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The Taliban Haven’t Changed

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Suhail Shaheen, a member of Taliban’s negotiation team, speaks during a joint news conference in Moscow, Russia, March 19, 2021. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Reuters)

Pundits and U.S. officials have speculated that a new, softer version of the Taliban might emerge.

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Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we remind our leaders that the Taliban have not changed, highlight another shoddy smear job of Governor Ron DeSantis, and take note of more media misses.

The Taliban Haven’t Changed

For the first time in nearly two decades, the Taliban control most of Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul.

As the self-destruction of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan continues apace and the Biden administration haphazardly races to evacuate U.S. citizens and allies from the war-torn country ahead of its self-imposed deadline of August 31, an odd line is emerging: Maybe the Taliban aren’t so bad.

Experts such as Mustapha Ben Messaoud, the chief of field operations at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), claim to be “optimistic” about the Taliban’s return to power, citing “ongoing discussions.” Reuters reported that officials at UNICEF have “cited some Taliban local representatives as saying they were waiting for guidance from their leaders on the issue of educating girls, while others have said they want schools ‘up and running.'” A spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet at least had the decency to acknowledge that the concerns of Afghans were “thoroughly understandable,” in what nevertheless may qualify as the understatement of the century.

The president of the United States and his team have also hypothesized that the Taliban may turn over a new leaf. In an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos last Wednesday, Biden responded to a question about whether the Taliban had changed:

“No. I think — let me put it this way. I think they’re going through sort of an existential crisis about do they want to be recognized by the international community as being a legitimate government,” he said.

The claim that the Taliban were facing an existential crisis echoed White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s assertion from earlier this month that “the Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their role to be in the international community.”

It appears that they have made that assessment already.

The Taliban haven’t changed. They still hate anyone who seeks to deliver freedom and prosperity for their countrymen. To prevent them from having either, they’ll maim, rape, torture, and kill. And in the meantime, they’ll provide a safe haven for terror groups, including al-Qaeda.

The Taliban haven’t changed. The West’s sense of moral clarity about their wickedness and confidence in its ability to defeat them has.

Biden’s Best Fact Checkers Work For Him

Last week President Biden was repeatedly fact-checked by his own administration. On Friday, Biden attempted to defend himself against criticism regarding the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan by questioning what interest the U.S. could possibly have in the country at this point give that al-Qaeda is “gone.” He argued that the U.S. “went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan as well as — as well as — getting Osama bin Laden. And we did.”

Shortly after the president’s remarks, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said, “We know that al-Qaeda is a presence, as well as ISIS, in Afghanistan, and we’ve talked about that for quite some time.”

On Monday, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan defended Biden’s remarks, arguing that the president had been referring to al-Qaeda’s capability to attack the U.S., “which the intelligence community tells us today is not present in Afghanistan.”

Sullivan added that there is a “serious threat” to U.S. forces at the airport in Kabul from ISIS-K and that there is the possibility that al-Qaeda “could reconstitute an external plotting capability in Afghanistan,” but noted that Biden believes American counterterrorism capabilities will allow U.S. forces to suppress those terrorism threats without keeping thousands of troops on the ground.

Biden also claimed that the U.S. had not received reports of American citizens being unable to enter Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Friday, despite reporting from multiple outlets that some American citizens and Special Immigrant Visa applicants have been beaten by Taliban militants while attempting to get into the airport.

Hours later, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged that some Americans trying to evacuate have been beaten by Taliban militants, according to Politico.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also said the U.S. was aware of reports of beatings. “We’re certainly mindful of these reports and we’ve communicated to the Taliban that that’s absolutely unacceptable and we want free passage through these checkpoints for documented Americans,” Kirby told reporters. “By and large, that’s happening.”

Then, just one day later, the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan warned Americans looking to evacuate not to head to Kabul airport unless directed to do so, citing “potential security threats.” 

Headline Fail of the Week

The Associated Press (AP) published a story last Wednesday titled “DeSantis top donor invests in COVID drug governor promotes.” The “drug” is Regeneron, which has been shown in clinical trials to be an exceedingly effective complement to the vaccines in preventing symptomatic COVID cases. In a letter to the AP, DeSantis stated that “the purpose of the headline and framing of the story was to smear me by insinuating that Florida’s push to expand awareness of and access to monoclonal antibody treatments was done to boost Regeneron’s profit, rather than to simply help Floridians in need.”

The letter ended by asserting that the news organization had “succeeded in publishing a misleading, clickbait headline about one of your political opponents, but at the expense of deterring individuals infected with COVID from seeking life-saving treatment, which will cost lives,” and asking “was it worth it?”

DeSantis’s distribution of the coronavirus vaccines to Publix — the largest grocery store chain in Florida — was criticized in a 60 Minutes feature earlier this year as “pay to play.”

Media Misses

• Julie Kelly of American Greatness argues that “if you need a booster 8 months after the first shot…it’s not a vaccine.” A quick glance at the vaccine schedule for other diseases might have saved her some embarrassment.

• Matt Yglesias commented sarcastically on the situation in Afghanistan, tweeting that it’s “unfortunate that after 6,935 days of war in Afghanistan with no operational failures whatsoever, the Taliban was able to overrun the country with minimal resistance and then out of nowhere Biden came with this ‘botched’ withdrawal plan wrecking an otherwise flawless mission.” America’s Afghan allies are being hunted down and murdered while American citizens are dependent on the benevolence of the Taliban to make it out of Afghanistan alive. Congratulations to Yglesias on his impressive and definitive victory over some loose straw blowing in the wind, though.

• From the comfort of her home, Jen Rubin labels the idea that “we abandoned the Afghans. We failed to get people out,” “false” and writes that “the airport in Kabul is up and running flights to evacuate U.S. citizens, third-party nationals, interpreters and other Afghan partners.” On the ground, it has been reported over and over again that Afghans are being turned away from the gates of the airport, as well as hunted down around the country. The existence of a rescue mission that gets some people out does not constitute proof that the Biden administration has not failed many of our Afghan allies, nor does it excuse the fact that they find themselves in peril in the first place.

• The mainstream media have a geography problem.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

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