I’m not sure what was misunderstood there.
I was referencing the President and the tell that he actually is full of bloodlust. It should be a tell to those who claim he is not.
Ok, except you said you disagreed with me, and didn’t reference the President when replying to me, hence the confusion.
Thank you for clarifying though.
One of the extremely interesting things about the aftermath of September 11th that I didn’t know about until 7 years ago or so was how high profile elected leaders made use of the citation of Isaiah 9:10 in their speeches attempting to rally or encourage the nation. Utterly remarkable given the full context of the verse. It was cited in a Senate speech on Sept. 12, 2001 by Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader at the time and later on Sept. 11, 2004 in a speech by then Senator John Edwards (2004 Vice-Presidential candidate of ill-repute for the Democratic ticket.) Taken together, seemingly more of a Caiaphas moment then almost anything I’m aware of in the country’s history. Something about testimony being established by the mouths of two or three witnesses comes to mind.
See here:
and here:
One of the stranger parts to the story is the fact that a sycamore tree planted by (If I recall correctly) George Washington and others (edit: I didn’t remember correctly 
- it was just an older, large sycamore, possibly related to the colonial era) in lower Manhattan was actually destroyed by falling debris during the attacks and was later replaced by an evergreen tree in a commemorative ceremony during the lengthy rebuilding. In essence, acting out a portion of the passage of judgement in Isaiah 9.
I learned all this listening to some of the instances in which a Messianic Rabbi, Johnathan Cahn, speaks about a book he’s written on the subject. He seems to travel in somewhat charismatic circles of influence but I’ve still found things I’ve heard from him to be mostly balanced and useful, despite some things that I’d not always agree with.
See here:
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I remember hearing the part of then-President George W. Bush’s speech at 9/11 where he said this:
Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable, acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet unyielding anger.
(Emphasis mine.)
I remember thinking at the time that then-President Bush was calling for holding a grudge and that that was something distinctly different from humbling ourselves before God and mourning and fasting and seeking His favor.
President Biden’s words aren’t something new; it’s just more of the same. I don’t want calls for President Biden to be impeached; I want us to humble ourselves and return to the Lord (Amos 4).
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I don’t think those are the same. Anger is not the same as lack of forgiveness. I think it is accurate to describe my current feelings about 9/11 as quiet, unyielding anger. But I wouldn’t say I’m holding a grudge.
Recognizing the variety of ways that God is calling us to humble ourselves and return to the Lord, I still think it’s appropriate to hold men accountable for the work they’ve been given. The President is the commander in chief. He should probably be impeached for this failure of a withdrawal—not for his leading us into unforgiveness.
Nevertheless, I think it is indeed quite noteworthy. Less for the reason that the president is saying something terrible, but more for what that says about our nation.
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Be careful what you wish for.
I really don’t believe Mr. Biden is responsible for the management of the withdrawal from Afghanistan in ways other than bearing that responsibility via bearing the chief executive’s title. Morally and federally, in other words, but I doubt in any ways functionally responsible.
I don’t doubt that there are many with wicked intentions who desire the removal of Mr. Biden from the position of said office-holding responsibilities and who aren’t above using substantial forms of manipulation to attempt it. I try not to under-estimate the level of evil that can be accomplished through cooperation of the State Department and the “intelligence community.” I often fail. I do find it interesting the widespread nature of critical coverage of the administration’s withdrawal. Not that it is undeserving of widespread criticism, but when does logical analysis dictate talking points for “the news?” Fox News and broader conservatism are obvious, ongoing criticism and displeasure of Mr. Biden’s handling of the events from MSNBC, less so. Just some general thoughts, but I’d be concerned with much wider possibilities than simply Ms. Harris.
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Frankly, I think you guys are giving the President too much credit if you think his statement about lack of forgiveness arises from some firm sentiment or conviction rather than a passing feeling that will disappear with the next news cycle. I see it as empty bravado arising from weakness. What comes to mind is King Tirian’s statement in The Last Battle, "And peace, Eustace. Do not scold, like a kitchen-girl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.”
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Agreed. My point was that it is notable that such a statement is seen as good and strong today in our culture. And that is a change.
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I agree with this to a point. Biden certainly didn’t tell the military to [insert any of two dozen poor decisions]. But we are now two weeks into this slow-motion crisis and zero cabinet members, generals, intel officials or senior diplomats have been fired. AFAIK, the only career fallout from this has been a Lieutenant Colonel or two who have committed public career seppuku over this.
The only conclusion I can draw here is that Biden is fine with this. As a leader, you can only blame your subordinates if you’re also willing to relieve them of duty.
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Two conspiracy theories I will offer.
The first is that Biden went into office, determined to withdraw, as he had wanted to do since he had been a senator and vice president. It was his political conviction that the previous administration and the American people had come to agree with. It was all teed up for him. He just had to give the word.
