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Omidyar"},{"term":"Saudi Arabia"},{"term":"Scam"},{"term":"Science"},{"term":"Soros"},{"term":"South America"},{"term":"Sports"},{"term":"Star Trek"},{"term":"Steele"},{"term":"Supreme Court"},{"term":"Tlaib"},{"term":"Tunisia"},{"term":"USSR"},{"term":"VA"},{"term":"Woke"},{"term":"Yemen"},{"term":"Zero Hussein"},{"term":"aboutme"},{"term":"amona"},{"term":"cities"},{"term":"class warfare"},{"term":"feminism"},{"term":"foreign policy"},{"term":"gang violence"},{"term":"gender"},{"term":"israeli police brutality"},{"term":"judicial activism"},{"term":"photoshops"},{"term":"social justice"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Daniel Greenfield \/ Sultan Knish articles"},"subtitle":{"type":"html","$t":"Daniel Greenfield's articles and writings on the Sultan Knish blog"},"link":[{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/posts\/default"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/-\/recent?alt=json-in-script\u0026orderby=published"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/search\/label\/recent"},{"rel":"hub","href":"http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/"},{"rel":"next","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/-\/recent\/-\/recent?alt=json-in-script\u0026start-index=26\u0026max-results=25\u0026orderby=published"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"generator":{"version":"7.00","uri":"http://www.blogger.com","$t":"Blogger"},"openSearch$totalResults":{"$t":"187"},"openSearch$startIndex":{"$t":"1"},"openSearch$itemsPerPage":{"$t":"25"},"entry":[{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4576521307769310553"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-16T22:37:00.000-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-16T22:37:21.470-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Democrats"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Russia"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Dems Complain Putin Stole Their Election Theft Ideas"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Like two actresses who wore the same dress to an awards show, the Biden administration and the Putin administration are acting huffy over the latest stolen election. The theft in question involves not just stealing elections, but stealing ideas for how to steal elections.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-jJkiz0qIsLA\/YWXQJ84N7NI\/AAAAAAAATgc\/JG8Kj2TSghcJ07sse175Q-Mt2pc6_v6ggCNcBGAsYHQ\/s800\/putin%2Bbiden%2Bframe.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"391\" data-original-width=\"800\" height=\"156\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-jJkiz0qIsLA\/YWXQJ84N7NI\/AAAAAAAATgc\/JG8Kj2TSghcJ07sse175Q-Mt2pc6_v6ggCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/putin%2Bbiden%2Bframe.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E“The Russian government’s use of laws on ‘extremist organizations,’ ‘foreign agents,’ and ‘undesirable organizations’ severely restricted political pluralism and prevented the Russian people from exercising their civil and political rights,” State Department spokesman Ned Price sniffed. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat playbook ought to sound familiar because it’s the one Democrats used in 2016 and 2020.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats invented a false conspiracy theory claiming that President Trump and his associates were Russian agents. They took a dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and passed it out to their associates in the DOJ, the FBI, and every three letter acronym in Washington D.C. After years of eavesdropping, trials, and investigations that destroyed lives and influenced elections, the “foreign agents” conspiracy proved to have as much substance as a Maddow vodka rant.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut that didn’t stop Democrats and their allies from using another variant of the Russia conspiracy theory to pressure Facebook into censoring negative stories about Democrats. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat included censoring news of an investigation into Hunter Biden by crying, “disinformation”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPutin just took a page out of the Democrat playbook by expanding a law that allowed him to declare his opponents to be “foreign agents”. Ned Price might have some more credibility in complaining about the practice if he hadn’t spent years playing the same rotten game.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Putin is essentially turning down a White House visit and, instead, summoning Trump to Moscow,\" a typical Price tweet \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nedprice\/status\/1022837738121379841?lang=ca\"\u003Eread\u003C\/a\u003E. \"This is what he paid for.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPrice could discover a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nedprice\/status\/1174489190517661696?lang=en\"\u003Econspiracy\u003C\/a\u003E in a phone call in which President Trump offered Russia assistance with its wildfires, and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/think\/opinion\/paul-whelan-could-be-pawn-russian-spy-swap-attempt-between-ncna956106\"\u003Erepeated\u003C\/a\u003E the conspiracy theory that the 2016 election had been rigged by Russia, and that Trump and Republicans were acting as foreign agents.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf restricting “political pluralism” by labeling your opponents “foreign agents” is okay in D.C., why shouldn’t it be fine in Moscow? When Democrats deploy 25,000 soldiers to Washington D.C. to “protect democracy” after a disputed election, who can tell apart D.C. and Moscow?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPutin was sufficiently impressed with Biden’s reliance on Big Tech censorship to rig elections to enthusiastically adopt the practice. And Google, which long ago traded its old motto of “Don’t Be Evil” for “Obey, Comrade”, did its part for the regime. YouTube censored opposition videos and Google Docs even removed documents being used to coordinate opposition voting.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe media is pretending to be outraged at this as if it hadn’t spent five years demanding that Big Tech censor conservatives in exactly the same ways. Why can’t the Russians also “protect democracy” and suppress “disinformation” from “foreign agents” and “extremists”?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter taking down Parler, Apple and Google also took down Russian opposition apps.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“We call upon Russia to honor its international obligations to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to end its pressure campaign on civil society, the political opposition, and independent media,” Price lectured Moscow. But when is the leftist elite that Price represents going to end its pressure campaign on the political opposition and a free press?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn July, Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden White House was issuing demands to Big Tech companies to take down “problematic posts” that spread what she claimed was “disinformation”. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden regime was even touting some sort of  “robust enforcement strategy” and demanding that all Big Tech companies should censor the same people.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others,\" she declared.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPutin would agree.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA decade ago, the White House could credibly condemn election suppression in other countries, now Biden’s cronies are complaining that Putin is ripping off their shtick without paying a fee.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn between complaining that Russia is using conspiracy theories to suppress the opposition, the Biden administration is already preemptively blaming midterm losses on a Russian conspiracy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAlso in July, Biden delivered remarks at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and alleged, “look what Russia is doing already about the 2022 elections and misinformation.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden appeared to be referencing some sort of classified briefing dealing with “disinformation”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf Russia or China’s leaders made remarks like that, we would all understand that they were preparing to tamper with an upcoming election. Now we know the same thing is true in the U.S.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat is Russia doing about the “2022 elections”? It’s secret, but you can bet it will require a lot more censorship of conservatives. Maybe Google and Apple will need to delete a few more apps, and Amazon will need to cut off cloud services to the political opposition. And then maybe Visa, MasterCard, Stripe, and PayPal can cut off donations to enemies of the state.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EUnder Biden, the ODNI had already issued a report claiming that Russia had tried to help President Trump while advancing claims about Biden and his family’s corruption.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf you think something might be off about Hunter Biden’s business, you’re spreading Russian disinformation: “election integrity” and “protecting democracy” requires silencing you.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd if you think that’s a theoretical scenario, ask Twitter and the New York Post.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe State Department still delivers its familiar lectures about free elections even as its political bosses plot to federalize elections, a trick they picked up from Putin, and its security colleagues are coming after the midterm elections by blaming Russia, so no one takes it too seriously.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere was a time when Americans laughed at foreign diplomats who believed that General Douglas MacArthur’s return foreshadowed a coup. Such things didn’t happen in America. But these days a lot of things happen in Washington D.C. that would have once been unthinkable. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat would have been unimaginable a decade ago has become almost routine. America’s elections now take place under the shadow of states of emergency and counterintelligence operations and while Putin still holds the lead in contrived suicides and radioactive teas, the Democrats have learned from him and he has learned from them. At the end of Animal Farm, the farm animals couldn't tell apart the pigs and the men. It’s getting hard to tell them apart now.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/4576521307769310553\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/dems-complain-putin-stole-their.html#comment-form","title":"2 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4576521307769310553"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4576521307769310553"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/dems-complain-putin-stole-their.html","title":"Dems Complain Putin Stole Their Election Theft Ideas"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-jJkiz0qIsLA\/YWXQJ84N7NI\/AAAAAAAATgc\/JG8Kj2TSghcJ07sse175Q-Mt2pc6_v6ggCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/putin%2Bbiden%2Bframe.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"2"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-5395979730732880243"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-12T15:45:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-12T15:45:00.319-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"China"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"global warming"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"green energy"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Red China Tried To Go Green, Now It’s Going Dark"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Last year, President Xi Jinping announced that Communist China was going to go carbon neutral by 2060. Like every Communist 5-year-plan, it began with lies and ended in disaster.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 14th Renewable Energy Development Five Year Plan would have China dominate the green energy industry and increase its share of non-fossil fuel energy from 15% to 20%.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat was last year. This year, China is importing American coal to keep the lights on in its cities. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-IGfE_WJ4nF4\/YWXP2hBJ1wI\/AAAAAAAATgQ\/YGeRs29YRsQ3fSoTojaZr5Da0TvTSayhQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s2048\/xi%2Bframe.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"1152\" data-original-width=\"2048\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-IGfE_WJ4nF4\/YWXP2hBJ1wI\/AAAAAAAATgQ\/YGeRs29YRsQ3fSoTojaZr5Da0TvTSayhQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/xi%2Bframe.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EChina's desperate buying spree has\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/point\/2021\/10\/while-dems-war-coal-china-desperately-buying-us-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003E sent the price\u003C\/a\u003E of lignite coal, the dirtiest coal, up from $20 to $120. While Democrats are trying to destroy coal in America, our shipments of coal \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/point\/2021\/10\/while-dems-war-coal-china-desperately-buying-us-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Ehave increased\u003C\/a\u003E 30 times making China our second biggest coal market.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd we have the “green energy” of the reds to thank for it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERed China made no grand commitments to green energy, but even its 5% shift may have proven disastrous. So-called renewables are dangerously unreliable because they shift with the natural cycles of wind, sunshine, and tide. The same phenomenon leading to power outages in California has brought China, which has a much bigger population and industry, to its knees.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGoing green in China is less likely to mean wind and solar than hydroelectric. That’s a wise decision because hydroelectric power is more reliable and efficient than wind and solar, but as a water empire, the Communist regime should have reckoned with China’s history of droughts. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChina’s green strategy depended on hydropower and the droughts have left it powerless. And its hydropower is anything but environmentally friendly. Mao used dams to revive the water empire strategy of the ancient emperors allowing the Communist regime to starve entire regions of the country and to undermine neighbors like India. The massive number of dams in China, a totalitarian program to enable mass murder, were environmentally devastating before being revamped as “green energy” hydropower. Green energy, as usual, has its roots in genocide.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the vast majority of China’s hydropower plants are so useless that the regime has been shutting down tens of thousands of them. The environmental damage from Mao’s dam program destroyed enough bodies of water that there’s no more hydropower to be gained from them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat is the real face of China’s “green energy”: a genocidal environmentalist boondoggle.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike their Soviet Communist counterparts who reported 96% successful wheat harvests even while the peasants starved, Chinese Communist officials were pressured to fake numbers for the hydropower projects to prop up Xi’s international green energy commitments. As the droughts devastated hydropower capacity, Communist officials responded with drastic power cuts that are harming Chinese industry, its exports, and even killing people with rationing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs the hot summer surged, China desperately began searching for coal overseas to prepare for the coming winter. The Communist regime scrambled to conduct industrial triage, banning bitcoin miners and cracking down on online gaming, officially for social welfare, but really as a desperate effort to reduce power usage in a country with a booming internet culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChina, like California, is desperately rationing energy. Some places are only allocated a few days of power a week. Part of the supply chain disaster wreaking havoc on American consumers is actually originating at the source with some Chinese factories only being given power for a day or two leaving them unable to manufacture products or fulfill orders.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven while Chinese propaganda touts new skyscrapers and bizarre bridges, its cities are going dark and the residents are buying candles. It’s not unusual for Chinese drivers to navigate evening roads with no lights and for Communist officials to urge people to open their windows instead of turning on air conditioners and to use “natural light” instead of electricity.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWorsening the green energy disaster is China’s Communist hostility to a market economy which made it impossible for utilities to use price signals and cope with the demands and shortages. China’s electric rates are capped leading to the same results as in South Africa’s socialist power grid in which the utilities would go bankrupt providing more power when coal is too expensive. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut China’s Communists, like Soviet Communists, can’t escape market economics. The power shortages are leading to price hikes for products, decreasing exports, and a lower growth rate. It’s also causing Xi’s regime to aggressively threaten Taiwan after consolidating control over Hong Kong as the Communist dictatorship tries to project strength and plots to seize the wealth of other nations, like Taiwan, to compensate for the domestic failures of the corrupt regime.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, headed off to China to \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/09\/communist-china-sustainably-humiliates-john-kerry-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Eplead with the regime \u003C\/a\u003Eto cut back on its use of coal, the Communists humiliated Kerry and read off a list of demands, including an end to sanctions on its slave labor solar panels. Kerry dutifully returned once more from Asia spouting the Communist propaganda of his hosts and once again he was taken for a ride by his captors.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EXi couldn’t cut the use of coal even if the world were ending because it would end his regime. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChina survived the counter-Communist revolutionists that toppled the USSR and its satellites because it was able to offer the benefits of consumerism, from smartphones to sodas, to a people who were a generation away from planned government famines. The Communists traded enough of their ideology to survive. They won’t doom themselves for environmentalism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EXi’s crackdown on Chinese big industries, the threats to big internet companies, its entertainment industry, and its tycoons is not a show of strength, but a sign of weakness. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Communist regime is anticipating trouble and is going to the mattresses, consolidating control over companies and the culture to be able to ride out a crisis that it expects will be much bigger than the pandemic. As Xi’s regime panics, green energy may end up on the kill list.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChina’s dam obsession wrecked its rivers and as the past year has shown, it cannot expect to service the demands of a growing population and booming industry with the bodies of water that it has spent generations destroying. Green energy isn’t China’s future, but the past, and its emperors were far wiser stewards of its rivers than the Maoists and the Communist regime. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Communist regime can fill Taiwan’s skies with warplanes and threaten India and Australia, hold Canadians hostage and browbeat American diplomats, but it’s powerless when its economic pyramid scheme fails to heat and light the homes of the Chinese people.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERed China tried to go green. Instead it’s going dark. \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/5395979730732880243\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/red-china-tried-to-go-green-now-its.html#comment-form","title":"3 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5395979730732880243"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5395979730732880243"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/red-china-tried-to-go-green-now-its.html","title":"Red China Tried To Go Green, Now It’s Going Dark"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-IGfE_WJ4nF4\/YWXP2hBJ1wI\/AAAAAAAATgQ\/YGeRs29YRsQ3fSoTojaZr5Da0TvTSayhQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/xi%2Bframe.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"3"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2514827902088961157"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-12T02:21:00.002-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-12T02:22:00.430-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"culture war"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"history"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The War on Columbus is a War on America"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E(I first \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2009\/10\/goodbye-columbus-america-apologizes-for.html\"\u003Ewrote this article in 2009\u003C\/a\u003E and have been posting it every year. In the decade since, Indigenous People's Day went from obscure revisionist history to the dominant narrative embraced by Democrats. Statues of Columbus have been destroyed or removed. Biden and numerous blue states and cities have gotten behind Indigenous People's Day. Some of the references from 2009 are no longer relevant, but a decade later the article's theme and its prediction, that the next target would be America and Independence Day is very much a current reality.)\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EColumbus may have outfoxed the Spanish court and his rivals, but he is falling victim to the court of political correctness. The explorer who discovered America has become controversial because the very idea of America has become controversial.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/StZ00sv0RYI\/AAAAAAAACrI\/c42D1QzmArQ\/s1600-h\/columbus.jpg\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/StZ00sv0RYI\/AAAAAAAACrI\/c42D1QzmArQ\/s320\/columbus.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EThere are counter-historical claims put forward by Muslim and Chinese scholars claiming that they discovered America first. And there are mobs of fake indigenous activists on every campus to whom the old Italian is as much of a villain as the bearded Uncle Sam.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EColumbus Day parades are met with protests and some have been minimized or eliminated.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn a number of cities Columbus Day was transformed into Indigenous People's Day, which sounds like a Marxist terrorist group's holiday.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter making a shambles of his efforts at socialized medicine, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed on to Indigenous People's Day. What began in Berkeley, spread to Denver, Pheonix and Seattle, among other cities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo American state has followed Venezuela's lead in renaming it Día de la Resistencia Indígena, or Day of Indigenous Resistance, which actually is a Marxist terrorist group's holiday, but the whole notion of celebrating the discovery of America has come to be seen as somehow shameful and worst of all, politically incorrect.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe shift from celebrating Columbus' arrival in America to commemorating it as an American tragedy by focusing on the tribes who had settled there earlier, rather than the American settlers, is a profound form of historical revisionism that hacks away at the origins of this country.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe attacks on Columbus Day have less to do with the distant descendants of those tribes, most of whom owe more of their ancestry to the later arrivals made possible by Columbus, than with the agenda of the left.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnti-Columbus Day protests are mounted by La Raza, whose members, despite their indigenous posturing, are actually mostly descended from Spanish colonists, but who know that most Americans are too confused to rationally frame an objection to a protest by any minority group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe absurdity is deepened by the linguistic and cultural ties between the Italian Columbus Day marchers and the Latino Anti-Columbus Day protesters with the latter set cynically exploiting white guilt to pretend that being the descendants of Southern European colonists makes them a minority.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf being descended from Southern Europeans makes you a minority, then Columbus, the parade marchers, the Greek restaurant owner nearby and even Rush Limbaugh are all \"people of color.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EItalian-Americans are the only bulwark against political correctness still keeping Columbus on the calendar, and that has made mayors and governors in cities and states with large Italian-American communities wary of tossing the great explorer completely overboard. But while Ferdinand and Isabella may have brought Columbus back in chains, modern day political correctness is erasing him from history and replacing him with a note reading, \"I'm Sorry We Ever Landed Here.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut this is about more than one single 15th century Genoan with a complicated life who was neither a monster nor a saint. It is about whether America really has any right to exist at all. Is there any argument against celebrating Columbus Day, that cannot similarly be applied to the Fourth of July?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf Columbus is to be stricken from the history books in favor of ideological thugs like Malcolm X, then America must soon follow. Columbus' crime is that he enabled European settlement of the continent. If the settlement of non-Indians in North America is illegitimate, then any national state they created is also illegitimate.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt is easier to hack away at a nation's history by beginning with the lower branches.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EColumbus is an easier target than America itself, though the left considers both colonialist vermin. Americans are less likely to protest over the banishment of Columbus to the politically correct gulag\u0026nbsp; than over the banishing America itself, which was named after another one of those colonialist explorers, Amerigo Vespucci. First they came for Columbus Day and then for the Fourth of July.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe battles being fought over Columbus Day foreshadow the battles to be fought over the Fourth of July. As Columbus Day joins the list of banned holidays in more cities, one day there may not be a Fourth of July, just a day of Native Resistance to remember the atrocities of the colonists with PBS documentaries comparing George Washington to Hitler.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThese documentaries already exist, they just haven't gone mainstream. Yet.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe celebrate Columbus Day and the Fourth of July because that is our history. Had the Aztecs, the Mayans or the Iroquois Confederation developed the necessary technology and skills to cross the Atlantic and begin colonizing Europe, the fate of its native inhabitants would have been far uglier. The different perspectives on history often depend on which side you happen to be on.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETo Americans, the Alamo is a shining moment of heroism. To the Mexicans who are the heirs of a colonialist empire far more ruthless than anything to be found north of the Rio Grande, the war was a plot to conquer Mexican territory. And neither side is altogether wrong, but choosing which version of history to go by is the difference between being an American or a Mexican.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA nation's mythology, its paragons and heroes, its founding legends and great deeds, are its soul. To replace them with another culture's perspective on its history is to kill that soul.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat is the ultimate goal of political correctness, to kill America's soul. To stick George Washington, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, James Bowie, Paul Revere, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and all the rest on a shelf in a back room somewhere, and replace them with timelier liberal heroes. Move over Washington, Caesar Chavez needs this space. No more American heroes need apply.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFollowed of course by no more America.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-D0Vh8qLs_ds\/TpO3j219SYI\/AAAAAAAAFMw\/-uXdJSY3xxI\/s1600\/Sprit_of_%252776.2.jpeg\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-D0Vh8qLs_ds\/TpO3j219SYI\/AAAAAAAAFMw\/-uXdJSY3xxI\/s400\/Sprit_of_%252776.2.jpeg\" width=\"300\" \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EThis is how it begins. And that is how it ends. Nations are not destroyed by atomic bombs or economic catastrophes; they are lost when they lose any reason to go on living. When they no longer have enough pride to go on fighting to survive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe final note of politically correct lunacy comes from a headline in the Columbus Dispatch about the Columbus Day festival in the city of Columbus, Ohio. \"Italian Festival honors controversial explorer with its own Columbus Day parade\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOnce the great discover of America, Columbus is now dubbed \"controversial\" by a newspaper named after him, in a city named after him .And if he is controversial, how can naming a city after him and a newspaper after the city not be equally controversial?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECan the day when USA Today has a headline reading, \"Some cities still plan controversial 4th of July celebration of American independence\" be far behind?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles. And\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/paypal.me\/DgreenfieldWriting\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Eclick here to support my work with a donation\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/2514827902088961157\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/the-war-on-columbus-is-war-on-america.html#comment-form","title":"3 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2514827902088961157"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2514827902088961157"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/the-war-on-columbus-is-war-on-america.html","title":"The War on Columbus is a War on America"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/StZ00sv0RYI\/AAAAAAAACrI\/c42D1QzmArQ\/s72-c\/columbus.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"3"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4876762431027184018"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-10T20:46:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-10T20:46:32.872-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Crime"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Pro-Crime"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The Power is on the Side of the Killers, Not Their Victims"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EAt 6:11 PM, Ernest Lee Johnson, a monster who murdered three people, two of them poor single mothers, with a claw hammer was pronounced dead.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-DMHDS1wp_AI\/YWOJWZR9KsI\/AAAAAAAATgE\/3ZEK6yp8tOwnhudGavTiwYGXGkuFBwQpACNcBGAsYHQ\/s290\/jones.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"174\" data-original-width=\"290\" height=\"174\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-DMHDS1wp_AI\/YWOJWZR9KsI\/AAAAAAAATgE\/3ZEK6yp8tOwnhudGavTiwYGXGkuFBwQpACNcBGAsYHQ\/s0\/jones.jpg\" width=\"290\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EDespite the pro-crime lawfare that went all the way to the Supreme Court insisting that lethal injection would cause painful violent seizures, he died quietly.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EThat was more so than could be said for his victims.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EOn a cold day in a Missouri winter, Mary Bratcher never came home to the trailer park where the single mother lived with her three children. She was working that night as a manager at a Casey’s General Store in Columbia helping out Mable Scruggs, another single mother, making ends meet by picking up a night shift. Neither of the two women would make it home again.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E An hour before midnight, Ernest Lee Johnson came in after a binge in which he bought three rocks of crack cocaine, traded one of them for a gun, put on a mask and came to rob Casey’s.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe plan had been to lock the employees in the back and have one of them open the safe. But then Johnson beat all three of the Casey's employees to death.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe stabbed Mary Bratcher repeatedly through her hand with a screwdriver, likely defensive wounds as she fought the monster for her life. Then he smashed her over the head with a claw hammer again and again. Johnson appeared to be aiming for her face, striking her mouth and nose, to disfigure her while killing her. He beat Mabel to death in the same vicious way.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat was 1994. Like every monster, Johnson never had any shortage of defenders.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995, but the Missouri Supreme Court intervened claiming that the jury should have heard testimony that the crackhead was actually suffering from \"cocaine intoxication delirium\". The case went to a jury yet again which refrained from excusing the crackhead on the grounds that he had been high while murdering three people.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd then the liberal justices on the United States Supreme Court gave murderers on death row a gift with a decision falsely contending that executing murderers with intellectual limitations was cruel and unusual punishment. Any killer who could claim an IQ under 100 was home free.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EInstantly every killer, no matter how cunning and clever, became retroactively retarded.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJohnson had plotted to rob the Casey's safe, he had carried out the crime, and then tried to conceal the evidence. He was evil and high, but not stupid. But the Missouri Supreme Court threw out the decision again and a third jury found the crackhead guilty all over again. But by then over a decade had passed since the original murders while the families waited for justice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETwo decades later, Johnson was finally scheduled to die when the United States Supreme Court intervened, complaining that the monster who beat two women to death with a claw hammer might suffer “painful seizures” when he’s executed by lethal injection because he has a tumor.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESince then he found exciting new legal stratagems to delay justice, including requesting death by laughing gas and firing squad.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJustice Sonia Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan wanted to hear his plea for a firing squad.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“In addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless. And historically, the firing squad has yielded significantly fewer botched executions,” Sotomayor ranted in her dissent.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EDid the court’s wise Latina develop a sudden fondness for firing squads? No more than the rest of the delaying tactics that kept the bludgeoner alive this long.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELeftist lawyers and judges wage lawfare against the law and the victims to protect killers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut now that Johnson is out of tricks, the Democrats have come to his defense.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERep. Cori Bush, a former organzier for the racist hate group, Black Lives Matter, co-signed a petition demanding a commutation of Johnson's sentence because it's just like \"slavery and lynching\". It’s understandable that Bush would take that position considering that Mary and Mabel were white women and their worthless lives don’t matter to Black Lives Matter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut Johnson’s first victim was the store’s third worker: Fred Jones.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJones, an African-American man, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.columbiamissourian.com\/news\/local\/victims-family-prepares-for-execution-of-their-mothers-killer-ernest-lee-johnson\/article_f4c9f4ec-7f3a-11e5-9f69-e754a006f459.html\"\u003Ehad been the\u003C\/a\u003E only caregiver for his mother and a disabled brother. When Johnson murdered him, he also took away the only helper left in their lives.