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No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

This poem written by Donne (1572-1631), illustrates the unbridgeable gulf between Western Civilization and 7th Century Islamism.  It acknowledges the inestimable value of each human life.  The bell, of which Donne writes, is the village church bell, tolling to call the village to a funeral service.  When the bell would toll, villagers would wonder who died, for death was the constant companion of the people of Donne’s time.  There is no need to wonder, for as in Adam, all die, and every life matters.  Not to the Taliban.

This article is a collection of incredibly fast-moving developments, most of which the American media is taking pains not to cover lest they reflect badly on D/S/Cs, which is the only way any sane American can possibly see them.  Before plunging into the morass, take this link to a PJ Media article by David Solway that explains the unpardonable sins necessitating the removal of Donald Trump from office.  It’s a useful bit of perspective on current events.

Also take this link to a National Review article on President Biden’s deteriorating mental state.  I’ll add that what’s wrong is progressive dementia, and the drugs that have, for the first five or so months of the Age of Biden, allowed him to be at least somewhat coherent in public appearances, are no longer consistently working.  There is no definitive diagnosis—his handlers are absolutely avoiding that—but Biden’s continuing decline is there for all to see, which is why Biden is being kept away from the public as much as possible, and only appears briefly, most likely on those few occasions when the drugs are still at least partially working.

Remember, gentle readers, how Biden said he has planned for every contingency?  Yeah, well, not so much: 

The Biden State Department moved in June to cancel a program overseeing the protection and evacuation of American citizens stationed overseas in the case of an emergency, just as the Taliban was taking over Afghanistan, according to an internal State Department memo obtained by the

Washington Free Beacon and multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The Biden State Department moved to dissolve the Trump-era crisis response program, according to an internal State Department memo and sources familiar with the matter. That memo, which was marked sensitive but unclassified and was signed by Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon, approved the ‘discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR),’ a new State Department entity created during the Trump administration to coordinate emergency response services overseas.

The CCR bureau was established late last year by then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo. In a notification sent to Congress in October and also obtained by the Free Beacon, the Trump administration said the new bureau would provide ‘aviation, logistics, and medical support capabilities for the Department’s operational bureaus, thereby enhancing the secretary’s ability to protect American citizens overseas in connection with overseas evacuations in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster.’

The Harris/Biden/Whoever Administration is refusing to provide any details.  Why, in the name of all that’s holy, would they do away with this kind of capability, particularly when they knew they were going to be abandoning Afghanistan?  Because Trump, that’s why.  Even though it will likely cost American lives, what more reason do such people need?

For a bit of terrifying, comic relief, take this link to an Andrea Widberg article to see American trainers trying to teach Afghan trainees jumping jacks.  It’s at once hilarious and terrifying, because it shows the incredible cultural divide between Afghanistan and the West.  And for an example of the horror the best and brightest produce, here’s what our UN Ambassador, Linda Thomas Greenfield—no, I’ve never seen or heard of her either—is doing:

We are hearing from people in Afghanistan that they are getting threats from the Taliban, and we have expressed in no uncertain terms, here at the United Nations, through a very strongly-worded press statement from the Security Council, that we expect the Taliban to respect human rights including the rights of women and girls.

Ooooo!  A “very strongly-worded press statement”! It’s a wonder the Taliban haven’t fled, in terror, back to Pakistan for good.  I wonder how much that gig pays?  I’m sure I can write “very strongly worded press statements” for less.  And Mr. Biden is exercising the kind of strength on the international stage we’ve come to expect:

The White House revealed President Joe Biden has not spoken with world leaders since the Taliban took control of Kabul, the capitol city of Afghanistan.

‘He has not yet spoken with any other world leaders,’ White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in response to a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a press briefing Tuesday [08-17-21].

He has apparently since spoken to two: Boris Johnson of the UK and Angela Merkel of Germany.  As for the rest of the world…  But Mr. Biden did speak to the nation on an issue of great importance, as Scott Johnson at Powerline reports:

Joe Biden just took the lectern in the East Room at the White House to stare vacantly into the teleprompter and announce that there are people dying who didn’t need to die. It didn’t need to be this way, he said. Unbelievably, he wasn’t referring to his own performance as commander-in-chief regarding our national humiliation underway in Afghanistan. He was talking about Covid-19, vaccinations, and booster shots. Not a word about the historic debacle in Afghanistan.

But he took on world opinion. Some world leaders say we shouldn’t be getting a third shot! He dares to disagree.

The people running the daycare operation at the White House must be out of their minds. What a complete and utter disgrace.

Mr. Biden did, however, issue stern threats—to American governors who are allowing parents to decide about masking their children, and to the operators of nursing homes across the country.  And no one can say Biden doesn’t have his priorities in order, as Breitbart.com reports:

President Joe Biden celebrates World Humanitarian Day on Thursday while Americans are trapped in Afghanistan after Sunday’s collapse.

