So far, the Republican response to this nation's withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a bit of a clusterfudge. That's to be expected; a fascist movement that centers its policies around the supposed brilliance of its own Dear Leader figure and the unending malevolence of anyone who ain't him is bound to see at least some light bruising in the places where their past earnestly held beliefs are no longer applicable, and new earnestly held beliefs must be hastily swapped in.
The most spectacular example of this, of course, was the Republican National Committee's scrubbing of a page effusively praising the ongoing withdrawal as a "historic peace agreement" brokered by Dear Leader Donald Trump in his great and powerful wisdom. The agreement, between the Trump administration and Taliban rebels, exchanged a full U.S. withdrawal for a Taliban promise not to attack American forces while we were doing it. The agreement was drawn up without input from the U.S.-backed Afghan government, and included the Trump-ordered release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including some of the top figures currently appearing on television cameras in Kabul.
All of this was heralded as evidence of Dear Leader's genius just two short months ago. The new Republican Party stance is that none of that happened, so shut up. If it weren't for the Internet Archive, you'd never know that the previous official Republican National Committee stance existed.
The new party stance is more complex, relying on vague assertions that if Dear Leader had been reelected and followed through on his original timetable for pulling out U.S. troops, four months earlier than Biden's slower version, everything would have been magically better because Dear Damn Leader was just that much of a military genius and would have definitely done more to help out the fleeing refugees now huddled at—oooooh. Right. That's the part where the party's new position transitions to low mumbling noises. You're going to have to forgive the party for not being able to flesh out the argument any more than that; it's going to take some time to get the CPAC conservatives, the up-for-reelection Republicans, the mad clerics of Mar-a-Lago, the unrepentant hawks, and the America First, The Rest Of You Last crowds all on the same talking points.
While the party strategists try to come up with new justifications and demands, however, their actual party members are moving on without them. There is only one core belief that the modern Republican movement believes in as much as it believes in the infallibility of its Dear Leader figures, and that is the belief in white nationalist conspiracy theories. All of them. Any of them. Whatever you've got, they'll bite.
And so while the Republican National Committee trolls its archives to try to find a salvageable position on "giving Afghanistan to the Taliban and getting the hell out of Kabul was one of Dear Leader's most ‘historic’ triumphs," the movement leaders with the biggest microphones are swiftly moving on to frame the withdrawal as a possible conspiracy by The Liberals to sneakily overwhelm the United States of America with not-white refugees.
It was the white nationalist Trump aide Stephen Miller who sought to set the narrative.
The other leading lights of the movement didn't need the cue. Conspiracy network Newsmax was on it, with one host grumbling that "the very last thing America needs right now is a swarm of migrants from a battle-torn wasteland." But we'll cut to the chase: Of course it was white nationalist figurehead Tucker Carlson who pushed hardest into this new territory. After 20 years of "nation building" that produced, evidently, nothing at all, the new greatest danger to America is the resulting immigrants.
Welcome to white nationalism's Great Replacement Theory, a belief that secret forces are conspiring to overwhelm white Americans with not-white human beings. It is, says Tucker, an invasion.
All of this is fouling what Republicanism's many, many war-promoters have attempted to use as their main justification for condemning the withdrawal: The protection of the Afghan men, women, and children who will likely be targeted by the returning Taliban. This has always been the most compelling reason for the Forever War, because it is unquestionable that the theocratic hard-right Taliban will clamp down on women's rights, childhood education, and the other universal targets of hard-right movements everywhere. The most effective means of protection is to provide political asylum to those in Afghanistan that seek it.
But that's not a position the fascist, white nationalist hard-right of this country is willing to abide. The go-to Republican critique of the withdrawal is now being overwhelmed by the white nationalist Republican base, and there's not a damn thing the Republican Party bigwigs can do about it. The new fascist movement doesn't give a damn what happens in Afghanistan or outside of it, has said so repeatedly, elected the clownish incompetent who bellowed it most ferociously, and is now immediately pinning the desire to evacuate the Taliban's enemies and targets as a new conspiracy bent on diluting the white American "race."
The Afghanistan withdrawal is unquestionably a wreck. It does seem that the Afghanistan government's foreign allies were grossly misled as to the fighting power of the alleged 300,000-troop strong military, and on their willingness to fight Taliban forces. It may turn out to be the case that U.S. military and diplomatic leaders were caught flatfooted when Taliban negotiators simply bought ownership of each town and province, arriving at the nation's largely undefended capital weeks earlier than American planning presumed. It may be true that allies held off on mass evacuations out of deference to an Afghan government attempting to portray strength—only to have members of the Afghan government flee the country before anyone else could.
There is not likely to be a unified Republican stance on what to do about any of it, however. Conservatism is no longer capable of mustering policy stances like that. The withdrawal was good when Dear Leader did it, and is outrageous when not-Dear Leader followed through on it, and it is monstrous for not-Dear Leader to be presiding over chaotic attempts to evacuate our Afghan allies and their families but Dear Leader's minions are absolutely correct in proclaiming that actually doing those evacuations would be an attack on white American values, so let them rot.
The party's stance will be determined, as always, by the most dire conspiracy they can imagine. Given that white nationalist panic was the only universal trait that could be mustered inside the last Republican administration's twitching half-policies, it is almost assured that the party will coalesce into a new demand that Afghan refugees be refused entry lest they taint the nation's good conservative essence. Any other alleged policies the party leaders come up with, from Ted Cruz to Rand Paul to Olympic-level brown noser Lindsey Graham, will be ephemeral little blurbs meant to take up space.