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJohnson started out by shooting Fred Jones. But when the bullet didn't kill him, the crackhead beat the store employee to death with a hammer instead.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen he began the rest of his killing spree.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFred Jones had been in the cooler, perhaps because as the only male in the store he was seen as more of a threat. And he may have resisted or tried to fight Johnson, leading the crackhead to decide to kill him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd everyone else.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe killer had shot Jones in the head. Then he beat him with the claw on the hammer fracturing his skull.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut his black life, like the lives of the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/09\/black-lives-matter-killed-2000-black-people-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Eover 5,800 black people \u003C\/a\u003Ewho were killed in 2020, don’t matter to Rep. Bush and to Black Lives Matter. Only the lives of crackhead killers do.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPro-crime lawfare had already put the families of Johnson’s victims through hell. When the Supreme Court decided to illegitimately intervene in his previous execution, the family members had \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/deathwatch.medium.com\/ernest-johnsons-execution-will-be-a-nothing-burger-d6f3a06c1cc7\"\u003Ealready been there\u003C\/a\u003E and waiting. Instead justice was denied to them for another six years.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERep. Cori Bush claims that executing the killer of a black man is racist, the NAACP is rallying on behalf of the killer, not the victim, and Pope Francis has appealed to the “sacredness of human life.” Except the lives of Mary Bratcher, Mable Scruggs, and Fred Jones which are not sacred.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“This would be a crime against humanity,\" Rep. Bush falsely claimed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe crime against humanity was that Mary Bratcher never came home to her three children, that Mable Scruggs also never came home to her children, and Fred Jones never returned to his mother. But that is not the only crime here. The feverish efforts to prolong the pain of their family members in order to keep the monster who killed them alive is a crime against humanity.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd a crime against justice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEvery dirty trick, every fashionable legal trend, from mental disability to the supposed risk of side effects from death penalty drugs, had been enlisted in the crackhead killer’s defense.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"These death sentences are not about justice,” Bush and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver whined in their pro-killer petition. \"They are about who has institutional power and who doesn’t.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey’re right.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhich House members have spoken out on behalf of Mary Bratcher, Mable Scruggs, and Fred Jones? Do Bush and Cleaver even know their names? Does Pope Francis? I doubt it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe institutional power that allowed the killer to escape justice for 27 years is on his side.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis is not about justice, it’s about who has institutional power. And it’s the killers who have all the power and their victims who have none. After Johnson got through beating three people, poor people, to death with hammers, lawyers and judges took up what he had left undone.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven Rep. Cori Bush and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver took a turn swinging the claw hammer.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHollywood, the media, and politicians keep pushing the big lie that criminals are helpless victims of the system. And yet they provide the best evidence of the vast institutional power that even the lowest and vilest killer can summon against justice and the families of his victims.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/4876762431027184018\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/the-power-is-on-side-of-killers-not.html#comment-form","title":"2 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4876762431027184018"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4876762431027184018"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/the-power-is-on-side-of-killers-not.html","title":"The Power is on the Side of the Killers, Not Their Victims"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-DMHDS1wp_AI\/YWOJWZR9KsI\/AAAAAAAATgE\/3ZEK6yp8tOwnhudGavTiwYGXGkuFBwQpACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/jones.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"2"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7959434020397122709"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-07T22:16:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-07T22:16:42.217-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"immigration"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Islamization"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"An Afghanistan Grows In Wisconsin"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003EThe skies over Sparta have never been as busy as when the Biden administration decided to dispatch 13,000 Afghans, including at least one pedophile, to Wisconsin.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--Fxc_3WM0X8\/YV-p_-_lv0I\/AAAAAAAATf8\/f6457D6dLU0eqSgV7C_b9m5O4J9LIin_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s745\/image_2021-10-07_191630.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"511\" data-original-width=\"745\" height=\"219\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--Fxc_3WM0X8\/YV-p_-_lv0I\/AAAAAAAATf8\/f6457D6dLU0eqSgV7C_b9m5O4J9LIin_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-10-07_191630.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003ESparta, a small town of less than ten thousand souls, whose claim to fame is being the “Bicycling Capital of America”, could only watch as a population of Afghans outnumbering its own population created a new Afghanistan on the premises of Fort McCoy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENone of the Afghans at Fort McCoy have a Special Immigrant Visa. Biden left the SIV visa holders \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/10\/bidens-evacuation-was-taliban-human-trafficking-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Ebehind in Afghanistan\u003C\/a\u003E. The Afghans who have overrun the Wisconsin base are the ones whom the Taliban, for their own reasons, decided to allow through their checkpoints.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd they’re living up to the high cultural standards of the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe problems began with the toilets. Then there were issues with the rice, the sexual abuse of young boys, and Afghans simply leaving on their own despite promises of taxpayer cash.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“Afghans were confused and upset by hygiene practices,” a Wall Street Journal article \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/a-u-s-military-base-needs-to-make-13-000-afghan-evacuees-feel-at-home-11633120015\"\u003Edescribed\u003C\/a\u003E. “Every toilet on base was Western style, with a seat and toilet paper. But a number of Afghans are accustomed to restrooms that allow them to squat so they don’t have to physically touch the toilet. It led to some cases of Afghans relieving themselves outside.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis shouldn’t have surprised anyone after two decades in Afghanistan. But political correctness has mostly suppressed accounts of even the most basic facts about the beneficiaries of our great nation building project leaving Americans confused by the behavior of the new arrivals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA Czech journal article from the Department of Military Hygiene \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/military-medicine.com\/article\/3494-the-hygienic-conditions-in-afghanistan.html\"\u003Enoted that\u003C\/a\u003E Afghan \"people in rural areas were found to defecate almost everywhere according to convenience. It is important to observe that particularly the rural population does not know or does not use toilet paper.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMore accurately, Islamic law is held by\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-3030041\/Islamic-fatwa-decrees-toilet-paper-halal-Directorate-Religious-Affairs-says-wiping-acceptable.html\"\u003E some authorities\u003C\/a\u003E to ban the use of toilet paper.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“You should consider very carefully shaking hands during the contact with the local population,” the journal article warned. Unfortunately their local population is now our local population.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAn account of the toilet practices of the defunct Afghan National Army described how our soldiers were forced to “share their toilet with the ANA, as they had been ordered to do by their commanding officers” to win their “hearts and minds”. Unfortunately “it was the custom of the ANA to wipe themselves with their hands, smear their excrement on the walls of the toilet, and rinse their hands in the sink, which left the sinks reeking.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile great care is taken by Muslims to keep their clothes clean so that they are not “impure” during prayers, bathrooms can be left in a horrifying state because they’re already unclean.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMuslim tradition teaches that toilets are possessed by demons and as a result followers of the religion may be reluctant to make contact with them because they have been taught that “Satan plays with the backsides of the sons of Adam”. Islamic teachings encourage squat toilets and forbid men to urinate standing up because Mohammed “only ever used to urinate sitting down.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAt Kandahar Air Base, the toilets were \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/world\/natos-potty-rules-shut-out-afghans\/article17994076\/\"\u003Esegregated\u003C\/a\u003E because, as an officer noted, “When they use our port-a-potties, they stand on the seats and it causes quite a mess. I think it's just a cultural thing.\" There are a lot of these cultural things. Many of them far worse than the toilets.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAlthough when dealing with a group\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/military-medicine.com\/article\/3494-the-hygienic-conditions-in-afghanistan.html\"\u003E where\u003C\/a\u003E “90% of the population are infected by a parasitic disease” and which routinely goes around with fecal matters on its hands, it is an issue.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats insist that 2-year-olds should wear masks, yet invite in a population that doesn’t understand the concepts of toilets, toilet paper, or disease transmission.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the toilets were the least of the problems at Fort McCoy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Afghans, who had supposedly just been saved from death, didn’t like American food.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican rice was “swapped for basmati rice. New spices, hummus and dates were added to the chow hall’s menu” which was entirely Halal. Basmati rice is one of the most expensive varieties of rice available, but nothing was too good for the endlessly complaining arrivals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile the Afghans were complaining to reporters about \"hard rice\", personnel at Fort McCoy were complaining about “multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families.\" This wasn’t too surprising since the child marriage in Afghanistan stands at 57%. Like the toilets, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/point\/2021\/09\/2-afghan-refugees-already-busted-child-abuse-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Eit’s a\u003C\/a\u003E “cultural thing”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile no action was taken on those cases, Bahrullah Noori, an Afghan refugee, was arrested for trying to undress a 14-year-old boy and behaving inappropriately with a 12-year-old boy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMohammad Haroon Imaad was also arrested after his wife accused him of choking her. He had also allegedly threatened to “send her back to Afghanistan where the Taliban could deal with her” and also told her “that nine women have been killed since getting to Fort McCoy and that she would be the tenth.” An estimated 87% of Afghani women face domestic violence.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike the toilets and the child rape, choking women is just another Afghan cultural thing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGeneral Glen VanHerck however visited Fort McCoy and assured reporters that the enlightened Afghans were much more law-abiding than the racist Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI've done some research and how that compares to populations across the United States,\" VanHerck declared. \"For example, in six weeks in Operation Allies Welcome, in a population of 53,000, there have been eight reported cases of robbery and theft.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVanHerck neglected to Google the statistics for assaulting children and women. Or to note that this isn’t a measure of Afghans having lower crime rates than Americans, but a much lower willingness to report crimes to infidels who don’t resolve problems with the use of Islamic law.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"And how long are the Afghans going to be on U.S. military bases?\" the FOX News correspondent asked.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"We're prepared to be here as long as we need to conduct this mission,\" VanHerck replied. \"We'll be ready if we need to support through the winter months and into the spring.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf only there had been the same sort of commitment to getting Americans out of Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EForget the ‘Forever War’ and get ready for the ‘Forever Refugees’.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVanHerck claimed that the Afghans at Fort McCoy \"are appreciative of our support and eager to begin their lives in America.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey're so eager that they're just leaving.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESome 700 Afghans have left bases like McCoy despite promises of free taxpayer cash if they just stay and wait to be resettled. The deserting Afghans are upsetting the Biden administration, not because it’s concerned about potential terror threats from the refugees, but because it makes it harder for its refugee resettlement allies to cash in on every single Afghan. And it interferes with their plot to alter demographics in red states by resettling Afghans in the South.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMeanwhile Fort McCoy is near capacity. American soldiers are back to patrolling Afghan streets and trying to win their hearts and minds by asking them to use toilets and not to abuse their women and children. But the scenes of American soldiers trying to keep the peace among Afghans and communicate American values to them are no longer taking place in Kandahar, but in Wisconsin, and in other states with the misfortune of housing Afghans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s almost as if we never actually withdrew from Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans are funding three Halal meals a day for tens of thousands of Afghans, our bases are full of mosques, our soldiers are trying to keep Afghans from killing and abusing each other, and we are on the hook for every dollar in welfare spending lavished on the Afghans while Americans struggle. As the Afghans leave Fort McCoy, the occupation of America will begin.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden didn’t withdraw from Afghanistan. He brought Afghanistan to America. \u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/7959434020397122709\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/an-afghanistan-grows-in-wisconsin.html#comment-form","title":"8 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7959434020397122709"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7959434020397122709"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/an-afghanistan-grows-in-wisconsin.html","title":"An Afghanistan Grows In Wisconsin"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--Fxc_3WM0X8\/YV-p_-_lv0I\/AAAAAAAATf8\/f6457D6dLU0eqSgV7C_b9m5O4J9LIin_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-10-07_191630.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"8"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2151237929217476000"},"published":{"$t":"2021-10-04T17:35:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-10-04T17:35:12.700-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Crime"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Pro-Crime"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Race"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Black Lives Matter Led to a 62% Increase in Black Murders"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"The Black Lives Matter movement and the allied criminal justice reform movement which opened jails and decriminalized crimes led to a nearly 30% surge in murders in 2020.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 29.4% increase is historically unprecedented.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vE4h92iEOk8\/YVtzXugPe_I\/AAAAAAAATfU\/Wor1VCe6EhQbDXkbzZ4I3mWBUojUsMd0gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1280\/6310924_071020-wls-white-house-chicago-kids-530aVO-vid.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"720\" data-original-width=\"1280\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vE4h92iEOk8\/YVtzXugPe_I\/AAAAAAAATfU\/Wor1VCe6EhQbDXkbzZ4I3mWBUojUsMd0gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/6310924_071020-wls-white-house-chicago-kids-530aVO-vid.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe worst one-year percentage jump in murders was a 12.7% increase in 1968 during a crime wave that led Democrats and Republicans to embrace tough on crime policies. 1968 was the year that LBJ signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act into law. But the opposite happened in 2020 as Democrats and some libertarian Republicans colluded to dismantle the criminal justice system, open up the jails, and endorse Black Lives Matter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe pro-crimers have the blood of thousands on their hands.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe FBI’s numbers are in and they show that Black Lives Matter and its corporate backers killed more black people in one year than anything short of an African civil war.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E3,595 black people were murdered in 2019. But in 2020, 5,839 black people were murdered.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat's an additional 2,244 black people killed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E56% of the murder victims of 2020 were black.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile people of all races were more likely to be murdered in the year of Black Lives Matter, black people were disproportionately likely to be killed as a result of police defunding and the George Floyd Effect, as well as the pressure on the justice system to open up prisons, free criminals, and stop arresting new criminals in the name of fighting for the big lie of racial justice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E3,060 white and Latino people were killed in 2019, which rose to 4,167 in 2020. The 36% increase is devastating, but the number of black people murdered in 2020 shot up 62%.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 62% increase in the murders of black people should be the headline in every single media outlet which currently treats the lack of black classical musicians or chefs as a major crisis.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile statistics like 135 \"unarmed\" black people being shot by police in 5 years becomes a cause for massive riots, violent assaults on innocent people, and the defunding of the police, a 62% increase in the murders of black people won’t even get a mention from the same media which regales us with claims that car accidents are racist because of disproportionate impact.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 62% increase in the murders of black people is the biggest disproportionate impact statistic.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf the 2,244 black people had been shot by white people, Asian people, or Republicans, we could talk about it. Indeed, the odds are that we would never talk about anything else. Ever.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut unfortunately it’s the devastating result of black-on-black crime.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBlack perpetrators were responsible for 5,832 murders or approximately 50% of the murders despite making up only around 13% of the population.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhite people and Latinos who make up 76% of the country accounted for 3,981 homicides or 34%. American Indians were responsible for 116 murders and Asians for only 65 murders.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBlack people both commit murders and are the victims of murders at disproportionate rates.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere is no escaping these facts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECoddling criminals and defunding police hurts people of all races, but black people are the ones suffering the worst from the gang members and criminals in their communities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe number of black murderers rose 38% from 4,208 to 5,832. That’s a sharp increase in black murderers, but it’s dwarfed by the 62% increase in black murders. The number of black crime victims is rising much faster than the number of black criminals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBlack people are becoming victims at higher rates than they are becoming criminals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat is exactly why it was black communities who originally championed a crackdown on crime, why the NAACP had originally demanded the death penalty for drug dealers, and why black people are still far more likely to oppose police defunding and other pro-crime measures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven in the one category of violent crime, rape, that decreased overall in 2020, that was true of every group except one where the number of black rape victims defied the trend.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut black rape victims, like black lives, don’t matter to Black Lives Matter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn Israel, the hashtag Arab Lives Matter took off after the rise in arab-on-arab crime to demand that Israeli police stop the criminals. In the United States, Black Lives Matter is a demand that the police allow gang members to shoot up black neighborhoods with no interference.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe additional 2,244 dead black people are a tribute to Black Lives Matter’s efforts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile Robin DiAngelo cashes in preaching the cult of anti-racism, and suburban white liberals search their souls for systemic racism, what’s really destroying black people is in the numbers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E5,839 black people were murdered in one year.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHomicide doesn't even make the CDC's \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/healthequity\/lcod\/men\/2017\/nonhispanic-black\/index.htm\"\u003Etop 10 causes \u003C\/a\u003Eof death for men in America, but it's number four for black men. In 2017, it caused 5% of the deaths of black men, more than strokes, diabetes, or most diseases. The only things more likely to kill black men than black-on-black crime are heart disease, cancer, and accidents.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmong black men under the age of 20, homicide is the leading cause of death at 35.3%.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E(Those were 2017 numbers, the 2020 numbers, if they’re released, will be much worse.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt's also the leading cause of death for black men from 20-44 years old at 27.6%.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOnly at the age of 65 does homicide drop out of the top 10 causes of death for black men.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere are no such numbers among any other group, including black women. They reflect a high rate of gang violence, drug dealing, and violent crime among a subset of black men. This crisis is not news. There has been ample research on the subject going back generations that the new wokeness decided to shut down, suppress, and penalize anyone who mentioned it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2020, the Left used George Floyd’s overdose death to initiate a massive cultural revolution, supposedly on behalf of black people, but in reality to spread terror and seize power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJust as the proletariat paid the price for the leftist revolutions conducted on behalf of the working class, black men are paying the price for the latest revolution being waged on their behalf. The people paying the price may be ordinary, or they may be gang members themselves. The dismantling of the criminal justice system also led to an unprecedented expansion in crime that recruited a generation of black teens into drug dealing, robbery, and carjacking. The police now routinely arrest armed carjackers as young as twelve years old as part of the new crime wave.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven if a new anti-crime consensus is forged between conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats who shed the madness of criminal justice reform, the damage will be hard to fix.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECracking down on crime increased property values in black areas, led to a growth in black small businesses, and made it more possible for black teens to go to college, and earn higher incomes. Black Lives Matter calculatedly undermined many of those achievements. The teens whom teachers’ unions kept out of school, joined gangs, and began to deal and steal will find it much harder to build stable lives. The women they might have married and the families they might have built are more casualties. It is hard to build things, but all too easy to break them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 5,839 dead black people are just the most obvious sign of the social wreckage.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile black people are the biggest victims of black crime, they are not alone. As these statistics show, we all pay a price. Some pay it directly in the forms of murders, muggings, and assaults. But we all pay for the social cost indirectly through our taxes, the price of goods and services, the cost of insurance, the broken social compact and lack of trust, and the diminished future of our cities and our country. The criminal justice reform movement, like all leftist propositions, was based on ignoring everything we had learned from the past about crime and how to fight it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Black Lives Matter movement terrorized cities and became the official dogma of Corporate America. Every major institution began accusing itself of systemic racism and purging itself.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMeanwhile thousands of black men died in the streets of major cities. The CEOs and university presidents heard the death toll reported on the evening news and paid no attention because it was taking place in neighborhoods and housing projects that they would never set foot into.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow the sum total of the carnage is in. 5,839 black people killed. 2021 is on track to see more elevated murder rates. The question is how many black people have to die until the big lie of systemic racism, the scam of anti-racism, and the criminal justice reform killing fields end.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/2151237929217476000\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/black-lives-matter-led-to-62-increase.html#comment-form","title":"6 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2151237929217476000"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2151237929217476000"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/10\/black-lives-matter-led-to-62-increase.html","title":"Black Lives Matter Led to a 62% Increase in Black Murders"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-vE4h92iEOk8\/YVtzXugPe_I\/AAAAAAAATfU\/Wor1VCe6EhQbDXkbzZ4I3mWBUojUsMd0gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/6310924_071020-wls-white-house-chicago-kids-530aVO-vid.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"6"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6153669468278319880"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-29T23:21:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-29T23:21:31.301-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"culture war"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"feminism"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Feminism Without Women"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"50 years after Ms. Magazine was founded by Gloria Steinem, the prototypical feminist magazine decided to erase women by referring to them as “birthing people” and “people with vaginas”. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Y2__itmziVs\/YVUtMTkpzlI\/AAAAAAAATfA\/4SwSi4J9-yYD1IzwsNkP_woEPmVnA8NwwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s688\/rachel%2Blevine%2Bframe.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"431\" data-original-width=\"688\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Y2__itmziVs\/YVUtMTkpzlI\/AAAAAAAATfA\/4SwSi4J9-yYD1IzwsNkP_woEPmVnA8NwwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/rachel%2Blevine%2Bframe.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EOnce the champions of newspeak jargon like “herstory” that was supposed to emphasize the role of women, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation are now erasing women. After generations of accusing men of objectifying women by reducing them to body parts, the professional feminists are eliminating women entirely by reducing them to body parts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMs. is short for Miss which was itself short for Mistress. At some point, the magazine will have to be renamed to Xer or They. And the Feminist Majority Foundation owes its name to yet another romance language name for women creating a movement named after women without women. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECan there be a feminist movement without women? Will feminism have to be renamed Xerinism or Theyinism?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2020, 55% of white women voted for President Trump despite a drumbeat of denunciations of “white women” in the previous election. White women had built the feminist movement which then read them out of the movement. But black women, championed as the new face of feminism, have been replaced by “black birthing people” by the Feminist Majority Foundation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat is the purpose of feminism without women except to prevent “birthing people” from birthing?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut feminism often didn’t have very much to do with women. The term was coined by the mad French socialist Charles Fourier who also believed that women should have four husbands and that human beings would grow to be seven feet tall and develop tails. More seriously, he envisioned the end of the family and collectivist living that influenced the nightmarish socialist utopias that used him as a model.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs one critic noted, Fourier envisioned abolishing marriage and using women for \"sexual services\" that would be \"bought by society as a whole to further industrial or general economic productivity\". It’s easy to mock Fourier’s deranged ideas, but his central premise of replacing marriage and the family with a collectivist system is still at the heart of modern feminism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFourier, like most leftist ideologues, reduced women to an abstraction, a cog in a social machine, and his contemporary counterparts abstracted the abstraction. Birthing people is the natural outcome of reducing people to a group and the group to an abstraction. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe current feminist abstraction, in which gender is a state of mind and the best way to reinforce that is by erasing the existence of women, is no less insane than Fourier’s utopian society of 7-foot-tall women with tails living in communes and practicing industrial prostitution. When you don’t deal with the reality of people, life becomes a science fiction novel written by inventing new ways of living to solve the social problems of human nature.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELeftist theories ignore human nature and blame social problems on the failure of everyone to accept their theories, abandon their genders, private property, and religion, and grow tails. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe radicals insist that they’re liberators because they reduce everything to power relations. It was simple enough in the 19th century to reduce life to simple binaries of the rich and the poor, men and women, white and black, and declare themselves the champions of the oppressed against the oppressors. In a multicultural society, the binaries become more complicated. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut leftist ideology is a machine for simplifying human complexities into the same binaries.  \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIntersectionality splits diversity into new diversities, subdividing each category into the oppressors and the oppressed. It was inevitable that intersectionality would come to condemn women as the oppressors within the entire category of women and then eliminate the category.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd it’s not just happening to women.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELatinos are being replaced by Latinx and divided by race. The “white hispanic” is denounced as an oppressor. So is the white gay man within the gay category. Even black men are being reinvented as the oppressors in the black category.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOr as one site put it, \"Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd women, apparently, are the white people of birthing people. Can you blame feminism for turning its back on women after they turned out to be the oppressors?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFeminism, like every other ‘ism’ and every identity politics movement, was not concerned with the rights of women, but with social utopia. Identity politics is just a multiplicity of front groups for the same movement which co-opts group struggles in order to construct a totalitarian state.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Would it not in that case be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?\" Bertolt Brecht rhetorically asked the East German regime after it warned that the people must win back the confidence of the government.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the Left does this sort of thing all the time. Having dissolved the white working class, it still claims to fight for the working class because it elected minorities as the new working class. Now it dissolved women and elected birthing people as the new women. That’s easy to do if you believe that all of life, including women and the working class, are just a set of premises, a category someone invented, a few lines in a thesis statement.  \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike the way Columbus, Ohio abolished Columbus Day, but kept its name, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation, not to mention the numberless other feminist organizations, are getting rid of women, but still keeping the “W” word, Ms. and Feminist in their names.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU rewrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s quote, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity” to eliminate “woman” and “her”, but it hasn't renamed the ACLU Women's Rights Project that Ginsburg co-founded.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe leftist advocacy group understands the emotional power of the “W” word. When it calls Ginsburg a \"champion for abortion and gender equality\", the phrase has curiously little power compared to a “champion for women”. Replacing women with “birthing people” only to champion the ‘unbirthing’ of their babies is a typically self-nullifying proposition. As is championing “gender equality” while eliminating the gender that might be in need of equality from the proposition.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere’s precious little dignity in fighting for “birthing people” and “people with vaginas”. