FEDERALIST
Our Defeat In Afghanistan Is Only The Beginning
by John Daniel Davidson
September 2, 2021

…As we learn more in the coming weeks and months about the fecklessness and deceit of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal — including Biden’s appalling conversation with then-President Ashraf Ghani, urging him to “project a different picture” of the fight against the Taliban, “whether it is true or not” — every nation in the world will take note of what our promises are worth. Some of these developments will take decades to mature, but others will move rapidly. By the end of Biden’s term, assuming he’s able to see it through, we might well long for the days when all we had to worry about was our humiliation in Afghanistan. READ MORE

FDD Thomas Joscelyn: What We Know—and Don’t Know—About ISIS-K When the Islamic State declared its caliphate in Iraq and Syria in June 2014, its leaders immediately rejected the legitimacy of all other Muslim and jihadist authorities—including the Taliban. According to the Islamic State’s scheme, once its men set foot on the soil of any country or region, all Muslims in the vicinity owe their allegiance to its caliph. 

MELANIE PHILLIPS Biden’s contemptible speech Instead, the President insisted that the operation at Kabul airport was an “extraordinary success”. He implied that everything apart from the Afghan army’s collapse and the flight of the Afghan president had gone according to plan. He accepted no responsibility for any failings in the operation, which were all apparently the fault of others.