© REUTERS/Stringer; REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
Taliban fighters in Kabul (left) and January 6 riot at the US Capitol (right)
Comedian Stephen Colbert comparing the Taliban to January 6 Capitol rioters may seem silly and dumb, but when he's joined by a chorus of Democrat activists, it becomes clear they're really saying the quiet part out loud.
"Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan? We've got our own on Capitol Hill," Colbert said during his show on Monday night, showing the photos of the January riot that Democrats like him insist was an "insurrection" against Our Democracy.
While the line got a laugh from the studio audience in New York, it was not really a joke -
but a way to amplify the talking points put forth by Washington. After a weekend of watching in stunned silence as the US-backed Afghan government
collapsed even before Western troops, diplomats and NGO staff could leave the country - resulting in harrowing images of stampedes at the Kabul airport - President Joe Biden returned to DC on Monday and tried to change the narrative.
Instead of addressing the downfall and the way it caught the US unprepared,
Biden talked about the merits of leaving - a straw man issue, since the overwhelming majority of Americans actually agree.
The ones that don't are the neocon hawks like Bill Kristol, the Cheney-Kinzinger 'Republicans' and the Lincoln Project types, all of whom backed Biden in 2020.
Taking credit for ending the war and arguing US troops shouldn't be fighting a civil war in Afghanistan, Biden left without taking questions from the media. His mission was accomplished: he had served up a new narrative to fill the void created by the Taliban's reality bomb.
That certainly appears to be the context for the first half of Colbert's "joke." As for the second, it caught the attention of journalist Glenn Greenwald,
who warned back in January that Washington was itching to turn the powers of the national security state against domestic political opponents.
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