CommentsCOMMENTARY-Priorities should be a thing again. However, in a modern-day peaceful world, affluenza continues to run rampant.
When true danger occurs, like the Taliban takeover of Kabul, some wake up but unless it hits home like 9-11 did twenty years ago, many will stay asleep despite the documented videos and accounts of beheadings and women instantly put into sex slavery by a Taliban regime that has taken over every major city now.
The Americans who feel the imminent danger, such as Afghan Americans who understand the true danger of the Taliban regime, and frontline deployed military and their families are now starting to audit the bad governance and rethink their priorities. Buyer’s remorse is causing them to finally question the media outlets for not covering this over the long term. Does it take blood to finally wake up?
No news is good news, but it seems to be a free pass to bad priorities. For four years before this administration, our general population spent their time overanalyzing and overreacting to the previous president’s tweets, meanwhile, ignoring the aspects of his presidency that did work, such as competent leaders on the foreign policy front. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not have allowed this siege on Kabul and would have rejected a ridiculous need to virtue signal.
Now, successor, Secretary of State Blinken, has done less than blink. He fell asleep at the wheel, aided by Commander-in-Sleep, Biden, and Senate Democrats who felt it was more important to “pivot” to other priorities. Bottom line is Blinken’s job was to protect the American troops as they slowly returned home, and he failed miserably. Maybe he planned to “circle back” after his nap? Too late now: this is the first time since 1979, when Jimmy Carter was President, that the US has lost an embassy. Over 400 days, hostages were held in Tehran then. Looks like a repeat performance here as Afghan American protestors carried signs in front of the White House saying “Biden, your pullout game is weak”, stressing the savagery of the incoming Taliban government.
Watching the images of chaos, I instantly think back to the Fall of Saigon. It was far from an orderly pullout, reminding me of my friend Jeannie Luong, who was separated from her husband and for young children in 1975, but thankfully was able to reunite with them in the Philippines on an American base. Many Vietnamese were not as lucky. Jeannie will never forget the desperation of everyone leaving as the Communists came. Like in Kabul days ago, rural people, afraid for their lives and future as human rights are stripped from them overnight, cashed out their savings, and flocked to the cities to escape in planes. Even reporters who tried to maintain a calm demeanor, went from regular clothing to burqas the next day of reporting. Let’s be real here: things are not under control, even when Blinken asserted on ABC’s “This Week,” “This is manifestly not Saigon.” Sure looks like Saigon to me.
We have become a society easily bought off by virtue signals. Biden talks nice, so suddenly his very damaging actions (or inaction) around Afghanistan are supposed to get a free pass? Trump at least had an orderly pullout plan, and Biden accelerated this in an extreme fashion, desperate to virtue signal to the woke. Can we now admit that wokeness is actually costing lives? Can I get my mean tweeting President who kept things pretty orderly and was feared more than he was loved? Now, dangerous regimes have been sent a signal that it’s open season by Biden.
Soon after spoiled Americans obsessed over Nixon’s Watergate, Jimmy Carter came along and reminded everyone to shift back to the right priorities with gas lines and Iran Contra. Now, Biden’s foreign policy breakdown seems to be doing the same. He ran on returning decency to America, but none of the images seen in Kabul were even close to “decent.”
Maybe if the administration wasn’t busy virtue signaling and thoughtfully did their job, we would have avoided the rape and murder of all these Afghan women and children? Will Women’s March take on their cause, or listen to the young Afghans, like 22 year old Aisha Khurram, who grew up in a post 9-11 world, just about to graduate, and had dreams to build back her country? Do the families separated in Kabul matter to those who were virtue signaling about the detention camps? I would love to see some consistency in the outrage for once.
Political ADD and bad priorities are not sustainable. In California, we can recall Governor Newsom and district attorneys like Gascón. But impeaching a President is much more complicated, especially when “wolf” was cried too many times in the last administration. Elections have consequences, and sometimes the price is paid in blood when your priorities are whack. Let’s hope the price we pay for the learning curve isn’t too steep and that this isn’t another Sarajevo 1914 because there are international consequences to this.
(Marc Ang ([email protected]) is the President of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance in Orange County, co-chair of “Recall Gascon Now”, was the Director of Outreach for the “No on 16” campaign, a community organizer in Southern California and the founder of AsianIndustryB2B who specializes in race relations and the minority conservative experience. His book “Minority Retort” will be released in late 2021.) Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
