the CINCPAC understood this. The entire purpose of subsequent American naval operations was to find and sink these ten ships; and the Nihon Kaigun’s subsequent efforts revolved around their attempt to preserve them.

But today only one side — the forces behind al-Qaeda – have a clear strategic conception of the war they are waging. The President seems determined to misunderstand it. He is waging existential war against tribesmen at the end of the world while denying that the Kido Butai even exists. He may succeed on narrow terms, but al-Qaeda, the modern Kido Butai, will simply move elsewhere: to Yemen, Birmingham or Detroit and the menace will remain unabated.

Incredibly prophetic,

Thoughts on the Middle East Wars

Whenever a discussion involves the war in Iraq, there are inevitably many people who argue that the entire enterprise was a failure - or worse - a geopolitical catastrophe that has upset the Middle East apple cart. They are wrong. At the article by the American Interest I made this point in response to a comment by someone who believes that there is no " ... good strategy for success in either Afghanistan or Iraq." Saying we "need to be realistic." The point is that there is a recipe for success and it's not that difficult.  And we have been very unrealistic, but not in the way that most people believe.

Herewith my comment (with a few edits):

“We need to be realistic” is a great tag line, but very little realism has been exhibited by either the supporters or the opponents of the invasion of Iraq. The first unrealistic assumption is that “"of course" people everywhere would choose Western-style democracy and freedom if given the chance.” I never thought so and was worried by the Bush administration’s emphasis on this idea. I suspected that Bush 43 was too naive and this troubled me.

There is little evidence of that Western-style democracy is the default position in developed countries and absolutely none in underdeveloped countries. The idea that the people of Iraq, with absolutely no experience with Western-style democracy, would embrace it was appealing but absolutely unsupported by reason or experience. The fact that the Bush administration was promoting this idea I attribute to one of two reasons: (1) they really believed it (bad), or (2) they were attempting to counter the Left’s theme that the war was a mistake and wanted to use Iraqi elections to counter that propaganda (also bad).

History is a great teacher if anyone bothers to study it. It doesn’t have to be ancient history. Within the last century we defeated Germany and Japan, both first world countries, and have troops there to this day. Japan had no history of Western-style democracy. After defeating the Empire of Japan we did not allow them to have elections and leave. We stayed to make sure that the kind of government we approved of grew up in the rubble of the war. General Douglas MacArthur ruled Japan as an American Proconsul until the Korean War. Modern Japan was largely created by Mac Arthur, not by Japanese elections.

Germany had a brief, unhappy history of democracy between the wars, but after WW2 the conquerors imposed military rule on the country which did not end until 1949. We had a veto power over who was elected and what policies were followed.  As an incentive, the US and other allies maintained a military presence in Germany ever since then.

So what political genius decided that after invading a country with no history of democracy, with a religion that’s hostile to Western-style democracy, all that was needed was a new constitution and a good election to become just like us?

The problems began when the Bush State Department decided to disband the Iraqi military and much of its civilian political structure, creating several million people without jobs and no way of making a living. In comparison, after WW2 the West left most of the German and Japanese political infrastructure in place, and a big enough military presence to quell whatever resistance arose.

Despite these blunders the US won the Iraq war, peace was mostly restored after a brutal struggle and winning the peace would be the challenge. Bush hinted that he understood by his references to the long struggle ahead as he left office.

Then the election of 2008 brought Obama to power. The man who said invading Iraq was a mistake.

Exit the Bush administration, and enter Obama. He declared Iraq was the unnecessary war but Afghanistan was the good war, took a victory lap and - ignoring the fact that Iraq, a disarmed country, was rapidly coming under the control of Iran – left zero military forces behind. With no military influence we could not change destructive Iraqi government policy, we could not dissuade Iran from increasing its influence, we could not even do anything to stop ISIS – the group Obama called the “JV” team – from taking the military gear we left behind and begin its reign of terror.  Today Iraq is rapidly becoming a client state of Iran unless ISIS (the JV team) takes over the entire country.

Obama threw away Iraq. He’s losing the war in Afghanistan. He’s managed to transform Libya from a country with a bad dictator who kept the crazies under control to a failed state that’s a safe haven for every Jihadist who wants a break from beheading infidels. He desperately wanted to turn Egypt over to the Muslim Brotherhood (slogan: “Death to the Jews”). He’s busy helping Iran become the hegemonic power in the Middle East (slogan: “Death to America”). And if he has his way, one day Jerusalem will be the target of the Persian atom bomb, solving his Jewish Problem™.