The Deep State told Biden that if he really pulled the trigger and withdrew that they would bungle it and blame him. Believing that this bluster would be enough for him to reconsider, they believed that the mission they had been deceiving Congress and previous presidents about would continue on. But Biden called their bluff and actually did it, knowing that he is 78 years old and has nothing to lose. Biden will take the heat and everyone will forget about this by November 2022.
The second theory is that the Deep State, rather than being caught off guard, is playing three dimensional chess with Biden. The Obama admin holdovers agree with Biden that it was time to get out, or knew he wanted to get out and decided to let him do it with minimal supervision. The long term plan is to pin the blame on the president, begin to quietly investigate him and let the drip, drip, drip begin. It’s all to set up Biden to resign for the good of the nation half way through his term so that Kamala Harris can be president for 10 years, locking in the Obama coalition and ushering the brave new inclusive future.
The world and all it contains has looked so bizzarro this past week, I’ve had occasion to ask some folks I consider to be sane (1) “Does it look bizzarro to you too? Or, is it just something I ate?” and (2) “How do you parse Biden’s actions/inactions over the past week?”
I was interested to hear people who had not conferred with one another (or with me, previously) all independently of one another offer some version of what you offer as a second option here - viz. that Biden’s been (or is being) set up to take the fall.
Most think it will be via the 25th Aendment. Definitely NOT via an impeachment, as this would open too many doors for investigators, cross-examinations, hearings, and all sorts of similar political folderol. So, a simple “depose him via the 25th” and put Kamala in office in his place, cluck-clucking about how tragic it is that so great a political leader should decline so quickly just when he’d reached his lifelong goal. Tsk tsk tsk and so forth.
Oh my, how I’d love to know what sorts of heavenly councils generated the events of this month! Maybe some angelic scribe is committing it all to an archive we can eventually read.
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I think there is a piece of this that is true. The military is very unhappy that Biden broke their rice bowl and we can see the hissy fit on TV. I think it also provides some illumination as to why Trump didn’t withdraw in spite of his proclivities.
But here’s the piece of your conspiracy that doesn’t add up: Huge numbers of these guys, from cabinet members to generals to diplomats, serve at Biden’s whim. He could drop any of them in a heartbeat, either before their threats or after.
My conclusion after watching Biden fumble and snooze his way through this crisis is almost exactly opposite yours: Biden is actually in charge here. There is no one behind the curtain. The DNC poobahs rigged the primary (and maybe the whole election) and put Joe Biden in charge. President Joe Biden. That’s what we get.
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Firstly, I should say I have no military service history, only the utmost respect for those who have honored their country and ultimately blessed their neighbors by honorably serving. I’m no expert and certainly not in military affairs. When I say that I don’t think Mr. Biden is functionally responsible it’s because I seriously doubt he’s living in a condition of anything like the mental faculty functionality necessary to even be consulted for decision making duties regarding any of the President’s responsibilities beyond giving (likely technologically-assisted) speeches or very controlled appearances. It would be interesting to know what sort of contortions are likely in play to give a bad excuse for constitutional credibility to the completion of unavoidable formalities regarding the duties of the commander-in-chief. I mean no disrespect. It’s sick, actually. I would be lying if I said I thought otherwise.
As for speculation regarding what’s “really going on,” I’ll leave my thoughts for another day, perhaps. I’ll say that I truly think it’s a much more sinister situation than what you outlined. And ultimately, it ties together with so many other topics. That is partial speculation on my part, of course. But speculation that is neither crazy nor fatal and hopeless. For so many reasons, it’s much the opposite.
Week?
Fr. Bill is a man of vocabulary! 
And truth!!! 
Well, maybe I won’t leave all my thoughts for another day. I’ll reiterate that I think what’s going on with the present presidential intrigue really does tie in to many other things including the previous year’s election intrigue and COVID (of course.) To be honest, that’s just the start.
Regarding conspiracies more broadly but with definite relationship to the “oddness” of our present worldwide weirdness I’ll say that I’m no expert here either. I’m a Christian by God’s grace and I try to use the mind that He gave me to consistently understand what I encounter. And I’ve had the opportunity to spend time exposed to a decent amount of broadly “conspiratorial” content and material over a number of years, partly as hobby, partly as interest motivated by an attempt at love for the truth. Attempting meaningful understanding and analysis of such materials truly is rife with pitfalls. There are important topics to know about, though, too and there is a continuity to many of their relationships to one another that make the history of, at very least, the post-WWII era take on a number of aspects that I, for one, was never taught in school. And there are modern “praetorians,” so to speak.
