The Railer remembers watching the final moments of South Vietnam. CBS’ Ed Bradley narrated the terrible images of desperate throngs trying to escape. The lucky last left on a US Marine helicopter from the U.S. Embassy roof, praying they would reach Navy ships offshore. That iconic image is what we remember today. It was a humiliating end to a war that consumed untold treasure and more than 50,000 US casualties.
It didn’t have to end that way. Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory – twice. First, in 1968, after a major U.S. battlefield victory, President Johnson stopped the bombing to entice the North to the negotiating table. We know it was effective because years later North Vietnam’s General Giap admitted:
Something all of you should think about is what General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander in Chief of the North Vietnamese Army had to say about John Kerry in his 1985 memoir “How We Won The War”. He said that the North Vietnamese were planning a negotiated surrender after the 68 TET offensive. They watched the US news and heard how distorted our press reported it and the war protesters rioting in the streets of America. He said “We were delighted. We went from a planned surrender to a policy of needing to persevere for one more hour, day, week month, eventually the protesters in America would help us to achieve a victory we knew we could not win on the battlefield.” He also said “If it were not for organizations like John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the US.”
This is only one of many reasons that The Railer considers John Kerry a pompous ass, narcissist, and traitor. These qualities also make him a revered Democrat. In 1973, after Nixon resumed the punishing bombardment, Kissinger concluded a legitimate peace agreement. Congressional Democrats promptly torpedoed the treaty by withdrawing Nixon’s ability to enforce it. The Case-Church Amendment prohibited the aerial bombing that would have kept the North in check. The North resumed their offensive campaign without fear of U.S. retaliation. The 1975 loss of Vietnam soon led to the fall of Laos and Cambodia, and mountains of human skulls and bone. An estimated six million people died in Pol Pot’s killing fields.
But Vietnam wasn’t the only 20th Century Democrat engineered surrender. Truman did the same thing in Korea when he refused to confront newly communist China. We had overwhelming air superiority and mainland allies in Taiwan. We didn’t lose South Korea, yet, but Truman’s weakness invited aggression that killed 50,000 Americans. The NORK’s Kim Dynasty retained power, three generations and counting. They, with their Chinese Communist patrons, remain a menace to this day, still threatening the immolation of the South.
Kennedy did the same thing in newly communist Cuba when he withheld promised air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion. JFK was for the assault, until he wasn’t, when it was already underway. The planes never came, we lost, and almost lost everything in the retaliatory Cuban Missile Crisis – a Kennedy caused near existential disaster. Again, Democrat weakness invited aggression. JFK’s mind was instead on Marilyn and what he was going to do next with Fiddle and Faddle in the White House pool, not the safety and security of the American people.
Clinton sealed our fate on 9/11 when he failed to respond to Osama Bin Laden’s brazen attacks in Somalia, our embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole through the 1990’s. Sudan offered up Bin Laden in 1996, Clinton refused. No less than CNN said:
Bin Laden disastrously misjudged the likely American response to the 9/11 attacks because he labored under the delusion that the United States was weak. In his first television interview on CNN in 1997, bin Laden claimed the United States was a paper tiger, pointing to the American withdrawals from Vietnam in the early 1970s, Lebanon in the early 1980s and from Somalia in 1993 as evidence of the United States’ waning power. Bin Laden told CNN, “The US still thinks and brags that it has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut … and Somalia.”
Clinton sent a few million-dollar cruise missiles crashing into an “aspirin factory” and awakened a few goats an an uninhabited desert. This lame retort only bolstered Al Queda’s view. But Slick Willie had more important things to do, like moaning with Moanica and staining dresses in the Oral Office. Bin Laden’s biggest miscalculation was that he executed 9/11 while a newly elected Republican fighter pilot son of a WWII fighter pilot hero sat in the White House with a Vice President named Chaney.
Add DimJoe Xiden now to the list of Democrats who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – twice. DimJoe as Obama’s Vice President argued for a premature withdrawal from Iraq. That mistake birthed ISIS, beheading videos, global aspirations for a radical Islamist Caliphate, and incalculable human suffering. President Trump had to clean up the mess. He obliterated ISIS in record time, a Herculean feat that left his critic’s mouths agape.
DimJoe inherited from Trump an Afghanistan under solid central government control. With U.S. air power, and a small number of troops on the ground, the Afghan military held. All DimJoe needed to do was keep Bagram Air Base open with a few drones, A10 Warthogs, and C130 gunships fueled and ready to roll. Those weapons could rain hellfire on any spot in Afghanistan within minutes. That airfield could also surge U.S. troops and materiel to dispatch any future threats. Instead, DimJoe left the Afghans defenseless, without notice:
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
Looters stripped everything of value before the Afghan military knew what happened. As long as Bagram Air Based remained, the Taliban could not prevail. Without it, there’s no hope.
While we don’t know exactly what the Taliban thinks of DimJoe, we know for certain that their Spiritual Leader, the late Osama Bin Laden, held him in low regard. While planning for a new round of attacks a decade after 9/11, Bin Laden explicitly declared then Vice President Joe Biden, not worth the effort.
He told his lieutenants that he wanted “effective operations whose impact, God willing, is bigger than that of 9/11.” He explained that killing President Barack Obama was a high priority, but he also had General David Petraeus, at that time the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, in his sights. Bin Laden told his team not to bother with plots against Vice President Joe Biden, whom he considered “totally unprepared” for the post of president.
DimJoe, even pre-dementia, wasn’t a threat to Al Queda then, nor now. Osama was tactically brilliant to leave DimJoe alive. Like a virus, DimJoe festered within his host, waiting for the chance to attack and consume. Recall too that DimJoe alone opposed the raid that killed Bin Laden. Another decade later DimJoe has become the Taliban’s Man in Washington.
But, Dear Reader protests, “DimJoe is flying bombing missions from bases eight hours away in the Middle East.” For a thousand practical reasons, that won’t get the job done – and the Taliban know it. In just days they’ve recaptured most of Afghanistan and Kabul will soon be the last redoubt. Events are moving faster than The Railer can digest. This New York Times headline is something from an alternate universe:
U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul
The demand seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy by dangling aid to future Afghan governments — even one that includes the Taliban.
Defeat and humiliate the United States, kill thousands of U.S. citizens and soldiers, win cash and prizes. Biden is desperately trying to avert the embassy rooftop photos that will become his ignominious legacy.
Those brave Afghans who embraced our push for democracy, who believed in the education of women, who practiced tolerance, will soon perish – horribly. Bartle Bull asks in the Wall Street Journal “What Will Happen to the Women of Afghanistan?” How about that question DimJoe? What’s the answer? What will be their fate?
It’s all so preventable, and at such a small cost, especially in light of the 3000 New Yorkers who perished on 9/11, the 2400 more who died on Afghan battlefields, and the more than $1T spent. How long will it be before we are forced to return to Afghanistan and at what cost?
Every Afghani who embraced hope for a post-medieval society will be killed. Allahu Akbar! The Taliban will again provide haven to Islamic extremists eager to attack the West. China is ready to swoop in and help them. DimJoe ordered Americans to leave immediately, and the helicopters will soon fly their last missions from another United States Embassy rooftop. Terrorists and enemies are watching. They know our well-established pattern of Democrat Pol weakness and surrender. They are planning accordingly.