No war goes according to plan, especially a new kind of war with enemy combatants that look just like the farmer in his field, the passenger on the bus or the woman out shopping. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to leaders who want to protect Americans and defend American interests. But the current administration is in the process of shunning traditional allies and accommodating traditional adversaries.  Nixon to China was an example of a major change in American foreign policy. It has born much fruit. However,when these initiatives don’t seem to make thing better questions arise.

At some point, if you are looking at things in a clearheaded way – shedding rose colored glasses – you begin to wonder if it’s all a series of bad decisions by political neophytes or done with deliberate malice. You hope it's the former, but hope is not a plan.

Media Gives President a Pass Again … for Losing Afghanistan

Walter Russell Mead

Once again, be very glad we don’t have a Republican president right now. If we did, we would be treated to a merciless media pounding, night-and-day, on the series of strategic failures, mistakes and false starts that have characterized America’s war strategy in Afghanistan since 2009. ...

President Obama has been permitted to fail in Afghanistan quietly and off center stage. We hear nothing anymore about the months of agonized reflection before choosing strategies that didn’t accomplish their goals. We never see mentions of his 2008 campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan—”the necessary war”—against which we might be asked to measure what has actually been achieved....

But the heavy media bias against Republicans and for mildly to solidly left-of-center Democrats isn’t just a question of conscious and malicious bias. When the press puts Republicans through the wringer while giving Democrats the best deal it can, it’s often a reflection of the groupthink that comes naturally and almost inevitably to those who’ve spent their lives as bubble babies in the ultra-liberal world of the contemporary American campus where intellectual homogeneity is considered a virtue....

The news articles and opinion pieces they write aren’t biased in the sense that they are consciously telling untruths or twisting facts. They are reporting the world as they see it. And in that world, Obama is a master strategist, a visionary diplomat, and an innovative thinker out to change the way the world works.

Don't go to war with the President we have

There were news reports yesterday that there was going to be an attack by American, Iraqi and Kurdish forces on ISIS in Mosul.  The attack is scheduled for a month or two or three from now: April, May or possibly later.

Please don't.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.  Forget the reasons given for telegraphing our intentions months ahead of time.   They make no logical sense.  

What will happen is that the ISIS forces will have months to prepare, to reinforce, to dig in, to booby trap ... in other words to create a killing field.  And it will get quite a few Iranians, Kurds and Americans killed.

You can be sure that the hard core of the attack will be American troops, probably Marines.

In small numbers without heavy equipment.

Mosul has a population of over a million civilians.  Fighting will be house-to-house.

There will be rules of engagement that will get more of our troops killed .... or prosecuted for war crimes.  Take your pick.

Small enough to insure defeat, big enough to create a media meme.  Like Tet, which was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese.  But transformed by the media into an American military disaster, proof that we were losing.

It can have the effect of destroying American military morale as Viet Nam did.

The Left will say that Conservatives are demanding a forceful military response.  Some are.  People like John McCain - a Republican but not a conservative - have been demanding all kinds of very forceful military action.

But count me among a growing number of people who are not.  "Be careful what you wish for" is wise advice.  We knuckle dragging Neanderthals have seen how well Obama has handled Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan.  He reset our relations with Russia so well that Putin is swallowing Ukraine and there is now talk of war in Europe.  

His team dithered in a failed attempt to rescue hostages that missed by a few days; perhaps hours. Susan Rice - she who blamed a video for the Benghazi attack - claimed it wasn't Obama's fault.  “It can’t happen any faster than that . . . particularly given the complexity of the risk” she claimed.  Who are you gonna believe, known liar Susan Rice or the Pentagon spokesman who said it took a week from the time they sent a plan to the White House until the rescue attempt was made.

It should be crystal clear by now that Obama likes to micro-manage the military, even to the point of picking the victims of drone strikes.

“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

This is reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's management of the war in Viet Nam, where he picked the bombing targets.  That did not turn out well.  Wars are not won by politicians, especially politicians taking half-measures.  Compared to Obama, Johnson was W.T. Sherman who said "war is hell."  For Obama, war is icky.  The fastest way to end a war is to lose.  The president who doesn't "love America" (he may not even like America) could lose us another war.

No thanks.  No Mosul attack with Commander in Chief Obama in charge.  Let's pretend to do something but never really do it.  Let General Obama drone on.  Set up Facebook sites calling random terrorists bad names, without naming their religious affiliation.  

If Obama starts feeling belligerent, unleash the hash-tags of war.  Then pray.

American troops to fight on in Afghanistan: Obama kicks military under the bus

Leaked to the NY Times by Team Obama:

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.

