Paper Bag Over the Head Territory

Mark Steyn-The Scale of Humiliation

The scale of America’s global humiliation is so total that I see my friends at Fox News cannot even bear to cover it. As I write, every other world network – the BBC, Deutsche Welle, France 24, not to mention the Chinese – is broadcasting the collapse of the American regime in real time; on Fox, meanwhile, they’re talking about the spending bill and the third Covid shot and the dead Haitians …as if the totality of the defeat is such that for once it cannot be fixed into the American right’s usual consolations (“well, this positions us pretty nicely for 2022”).

On the leftie side, of course, the court eunuchs have risen as one to protect the Dementia Kid, and are working as hurriedly as the Kabul document-shredders in an effort to figure out a way to blame it all on Trump.

99 Replies to “Paper Bag Over the Head Territory”

    1. Did I just read somewhere that Byedin-Heiress will finish their evacuation of 30,000 people by Aug 31!? Uh … someone better tell our drooler-in-Chief that there won’t be anything but cadavers left by Aug 31!!!! Newsflash: The Tallieee-bahn are in charge of Kabul … NOW!!! There won’t be anything left to evacuate in two weeks.

      Here comes the sequel to Blackhawk Down … Chinook Down … with all 50 passengers. Shot down with our own weapons. Thanks Raytheon and Dementia-Joe

  1. Afghanistan is a distraction, while other “stuff” is implemented. Don’t be fooled by it. It’s a smoke screen for unrelated actions going on in the background.

      1. Yeah. It’s not in the background. Making enemies of the state people who perceive government restrictions for Covid and don’t think it’s representative of the Republic. Likewise, merely contemplating denial of interstate travel for the unvaccinated.

        President Pedophile ain’t long for the world. Who does the hated VP Kameltoe choose?

      2. Maricopa County preliminary audit results to be delivered next week.

        Quick, start a new war to distract the sheep!

      3. LindaL

        Such as setting up for next election theft, as they will not win in and honest election in 2022.

  2. Oh, oh, but, if a nation doesn’t have an army to defend it, a quarter-of-a-million foreign invaders could just walk into the country with impunity every month!

    America’s entire Military is AWOL. They wouldn’t DARE risk another Blackhawk Down moment in Kabul … or along our Southern border … where the Calli-bahn cartel rules the land.

    Nap time for President Bonzo

      1. Have heard that this was the official stand, but that there was a fair bit of private enterprise still tolerated.

    1. “Harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend”

      The rot really accelerated with Rumsfeld’s incompetence. Then Obama took up the charge with glee. Trump didn’t do much to fix the problem (Israel peace deals notwithstanding), and now Biden is here to finish it all off.

      Praise be to Xi, our glorious future awaits.

    1. And the people left behind right now are told to hide in place…
      Like that is going to work this time.
      Anyone left behind is on their own resources to get out as I don’t think the Teliban has any forgiveness to hand out after twenty years of bombing.

      1. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have a division standing by in Kabul to ensure an orderly retreat. If they kill too many Americans they may have problems. In the British 1842 retreat from Kabul they managed to lose 4,500 troops and maybe 12,000 civilians. I say turn the shithole to glass to let the next assholes know what will happen if the frig with you.

        1. The Taliban got to Kabul before the 3000 strong security force arrived?

          Which presumably were part of the troops evacuated a few weeks ago?

          1. Reminds me of the Grand old Duke of York, he had 10,000 men they marched up to the top of the hill and they marched back down again. Except these 3000 clearly didn’t know whethere they were coming or going.

      2. Taliban never had any forgiveness to begin with.
        This is the price civilization pays for treating subhuman as human. Evacuate as many as possible turn the rest into a crater. It is the merciful thing to do.

        1. Yeah … I’d say we are all DOOMED lest we relearn the difference between GOOD and EVIL.

          A foreign policy built on a core principal of moral relativism is DOOMED. Because TRUTH always wins in the end. Just wait for politicians spinning this as “their country … “their choice”. You will hear it from both left and right. Meanwhile … little girls getting sold into a lifetime of slavery … is “their choice”. Thanks Jimmy Carter … you didn’t REALLY understand a Word of the Gospel. And to think, I voted for you because you SAID you were a Christian …

        2. Colon, you’d make a fine Afgan hillbilly yourself, with that attitude.

          “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
          And the women come out to cut up what remains,
          Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
          An’ go to your God like a soldier.”