It's a fascist movement, not a movement of experts. The party's policies are whatever most sets their voters into rage and panic on one particular day. When the policy changes to something else, only the Internet Archive will notice the difference.
The most spectacular example of this, of course, was the Republican National Committee's scrubbing of a page effusively praising the ongoing withdrawal as a "historic peace agreement" brokered by Dear Leader Donald Trump in his great and powerful wisdom. The agreement, between the Trump administration and Taliban rebels, exchanged a full U.S. withdrawal for a Taliban promise not to attack American forces while we were doing it. The agreement was drawn up without input from the U.S.-backed Afghan government, and included the Trump-ordered release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including some of the top figures currently appearing on television cameras in Kabul.
All of this was heralded as evidence of Dear Leader's genius just two short months ago. The new Republican Party stance is that none of that happened, so shut up. If it weren't for the Internet Archive, you'd never know that the previous official Republican National Committee stance existed.
The new party stance is more complex, relying on vague assertions that if Dear Leader had been reelected and followed through on his original timetable for pulling out U.S. troops, four months earlier than Biden's slower version, everything would have been magically better because Dear Damn Leader was just that much of a military genius and would have definitely done more to help out the fleeing refugees now huddled at—oooooh. Right. That's the part where the party's new position transitions to low mumbling noises. You're going to have to forgive the party for not being able to flesh out the argument any more than that; it's going to take some time to get the CPAC conservatives, the up-for-reelection Republicans, the mad clerics of Mar-a-Lago, the unrepentant hawks, and the America First, The Rest Of You Last crowds all on the same talking points.
While the party strategists try to come up with new justifications and demands, however, their actual party members are moving on without them. There is only one core belief that the modern Republican movement believes in as much as it believes in the infallibility of its Dear Leader figures, and that is the belief in white nationalist conspiracy theories. All of them. Any of them. Whatever you've got, they'll bite.
And so while the Republican National Committee trolls its archives to try to find a salvageable position on "giving Afghanistan to the Taliban and getting the hell out of Kabul was one of Dear Leader's most ‘historic’ triumphs," the movement leaders with the biggest microphones are swiftly moving on to frame the withdrawal as a possible conspiracy by The Liberals to sneakily overwhelm the United States of America with not-white refugees.
It was the white nationalist Trump aide Stephen Miller who sought to set the narrative.
The other leading lights of the movement didn't need the cue. Conspiracy network Newsmax was on it, with one host grumbling that "the very last thing America needs right now is a swarm of migrants from a battle-torn wasteland." But we'll cut to the chase: Of course it was white nationalist figurehead Tucker Carlson who pushed hardest into this new territory. After 20 years of "nation building" that produced, evidently, nothing at all, the new greatest danger to America is the resulting immigrants.
Welcome to white nationalism's Great Replacement Theory, a belief that secret forces are conspiring to overwhelm white Americans with not-white human beings. It is, says Tucker, an invasion.
All of this is fouling what Republicanism's many, many war-promoters have attempted to use as their main justification for condemning the withdrawal: The protection of the Afghan men, women, and children who will likely be targeted by the returning Taliban. This has always been the most compelling reason for the Forever War, because it is unquestionable that the theocratic hard-right Taliban will clamp down on women's rights, childhood education, and the other universal targets of hard-right movements everywhere. The most effective means of protection is to provide political asylum to those in Afghanistan that seek it.
But that's not a position the fascist, white nationalist hard-right of this country is willing to abide. The go-to Republican critique of the withdrawal is now being overwhelmed by the white nationalist Republican base, and there's not a damn thing the Republican Party bigwigs can do about it. The new fascist movement doesn't give a damn what happens in Afghanistan or outside of it, has said so repeatedly, elected the clownish incompetent who bellowed it most ferociously, and is now immediately pinning the desire to evacuate the Taliban's enemies and targets as a new conspiracy bent on diluting the white American "race."
The Afghanistan withdrawal is unquestionably a wreck. It does seem that the Afghanistan government's foreign allies were grossly misled as to the fighting power of the alleged 300,000-troop strong military, and on their willingness to fight Taliban forces. It may turn out to be the case that U.S. military and diplomatic leaders were caught flatfooted when Taliban negotiators simply bought ownership of each town and province, arriving at the nation's largely undefended capital weeks earlier than American planning presumed. It may be true that allies held off on mass evacuations out of deference to an Afghan government attempting to portray strength—only to have members of the Afghan government flee the country before anyone else could.
There is not likely to be a unified Republican stance on what to do about any of it, however. Conservatism is no longer capable of mustering policy stances like that. The withdrawal was good when Dear Leader did it, and is outrageous when not-Dear Leader followed through on it, and it is monstrous for not-Dear Leader to be presiding over chaotic attempts to evacuate our Afghan allies and their families but Dear Leader's minions are absolutely correct in proclaiming that actually doing those evacuations would be an attack on white American values, so let them rot.
The party's stance will be determined, as always, by the most dire conspiracy they can imagine. Given that white nationalist panic was the only universal trait that could be mustered inside the last Republican administration's twitching half-policies, it is almost assured that the party will coalesce into a new demand that Afghan refugees be refused entry lest they taint the nation's good conservative essence. Any other alleged policies the party leaders come up with, from Ted Cruz to Rand Paul to Olympic-level brown noser Lindsey Graham, will be ephemeral little blurbs meant to take up space.
It's a fascist movement, not a movement of experts. The party's policies are whatever most sets their voters into rage and panic on one particular day. When the policy changes to something else, only the Internet Archive will notice the difference.