I think that it is from there that much of the corruption functions but I also often give consideration to what some who have or have had such roles and tried to do so honorably (or even as Christians) think about each of the issues under discussion and how they inter-relate, as well as how they experience grief over the state of the country. I think that, tragically, some of the most honorable to serve both in the armed forces and also in other forms of foreign service and the intel agencies have often been the least honorably treated when they have become aware of serious criminality, wrongdoing, and in some cases profound evils. Their attempts to expose the blatantly un-American and illegal realities often carry the doubly injurious situation of being attacked by the systems that should be protecting all Americans while at the same time having their rather earth-shattering information largely ignored, certainly by “the news.”
I had assembled a number of links and typed up some descriptions to material that I think help to introduce some modern topics that would give a picture as to why I think and speak like the corruption is so systemic and partly coordinated. I decided against posting it right now, simply because I feel the discussion is involved enough that it would be difficult (for me at least) to give a full enough description in this communication format to be as accurate as I would want with my thoughts. I’d love to actually discuss some of the related topics, though. Perhaps that sort of thing works best in person or more slowly for the written format.
Since it’s slightly boring to read my remarks, maybe I’ll include one picture, though. When I say there’s a continuity to some of the current corruption and intrigue, though, I really do think it inter-relates in some ways to things that go back much further. This is, in my mind, one of the most remarkable historic photos of the 20th century.
May our Lord grant courage to those who sacrifice for the exposure of wrongdoing.
Eph. 5:11-13
Luke 8:17
I don’t think we need a conspiracy. The military, the state department, the CIA, DHS, et al. were probably telling Biden that it was going to be terrible if we pulled out because they believed it, and they still believed in the mission (in whatever way their cold little hearts could!). They probably weren’t particularly motivated to do the best job of contingency planning, and after 10 years of hearing politician go on about withdrawal many of them might not have believed it would really happen, but I doubt there was any overt threat.
Beyond that, I think Douthat’s take is pretty good. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/opinion/afghanistan-biden.html
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But who is doing the controlling here? Wouldn’t you expect them to exert a little more, you know, control?
I know that it might be a little tough for them to get his meds balanced right or to schedule a presser on a “good day,” but aren’t there workarounds for this, like getting SecDef or SecState on TV to act like they know what they are doing? Or to get them to make reasonable decisions in light of the crisis at hand? Or at least to get Biden to stop talking about Beau for 20 minutes? It sure looks to me like President Biden is the one in control. God help us.
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I’m coming around to the view that there was no option under which withdrawal would not be a fiasco. By demonstration, the Afghan government was a house of cards, and I think it is likely that that fact was known by the U.S. military and civilian leadership. But there is no safe way to dismount a tiger. If the U.S. had voiced ahead of time that it expected the Afghan government to collapse in two weeks or took actions that indicated that it believed that would be the case, then the Afghan government would have immediately began to collapse, thus producing the same result we have now.
And in terms of holding people responsible, well sure, but let’s not think that is confined to those left holding the bag at the very end.
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I’m sorry, but are we completely forgetting what it means to be President of the United States. Are we honestly going to overlook his every very real failure to lead, or his incompetence on matter that he was purportedly the most competent on.
Biden gets no pass just because he’s a puppet. He get no pardon just because he’s always been a notorious liar, especially about his competence and experience. (Worlds smallest 
)
I’m sorry, I’m all for respecting authority, but this man and the people who put him there are tearing this country apart from the inside. That’s not authority that’s treason, and if anyone thinks it would be different with Kamala as POTUS is forget that the same people who set up Biden to be President did so for her too. VP, are usually insurance policies to keep attacks on the President within reason. The only thing the liberals were more terrified of than Trump was a prospective Christian conservative leading the nation. Trump didn’t go conservative enough for his VP pick.
However Kamala is absolutely ecstatic about the prospect of momentarily looking better than someone else for once. Which very much suggests that the plan all along was to have the first female President.
But no sympathies from me for any of those haters of the American people.
Whichever grandees of the Democratic Party coordinated every other Democrat dropping out of the race to endorse Joe Biden on the same day (except the one whose votes would have gone to Bernie!!) have some explaining to do to the rest of us.
Why did Blinken go on vacation the weekend Kabul fell? Why did they act like there was no contingency plan for an emergency airlift out of HKIA?
The withdrawal was going to be painful. Anyone who had to be extracted from a jungle in Vietnam by helicopter while under fire can tell you that there’s really no good way to do a retreat under fire.
But there are ways to plan for it that make it less painful than it could be.
Perhaps we will find out someday that we had good reasons for counting on the good will and good faith of the Taliban as part of our withdrawal (if so, then I expect those good reasons had pictures of Ben Franklin on them), but to back our way into that situation is inexcusable. As it stands, the good will of the Taliban is the only reason the Taliban didn’t kill every American in Afghanistan starting on the 15th of this month.
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I’m normally not very impressed with Douthat but that was a great column.
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