The White House wrote in a statement paying ‘tribute to the humanitarian workers and everyone on the ground advocating for and delivering life-saving aid to the most vulnerable every day.’

Apparently that doesn’t include the tens of thousands of Americans Biden stranded behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.  But not to worry.  The Secretary of Defense has things well in hand, as Breitbart.com reports:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared stumped for an answer after a reporter asked him if the United States is relying on ‘diplomacy with the Taliban’ to allow people safe passage to the Kabul airport, at his first appearance in front of the press after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

The reporter asked Austin: ‘So it sounds like you’re saying this depends on diplomacy with the Taliban. That’s it. That’s our only option is getting them to agree to do this.’

Austin remained silent for several seconds and looked away before Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley stepped in with a response.

That—a deer in the headlights stare—is leadership, gentle readers, the kind we need in this kind of crisis.  And how are we doing at evacuating Americans?  This 08-18-21 report is representative:

The Pentagon said Wednesday morning that between Tuesday 3 a.m. and Wednesday 3 a.m., the military evacuated about 2,000 from the Kabul airport, including 325 Americans.

That small number of Americans is compared to the estimated 11,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan, following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the Biden administration’s disastrously-executed withdrawal.

Current reports indicate C-17’s—the few that are departing–are leaving only about 60% full.  Their normal capacity is a bit of 300 personnel, though one C-17 crew managed to fly over 800 Afghans out.  And how is our brilliant, “planned for every contingency,” evacuation going?

Right. Here’s how well things are going at the airport:

British troops in Kabul on Thursday confirmed a horrifying rumor, telling reporters that desperate women in Kabul are throwing their babies over razor-wire barriers in the hope soldiers will catch them and take them out of Afghanistan. Some of the children landed in the razor wire.

‘It was terrible, women were throwing their babies over the razor wire, asking the soldiers to take them, some got caught in the wire,’ a senior British officer told Sky News on Thursday.

‘I’m worried for my men, I’m counseling some, everyone cried last night,’ he said.

An unnamed British Parachute Regiment officer, possibly the same one, gave a similar account to the UK Independent on Thursday.

‘The mothers were desperate, they were getting beaten by the Taliban. They shouted, ‘save my baby’ and threw the babies at us. Some of the babies fell on the barbed wire. It was awful what happened. By the end of the night there wasn’t one man among us who was not crying,’ he said.

But we’ve planned for every contingency!  American troops are being forced to take infants and babies as well.  We’ve also learned British and French special forces troops operating out of Kabul Airport are going outside the wire to rescue their people:

American troops, of course, are not.  Don’t get me wrong, gentle readers, it’s not because they don’t want to or can’t do the job. Things aren’t going so well for the media either:

CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward on Wednesday delivered a report from the ground of Kabul, Afghanistan, following the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

Ward said she and her crew were ‘accosted’ just outside of the Kabul Airport and she was forced to cover her face. After showing that a Taliban member took the safety off of his AK-47 and ran through a crowd of people, she aired a clip of a Taliban member charging her and a producer with the butt of a gun.

Not to worry.  Every contingency has been planned for.  And how are our allies taking things?  David Horovitz at The Times Of Israel provides a representative sample:

For Israel and its allies and semi-allies in the region, the US mishandling of Afghanistan also shocks and horrifies because it gives succor to terrorist groups and extremist regimes. First and foremost of these is Iran, closing in on the bomb, toying with the US in negotiations over a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, determined to destroy ‘Little Satan’ Israel, and now even more contemptuous of the ‘Great Satan.’

For the United States, however, what’s ultimately worst about the abandonment of Afghanistan to some of the darkest forces on the planet is that it negates, rather than serves, that core presidential obligation to ensure the security and well-being of the American people. The US deployment had been greatly scaled back, and the losses, still of course terrible, reduced to a fraction of those in earlier years. The hapless departure and its consequences, bitter experience indicates all too well, will exact a far greater cost than maintaining that deployment would have.

Putting America and Americans first?  Oh, those silly, unsophisticated,  foreigners!  The Daily Caller explains:

The Biden administration continued to inform American citizens in Afghanistan as of Thursday evening they could have to pay more than $2,000 to board an evacuation flight out of the country, despite the State Department telling the press hours before that it had no intention of levying any such charges.

This is apparently what Biden meant by unifying America, and it’s certainly what he meant by planning for every contingency.  We allow unvetted foreign nationals, many infected with Covid, and many not from Central and South America or Mexico, across our southern border.  No charge.  We put them up in hotels.  No charge.  We bus and fly them across the country, dropping them in American towns and cities without advance warning.  No charge.  We strand tens of thousands of Americans behind enemy lines, their lives in imminent danger, and we charge them for the privilege of saving the lives our government put in jeopardy?  Sounds about right.