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFeminism without women is as hollow as class warfare waged by trust fund hipsters. And yet the Left must destroy that which it champions in an act of ritual ideological sacrifice. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBack to the Fourier days, the purpose of feminism was the elimination of women, much as the purpose of the civil rights movement had become the elimination of black people, and the gay rights movement the elimination of gay people. The Left doesn’t fight for equality, but equity, laboring to remake society by remaking people in its ideological image. Identity politics gains its apotheosis from reinventing identity so thoroughly that the original identity ceases to exist.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd its problems cease to exist with it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut bereft of any new ideas, identity politics only revisits what it claims to want to escape, resurrecting the plantation for black people and the harem for women in the name of progress. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe reversion to slavery and oppression promises to usher in a new age that abolishes all distinctions between human beings in which we will all, perhaps, inhabit a Fourieresque world of seven foot tall socialists with tails living in communes, but the age never actually arrives. It’s much easier to erase women or human nature from language than to actually change reality.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFeminism can act as if women no longer exist, but the realities of biology will outlive the unrealities of leftist ideology.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/6153669468278319880\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/feminism-without-women.html#comment-form","title":"12 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6153669468278319880"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6153669468278319880"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/feminism-without-women.html","title":"Feminism Without Women"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Y2__itmziVs\/YVUtMTkpzlI\/AAAAAAAATfA\/4SwSi4J9-yYD1IzwsNkP_woEPmVnA8NwwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/rachel%2Blevine%2Bframe.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"12"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7963555849038349496"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-27T17:13:00.003-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-27T17:13:51.969-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"War on Terror"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"10% of Biden’s Afghanistan Humanitarian Aid Will Go To Taliban"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Deborah Lyons, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a wanted terrorist with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban component with close ties to Al Qaeda.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-8GXuS0UvG0A\/YVI0BJSH2TI\/AAAAAAAATe4\/__G5YAgzB0kv3oFvOcVorVqYecYUH9emwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1018\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"566\" data-original-width=\"1018\" height=\"178\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-8GXuS0UvG0A\/YVI0BJSH2TI\/AAAAAAAATe4\/__G5YAgzB0kv3oFvOcVorVqYecYUH9emwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003ELyons had served as Canada's ambassador in Kabul when the Taliban carried out a suicide bombing against a Canadian embassy convoy. Lyons put up a monument to the security contractors who were wounded and killed, but they \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/23\/world\/asia\/nepali-guards-kabul-bombing.html\"\u003Esued\u003C\/a\u003E after being abandoned afterwards.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted terrorist with a $10 million FBI reward on his head.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging with the de facto authorities,”  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe de facto authorities being the Islamic terrorists of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe official word is that the Taliban won’t stop the UN humanitarian operations. Whether or not the Taliban will refrain from taxing the UN’s proposed $1.2 billion aid boom is another question.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWithout waiting for that question to be settled, Biden has not only kicked in $64 million, but the Treasury Department issued a license for Afghanistan aid which states that it, \"will continue to support the continuity of the U.S. government’s important humanitarian-related work in the region\", while claiming that \"we have not reduced sanctions pressure on Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban and most “humanitarian” groups in Afghanistan are using the Islamic Hawala system which enables international finance and massive terrorist fundraising at the same time.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd “humanitarian aid” is one of the best ways to fund Islamic terrorists. The Taliban impose an Islamic tithe which American taxpayers will end up paying once the millions in aid arrive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban had set up its Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations at least over a decade ago. Much like the old Afghan government, it made few distinctions between for-profit companies and non-profit charities, and taxed them both.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen the United States was in control of Afghanistan, USAID and the UN were exempted from government taxes. That was only fair considering that the vast majority of Afghanistan’s money came from USAID and the UN. But the local Afghan “implementing partners” paid taxes to the government and if they did business in Taliban territory, they also paid off the Jihadists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe don’t know exactly how much taxpayer money went to the Taliban, but one survey found that contractors priced in \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.pri.org\/stories\/2009-08-07\/funding-afghan-taliban\"\u003E20% to 30%\u003C\/a\u003E from their contracts as payoffs. More formally, the Taliban tend to charge a 10% Islamic tax on income and a 2.5% Islamic wealth tax. While this is modest compared to taxes in some western socialist countries, the only service the Taliban provide is not killing you. That doesn’t require much infrastructure, but is really valuable on the ground.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEvery charity and humanitarian group has denied paying taxes to the Taliban because it’s illegal. All of them, or almost all of them, are likely lying because otherwise they’d be dead.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban had an extensive and sophisticated tax collection network long before they took Kabul which included all the usual elements of bureaucracy, registration, certificates, and assessments. They \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/asia\/2020\/11\/18\/as-america-pulls-out-of-afghanistan-the-taliban-fight-on+\"\u003Eeven have\u003C\/a\u003E “NGO coordinators” who work with non-profit groups.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs an Economist article \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/asia\/2020\/11\/18\/as-america-pulls-out-of-afghanistan-the-taliban-fight-on\"\u003Enoted\u003C\/a\u003E, \"Britain’s Foreign Office had to remind ngos not to pay taxes to the Taliban.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban at one point provided a list of non-profits that \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/odihpn.org\/magazine\/taliban-policy-and-perceptions-towards-aid-agencies-in-afghanistan\/\"\u003Ehad registered \u003C\/a\u003Ewith their Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations. The group “included UN agencies, national and international NGOs and human rights organisations” including those that  “rely on funding from a wide range of sources, including both the UN and the US government”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat was back in 2013 when the Taliban had far less power and were less intimidating.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s a safe bet that nearly every non-profit still operating in Afghanistan is registered with the Commission, and was probably registered in previous years, and is paying off the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven if the UN succeeds in exempting its operations from taxes, the “implementing partners”, local Afghan groups, will still pay taxes to the Taliban. And their employees and those of the groups they fund will certainly be taxed. If the United States funds doctors and clinics, they will be taxed (as they were before the fall of Kabul), if we fund teachers, they will pay taxes to the Taliban, and so will every beneficiary of our “humanitarian aid”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"We can maintain a humanitarian commitment to... the Afghan people in ways that do not have any funding or assistance pass through the coffers of a central government,\" Ned Price, Biden’s State Department spokesman, falsely claimed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPrice knows that’s a lie.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven if the humanitarian aid doesn’t initially pass through the Taliban’s coffers, it will inevitably end up there as it works its way through Afghanistan. Even if we just shipped food and medicines, the Taliban will take its ‘cut’ of the medicine and food as they used to before. They will then be able to dispense it to their supporters or resell it on the black market. Both are common practices for Islamic terrorist groups like the Houthis in Yemen or Hamas in Israel.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s why it’s common for there to be a “humanitarian crisis” in terrorist hellholes like Yemen or Gaza. No matter how much aid is sent in, the crisis never goes away because the terrorists not only steal the aid, they deliberately create the crises so that they have more aid to steal.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe only way to stop the crisis is to either kill the terrorists or at least stop sending them aid.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 10% in the headline is a crude estimate. Any money or aid dispatched to Afghanistan will resonate back and forth through the economy with the Taliban taking a cut at every end. And the final amount will be a whole lot more than the formal Islamic tithe which the Taliban impose.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere is no way to provide humanitarian aid to a terrorist state without funding its regime.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd that will mean difficult moral choices.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen the Great Famine struck Russia as a result of Communist collectivism, the United States undertook a massive aid effort, sending $20 million (a quarter million in today’s dollars) in food aid. The noble effort saved millions, and bailed out the Bolshevik regime which showed no gratitude and went on to kill millions anyway. Then it built up a massive nuclear program while plotting to destroy the United States and murder hundred of millions of Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo one wants to deny aid to suffering people, but when the cause of the suffering is a genocidal enemy regime, subsidizing it only makes things worse. Refusing to provide aid or normalize economic relations with the Soviet Union might have saved far more lives in the long run.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban won because many Afghans decided to support them or not to resist them. That is a choice that they will have to live with and learn to regret if anything is going to change.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EProviding aid to Afghanistan will bail out the Taliban. The more aid we send to Afghanistan, the more powerful, the more secure, and the more aggressive the Taliban’s ambitions will grow. The harder the Taliban have to work to maintain control over Afghanistan, the less scope they will have for terrorism abroad. The more aid we send, the broader the Taliban’s horizons will grow.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESenator Cory Booker foolishly argued that aid is a “strategic leverage that we have over the Taliban.” No, it’s strategic leverage that the Taliban have over us as the Biden administration and the UN negotiate with the terrorists over the right to bail out their vicious regime.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden kept falsely claiming that he had to get out of Afghanistan because we couldn’t keep spending money on the failed state. Yet he began sending more money to Afghanistan before all of the Americans he abandoned behind enemy lines had even been evacuated.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter leaving massive caches of weapons and vehicles for the Taliban to enjoy, Biden is dispatching another $64 million, of which millions will likely end up in the hands of the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban will impose their Islamic tithe on the aid that Biden sends to Afghanistan. And taxpayers will be the ones paying the tithe to support the Taliban’s Jihad against non-Muslims.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans aren’t just paying taxes to the government, they’re paying them to the Taliban.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/7963555849038349496\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/10-of-bidens-afghanistan-humanitarian.html#comment-form","title":"6 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7963555849038349496"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7963555849038349496"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/10-of-bidens-afghanistan-humanitarian.html","title":"10% of Biden’s Afghanistan Humanitarian Aid Will Go To Taliban"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-8GXuS0UvG0A\/YVI0BJSH2TI\/AAAAAAAATe4\/__G5YAgzB0kv3oFvOcVorVqYecYUH9emwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"6"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3536607981204354897"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-26T00:23:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-26T00:23:37.396-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Virginia"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"A New Civil War in a Time Capsule"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"“This is today’s Virginia, not yesterday’s. And one day, when future generations look back at this moment, they will be able to learn about the inclusive, welcoming Commonwealth,\" Governor Ralph Northam sourly declared as the statue of General Lee was pulled off its pedestal.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-6iDfS99cZlQ\/YU_1v317HrI\/AAAAAAAATew\/SmUW3aQG9Jg-FP47v-A6ATB7XDesfZa_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s656\/image_2021-09-25_212327.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"401\" data-original-width=\"656\" height=\"196\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-6iDfS99cZlQ\/YU_1v317HrI\/AAAAAAAATew\/SmUW3aQG9Jg-FP47v-A6ATB7XDesfZa_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-09-25_212327.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EYesterday’s Virginia was fairly recent because Northam had been photographed dressed either as a Klansman or in blackface back in 1984. Future generations however probably won’t be invited to learn about the inclusive and welcoming state being built by a hypocritical racist.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENortham submitted pictures of his own press conference, his wife’s face mask, and an anti-American poem read at his Juneteenth commemoration to the time capsule, but neglected to include his awkward Klan blackface picture as a gift to the inclusive people of the future.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s a little awkward that Monument Avenue now has no monuments, except a statue of tennis player Arthur Ashe who left Richmond when he was in high school, but the barren avenue is what happens when you spend all your time destroying things, instead of creating them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENortham’s big show at the General Lee monument, replacing a time capsule from 1887 with a new capsule featuring the newly woke Virginia, hit a snag when they couldn’t find the old one.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Democrat leaders had gathered a perfect capsule of the sort of things a leftist would value, like a sticker from today's Klan, the Black Lives Matter movement, a face mask, and a magazine cover of the Lee monument graffitied with the face of George Floyd, a criminal who robbed a  woman at gunpoint during a home invasion and died of a drug overdose triggering race riots.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut they couldn’t find the original 1887 time capsule.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter wrestling with the massive granite base for most of the day, and digging a hole, the woke vandals came up \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/09\/10\/us\/lee-monument-time-capsule-trnd\/index.html\"\u003Eempty\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"After a couple of long hard days, it's clear the time capsule won't be found and Virginia is done with lost causes,\" Northam's spokesman snapped. \"The search for this moldy Confederate box is over. We're moving on.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWere 21st century wokes outsmarted by 19th century southerners? Or did someone more modern figure out how to get at the time capsule before it could be ritually burned?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat is the new woke Virginia moving on to? As Governor Northam put it, “the capsule focuses on the story of race in Richmond”. Any future Virginians who open the time capsule will discover that the early 21st century was much more obsessed with race than the late 19th century.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 1887 time capsule had plenty of Confederate materials: none of them dealing with race. It’s not the Virginians of 1887 who viewed the world purely in terms of race, but their modern descendants who are obsessed with race in the way that only obsessive racists are.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike the sort of racists who dress up as klansmen before ushering in the new inclusive Virginia because they don’t actually believe in anything except tearing us apart to gain power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe contrast between the 1887 and 2021 time capsules is revealing. The 1887 capsule contained plenty of Confederate, but also Masonic memorabilia. There were also a variety of coins, American, Confederate, and even British, city statistics, and commercial advertisements.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAlong with a church history and a bible.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBibles are notably absent from the 2021 time capsule which is dedicated to the new woke religion of leftist virtue signaling. The closest to any sort of religious content in the new woke capsule is a Presbyterian session on \"dismantling racism\" and a Zoom interfaith prayer featuring diverse clergy who, apart from the Muslim participants, almost certainly believe in nothing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENortham and his cronies claim that the new time capsule represents a more welcoming Virginia, but it’s actually more parochial in its stifling ideological conformity. The 1887 capsule for all its championing of the Confederacy included a picture of Lincoln lying in his coffin. The men and women who assembled that capsule were capable of honoring the tragedy of Lincoln’s death.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere are no such concessions in the woke time capsule of 2021 to any other point of view.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“The creation of this new capsule is a response to the Virginia represented in the old capsule, which promoted Lost Cause mythology and only represented the stories and experiences of a small segment of society. It is also a representation of the Virginia of today, one rooted in our values of inclusion, equity, and diversity,” Governor Northam declared.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe stories and experiences in the woke capsule represent an even smaller tribal segment. If you’re not a black nationalist, politically gay or militantly feminist, there’s nothing there for you. The woke artifacts are concerned with tribal identity to a larger degree than the 1887 capsule. The archeologists of another century will see a self-conscious society of castes obsessed with its own conflicts while offering next to nothing in the way of unity or hope for the future.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA significant number of artifacts in the woke time capsule are concerned with the decision to vandalize and remove the General Lee statue. There are tributes to the Black Lives Matter race riots, to the bizarre efforts to revive the ERA, and fetishization of pandemic paraphernalia. What little art there is vulgar, tasteless, tribal, and predictably accuses America of racism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe woke time capsule struggles to invent the last few years as a new era in history, a contemporary to the civil rights movement, but all it succeeds in doing is drawing a portrait of a broken age that is so obsessed with its momentary causes that it lacks all perspective.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 1887 time capsule captured life decades after the end of the Civil War while the 2021 time capsule is a snapshot of a society on the verge of a new civil war. It’s easy to sneer at the reverence for Confederate history in the 1887 time capsule, but it’s far better than the mingled arrogance and rage of the 2021 time capsule which is entirely concerned with settling scores.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E19th century Richmond was remembering the past while its 21st century counterparts are capable of nothing more than broadcasting war propaganda while celebrating their power. The men and women who hid the time capsule so well that the wokes have yet to find it did not expect that the future would recognize them as the winners. But Northam and his ilk are convinced that whoever opens this time capsule will cheer them on as crusading heroes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe woke time capsule is the premature victory celebration of a civil war yet to come.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd yet there’s nothing in their time capsule that would convince any disinterested observer of the future that the woke cause deserves to win. The new inclusive Virginia, based on the contents of the capsule, has no art or music, is incapable of creating, only at best remixing, confuses vulgarity with creativity, and appears to have accomplished nothing in all this time.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EExcept to tear down a statue.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven its radical causes, whether it’s Black Lives Matter, the ERA, or sexual politics, are always in motion, never actually fulfilled. These are the only things that the Democrats can think of to pass on to the future. It’s as if, given a chance to speak with our great-grandparents they would shout at us about bimetallism and railroad monopolies, or, as in Richmond, when speaking to our great-grandchildren, all we could do was shout “Stop Asian Hate” and “Black Lives Matter”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat would any future Virginia think of people who would store Natalie Diaz's lesbian Post-Colonial Love Poem, \"I am in the dirt for you. Your hips are quartz-light and dangerous\", or photos of Northam’s own press conference on removing the General Lee statue for the ages?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey will rightly see them as feckless, inept, and decadent. A society that, like the declining days of ancient Rome and Egypt, whose caesars and pharaohs were obsessed with destroying the monuments of their predecessors, is destructive, and obsessed with power and pleasure.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd they won’t be far wrong.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe used to wonder what made the great empires and nations of the past fall so far from their glory days. Now all we need to do is pick through the trash that the incompetent master wokes deem worthy of showing off to the future to realize how far the nation has fallen into the gutter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe woke time capsule was deliberately selected to replace the old Virginia with the new. Yet the woke vandals couldn’t even find the old time capsule and sneered that they didn’t need it anyway. Why bother searching for the past when all you want to do is destroy it anyway?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut what the men and women of Richmond understood in 1887 is that the past is built on the future. The past, like all things, is imperfect, but destroying it leaves us with nothing. Like the bare pedestals of Monument Avenue, the gutted storefronts, and a time capsule devoid of anything beautiful and constructive, what the Left has left is ruins, ugliness, and hate.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EInside the new woke time capsule is a snapshot of a nation on the verge of another civil war.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/3536607981204354897\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/a-new-civil-war-in-time-capsule.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/3536607981204354897"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/3536607981204354897"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/a-new-civil-war-in-time-capsule.html","title":"A New Civil War in a Time Capsule"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-6iDfS99cZlQ\/YU_1v317HrI\/AAAAAAAATew\/SmUW3aQG9Jg-FP47v-A6ATB7XDesfZa_gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-09-25_212327.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-8961593102655801710"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-22T23:06:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-22T23:06:07.268-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Islam"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"War on Terror"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The War on Terror Sacrificed Thousands of Lives to Avoid Tough Political Decisions"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"The infrastructure of Islamic terror is made up of three groups: domestic infrastructure, financial infrastructure, and organizational infrastructure. The domestic infrastructure consists of the populations who are the source of Islamic terrorism, the financial infrastructure comes from the state sponsors and billionaire funders of terrorism, and the organizational infrastructure is represented by the terrorist groups like Al Qaeda that run training camps and plan operations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-59yUfUDXN0s\/YUvvBMgYU6I\/AAAAAAAATeQ\/79CNpy0bLZAv3iBAhuyxCTareFsP_6W6gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s674\/pm%2Bkhan%2Bscreenshot.jpg\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"403\" data-original-width=\"674\" height=\"191\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-59yUfUDXN0s\/YUvvBMgYU6I\/AAAAAAAATeQ\/79CNpy0bLZAv3iBAhuyxCTareFsP_6W6gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/pm%2Bkhan%2Bscreenshot.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EGoing after training camps and terror leaders made sense, but it was also the most difficult militarily, requiring the deployment of troops to distant countries to engage in guerrilla warfare in hostile environments and counterterrorism in enemy cities, and the easiest politically.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOf the three infrastructures, domestic, state, and organizational, Osama bin Laden had the smallest constituency. Political leaders, Republican or Democrat, knew that they could expect to pay the smallest political price for targeting him or other Al Qaeda terrorists on the ground.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe War on Terror was structured to focus on the least politically difficult targets while avoiding the most politically difficult targets. What initially began as a broad spectrum campaign that detained large numbers of domestic Islamists and went after Islamist billionaires who were funding the terrorists narrowed down to nation building in response to political pressures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESpending the lives of thousands of American soldiers was easy compared to the political challenges of rooting out the domestic Muslim Brotherhood operation, its mosques and organizations, or trying to hold Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar accountable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGoing after Al Qaeda training camps and leaders made sense, but in isolation it was a strategy that was doomed to fail because it targeted terrorist middlemen rather than their state sponsors or the growing Muslim populations in the United States that were being recruited for terrorism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Al Qaeda leadership could always fade away, amplify their propaganda, and crowdsource terrorism to local Muslim populations while we spent our strength chasing them around the world. And that’s exactly what they did. While we tried to fight a conventional war, a new generation of Al Qaeda and ISIS propagandists, some operating inside our countries, used the money from their state sponsors to recruit and train the so-called “lone wolves” over the internet.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo one has yet come up with an answer to this new strategy for conducting domestic terrorism in America except to “partner” with Islamist groups on how to “deradicalize” terrorists. That and the Obama administration initiating a CVE program of arguing with the terrorists on Twitter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis sort of thing is a politically safe strategy that avoids the explosive problem of a growing domestic Islamist population and an increasingly influential Islamist organizational infrastructure.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2001, the Islamist groups were mostly marginal. In 2021, they’re an integrated part of the leftist intersectional movement, and presidents and senators advocate for their causes. What would have been politically difficult in 2001 has long since become politically untenable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike the Europeans, our political elites argue that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism because politicians adopt the narratives that fit the political realities, not the military ones. The same process that led to the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal resulted in a generation of mishandling the War on Terror by following the politically easy narratives of hunting terrorists while neglecting the backers and recruits who could continually regenerate their movements.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe conviction that Islamic terrorism was the product of a tiny minority of extremists huddling in caves and training camps was a deliberate misunderstanding of how terrorism actually worked.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAl Qaeda was a startup operation drawing on the support of powerful countries and wealthy donors above, and on recruits from massive populations of devout Muslims below. Islamic terrorist groups are just the community organizers of the Jihad, recruiting the latter for the causes of the former. Terrorism could no more be defeated by destroying Al Qaeda than the Left was beaten when ACORN was broken up. It’s easy enough for the big money to restore old organizations or form new ones that draw on the same conditions in the same populations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOrganizations are the most fragile of the three groups, but also the easiest to reconstruct.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the Jihadists, like the Taliban, can simply outwait us knowing that as long as the money and the people are there, it’s only a matter of time until they can rebuild their operations. Until then they’re happy enough to let us pour billions into the countries they plan to inherit in the vain hope of convincing their people that an inclusive government is better than tribal supremacism\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the political establishment, Democrat and Republican, found two decades of war much more palatable than having to deal with the difficult political realities of Islamic terrorism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd there’s no sign of that changing any time soon.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThousands of dead Americans are far more conceivable than admitting that the real axis of evil wasn’t just a few countries with dictators, but encompasses the wealthy Muslim countries that are our allies, and that Islamic terrorism is rooted universally in the Koran and locally in ethnic tribalism, and cannot be countered by overthrowing a dictator and offering democracy lessons.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EStanding up to oil-rich kingdoms would have cost far fewer lives than spending decades in Afghanistan, but it would have also blown up the economy and international trade. Fundamentally rethinking immigration would have been even more painful for the party of demographic change and for the party of cheap labor. War was the cheapest political option.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut it may be comforting to remember that we have been down this road before.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican leaders spent the first generation of the Bolshevik revolution bailing out the Soviet Union from famine and war, doing business with it, enabling its conquests, and finally letting the Communists take China and all of Eastern Europe before we learned our painful lesson.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe lesson was learned not because our leaders grew smarter, but because the ruthlessness and scale of the enemy became inescapable. Even then we spent the Cold War trying to figure out how to live in peace with the big Communists while fighting brushfire wars with the little Communists, leading to lots of lives lost and what looked like a pathway to our defeat.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Soviet Union eventually collapsed while Communist China adapted, leaving us with a new war with an enemy that we keep enabling because it’s politically and economically cheaper.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt took a generation after Tiananmen Square for our leaders to slowly realize that we are on a collision course with Communist China. So it shouldn’t surprise us that they have yet to come to the painfully obvious conclusion about the Jihad even two decades after September 11.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe didn’t defeat the Soviet Union. Our economic and social setup outlasted theirs. Communist China and the Islamists assume that their social and economic systems will outlast ours, and that they can exploit fractures and weaknesses in our systems to corrupt and conquer us.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Soviet Union thought the same thing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur various enemies were correct in assuming that our political leaders lacked the will to make the necessary decisions. Where they erred was in assuming too much and pushing too far. The Japanese made that mistake in Pearl Harbor, the Soviets in Berlin, and Al Qaeda on 9\/11. The Jihadists haven’t made one final mistake yet, but history suggests that they will.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica, to its friends and enemies, and to its own patriots, can be an infuriating mix of weakness and strength, idealism and corruption, division and unity. And it’s never entirely clear, even to us, when the tipping point that turns one into the other will unexpectedly arrive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe great tragedy of the aftermath of September 11 is that our leaders proved willing to sacrifice soldiers, but not the dream of a democratic world order, and instead sacrificed lives to that dream. They took the road that was easiest for them and hardest for so many military men.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe War on Terror only became a forever war because we failed to confront two of the three pillars from which the enemy draws its strength. After two decades, we’ve seen the limitations of a military option that is not combined with foreign policy and immigration decisions that would cut off the true economic and demographic sources of the enemy’s strength. Until our leaders are ready to make the hard choices and our people are ready to elect those who will, the forever wars will go on, not just in distant countries, but in the streets of our own cities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe have failed to identify the enemy. And until we do, we can never win.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/8961593102655801710\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/the-war-on-terror-sacrificed-thousands.html#comment-form","title":"10 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/8961593102655801710"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/8961593102655801710"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/the-war-on-terror-sacrificed-thousands.html","title":"The War on Terror Sacrificed Thousands of Lives to Avoid Tough Political Decisions"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-59yUfUDXN0s\/YUvvBMgYU6I\/AAAAAAAATeQ\/79CNpy0bLZAv3iBAhuyxCTareFsP_6W6gCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/pm%2Bkhan%2Bscreenshot.