Yesterday as Red State ReportAccording to reports, the U.S. military carried out a drone attack that blew up an Islamic State “planner” in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
This was touted as a retaliatory strike against the U.S. Double suicide bombing This happened in Kabul, tragically taking the lives of at least 13 American soldiers, and a dozen others are still hospitalized. The terrorist attack also killed at least 170 Afghans and injured countless others.
Central Command (last night): “The U.S. military carried out an over-the-horizon counter-terrorism operation against an ISIS-K planner today. The unmanned air strike took place in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The initial signs were that we killed the target. We know that there were no civilian casualties.”
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) August 28, 2021
I know this is the key point where I should raise my fist and praise Joe Biden, because he shouldn’t have made the necessary response in the first place, but it makes me very suspicious of how this is structured. If Jen Psaki wrote that press release himself, how would it be different?
No, I am not saying that the strike did not happen. I’m sure that a certain shepherd who supported terrorism in the hut was blown to pieces. But my suggestion is that there is some serious gas lighting for the actual meaning and significance of the strike.
Use the term “over the horizon” in the press release. In the past few weeks, this is what Biden and his agent have been restraining, and it happens to be here. Regarding the giggles, I went to Google and searched for this phrase to understand how common its use was before the Biden administration’s rhetoric on the area flooded. Not surprisingly, it was basically unheard of before, and in the last two months after Biden mentioned the feature in July, it was mentioned every time. This is not to say that “over the horizon” has never been used in military vocabulary, but that it has only recently been promoted to be included in an overwhelming public narrative and is politically motivated.
So what impression should you get from that press release? Please allow me to translate: Biden’s promise of beyond visual range capability has been fulfilled. He kept his promise that we can strike anytime and anywhere. He has always been right, and withdrawing has not changed our ability to fight terrorism!
What is overlooked is that you need intelligence to know where to strike, which is almost impossible to achieve in Afghanistan. In addition, please pay attention to the location of the strike. Nangarhar Province is an area in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistani border, far away from the main gathering place of the Taliban. Although we know that there are thousands of ISIS fighters in Kabul and its surrounding areas, we chose to attack a man only described as a “planner” in a remote place. Given that this administration is constantly lying about the situation, I will ask for more before I believe they really do anything important here.
In the end, our throw-in that did not kill any civilians also made me feel strange and impossible. Do we believe that this ISIS mastermind lives alone in an area with no surrounding population? Given the Afghan culture, this would be very unusual. In other words, this seems to once again give people an impression of how amazing success the Biden administration has achieved in carrying out an over-the-horizon strike.
I don’t buy these, and neither should you. It feels like a classic CYA moment, similar to Bill Clinton bombing a chemical plant after Al Qaeda bombed our embassy. I think this attack did not punish ISIS or impair their combat capability at all. On the contrary, I suspect that this is the goal provided by the Taliban, giving Biden the opportunity he needs.
