So What Happened at the G-7 Meeting in June 2021?

Well....President Biden got chatty and basically told the other six leaders that the US would ensure 'forces' remaining in place to keep Kabul safe following the drawdown of NATO forces, 

Notes were kept from this meeting and the comments made by President Biden.

Three weeks after this G-7 meeting....the US quietly left in the middle of the night from Bagram Air Base.  Looking back, this one runway area would have made perfect sense to keep and operate while evacuating out of Afghanistan at the 'end'.  There's no indication that Bagram was even mentioned at the G-7 meeting.  

Was there a master plan in June existing?  There is zero indication of that now.  Even the G-7 folks have to be standing there now and wondering what President Biden was all chatty about or if he even understand the whole situation.

My Picks for VP

 If impeachment or the 25th Amendment come up....'President Harris' becomes a reality, so I have five likely Democrats that I suggest will be on her VP list:

1.  Secretary of Transportation: Pete Buttigieg.

2.  Governor of Michigan: Gretchen Whitmer

3.  Governor of New Jersey: Phil Murphy

4.  Andrew Yang

5.  Former Governor Kasich of Ohio (claiming some fake unity)

I suspect that the DNC will put a fair amount of pressure upon her with 'options'.  It has to be someone that would get only moderate opposition in the Senate.  Age to play a big deal?  Yeah....no one over the age of 65 will be listed.  

Rescue 'Who'?

 If you were given a rescue mission, and about ten minutes into discussing it....some Captain raised his hand and asked....'who are we rescuing, and how many of them'....if you can't answer that question, then the whole discussion needs to halt at that point.

I sat there last night, watching the CNN report situation in Kabul, and it's painfully obvious that the Pentagon has a mission, but has no idea how many Americans are in the country.  It might be 500....it might be 5,000.

It looks painfully obvious as well....that tens of thousands of Afghans might be flown out....only because there aren't any Americans at the airport, to take up seats.

The planning process?  Well....back in July...some idiot should have sat down and eyeballed the number business, and wrote a simple three-page plan to cover the basic departure.  But this never happened.  

The Biden What-If Scenario

 So what if impeachment, the 25th Amendment or he just resigns out.....does anything really improve with President Harris?

You would have to pause and ask if the Secretary of State and National Security Adviser leave as well, and the answer is probably no.  So I would suggest that nothing much improves.

Harris prepared for this type of situation?  Not really.  

Public confidence with allies of the US?  I would suggest nothing much improves.

2022? It becomes a pretty rough year, and mid-terms appear to be the only way to clear the deck.  

Ten Things About This Afghanistan 'Mess'

 1.  You get the impression that President Biden thought the job was a part-time situation, and you'd get enough advice daily to make half-way decent decisions. 

2.  There was a letter found in the bin Laden compound after his death (2011).  Some element of the al Qaeda group had asked 'permission' to put a hit on VP Biden at the time.  Bin Laden said 'NO', because he felt Biden was useful as a incompetent future President, and would lead the nation into chaos.  You have to stand back for a while, think about how this question arose, and how he answered the question.  

3.  President Biden was 'rebuked' today by the British Parliament.....over his decision-process.

4.  Shocking enough, Taliban 'bosses' are now treated at the same level as 6 January insurrectionists or Trump, by the US news media. 

5.  Early in the week, PM Trudeau of Canada wanted to talk to President Biden.  He got nowhere in getting a response, and tried the number he had for VP Harris....getting nowhere on that.  He ended up pulling up the private number of Hillary Clinton, and got a personal opinion of the mess from her.  Whether it helped or not....unknown.  

6.  In the middle of this chaos, three US senators earlier in the week announced they had Covid (Wicker, King, Hickenlooper).  This might have been page one news, had Afghanistan not come up.  

7.  Some story has started up over the past couple of days....Biden....either through the excitement or the pressure....can't sleep.  The story goes that he (or his wife) thinks the only place where he can sleep is the family house in Delaware.  Truth to it?  Well....you'd think that he'd be juiced up by the Presidential doctor to sleep.  Maybe they've already reached the peak on that sleep medication and it's not effective enough.

8.  The 'good' Taliban chatter?  Yesterday, based on a number of bad-boy events, I'd say that evaporated completely.  Same bad-boys as in the 1990s.

9.  If you were stupid enough to be an American in Kabul, and wanted a way out....you have to sign a document pledging $2,000 as a 'fee'.  I should note, that only gets you out of the country.  Wherever they land the plane....from that point on, you pay commercial rates for the ticket.....to return the rest of the way.

10.  This afternoon in Germany, Chancellor Merkel asked Russia's Putin, if he can influence the Taliban.  No comment was uttered over the grin or return comment.  This had to be one of the ten most embarrassing moments of the Merkel era.  Odds that Putin could do 'something'?  I'd give it a 99-percent chance.  

'Residents'

 I sat and read a piece this morning, and the topic was....an announcement by a sheriff (up in Wisconsin) that he's going to start using the phrase 'residents' instead of 'inmates'.  He says that it's more human to use the term.

I sat and pondered over this.

Generally, when you use the term residents to me....it usually means folks who stay and live in a 'community'.....long-term.  

Sheriffs tend to run jails....not prisons.  So this is usually where the judge has passed some sentence and you got 30 to 90 days of 'time', and you stay right there in the county jail....NOT some state prison 300 miles away.

Would most guys care for the term being introduced?  I doubt it.  Maybe if it meant an extra muffin, or a private 3-minute shower, or new mattresses being part of the deal....it'd make a difference, but I doubt that you get anything new.

Failures Story

 I sat and watched a bit of CNN today, with Clarissa Ward.  At some point, talking over the Biden business and Afghanistan, she hyped-up and asked....."If this isn’t failure, what does failure look like exactly?"

I worked in various military-related organizations in my life, and we had projects which were deemed by members of the unit as 'failures'.  Some of us (not myself) even got medals for the 'failed' projects.  Some folks even got promoted (even Captains to Major) by accomplishing a doomed and utter failure.

I sat and looked at a renovation project....probably involving $50,000 in funding....where the end-work could not be used as projected, and simply became a storage room.

I could point at a dozen construction projects in the DC area, where tens of millions were spent, and were utter disasters at the half-way point....requiring tens of extra millions to renovate the screw-ups.

There's a hotel/BX project at Ramstein.....which came to be a serious crappy project.  The opera-house in Hamburg, went way over the original estimate because of failures.  The BER airport in Berlin?  Massive failures.  The Stuttgart-21 railway project.....massive failures.

I'm sure that I could sit down with twenty folks and probably identify well over 300 failed situations.  

CNN itself?  Well....it's a failed news media organization.

Trying to get President Biden to admit his decision doomed this whole Afghanistan thing?  No, he has no will-power to go and admit this.  

So it's just something better left lying on the street....like dog-crap.  Don't pick it up.....don't worry about it, and don't hype color or texture of the dog-crap.  Just leave it.