War on Terror – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

November 18, 2023December 2, 2023

The Flag of Israel on My Montana Home, 11/18/23

No photo description available.

I am not one to turn my vehicles and home into political billboards. And no country comes close to my love for my own. Still, Israel is special. The history and cultural affinity of the people and country should draw us close to this narrow strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

The events of October 7 bring into sharp focus the threat to this natural strategic and cultural ally in a very dangerous neighborhood. The horrors of that day should remind us that the U.S. is also a very special country. We are the last remaining superpower on the side of the angels. As such, we can’t be blinkered and flippant like those small countries that dominate the UN General Assembly. Stan Lee of Marvel put it best when he wrote into the mouth of Spider-Man, “With great power there must also come great responsibility.” We have the duty to prevent the annihilation of the Jews and Israel because we have the power to do it.

To be charitable, the radical Left may actually believe that their chants of “End the apartheid state” and “from the river to the sea” aren’t calls for genocide. But if they have their way, there will be a second holocaust of the Jewish people. Israelis would be thrust cheek-by-jowl into political communion with people who hate them, if recent opinion polls are any indication (see below). A poll released on November 14 by Arab World for Research and Development (AWRD) shows that 83% of West Bank residents supported the slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7. Of Gaza Strip inhabitants, almost 64% did so. No other choice came close. Of course, in an exercise of gross euphemism in the question, the slaughter of civilians merely for their Jewish ancestry was hidden behind “military operation” and the killers referred to as “resistance”.

How can a people become so hostile to the very existence of Jews? Simple, the people are raised on a steady diet of the vilest propaganda. I invite you to pay a visit to the Middle East Media Research Institute who regularly looks into the subject (see below). In a Times of Israel story from 2013, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) funded camps for Palestinian children that instilled into these kids the idea that “Jews are the wolf” (see below). Or check out the YouTube video, “Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists” at https://youtu.be/vCWMBvxWKL0?si=p1oa8CyaMoiW-qnF, to get a taste of it.

“River to the sea” is a suicide pact for Jews. Should the U.S. be a party to this eventuality through indifference? If you talk to some on the Right, yes. They see America as an insular island on the globe. They wish a return to the 18th and 19th centuries when oceans were barriers, and the U.S. was a developing country. No longer on both counts. They wish to disguise their indifference behind the existence of domestic problems. Problems, like the poor, shall be with you always. But we have the power and with that power we have the responsibility to prevent a horrible replay of history.

Some on the Right – Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens come to mind – seem to suggest that we do nothing till their domestic pet peeves are addressed in their preferred manner. The flag of Israel flying from my house is a reminder that a superpower must look outward and inward at the same time. It’s the adult response in a chaotic world.

RogerG

The Error of Following a Person and Not What They Say: A Lesson that the Right Needs to Relearn

See the source image — Jordan Peterson, an icon of the Right

We are in an age of personality cults. Maybe we always have been to one extent or another. Regardless, we are in one, big time.

The decline in religiosity could be a partial explanation for people who need something to look up to after they have relegated heaven to myth. It’s easier to replace God with a human being. It’s evident across the political spectrum. The Left has theirs in the many academic offshoots of Karl Marx. On the Right, icons have arisen in the person of people from Jordan Peterson to Donald Trump. They may be correct in much that they say, but being human, they occasionally step on a rake. Then, the followers parrot the mistake while jettisoning their brain, the same brain that God gave them, that they don’t recognize that it was God who gave it to them.

Today’s brain is ill-informed of history. The schools have failed. We study history for what it says about human nature. And, yes, there is such a thing as human nature. Many won’t recognize the errors of the present because they are unaware that we’ve committed the blunders many times before. For instance, some of what today’s Right seems to be saying about the Ukraine War is an imitation of the rhetoric of the 60’s radical Left. Jean Kirkpatrick, a longtime Democrat and a defector from the looming socialistic, neo-Marxist takeover of her party, spoke to the 1984 Republican Convention nominating Ronald Reagan for a second term (see below). Her speech was a bold rejection of the “San Francisco Democrats” (Sound familiar?) and the Left’s “blame America First”.

Today, you’ll hear echoes of the same condemnable language of the 60’s radical Left coming from the likes of Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, and their media apologists.