      3. If I was a greedy,pirate, instant Taliban Commander General Warlord, I’d be taking hostage…er..”guests” right now. 1,000 Anericans, Westerners, you know to protect them. Did you see my crazy cousin Mohammed slit that gals throat? Of course security is expensive. I’ve secured my guests all over Kabul. Very nice accommodations. Let’s start negotiations at $10 million a head, so to speak.

      1. Wait until this American fecklessness affects a real place, with real strategic implications. Afghanistan is a dusty far-away desert with no industry.

        Taiwan is not.

        1. Well to be fair, hardly anyone else has stepped up the last 60 years.

          Fat dumb and two oceans US will be fine..

    2. It is, and most at home cheer its demise. Such is the price of multiculturalism, diversity and mass importation of savages who have more in common with Taliban than with us.

    1. Are you kidding!? He got “elected” despite hiding in his basement (as he is doing now). He will be spoken of in heroic terms for watching TV in the Camp David bunker “Ready Room”. The Politburo and presstitutes will turn Byedin-Heiress into a heroine.

      1. Kenji you know as well as most people in the world he did not get elected. Xi and Putin must be splitting teir sides in laughtr. Meanwhile, China is bagging all that US technology

    2. He is going to plagiarized this as a brag at his next press conference about ending that 20 year war; it will prove he is smart, not stupid like some people say:
      “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. ” (George Orwell)

        1. A rubber doll head with only a sparse patch of hair coming out of round plug holes … would be a better figurehead than a confused Byedin-Heiress.

  3. You thought that when the US betrayed you guys on Keystone it was bad. The US government cannot be trusted. I bet in Taiwan right this minute they are planning how to get their hands on nukes. South Korea and Japan likewise. We thought it was bad when that all girl command crew rammed a combat ship that has radar that can detect a swimmer at two miles into a freighter, because the officers on the bridge weren’t speaking. That was just the pre-show. One of those jokes they give away in the trailer.

    We are seeing the end of an age, and the people taking over are a lot more ruthless.

    Whoever talked Joe into this has no interest in being photographed with him… LOL.

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1427002705327841281

    1. Byedin-Heiress thinks he’s watching the capture of Osama-bin-Laden on body cams. He doesn’t remember watching that 10 years ago.

  4. Two comments from the Althouse blog thread:
    MR said…
    “Far from it for me to defend Pres. Biden, but: We saw this already under Pres. Trump. The military commanders and advisors lied to him, manipulating to get the continuation of the war they wanted. After a while, both Trump and Biden decided that there’s no sense in listening to them anymore. CNN and the Wall Street Journal never figured that out.
    Probably the truth is that they are so messed-up over there that they just are not able to plan an orderly withdrawal. Planes? What planes?
    Maybe fire the lot of them since they aren’t currently doing anything anyhow, and begin to rebuild the military without all the woke idiots. Of course because Joe Biden will do no such thing.”

    Yancey Ward said…
    “I have written it before and will write it again- this outcome was always the ultimate endpoint. We were never going to stay forever and we no longer have the will to do what was actually necessary to eradicate the Taliban. Whether we leave today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now, this same clusterfuck was going to happen.
    There are numerous decisions made over the last 20 years that led to this day, but Bush’s decision to nation build a kind of democracy was the main one- it was a hopeless task unless one is willing to literally eradicate the Taliban (and I doubt this is possible, but it is the only potential path to build a more modern functioning Afghan government). The same thing is going to happen in Iraq when we finally fully depart, which we will at some point because staying forever isn’t a realistic option.
    I don’t blame Biden for this outcome- it was going happen, slowly or quickly, but it was going to happen. Ultimately, not enough of the Afghanis ever wanted us there, nor did the ones we put in charge have the competence to rule the country. Maybe, just maybe, we have learned the lesson, but I doubt it. We ourselves have become too corrupt and incompetent to do anything correctly.”
    https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6329595&postID=3188403049010207693

    1. Probably would have been better for the Afghans to turn them over to the Anti-Taliban warlords, 15 years ago.

    2. The west could have supported the Najibullah govt. but they didn’t because of the rabid polish catholic bigot Zbiegniew Brezhshinky; puppet handler of Jimmy Carter.
      We f***ed ourselves in Afghanistan. The US military is worthless because the US political elite is worthless.
      The US is terminally decadent and corrupt. China rules now, get used to it.