But surely the Taliban want to cooperate?  They want to be respected members of the international community, they’re all about diversity and inclusion, intersectionality, LGBTQWERTY rights, and they fully intend to respect the rights of woman and girls, and welcome them into their government?

Senior Taliban leader Waheedullah Hashimi said on Thursday the group would not implement democracy in Afghanistan because Afghan culture and Islamic sharia law do not support such a political system.

‘There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country. We will not discuss what type of political system we should apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law and that is it,’ Hashimi told Reuters.

Even if the Taliban leadership in Kabul intended to temporarily honor a promise to allow Americans, allies and some Afghans out of Afghanistan unmolested, they do not have a unified command and control network.  Most of their foot soldiers are illiterate, educated only in the Koran, and fanatical indeed at enforcing their understanding of it.  An order originating in Kabul won’t be received by most Taliban in Kabul–to say nothing of the rest of the country–for days, if ever. For this lack of command and control, if nothing else, Americans and others are going to be beaten, taken hostage, tortured, raped and murdered by Taliban secure in the knowledge they’re faithful to the Koran and furthering Jihad.  Some Americans, allies and Afghans will simply disappear and we’ll never know what happened to them.  The Taliban does not adhere to the Geneva Conventions.  Most couldn’t read or understand them if they wanted to.

My favorite bookworm, Andrea Widberg, adds this:

I have agreed with the decision to leave. If you want to change a country, you have to flatten it first, as we did in Germany and Japan. You then have to commit to running it in the first few years and then staying there for another 70 or so years to ensure a couple of generations grow up under the new order. Oh, and one other thing: It has to have been a civilized country to start with. None of those things occurred in Afghanistan. We never subdued it, we never had a plan to stick around and run it until they were ready to take over, and it’s always been, and probably always will be Stone Age.

Biden and his handlers are clearly incapable of understanding the nature of Islam and the Taliban.  Its leaders are no less bloodthirsty than it’s dimmest of foot soldiers, but they’re more sophisticated—relatively speaking.  They know how to manipulate credulous westerners, what to say, what to promise, and how, expertly and effortlessly, to extort billions.  They make promises and sign binding agreements with delight, secure in the knowledge Alah will reward them for following his word in lying to and deceiving Infidels, the better to conquer the world for Islam.  Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has Joe Biden’s number:

Excoriating President Joe Biden’s failed and ‘humiliating’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, former President Donald Trump on Newsmax said, ‘it’s inconceivable that anybody could be so incompetent, stupid.’

‘Use any word you want to use,’ Trump told Wednesday’s “Greg Kelly Reports.” ‘To imagine that you take out your military before you take out your U.S. citizens, and the civilians and others that may be helped us to even think of that, it’s not something that can be believed.’

Is it mere stupidity?  Be sure to check back on Sunday, 08-22-21 at 1700 Mountain Time, when I’ll post an article exploring whether it’s simple, stupid incompetence, or something else entirely.

Finally, Temporary President Biden held another gaslighting session on Afghanistan on Friday (08-20-21) afternoon.  He was late, spoke for about ten minutes, and took—relatively speaking–a few questions before returning to his metaphorical basement. He claimed the only reasons we were ever in Afghanistan were to get Osama Bin Laden, and to run Al Qaeda out once and for all.  Those goals have been accomplished, he said.  As is all too common, the British press does the job the American press won’t:

And it also emerged on Tuesday that the Taliban is already offering ‘safe haven’ to Al Qaeda, according to a Pentagon watchdog report – published just a day after President Biden said the war in Afghanistan had succeeded in ensuring the country could not be used to launch attacks against the U.S.

The revelation will bring fresh questions about why Biden was intent on pushing through the U.S. withdrawal so fast.

 But the American press is on the job too with insightful, vital coverage:

Here’s some additional information on Biden’s latest media session:

We’re not going to rescue you, like the British and French, but if you somehow manage to get to the airport alive, we’ll charge you $2000. 

This must be the “risk of loss” stuff he was talking about.

The cable was sent by more than 20 of our foreign service officers at the Kabul Embassy in mid-July, warning of exactly what has happened.

Oh yeah?

But to be absolutely fair, if he did see it, would he remember?

Of course it is.  Here’s how it ended:

And much of the media continues to cover for Biden…

UPDATE, 08-21-21, 1100 MT:  Oh. My. God.  From Tom Rogan at The Washington Examiner:  

I understand that the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue has told his British Army counterpart, a high-ranking field-grade officer of the British army’s 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, that British operations were embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar U.S. military operations. I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request.

And thank God for the SAS.  The British are also rescuing Americans.  This, gentle readers, is what woke military leadership produces: cowardice and political expediency over human life.  Christopher Donahue: a name that will live in infamy. America first, anyone?