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"10"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-792936468965616234"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-14T12:58:00.003-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-14T12:58:43.741-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"ACLU"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Coronavirus"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Freedom"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The ACLU Trades Civil Rights for Government Power"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Six years ago, the ACLU challenged a school vaccine mandate bill in California.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECOVID-19 was only a gleam in the eye of some Wuhan University of Virology lab workers, if even that, and the vaccines in question were the more ordinary kind most children have.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fJSBBdgLnfY\/YUDUscxEBhI\/AAAAAAAATd8\/XBiElEoR8G4Tj5nFxZUiqoflYFMqTyBywCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1608\/1984.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"905\" data-original-width=\"1608\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fJSBBdgLnfY\/YUDUscxEBhI\/AAAAAAAATd8\/XBiElEoR8G4Tj5nFxZUiqoflYFMqTyBywCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/1984.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven so, the ACLU \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/abcarian\/la-me-abcarian-vaccination-bill-20150424-column.html\"\u003Eargued \u003C\/a\u003Ethat children have a right to a public education and can't be barred from school based on whether they're vaccinated or not. The civil rights groups also questioned the idea that the state has a \"compelling interest\" in requiring vaccinations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica has changed since and so has the ACLU.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn a New York Times \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/09\/02\/opinion\/covid-vaccine-mandates-civil-liberties.html\"\u003Eop-ed\u003C\/a\u003E, the ACLU's national legal director and the director of its religious freedom program falsely claim that, \"far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EArguing that taking away some people’s civil liberties protects everyone’s rights isn’t a new argument. It’s just the argument that the ACLU spent its entire history militantly opposing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU tries to disguise its radical shift by wrapping it in identity politics and contending that forcing people to get vaccinated protects \"the most vulnerable among us, including people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated and communities of color hit hard by the disease.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut young black men, the group that the ACLU had claimed to be advocating for last year, are the most likely to be fired or segregated due to vaccine mandates.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU wants to protect black people by taking away their civil rights.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the ACLU isn’t just turning civil liberties on its head, it’s contradicting its own positions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2002, the ACLU had opposed mandatory smallpox vaccinations of first responders during a pandemic. It further warned that employees who refuse to be vaccinated should be protected from retaliation. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Smallpox vaccine has risks and getting vaccinated is not a choice to be made lightly -- but in America, it should certainly be a choice,\" the ACLU's Technology and Liberty director had argued.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChoice. In America. Go figure.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU had even produced an entire Pandemic Preparedness pamphlet \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/sites\/default\/files\/field_document\/asset_upload_file399_33642.pdf\"\u003Ewhich\u003C\/a\u003E warned against a public health model that “assumes that we must trade liberty for security” resulting in “pandemic prevention” that takes “aggressive, coercive actions against those who are sick.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe pamphlet further warned that “the CDC’s plan would have set us back even further. It applied its penalties to people who did not have any contagious disease and to people who would never expose anyone else to disease. Moreover, it included provisions to make all public health personnel, and those acting under their orders, immune from liability for any injury—even if forced vaccination or other mandated treatments killed the patient.” Who would have thought?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter a long history of opposing forced treatment and coercive medical measures, including mandatory swine flu vaccines for health care workers in New York, and flu shots and HPV vaccines for children in Rhode Island,  the ACLU is completely on board with vaccine mandates.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHaving turned civil liberties on its head, the ACLU now argues that, “The real threat to civil liberties comes from states banning vaccine and mask mandates.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd, indeed, the ACLU is suing states who ban schools from forcing children to wear masks.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe real threat from civil liberties now comes from championing civil liberties. The old ACLU is a threat to the new ACLU which redefines civil liberties as the deprivation of civil liberties.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere is a surreal hypocrisy in the ACLU abandoning all its old beliefs to argue that \"rights are not absolute\" and that there are \"justifiable intrusion(s) on autonomy and bodily integrity\" for the public good.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU hasn’t discovered some exciting new legal principle to justify its switch.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was fighting the threat of possible smallpox vaccine mandates under the Bush administration because, as everyone at the ACLU understood at the time, Bush was the new Hitler. It fought childhood vaccine mandates because many of the concerned mothers were ACLU liberals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut beyond the political shifts, the ACLU has largely discarded any interest in civil rights as a legal theory to become another interchangeable leftist pressure group with lawyers. The New York Times op-ed is the work of people who can’t even be bothered to define civil rights, but who understand that their donor base is currently agitated about pandemic identity politics.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the ACLU has to show that it’s fighting their cultural enemies and destroying them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe old ACLU won respect because it stuck to its principles, defending Nazis and other evil people to show that a free society could work as long as civil liberties were protected. All of that has long since gone out the window and the ACLU’s endorsement of vaccine mandates is long overdue as part of its shift from principled liberalism to unprincipled lawfare culture wars.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf it doesn’t fundraise off forcing children to wear masks and young black men to get vaccinated, the ACLU’s leadership understands that some other leftist organization will beat it to the punch.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s hard to have legal principles when you have no principles of any other kind.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd yet the old ACLU’s arguments about the dangers of criminalizing disease made a good deal of sense. That was the same organization that wisely warned against making people, instead of the disease, into the enemy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat is exactly what leftists have done, dividing Americans, instead of uniting them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the ACLU knows quite well that there’s a lot more money to be made on division than there is on arguing for general principles and rights that apply to everyone across the board.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPresident Trump’s victory led to a massive \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2017\/01\/30\/the-aclu-says-it-got-24-million-in-donations-this-weekend-six-times-its-yearly-average\/\"\u003Esurge\u003C\/a\u003E in online donations to the former civil rights group. In the weeks after he won, over $15 million in online donations rolled in. In one weekend after he took office, the ACLU gasped as $24 million in cash showered into its coffers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat was six times its annual donation total.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU looked at that river of resistance cash, dived in like a petty criminal who suddenly realizes that he could be raking in millions instead of thousands, and never looked back.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“To some degree, civil rights and civil liberties is a cyclical business,” the ACLU’s national legal director who authored the pro-vaccine mandate op-ed, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/after-thriving-under-trump-aclu-doubles-down-on-progressive-stances-11614693600\"\u003Eargued\u003C\/a\u003E. “We need to convince people that is a long-term business.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere was a time when the ACLU wasn’t any kind of business. Now, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, it’s in the civil rights business and that’s the business of selling out rights for cash.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU didn’t just abandon its opposition to vaccine mandates. It’s largely jettisoned its interest in civil rights. Instead, it’s reinventing opposition to civil rights as the new civil rights.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBefore it defended vaccine mandates as taking away civil liberties from some to protect others, it was \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-expression-1529533065\"\u003Edefending\u003C\/a\u003E speech bans that would protect “marginalized groups”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWithin a few years, the ACLU had gone from championing free speech to balancing the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter an entire history of arguing that larger problems don’t justify the abolition of individual civil liberties, the ACLU now contends that abolishing the liberties of individuals actually protects collective welfare when there is some sort of general crisis like a pandemic or hurt feelings.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThese days the ACLU argues that not only must liberty be traded for security, but that security is liberty. And that depriving people of liberty for security is actually a defense of liberty.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EExcept it doesn’t like the word, “liberty”, it prefers the ambiguity of “rights” which can be things that the government and corporations seek to protect you from for your own good.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOrwellian arguments are on point for a civil rights organization co-founded by a \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2010\/08\/day-aclu-joined-al-queda.html\"\u003ECommunist sympathizer\u003C\/a\u003E who had argued that \"If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech\" it was only to create a Communist dictatorship and when that dictatorship is \"achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever.\" And after a long career of civil liberties, the ACLU has come around to the position of “maintaining it by any means whatever.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd it also gets to pig out on the much larger sums of money from the “maintainers” of tyranny.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut there isn’t even the pretense anymore that the resistance is to President Trump or to some authority. Even the ACLU’s mask mandates were disguised as attacks on Republican governors. But arguing for a vaccine mandate isn’t a resistance to authority, it’s authority.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ACLU has become the authoritarians it always claimed to be fighting against. After generations of fighting for civil rights, it discovered that fighting against civil rights pays better.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/792936468965616234\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/the-aclu-trades-civil-rights-for.html#comment-form","title":"3 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/792936468965616234"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/792936468965616234"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/the-aclu-trades-civil-rights-for.html","title":"The ACLU Trades Civil Rights for Government Power"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fJSBBdgLnfY\/YUDUscxEBhI\/AAAAAAAATd8\/XBiElEoR8G4Tj5nFxZUiqoflYFMqTyBywCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/1984.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"3"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2598271124152752808"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-12T00:53:00.002-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-12T00:53:12.292-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"War on Terror"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"It's Not Over"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,” a terrorist declares on the Flight 93 cockpit recording. That’s followed by the sounds of the terrorists assaulting a passenger.\u003C\/p\u003E“Please don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “Oh God.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs the passengers rush the cabin, a Muslim terrorist proclaims, “In the name of Allah.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tVAiCOKHeds\/YT2HpM_jDUI\/AAAAAAAATdc\/HaVNvZbioLAuFimnTbkI4NKWxpabpDAVgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s795\/911.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"470\" data-original-width=\"795\" height=\"189\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tVAiCOKHeds\/YT2HpM_jDUI\/AAAAAAAATdc\/HaVNvZbioLAuFimnTbkI4NKWxpabpDAVgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/911.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EAs New York firefighters struggle up the South Tower with 100 pounds of equipment on their backs trying to save lives until the very last moment, the Flight 93 passengers push toward the cockpit. The Islamic hijackers call out, “Allahu Akbar.”\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EMohammed Atta had advised his fellow terrorists that when the fighting begins, “Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” He quoted the Koran’s command that Muslim holy warriors terrorize non-believers by beheading them and urged them to follow Mohammed’s approach, “Take prisoners and kill them.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe 9\/11 ringleader quoted the Koran again. “No prophet should have prisoners until he has soaked the land with blood.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn Flight 93, the fighting goes on. “Oh Allah. Oh the most Gracious,” the Islamic terrorists cry out. “Trust in Allah,” they reassure. And then there are only the chants of, “Allahu Akbar” as the plane goes down in a Pennsylvania field leaving behind another blood-soaked territory in the Islamic invasion of America.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EToday that field is marked by the “Crescent of Embrace” memorial.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThousands of Muslims cheered the attack in those parts of Israel under the control of the Islamic terrorists of the Palestinian Authority. They shouted, “Allahu Akbar” and handed out candy.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EBut similar ugly outbreaks of Islamic Supremacism were also taking place much closer to home.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn John F. Kennedy Boulevard, in Jersey City, across the river from Manhattan, crowds of Muslim settlers celebrated the slaughter of Americans. \"Some men were dancing, some held kids on their shoulders,\" a retired Jersey City cop described the scene. \"The women were shouting in Arabic.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESimilar Islamic festivities broke out on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a major Islamic settlement area, even as in downtown Manhattan, ash had turned nearby streets into the semblance of a nuclear war. Men and women trudged over Brooklyn Bridge or uptown to get away from this strange new world.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EAt Union Square, I passed NYU students painting anti-war placards even as the downtown sky behind them was painted the color of bone. They ignored the crowd streaming up past them and focused intently on making all the red letters in NO WAR line up neatly on the white cardboard.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn the years since, I have seen that look on the faces of countless leftists who ignore the stabbers shouting, “Allahu Akbar” in London or the terrorist declaring, \"In the name of Allah, the merciful,\" among the bloody ruin of a gay nightclub in Orlando. Instead they focus on their mindless slogans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“NO WAR,” “Stop Islamophobia” and “Refugees Welcome.” The world of the cardboard sign and the simple slogan is an easier and neater one than a sky filled with the ashes of the dead.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn September 11, some of us opened our eyes. Others closed them as hard as they could.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EThe passengers on Flight 93 who took the lead were in their thirties. But the two firefighters who made it to the 78th floor of the South Tower, Ronald Bucca, who did duty in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and Orio Palmer, a marathon runner, were in their forties. Those men and women had the most meaningful answers to the old question, “Where were you when it happened?”\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EThe great lesson of that Tuesday morning was that it wasn’t over. It wasn’t over when we understood that we wouldn’t find anyone alive in that twisted mass of metal and death. It wasn’t over when the air began to clear. It wasn’t over when the President of the United States spoke. It wasn’t over when the planes began to fly again and the TV switched from non-stop coverage of the attacks and back to its regularly scheduled programming. It wasn’t over when we were told to mourn and move on.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt still isn’t over.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter every attack, Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, New York, Paris, Manchester, London, Barcelona, we are encouraged to mourn and move on. Bury the bodies, shed a tear and forget about it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETerrible things happen. And we have to learn to accept them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut Tuesday morning was not a random catastrophe. It did not go away because we went back to shopping. It did not go away with Hope and Change. Appeasing and forgetting only made it stronger.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E“Where were you?” is not just a question to be asked about September 11, 2001. It is an everyday question. What are you doing today to fight the Islamic terrorists who did this? And tomorrow?\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003EOur enemies wake up every day wondering how to destroy us. Their methods, from demographic invasion to WMDs, from political subversion to random stabbings, are many.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA new and terrible era in history began on 9\/11. We are no more past it than we were past Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. Its origins are no mystery. They lie in the last sound that came from Flight 93.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“Allahu Akbar.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe are in the middle of the longest war in American history. And we still haven’t learned how to fight it.\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003ESeptember 11 has come around again. You don’t have to run into a burning building or wrestle terrorists with your bare hands. But use the day to warn others, so you can answer, “Where were you?”\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/2598271124152752808\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/its-not-over.html#comment-form","title":"17 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2598271124152752808"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2598271124152752808"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/its-not-over.html","title":"It's Not Over"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tVAiCOKHeds\/YT2HpM_jDUI\/AAAAAAAATdc\/HaVNvZbioLAuFimnTbkI4NKWxpabpDAVgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/911.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"17"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2046206516878407946"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-09T00:09:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-09T00:09:26.367-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Biden’s Shameless Exploitation of His Dead Son"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"After getting 13 American military personnel killed in Kabul, Biden met with family members and, instead of listening to their pain and apologizing for his actions, lectured them about his son.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFormer Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the scion of the family who took up the family business, figured large in his father’s speeches defending his disastrous retreat in Afghanistan. It was the same stump speech that Biden had been giving about his dead son for six years which he dusted off to explain why he was abandoning Americans in the hands of terrorists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was the same speech to which he subjected the family members of the men he killed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl Jared Schmitz, said. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wYNs5U2mvjo\/YTJgtE6_SCI\/AAAAAAAATco\/756pUdNF1jIt0emss2wG1ajakyy7TtgoACNcBGAsYHQ\/s2048\/beau.jpg\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"1412\" data-original-width=\"2048\" height=\"221\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wYNs5U2mvjo\/YTJgtE6_SCI\/AAAAAAAATco\/756pUdNF1jIt0emss2wG1ajakyy7TtgoACNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/beau.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe loss of a son is unimaginably painful, but Biden has spent the remainder of his political career exploiting Beau Biden, the way that he spent his early career exploiting his dead first wife and daughter by accusing the truck driver of being drunk or having broadsided her. In reality, his first wife drove into the path of the truck. What should have been a private tragedy was weaponized into a public spectacle with Biden taking his Senate oath at his son’s bedside.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe infamously \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2020\/11\/01\/ap_731990605978_custom-37e989f0298a34f7468537f4f600d177b960a285.jpg\"\u003Etheatrical scene\u003C\/a\u003E of Beau as a little boy lying in a hospital bed in a room filled with reporters and photographers was not an act of devotion, but disturbing exploitation. Two young boys, Beau and Hunter, who had lost their mother could have used some privacy while they recovered. Instead, Biden dragged them into the spotlight in a public relations bid.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn death, Biden exploited Beau even harder than he had in life. After his son’s death, Biden contemplated building an entire political campaign around his dead son.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA few months after Beau's death, Biden\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2015\/10\/joe-biden-beau-2016-214459\"\u003E told\u003C\/a\u003E New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Beau had begged him to run against Hillary because \"the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” Beau not only conveniently framed his plea to his father in the form of a campaign slogan, but also an attack on Hillary Clinton that she could not possibly rebut. What was she going to do? Attack Biden’s dead son?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs a Politico story\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2015\/10\/joe-biden-beau-2016-214459\"\u003E noted\u003C\/a\u003E, \"Biden has told the Beau story to others. Sometimes details change — the setting, the exact words.\" That tends to happen with stories that are made up.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat kind of man would put an attack ad in his dead son’s mouth?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe same kind of man who would take a wounded boy lying on a hospital bed who had just lost his mother and drag him in front of the cameras for a 30 second story on the evening news.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut that’s the thing about Joe Biden. As bad as you think he may be, he’s even worse.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“It’s near insulting to Beau’s legacy to think that his last moments were politically driven,” a close friend of Beau's\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.delawareonline.com\/story\/news\/local\/2015\/10\/10\/beau-biden-looms-large-presidential-race\/73658664\/\"\u003E told\u003C\/a\u003E a local paper. “His dying wish would not be driven by politics. It would be driven by his concern of family.” But Biden is always all about politics and all about himself.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere is a fine line between grief and exploitation. In 2015, Joe Biden didn’t just step over it, he rode a parade float over it. He didn’t just give a stream of interviews about Beau’s death in dignified settings like the CBS Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but tied it to a presidential run.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA Draft Biden ad featured not only Beau, but Joe Biden’s first wife and his first daughter under the title, My Redemption.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Am I alone in finding this Draft Biden ad tasteless?\" Obama adviser David Axelrod asked.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden's first memoir slash campaign book, Promise Me, Dad, came out two years later and netted him millions. Hunter Biden's own memoir, Beautiful Things, also takes its title from Beau Biden. Exploiting Beau’s name is a family business and it doesn’t just extend to books.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHunter Biden’s infamous laptop had the \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2020\/10\/hunter-biden-chaired-foundation-to-stop.html\"\u003EBeau Biden Foundation\u003C\/a\u003E sticker on it. A hospital scandal involving James Biden \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2020\/10\/the-bidens-cashed-in-while-pennsylvania.html\"\u003Ewhich wrecked rural hospitals\u003C\/a\u003E, saw a CEO being introduced to Joe Biden by James Biden, the crooked politician’s brother, at a Beau Biden Foundation fundraiser.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMuch like dragging Beau as a little boy into a political photoshoot, this wasn’t doing anything good for Beau. But Beau, in life, had not been some sort of icon. Joe Biden, like Joe Kennedy, intended to live his political legacy through Beau. A year before his death, Beau announced  gubernatorial run in Delaware. There was however a terrible scandal waiting in the wings.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERobert H. Richards IV, a du Pont heir, had been accused of sexually assaulting his 3-year-old daughter.  Instead of being put away for 20 years, he spent no time in prison and ended up paying a fine after Beau Biden’s office recommended that he get off with \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.delawareonline.com\/story\/news\/crime\/2014\/04\/03\/beau-biden-defends-handling-du-pont-heir-sex-case\/7255629\/\"\u003Eprobation\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhether Beau Biden’s political ambitions or those of his father played a role no one will ever know for sure.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut it’s understandable that Beau Biden didn’t want to step on the toes of the DuPont family.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeau grew up in the former du Pont mansion that Joe Biden managed to buy for six figures after being elected to the Senate. Joe Biden's first Senate campaign was \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/duponts-up-and-down-history-shaped-bidens-views-on-business-11606157282\"\u003Estaffed with\u003C\/a\u003E DuPont employees, he regularly helped the company, and received donations from its executives.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeau Biden had made his name claiming to fight for children. The full name of the Beau Biden Foundation is the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children and \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2020\/10\/hunter-biden-chaired-foundation-to-stop.html\"\u003Esells workshops\u003C\/a\u003E and training programs for fighting the exploitation of children. Little has changed even after allegations emerged about Hunter Biden’s possibly inappropriate behavior with girls.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeau claimed that he gave Richards a slap on the wrist over a 3-year-old girl because it wasn’t a “strong case”, but many in the media saw echoes of Jeffrey Epstein. Especially when Judge Jan Jurden gave Richards a pass because he would “not fare well” in prison.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJudge Jan Jurden, a Democrat, has since been elevated to President Judge of the Superior Court of Delaware. Beau might have been governor and then, perhaps, president. But, more likely, the child abuse scandal would have dragged him down long before that instead.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeau, sick,and then dead, was far more useful to his father than a failed political candidate with a scandal who couldn’t make it to the governorship even with his father’s name at his back.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJust as when he had been the sick little boy in the hospital, a sick Beau was much more of an asset. And dead, his father could run on his name. Maybe that was the real lesson that Beau and Hunter learned when Joe brought in the photographers at the hospital. That they were worth more to their father when they were sick and broken than when they were well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd maybe Beau and Hunter both internalized that horrible lesson in different ways.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere’s no way to know what goes on in someone else’s head. Joe Biden no doubt loved his sons in his own way. But it was a love that came with the expectation that he was entitled to use them however he pleased. That was something he had in common with Robert H. Richards IV.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd over forty years from that hospital bed, he’s still doing it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECampaign profiles of Joe Biden played up the idea that he had grown as a candidate from suffering. But it wasn’t really his suffering. The deaths and illnesses of his family members could add a second hand martyrdom that made a narcissistic selfish politician seem more human. The more people around Joe Biden died, the less you were supposed to notice that he had no real empathy for anyone else. And that he was eager to exploit the pain and death of his family.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAt his Afghanistan speeches, Biden defensively kept bringing up Beau as if his politician son who died long after serving as an Army JAG somehow excused him from accountability.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven when he couldn’t seem to remember what Beau’s military service even consisted of.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn the Stephanopoulos interview, Biden claimed that his \"deceased son Beau\" had come out of Afghanistan, before correcting himself. Biden also wrongly suggested that Beau had been a Navy Captain, before correcting that too. Joe Biden can’t remember which country and which branch of the military Beau served in, but won’t stop exploiting him as a weapon against the dead and stranded Americans that he callously left behind in Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo one in the media was willing to call out this tawdry spectacle until Biden pulled the same routine on the family members of the Marines who had lost their lives because of him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat doesn’t mean that Biden will stop.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe politician who used his hospitalized son as a photo op when he was a little boy recovering from the loss of his mother is not about to stop using his memory every time a scandal arrives.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJoe Biden is utterly shameless in the way that only a man with no shred of decency can be.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the only decent thing to do would be to let Beau rest now, as he should have been allowed to rest in the hospital after his mother’s death. Biden won’t allow it and the media won’t say it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the rest of the country has to stop letting Biden get away with murder because he lost a son.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/2046206516878407946\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/bidens-shameless-exploitation-of-his.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2046206516878407946"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2046206516878407946"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/bidens-shameless-exploitation-of-his.html","title":"Biden’s Shameless Exploitation of His Dead Son"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wYNs5U2mvjo\/YTJgtE6_SCI\/AAAAAAAATco\/756pUdNF1jIt0emss2wG1ajakyy7TtgoACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/beau.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4617009051821576760"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-05T04:03:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-05T04:03:00.405-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"War on Terror"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Afghanistan After America"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"On September 27, 1996, the State Department was very surprised when the Taliban took Kabul. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAll of the official reports stated that the Taliban were not likely to take the capital. A lone memo, which never reached Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, warned it could happen, but was mostly ignored until nine days later when the Taliban “unexpectedly” marched into the city.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-NyloSBPKyUU\/YTJhaXhieoI\/AAAAAAAATcw\/I2wVOD5A6C8jq8OdNVJjtJkWqxDVo0W8QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s932\/astan%2Bframe.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"630\" data-original-width=\"932\" height=\"216\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-NyloSBPKyUU\/YTJhaXhieoI\/AAAAAAAATcw\/I2wVOD5A6C8jq8OdNVJjtJkWqxDVo0W8QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/astan%2Bframe.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EBiden and his allies claimed that no one could have anticipated that the Taliban would take Afghanistan in 11 days. As the Washington Post recently noted, “On Sept. 27, 1996, Taliban forces captured Kabul overnight, flooding in from all directions after a 15-day sweep of the country. (In August 2021, it would take 10 days.)“ Were Biden and Milley really that surprised by those extra 4 or 5 days (depending on how you do the math) that they didn’t see it coming?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 1996, the United Nations, which was supposed to bring peace to Afghanistan, fled. President Najibullah, who had lost the last of his Soviet support when the USSR fell apart, stayed at the UN compound. He fought the Taliban Jihadists who came for him before they hung and castrated him. The State Department celebrated the Taliban win and began its outreach.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGlyn Davies, Obama's former Ambassador to Thailand, said back then \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1996\/10\/23\/world\/state-dept-becomes-cooler-to-the-new-rulers-of-kabul.html\"\u003Ethat \u003C\/a\u003Ehe hoped the \"new authorities in Kabul will move quickly to restore order and security and to form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDavies also claimed \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/politics\/2001\/11\/05\/how-afghanistan-went-unlisted-as-terrorist-sponsor\/903bfb89-5877-4e48-87c6-4d76d906fbac\/\"\u003Ethat\u003C\/a\u003E he saw \"nothing objectionable\" about the Taliban imposing Islamic law.