      1. This “I for one welcome our new insect overlords” song-and-dance is mucho premature…

    3. From

      When Bush went into Afigan, over 50% of the population was 18 or under. There was no chance of winning with kids , who had no life experience, to rely on to run the country. Nation building needs competent people with life experience, to run a country>

  5. To reprise the illustrious Bruno Ganz:

    “Der Krieg ist verloren. Tun Sie was Sie wollen!”

    (The war is lost. Do what you want.)

    Cheers

    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  6. https://rumble.com/vl7fpn-special-broadcast-warroom-with-steve-bannon.html

    Andy Ngo had some tweets showing the current situation in Kabul, which appears to be 1000’s of people running in various directions on the tarmac of the airport…

    I think (hope, not really think) it’s too early to speak of “prisoners of war” or hostages… but there’s an awful lot of people stuck there without a clear path to freedom, and an absence of leadership from the White House, and from America’s newly woke military hierarchy.

    I think Mark Steyn is holding back in his column above.
    Nobody is ever going to mention the idiot Biden in the White House without mentioning 15-16th of August 2021and the events unfolding in this moment.

    1. But what happened early in January was far, far worse, wasn’t it?

        1. More like an “inserection”: happened suddenly, climaxed in minutes, and quickly deflated. And everybody will be dealing with the consequences for life…

  7. What’s the point of having military might if you cannot use it. China will not fall for that silliness. Neither Russia. They both use what might they might have.

  8. Anybody wondering if Dubya’s gonna be kissing Obama’s and Biden’s asses in public going forward after the epic rollover by the U.S. military in Afghanistan? If anyone’s feeling like carrying out seppuku it’s him. All those lives he’s thrown into Afghanistan’s meat grinder. Wasted.

  9. Unfortunately, the first priority seems to be to burn the flags, wall plaques, and other symbols of the American presence, before they start shredding an burning the code books and other top secret documents.

    I just hope we have a plan for how to respond when they try shooting down one of the evacuation helicopters. And then there are the American citizens who will be left behind… they’ve already been abandoned and told to “shelter in place” until State Department and Military can figure out how to help.

    This has devolved from a farce, to a fiasco, to a debacle. It’s beginning to look like Dunkirk would have been without any boats.

    At this point each and every 4-star should be relieved of command. If their replacements cannot handle the job, sack them too. I have to believe that there are still some competent senior officers who can at least deal with the chaos.

    1. Shooting down some Americans is the last thing the Taliban would want to do. That might actually invoke a serious American military response.

      No. The Taliban will be shooting at Americans with cameras. Filming the humiliation, the defeat, the retreat. The final capitulation of a “Superpower.”

    2. Sometime in the next 12 to 48 hours, the Taliban with the heavy weapons (AA guns, artillery, etc) will arrive, and then the airport cannot be used any more.

    3. Sack everyone down to Colonel in every unit. Those are the guys who actually run things in the military. Generals are just too political for practical command in the field. Looking for their next star.

  10. Afganistan doesn’t matter….

    China sees a weak America, and looks at Taiwan and the Philippines

  11. I drove through Brampton today and stopped at a couple of places that I knew would have Al-Jizmazera on. Plenty of savages glued to screens, mood has been celebratory. Almost like Concordia enricher students on 9/11. A street party seems to be brewing.

    1. I would not be surprised in the least to see them dancing in the streets of Bramistan (Bramladesh?) While the Peel police sit by twiddling their thumbs

      At a time when church services, weddings, funerals and basically any public gathering regardless of size were banned due to the coof Peel Region’s finest were directing traffic outside one of the areas many mosques after some sort of celebration took place there according to a friend who was passing by. Different rules for different folks as per usual in Canaduh.

      1. Yep there are two kinds. Radicals that want to kill you and nonradicals that want the radicals to kill you.

  12. Last grownup we had in the White House? Bush One. Desert Storm was a coalition effort to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The Iraqi Army was on the run, we were killing them by the thousands using air power. That’s Air Power. You know, airplanes drop bombs on the bad guys. Kills them. Dead. Bush called off the dogs because their job was done.

