Among the many remark­able inhab­i­tants of the lake where the pho­to for this blog site was tak­en are weasels.
Resource­ful, fast noc­tur­nal hunters, weasels avoid humans. They also have the mis­for­tune to be a syn­onym for cun­ning or deceit, which unjust­ly asso­ciates them with the kind of peo­ple try­ing to “weasel” their way out of their share of respon­si­bil­i­ty for what is hap­pen­ing in Afghanistan.

A case in point is for­mer Sec­re­tary of State and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er Con­doleez­za Rice, who backed the inva­sion of Iraq at the expense of com­mit­ment to Afghanistan. In a recent Wash­ing­ton Post Op-Ed piece, Rice pro­claimed: “Each of us who held posi­tions of author­i­ty over those years made mis­takes — not because we didn’t try or were heed­less of the challenges.”
Real­ly?
In Octo­ber 2005, Sec­re­tary of State Rice told the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee that the U.S. strat­e­gy for “win­ning” in Iraq had “already begun.” As evi­dence she offered: “Com­pare the sit­u­a­tion a year ago in places like Haifa Street in Baghdad…”.
I guess she missed the large sign at the apt­ly named Assassin’s Gate exit from the ‘Green Zone’:
HAIFA STREET IS CONDITION RED. DO NOT USE HAIFA STREET
The CBS office in Bagh­dad was in a hotel on Haifa Street, less than half a mile from Assassin’s Gate. Gun­fire was a fea­ture of the neigh­bour­hood ambience.
Rice also assured sen­a­tors that secu­ri­ty along the noto­ri­ous air­port road in Bagh­dad “has mea­sur­ably improved.”
Iraqis called the air­port road “Death Street”. Amer­i­can sol­diers dubbed it “IED Alley”. A sign on the last check­point out­side the air­port read:
YOU ARE LEAVING A SECURED AREA. ALL WEAPONS RED AT THIS POINT. LOCK AND LOAD.

                         PLUMBING THE POLITICAL DEPTHS

Anoth­er stal­wart from the start of both the Afghan and Iraq imbroglios, for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair, referred to Pres­i­dent Biden’s deci­sion to with­draw troops as “imbe­cil­ic”, and “dri­ven not by grand strat­e­gy but by politics”.
Hav­ing ral­lied to Bush’s cry of a “glob­al war on ter­ror”, and claims of non-exis­tent weapons of mass destruc­tion, Blair is an expert on such things. Per­haps he could also explain what exact­ly the “grand strat­e­gy” for Iraq was, and how well it turned out.

The war in Afghanistan was one of the most broad­ly sup­port­ed bipar­ti­san issues ever in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Sen­a­tor Lind­say Gra­ham man­aged to turn that on its head. “I think Joe Biden deserves to be impeached,” he told the extreme right-wing Newsmax.
No doubt the des­per­ate Afghans at Kab­ul air­port will applaud the senator’s brave stand on their behalf…if they live long enough to hear about it.

             AND IT’S NOT JUST THE POLITICIANS…

Those who were respon­si­ble on the ground in years past are behav­ing lit­tle bet­ter. As Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Jen­nifer Rubin wrote: “When for­mer offi­cials such as retired Gen. David Petraeus or for­mer defense sec­re­tary Leon Panet­ta tut-tut about the incom­pe­tence of the Biden team, remem­ber that these same fig­ures either delib­er­ate­ly spun a false nar­ra­tive of the Afghan military’s progress or were utter­ly clue­less about the real­i­ty on the ground.”

Con­spic­u­ous by their absence in the Afghan evac­u­a­tion effort are the Saudis.
The proud guardians of Islam’s two holi­est sites haven’t tak­en in any refugees from Afghanistan, or any oth­er Moslem coun­try come to that. They are, how­ev­er, build­ing the world’s biggest and most expen­sive roller coast­er. Billed as “Faster, high­er, longer!”, it will report­ed­ly set world records in all those areas when it opens in 2023.

                                   NO ‘YELP’ LISTING

Five Sau­di air bases, often used by U.S. forces, are with­in a cou­ple of hour’s fly­ing time of Qatar’s Al-Udeid air­base, which is over­worked and clogged with Afghan evacuees.
No evac­uee flights have land­ed in Sau­di Arabia.
The Saud­is accom­mo­date mil­lions of Haj pil­grims every year, which means there are a lot of emp­ty hotels and com­pounds avail­able at the moment. So far, the No Vacan­cy sign is up for evacuees.
But then again, the Saud­is already “gave at the office”.
Fif­teen of the 19 hijack­ers in the 9/11 attacks were from Sau­di Ara­bia, an absolute monar­chy that, like the Tal­iban, sub­ju­gates women, restricts reli­gious free­dom and mur­ders dissidents.

                  DEDICATION ABOVE AND BEYOND

Pres­i­dent Biden and oth­ers in Wash­ing­ton point­ed fin­gers of blame at the hap­less Afghan Pres­i­dent Ashraf Ghani for flee­ing into exile. But lit­tle men­tion is made of for­mer Afghan pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdul­lah Abdul­lah, the long-time leader and chair­man of Afghanistan’s Nation­al Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Coun­cil, who stayed in Kab­ul to try to form a new and inclu­sive gov­ern­ment with the Taliban.
To call that coura­geous is a seri­ous understatement.
When the Tal­iban seized pow­er in 1996, they hauled the then Pres­i­dent of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibul­lah out of the UN com­pound in Kab­ul. He and his broth­er were tor­tured to death. Their naked bod­ies were dragged through the streets and hung out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace. For good mea­sure and a final insult, funer­al prayers for Najibul­lah were forbidden.

When a movie is made about the last 20 years in Afghanistan (as it no doubt will be, in some form or anoth­er) an appro­pri­ate theme song would be Pete Seeger’s’ “Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone”.
The cho­rus line being: “When will they ever learn/when will they ever learn.”

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