But a secret order by Obama changed that.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

To me that sounds as if Americans will be in combat under any conceivable circumstance. It sounds as if the military and the new Afghan government convinced Obama that if his Afghan strategy was carried out, the war would be lost before he left office.

So, despite prior promises, Obama doesn't want Afghanistan to turn into another Libya on his watch. One Benghazi is enough.  

According to the report in the NY Times, official print house organ of the Obama administration:

“… generals both at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan urged Mr. Obama to define the mission more broadly to allow American troops to attack the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other militants if intelligence revealed that the extremists were threatening American forces in the country.

And if things go wrong, will the Commander in Chief be responsible? You have to be kidding me. It’s going to be the fault of the military. As one administration official put it:

“… the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

[Cue Obama voice] "You can'r blame me, I gave the military what it wanted.  The Commander in Chief?  Not me; it's the military's fault."

The Limbaugh Theorem in action.

I guess that Obama doesn't want al Qaida to take over Afghanistan until he leaves office

In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat

"Foreign policy" is something old bitter white men do.

Mark Steyn

And so the President assures us that his determination to "destroy" Isis won't be anything like Iraq and Afghanistan, but more on the lines of Yemen and Somalia - that's to say, one more failed state we'll drone now and again. Can you really treat one of the world's deepest pools of oil as just another piffling fringe-of-the-map basket-case? Don't worry about it. For the modern progressive, the entire planet is fringe-of-the-map. Real politics is about free contraceptives for thirtysomething college students, and transgender bathrooms for grade-schoolers. "Foreign policy" is something old bitter white men do.

Navy Cross Citation to Cpl. Clifford Woolridge

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Corporal Clifford M. Wooldridge, United States Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as Vehicle Commander, Combined Anti-Armor Platoon White, Weapons Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, Regimental Combat Team 2, FIRST Marine Division (Forward), I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) Afghanistan, on 18 June 2010 in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.

When their mounted patrol came under intense enemy fire, Corporal Wooldridge and his squad dismounted and maneuvered on the suspected enemy location. Spotting a group of fifteen enemy fighters preparing an ambush, Corporal Wooldridge led one of his fire teams across open ground to flank the enemy, killing or wounding at least eight and forcing the rest to scatter. As he held security alone to cover his fire team’s withdrawal, he heard voices from behind an adjacent wall. Boldly rushing around the corner, he came face-to-face with two enemy fighters at close range, killing both of them with his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon.

As he crouched back behind the wall to reload, he saw the barrel of an enemy machine gun appear from around the wall. Without hesitation, he dropped his empty weapon and seized the machine gun barrel. He overwhelmed the enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat, killing him with several blows to the head with the enemy’s own machine gun.

His audacious and fearless actions thwarted the enemy attack on his platoon. By his bold and decisive leadership, undaunted courage under fire, and total dedication to duty, Corporal Wooldridge reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.

H/T Vander Leun

U.S. troops prevented from helping even as al Qaeda overruns Iraqi cities

Obama's losing the war that Bush won.  By failing to negotiate a status of forces agreement at the beginning of his term in office, he guaranteed that Iraq would fall either to Iran or to al Qaeda.

Gen. Keane and others who fought in Iraq are watching their gains slip away. “We’re creeping right back to where the situation was at the beginning of the surge in 2007,” he said. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting close.

“What we could do to help them is some advisers at the major headquarters to provide some advice to them in terms on what the strategy should be and the tactics should be,” he said. “We’re not talking about returning troops again. That’s not going to be politically viable.”

Gen. Keane, who was Army vice chief of staff and a key adviser to the George W. Bush administration on how to defeat the insurgency, said Mr. al-Maliki’s government has returned to its old way of operating.

“We trained them an awful lot on how to do this, but the fact of the matter is they have ignored in the past a lot of our counterinsurgency practices by simply posting checkpoints along roads and being considerably more defensive than what you need to be in terms of a protect-the-population counterinsurgency strategy, which is what they will need to do to gain the momentum back. That’s going to be critical for them,” he said.

Of course he also screwed up Afghanistan.

Rules of engagement.

Reading Erik Prince’s book on Blackwater "Civilian Warriors" and discovered that one of the things that made his company a success was the Cole bombing.  For those who don’t remember the Cole, that was an American destroyer refueling at Aden which was attacked and nearly sunk by a small boat manned by  suicide bombers and laden with explosives that blew a 40 by 40 foot hole in the ship, killing 17 and injuring 39.  A report later concluded that even if the captain and crew had followed all the rules regarding ship protection, the “rules of engagement” would still have allowed the bombers to blow up the ship. 