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E(Davies, a Biden supporter and  formerly an Elizabeth Warren supporter because \"Warren will rebuild American leadership by ending our endless wars\", works for former Secretary of State Madeline Albright's ASG consulting group and has not offered any comments on Afghanistan.) \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Clinton administration asked the Taliban to send an envoy to D.C. and pleaded with the Jihadists to accept an American envoy. It was the Taliban who turned Bill Clinton down.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2021, history repeated itself again with an incompetent Democrat administration caught by surprise at the speed of the Taliban’s victory before trying to come to terms with the Jihadists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike Bill Clinton, Biden is learning the same old lesson the hard way without actually learning it. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe State Department, which sent an emissary to urge the collapsing Afghan government to come to terms with the Taliban and form an inclusive government in the 90s, was playing the same dumb game now. A generation later the State Department hadn’t learned a damn thing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban won in 2021 for the same reason that they had won in 1996. The Afghan government had lost its main backer and was replaced by the Pakistani-backed Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was set once Pakistan made them its final choice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf the Taliban performed better in 2021 than in 1996, it’s because China is also backing them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe American-Pakistani alliance of 1996 has been replaced by a Chinese-Pakistani alliance. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan is a tribal region of quarreling ethnic and religious groups, warlords, druglords, elders, and gunmen. For the last two generations it’s been ruled by whichever faction assembles enough backing from a foreign power to maintain control over the country.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETemporarily.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EForeign policy consists of the different sides jockeying for the support of the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and anyone interested enough to provide money and guns.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban have not “taken” Afghanistan. They’ve reached agreements with various factions, from the druglords to tribal leaders and warlords, based on their foreign support and momentum. Those agreements will collapse when the Taliban start to run into trouble.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETheir victories in 1996 and 2021 were partly achieved by foreign Jihadis fighting for them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut those Jihadis are a double-edged sword. The Taliban’s deal with Al Qaeda helped it maintain power, but after September 11, led to their overthrow by the United States.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban of 2021 will have to decide whether they need the foreign fighters more than they fear the United States. Considering Biden’s humiliating retreat, the Taliban are unlikely to make a different choice than the one they made about Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Afghan government that we backed was a phantom. So is the Taliban regime. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans think of government as an organized and pervasive force that extends its dominion over all its territories. Afghan governments are more like bandits, using fighters to intimidate the locals, and collect protection money through their officials. An Afghan government is just a band of fighters that have transitioned from roving bandits to stationary bandits by seizing cities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EUnder Biden, the Taliban controlled the rural areas, while the Afghan government held the cities. As the withdrawal was announced, the Taliban formed alliances, swept across provinces, and claimed the cities not, mostly by firepower, but by cutting deals with key Afghan leaders.  \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban’s various allies, from the Pakistanis, Qataris, the Iranians, and the Chinese, to Al Qaeda and the druglords, got what they wanted by forcing the United States out of Afghanistan. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut what they’re going to want now are incompatible things. China and Pakistan want stability and the opportunity to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral riches and geographic location for trade. Al Qaeda and various foreign Jihadis want to set up terrorist training camps and fight infidels. Some of them are likely to target China as Jihadis operating in Pakistan have already done.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban’s state sponsors want to reduce the flow of drugs, but opium is the only functional part of Afghanistan’s economy: especially now that the United States and its allies are gone. The Taliban formerly opposed opium, but if they do it again, they’ll fund their own opposition. If they try to restrain the foreign Jihadis who helped them take Afghanistan, they’ll face a civil war. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven if Biden refrains from backing the opposition to the Taliban, India isn’t likely to be as forgiving. Other countries and international players will find their own reasons to do the same. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s State Department will be forced to acknowledge, even faster than Clinton’s diplomats, that any promises that the Taliban make are worthless. Taliban spokesmen have learned to tell liberals what they want to hear, but don’t actually speak for the leadership. Nor do they speak for the various factions who actually make up the Taliban power on the ground. Or their backers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EStability is not in Afghanistan’s future. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban, like most Jihadis, are players in someone else’s chess game. Islamic terrorist groups, like their Marxist counterparts, have state backers and wealthy funders behind them. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat looks like a stunning victory is more often the result of backroom deals. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMuslim Jihadis claim a fearsome reputation, but routinely bow out of fights when the odds aren’t on their side, when they aren’t feeling motivated, or are paid off. They prefer to win battles by treachery and subterfuge as they have done for over a thousand years since Mohammed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans are used to the idea of standing, fighting, and dying for their country. But fighters in tribal cultures are more nomadic. They don’t stand and fight, they appear and disappear, as we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq. They strike when they sense weakness and flee when they feel strength. Biden showed weakness, so did the Afghan government, and the rest is history.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban will impose unfiltered Islamic law, but whether girls are allowed to go to school and women are permitted to leave the house matters very little to the power players. Those important enough will be able to do what the elites of Muslim countries always do, send their sons and daughters to cavort in Beverly Hills and the French Riviera, while poorer girls are beaten, enslaved, and executed for minor offenses like meeting the eye of a strange man.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere will be burkas for millions of Afghan women, but the daughters of key leaders who cut deals with the Taliban will wear bikinis on the beaches of the Atlantic and the Pacific.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration cares as much about the rights of women as the Clinton administration which was willing to embrace the Taliban and endorse their oppressive Islamic law. It was only when the Taliban turned down the Clintons that they rediscovered an interest in feminism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECount on the Biden administration and Democrats to follow the same corrupt road out of Kabul.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan will go on being what it was all along, a tribal wasteland run by bandits, all of whom swear by Allah, but only some of whom kill women for not wearing burkas, who get their money and guns from various foreign interests and serve them until they inevitably betray them. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban didn’t win a great victory. They assembled a house of cards coalition just as they did before. That house of cards will begin collapsing because Afghanistan is not a country and it cannot be ruled by any government, only corrupted, robbed, and terrorized in Allah’s name.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/4617009051821576760\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/afghanistan-after-america.html#comment-form","title":"5 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4617009051821576760"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4617009051821576760"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/afghanistan-after-america.html","title":"Afghanistan After America"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-NyloSBPKyUU\/YTJhaXhieoI\/AAAAAAAATcw\/I2wVOD5A6C8jq8OdNVJjtJkWqxDVo0W8QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/astan%2Bframe.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"5"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-4935710880947570744"},"published":{"$t":"2021-09-01T14:58:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-09-01T14:58:29.805-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Biden Tried to Send Pallets of Cash to the Taliban as Kabul Fell"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"On August 14, Secretary of State Blinken spoke with Afghanistan’s former president and promised that the Biden administration would provide a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aahmady\/status\/1427883009164955649\"\u003Ebulk shipment\u003C\/a\u003E of dollars.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe next day Kabul fell.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn that same call, Afghanistan’s former leader \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aahmady\/status\/1429058195364925440\"\u003Ehad agreed\u003C\/a\u003E to surrender power to the Taliban. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-BoLtBFgyttM\/YS_NR7JljPI\/AAAAAAAATcc\/uSVjz5EuFt8mrwLw_aT2ld9XnD3D46wLwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1004\/image_2021-09-01_115815.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"727\" data-original-width=\"1004\" height=\"232\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-BoLtBFgyttM\/YS_NR7JljPI\/AAAAAAAATcc\/uSVjz5EuFt8mrwLw_aT2ld9XnD3D46wLwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-09-01_115815.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe Biden administration had effectively agreed to provide a massive infusion of cash to the Taliban. But the final deal fell through, the Afghan government fled, and the Taliban took Kabul.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe bulk shipment of dollars never did arrive. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s diplomats scrambled to evacuate from Kabul. Ajmal Ahmady, the governor of DAB, Afghanistan's central bank, already had a ticket and headed to the airport. He managed to get on a military plane.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESince then he's tweeted that he was warned that the Taliban had come looking for him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban were hoping to get their hands on Afghanistan’s money, but much of it is in the United States. The most tangible part of Afghanistan’s assets, $1.3 billion in gold, is sitting in downtown Manhattan, a little bit south of Ground Zero, in the vaults of the Federal Reserve.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf there were any justice, that money would be used to compensate the police officers, firefighters, and workers who died on that day or later on from ailments related to 9\/11.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMeanwhile, all the Taliban have to do is fly into JFK, take an Uber to 33 Liberty Street, and ask to be taken down to the basement to see all the bars of gold. And even in Biden’s America and De Blasio’s New York City, they might have trouble walking away with over a billion in gold bars. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENot unless they trade their camos and kameezes for Black Lives Matter t-shirts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe United States did plenty of dumb things in Afghanistan, but it kept the gold locked up in the basement vaults and $3.1 billion of DAB’s assets went into U.S. Treasury bills and bonds.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAhmady\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aahmady\/status\/1427883012348424192\"\u003E estimates \u003C\/a\u003Ethat $7 billion of DAB's assets are being held by the Federal Reserve which includes the gold, the bills and bonds, $300 million in cash, and another $2.4 billion in World Bank funds for aiding developing countries. There’s also $700 million at the Bank for International Settlements and another $1.3 billion in international accounts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThose are likely being held in Turkey which is an Islamist dictatorship friendly to the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban would like some or all of that money. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe problem is that while the Taliban expected to find vaults full of gold and cash, Afghanistan had been plugged into the international finance system in which access to cash depends on either great internal wealth or good international relations. The Taliban have neither.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETo the extent that the Taliban have been behaving themselves, at least in Kabul, it’s because they want to lay claim to the stream of international wealth that used to flow into Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA week after Kabul fell, the International Monetary Fund was supposed to disburse $460 million in Special Drawing Rights to Afghanistan, but that, like all the other international funding mechanisms that the Taliban wanted to lay claim to, was blocked. While the Biden administration’s diplomats and national security people had made a complete hash of the withdrawal, the treasury people proved to be surprisingly on top of cutting off Taliban cash.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban still control border crossings and they’ll be able to take advantage of Chinese money, but that’s a long way from the cash they need to run any kind of functional country.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EParadoxically, we were the single biggest revenue source for the Taliban’s money machine.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOne expert \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.chathamhouse.org\/publications\/the-world-today\/2021-08\/afghanistan-money-can-be-milk-taliban-moderation\"\u003Eestimated\u003C\/a\u003E that at the peak of Obama and Biden's Afghanistan surge, \"the Taliban’s ‘taxes’ on truckers supplying NATO likely even surpassed the Taliban’s income from drugs, being tens of millions of dollars at least, maybe up to $100 million annually.\" \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike a lot of failed states, remittances from Afghans living overseas made up 4% of their GDP. Last year that amounted to \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/world-nation\/story\/2021-08-22\/taliban-finances-collapse\"\u003E$788 million\u003C\/a\u003E. Some of that money is being blocked. For now.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWithout an ongoing war, the money from both NATO and the international financiers of the Jihad will stop flowing. Chinese state businesses won’t allow the Taliban to rob them the way that they looted NATO and while drugs are big money, they’re no substitute for an economy. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJust ask Venezuela and Iran. Or Detroit.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban’s options are limited. They've appointed Mohammad Idris, a previously unknown Taliban official, to head the central bank. Afghanistan’s currency is imploding and dollarization without dollars doesn’t work so well. Much of Afghanistan’s economy, which was propped up by foreign aid, will collapse leaving behind subsistence farming, opium, and smuggling rackets.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe arms and vehicles looted from the United States will be sold off to fellow Jihadists for a one-time cash infusion because there’ll be no more armored vehicles and drones handed out.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBefore 9\/11, Afghanistan was facing drought and famine under the Taliban. The United States campaign not only toppled the Taliban, but saved parts of the country from starvation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the Taliban do have two key assets: people and trouble.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThose are the same assets held by Jihadists around the world from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthis in Yemen. The Taliban don’t care if portions of the population, especially non-Pashtuns and non-Sunni Muslims suffer, but they know that we do.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven now there’s talk about how to continue providing humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. And the flow of humanitarian aid to a population in a terrorist area means funding terrorists. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeyond inflicting misery on Afghans, the Taliban have a variety of options for causing trouble for their enemies. They can speed the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe and also boost the opium business and demand money to “fight drug trafficking” in order to shut it down. (This scam is common in both South America and Southeast Asia, and helps fund the drug trade in the name of fighting it as corrupt politicians cash in on both the drug and anti-drug businesses.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd their biggest short-term asset are the Afghans and Americans trapped in Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhatever agreements the Biden administration reached with the Taliban to allow it to operate and to coordinate on security arrangements were almost certainly financial. Once the United States leaves, the Taliban will be able to extract money for every single Afghan who leaves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut what the Taliban really want is all that money sitting in the Federal Reserve. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere have been precedents for terror states toppling legitimate governments and leaving their wealth in the hands of the United States. From the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union to the Shiite Islamists of Iran, Democrats eventually turned over the money to the red-green terrorists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere’s little doubt that the Taliban will get their hands on much of the money.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EChina, Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar will likely push to legitimize the Taliban in international forums. The Biden administration will make a token show of resistance. As the international governance bodies topple and humanitarian groups cry about famine, the money pipeline will reopen. And even though there won’t be a single American soldier in Afghanistan, Biden will go on funding the Taliban long after the withdrawal is wholly complete.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe $7 billion will end up being another down payment in the funding of Islamic terrorism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe day before Kabul fell, Biden nearly allowed a massive bundle of pallets of dollars to be shipped to Afghanistan. He did so knowing that the money was destined for a Taliban regime. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHis cash shipment to the Taliban only fell apart because the Afghan government did.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHow long will it be until Biden is shipping money to the Taliban? He may already be doing it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,\" Biden \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/archives.frontpagemag.com\/point\/biden-after-911-it-would-be-good-time-send-check-daniel-greenfield\"\u003Eproposed\u003C\/a\u003E after September 11. His previous administration illegally shipped $1.7 billion in pallets of cash to Iran. The question isn’t whether Biden will fund the Taliban, but when.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECreating a hostage situation is, as Obama already discovered, a convenient pretext for funding Islamic terrorists. Biden has created a massive hostage crisis in Afghanistan. What better way could there be to force the United States to fund our worst enemies once again? \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/4935710880947570744\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/biden-tried-to-send-pallets-of-cash-to.html#comment-form","title":"12 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4935710880947570744"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/4935710880947570744"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/09\/biden-tried-to-send-pallets-of-cash-to.html","title":"Biden Tried to Send Pallets of Cash to the Taliban as Kabul Fell"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-BoLtBFgyttM\/YS_NR7JljPI\/AAAAAAAATcc\/uSVjz5EuFt8mrwLw_aT2ld9XnD3D46wLwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-09-01_115815.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"12"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-1326371578441234633"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-31T04:16:00.002-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-31T04:16:21.378-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Impeach Biden"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"When Kabul fell, the Taliban offered the Biden administration a deal. Either the United States could control the city until August 31, the terror group’s deadline, or the Taliban would.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-3qKTC2lIk7Q\/YS3lOtMBYXI\/AAAAAAAATcU\/WHBCoPmvJFMvbtK57WjVz3ZDM-6zD3jXwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s1018\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"566\" data-original-width=\"1018\" height=\"178\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-3qKTC2lIk7Q\/YS3lOtMBYXI\/AAAAAAAATcU\/WHBCoPmvJFMvbtK57WjVz3ZDM-6zD3jXwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe Taliban may have been testing Biden, wary of a direct military confrontation with a large concentration of American forces, but if so they quickly learned that they had little to worry about. Instead of maintaining control over Kabul so that Americans could be speedily evacuated, the Biden administration and its cronies turned over the city to the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the Taliban turned to their most professional and deadliest assets. The Haqqani Network had been closely allied with Al Qaeda and picked up many of its tricks. Its commanders understood urban warfare, excelled at suicide and truck bombings, and had expert units whose commandos had been trained in Pakistan by the terror regime’s ISI secret agents.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban officially named Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani to head security in Kabul. The Haqqani Jihadist figure had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States. Not long after the Biden administration made its deal with the devil, a designated foreign terrorist group and a specially designated terrorist controlled access for American refugees fleeing to Kabul’s airport.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration made no protest. It did not complain that a terror group founded by one of Osama bin Laden’s mentors which had repeatedly targeted American soldiers with suicide bomb attacks, including the murder of a colonel and two lieutenant colonels by a car bomber, a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers in a 9\/11 anniversary attack on a base, and a truck bombing attack on another base, was “coordinating security” for Kabul airport.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden had been given the opportunity to create a secure escape route for American civilians escaping Afghanistan and to keep American soldiers safe in the city. Instead he set them up to be massacred by turning security in Kabul and around its airport over to a terrorist group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven while Biden falsely claimed at a press conference that Afghanistan would be nothing like Kabul, military and intelligence briefings had already prepared him for much worse. If someone had to take the PR hit for chasing away refugees and a botched evacuation, Biden preferred that the Taliban play the bad guys while he disavowed all responsibility. He didn’t care how many Americans died as long as he maintained plausible deniability to cover up their deaths.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s assumption that the Taliban could be trusted to do his dirty work without wanting anything in return except the end of our presence in Afghanistan was treasonously dumb.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EObama had assumed that the Muslim Brotherhood could be trusted in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. The attacks of September 11, 2012, climaxing in the Benghazi massacre, proved him wrong. Biden’s own Benghazi began the same way when he turned over power to Islamists while believing that they would be satisfied with just taking over a country.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban had turned over the problem of Kabul airport to the Haqqani Network. Like Biden, the Taliban wanted plausible deniability for whatever might happen around the site. The Haqqani Network was part of the Taliban, yet the United States had set the unfortunate precedent of designating the Haqqanis, but not the Taliban, as a foreign terrorist organization.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat legal distinction had provided both the United States and the Taliban with plausible deniability over the years. The Haqqanis would carry out terrorist attacks while the United States could still negotiate with the Taliban without being accused of “negotiating with terrorists”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen the Taliban turned over the checkpoints and security around Kabul airport to the Haqqani network, they were sending a clear signal that they were washing their hands of any attacks.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the Biden administration, which had made the deal with the devil, could not hold the Taliban accountable without exposing its own complicity in this setup. The rest was all but inevitable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban checkpoints failed to hold back the crowds from the airport even with bouts of occasional brutality. The Jihadists manning them had little interest in screening paperwork on behalf of the Kabul embassy, as Biden expected them to, instead they searched for Afghans on their lists. Once the State Department handed the Taliban its lists of approved Americans and Afghans, their real job of finding and detaining key officials and other figures became easier.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans continued to have trouble reaching the airport even while Biden and his cronies falsely claimed that there could be no problems with Al Qaeda’s allies running checkpoints.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThings got worse from there.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EISIS-K's leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, was a former Haqqani commander. The Islamic State affiliate had recruited heavily among the Taliban and, in particular the Haqqani Network.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden had put America’s worst enemies in charge of security around Kabul airport.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGen. Frank McKenzie, who had originally met with Taliban officials to hear their offer to take Kabul, went on bragging that, \"we use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWho was using whom became obvious when an ISIS-K suicide bomber and gunmen who had gotten past the Haqqani checkpoints murdered 13 American military personnel.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIncluding eleven of McKenzie’s marines.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey didn’t have to die. And the entire botched evacuation didn’t have to play out this way.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden made numerous mistakes that led to the fall of Afghanistan, including the abandonment of Bagram Air Base, which not only cut off a secure evacuation route, but freed countless Jihadis, some of whom may have even taken part in the Kabul airport attack. But the decision to turn over Kabul to the Taliban, and to turn over security around Kabul airport to allies of Al Qaeda whom the United States had designated as terrorists is nothing short of treasonous.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E13 American military personnel paid in blood for Biden’s treason.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats made a point of impeaching President Trump twice. In 1787, Senator William Blount became the first politician impeached over a plot to help the British take over Florida and Louisiana. Impeachment in the Constitution begins with “treason”, continues with “bribery”, and then finally with “high Crimes and Misdemeanors“. Section 3 defines treason only as “levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s hard to think of a clearer definition of aid and comfort than the massive amount of armaments that the Taliban and its Jihadists have picked up in Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden can claim that all of that was unintentional. But turning over Kabul to the Taliban at a time when thousands of Americans sheltered there was no accident. Nor was shrugging when the Taliban handed over access to Kabul airport to the Haqqani Network which is designated as a foreign terrorist organization.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThese were treasonous acts whose foreseeable consequences are entirely his responsibility.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Jihadists levied war against American military forces with the attack at Kabul airport.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s treason led to the murder of 13 American military personnel. His aid and comfort to the enemy, his adherence to the Taliban at the expense of American soldiers and civilians led to the massacre of Americans. And he can and should be impeached for his treasonous crimes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJoe Biden’s treasonous decision to entrust American lives and security to the enemy was not committed out of any pure motive, but to protect his own political career. After decades of appeasing Islamic terrorists, Biden was only doing what came naturally to him. And he had either learned nothing from Benghazi or he simply did not care about the risk to Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike Blount and later Burr, Biden, the third ‘B’ in the bunch, committed treason out of self-interest, throwing in with America’s enemies because he thought it would profit him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat does not lessen his treason. It worsens it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica’s original traitors, men like Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr, were motivated by greed, pride, and wounded egos. They did not believe in anything except themselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s treason is that of a career politician who will sacrifice anyone for his own sake.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPresident Trump was impeached over Ukraine, yet the impeachers could not point to a single American who had died in that country. 13 Americans have died in Afghanistan. The parents of some of these fallen men and women have come forward to demand justice. They deserve it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats currently control the Senate and the House. But that does not excuse Republicans from the need to confront Biden and hold him accountable by calling for impeachment anyway.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven a failed effort will keep this issue alive and prevent the dead from being forgotten.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe all saw Biden checking his watch at Dover while waiting for the transfer of the men and women he killed to be complete. The dead Americans are no more to him than the Afghans whose deaths he had falsely dismissed as having happened, “four or five days ago.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter another four or five days, Biden hopes that the dead Americans will be forgotten.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden is counting on Americans to have as bad a memory as he does. And if Republicans remain silent, pivoting to the next scandal or talking point, he will have been proven right.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Americans murdered and betrayed by Biden deserve justice. They deserve to see the question of his impeachment raised and debated. And America’s honor deserves it too.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe world must not think that what it saw in Kabul represents a new American normal.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat would be devastating to our national security and to our honor. The world must know that what happened was a crime. And that Americans will work to hold the criminal accountable.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/1326371578441234633\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/impeach-biden.html#comment-form","title":"9 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/1326371578441234633"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/1326371578441234633"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/impeach-biden.html","title":"Impeach Biden"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-3qKTC2lIk7Q\/YS3lOtMBYXI\/AAAAAAAATcU\/WHBCoPmvJFMvbtK57WjVz3ZDM-6zD3jXwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/biden%2Bchecking%2Bphone%2Bat%2Bdover.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"9"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7887383409766968421"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-29T23:36:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-29T23:36:31.091-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Biden’s Benghazi"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"More American soldiers died in one week of Biden’s retreat than in the last two years of war. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E9 American soldiers had died in combat in Afghanistan from August 2019 until now when over a dozen of our men were murdered in one single day during Biden’s shameful retreat.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-cnAvlX3Ov1Y\/YSxSL6219aI\/AAAAAAAATbw\/doG4a0Lg7lURN1xPvqCsBoybymPdc4WGwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s800\/kabul%2Battack%2Btroops.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"450\" data-original-width=\"800\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-cnAvlX3Ov1Y\/YSxSL6219aI\/AAAAAAAATbw\/doG4a0Lg7lURN1xPvqCsBoybymPdc4WGwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/kabul%2Battack%2Btroops.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003ELike so many of the American soldiers who were killed by the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies during the Obama-Biden administration, and like the Americans murdered in Benghazi by Jihadists allied with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, they did not have to die.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican soldiers died because they were prevented from defending themselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAbandoning thousands of Americans behind enemy lines, the Biden administration turned the Kabul airport into Fort Apache surrounded by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Jihadis.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETaliban Jihadists controlled checkpoints, checked papers, beat Americans, and entered the airport to “coordinate” security with American forces. Thousands of American citizens and soldiers were cut off from each other, able to meet only with the approval of the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“We use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible,\" Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie had bragged. McKenzie had repeatedly described the Taliban as \"partners\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs warnings of an imminent ISIS-K attack grew, the Biden administration continued to rely on the Taliban to keep their fellow terrorists in check. This was the same treasonous mistake that led to the murder of Americans in Benghazi at the hands of an Islamic militia that was being paid to protect them from other Jihadis. It was also how the British lost thousands of soldiers during the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842. But Biden, Austin, and Milley remained blind to both recent and classical history about the perils of trusting the lives of your men to the enemy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven now with so many American soldiers dead, the Biden administration and its generals can only think of closer “security cooperation” with the Taliban showing that they learned nothing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban and ISIS-K are feuding because ISIS-K consists of former members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. But that hasn’t stopped ISIS-K and the Taliban from cooperating by freeing each other's members from prison during previous attacks. