Meet your new Taliban, all decked out in American uniforms and using American equipment. And then there’s today’s attack. And there will be more.
Heckuva Job, Joe
Monthly Archives: August 2021
My Latest
It is at the Wall Street Journal – could be behind a paywall. If so, enjoy the first few lines.
Tom Tugendhat
Exodus
The Horror, the Horror
Further to my Previous
So, I was saying here that Biden is compassionate and decent, but boy, the events of the past few days are making me wonder. And that statement he gave yesterday was appalling. To sum it up in a few sentences: “I am President of the United States and the buck stops here. But everyone else is to blame.” “I am the President of the United States.” “Afghans aren’t willing to die for their future, and yes, I am conveniently forgetting that 70,000 members of the Afghan military have died in this conflict.” “We will always support the Afghan people, except for starting from now.” “Did I mention I was President of the United States?” “Evil Trump made me do this, and even though I have gone back on pretty much all of his policies, I can’t go back on this one.” “I am President and I stand by my decision. Also, everyone else is to blame.” “We can’t have an endless war and endless sacrifice of American lives, and yes, I am ignoring the fact that there are only 2500 US troops in Afghanistan and that we have had troops in Korea and Europe for decades now.” “I am President of the United States and this is not my fault. Also, I am not taking questions.”
What adds to the tragedy is that all Biden had to do was nothing, as explained in this column.
Robin Flight School
Our second clutch of robins for 2021 flew the nest earlier this week. (I wrote about our 2020 clutches here.) There were three, born Bastille Day: Etienne, Jil and Daniel (named after singers Etienne Daho, Jil Caplan and Daniel Balavoine). Daniel left first, then Jil and…a full 24 hours later, Etienne was still sitting there, enjoying his space and enjoying his parents bringing him worms. He was like one of those kids who won’t move out of his parents house – a real failure to launch. What was truly comical – and a bit unnerving – was that Eleanor and Henri (Etienne’s parents) spent the last few hours he was in the nest perched in our cherry tree (located just behind the nest) squawking at their son. And I mean, squawking really loudly. We had never seen this behaviour. They appeared to be frantic, and we started to worry that maybe Etienne was sick or injured and couldn’t fly. I called a friend of mine who does wildlife rehabilitation and described the situation. She assured me that Etienne was fine and that his parents were simply encouraging him to leave. In other words, it was robin flight school. What they were squawking was, “Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, FLY!!!!!” And finally, he did. We shall miss them and hope for a third year of clutches in 2022, a third year that we are able to witness.
