My latest in FrontPage:
Fox News reported Saturday that “a Taliban fighting unit called the Badri 313 Battalion was spotted patrolling Afghanistan with U.S.-made gear, and posting one photo appearing to mock the iconic World War II photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.” If we had a sane political culture in America today, which of course we do not, the Taliban’s Iwo Jima mummery would be cast in bronze and set in some prominent place in Washington, and called the Biden Monument, as an everlasting reminder of the betrayal and fecklessness of Biden’s handlers’ administration.
The Fox report explained that “propaganda videos posted this week on channels affiliated with the Taliban show soldiers in the little-known Badri 313 Battalion carrying U.S. and U.S. ally-made weapons and gear that appear to be stolen from allied militaries while patrolling parts of Kabul. In one propaganda photo, members of the Badri 313 Battalion are seen hoisting a Taliban flag in a similar fashion to the six U.S. Marines who raised the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.”
This is Joe Biden’s legacy: the equipping of the Taliban, the outfitting of the Taliban, the spectacle of the Taliban strutting around bragging that they have defeated the world’s lone superpower – this is what just eight months of the Biden administration have given us. And as journalist Shiv Aroor of India Today observed, “With the Taliban now in power, there is every reason to believe the militia could grow in strength.Expect to see much more of the Badri 313 in the weeks and months ahead.”
Yes. As Fox News noted, “the U.S. gave Afghan forces an estimated $28 billion in weaponry between 2002 and 2017. But now, ‘everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,’ a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.” That amounts to a great deal, but not even Biden’s handlers are sure of the scope of the catastrophe. The Times of Israel reported Saturday that “Washington is still attempting to gauge the scope of United States weaponry and technology that have fallen into the hands of the Taliban following Afghanistan’s fall to the militants, though it is believed to be considerable. Materiel the Islamist group is believed to have gained includes hundreds of thousands of assault rifles, thousands of armored vehicles, dozens of aircraft, tanks, artillery, sniper rifles, night-vision goggles and much more.”
The Taliban reportedly don’t have the expertise to operate all of this, but they’ll be able to make use of a lot of it. But as with the Iwo Jima parody photo, it’s the symbolic value that counts. Matthew Henman of Janes explained: “These seizures have more propaganda value for the Taliban than any real leveling-up of capabilities.” The Taliban’s capabilities may be being underestimated, but whether they are or not, there is no doubt that the propaganda value of all this is immense.
Are Biden’s handlers really this inept? Or is Lara Logan’s assertion to Tucker Carlson, “the United States wants this outcome,” more likely? Either way, this is the world they have given us: one in which American power is mocked, American wealth is squandered and falls into the hands of our enemies, and even the images of our finest hour become the linchpin for ridicule in one of our worst eras. Back in February, the Associated Press reported happily that “collective sighs of relief could be heard from many European capitals Saturday after U.S. President Joe Biden made clear in his first major foreign policy address since taking office that he rejected the ‘America First’ and transactional approach of his predecessor and urged cooperation among Western allies.” Germany’s Der Spiegel was just as relieved: “Biden gave exactly the speech that many Europeans wanted to hear – an America that pats you on the shoulders, that doesn’t criticize or demand.”
Now we see yet again, in the most vivid illustration of this since the Benghazi jihad massacre, what happens in the world when we don’t have an American president who puts America first.But Donald Trump was an anomaly, which is why the entire political and media establishment ganged up on him and did everything it could to make sure he would leave office on January 20, 2021. On that day, we were promised that “America is back!” But the America that has come back is self-defeating, confused, and justly the object of ridicule. If America survives the Biden era as a free nation, that Biden Monument should indeed be erected in Washington, as a cautionary tale of the costs of departing from the “America First” principle.
Walter Sieruk says
That affront of arrogant Taliban mockery against American Patriotism and American soldiers is a result of that villian ,bogus “President ” Biden.
Peace says
Someone should photoshop Biden into the picture
Check Burry says
Agreed, but where should we place the blunt end of the flagpole?
A real quandry for me, can you help?
Walter Sieruk says
Yes . good point.
