Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Where Is the Outrage from the Right?
Over at Powerline, David and Daniel Greenfield have an article: Where is the Outrage?
It opens strong:
Only one man lost his job over Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller challenged Biden’s incompetent and spineless Joint Chiefs of Staff to take responsibility for their dereliction of duty that led directly to the catastrophe in Afghanistan. Taking responsibility meant resigning. Biden’s military men immediately smeared him as mentally ill and forced him out of the Marines.
For four years, conservatives of a certain stripe cheered and encouraged the military to attack Trump. They considered it part of the normal constitutional order. Now, when a solider dares to criticize Biden for…
Biden is directly responsible for the worst, most humiliating, most dangerous – yet completely avoidable – defeat in the history of American warfare.
…those same conservatives have nothing to say about this man being fired, or, worse, they cheer it on, as the rules get applied to him, while they cheered on others not having the rules apply to them.
The article goes on to attack GOP leadership for their spinelessness. They sure don’t fight for anything of value. I understand why: They never meant it. They are in it for the perks and don’t care about anything as long as they get their goodies.
What I cannot understand, are rank and file Republicans who buy into this nonsense. They can claim to be for America, but it is crap. Any conservative who voted for Biden, who frankly, could not be doing more damage to America than if he were an agent for Xi, can only win back trust if he or she is willing to get outraged at Biden as they were at Trump and his mean tweets.
Published in General
Considering how mild-mannered John Hinderaker usually is, this is very strong.
This was really good on this topic.
https://victorhanson.com/the-culturalist-the-praetorian-question/ They definitely need to do something. This is also good but I would listen to the other one first. https://victorhanson.com/the-traditionalist-the-therapeutic-screw-up/
Well, I suspect that the reason for the lack of outrage is that this was a successful evacuation, with minimal casualties. 13 deaths so far, I think, though I’d appreciate any updates. About 14,000 Americans returned safely, it appears, and about 100,000 others.
Scheller’s claim that this was the worst and most humiliating defeat in US history lacks perspective. Off the top of my head, I can think of dozens of battles that were much, much worse, often by an order of magnitude, or two, or three. I’m not going to look up the figures for each of these, but here are a few:
The outrage from the right is driven from the public square. Ricochet is as close as you will get before the kook ratio rises steeply.
There is certainly no outrage from the upper layers of the two-party money club. They are all in damage control mode, Republicrats and Demicans alike.
And “The military” is gone. We are developing two militaries in a more profound way than the usual.
With the exception that we didn’t engineer our own defeat in any of those.
We’re not suffering from a lack of outrage in this country. Sober analysis, patience, and measured rhetoric do seem to be in short supply, however.
Yes, the surrender of Afghanistan was essentially a pre-planned peace-time affair. We had no time constraints, and a more than capable military installed, and that we only got 10 or 20% of the Americans out is a beyond consideration of incompetence, it’s deliberate.
To call it a success is delusional.
We evacuated 100,000 Afghans who were completely unvetted, Most of the SIV holders got left behind. We have no idea how many Americans were left behind. It was chaotic and completely without preplanning or organization. It did not need to be that way.
You seem to be drinking the MSM koolaid on this.
Need to stop watching CNN. This is absurd.
The GOP has been an empty shell for most of my adult life. There are some truly conservative, America loving, honorable members among the elected class but by and large the GOP is a den of harlots. I want no part of it, and neither should God fearing patriots.
Yup. I am done with politics, done with convincing, and mostly done with voting.
I am 100% done with the Republican Party, although when there are good people running as Republicans, I won’t refrain.
We had all three branches for two years, and Paul Ryan stabbed us. Mitch McConnell kinda sat some of it out — he’s smarter than Ryan.
Invest in metals.
Gold or lead?
It certainly doesn’t surprise me that those who seem fundamentally unable to comprehend American Liberty similarly haven’t a clue about American Exceptionalism. (And I won’t even go into the rather disgusting way the definition of “casualty” can be so callously limited to ignore the untold number of allies and innocents who are paying and will pay the price for this dereliction of duty at the top and throughout our ruling beltway.)
Welcome to the party, pal. (I’ve been out since Mississippi 2014. Never forget Mississippi 2014!)
Brass and lead mostly. Some steel. Copper when I feel saucy.
Steel does OK in my AK, not so well in my .38 revolver.
Good point. I went through the list and can’t find one that was engineered by strictly political considerations. An interesting point was made by VDH last night; the cost of the equipment that we left behind was the equivalent of seven Gerald Ford-class aircraft carriers. That’s a ton of money.
We probably couldn’t use those.
Oh what the hell, I will go into it…
Please note passages like this:
The casualty count will continue to accumulate for years and years to come. How’s that for perspective you smug, forced-contrarian, jacka… [The unnatural mode of self-censorship forced on one by having two “Ricochet” strikes requires me to stop there. Just let it be known that I hold every Arizona Lawyer I “know” if very low regard.]
I don’t think we ever deliberately armed terrorists so they could kill us.
No one can accuse the Republican Party of having too much passion. Since the demise of the Tea Party, the closest thing to passion (IMHO) are the Pro-Life folks.
The rest of the Party (with the possible exception of Jim Jordan) seems to be composed of Paul Ryan clones; strolling through the Capital in their nice suits with one eye looking for a nice position as a lobbyist after leaving office.
And you thought “Fast And Furious” was bad…
I guess Jerry knows better than VDH.
I could counter point by point, but I’ll decided that an Arizona Lawyer knows less about this stuff than VDH.
Something wrong with the whole legal profession in Arizona. Their supreme court just eliminated pre-emptive challenges to jury members because they might be racial or something.
Kozak, this is a good point about the Afghan evacuees. I was very strongly against this, and did a post about it. I did not want any Afghans brought to this country.
I was evaluating the evacuation as a military operation. The President’s goal was to get out Americans, and allied civilians (meaning folks like Brits), and Afghans who allegedly worked for us. Since that was the goal, the safe extraction of the Afghans is part of the success of the mission, as ordered by the President.
I never watch CNN. I can do math, though.
I’m not sure what you mean by “strictly political considerations.” There were also military considerations in Afghanistan, though I think in all cases, there were both political and military considerations. Most of the defeats that I list were the result of poor political calculations that disregarded military realities. I’ll describe a few, as examples.
The Battle of Brooklyn Heights was an unwise attempt to hold NYC for political considerations. It was clearly indefensible.
The entire War of 1812 was a major political miscalculation.
Politics was the motivation behind almost all of the Civil War battles that I listed. Though I think that McClellan might have won, had he been more aggressive.
The losses in WWII in the Pacific were all about politics, with FDR forcing Japan’s hand with an oil embargo, while leaving hopelessly outnumbered forces in the Philippines and on Guam and Wake, and having insufficient vigilance at Pearl.
Vietnam — well, that was political. Beirut, too.
Then there’s Little Big Horn, the result of appointing a young, glamorous popinjay of a cavalry general against some pretty tough and canny Indians.
I think the outrage people are looking for exists in Republican Representative Mullin from Oklahoma. He is not going to let this go. He went through a horrible time in Afghanistan last week, and he is not going to forgive Biden or the State Department. He does not mince words.
Anyone who calls the war of 1812 an unnecessary political miscalculation doesn’t understand history well enough to comment on any battle or war.
LOL. Embrace the power of AND.