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen Biden abandoned Bagram Air Base, he not only threw away the best and most secure means for evacuating Americans, he also handed over thousands of terrorists imprisoned at Pul-e-Charkhi who included Al Qaeda and ISIS-K terrorists. It would not be surprising if the perpetrators or organizers of the Kabul airport attack turned out to have been imprisoned there.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration and its cronies keep promising that the Taliban will fight ISIS-K.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETaliban units have gone back and forth from ISIS-K in much the way that our “good” Jihadis in Syria went back and forth between the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen the Biden administration coordinates with the Taliban, there’s no way to know if it’s coordinating with the factions of the Taliban potentially sympathetic to ISIS-K.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut there’s no question that it’s coordinating with Al Qaeda.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban put Khalil Haqqani in charge of security in Kabul. The Haqqani network has been closely allied with Al Qaeda. The Wall Street Journal \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/in-taliban-ruled-afghanistan-al-qaeda-linked-haqqani-network-rises-to-power-11629990056\"\u003Enoted \u003C\/a\u003Ethat, \"prominent Taliban units with ties to the Haqqani network now operate within feet of U.S. troops securing the area. \"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EShahab al-Muhajir, ISIS-K’s new leader, was a former Haqqani network commander.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghan officials from the former government \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/south-asia\/isis-khorasan-branch-new-leader-is-pak-based-haqqani-network-terrorist-afghan-minister\/articleshow\/77349098.cms\"\u003Ehave claimed \u003C\/a\u003Ethat ISIS-K is just another mask being worn by the Haqqani network. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Shahab Almahajir, the newly appointed leader of the Islamic State of Khorasan Province-ISKP is a Haqqani member. Haqqani and the Taliban carry out their terrorism on a daily basis across Afghanistan and when their terrorist activities do not suit them politically they rebrand it under ISKP,\" former Afghan interior minister Masoud Andrabi had tweeted.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJust like in Libya and Syria, sorting through the complex web of alliances and enmities between Jihadist groups, is a long and difficult process with no ultimate truth at the end, only more lies. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe only sane thing to do is to trust none of them. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETurning over security around the airport to a group with ties to Al Qaeda was treason.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden entrusted the lives of American citizens and soldiers to a Jihadist organization, the Haqqani network, which was allied with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven now the Haqqani network is holding Mark Frerichs, a Navy vet, hostage.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration not only failed to free Frerichs, but coordinated on security with his captors in the hope that they would protect American soldiers and civilians.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey even turned over lists of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban to help them with their \"security\" arrangements in what has been described as a \"kill list\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAn official defended the move by arguing that \"they had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat did not have to happen.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden made the decision to evacuate the military before the civilians. Then he rushed the military back, but refused to allow our soldiers to actually create a secure evacuation pathway. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban were put in charge of security to and around the airport. And even when the Taliban handed over security to a group allied with Al Qaeda and even possibly ISIS-K, the Biden administration and its incompetent appeasers in uniforms and suits went on trusting the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration was repeatedly warned that ISIS-K was planning an attack. Just as the Obama-Biden administration was warned that the Benghazi consulate was threatened.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBoth in Benghazi and Kabul, the response was to lean harder on the goodwill of the Jihadis.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd in Kabul and Benghazi, Americans died because a treasonous administration put its trust in terrorists instead of letting American military personnel protect the lives of Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans did not have to die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Kabul.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans trying to reach the airport did not have to be beaten in the street by Taliban thugs.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe United States did not have to leave Afghanistan in an airport encircled by the enemy, while rushing to meet the Taliban’s August 31 deadline even if Americans had to be left behind.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThese were decisions that Biden, his cabinet members, advisers and generals made.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey should be held accountable for them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe failure to hold Obama accountable for Benghazi led directly to the tragedy in Kabul. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAppeasing Jihadists has become the cornerstone of the Obama-Biden foreign policy. Over a thousand American military personnel died during the Obama-Biden surge in Afghanistan because they were not allowed to defend themselves so as not to offend Muslims. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhy did Biden accede to the Taliban demand that we leave Afghanistan by August 31?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe same reason he turned over security around the Kabul airport to the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESo as not to offend the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican soldiers didn’t die because they had to. They died because they weren’t allowed to protect themselves and their fellow Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey died because Biden put the Taliban’s feelings ahead of the lives of American soldiers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESince 2007, when Biden\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/biden-was-biggest-supporter-of-sending.html\"\u003E ran for president\u003C\/a\u003E on a platform of surging soldiers and nation-building in Afghanistan to win the hearts and minds of the locals, he was selling out our soldiers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis is his most shameful betrayal.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDon’t call Joe Biden the commander-in-chief. Call him what he is, the traitor-in-chief.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/7887383409766968421\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/bidens-benghazi.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7887383409766968421"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7887383409766968421"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/bidens-benghazi.html","title":"Biden’s Benghazi"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-cnAvlX3Ov1Y\/YSxSL6219aI\/AAAAAAAATbw\/doG4a0Lg7lURN1xPvqCsBoybymPdc4WGwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/kabul%2Battack%2Btroops.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6649999424129245171"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-26T12:04:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-26T12:04:07.494-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Our Mistaken Ideas About Human Rights Failed Us in Afghanistan"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Human rights are not a government, they’re a culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica was founded on that simple premise. The Declaration of Independence’s conviction in the equality of men, individual rights, and governments gaining their authority from the consent of the governed was based on “self-evident” truths.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tBpRyNnUFz0\/YSe7bUiP2bI\/AAAAAAAATbk\/UPm9OkCCM1sXn-aQgAuJpWAtufModjGpwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s474\/memri%2Bhuman%2Brights.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"347\" data-original-width=\"474\" height=\"234\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tBpRyNnUFz0\/YSe7bUiP2bI\/AAAAAAAATbk\/UPm9OkCCM1sXn-aQgAuJpWAtufModjGpwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/memri%2Bhuman%2Brights.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThese truths are “self-evident” to Americans in the way that they’re not self-evident to the average Afghan, Pakistani, Iraqi, Russian, South African or Chinese citizen. They have their own truths that are equally “self-evident” to them based on their own worldview and culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban, like the vast majority of Muslims, assert that believers in Allah are superior to infidels, that men must have supreme authority over women, and leaders over people.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis hierarchical model governs a lot more of the world than anything we’ve come up with.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd even in America there are voices that favor tearing up the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and reverting to a hierarchical model. From the Marxists on the Left to the Neo-Reactionaries on the Right, there are those who would turn back the clock to feudalism with enlightened philosopher-kings imposing an “ideal society” on the inferior class of men.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen we say that something is self-evident, it flows naturally from our values and our beliefs.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EConsider the two radically different worldviews inherent in Benjamin Franklin writing that, “the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards\" is \"a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy” and the Ayatollah Khomeini proclaiming  “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun\" and thus there \"is no fun in Islam.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBoth Franklin and Khomeini were expressing a worldview that was self-evident to them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” came from people who believed that God loves us and wants us to enjoy life. Beheadings, butchery, and the burka came from Islamists who believe that Allah does not like us very much and that we deserve to be miserable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe respective governments of America and the Muslim world just play out that theology.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica’s approach to individual freedom and meritocratic government came out of broader English and European intellectual trends. Western nations mostly came around to the approach, at least after two world wars, finding that happy people made for a good economy and stability.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAsian First World nations also came around to their own modified versions of a free society while still emphasizing hierarchy and collective morality. And those were the success stories.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMost of the rest of the world is littered with failures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe American idea was exported successfully by contact with our culture which contained its individualistic, moral, and aspirational DNA. That’s much less true than it used to be. But what is still true is that our efforts to directly export our ideals have failed miserably. Whether it’s trying to explain the Founding Fathers to the Iraqis or funding Women’s Studies in Afghanistan, few were influenced, and many were confused, irritated, or moderately amused by our efforts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EConstructing “governments-in-a-box” in Iraq and Afghanistan was never going to fit their culture. Exporting human rights by explaining our self-evident belief in individual rights didn’t work in cultures that don’t think that people are primarily individuals with agency, but members of a group whose rights come from their role in a rigid hierarchy of ethnicity, gender or race.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur own political and cultural elites have adopted that worldview making them particularly unfit to spread human rights or individual freedom abroad even as they eliminate them at home.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHow can Biden, who decided to pick a black woman as his vice president, before deciding which individual was going to fill that role, credibly tell the Afghans or Iraqis that they shouldn’t pick their leaders based on their gender, tribe, ethnicity, or Sunni and Shiite status?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBefore we explain freedom and rights to the Afghans and Iraqs, we need a refresher course.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur democracy export business is based on a series of intellectual errors dating back to the two world wars which we had defined as fighting for democracy and against tyranny in Europe.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEver since then our intellectual and cultural elites have stuck to the conviction that the entire world works much like Europe. Every country, whether it’s in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, is in the midst of a struggle between liberal democrats and reactionary authoritarians. All we have to do is overthrow their Hitler or Mussolini, and a liberal democracy will emerge from the ashes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis fallacy may have hit its peak with the insistence that the Arab Spring was Europe in 1848.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe rest of the world isn’t Europe of the past three centuries. Its intellectual trends, worldviews, and culture have little in common. While western lefties managed to export socialism to most of the world, it takes on very different forms in places like North Korea or Iraq. The “self-evident” assumptions of political ideas are lost in the translation and transition to very different cultures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe problem with exporting our “self-evident” ideas is that they’re based on the belief in a loving and merciful God, on the value of individual life, and the genius of individual innovation. Most of the world’s cultures are not only not individualistic, many, like the People’s Republic of China or the Muslim world, are actively anti-individualistic and believe morality comes from hierarchy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIs morality individual or is it collective? Is the role of government to free people to make moral choices or to force them to make the right choice? Where you come down on the answer to that issue is going to determine the sort of society and government you want and will fight for.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf you’re a member of the Taliban, of the Chinese Communist Party, a believer in critical race theory or the neo-reactionary ideology, odds are you will come down on the collective side.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd on the side of tyranny.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIs life basically good or bad? Are most people bad or good? Does God love us or hate us?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYou can’t just casually export our underlying assumptions behind human rights to cultures that answer these questions in very different ways.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAll of us, in a more tribal America, have experienced the frustration of mutually incomprehensible conversations with our fellow Americans that appear to be about issues, mask mandates, Black Lives Matter, or abortion, but that are actually about culture and values.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf it’s all but impossible to establish common ground on what rights and freedoms are with other Americans, what were the odds that we were going to do it with Afghans or Iraqis?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica can and should export human rights. But the best way to do it is by example.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhether it’s parents influencing children, teachers acting as role models, or any other mentor relationship, the most vital lessons are not didactic, but personal. From our earliest years, we learn by imitation and we become like the people we want to be. Indeed, in both Judaism and Christianity, goodness comes from striving to learn from and imitate the ways of God.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETellingly, the concept plays out very differently in Islam where Muslims imitiate Mohammed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen nations and peoples around the world strived to be like America, it’s because they admired what we had, what we achieved, and how we lived. Most people assume that success is the result of values and behaviors. How people see a successful group, whether it’s Americans, Jews, or Asians comes down to the question of whether they achieved their success fairly through discipline and hard work, or unfairly by abuse and thievery. The answer to that question will determine whether someone is anti-American, anti-Semitic, or anti-whatever group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThese days the loudest voices stating that America is evil, and that everything we had was gained through colonialism and slavery, are coming from our own political and cultural elites.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhy would anyone admire or imitate us when we loudly announce that we’re liars and thieves?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EExporting human rights is not a matter of finding dictators to overthrow. The Muslim world isn’t Europe. It’s not in a state of conflict between tyranny and freedom, but between different flavors of tyranny which all share underlying assumptions about hierarchy over individualism.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERegime change won’t fix the culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere are times when America may need to intervene in other countries, when it’s to counter a threat or to prevent an extreme wrong such as genocide, but we cannot and will not fix the world. The vast majority of the planet will go on living under authoritarian regimes. Women in Muslim countries will suffer. And so will various ethnic and religious minorities under their rule.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe should condemn evil where we see it without assuming that we can make it go away and that should drive us to build alliances with nations that share our culture, heritage and values. Instead of spending billions reconstructing enemies, we’re better off strengthening our friends.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAbove all else, we should show that our values lead to a good life. The example that we set for the rest of the world will do more to spread human rights than any military interventions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s how it always was.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter a century of ideological cold wars, countering Communism and then Islamism, we have a lot of military interventions under our belt, but have gotten no better at making arguments for our way of life to our own people. While we were trying to convince Africans that Marxism wasn’t for them, our Ivy League institutions adopted it. And while we tried to talk the Afghans and Iraqis out of Islamic theocracy, our own cities, institutions, and governments filled up with Islamists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf we want to defeat Islamism and protect human rights and freedom, we should start at home.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s not just Afghanistan where young girls are being enslaved or sexually abused by Islamists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn 2019, I reported that there had been over \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2019\/01\/2000-muslim-child-marriage-immigration-cases-10-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003E2,000 visas approved for underage 'brides' f\u003C\/a\u003Erom Muslim countries. Two years before that I reported on a \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/archives.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/mutilating-little-girls-michigans-little-palestine-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Efemale genital mutilation\u003C\/a\u003E network in Michigan. There have been \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/point\/2019\/01\/muslim-couple-convicted-enslaving-5-year-old-texas-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Emultiple cases \u003C\/a\u003Eof slavery involving Muslim families in America.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe massive influx of Afghans into America will make those numbers worse, not better.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe fundamental lesson of our founding is that we can’t defend our rights without also defending our culture. The self-evident truths on which our freedoms were founded are no longer all that self-evident on a college campus, let alone in Islamist enclaves like Dearborn or Little Mogadishu. If we want to save our rights, we’ll have to defeat the Taliban at home.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/6649999424129245171\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/our-mistaken-ideas-about-human-rights.html#comment-form","title":"15 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6649999424129245171"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6649999424129245171"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/our-mistaken-ideas-about-human-rights.html","title":"Our Mistaken Ideas About Human Rights Failed Us in Afghanistan"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-tBpRyNnUFz0\/YSe7bUiP2bI\/AAAAAAAATbk\/UPm9OkCCM1sXn-aQgAuJpWAtufModjGpwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/memri%2Bhuman%2Brights.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"15"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-2007364402042933028"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-23T23:21:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-23T23:21:45.177-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Biden"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Biden Was the Biggest Supporter of Sending More Troops to Afghanistan"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"During the 2007 Dem primaries, Biden \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/blogs\/ben-smith\/2007\/08\/biden-obama-stole-my-ideas-002462\"\u003Eattacked\u003C\/a\u003E Obama for adopting his position on Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RteKbNpiPtU\/YSRliJKqNBI\/AAAAAAAATbI\/I-kIx9dEljAltcBOHYM0RsNxDlNiqhR1QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s738\/biden%2Binterview%2Bframe.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"415\" data-original-width=\"738\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RteKbNpiPtU\/YSRliJKqNBI\/AAAAAAAATbI\/I-kIx9dEljAltcBOHYM0RsNxDlNiqhR1QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/biden%2Binterview%2Bframe.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe flailing Biden campaign put out a press release accusing Obama of being a \"johnny-come-lately\" who had belatedly adopted Biden's push for \"significantly increasing reconstruction assistance\" and sending more American soldiers to Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile running for president, Biden had based his entire foreign policy around sending more troops to Afghanistan. He had memorized one line, \"if we're surging troops anywhere, it should be in Afghanistan\", and repeated it in the Senate, in interviews, and on the campaign trail.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESending more troops to Afghanistan, he argued would give America \"the moral high ground\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“The next president of the United States will have to rally the American people and the world to fight them over there, unless we want to fight them over here. But the over there is not, as President Bush has falsely and repeatedly claimed, in Iraq, but it's rather in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/event\/conversation-joseph-r-biden\"\u003Einsisted\u003C\/a\u003E at the Council on Foreign Relations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden attacked not only Democrat rivals like Obama, but also President Bush, for not wanting to send more troops to Afghanistan. “I asked the commander of British forces how long his people would allow him to stay in Afghanistan. And he said, ‘Senator, we Brits have an expression. As long as the big dog is in the pen, the small dogs will stay. When the big dog leaves, the small dogs leave as well.’ Well, guess what? The big dog left in 2002.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe was only off by 19 years. Biden was preemptively accusing Bush of his own sins.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBy the 2020 primaries, Biden had completely reinvented his entire history with Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“I’m the guy from the beginning who argued that it was a big, big mistake to surge forces to Afghanistan. Period. We should not have done it. And I argued against it constantly,” he falsely claimed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden had gone from attacking Obama for ripping off his idea of surging forces to Afghanistan to being the guy who \"from the beginning\" had opposed the idea.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe idea that Biden opposed “from the beginning” was the one he originally claimed credit for.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat was quite a\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/blogs\/ben-smith\/2007\/08\/biden-obama-stole-my-ideas-002462\"\u003E turnaround \u003C\/a\u003Efor the fraudster who had spent his previous presidential campaign declaring, \"If we're surging troops anywhere, it should be in Afghanistan.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden, one of the co-sponsors of the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act, which began the nation-building push in that country, also claimed that he was against nation-building.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation-building,” Biden claimed in his recent failed speech after Kabul turned into Saigon.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan should not have been about nation-building, but Biden was the loudest voice in support of turning the mission into nation-building. At one hearing he even complained that, “The original Marshall Plan cost $90 billion in today's dollars. Our total pledge for Afghan reconstruction is less than 1 percent of that, and we've only delivered a fraction of this pledge.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe attacked Bush, whining that his “follow-through commitment to Afghanistan, Afghanistan's security and reconstruction has fallen very short.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBack in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden had insisted that, “We have to get moving on reconstruction. We need more funds, and we need to use them better. The Afghans are patient, but they’re not seeing reconstruction worthy of a superpower.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter Biden failed miserably in the primaries, Obama picked his most inept rival to pad out his ticket with an old confused white man. And Biden tried to out-hawk John McCain on Afghanistan. When that failed miserably, he turned to making up stories of his own heroism in Afghanistan. The stories were as true as anything else that came out of his mouth.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“If you want to know where al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” he boasted. “Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDespite having this intimate knowledge of where bin Laden and Al Qaeda were, Biden never went back to Afghanistan to hunt them down. That’s probably because Osama bin Laden was safe in a Pakistani military town. Biden’s helicopter, which also carried his Senate colleagues, future Secretary of State John Kerry and future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, landed because of a snowstorm. “Other than getting a little cold, it was fine,” Kerry later said. “We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe joke, as usual, was on Joe Biden.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down. John McCain wants to know where bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That’s where Al Qaida is. That’s where bin Laden is,” Biden claimed at a fundraiser.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden and the other Senate members were not in Taliban territory. Heavily guarded and in airspace protected by a F-16 fighter, they waited while a convoy took them to Bagram Air Base. That's the same base that Biden would irresponsibly abandon, cutting off Americans trapped in Afghanistan from being able to get out without the permission of the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden could have \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.army.mil\/article\/7625\/arizona_national_guard_rescues_u_s_senators\"\u003Egiven credit \u003C\/a\u003Eto the men of the Arizona National Guard's 1st Battalion who traveled through the \"bitter winds, freezing rain and snow for more than 15 hours\" to transport him out. Instead he pretended that he was some sort of hero for sitting in a warm chopper.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd now, Biden could have considered the thousands of Americans trapped in Afghanistan, when he gave the fatal order to pull out military forces without evacuating them. When he was on that mountain, American soldiers traveled through difficult weather to get him out. But when Americans, some of them veterans, are trapped in Afghanistan, he turned his back on them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EObama adopted Biden’s proposal for an Afghan troop surge with disastrous results. American forces in Afghanistan were quadrupled to 100,000 while preventing them from fighting back so as not to alienate Muslims. 1,200 American soldiers died during the disastrous Afghanistan surge. And Biden, who had pushed the whole thing, ran the other way.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter taking credit for selling Obama on an Afghan surge, Biden rebranded as a skeptic of sending more troops to Afghanistan. By the 2012 election, Biden was running against his own Afghanistan position, and castigating Rep. Paul Ryan for wanting a conditions-based withdrawal. Meanwhile, Biden kept bragging about his expertise on Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“I've been up in the Kunar Valley. I've been throughout that whole country, mostly in a helicopter, and sometimes in a vehicle,” he claimed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“What we also want it do is make sure that we're not projecting weakness abroad, and that's what's happening here,” Ryan warned. Biden dismissed any such notion.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EObama and Biden promised a withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. It did not happen.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s been true of the vast majority of Biden’s promises.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen it comes to Afghanistan, Biden was usually for most things before then turning around and being against them. Biden had sold the D.C. political class on the idea that he was some sort of foreign policy expert based on Afghanistan when he actually had no idea what he was doing. He had jumped on the Afghanistan bandwagon after September 11 while scrambling for an approach that would build up his presidential credentials.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHis initial\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/point\/2020\/01\/after-911-biden-wanted-send-200-million-check-iran-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003E response\u003C\/a\u003E was, \"This would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.\" But after that disastrous idea, Biden zeroed in on Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe constantly championed more troops and funding for Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"If we fail in Afghanistan, we are going to be talking about, in my view, a country seven times as big, with nuclear weapons sitting on one border, and a country that is, in its present security leadership, hostile to the United States on another border, with more than seven times, probably--I guess it's probably 14 to 15 times the population, seeking nuclear weapons,\" Biden argued at one Senate hearing in favor of expanding military forces in Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“We're in for, as they say on the east side of Wilmington,  Delaware, a world of hurt that has nothing to do with terrorism, that goes far beyond terror, far beyond terror. So I hope you're here to tell us the good news about your overwhelming enthusiasm supporting expanding ISAF.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEven completely dishonest politicians have the right to change their minds. Or at least pretend to have changed them. But Biden adopted the opposite position of the one he ran on while claiming that he had always \"from the beginning\" opposed the things he supported.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis behavior was not the mark of a responsible leader, but a clueless con artist.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s exactly what Biden always was. And it’s what his disaster in Afghanistan has plainly revealed him to be even to his passionate supporters in media.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden claimed to know all about Afghanistan. In reality he knew nothing. He leaped from one radical position, surging troops to Afghanistan, to the opposite extreme, withdrawing the troops before evacuating the civilians. The result was a horrifying national security disaster.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the same media which has temporarily turned on Biden let it happen.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s dishonesty and ignorance were well known to the press corps. They chose to cover it up and lie about it because they wanted him to win. Now some of them are feigning outrage that the lying hack they championed could have unleashed such an inexplicable disaster.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden had contradicted himself again and again on Afghanistan because he didn’t believe anything coming out of his own mouth. That’s how the politician who once predicted, “If Afghanistan falls, I'm not sure how far behind NATO will be” was the one who fell.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe problem wasn’t that Biden had the wrong views, it’s that he was the typical case of a D.C. echo chamber politician who repeated whatever slogan he thought would get him ahead.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe had no plan for carrying any of his proposals out. All he could do was indict himself.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E“Ousting the Taliban is only the first step in a long process. Everyone knows we can remove an evil regime. The question is, are we willing to expend the security, financial, diplomatic, and political resources to make the successor regime a success?” Biden once asked at a hearing. “The U.S. has power--but do we have staying power?”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden has since answered his own question.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/2007364402042933028\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/biden-was-biggest-supporter-of-sending.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2007364402042933028"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/2007364402042933028"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/biden-was-biggest-supporter-of-sending.html","title":"Biden Was the Biggest Supporter of Sending More Troops to Afghanistan"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RteKbNpiPtU\/YSRliJKqNBI\/AAAAAAAATbI\/I-kIx9dEljAltcBOHYM0RsNxDlNiqhR1QCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/biden%2Binterview%2Bframe.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-7881723222468541994"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-22T18:55:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-22T18:55:07.578-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Democrats Want to Hate Their Way Out of the Pandemic"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\"As Virus Cases Rise, Another Contagion Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger,\" the New York Times hisses. \"Vaccinated people are ready for normalcy — and angry at the unvaccinated,\" the Washington Post jeers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"It's O.K. to be mad at people who refuse to get vaccinated,\" America Magazine reassures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wD9ONpY_xbg\/YSLVwauEWFI\/AAAAAAAATbA\/9Ridt8B0Hx0h2yFbH9em2IxFNTWUZ1_cwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s921\/image_2021-08-22_155457.