90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Taliban leader was freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2014 swap by Obama

When President Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American deserter in 2014, he assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan.

In fact, they were left free to engineer Sunday’s sacking of Kabul.

Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the Obama-Biden administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.

Eventually, they were recognized by Western diplomats as official representatives of the Taliban during recent “peace” talks.

Taliban fighters inside the Presidential Palace in Kabul

Earlier this year, one of them, Khairullah Khairkhwa, actually sat across the table from President Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Moscow, where Khairkhwa was part of the official Taliban delegation that negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.

“I started jihad to remove foreign forces from my country and establish an Islamic government, and jihad will continue until we reach that goal through a political agreement,” Khairkhwa said at the summit.

After raiding the presidential palace in Kabul, a group of armed Taliban fighters told Al Jazeera that they were arranging to bring back their Gitmo-paroled leadership from Qatar upon securing the capital. One unidentified fighter, who blasted America for “oppressing our people for 20 years,” claimed he had also been locked up at the Guantanamo Bay facility. It’s more evidence that Gitmo catch-and-release policies facilitated the fall of Afghanistan to the enemy that...

#madisoncawthorn

Open Border Blues...

I'm crying please, please don't do me wrong,
Who been drivin' my Terraplane ...
I said who?, yeah,

Keep on tanglin' with your wires.
Whoo!

Chinese State Media Outlet Says US Will ‘Abandon’ Taiwan, Too, ‘Once a War Breaks Out’

A Chinese state mouthpiece reacted to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban Monday by saying the crisis has dealt a severe blow to U.S. “hegemony,” and suggesting allies like Taiwan should be careful about placing their trust in the U.S.

“Taliban’s rapid victory embarrasses U.S., smashes image, arrogance,” stated one headline in Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organ.

It published an editorial contrasting the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan and its commitment to Taiwan, and concluding that if it “abandoned” Afghanistan, then the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan should “wake up from their dreams.”

“From what happened in Afghanistan, they should perceive that once a war breaks out in the [Taiwan] Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and the U.S. military won’t come to help,” Global Times opined. “As a result, the DPP authorities will quickly surrender, while some high-level officials may flee by plane.”

China views Taiwan as a rebellious province that will be reincorporated into “one China” eventually, by force if necessary. The U.S. is committed under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to protecting the island democracy from unprovoked aggression, and to providing it with military aid.

Last March, the outgoing commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, told a Senate panel that China’s threat to Taiwan could become “manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next...

ORWELL:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

‘A Pitiful, Helpless Giant’

The more serious and recurrent the failures and humiliations of the Biden Administration, the more China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea will push and provoke America and its allies.

resident Richard Nixon warned what America would become should it fail to have the determination and courage of a great world power. Speaking on April 30, 1970, he said: “If when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.” He was announcing a successful incursion into Cambodia that was welcomed by the Cambodian government and which he promised would be ended within a deadline—which was met.

In recent weeks, we have had the announcement of the withdrawal of the final 3,500 Americans from nearly 20 years in Afghanistan with the confident assertion that the heavily armed Afghan army would hold its own against the Taliban Islamist guerrillas, followed by steadily more alarming reports of Taliban progress to the point where 5,000 soldiers and Marines are being concentrated and sent to Kabul to assure the safe evacuation of all American personnel from that country.

In the few weeks between the confident statement of American withdrawal and Afghan defense capability, the U.S. government, through Defense Department spokesman John Kirby (who has not been exuding confidence), first assured the press that the Taliban was sufficiently concerned with international acceptance that it would avoid provocative actions such as seizing the U.S. embassy. That state of official serenity lasted for approximately a week before the announcement that elite airborne forces would be entrusted with the evacuation of Americans and close U.S. supporters among the Afghan population.

The U.S. embassy was completed about 10 years ago at a cost of $700 million. To the world, it will almost undoubtedly be represented as a reenactment of the dreadful and shameful fiasco in Saigon in 1975 when helicopters evacuated Americans from the embassy compound with desperate Vietnamese clinging to the runners and wheels of the departing...

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Afghan “Refugee” Flight Overwhelmingly Filled With Fighting-Age Males

A military cargo plane departing Kabul’s besieged airport with so-called “refugees” is overwhelmingly filled with fighting-age males, raising questions about the wisdom of accepting hundreds of thousands of Afghani migrants supposedly in need of asylum in western, predominantly Christian countries.

Imagery of a US Air Force flight containing hundreds of Afghans fleeing the country emerged on Monday, with 640 passengers authorized to board on the basis of their supposed connection to US military forces who have fought in the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. The flight was bound for Qatar, where visa and migrant processing for those onboard will continue in third party countries with the understanding the “refugees” will eventually reach the United States.

A few women and children can be seen in the lower left of the picture, paling in comparison to the hundreds of men. Gender segregation is widely practiced in Afghanistan, with women unlikely to sit among throngs of men they’re unrelated to.

Human rights advocates have drawn attention to the plight of Afghanistan’s women, who stand to face restrictions on their rights and daily lives under the impending Taliban government. However, the failed state’s young men appear to be the ones fleeing the Islamist terrorist group, rather those who wouldn’t be expected to actually fight against the organization.

A crowd overwhelmingly composed of young men was also seen mobbing a military cargo plane on the runway of the Kabul Airport, with some even going so far as to tie themselves to the taxiing aircraft, later falling to their deaths from the plane in flight. Afghans have generally declined to accept similar risks in fighting the Taliban, who has taken all of the country’s provincial provinces with minimal bloodshed in the nation’s capital without firing more than a few shots.

With Afghanistan’s supposedly heroic and brave youth opting for flight from their homeland over picking up weapons and firing back at the far-from invincible Islamist organization, citizens of western countries forced to pay welfare, housing, food and...

Crazed Female Destroys Entire Country

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has put the entire country under lockdown after just one single case of COVID was discovered.

Yes, really.

After the isolated case was detected in Auckland, the first nationwide in 6 months, Kiwis across the country were told they’d be placed under a full lockdown for the next 3 days.

“Auckland and Coromandel – a coastal town where the infected person also spent time – will be in lockdown for seven days,” reports Sky News.

New Zealand will now be placed under its first full national lockdown for the first time since the original lockdown over a year ago.

Schools, offices, businesses, and all other “non-essential” venues will now all be shut down, with citizens only allowed outside to exercise, buy food and seek emergency medical treatment.

“Delta has been a game-changer, we’re responding to that,” said Ardern. “The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard.”

Like its neighbor Australia, New Zealand continues to pursue a controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy that necessitates continuous draconian lockdowns with no end in...