The destroyer's rules of engagement, as approved by the Pentagon, kept its guards from firing upon the small boat (which was not known to be loaded with explosives) as it neared them without first obtaining permission from the Cole's captain or another officer.

Petty Officer John Washak said that right after the blast, a senior chief petty officer ordered him to turn an M-60 machine gun on the Cole's fantail away from a second small boat approaching. "With blood still on my face," he said, he was told: "That's the rules of engagement: no shooting unless we're shot at." He added, "In the military, it's like we're trained to hesitate now. If somebody had seen something wrong and shot, he probably would have been court-martialed." Petty Officer Jennifer Kudrick said that if the sentries had fired on the suicide craft "we would have gotten in more trouble for shooting two foreigners than losing seventeen American sailors."

As a result of the Cole bombing, the Navy contracted with Blackwater to teach its sailors to shoot.

It seems that the Obama administration is determined to make American servicemen targets in an Afghan shooting gallery.  From the Washington Times

The new U.S.-Afghanistan security agreement adds restrictions on already bureaucratic rules of engagement for American troops by making Afghan dwellings virtual safe havens for the enemy, combat veterans say.

The rules of engagement place the burden on U.S. air and ground troops to confirm with certainty that a Taliban fighter is armed before they can fire — even if they are 100 percent sure the target is the enemy. In some cases, aerial gunships have been denied permission to fire even though they reported that targets on the move were armed.

The proposed Bilateral Security Agreement announced Wednesday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Secretary of State John F. Kerry all but prohibits U.S. troops from entering dwellings during combat. President Obama made the vow directly to Mr. Karzai.

I wonder what the rules of engagement are for Obama’s Secret Service escort.

“U.S. forces shall not enter Afghan homes for the purposes of military operations, except under extraordinary circumstances involving urgent risk to life and limb of U.S. nationals,” Mr. Obama pledged in a letter to the Afghan leader.

Ryan Zinke, who commanded an assault team within SEAL Team 6, said of the security deal: “The first people who are going to look at it and review it are the enemy we’re trying to fight. It’s going to be a document that can be used effectively against us. This is where we either fight or go home. What’s happening is we’re losing our ability to fight overseas.”

 I wonder what the rules of engagement are for Obama’s Secret Service escort.

My life of hell in an Afghan harem

Why would a nice Jewish girl marry a Muslim Afghan? 

It is 1959. I am only 18 when my prince — a dark, older, handsome, westernized foreigner who had traveled abroad from his native home in Afghanistan — bedazzles me.

We meet at Bard College, where he is studying economics and politics and I am studying literature on scholarship.

Abdul-Kareem is the son of one of the founders of the modern banking system in Afghanistan. He wears designers sunglasses and bespoke suits and when he visits New York City, he stays at the Plaza.

He is also Muslim.

I am Jewish, raised in an Orthodox home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the daughter of Polish immigrants. My dad worked door-to-door selling soda and seltzer.

But none of this matters. We don’t talk about religion. Instead, we stay up all night discussing film, opera and theater. We are bohemians.

We date for two years. Then, when I express my desire to travel, he asks me to marry him.

I don't think we're getting the whole story here, but it doesn't matter. She arrives in Kabul and finds what it's like to live in a compound with a mother-in-law who's ready to kill her if she doesn't obey.  And a husband who's transformed from a well dressed, "Westernized" bohemian to a Muslim in a Muslim society.  Let's just say that it's not what she expected. 

She finally escapes, sick and pregnant. And she not only survives but learns something about the romantic image that Liberalism weaves with its fantasy of multiculturalism.

I’ve never told this story in detail before, but felt that I must now. Because I hear some westerners preach the tortured cultural relativism that excuses the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. Because I see the burqa on the streets of Paris and New York and feel that Afghanistan has followed me back to America.

I call myself a feminist — but not just any feminist. My kind of feminism was forged in the fires of Afghanistan. There I received an education — an expensive, almost deadly one — but a valuable one, too.

I understand firsthand how deep-seated the hatred of women is in that culture. I see how endemic indigenous barbarism and cruelty is and unlike many other intellectuals and feminists, I don’t try to romanticize or rationalize it.

I got out, and I will never return.

She also manages to translate the experiences she had at the hands of her first lover to her all men.  She was primed for it as a young girl and never really learned to outgrow it as a woman.  It should have been a teachable moment; instead she incorporated her treatment in Afghanistan into her skewed worldview.  Rather sad.