False Narratives

An opinion piece from John Solomon makes a productive point:

The long saga of the Russia collusion scandal — during which law enforcement, media, political operatives and intelligence assets manufactured a two-year illusion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy that did not exist — raised questions about a new era of political warfare in which false realities could be foisted upon the American public.

The bungled, bloody U.S. exit from Afghanistan now has some fearing the Biden administration practiced deception by omission and commission to create a two-month false narrative that misled Congress and the American public by making the situation in and around Kabul look better than it was.

That Solomon should mention the Trump-Russia false narrative brings to mind two other ongoing false narratives, in addition to the one just discredited, that the Afghanistan mission was succeeding:

• The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success
• The January 6 US Capitol demonstration was an insurrection,

So far, it's plain that Speaker Pelosi is simply ignoring calls from Republicans for a congressional investigation into the Afghanistan fiasco, which given recent revelations is metastasizing into a story of months-long coverup of the actual situation. Meanwhile, she's continuing to promote the investigation of the January 6 events, with the cooperation of two turncoat Republicans who are now facing the potential of expulsion from the House Republican Conference.

The overall problem with the false narratives is that they aren't credible, and so far, the mainstream media hasn't fully signed on. The actual numbers are too hard to ignore:

[T]he one thing Biden has been bragging about as his supposed great success was actually a colossal failure as well. The airlift may have gotten out 120,000 people total, but those were not mostly Afghan allies who we had sworn to protect.

According to NBC News, around 20,000 Afghans who had worked with the US government had applied for SIVs, and that was back in May. No doubt the number skyrocketed as it became clear the Taliban would prevail. When you add in their families, that number jumps to almost 75,000. In the end, we got out around 8,500, a tiny fraction of those we made promises to.

The difficulty increases when, if you recognize that only 8,500 legitimate visa holders were evacuated, the rest of the 120,000 were unvetted, something that's gradually being acknowledged, while it's also slowly being acknowledged that at least 100 Americans, and likely more, were also left behind. All of these represent the potential for bad headlines going forward.

The Biden-Pelosi strategy continues to be to rely on paper-thin congressional majorities to stay on course day to day, while hoping Afghanistan blows over and something or other can work in their favor. But going into the Labor Day weekend, which has traditionally been just the crowning event of the end-of-summer silly season, things don't look propitious for this approach.