Trump introduced the Left’s oratory to the Right when he morphed the Left’s “blame America First” into “American First”. His 2015-2016 bombast against the Bushes led to a harangue about “endless wars”, i.e., the War on Terror, almost identical to the Left’s complaint about the Vietnam War. Trump made the chant of “America First” and its cousin “MAGA” into a reflex for isolationism, something ever-present in the GOP going back to 1940 and Lindbergh’s America First. Don’t’ forget, implicit in “Make America Great Again” is the claim that we aren’t great, which for the Right is due to our decadence. For the Left, we are censured as “exploiters”. As decadent or “exploiters”, the Right has made common cause with Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

See the source image

Seemingly taking their cue from Trump in his odd admiration for Putin, some on the Right chide our support for Ukraine. The culture war is used as the excuse to criticize support for Ukraine. Tucker Carlson is scornful of the Zelenskyy government for its alleged autocratic tendencies; Laura Ingraham complains of our aid lost in purported Ukrainian corruption; and Jordan Peterson provides an alibi for Putin’s invasion as Putin fending of western decadence, a decadence resplendent in transgenderism. He comes close to aligning with Putin and when confronted backs off. The quote that got him into trouble was as follows:

“The culture war is now truly part of why we have a war [in Ukraine]. It is certainly the case that we do not therefore have all the moral high ground…. In fact, how much of it we have at all is something rightly subject to the most serious debate.”

In my view, transgenderism is a civilizational catastrophe, but to mingle it with Ukraine is sophistry. That puts Putin as a defender of goodness and light. If so, where does that put the CCP’s Xi? After all, Xi is leading a campaign to stop the feminization of men. Have you seen those PLA recruitment ads? They’re nothing like those gushing rainbow LGBTQ+ ads by our Marine Corps. Carlson, Ingraham, and Peterson would find themselves boxed into the corner of opposing US support for Taiwan against a Red Chinese invasion just to remain consistent. What kind of world would we have if our decadence or any other domestic policy failing is a straitjacket on our ability to stop this generation’s fascist and communist aggressors? Look to history for the answer.

Jean Kirkpatrick in 1984 outlines the stakes of a Trump/Carlson/Ingraham/Peterson foreign policy. It’s the same one advanced by the “San Francisco Democrats”. If you have 21 minutes, please listen to her riveting speech. It’s the antidote to the bile in this new era of personality cults.

RogerG

Sources:

*”Jordan Peterson claims Russia attacked Ukraine to stop the spread of ‘degenerate’ US culture wars. . .”, Daily Mail, July 12, 2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11005863/Jordan-Peterson-says-Russia-attacked-Ukraine-culture-wars-left-degenerate.html
*Transcripts of Jean Kirkpatrick’s speech to the 1984 Republican Convention at https://speakola.com/political/jeane-kirkpatrick-blame-america-first-gop-1984

September 15, 2021September 15, 2021

“Blood on My Hands”, John Ondrasik and Five for Fighting

The relationship between 9/11 and Afghanistan has an additional meaning since August 31, 2021. It’s called “SHAME”. We abandoned Afghanistan leaving Americans and our Afghan allies to the fate of people who decapitate, maim, and whip as part of their normal means of social control. These cretins stepped out their time tunnel from the Dark Ages and back into control of an entire nation-state. Think of the thousands left to the cruelty of these atavistic inquisitors. John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting captures the shame if it all.

Here’s the music with lyrics.

RogerG

*Update: Shortly after release of the song and video, Facebook banned any advertising for the song. No reason for the censorship was announced by Facebook to the public or John.

September 1, 2021September 1, 2021

Is Democracy a Ship of Fools?

Biden and his announced cabinet, January 2021.

It’s August 31, September 1 in Afghanistan, and we’re gone, lock, stock and barrel. Biden, Trump, and the primetime lineup of Fox News got what they wanted.

The “Ship of Fools” allegory is from Plato’s “The Republic” in which a ship is run by a dysfunctional crew. Democracy can magnify the “fools” presence among the personnel. But so do the other forms of governance: the “fools” can be a subservient peasant class and their overseers born into privilege, or a group of belligerent oafs, fired up by half-witted utopian visions, and gaining power through the barrel of a gun. Such has been the lot of mankind. We should know this oft-repeated story well.

Look at what democracy gave us in November 2020. A majority rejected the man-of-many-mean-tweets and narcissistic demagogue (a tautology?), and chose a doddering old fool, obsequious to the ruling radical left of his party. The result is the ruination that the radical left has always given the people who sadly have to live under their edicts. Prime example: the Afgan bugout.

