Left Behind

 Michael P. Ramirez at Issues and Insights:

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Mark Steyn: America is not "Too Big To Fail"

 

This weekend the inimitable Mark Steyn posted his column as the catastrophic events unfolded in Afghanistan.  It is a depressing read, and as America’s past and present involvements in Afghanistan impact on our “fiscal responsibility”  (a subject within the scope of Tea Party’s mission), I am linking to it.  Mr. Steyn considers not just the Biden administration’s failures, the U.S. military’s failures, Afghanistan and the Taliban, but also larger consequences, for America and across the globe.  Here’s Mr. Steyn’s opening:

To reprise a line from a decade-old column of mine:

Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you're Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you're Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America.

That's the point to remember: if you're an Afghan schoolgirl, today is the fall of Kabul; elsewhere, in the chancelleries of allies and enemies alike, it's the fall of America. Even by their usual wretched standards, the world's most somnolent media are struggling to stay up to speed on the story. Here's the scoop from USA Today:

Taliban's Afghanistan Advance Tests Biden's 'America Is Back' Foreign Policy Promise

You don't say! Did he misread the prompter, or mishear the guy in his ear? "America is on its back", surely?

But don't worry, the world's most lavishly over-funded "intelligence community" is on the case:

Kabul Could Fall To The Taliban Within 90 Days, U.S. Intelligence Warns

Thank you, geniuses. That was Thursday. So it turned out to be well within ninety hours - which is close enough for US intelligence work.

. . .

One of the depressing aspects of the Swamp is that everything becomes a racket - including even your armed forces. Look at that buffoon at top right, the guy who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Thoroughly Modern Milley: that's an awful lot of chest ribbonry for a nation that hasn't won a war in three-quarters of a century. During his recent wokier-than-thou Congressional testimony on "white rage", I wish someone would have asked Thoroughly Modern what they were all for:

Well, this is for Korea... Vietnam... This small ribbon's for the Jimmy Carter helicopters-in-the-desert fiasco, because that went tits up far quicker than it usually takes... Here's the Pentagon Female Empowerment Award I got for introducing Take Your Child Bride To Work Day to Jalalabad... This one's from the Association of Non-Binary Staff Colleges for Most Transitions in a Single Battalion... Oh, and this most recent one is for getting into a Twitter spat over Tucker Carlson...

If you don't have total contempt for Milley and the rest of the brass right now, you're part of the problem.

And here’s a chilling scenario:

America is not "too big to fail": It's failing by almost every metric right now. The world-record brokey-brokey-brokeness manifested by the current spending bills is only possible because the US dollar is the global currency. When that ends, we're Weimar with smartphones. Clearly, Chairman Xi and his allies occasionally muse on the best moment to yank the dollar out from under. If you were in Beijing watching telly today, would you perhaps be considering advancing those plans?

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Click here to read the full column.

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