113 Comments

We'll sooner see a unicorn. I'm an old man with decades of close observation of our high officials. The scales fell from my eyes when we quit and ran away in Viet Nam. One resignation is all that I have seen: Cyrus Vance Sec of State, to object to Pres. Carter's disastrous handling of the Iranian hostage crises (1970). Sounds similar to our present, no?

Expand full comment
founding

Jordan, your words give hope to the heretofore silent and anguished majority. Silent no more. Semper Fi

Expand full comment

Bari - Hoping that you'll consider publishing a response to Rafia Zakaria's truly retrograde, bigoted commentary which is getting quite a bit of coverage on NPR and in other circles. Its really dangerous and needs urgent attention. Thanks for your consideration.

Expand full comment

You did a great job, Bari, in this interview. McMaster did not offer you much heavy thinking. He basically shifted his feet when you asked the questions that simply lie on the surface of our rage at this inanity. When it came to the military's culpability in this chaos he would giggle and not refute you. That's the best he had. The canard that Trump psychologically clouded Milley's judgment so that he could not see how bad things were was beyond insane. And his assertion that bringing Afghanis to America was the best way to defeat the Taliban was illusionary. Is this man really military? His answers were not direct, clear, and avoided anything approaching taking responsibility for atmospheres he helped create. A most disappointing moment. But you still managed to express the soul that is in our questions, outrage at incompetence, blame shifting, and intellectual laziness. Thank you for staying close to the American soul.

Expand full comment

The Afghan people have a lot of problems. I am not a fan of them. When many were shipped to Europe in 2015, they were the ONLY group of refugees to act out raping boys, women, and elderly women in gangs. They had contempt for Western Culture and thought themselves superior to those in the country which invited them. They are known as being lazy and try to game the system.

Let's get it straight; we went to Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and Almeida. We did not go there to liberate women. If you read Foreign Policy magazine just talks about what a shame it is for the women of Afghanistan. Real propaganda that fed this disaster was how Afghanistan would be stable without women written in April 2021 was real propaganda that fed this disaster. Everybody bowed to the cultural woke feminists and were afraid to see the real problems.

Muslim women do not want to be saved the way White feminists think. All White feminists want is for Muslim women to remove the hijab and wear makeup. Muslim feminists, of whom Mona Eltahawy is perhaps the best known, seeks to challenge the victim narrative and assert their place in the feminist discourse on their own terms. Saving oneself, as opposed to being saved by others, whether by escaping physically, emotionally, or creatively, is a key theme in the emerging Muslim feminist narrative. See (3) below.

Biden thought the goal was to achieve long-term political solutions like women's rights Boy were the Woke Deep State Social Warriors mistaken. How can you force someone to go to heaven that does not want to go? Now we will have to deal with lazy, West hating, Rapists. They should fit in well in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. By the way, they saved the Pride flag that flew at the US Embassy.(4)

(1) https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/30/afghanistan-taliban-united-states-women-rights-doha-negotiatons-peace-deal/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/03/afghanistan-women-rights-taliban-biden-senate-human-rights-withdrawal/

(3) https://conversationalist.org/2021/06/08/muslim-feminists-are-not-interested-in-the-white-womans-gaze/

(4) https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/15/biden-prioritized-lgbt-agenda-afghanistan-terrorists-took-over/

Expand full comment

There's a bit of the sunk cost fallacy to the 'death in vain' considerations. Additionally, "Choices like his inspired me and thousands more to follow him into combat" comes terribly close to the glorification of combat. I thought the realities learned in the past 50-100 years had shown such glory is not realistic. Bravery, devotion to fellow soldiers and country, yes. But too much death, destruction, blood and guts.

But the military is there to pursue policy, not to make it. Soldiers are there to implement tactics determined by higher-ups. Soldiers accepting responsibility for policy, strategy and tactical failures is a bit grandiose. (Not unlike guilt people often feel for matters truly beyond their control.) A huge lesson (among many) from Viet Nam is to respect those who serve our country and don't hold them responsible for bad leadership and bad policy decisions. The public won't, so I hope vets don't.

Expand full comment

The captain of the USS Midway, whose ship was a haven for those fleeing Saigon in 1975, says this is much worse of a FUBAR than what he had on his hands.

Expand full comment

McMaster’s solution? Full on immigration of Afghani’s to America so they can save Afghanistan from here. This is not a serious thinker. He is what is wrong with the military. Bari kept trying to put him on the hook. He stumbled and stuttered. He simply would not admit our military leaders are not serious people, even as McMaster is not.

Expand full comment

I just posted this on my social media - Bari Weiss on her podcast Honestly said to HR McMaster that Gen. Miley in June had said it there is a medium risk that the Taliban would retake Afghanistan and it would take two years. McMaster said it was Trump’s fault in effect, that Trump had caused psychological conditions that clouded Milley’s judgement. McMaster is part of the problem. I wish Bari had severely called McMaster out on such specious reasoning.

Expand full comment

The larger questions are why would Pompeo, purported at Trumps direction, negotiate an agreement with the Taliban in this first place? And with all our intel in Afghanistan, how could anyone have missed the Taliban’s preparation for an operation that swept across Afghanistan in a matter of days? There are lots of levels to be investigated in this “cluster ____”!

Expand full comment

Of course it was Trump who negotiated a surrender to the Taliban in February 2020. You can read the surrender document here:

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf

Expand full comment

Mark thanks for sending the link. It is an odd document destined to fail. Why would the Trump admin. negotiate with the Taliban while, at the same time, disavowing it’s legitimacy? Strange times we live in. Still, Biden has had seven months in which to restructure the deal.

Expand full comment

There exists in this world a sizable and passionate group of Islamic fundamentalists on a mission to spread an extreme version of Islam throughout the world-including America. Those are the words from the Taliban. The Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, and the Iranian forms of Islam is not compatible with America's Western Values. America cannot protect girls and women from their own culture.

Expand full comment

I love how McMaster blames Pompeo.

Didn't Pompeo have a boss?

I'm pretty sure he did.

Geez, if only I could remeber that guy's name ...

Expand full comment

FYI : Even though Biden threw The Afghan Army under the bus Afghanistan lost 66,000 troops in addition to nearly 50,000 civilians. This war was a slow motion crime and disgrace. W, Rumfeld, and "The Military Leaders" who executed this F Up should be publicly shamed and Court Marshaled . The Contractors (paid militias) should be investigated. The idiots who planned and the architects that designed the supersized "Land of Oz" Embassy need to be outed and fired . Finally ....Journalists need to step up their game. ...for the health of this nation.

Expand full comment

What about congress? The bucks stops with them.

Expand full comment

Congress was lied to by the generals along with all the rest of us.

Expand full comment

"We don’t talk much about virtue today in American public life. It seems like many of the people in positions of power have given up on ideas like honor, duty, courage and integrity. "

This is what stands out to me. Sure Trumpsters have little to no standing to talk about these things being absent in our leadership but I note it has been absent for decades. DECADES. I'm not sure who the last president was who took some responsibility for failures on his watch. Maybe JFK?

Expand full comment

"When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are." ~ Thucydides

The casualties we require are for those in command, field officers and leading politicians, who put our dead in harm's way--and escaped themselves. It is they who deserve loss of benefits, banishment from decent company, and everlasting shame. Gen. McMaster among them.

Expand full comment

100%. When is JUST ONE of the political elite going to be held accountable? JUST ONE. Until that happens I have no hope for our country.

Expand full comment

The girls in Afghanistan who got a 20-year reprieve from being sex slaves can attest to the fact that the benefit of US intervention was not zero.

But it could have been done a lot better.

Expand full comment