I turn to H.L. Mencken for sarcastic aphorisms on democracy. Here’s some for your edification (courtesy of Mark J. Perry of AEI). Enjoy.

H. L. Mencken. (Henry L. Mencken.), a writer for the Baltimore Sun from 1905 to 1948. (Baltimore Sun Staff File Photo by Robert F. Kniesche). (Baltimore Examiner and Washington Examiner OUT ORG XMIT: BAL0909101149453148)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. (my personal favorite)
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
All government, of course, is against liberty.

That about sums it up. Elections are just as able to hand command of the rudder to fools as any other method.

RogerG

August 28, 2021August 29, 2021

We Shouldn’t Lie to Ourselves

Zalmay Khalilzad (l), US negotiator at the Doha conference, with the Taliban representative signing the Doha Agreement, Feb. 29, 2020.

A suicide bomber killed 13 American soldiers, wounding 18, while defending the perimeter around HKI airport in Kabul on Thursday 8/26. The bloodbath included 95 Afghans killed and more than 100 wounded among the teeming thousands feverishly trying to get out of a now Taliban-ruled country. It’s heart-wrenching but the bloodbath both illuminates and obscures the key reason for our presence in Afghanistan. We were in Afghanistan to kill and obstruct people who have a nasty habit of mass-murdering moms, dads, and children as they go shopping, and to work and school. Somehow, we forgot it.

The terror bombing at HKI Airport in Kabul, August 26, 2021.

It’s easy to become wearisome of something when you’ve forgotten its original purpose, or have been raised on fantasies over the course of three administrations of it being a Denmark in the Hindu-Kush. The mission has been muddied and politicians, the people we elected D to R, have been the most ardent purveyors of the slinging. Conversely, and more prominent over the most recent few years, a steady drumbeat of “forever wars”, left to right, continually pummeled the nation and so overwhelmed it that the 2020 November election became a contest between two withdrawal-enthusiasts.

In the end, Biden gave us a deadly debacle, a forever-stain on the country, and coincidentally, if you think about it, a stain on the politically opportunistic cliché of “forever wars” popularized by Trump. Would Trump have led us into a similar drubbing had he won in 2020? It’s hard to say, but his after-the-fact big talk that “we wouldn’t have done that” isn’t reassuring in light of the public record.

I can’t speak for the left, but we on the right shouldn’t lie, least of all to ourselves. History will not be kind.

The February 2020 Doha Agreement that Trump and his people describe as “conditions-based” was only ink on paper to the Taliban (taqiyya: lying and deception are justified in dealing with infidels). The “conditions” – break from al-Qaeda, cease attacks, and bargain with the Afghan government – were in the Agreement’s hidden annexes. The Taliban didn’t think enough of the promises to publicly admit to them. The Taliban didn’t get around to starting negotiations with the Afghan government till September 2020, and then only half-heartedly. As for the break with al-Qaeda, a Defense IG report in August 2020 confirmed that the break hadn’t taken place. So much for the much-vaunted calibration of US actions to conditions on the ground. The withdrawal of US troops continued apace in 2020.

The most damaging aspects of the agreement to American interests were openly declared, such as the withdrawal date of May 1, 2021 for all US forces. I repeat “all”. Foreshadowing what Biden did – albeit horribly – the Trump/Taliban agreement reads,

“The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement [i.e., by May 1, 2021].”

This may come as a surprise to the Trump brigade but Trump didn’t possess a crystal ball from throughout 2020 to before Biden’s deadly fiasco this August. Trump was singing a different tune before the current hot potato. Going back to the period of his ardent efforts in 2020 to reach agreement with the Taliban, the group and its terrorist allies continued their attacks before the ink was dry – in fact, before they even found the pens and long after. A Defense Department IG report covering January to March 2020 stated, “Taliban violence continued at high levels, even during a negotiated weeklong reduction in violence that led to the agreement’s signing . . . . The Taliban escalated violence further after signing the agreement.”

The boast that we hadn’t lost a single soldier since the ceremony rings hollow since the thugs didn’t want to upset the skedaddle then underway and instead turned their guns on the Afghans. And they continued to do so throughout 2020. In spite of the violence, Trump persisted in reducing troop levels from 13,000 to 2,500 by the end of his term in January 2021. Trump is now a tough talker but “conditions” in real time didn’t dissuade him from negotiating with the officially-designated terror group and fulfilling their desire of getting us out. On that, the terror group and Trump agreed.

