Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Joe Biden is deaf, dumb and blind to the chaos the US has unleashed

The administration is ignoring history by putting blind faith in the goodwill of the murderous Taliban. 

As the top comment (at time of writing) to this in the Telegraph says 

Joe Biden is certainly dumb … incompetent, anti-American . . . a stain on America’s reputation and already one of America’s worst Presidents. But he doesn’t tweet rude things, so his corrupted election must have been ok, right? Right?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes

The Taliban, and jihadis around the world, are celebrating that the American leadership has been rendered deaf, dumb, and blind. (As an aside there is a serious comment to the effect that this phrase is offensive and outdated and the terms hearing impaired, visually impaired and lacking in speech are the correct ones. That person seems oblivious to the responding sarcasm referencing the rock opera Tommy. But I digress)  So dumb are they that the Biden administration allegedly provided the Taliban with names and biometric details of Afghans who have worked for the US over the past two decades, in a show of blind faith that they would allow these at-risk Afghans through checkpoints for evacuation.

Q: “Just to follow up, do you – does the administration think that they need the Taliban agreement to extend beyond August 31?”

Mr Sullivan: “As I said, we are engaging with the Taliban, consulting with the Taliban on every aspect of what’s happening in Kabul right now – on what’s happening at the airport; on how we need to ensure that there is facilitated passage to the airport for American citizens, SIVs, third-country nationals, and so forth. We’ll continue those conversations with them.”

That exchange took place just a day before 13 US service personnel and close to 200 Afghans were killed in a terrorist attack. The Marines were there to help evacuate other US citizens, Afghans entitled to Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), and third-country nationals.

Those of us who have been tuning in to these press conferences since the announcement of the over-hasty and chaotic US withdrawal have been treated to some bizarre stuff. But the exchange above was surreal. Those entitled to SIVs are Afghan men and women who worked with the occupying forces of the US government and its allies not only against the Taliban and al-Qaeda but also against other local Islamist groups. They took a huge risk but were reassured that America had their back. Even in the event of a full withdrawal, America would help them out of the country – that surely was why Congress created the SIV programme.

Now, they must all face the reality that an American administration has handed their identities to the Taliban.

In a desperate attempt to explain the terrorist attack that killed the 13 Marines, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that it was carried out by IS-K, not by the Taliban, whom the administration was “consulting with on every aspect of” the evacuation. Taliban, IS-K, al-Qaeda. These are the best-known jihadi brands operating inside Afghanistan. Alongside them are a myriad militant Islamist groups, often aligned with local tribes and clans. They are rivals as much as they are confederates. They have different priorities. But not one of them can be considered a reliable counterparty in the current situation.

Earlier this week, US secretary of state Antony Blinken stated that the Taliban “have made public and private commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans, for third-country nationals, and Afghans at risk going forward past August 31.” But we’ve already heard many reports to the contrary. Some wishful thinkers would like us to believe that this is a newer, modern version of the Taliban. However, this is not the Taliban 2.0. They are showing us who they are before we’ve even left. Soon after the collapse of the Afghan government, reports stated that they were “going door-to-door and screening names at Kabul checkpoints as they hunt for people who worked with US-led forces or the previous Afghan government”.

The recklessness of the Biden team continues to astound me. It really is as if they are deaf, dumb, and blind – ignoring not only what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan but also what has happened in multiple similar situations throughout history.