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"503\" data-original-width=\"921\" height=\"175\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wD9ONpY_xbg\/YSLVwauEWFI\/AAAAAAAATbA\/9Ridt8B0Hx0h2yFbH9em2IxFNTWUZ1_cwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-08-22_155457.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EHating people is a hell of a prescription for a medical crisis, but to the Left all problems are political problems. And they deal with political problems by hating twice as hard as ever.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur media, like that of most totalitarian countries, exists to tell regime loyalists whom to be angry at today while distracting them from the regime’s latest disaster. The American Left only knows and understands identity politics. Its view of the world is rooted in the same Marxist theories that made the Soviet Union and every Communist government so dysfunctional, but the need to juggle the intersectional dynamics of multiculturalism has made it especially insane.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnyone who wants to understand America’s racial divisions need only look at the perverse skill with which leftists divided the country between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in less than a year. In a short amount of time people had been taught to hate each other and to form deep divides over an issue that hadn’t even been on their minds last summer.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf the Left can do that with a shot, is it any wonder they were able to do it with skin color?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica’s Left has become an identity politics generator, literally creating new identities overnight (the average number of gender identities went from 48 in 2019, to 56 in 2020, to 64 today), to compete in a packed victimhood Olympics whose only purpose is political power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Left has succeeded so well that all of the country’s political discourse is about rival claims of victimhood and dueling accusations of oppression. The identity politics generator works so well that in under a year a new identity can be up and running, and ready to register victims and demand political power to repress the other side of their binary identities. But all this does is give the Left an exciting new way to seize power and posture as the victims this week.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFaced with a pandemic, the Left built a new political identity around masks and vaccines.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s what it does with every challenge or crisis. When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail and when all you have is identity politics, every problem is identitarian.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd every solution manufactures the same cliched binary identities, victims and oppressors, the enlightened and the reactionaries, and yokes them to the same tired narrative which organizes the latter against the former. The speed with which the Left turned personal medical decisions into an identity shows how the artificial assembly line of its identity politics really works.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDiversity isn’t really very diverse. Multiculturalism is really a single political culture. Identity politics offers the same product with a different coat of paint from the same identity factory.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIdentity politics is a revolutionary tool, organizing everything from fifth columns to coalitions to seize political power, but revolutions solve the problem of who is in power, not real problems.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERevolutionary regimes are great at revolutions and bad at everything else.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Democrats are great at identity politics and bad at pandemics. They excel at taking over institutions, rigging elections, and building narratives in which they’re the victims. They just don’t know how to do anything else. During the revolutionary phase, problems don’t need solving, only exploiting. As Lenin reportedly said, “the worse, the better.” A pandemic, a wildfire, tainted water, or an economic collapse is just another opportunity to churn out narratives declaring that identity politics groups have been hit hardest by the disaster before seizing power in their name.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis works about half the time. The half when Democrats are out of power. Revolutions work best when you’re not already on the throne and trying to blame someone else for your mess.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPower and identity politics can exploit a pandemic, but they can’t meaningfully address it. Much as the Soviets couldn’t address agriculture, and China can’t fix its environmental disasters, the Biden administration and its leftist allies lack the intellectual tools to cope with the problem.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunist regimes reduced all problems to class warfare, declared that they had eliminated classes, and then blamed problems on domestic saboteurs or denied that they existed at all.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Democrats blamed the pandemic on the Trump administration. After taking power, they began blaming Trump supporters. Unable to deliver on their promises, they doubled down on identity politics as their way of evading responsibility for the job they claimed they wanted.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut lefties want the job, they don’t want the responsibility.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFixing problems is dirty and unrewarding work that requires humility, patience, and a willingness to listen. These are not the attributes of a radical movement of egotistical theoreticians who use identity politics to trick people into letting them test out their theories and then when their theories fail in the real world, pivot back to identity politics to blame others for their failures.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe revolutions keep coming, but utopia never arrives.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Left interacts with reality through a series of abstract constructs filtered through an ideological matrix defined by social relations. This is an unfit model for solving anything except social problems and hasn’t even seen any success there. Reducing the problems of a vast universe, or even a planet, to social injustice is the laughably stupid approach of our elites.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAn ideology that blames everything from forest fires to viral outbreaks on social injustice foolishly treats human social relations as the greatest force in the universe. Elites who embrace these ideas are announcing their inability to grapple with problems outside social relations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EInstead of dealing with the problems, they attach them to another identity politics group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen they blame some other group for their own inability to grapple with the problem. Democrat politicians and the media have blamed the pandemic on church attendees, Chassidic Jews, spring breakers, surfers, Trump supporters, and an endless list of out-group scapegoats.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEvery instance of scapegoating has been undone by their own hypocrisy from the French Laundry to Black Lives Matter riots to the rejection of vaccine mandates by their own health care and teachers’ unions. And Americans are growing tired of their cynical blame game.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemocrats and their media are encouraging Americans to hate each other as they have since the very beginning of the pandemic and the very beginning of their radicalization as a party.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEvery problem is met with identity politics and hate.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Left wants Americans to blame everyone for their problems except the ones in power.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/7881723222468541994\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/democrats-want-to-hate-their-way-out-of.html#comment-form","title":"10 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7881723222468541994"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/7881723222468541994"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/democrats-want-to-hate-their-way-out-of.html","title":"Democrats Want to Hate Their Way Out of the Pandemic"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-wD9ONpY_xbg\/YSLVwauEWFI\/AAAAAAAATbA\/9Ridt8B0Hx0h2yFbH9em2IxFNTWUZ1_cwCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-08-22_155457.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"10"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6792550433730644668"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-19T19:43:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-19T19:43:00.441-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"While Afghanistan Fell, Military and CIA Focused on Diversity"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WbiSRDodlrQ\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"580\"\u003E\u003C\/iframe\u003E \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\"I want to understand white rage, and I’m white,\" Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whined at a congressional hearing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe might have done better to understand Muslim rage.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA week after his testimony, the Taliban had not only doubled their number of districts, but possessed hundreds of captured U.S. armored vehicles, along with artillery and drones.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Pentagon's spokesman \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/us-politics\/taliban-seizes-drones-humvees-mraps-b1902308.html\"\u003Etold\u003C\/a\u003E reporters to ask the Afghan military about the gear.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn May, Milley \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/news\/world\/2021\/05\/02\/afghan-forces-bad-outcomes-war-taliban\/115947534\/\"\u003Ehad\u003C\/a\u003E shrugged off questions about whether the Afghan military would survive. “We frankly don’t know yet. We have to wait and see how things develop over the summer.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Afghan military was beginning to fall apart while Milley was defending critical race theory.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA week earlier, the New York Times had described \"demoralized\" Afghan forces \"abandoning checkpoints and bases en masse.\" Two days after Milley’s disgraceful performance, the media \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/national-security\/even-taliban-are-surprised-how-fast-they-re-advancing-afghanistan-n1272236\"\u003Ereported\u003C\/a\u003E that even the Taliban were “surprised” at how fast they were advancing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAt the beginning of July, the Biden administration abandoned Bagram Air Force Base. A week later the Taliban reclaimed the Panjwayi District where the Jihadist movement had gotten its start, seized the largest border crossing with Iran and the millions in revenue that came with it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe United States Army responded by announcing that it was putting \"a renewed emphasis on diversity, inclusion, and equity\" or DEI. Had the brass ordered it as diversity, inclusion, and equity, the resulting acronym would have been more reflective of the real world.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile the Taliban were conquering Afghanistan's rural provinces and then moving on to besieging its cities, the Army was wrestling with the \"effective messaging that demonstrates why DEI efforts are critical to the success of the Army\". The new messaging would explain how the \"talents of a diverse workforce\" that included \"language, race, color, disability, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity\" were vital to whatever its mission was.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban, who were mostly Sunni Islamist Pashtun tribesmen, would spend the next two months demonstrating that diversity was not a strength, but a serious weakness.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile the Afghan government and its military were divided between diverse tribal factions, some of whom would flee to Iran and others to Uzbekistan (depending on whether they were Hazaras or Uzbeks) while the Pashtuns would surrender to their fellow Taliban tribesmen, the Taliban showed that unity would stomp diversity in the face and then dance on its grave.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMeanwhile the military brass in this country, as discussed in my recent pamphlet, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/08\/disloyal-frontpagemagcom\/\"\u003EDisloyal: How the Military Brass is Betraying Our Country\u003C\/a\u003E, was busy dividing our own military from within in pursuit of diversity, pitting black and white service members against each other in “critical conversations” and urging them to accuse their country and services of “systemic racism”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs the Army brass were striving to establish the “Army as a global leader in DEI”, America’s enemies were plotting to become global leaders in land, power, and military victories.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBy late July, Milley admitted that, \"Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBy \"sort of\", Milley meant that the Taliban had more than doubled their territory again and were marching on half of the provincial capitals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFew reporters asked follow-up questions about the \"sort of\" because the leading story in D.C. was an anti-Trump book which flatteringly portrayed Milley as preventing a Trump \"coup\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo one, from the media to Milley, cared about the actual coup underway in Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"This department will be diverse. It will be inclusive,\" Biden's Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin insisted. \"I’m committed to that. This department is committed to that. The chairman’s committed to that.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile Biden’s brass were pledging allegiance to diversity, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar to the People’s Republic of China. Yi praised the Taliban as a \"a pivotal military and political force\" and mocked the United States.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe United States Army was busy “developing and implementing a strategic plan to advance DEI across the Total Force” as the Taliban seized the capitals of Helmand and Herat.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut the Navy faced its own crisis when Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Nowell Jr. warned at a DEI panel at the Sea Air Space conference that removing photos from promotion boards, a diversity measure from last year, actually undermined diversity because the brass no longer knew exactly how many minorities they were artificially promoting to fit diversity quotas.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile the Navy was grappling with this dark night of the soul, Staff Sgt. Nicholas Jones with the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion received the Navy Cross for his heroism during a six-hour battle with ISIS last year during which he rescued a French ally and risked his life to try and rescue two wounded comrades.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJones “continued fighting until forcibly evacuated”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESadly, Jones is a straight white man from Kansas, and doesn’t really fit the DEI template, but in happier diversity defense news, the new Navy Secretary is an immigrant,  the first female sailor graduated from Naval Special Warfare training, and the Naval Institute published a confession by Lieutenant Commander David Elsenbeck \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.usni.org\/magazines\/proceedings\/2021\/july\/bias-education-necessary\"\u003Ethat he was\u003C\/a\u003E \"unconsciously biased\" and a \"member of the dominant group in a society suffering from institutionalized and historically ingrained bias”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEisenbeck urged immediate “bias education”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican POWs used to be starved, beaten, and had bamboo shoots driven under their fingernails without repeating the Marxist dogma they were being indoctrinated with. But hardly a week goes by now without another litany of Marxist confessions at military struggle sessions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban, who actually are a member of the dominant group, began swallowing up a series of provincial capitals and marrying off young girls to their Jihadists. Back home, the Virginia Military Institute’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officer, Jamica Love, announced that she intended to pursue \"institutional change\" to transform the VMI's culture. That’s what the Taliban were also up to.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile the Taliban advanced, CIA Director William Burns commented that increasing \"diversity and inclusion\" was among his top priorities. \"We cannot be effective around the world if everybody looks like me,\" he complained. To that end the CIA had unrolled an ad campaign featuring a Latina cisgender intersectional worker wearing a pink gender power clenched fist t-shirt. But the widely hated woke ad was only the tip of the agency’s diversity iceberg.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"At CIA, we don’t just leverage diversity, equity, and inclusion; we embrace and celebrate it,\" an agency diversity report insisted. \"This ethos must be woven in to our day-to-day tasks.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHow were diversity and equity woven into the task of monitoring the Taliban's advance?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo one knows. But, like the military, the CIA went on holding \"critical conversations\" in which minority employees were encouraged to spout racism accusations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESonya Holt, Deputy Associate Director of CIA for Talent for Diversity and Inclusion, who had started out as a mere recruiter, assured that through DEI, \"the Agency will be better prepared to address intelligence challenges and support its customers.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile CIA officers were learning “how diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to mission success”, the agency began belatedly considering how to extract its assets from Afghanistan.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERecent intelligence reports \"warned that Kabul could fall to the Taliban within years\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut while the CIA tried to figure out how it would collect intelligence on the Taliban after the withdrawal, its employees did have the benefit of 15 affinity groups including ANGLE (Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Officers and Allies), DAC (Deaf Advisory Council) and SALAAM (South Asian Leadership and Advisory Membership.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe CIA was also working to hire “neurodiverse” personnel, which it defined as people suffering from ADD, Dyslexia, or Tourette's Syndrome. Or as the CIA 'wokely' put it \"differences labeled with\" these syndromes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EKey Afghan figures had warned that there was a conspiracy underway to hand Afghanistan to the Taliban. The drumroll surrenders of cities and much of the Afghan military appeared to confirm that backroom deals had been made. The obvious players able to pull off such deals were Pakistan’s ISI spy agency, the original backers of the Taliban, along with Turkey and Qatar.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden’s CIA director had turned to Pakistan in the hopes of allowing the agency to run a spy base in the country that had harbored Osama bin Laden. The Biden administration’s military and diplomatic response to the Taliban was being run out of Qatar. And it had handed security at  Kabul Airport over to Turkey before frantically taking it back when the Taliban took the city.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe CIA should have been on top of this, but it had better things to do with its time.  \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAn unclassified intelligence community report did warn that the Taliban was “broadly consistent in its restrictive approach to women’s rights.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban have now taken over Afghanistan, but it’s not all bad news on the military front\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E.\"While Trump administration Pentagon nominees were overwhelmingly white and male, the Biden administration says 54% of its national security nominees ― to the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development ― are women, 40% are people of color, and at least 7% identify as LGBTQ,\" the publication \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/congress\/2021\/08\/12\/bidens-pentagon-nominees-more-diverse-and-more-of-them\/\"\u003Ethrillingly \u003C\/a\u003Ereports.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBetter yet, \"recent weeks saw two LGBTQ women confirmed to top military positions. Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones is the first out lesbian to serve as undersecretary of a military branch, while Shawn Skelly, the assistant secretary of defense for readiness, is the first out transgender person in the job and highest-ranking out transgender defense official in U.S. history.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe State Department is doing its part by asking the Taliban to form an “inclusive and representative government.” And if they refuse to have as many neurodiverse black transgender defense officials as us, Biden won’t give them any more humvees, artillery, choppers, or drones.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban may have won Afghanistan, but we’re winning the diversity race. And since diversity is more important than winning wars or being a military superpower, we’re beating the Taliban. Not to mention Russia, China, and Iran in the field of transgender defense officials.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs I warned in the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s booklet, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/08\/disloyal-frontpagemagcom\/\"\u003EDisloyal: How the Military Brass is Betraying Our Country\u003C\/a\u003E, wokeness is leading our military to disaster, disgrace, and defeat.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDiversity, Inclusion, and Equity, (sorry, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is at “the heart of everything” that Biden’s military does and our performance reflects the focus on DEI.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan is a disaster, but we’ll have the most diverse military in the world or DEI trying.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"color: #0000ee; font-family: Lato, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; text-decoration-line: underline;\"\u003EDisloyal: How the Military Brass is Betraying Our Country\u003C\/span\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bCMaseki6oM\/YR19n8ovynI\/AAAAAAAATao\/VGUiasLrpXsunPA983P5UU4e3hxCm1gFQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s2048\/disloyal.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"2048\" data-original-width=\"1280\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bCMaseki6oM\/YR19n8ovynI\/AAAAAAAATao\/VGUiasLrpXsunPA983P5UU4e3hxCm1gFQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/disloyal.jpg\" width=\"200\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/6792550433730644668\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/while-afghanistan-fell-military-and-cia.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6792550433730644668"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6792550433730644668"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/while-afghanistan-fell-military-and-cia.html","title":"While Afghanistan Fell, Military and CIA Focused on Diversity"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/WbiSRDodlrQ\/default.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-3446677941696681839"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-18T03:16:00.003-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-18T17:37:58.126-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Afghanistan Didn't Fall: It Never Existed"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\"Afghanistan's collapse: Did US intelligence get it wrong?\" ABC News asks. \"Afghanistan Is Your Fault,\" barks Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. “Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms,” Politico ponders.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe one thing that the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan is good for is more media hot takes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VLXbsfkIZr4\/YRyzxw5pGkI\/AAAAAAAATag\/Fgyvfp2aSWsvbf6TmfkCn7YLnuaTRsg0ACNcBGAsYHQ\/s792\/image_2021-08-18_001622.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"499\" data-original-width=\"792\" height=\"202\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VLXbsfkIZr4\/YRyzxw5pGkI\/AAAAAAAATag\/Fgyvfp2aSWsvbf6TmfkCn7YLnuaTRsg0ACNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-08-18_001622.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EAfghanistan didn't fall because it never existed.  The Afghan army laid down its arms because it also never existed. And not just because many of the 300,000 soldiers were imaginary. Its Pashtun members surrendered to their fellow Taliban Pashtuns, or fled to Iran or Uzbekistan, depending on their tribal or religious affiliations which, unlike Afghanistan, are very real.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Afghan army was there because we spent $90 billion on it. Much like Afghanistan with its president, its constitution, and its elections existed because we spent a fortune on it. When we left, the president fled, the army collapsed, and Afghanistan: The Musical closed in Kabul.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan isn’t a country. It’s a stone age Brigadoon of quarreling tribes, ethnic groups, Islamic denominations, and warlords manned by young men with old Russian and American rifles. Unlike the fiction of a democratic Afghanistan, that is something they will die for.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd in the coming years you will see some of those same soldiers who laid down their guns fighting and dying for  tribes and warlords, even fighting the Taliban, in the real endless war.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe forever war isn’t something we invented after 9\/11: Afghanistan has always been at war.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans are impressed that the Taliban held out for 20 years. They shouldn’t be.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere’s no time in Afghanistan. Two decades of war are horrifyingly incomprehensible to Americans. To Afghans, it’s the way things have always been. We stepped into a place that has been a war zone for centuries, took sides, supplied weapons, and then left as everyone knew we would. The British and the Russians came and went. After us, the Chinese will come and go.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd the forever war will go on endlessly.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBefore us, the Russians wanted the Afghans to pretend to be Communists. We wanted them to pretend that they were Democrats. But the Afghans aren’t ‘Afghans’, they’re Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Balochs, Hazaras, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, everything else is just a temporary costume.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Taliban, another Pashtun bid to seize power, will be met with resistance, not by the proponents of a free and democratic Afghanistan, but by rival tribes and warlords.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe’ll probably end up funding some of them. And maybe this time we won’t be stupid enough to ask them to hold elections or any of the other nation-building nonsense from Foggy Bottom.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur Afghanistan campaign after September 11 was fast, clever, and ruthless. The men who conducted it understood the society. They worked together with warlords to crush the Taliban. Their goal was a quick and dirty victory that would make an example out of the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur allies were anyone whose current factional interests in the endless power struggle aligned with ours. As the years went on, some of our allies became enemies, and some enemies became allies. The Taliban were the bad guys, but just like in Syria, so was everyone else. There were plenty of innocents caught in the crossfire, but innocents have no power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe average Afghan rural villager doesn’t think of being a citizen of some country called Afghanistan. He cares little for elections and his elders confuse Americans with the Russians and sometimes even the British. The elites in Kabul are happy to dress up their power grabs in presidential titles and constitutions that no one else in the country cares about. USAID pays girls in Kabul to play at feminism and college graduates to talk about international relations.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENone of it mattered a damn in the vast majority of the country as we are now finding out.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut, Afghanistan didn’t become a complete disaster for us. Until Obama.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerican forces peaked at 25,000 under Bush. Obama quadrupled them to 100,000. That’s the year more American soldiers were wounded than during the entire Bush administration.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E1,200 Americans died during Obama's Afghanistan surge, not just because he quadrupled the number of soldiers, but because the military was told to stop trying to defeat the Taliban.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur soldiers became community organizers with guns who were told not to fight.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENo hearts and minds were won. But cemeteries filled up with boys from Texas and West Virginia who weren’t allowed to shoot back because Obama wanted to win Muslim hearts and minds.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe military brass who embraced Obama’s strategy buried and crippled a generation of young men. Countless men and women came home wounded inside. They overdosed or killed themselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe surge receded. The military brass pulled back to secure the cities while the Taliban secured the rural areas that we spent so many lives on. All they had to do was wait for us to leave.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe speed with which the Taliban took the country only seems magical to CNN viewers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe country was theirs for the taking. The Taliban fought few battles. The various warlords and leaders began switching sides when Biden announced his withdrawal to join the winning team. That’s the Islamic team backed by Pakistan, China, Turkey who are the big boys still standing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut that doesn’t mean that they won’t switch sides next month or next year.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe hated government in Kabul was backed by our money and our air power. We’re out, so are they. But the locals will hate the Taliban too. And as the Chinese come in to set up mines, run roads, and offend the locals, they’ll find out what we, the British, and the Russians learned.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s its own forever war of quarreling tribes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe forever war will continue whether or not we’re there. But we’ll probably be there in one form or another. We never really understood Afghanistan or Iraq. And so we can’t escape them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAl Qaeda and ISIS will operate out of Afghanistan. So will countless other Jihadi fighters.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans didn’t invent the forever war. It’s been going on in the Islamic parts of the world for over a thousand years. It’s unfashionable and politically incorrect to mention it. That’s why the media carefully describes the Taliban as “religious students” without naming the religion. It’ll refer to Sunni and Shiite infighting in Iraq while leaving off the “Islam” part of the group.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe came to defeat the Jihadists behind September 11 and we stayed behind to reform Afghanistan. But what were we reforming it from? We couldn’t name the problem.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd when you can’t name a problem, you never come up with a solution.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHaving failed to fix Afghanistan, the process is now underway to bring as many Afghans as possible to America. The old plan to bring 100,000 “interpreters” and their family members has been vastly expanded to make any Afghan who did any work for American organizations, from aid groups to the media, eligible to come to America. By the time they’re done, we may end up with a million Afghan refugees in America. Some of them will become Islamic terrorists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe final act of fighting terrorism is bringing the terrorists to America to create more terror.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe real tragedy of Afghanistan isn’t just that we lost so many of our best and brightest in the dust, it’s that we learned nothing from the experience. Nothing except to blame ourselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe didn’t fail Afghanistan. Nor did we lose Afghanistan. It was never ours or anyone’s.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfghanistan wasn’t our forever war. It’s the forever war of the warlords and tribesmen who will keep on fighting it until the water dries up, the cattle die, and they all move to Fremont where 25,000 Afghans already live. Our mistake was not recognizing what Afghanistan was.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans like to believe that everyone is like us. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Wherever we go, the people speak English, listen to our music, and wear Nike shirts. They have opinions about our presidents and want to know how easy it is to move to Fremont. And we cheerfully supply them with more Nike shirts, bad music, worse movies, and try to persuade them to create a United States of Iraq or a United States of Afghanistan. Then when it doesn’t work out, they move to Fremont, Minnesota, or New York City, run for Congress, and tell us they hate us.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf we learn anything from Afghanistan, from Iraq, and from September 11, let it be this.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere have to be boundaries, physical and conceptual borders, between us and the rest of the world. American exceptionalism can’t be a narcissistic belief that everyone ought to be like us. If everyone could become us, there would be nothing exceptional about us. Our exceptionalism is that the rest of the world isn’t like us and never will be. And that if we want to protect ourselves, we have to stop trying to define the world or allowing the rest of the world to redefine America.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe could have won in Afghanistan, swiftly and decisively, and left, if we hadn’t been seduced into believing that Afghanistan could be America and that Afghans deserved to be Americans.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELikewise, Iraq.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVictories became defeats and cemeteries filled with the dead because we lost sight of the truth about Afghanistan and about ourselves. The more we think about Afghanistan or any place in terms of ourselves, the less we see it for what it is. And that can be a deadly illusion.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmericans have spent the last century trying to turn the world into America. Let’s spend this century making America what it was always intended to be: a refuge from the rest of the world.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWe won’t win wars anymore because we can no longer remember what we’re fighting for. Unable to draw boundaries between the enemy and ourselves, between our nation and the world, we’ve lost touch with the fundamental purpose and even the concept of what a war is.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETo win a war, we have to remember what we’re fighting for. Ourselves.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Afghans understand that concept. Perhaps they understand it too well. But it’s time we learned it too. If we can’t go to war for ourselves, not for democracy, human rights, or so that Afghan girls can go to school, then we will lose soldiers, lose wars, and lose our nation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAll wars are endless and forever when you don’t understand what it takes to win.