What of those released prisoners at Bagram when Biden abandoned the base? It was an abomination . . . like Trump’s agreement strong-armed the Afghan government to turn loose 5,000 in 2020. How many of those returned to the fight to maim and kill more Afghans, and maybe later to show up as suicide bombers of American soldiers and Afghans ringing the lonely and isolated outpost of an airport in the middle of Kabul in August 2021?

No wonder Afghan president Ghani split with bags of cash. Cowardly? Yes, but I understand his logic. Why should he stick his neck out if two successive administrations were set on abandoning his country? American resolve had evaporated under the barrage of two presidents bent on getting out. The Doha Agreement was strictly a pact between the US and the officially-designated terror group. The Afghans were left on their own to bargain with the wolves. The aforementioned Trump-approved jailbreak of 5,000 and the cutout of the Afghan government from the negotiations was heartily opposed by Ghani in 2020. He could see where this was heading back when the orange man was loudly lambasting “forever wars” and American policy began to reflect the smear.

Do you think that Trump let up on the rhetorical heat after leaving office? Not a chance. In April, Biden set a deadline of September 11 for the pull out. Three days later, Trump berated Biden for not doing it sooner by saying, “. . . we can and should get out earlier . . . .” Further writing, “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”

The big question posing as the elephant in the room is the one about the wisdom of a pullout to begin with. Right now, and excusably so, our eyes are glued to the unfolding debacle at Kabul airport. It’s contemptible and sufficient grounds for a presidential resignation. Dramatic as that is, we should not let it cause us to ignore what we are leaving behind. Do we really want another terrorism-compatible vacuum as existed on 9/10?

An easy out for Trump and Biden is to blame the Afghan leaders and soldiers. Both have smeared the Afghans. Neither mentions Biden’s withdrawal of the support that kept the Afghan air and ground forces in the field of battle. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan military is too easy a plum for Trump not to use to excuse his own skedaddle infatuations. It’s a convenient alibi for Biden for obvious reasons. Anyway, tarring the victim country makes it easy to not have to think about what we’re leaving behind, a Taliban/al-Qaeda/ISIS playground.

Children trained in the use of AK-47’s at an al-Qaeda at a camp in Afghanistan.

Which brings me back to remembering our original reason for invading the country: remove the Taliban, keep them out of power, and kill terrorists. The nature of the danger of terrorism means that it’ll be a threat into the foreseeable future. It’s like crime. You reduce it, not eliminate it, which means that you maintain precinct stations in high crime areas. If you tire of the war on terror, then you should be in favor of defund the police.

Trump and Biden, in the end, are unknowingly pushing for the international equivalent of Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and any Democrat-run big city in America. All I can say is this: keep a wary eye on the skies, water supply, and any place with a large gathering of people. Thank you, Biden and Trump.

RogerG

August 25, 2021August 25, 2021

The Trump Anchor

While thinking about the return of Trump – he’s already conducting campaign rallies – I ran into Peter Robinson’s essay of vignettes on the political, social, and economic morass that is California. Robinson was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is currently the Murdoch Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. No RHINO this guy.

His story of the predicament of Mike Garcia (R) in California’s 25th Congressional District is illuminating.

Rep. Mike Garcia (R) of California’s 25th congressional district.

Garcia is the son of Mexican immigrants, an Annapolis grad, flew two dozen missions in the Iraq War, and is overflowing in charisma and oratory skills. The 25th is tailored for Republicans to be legitimately competitive (D 38%, R 32%, NPP 25%). It like much of the state has been trending increasingly Democrat but is an easier get than most of the other districts on the coastal plain. The district centers on Simi Valley, the home of the Reagan Library for good reason. Yet, a Democrat, Katie Hill, took the seat in 2018 but had to resign in scandal in 2019. In a special election, Garcia took the seat back for Republicans, and barely won reelection in 2020 by 333 votes out of 339,000 cast. Why so tough, after all, in a competitive district with a great candidate?

As I’ve said repeatedly, I voted for Trump twice and would do it a third time if he is the 2024 nominee. The Democrats are too wretched. But campaigns like economics are decided in the margin, that space where voters or consumers could go either way, or simply leave a line on the ballot unmarked. Looking at the 2020 result, I can only conclude that Garcia was running with the Trump anchor chained to his ankle in a Republican-competitive district that Biden won by 10%. Trump is wildly popular among the rabid 24% of the electorate, but he’s highly toxic to a good chunk of the rest, especially in California. For any candidate like Hillary, Biden, or Trump, how many of the getables are willing to engage in hold-the-nose? For Garcia, thank the Almighty that enough were willing to ticket-split.

