Kabul collapses. Garbled, conflicting messages emanate from the White House, the Pentagon, and State Department, against a backdrop of political upheaval. Kamala Harris, the Grim Veeper, resumes her customary place four respectful paces behind Joe Biden at the podium, ready to assume the mantle of the presidency should he falter, or when he inevitably falters.

Even the Taliban are mocking us. We hear cries of Biden Must Go and castigations of his “imbecilic” surrender of Afghanistan. We concur.

Their republic is gone; we must save ours.

What we did was plop a pink pussy hat on top of an ancient tribal culture and call it a nation built. Feminism, lectures on conceptual art, and cell phones do not a nation make, however. Handing out the accoutrements of a middle class democracy does not mean it actually exists, in the same way, in failed domestic policy failures, we give people cars and mortgages and declare them to be middle class. And in a final trenchant illustration of the incoherence of the leftist project, we on one hand declared Afghan culture to be equal to ours, and then set about to change it to look like ours. Is this not colonialism?

It doesn’t work without the foundation of ideology and policy. Liz Cheney, strangely, made the most sense of anything I saw on the Sunday morning shows: you have to build the institutions first, she said. And we did not do that.

So, now what to do? Lunatic moves like those coming from the White House tend to spark world wars, so someone needs to take control. The G7 met yesterday in a virtual seminar to discuss the course of action to stem the spiraling situation in Kabul. Led by Boris Johnson, the meeting’s stated purpose was a proposed “request” for an extension to remove our citizens and allies from the new caliphate.

A strong unified response to the Taliban, military if necessary, from the West IS necessary, and NATO seems to understand that. They must overrule the Taliban and Biden too, not “request” permission.

World leaders like Tony Blair, and of course former president Trump, who laid out his effective plan last week, would be included. They acknowledge the reality of the Taliban’s evil intent, and Trump’s plan keeps the pressure on them. The Obamas are not to be considered. They could not have telegraphed their disinterest more in Biden’s fate, or even the fate of this nation, than to throw a birthday bash at a time when his old apparatchiks had to have known the end was coming soon for Afghanistan. His legacy is too tied with Biden’s to be considered.

Biden might be asked to resign in favor of Harris or, at the least, should cede authority to her. Yes, yes, I know, she is loathsome, but she understands the peril of the situation and I believe would concede to the experience of the allied leaders; she gets it that with Pakistan, China and Pakistan, our nuclear rivals, are in the same neighborhood as Afghanistan, and we simply cannot let it drift away. How long before one of those three dangles a dirty bomb in front of the Taliban’s hungry noses? Any success would enhance her reputation, and right now she is going down on Joe’s ship.

The face of our diplomatic corps, pallid Ivy Leaguers like Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken, with their carefully parted hair and impeccably tailored suits and ideology, must go, in favor of a wartime consigliere, if one be existent in coddled DC. The idea that Blinken is negotiating with the Taliban to “deconflict” is ludicrous and cowardly, with the Taliban beating and rounding up people outside the airport gate right under their noses.

Benjamin Franklin knew that the American republic was a gamble. We cannot double down on the present course and “keep it.”

Today’s Guest Opinion is written by Patricia Jay, a writer living in Southern California, and working in the entertainment industry under deep cover.

Featured Photo is Benjamin Franklin by DonkeyHotey, Flickr, cropped. Used with Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).