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Lato, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/08\/disloyal-frontpagemagcom\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDisloyal: How the Military Brass is Betraying Our Country\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Lato, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bCMaseki6oM\/YR19n8ovynI\/AAAAAAAATao\/VGUiasLrpXsunPA983P5UU4e3hxCm1gFQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s2048\/disloyal.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"2048\" data-original-width=\"1280\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bCMaseki6oM\/YR19n8ovynI\/AAAAAAAATao\/VGUiasLrpXsunPA983P5UU4e3hxCm1gFQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/disloyal.jpg\" width=\"200\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cem style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Lato, \u0026quot;Helvetica Neue\u0026quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/3446677941696681839\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/afghanistan-didnt-fall-it-never-existed.html#comment-form","title":"14 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/3446677941696681839"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/3446677941696681839"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/afghanistan-didnt-fall-it-never-existed.html","title":"Afghanistan Didn't Fall: It Never Existed"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-VLXbsfkIZr4\/YRyzxw5pGkI\/AAAAAAAATag\/Fgyvfp2aSWsvbf6TmfkCn7YLnuaTRsg0ACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-08-18_001622.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"14"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-8339625253439733001"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-15T13:35:00.005-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-15T19:27:24.445-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Afghanistan"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"War on Terror"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Why America Can't Win Wars"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\"Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.\"\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EGeneral George S. Patton\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\"It's our belief that one day mujahideen will have victory, and Islamic law will come not to just 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.\"\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003ETaliban commander to CNN\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhy can't America win wars?\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou've gotta fight a war to win a war. And we don't fight wars. In my upcoming article on the disaster in Afghanistan, I warn that we've lost the ability to define what a war is and why we fight them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-i3Kbsf93HN4\/YRlQcLLOZeI\/AAAAAAAATaI\/bCc-n2qGqfY08wYoMv2llePZGknL5C7FACNcBGAsYHQ\/s932\/image_2021-08-15_103544.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"630\" data-original-width=\"932\" height=\"216\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-i3Kbsf93HN4\/YRlQcLLOZeI\/AAAAAAAATaI\/bCc-n2qGqfY08wYoMv2llePZGknL5C7FACNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-08-15_103544.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\"If we can’t go to war for ourselves, not for\u003Cdiv\u003Edemocracy, human rights, or so that Afghan girls can go to school, then we will lose soldiers, lose wars, and lose our nation,\" I write.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe average American spent the last decade wondering what the hell we were doing in Afghanistan.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt's a good question with all the usual bad answers. We were propping up a government that wouldn't exist without us. We were exporting our ideals. We were trying to win hearts and minds. We were trying to stabilize an inherently unstable part of the world. What we weren't doing was fighting and winning.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWars, like stories, are simple things if you define a goal that can be achieved by military means.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFew of our goals could be achieved by military means and certainly not by the ones we were using.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Taliban know what they're fighting for. Not only don't we know what we're fighting for, but we couldn't define victory except in terms of Afghanistan turning into San Francisco with coffee shops, courses on feminism, and LGBT parades. The Taliban are fighting a culture war by military means. Our elites tried to do the same thing in Afghanistan without being able to define an enemy or victory.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe same establishment that excels at fighting culture wars against Americans keeps discovering that its toolbox of activism, media bias, and victimhood fails miserably outside the western world.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou can't win a culture war if you don't understand a culture.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Russian and Chinese Communists understood that they were out to suppress Islam. The Chinese Communists are still doing it. Compare their tactics of forcing Uighur men to shave their beards and drink alcohol to America funding feminism and democracy in Afghanistan. Undermining traditional culture worked in America, they assumed that it would work in Afghanistan. They assumed that they could co-opt Islam the way they have elements of Christianity and Judaism into their woke project.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir repeat failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe should be a wake-up call to their bright future in Little Mogadishu and all the Islamic enclaves that they've created in America.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut it won't be.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUp until the very last moment, the State Department believed that it could co-opt the Taliban into the political system they had set up in Afghanistan. Elements of it still seem to believe that they can even as the Jihadists advance into Kabul. Victory, such as it was, had come to be defined as the Taliban seeing reason and deciding to stop being Jihadists. Three administrations bought into this dumb fantasy.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJihadists who believe that \"\u003Ci\u003EIslamic law will come not to just Afghanistan, but all over the world\" \u003C\/i\u003Eare not interested in playing \u003Ci\u003ELet's Make a Deal\u003C\/i\u003E except as Taqiyya to keep the infidels off-balance.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Taliban play to win. We don't.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat's the simple answer to why we haven't won wars in a long time and aren't about to start.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAmerican soldiers are the best. They win battles all the time. When faced against an enemy that will stand and fight, our men roll over them. We aren't losing those kinds of battles: we keep losing wars in which the leaders can't define what a war is or what victory looks like in military terms.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELet's get back to Patton for a moment. \"Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can't win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it\" and \"I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly.\"\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat were we doing in Afghanistan for 15 years? Were we getting anything over it? Were we getting anyone? Were we winning a war so we could go home or were we holding our positions?\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWars can be won when you're out to defeat the enemy.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen you're not out to defeat the enemy, you never win the war and you never go home until you get tired of holding your position and waiting for the culture to change.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe inability to define war or victory isn't a military problem: it's a cultural problem.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWe can't win wars because while Patton's \"\u003Ci\u003EAmericans play to win all the time. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war\" \u003C\/i\u003Emay still ring true in parts of the country, it's as alien to the elites who run the country as the Taliban are. It's a strange species of exotica for people who drink organic seltzer, hand out participation trophies, and spend all their time worrying about victimhood.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey view the military as a means to a non-military end. That's how we ended up in Afghanistan.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStability, cultural transformation, and all the rest of it are non-military ends. If you want to use the military to achieve a non-military end, you have to engage in conquest and then use force to transform a region or a society. That's what the Taliban did and that's what they'll be doing again.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter successfully using the military for a military end, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, defeating our named enemies, our elites embarked on an impotent program of cultural change in which they couldn't tell themselves the truth about what they were doing or even explain why the military was there.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey assumed that they were liberating the innate forces of progress and civilization which would thrive if we just had some soldiers there to protect them. No wonder the non-European parts of the world were laughing at us. What the hell were we doing in Afghanistan? That's what we were doing in Afghanistan.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd so many places before it. We were trying to protect client states that couldn't stand on their own. We were practicing imperialism without the empire and it was always bound to fall apart on us.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003ESun Tzu\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAmericans don't know the enemy. And increasingly our elites don't know ourselves.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey can't define what a war is or how to win it. And they sure as hell can't define the enemy, let alone know the enemy.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey've lost the cultural skills to understand what war is and what victory looks like.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd they're the ones calling the shots.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E \u003Ciframe width=\"580\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VQVW1jYlguU\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003E\u003C\/iframe\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/8339625253439733001\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/why-america-cant-win-wars.html#comment-form","title":"12 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/8339625253439733001"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/8339625253439733001"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/why-america-cant-win-wars.html","title":"Why America Can't Win Wars"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-i3Kbsf93HN4\/YRlQcLLOZeI\/AAAAAAAATaI\/bCc-n2qGqfY08wYoMv2llePZGknL5C7FACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-08-15_103544.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"12"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-1512183323646274446"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-12T00:10:00.002-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-12T11:14:44.771-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Cuomo"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"New York"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Cuomo Quits Over Cuomosexuality, Gets Away With Cuomocide"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"All over Southeast Asia, there are women and little girls bent over sewing machines in sweatshops churning out “Cuomosexual” t-shirts that no leftist letch will buy anymore.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ltkqE1YPUss\/YRSfPEiMYZI\/AAAAAAAATZo\/ujXRCixQvj4BKHTRZ2YPhJzA9IFA0ErzQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s715\/image_2021-08-11_211035.png\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"507\" data-original-width=\"715\" height=\"227\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ltkqE1YPUss\/YRSfPEiMYZI\/AAAAAAAATZo\/ujXRCixQvj4BKHTRZ2YPhJzA9IFA0ErzQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-08-11_211035.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EYou can't buy a Confederate flag on Amazon, or a copy of a book challenging transgender identity, but the site is littered with $20 \"I Identify as Cuomosexual\" t-shirts and rainbow Cuomosexual face masks. Like Andrew Cuomo, his Cuomosexual crap has no future.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow all the Cuomosexuals know just what identifying as a Cuomosexual really means.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYou can use your $285 “Cuomo for President” cashmere sweater to wrap the shattered pieces of your “Crushin’ on Cuomo” coffee mug, and use it to mug somebody on 5th Avenue.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELast year, former Governor Cuomo endorsed tearing down President Teddy Roosevelt’s statue. Now his cult of personality icons are the ones falling on his walk of shame out of Albany.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENot so long ago, they worshiped him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Television Academy gave him an Emmy, the Washington Post compared him to FDR, and a poll showed him leading the field of potential presidential candidates in 2024.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENow it might as well be 2224.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAndrew Cuomo has many post-resignation career options. Former Governor Eliot Spitzer briefly became a CNN host, former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is a meditation teacher, and Anthony Weiner sells countertops. If Cuomo applies himself, he too can sell countertops.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike a cornered rat, Andrew Cuomo tried to do everything he could to stay in office. He blustered, he threatened, and tried to cut deals. But all the fellow rats he had climbed over on his way to the top got up on their hind legs and toppled the Beast of 138 Eagle Street.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt’s not the first time in the rat-eat-rat politics of New York.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFormer Governor Eliot Spitzer refused to resign, claiming that his hooker habits were a “private matter”, until, like Cuomo, he was threatened with impeachment forcing him to get out.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHis blind black replacement, Lt. Governor David Paterson, swore he wouldn’t give up the governor’s mansion, vowing, “The only way I'm not going to be governor next year is at the ballot box and the only way I'll be leaving office before is in a box.\" He left in disgrace after a covert dirty campaign waged in the media by his sociopathic successor: Andrew Cuomo.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe race is on to replace Cuomo with another scumbag who will quit before being impeached.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECuomo wasn’t just afraid of impeachment. There are \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2020\/04\/1-5-coronavirus-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Emuch worse things\u003C\/a\u003E lurking in his closet than the knobby grabby hands and the maniacal leer that splits his leathery face. The Democrats didn’t want to open that door and neither did Andrew Cuomo. Call it a cover-up.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s what it is.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAndrew Cuomo brought half a century of Cuomo clan politics to an end with his shameful resignation. Ever since Mario Cuomo ran for office in 1974, there’s been a Cuomo robbing taxpayers somewhere in New York or D.C. Before Mario lost his last race, he got his son Andrew a job as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration as a payoff for not opposing him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA world without Cuomos is almost as unthinkable for New York as a world without Kennedys for Massachusetts. The two inbred political clans even briefly intermarried when Andrew Cuomo wed one of RFK’s daughters as part of his presidential ambitions. Those are as dead as the thousands of senior citizens who perished after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to accept hospital patients infected with the coronavirus while blaming the outbreak on the Jews.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Clinton cabinet is where Andrew first began to be \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2021\/03\/when-cuomo-was-accused-sex-harassment-20-years-ago-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Eaccused of sexual harassment\u003C\/a\u003E (while the sexual harasser in chief covered for him) and where he became the “Father of the Subprime Crisis” which helped cause the economic recession of 2008 that brought Obama to power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBiden praised Cuomo for having done \"one hell of a job\". He’s right.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBetween the 15,000 nursing home coronavirus deaths in New York and the 2008 economic crisis, Cuomo may have done the most damage of any politician not in the White House.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf Andrew Cuomo had not existed, the history of the last two decades might have been very different and the Obama and Biden administrations might not have become terrible realities.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut unfortunately he did exist and he didn’t resign for any of his real crimes, but for sexual harassment which is practically a rite of passage for New York Democrats.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen New York Democrats aren’t stealing, they’re groping, or they’re doing both at once.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEliot Spitzer, the last Democrat governor to come into office through direct elections, stepped down for sexual misconduct. Cuomo’s predecessor as attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, resigned after being accused of choking women, but a Cuomo appointee refused to prosecute him. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer tanked his mayoral campaign after being accused of sexual harassment. Former mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner had sexted a 15-year-old girl.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVito J. Lopez, the chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/observer.com\/2013\/05\/yikes-the-ten-worst-allegations-against-vito-lopez-in-ethics-report\/\"\u003Ehad to resign\u003C\/a\u003E for groping female staffers. Micah Z. Kellner, a bisexual Schumer crony, lost his political career over sexual harassment and had to divorce his wife, Anthony Weiner's former chief of staff.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn New York politics, it’s scumbags all the way down.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECuomo’s resignation isn’t justice. It’s political theater and a cover-up of much worse crimes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile Biden’s crony, Attorney General Garland, has pushed political lawsuits against Texas, for trying to stop illegal aliens released by Biden from spreading COVID, and at Phoenix, for trying to stop homeless squatting, the DOJ has refused to investigate New York’s nursing home deaths. Unlike the rights of illegal aliens and the homeless, the\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2020\/04\/1-5-coronavirus-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003E deaths of 15,000 grandmas and grandpas\u003C\/a\u003E are not a “civil rights issue” to Biden, Garland, and the rest of the Democrat machine.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBy resigning, Cuomo and the whole corrupt system he headed evade accountability for the nursing home deaths, for coronavirus coverups, and for the system that protected Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and every monster with a ready checkbook for Democrats.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike so many other political offices in New York, Cuomo’s will be filled by a woman. Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul is apparently the only woman in Albany whom Cuomo didn’t get around to groping. New York’s female Democrats are as crooked as their male counterparts, but they are less likely to shove their sweaty hands where they don’t belong. That glass ceiling remains.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EReplacing men with women doesn’t clean up New York politics. It just swaps out monsters with poor self-control for monsters with better self-control. And that’s not what New York needs.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat New York Democrats need is a real reckoning. And that’s what Cuomo’s quitting avoids.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECuomo was a monster, but, like Bill Clinton, his treatment of women was a symptom of a much worse sickness. As civil rights vanished in blue states with rising coronavirus case numbers, he got to play out his worst megalomaniacal fantasies. People died and communities were terrorized. There was no accountability and there still isn’t. And there never will be.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EInstead of a real investigation of his crimes, Cuomo goes down as just another in a legion of Democrats, in the state and across the nation, who couldn’t keep their pants on. The parade of young female staffers sitting down for teary interviews may be real victims or they may not be, but the studios are haunted by the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2020\/04\/1-5-coronavirus-deaths-could-have-been-prevented-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Ethousands of ghosts\u003C\/a\u003E who truly belong in those chairs.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe nursing home patients who choked out their last breaths courtesy of the Luv Guv couldn’t make it. And none of the heavily made up anchors interviewing the women whom he pawed could spare a minute to talk to the children and grandchildren of the Cuomocides.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut wherever Cuomo goes to live out his decades of disgrace, the ghosts will follow him.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere is a higher justice than the miserable corrupt thing that New York’s political, judicial, and media system can dole out. It can bring down even the greatest of men at the height of their power, turn their icons to dust, and nothing can stand in its way. Not even Andrew Cuomo.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/1512183323646274446\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/cuomo-quits-over-cuomosexuality-gets.html#comment-form","title":"3 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/1512183323646274446"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/1512183323646274446"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/cuomo-quits-over-cuomosexuality-gets.html","title":"Cuomo Quits Over Cuomosexuality, Gets Away With Cuomocide"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ltkqE1YPUss\/YRSfPEiMYZI\/AAAAAAAATZo\/ujXRCixQvj4BKHTRZ2YPhJzA9IFA0ErzQCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-08-11_211035.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"3"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-839435604021554053"},"published":{"$t":"2021-08-10T12:58:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-08-10T12:58:44.323-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Middle East"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Muslim Brotherhood"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Tunisia"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Arab Spring 2: D.C. Politicians Rush to Save Islamists in Tunisia"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"It’s not just the rising prices and loss of hope that makes the Biden administration feel like a rerun of the Obama administration. In the birthplace of the Arab Spring, the same sorry drama is playing out after popular protests once again ousted the Ennahda \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/english.alarabiya.net\/News\/north-africa\/2021\/06\/05\/Thousands-of-Tunisians-protest-against-Muslim-Brotherhood-Ghannouchi\"\u003EMuslim Brotherhood plotters\u003C\/a\u003E who keep trying to take over the country, while the usual suspects in D.C. are fuming.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"If we believe in democracy and human rights, we should be loudly decrying the current assault on democracy in Tunisia—the heart of the Arab Spring. If Tunisia’s president does not reverse course, we should suspend all security aid,\" Rep. Ilhan Omar ranted.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bXyfn3YeCN4\/YRKwN_wvrnI\/AAAAAAAATZg\/3K34Eh-3UDgfOXbQPno-0lLvkWh6aJfBgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s673\/image_2021-08-10_095831.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"458\" data-original-width=\"673\" height=\"218\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bXyfn3YeCN4\/YRKwN_wvrnI\/AAAAAAAATZg\/3K34Eh-3UDgfOXbQPno-0lLvkWh6aJfBgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-08-10_095831.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EOmar then promoted the Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act (SAHRAA) as a means of cutting off security aid to Tunisia. Since Tunisia uses security aid to fight Islamic terrorists, like those who attacked our embassy in Tunis on September 11, 2012, her bill would aid Islamic terrorists, including Al Qaeda, and put American lives in Tunisia at risk.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt should surprise no one that Ilhan Omar is once again trying to empower Islamic terrorists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Tunisia's democracy is at risk. The US position must be clear: Tunisia's Parliament must be allowed to resume its duties immediately,\" Rep. Rashida Tlaib tweeted.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut it wasn’t just the members of the Squad rushing to bail out Tunisia’s Islamists.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESenator Chris Murphy, who serves as little more than an Iranian mouthpiece, blamed the popular protests that ousted the Ennahda Islamists on a plot by Iran’s enemies.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESenator Lindsay Graham, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading GOP enabler, jumped in crying that, “This is the place where the Arab world’s movement to representative government and democracy began, and it’s clear to me indecisiveness in the face of aggression is just going to destroy this movement. The United States and the Western democracies need to be all in, on the ground in Tunisia, stopping this before it gets out of hand.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe last time Lindsay wanted us to be all in on the ground, ISIS got its own country.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA Washington Post \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/07\/26\/biden-act-coup-tunisia-democracy\/\"\u003Eop-ed\u003C\/a\u003E by Josh Rogin attributed to Graham the worry that without American intervention, \"pro-democracy leaders in the region such as Ghannouchi will be left to fend for themselves.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt would be tragic if Ghannouchi, the genocidal monster who had declared that, “there are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed,\" were to be left with no support except from Qatar and Iran.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESince Ghannouchi had also \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/archives.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/barack-obamas-unholy-alliance-romance-islamism-frontpagemagcom\/\"\u003Edeclared\u003C\/a\u003E that, “Crusader America” was the “enemy of Islam”, and \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/1838\/rachid-ghannouchi-islamist\"\u003Ewho had spoken about\u003C\/a\u003E \"driving out the American invaders and their allies\" shouldn’t really expect the American invaders to come save him yet again.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERogin, who recently appeared at a McCain Institute event, agonized that “Tunisian police stormed the headquarters of the news organization Al Jazeera” and that “protesters looted the offices of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAl Jazeera isn’t a news organization. It’s a political arm of the Qatari regime whose mission is lobbying for Islamists and imposing regime change across the region. Ennahda is every bit as moderate as the “moderate Islamists” in Egypt, Syria, and Libya the paper told us to support.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnyone who remembers the lies which Arab Springers used to trick Americans into supporting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and then the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda militias in Syria and Libya, will not be surprised to learn that it’s a repeat of the same disastrous hoax.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETunisia was the original testbed for the Arab Spring. Before the Muslim Brotherhood seized Egypt in a brief coup and Obama illegally invaded Libya, the Arab Spring began in Tunisia when an illegal street vendor claimed to have been slapped by a female police officer. The slap heard around the world \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/2019\/05\/8-year-media-lie-about-how-syrian-war-started-daniel-greenfield\/\"\u003Enever happened\u003C\/a\u003E, but it was used to trigger protests, riots, and the Arab Spring.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe media cheered the takeover of Tunisia by the Islamist Ennahda party. Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi of the local Ennahda Muslim Brotherhood movement was feted by the Obama administration. The Washington Post called him \"visionary\". It still does.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn September 11, 2012, a wave of Islamist attacks against American diplomatic facilities began in Arab Spring countries. While the Obama administration and the media lied and blamed a YouTube video, these were organized campaigns by Jihadists with the sanction of the new regimes that Barack Obama and future Biden administration officials had helped bring to power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhen the Islamist attackers linked to Al Qaeda breached the outer walls of our embassy in Tunis, scaling them and waving their black Jihadist flag bearing the supremacist message, the Islamist regime shrugged. With the embassy on the verge of falling to the terrorists, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to call President Moncef Marzouki, a political rival of Ennahda, and plead with him to send out his presidential guard and save the embassy staff.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe presidential guard stopped the assault while receiving little thanks from Hillary or the media which went on falsely claiming that the assault by the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, was a political protest in response to a YouTube video about Mohammed.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDoes Rep. Omar want to see another repeat of Benghazi in Tunisia? Does Senator Graham?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDespite the best efforts of the Obama administration, the Ennahda Jihadist regime was ousted by popular protests in 2013 after the assassinations of secular leaders by Islamists. The killings were linked to a key figure in the Benghazi attack on the American diplomatic mission in Libya. (All the evidence that the September 11, 2012 attacks were a coordinated terrorist assault by some of the same players has not stopped the media from repeating the YouTube video lie.)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter being ousted, Ennahda bided its time. Meanwhile the violence continued. Last summer, while Americans were understandably distracted, Islamic terrorists blew themselves up near the American embassy in Tunis. It was a continuation of the Jihadist plots to seize the country and kill non-Muslims and secular figures. The Tunisian security forces tasked with fighting the Jihadists were steadily being infiltrated by a Muslim Brotherhood deep state.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile its deep state was growing, Ennahda had adopted the Hezbollah model of operating through political front men to avoid triggering the same response that had previously forced it out of power. Tunisia was being hollowed out by the Muslim Brotherhood with its politics and its security forces having become puppets in the hands of an Islamist secret society of killers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut once again Ennahda overplayed its hand and a new wave of popular protests exploded.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe massive rallies this year targeted Ennahda offices and called for the government led by its latest front man to be dismissed. With the mask of secret Ennahda rule stripped away and its puppet out of power, Washington D.C. and the media rushed to defend “democracy”.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd by democracy, as usual, they meant Islamist rule, open or covert.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMost local coverage in the region has been outsourced to Qatar’s Al Jazeera and the media has followed its Islamist line of accusing Tunisia’s president of undermining democracy. That. not at all coincidentally, is the same rhetoric coming from the Squad’s Islamist mouthpieces on the Hill.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut Ennahda was forced out of power, once again, by popular protests.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhether in Tunisia or Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was only forced out of power in the wake of massive popular protests. Islamists claim that popular protests sanction a change of government when it brings them to power, but not when it topples them from power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe media upholds this same cynical line of reasoning without ever challenging it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off,\" Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's brutal Islamist tyrant, once reportedly said.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETo Islamists, popular protests are also like a streetcar. They board them once they begin and then suppress them once they take over. The message of the Tunisian street to Ennahda, not to mention Omar, Graham, and Tlaib, is that it will never be allowed to work that way.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Biden administration, to its credit, has avoided Obama’s eagerness to aid the Brotherhood.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s why the Washington Post’s Rogin op-ed was titled, “Biden must try harder to stop the coup in Tunisia”. The Biden administration remains sympathetic to Iran, but it’s too busy wrecking America to spare much attention for the rest of the world. The recent international trips by Biden and Kamala Harris demonstrated that both are weak leaders in no shape to either lay out a foreign policy or project strength abroad. The Biden administration continues to enable Jihadists from Israel to Afghanistan to Iran, but its appetite for confrontation remains limited.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd that’s a good thing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBy Syria, even Obama had lost his appetite for military intervention on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Washington Post remains the final outpost for the Arab Springers who have turned Jamal Khashoggi into their Horst Wessel and keep touting the “moderate” Brotherhood.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMost Americans of both parties, even in Washington D.C., have ceased to pay any attention.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe calls by Omar, Tlaib, Murphy, and Graham should be met with the contempt that they deserve. Ghannouchi is a monster, not a moderate, and Ennahda, like its other Brotherhood counterparts, keeps being toppled by secularists and pragmatists, leftists and unions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAny Republican legislators in D.C. who are tempted to join the Omar’s Brotherhood bandwagon might want to remember how Egypt, Libya, and Syria’s “democratic revolutions” ended.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd stop trying to put Tunisia’s Islamists back in power.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/839435604021554053\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/arab-spring-2-dc-politicians-rush-to.html#comment-form","title":"5 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/839435604021554053"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/839435604021554053"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/08\/arab-spring-2-dc-politicians-rush-to.html","title":"Arab Spring 2: D.C. Politicians Rush to Save Islamists in Tunisia"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-bXyfn3YeCN4\/YRKwN_wvrnI\/AAAAAAAATZg\/3K34Eh-3UDgfOXbQPno-0lLvkWh6aJfBgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-08-10_095831.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"5"}}]}});