Holding the nose is an epidemic when the choices were Hillary, Biden, or Trump. Just looking at Trump, his ribald, brutal verbal ticks appeal to crowds not offended in bars and locker rooms. His approach is as Gutfeld would say, “direct”. But depth of understanding is shallow to such as extent that he ran the executive branch in a naively “direct” manner in, for instance, personal overtures to the world’s pariahs like Kim Jong-un. If you agree with Trump that foreigners are screwing us, Trump scraps the Trans-Pacific Partnership whose purpose was to create the commercial foundation for an alignment of Asian and Pacific countries against a resurgent and hegemonic Red China. Don’t like the “forever wars”? He’ll negotiate a pull out. Direct and understandable, yes. Effective in the long run . . . ?

He began his most recent rally in Alabama with Patton’s speech at the beginning of the movie “Patton”. How ironic. Scott’s Patton regales the crowd with Americans “staying out of the war as a bunch of horse dung”; “Americans love the sting of battle”; and “. . . making the other poor bastard die for his country”. It was lost on the rally-goers that Patton’s call to arms and martial virtue doesn’t comport with Trump’s pull-out fixation – essentially a negotiated runaway – and his drumbeat against “forever wars”.

Bar-room bouncers having to deal with roadhouse fights aren’t likely to deal with nuance, and the bouncer Trump wouldn’t practice it anyway. As president and politician on the stomp, he plays checkers as the CCP is immersed in chess.

Playing checkers gave us the Doha Agreement. Biden doesn’t play checkers since he doesn’t understand the colors of the pieces. Translating, Trump was getting to the king line on the checkerboard with his Doha pact; Biden is in the sand box; and the CCP is in the chess room with the rest of the geeks.

Pompeo and Taliban leaders in Doha, early 2020.

Trump got his withdrawal agreement which would have produced the loss of an operating base on China’s western flank and key on-the-ground assets in a strategic location to counter Islamofascism, protect our allies (read Israel and the Gulf Arabs), and kill those who have killed so many of us. To borrow from Patton, long distance, over-the-horizon diligence is “horse dung”. Once you’re out, you’re out, and you’re not going back in . . . unless we lose another 3,000 in the American heartland.

Biden achieved Trump’s endgame with a whole lot of chaos while destroying US credibility for a generation or more. Trump would have done a better withdrawal but still manufacture a vacuum in Afghanistan. All the rhetoric about “forever wars”, lack of fighting willingness of the Afghan forces, and Afghan government corruption is beside the point if the Islamo-crazies flock to the feudal Hindu-Kush, as they did before under the watchful eyes of the Taliban, to have the tranquility to coordinate mass-casualty events among the Kaffir (an insulting term used by some Muslims for non-Muslims).

That’s what is so amazing about Trump’s use of the Patton speech. Patton was calling men to arms. Trump was calling the nation to get out. Biden couldn’t get either right and gave us a cluster-f@#*. Get prepared for a perpetually heightened terror threat level to go with the non-stop COVID hysteria. Can a civilization withstand such a water-boarding? I guess that we’ll see.

RogerG

August 24, 2021August 24, 2021

Lara Logan Gets It Right in “Sacrificing Afghanistan”, aired Sunday, 8/22/21

Lara Logan interviews Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh in “Sacrificing Afghanistan” on Fox News.

Below is guest Lara Logan on Fox Business from Friday, 8/19/21.

This is my review of the current scene in light of her insights:

Yes, we are horribly, horribly governed, and have been for quite some time. 2016 brought in the orange man and his wretched rhetoric of “forever wars”, while getting some things right. I’ll give him that. But the guy wanted out, trying to peremptorily get out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan as if by doing so, we’ll cure the opioid epidemic in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. 2020 brought us a mentally incontinent and doddering fool, beholden to the powerful and growing neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party. The only real difference on Afghanistan between the two administrations is the difference between a smoother and impulsive bugout. The big, big question, heartily avoided, is the one over the wisdom of a pull out in the first place, no matter how conducted.

To be clear, I don’t get my cues on issues from celebrities on Fox News or talk radio. Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham chanting a common line matter not a twit to me when it sounds like so much nonsense.