Walter Sieruk says
Yes, good point.
maria says
everything is Biden and DemocRats fault. Cuomo had to go, America must fire Biden, Harris, Pelosi and all the democRats.
The President is Donald J.Trump not a mentally sick bidet
Check Burry says
Being in UK I know little about the current biden admin figures, but what I do see is some very weak lefty characters, we would in UK use the word “Wimps” to describe them.
DBM echo says
“in the little-known Badri 313 Battalion carrying U.S. and U.S. ally-made weapons and gear that appear to be stolen from allied militaries”
Under Anglo-American law property that’s been abandoned by gutless, stupid-to-the-point-of-treasonous armies led by duplicitous “leaders” hasn’t been stolen.
Under Islamic law any property not belonging to a non-Muslim is there for the taking by Muslims.
gravenimage says
Taliban mocks Iconic Iwo Jima Photo, and in the process, creates the Biden Monument
…………….
Yeesh…
sidney penny says
“If America survives the Biden era as a free nation, that Biden Monument should indeed be erected in Washington, as a cautionary tale of the costs of departing from the “America First” principle.”
Very hard to understand what is wrong with the “America First” principle?
Europe First?
Afghanistan First?
Emilie Green says
“Very hard to understand what is wrong with the ‘America First’ principle?”
If your aim is to create world government, aka the NWO, America First is an impediment. Since its creation in 1921 the Council on Foreign Relations has the sole purpose of making the USA “just another nation” to be controlled by an elite, the elite being the members of the CFR.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/none_dare_call_it_conspiracy.html
Wellington says
This abominable mocking stands as a testimony to the malevolency which is Islam. American soldiers came to liberate; Taliban soldiers have come to enslave.
ALL willing adult Muslims “own this” because this is what their religion symbolizes and one knows this or should know this—especially adult Muslims.
No more excuses. Islam is the spiritual equivalent of Nazism; one preached a master race and the other loser ideology has preached to this very day a master faith.
Just as Nazism could have never created the Constitution of the United States of America, so would the Islamic world never have created such a magnificent document, which four-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, William Gladstone, called the “single greatest document ever created by man.”
Gladstone, arguably the greatest Prime Minister of the UK with the exception of Winston Churchill, also stated in Parliament while holding a copy of the Koran in his hand, “As long as this book exists there will never be peace in this world.”
Bush 43 missed this. So did Obama (or did he miss it?). Certainly the cognitively impaired Biden has missed this. But Trump instinctively did not and why he said in March of 2016, and I quote, “I think Islam hates us.” No truer statement has ever been uttered by a Presidential candidate or President.
Islam is out of excuses except for the malevolent and the ignorant. Unfortunately, this still constitutes the bulk of mankind. And herein lies the major problem—not Islam itself, which is rotten to the core, but either defense of Islam by the evil portion of mankind or the unknowing portion of mankind.
Still a struggle to properly identify Islam as Thomas Jefferson, Edward Gibbon, David Hume, John Quincy Adams, Alexis de Tocqueville, Arthur Schopenhauer, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell and Oriana Fallaci, among so many others, did.
Not there yet. We should be there by now, especially since 9/11, but we are not and this serves as a stain upon the wisdom of the West which Islam is a mortal enemy of. And one knows this or should know it.
Check Burry says
Spot on W.
Lest we forget and a re showing of 9/11 videos every 3 months or more, to keep this atrocity in the peoples mind. It might just speed up the end of
“Not there yet”
Not a complete answer of course, but small chipping away of folks delusions re islam.
AustrianGuy says
Call me a Taliban, but how is that mockery?
Looks more like admiration to me
Closest of mockery might be, that they try to be better than the US-marines
Which isn’t really mockery either, if you think about it
Sorry if I sound that I praise them too much
gravenimage says
Of course this is mockery–Americans were celebrating their defeat of Fascist tyranny; the Taliban is sneering at America for being unable to do anything like that in Afghanistsn.
Pretending that the goals of America and the Taliban are one and the same–as though this was, say, a soccer tournament–is just grotesque.
I will not assume that you are actually lauding the Taliban and their sick goals here, but at best you are, I’m afraid, pretty clueless.