Attacks outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul left at least 12 U.S. service members and an unknown number of Afghan citizens dead.
It’s a tragedy, but what did anyone expect? An orderly and bloodless withdrawal? Please.
An ultimate goal for ISIS-K would be to get a bomb on one of the packed to the gills flights out, with 600 plus people on board. This hasn’t happened, and I’m guessing it won’t, because it looks as if the US military has been doing a great job, and under thankless conditions – much like the Capitol Police back in January.
Like Ezra Klein wrote in this morning’s Times (link https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html), all the handwringing that the punditariat has been doing would be better spent in analyzing how and why the US spent nearly 20 years screwing up while IN Afghanistan. Goal: no more Afghanistan Wars.
It’s okay when a Republican does it. Just ask any journo.
My first inclination was that fractious parts of the Taliban were going to be responsible, but it does make sense that there are other actors out there who don’t want this to end (peacefully or otherwise). I hadn’t really thought about ISIS presence in Afghanistan, but they certainly wouldn’t be content to just let the US leave and it’s pretty ironic now that we are working with the Taliban, to deal with ISIS attacks.
With the US pull-out, the Taliban will be able to consolidate power in Afghanistan and the US will be able to commit more forces to rooting out what’s left of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Certainly a strange bedfellows moment.
Biden’s critics — especially the scandal-starved junkies in the press corpse (sic) — wouldn’t be satisfied unless he evacuated every single Afghan man, woman, child, dog, cat, and hamster who’s not a member of the Taliban.
Just kidding!
They wouldn’t be satisfied by that, either.
Indeed Klein was really spot on.
Now that DAESH is active, it is going to be impossible to do many more civilians and there is a real risk of DAESH being scum of inserting sleepers into the legit refugees - a play not only on the plane but after.
And does not allow any of them into the US.
“Look at all the dog and cat poop Biden left.”
These would be the ISIS terrorists DJT told us the Taliban would be killing?
Reagan won reelection handily in 1984 after 241 service persons were killed in the Beirut bombing in 1983.
DAESH are an entity that actually merits the lazy bigots’smear “death cult”- they are weirdly exactly what islamophobes think all Islam is.
Also DJT supposedly defeated Isis, you know but everyone forgot.
The initial chaos at the airport would have been their best chance to smuggle a bomb on board. Sleepers are something to worry about, but I imagine there are enough safeguards in place now to stop someone with an IED from getting anywhere near a plane.
I don’t think a bomb now is a real threat, but with pressure to do fast screening it is entirely plausible to worry about DAESH pivoting to trying to insert sleepers in to try to take action later.
War and terror is way more profitable than peace and equanimity.
Yesterday’s Covid attack in the US left 1300 Americans dead.
And better for ratings! Ask any sociopathic media exec (but I repeat myself).
Which prompted Reagan to precipitously withdraw from Lebanon, just to make the analogy complete.
I can predict one thing with utter certainty, however. The mother of one of the marines killed today will appear on stage at the 2024 GOP convention to tell everyone how Joe Biden murdered her son.