And nonsense is everywhere in today’s political cauldron. The reason is obvious: our political discussion is dominated by cultists. Chirping hackneyed lines like “forever wars” or “respect of the world community”, they bring catastrophes in tow. We are experiencing it now, and will in the future in grotesque episodes when scenes from Kabul fade from the news cycle.

Cultists are famous for denying reality in the service of an imaginary one. For instance, the Democratic Party’s neo-Marxist cult has embarked on a great smear job of the country: it’s systemically racist. It’s easy to bug out of Afghanistan if you believe the country is evil, love and reciprocity lie in the heart of fanatical jihadists, and the revolution at home is far more important. At root, that’s how we get to the abandonment of Bagram Air Base and our Afghan allies in the middle of the night and the chaos begins to pour down on Kabul and the rest of the country.

The Trump cult has its own dispiriting lunacies. Cultists wanted a personality, not policies, and got one in the bravado and bombast of the man from Mara Lago. As long as he remained in your face, he was loved by a zealous following to the ends of the earth. So, the loaded jargon of “forever wars” filtered from his microphone to the broadcast studio and became a mysteriously accepted doctrine.

His appointees, having to translate his rhetorical burps into policy, engineered the Doha Agreement (Feb. 2020). Now, they’re trying to clean the fingerprints from the established policy in paper by hitting the airwaves to say, “We were tough”. Tough about what? Agreeing to get out, which was the great prize for the jihadists while fully disheartening to our Afghan allies? The scenes of Pompeo hobnobbing with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, speak volumes. It, like Biden’s horrendously precipitous skedaddle, shouldn’t ever be forgotten.

Combine Logan’s program with Levin’s on Sunday night and we get a fuller picture of the debacle. Levin interviewed Colonel Richard Kemp, commander of British forces in Afghanistan. He insists that there’s enough blame to lap on everyone involved, including the Europeans. Kemp justly reserves special contempt for Biden: Biden’s behavior is deserving of a court martial. But he also rebuts the rubbish coming out of the mouths of telegenic anchors and hosts from one end of the spectrum to the next. He has great respect for the Afghans, for many fought bravely until air and logistical support vanished in the abrupt surrender of Bagram upon, amazingly, the insistence of the Taliban according to Logan

Discussion between Mark Levin (l) and Colonel Richard Kemp on Levin’s show.

Kemp’s dire warnings about the future clearly draw into question the more fundamental insistence of pulling out to begin with. The damage to America’s reputation will reverberate on America’s global allies as they seek cover under less hospitable umbrellas. Now, chew on that for awhile.

RogerG

August 20, 2021August 20, 2021

Our Punditry Is Just as Bad as Our Ruling Class

CNN anchors with Brian Williams of MSNBC (l)

Let me be clear, I’m not tarring everyone in our punditry and governing classes. Not everyone is this stone cold stupid. But much of the chatter is hooey, and the hooey is only getting worse.

First on the list of buffoons are the folks in legacy media and all those swirling in their social circles. You know, the people at CNN, MSNBC, the networks, and the big metro newspapers and magazines. They’re hooked on soiling themselves daily, and have for quite a few years. They are the PR department of the left-wing revolution.

Next, we’re confronted by the primetime lineup on Fox News who, along with certain elements in the Republican Party, have resuscitated the Charles Lindbergh wing of foreign policy. If you’ll recall, Lindbergh was the mouth of isolationism before the Fall of France and Pearl Harbor put the kibosh to the whole smear.

Charles Lindbergh speaking at America First Rally in 1941.

Tucker Carlson is an out-and-out isolationist. In a quip during one of his recent shows, he said, “Oceans matter”, or something to that effect. Yes, they do if you have to cross them. No, they aren’t if you want to kill Americans. Why do you think North Korea and Iran want ICBM’s? Why do you think the Russians and the CCP have them? Even if you can’t get your hands on one, box cutters at the throats of airline flight attendants and flight crews will suffice. Voilà, you’ve got a mammoth cruise missile that has the range of an ICBM. Bin-Laden showed the way. Oceans only become another geographic feature on the way to killing Americans.

If the fanatics are more interested in a hands-on approach to the mass killing of Americans – and since I don’t think Tucker is willing to drive the airlines, cruise lines, and shipping companies into the ether by cutting us off from the outside world – trying to keep out the goons at passport/visa checkpoints won’t guarantee anything. More overpaid TSA government workers aren’t reassuring. We’ve already experienced the government efficiency that resulted in flight training for foreign nationals not interested in landing.