    1. Bush one was deep state, he was working for industrial military complex. They love war, as it brings in $$$$$$$$ for them

    2. Bush One stopped early. Saddam survived, his government survived, a quarter-million innocent Swamp Arabs were slaughtered, and the son “W” had to come in and finish the job for him a decade later.

  13. The important thing is that Biden has condemned those who have made comparisons to the fall of Saigon. We can all rest assured the msm will stigmatize those making the comparison with as much venom as required to make people hesitate to voice that opinion in public.
    I’ll bet the Democrats really have to restrain themselves from excoriating the Republicans for giving a helpless old man in the first stages of Alzheimer’s a hard time about something he can’t be expected to be able to handle given his condition. Perhaps we’re only months away from being obliged to pity poor President Biden.

  14. Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time.
    Chalk up another one for that mysterious shit hole everyone for one reason or another wants to conquer but can’t.
    Mongols, British, Russians and now the United States, just to name a few. There’s a lot of blame to go around and Biden deserves a lot of it to be sure, but how GW Bush’s name never gets mentioned is kind of weird.
    Just saying.
    Further – Someone made a lot of money when we were there and it wasn’t us. Wanna talk about opium fields…I’m open for that.

  15. It would be terrible if someone reported that form for phishing, since it asks for government document numbers that would make it easy to create an identity….

  16. Serious question…how is an unvaccinated, unmasked, non socially distanced army of men with negligible access to medical care able to be hale and hearty enough to take over an entire country in a matter of days? How are they not all ill and dying?

  17. Steyn was a loud cheerleader for getting involved in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place. When critics said it seemed to be a pipe dream that shitholes like that could turn into stable democracies he called it :”The soft bigotry of low expectations.” In other words, he thought it was going to work,and you’re a bigot if you don’t believe it.

    Steyn can blame Biden and the DOD all he wants, but it was the neo-con ideas that put us in this mess. Maybe he personally can admit he was wrong, before he starts pointing fingers.

    1. No, it was going to war with no expectations of victory. Both Democrat and Republican are guilty of that. It’s not a liberal vs. conservative as you are suggesting.
      Korea was Truman (D)
      Vietnam was Kennedy/ Johnson (D)
      Desert Storm was GHW Bush (R)
      Afghanistan was GW Bush (R)
      None of the above were undertaken with annihilating the enemy in mind. McArthur intended to win Korea but Truman wouldn’t allow it.

      1. I don’t think it was liberals v. conservatives. It’s just they never learned that they can’t win a guerrilla war. Militarily they “won” Vietnam, they “won” Afghanistan, they “won” Iraq, but the bad guys wouldn’t go away. Guys like Steyn say, go in, we’ll do it right this time. Sounds like a Marxist when confronted with the failures of communist states. It doesn’t work, learn your lesson.

        Stay out of shitholes in the Middle East. Let them kill each other.

    2. Nope, Steyn never believed in Nation-Building in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004 he was writing that the missions were over, punishment had been meted out and the US needed to pull out. He favoured using the US military as retribution, not as attempting to be bff’s. You need to reread those old Steyn columns from the NP back in the day.

      He said “the Afghans and Iraqi people should be held to the same standard as everyone else” i.e., if you need with us, you get the horns.

      But that is back in the day when the US military was still being used to protect the American people.

      Nowadays it has become the Praetorian Guard, purposed to protect the lifestyles of the establishment elites.

  18. There was some justification for going into the ME. After 9/11 the PTB realized they had 330million+ soft targets. One option would be to take the battle to the enemy. There are a lot of very good reasons for the saying “The best defense is a good offense.” In a way sending troops into the Middle East could also function like a Honey Pot defense.
    If what I suggest is a consideration, they would have and should have spent the time to harden potential targets and infrastructure, as well as beef up intelligence. Key would be exploring ways to eliminate dependence on that region for oil. At the end of the day, except for a brief period of energy independence, they did a mediocre job.
    This is what I can’t reconcile. The PTB obviously are eager to remain dependent on the ME and do what they can to diminish energy independence.

  19. Looks like we need some Patriarchy here. Why do I not smell some testosterone ? Will there be a ‘man -up’ ?

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