A chilling final image of Mihdhar and fellow hijacker Majed Moqed, captured on a surveillance camera at Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport the morning of September 11th. (© 2009 WGBH Educational Foundation)

After Tucker, Sean Hannity jumps in with his program of Trump-love. Nearly everything Biden does – agreed, most of it is horrible – is condemned with the follow-up, “Trump wouldn’t have done that.” It’s not just that Biden is dreadfully wrong. He is! It’s that Trump is a god to Hannity. Biden bad, Trump good. It’s that simple to the man from New York City, and soon to be living in a Florida seaside estate maybe next to Trump.

Batting third is Laura Ingraham. She was once a Reaganite in foreign policy but now has enlisted in the Lindbergh brigade. In her on-air confessional, she’s on the Trump train to paint “forever war” on any foreign engagement that might get sticky.

All of this buffoonery came to light in the days since our screens were awash in the abominable scenes in Kabul. Yep, this disaster is 100% Biden’s. No doubt. He carried out a Buster Keaton pullout. But don’t forget, they all wanted a pullout: Biden, Trump, and the telegenic celebrities in primetime Fox News. The left was preconditioned to be a booster of the bugout from W’s Bush-lied-people-died wars. This is something for which there is kumbaya between Code Pink and the Lindbergh wing at Fox News.

Biden concocted a dastardly bugout. Trump and his Trumpkin brigades, aping Trump’s “forever wars” lingo, wanted a nicer bugout. Either way, the timetable and the smoothness of the bugout will end in the same place: mass-casualty events.

In the end, as we’ll soon learn, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are a revolving door. Regardless of Bush’s asinine and airy rhetoric about the universal aspirations of mankind and our efforts to export wokeness, we were in Afghanistan to kill terrorists, the kind that’ll cry “Allah Akbar” as they spray bullets in a night club.

Omar Mateen, the Orlando Pulse Nightclub killer.

The mission demands 10,000 troops on the ground, bases in-country and outside, roving special forces, Afghan allies, intelligence operations par excellence, and an Afghan government that won’t stand in the way. That indigenous government doesn’t have to be Switzerland, just functioning enough to stay out of the way.

Yes, kill ‘em before they get a ticket to the Iowa State Fair. That’s a real America First strategy.

If you’re worried about our sons and daughters in harm’s way, well, any place is in “harm’s way” if these fanatics get a haven to slaughter us. If we can tolerate 35,000 troops in Germany, we sure as hell can put up with 15,000 to kill those who would kill us, and have done so.

Taliban soldiers killed in a fire fight with US troops.

How’s that for speaking truth to power, media power?

RogerG

August 17, 2021August 17, 2021

A Bi-Partisan Bugout

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center) and major Taliban leaders in Doha.

Larry Elder said it best: “We have forever wars because we have forever enemies.” The aphorism is lost on many talking heads and politicians across the political spectrum, including Biden and . . . Trump.

Last night, I couldn’t take it anymore. The Fox News primetime lineup were all in for a bugout. The only difference them and Biden on the abandonment of Afghanistan is the pace. They wanted a scheduled bugout and Biden carried out a precipitous one. Lost in all the barking was something Elder quickly understood. Our forever enemies hate us, want to extinguish us, and are in it for the long haul to construct a worldwide caliphate. The belief is central to their identity. Taliban/Al-Qaeda leaders have repeatedly said, even during the negotiations,

“One day mujahedeen will have victory and Islamic law will come not just to Afghanistan, but all over the world. We are not in a hurry. We believe it will come one day. Jihad will not end until the last day.”

They won’t be satisfied till we are like them in burqas, beards, prayer rugs, sandals, and the 8th century. I was so disgusted that I flipped to the Smithsonian Channel.

Let’s clear away some deadwood to logic. One is the chimera of the Taliban and A-Qaeda as distinct entities. They aren’t for practical and operational purposes. One 2020 UN report put it succinctly:

“Relations between the Taliban, especially the Haqqani Network, and Al-Qaida remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage. The Taliban regularly consulted with Al-Qaida during negotiations with the United States and offered guarantees that it would honour their historical ties.”

I’m not a fan of much that comes out of Turtle Bay, but this got it right, probably because it’s too well known in intelligence circles to refute. Think of Al-Qaeda as the Taliban’s Quds Force (of Islamic Republic of Iran fame, and once headed by Soleimani, now dead, thank God).

That’s who the Trump people were negotiating with. Many of the people sitting across the table from Trump’s negotiators in 2018 to 2020 were Al-Qaeda under the Taliban flag, which was well known throughout. Many of our adversaries wear two hats than can be switched with a flick of the wrist.

Taliban/Al-Qaeda fighters in Kandahar, August 13, 2021.

Good faith gestures in negotiations with people who want to kill, convert, and replace you is the height of folly. Leading up to the Trump/Taliban/Al-Qaeda “peace” agreement in Doha on February 29, 2020, was an officially-sanctioned jailbreak of 5,000 Taliban/Al-Qaeda prisoners. All returned to the fight to kill Americans and friendly Afghans. Two examples among many should suffice. The Taliban commander of Helmand province, Mawlavi Talib, was one of those set free. Even worse, the Taliban head, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was in custody for years in Pakistan till Trump asked for his “good faith” release in a bribe to the Taliban to let us bugout. Today, word is that Baradar is residing in Kabul’s presidential palace.

Mawlavi Talib (center) in Kabul, August 15, 2021? I can’t tell.

Trump consummated the diplomatic abortion, and Biden carried it out precipitously and with gusto. Despicable, absolutely despicable.

Most despicable was the collective amnesia over the real reasons for the 2001 invasion. It wasn’t only as our incontinent president put it yesterday when he limited the justification to removing the Taliban from power and the killing of Osama bin-Laden. Preemption was on the lips of officialdom in DC in the heady days after 9/11. Preemption means to forestall this from happening again: take over the rats’ nest, clear it out, and continually hunt down those foolish enough to be later recruited to kill Americans. Like them, we have to be in it for the long haul, something not well understood by our last two presidents, if not the last three if the myopic Obama is included.

So, we’ve come to this pass. The Taliban/Al-Qaeda are back in the seat of power, ready to continue their bloody evangelism. India, Taiwan, our allies, the signers of the Abraham accords, and Israel must be wondering if they’re going to be the next victim of an American bugout. The goatherders-with-a-cause will be emboldened, and get fresh video for recruitment of the next generation of suicidal killers.

Thank you, Biden . . . with Trump as your enabler.

RogerG

*Thanks to the reporting of Jim Geraghty and Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review.

August 16, 2021August 16, 2021

The Great Bugout

Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug.16. 2021. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death. (Verified UGC via AP)

Kabul has fallen. President Biden followed in the footsteps of his mentor, President Obama, in abandoning a fight. Obama did it to the Iraqis and we got ISIS; Biden repeated the ignominy and we’ll get a reinvigorated Taliban/Al-Qaeda. Expect a return of the 1990’s: the near sinking of the USS Cole, the bombing of our Kenya and Tanzania embassies, and escalations to grander slaughters.

Damage from the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen’s Aden harbor, Oct. 2000.

Scene from the 1998 bombing of US embassy in Nairobi

Both parties were at fault in stirring the pot against “forever wars”. Trump tried to implement a bugout in Syria and had been laying the rhetorical groundwork for the same in Afghanistan. But at least he was amenable to common sense and could be dissuaded from the worst of his instincts. Not so with Biden.

Biden’s “gut instincts” seduced him to turn his back on what was already a light footprint. Clearly by 2018, US forces were reduced to a level that resembled the overthrow of the Taliban: reliance on indigenous forces, CIA operatives, special forces, and US air power. The 100,000 troop levels ended over a decade ago. Biden decided even that wasn’t enough. The bugout was fully on.

A member of the Taliban stands outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

The parallels with the 1975 Fall of Saigon are tempting. But the worst parallel is the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform who suffered so much for an ignominious ending like this. They were brave, and abandoned by politicians childishly patronizing crowds who had gotten used to thinking of wars ending like World War II.

Our light footprint could have worked, not at nation-building, heaven forbid, but at killing the thugs who would turn jet airliners into missiles. Intelligence gathering, a base in the country and a few in the surrounding region, special forces scurrying around the country at a moment’s notice, and tactical and strategic killing of the ringleaders and their henchmen would have worked. Israel’s Mossad pointed the way. But no, Biden forsook that possibility for a bugout.

The vaunted pivot to Asia and the China threat will now be diluted by worries over Pashtun tribesmen infiltrating a Lollapalooza or college student union to blow it up. Today, our future just became darker.

RogerG