RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/02/the-competence-question/

The lesson we can learn from Afghanistan is not that Joe Biden lost what Donald Trump could have won. Nor is it that Trump, and his deplorable supporters, are to blame. After all, withdrawal was their plan. Nor is it—God forbid—that the United States should stay in Afghanistan forever. 

The lesson is a hard one. The national government of the United States is incompetent. 

The United States has been defeated in Afghanistan. The United States set incompetent, unachievable war aims, spent as much as $2 trillion over 20 years in the attempt, and achieved none of them. None. The Taliban are stronger, better financed, better equipped, more likely to remain in power, more able to harbor terrorists, more sophisticated, and more popular than they were in 2001. Women in Afghanistan will return to their former abject condition. China will be the Taliban’s partner for the extraction of Afghanistan’s natural resources, and for the promotion of the heroin trade.

The United States famously employs 16 intelligence agencies, a massive State Department, and a fabulously equipped Department of Defense. None of these institutions had the foresight to predict their failure. To say they were blind is unfair to the blind. They either willfully did not look or were consciously deceiving their country. Yet, the heads of these institutions have suffered no loss of prestige. There have been no dismissals, no reckonings, no resignations. The brass, the top bananas at the State Department and the intelligence agencies are, in fact, proud of the role they played. They are incompetent even to address their incompetence.

The incompetence in Afghanistan is not a specific, one-off, incompetence. The incompetence of the national government of the United States is general.

The national government of the United States is a gerontocracy. The president is nearly 79, the speaker of the House is 81, the Senate minority leader is 79, and Senate president pro tempore is 81. The Senate majority leader is the youngest of the senior elected officeholders at 70. The chain of succession for the presidency under the Constitution is president, vice president (who is incompetent, despite her youth), speaker, president pro tempore. Interrupted only by a cackle, it is liver spots all the way down. A gerontocracy requires the cooperation of the middle-aged and young, who cannot conceive of themselves wielding power and so defer to the old. Many place their hopes in Donald Trump, who will be 78 in 2024. This is a deep, broad incompetence.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/biden_completely_makes_up_a_visit_to_pittsburgh_synagogue_victimized_by_mass_shooting_in_speech_to_jewish_leaders.html

The President of the United States has completely lost touch with reality. This is Twenty-fifth Amendment territory, my friends. “No joke,” as the addled executive would say. Like some Walter Mitty of compassion, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. substituted himself for President Donald J Trump, as the person who visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after a deranged gunman attacked the house of worship in 2018. This is not acient history, but a mere three years ago. Here is the fantasy claim:

Steve Nelson of The New York Post fact-checked the claim:

Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life, said that Biden did not visit the synagogue in the nearly three years since the anti-Semitic attack.

In a phone interview, Feige, executive director since July 2019, said firmly that “no” Biden didn’t visit, even before taking office when he had a lower public profile as a former vice president and then-Democratic presidential candidate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17710/intelligence-report-china-covid

The Intelligence Community’s COVID Summary is dangerous; infinitely more dangerous than it appears.

How can the IC seriously believe that China’s active stonewalling of the international community’s attempts to get to the bottom of what happened and thus learn better how to combat the virus can be reduced to its “uncertainty about where an investigation might lead” or its “frustration” about outside political pressure? If… this wishful thinking really reflects what our IC believes, the world is in deep trouble.

In sum, we can assess with a high degree of confidence that while the origins and initial awareness of the virus by the Chinese government cannot be clearly ascertained, the Chinese government has been intimately involved in most everything since then. It has used the pandemic to further its global economic and political agenda. Its behavior has been ruthless and malicious.

[T]he U.S. intelligence community’s whitewashing of China’s culpability puts us all at risk…. Every word is weighed and considered. The implication that China is essentially innocent of any ill will is in the report only because some senior official wanted to include it.

God help us if this signals the beginning of a Biden administration appeasement strategy. Judging from everything we have experienced over the last ten to twenty years, the attempt to placate China by writing off its malicious behavior as lightly as this report does… shows weakness. It rewards an aggressive China, and only invites more of the same.

The recent release of an unclassified summary by the Intelligence Community (IC) of its investigation into China’s role in the COVID pandemic leaves one feeling that there is nothing there. Like Sergeant Schultz in the old TV series “Hogan’s Heroes,” the IC seems to be protesting “I know nothing! Nothing!” The report provided no real substantive insights into the origins of the pandemic. Yet the Intelligence Community’s COVID Summary is dangerous; infinitely more dangerous than it appears. Without saying so directly, it encourages us to discount China’s significant culpability in this disaster, downplaying its responsibility for the pandemic unleashed on its territory and its role in the deadly spread of COVID around the world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/matt-palumbo-video-mind-behind-iron-curtain-bongino-report/

In this new video, author Matt Palumbo talks about his new book: The Man Behind the Iron Curtain. It explores the domestic and international far-reaching influence of leftist financier George Soros, backed by his tens of billions of dollars. Don’t miss it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/forever-war-islams-war-west-don-feder/

Imagine after Pearl Harbor, FDR announcing, “We’re getting into this to bring human rights to Japanese women” or “Our goal in this war is give Germany a democracy.” He would have been laughed out of office.

There was only one legitimate reason to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 and it’s the same reason that should have impelled us to stay – not human rights, democracy or nation-building – but saving our nation.

We went to Afghanistan to root out terrorism, to destroy Al Qaeda’s infrastructure, to disrupt its network – and, quite frankly, to kill as many terrorists as possible.

The goal was to kill them there so they wouldn’t kill us here, as they did on 9/11. Everything else was extraneous. That the mission failed may be seen in just how quickly the Taliban made a comeback, except now, with the most modern weapons in the region – thanks to Quartermaster Joe.

The cut-and-run crowd called it “the forever war.” Rubbish.

You want to hear about a forever war? Afghanistan was the latest chapter in a conflict that’s been going on since the 7th century.

At one time, Islam engulfed much of the known world – from the Arabian Peninsula west to the Pyrenees and east to the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

In his book “The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order” (1996), Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington spoke of “Islam’s bloody borders,” alluding to the fact that almost all of the religion-based conflicts in the world involve Islam versus someone else.

America’s longest war, they call it. Really? Through April, 2,448 Americans died in the 20 years we’ve been in Afghanistan – fewer than the number of Americans who died in one day in the attack on the World Trade Center (2,996).

The Vietnam War, which started under the French, went on for 21 years (1954-1975). Over 58,000 Americans died when we fought there. Was it worth it? I believe it was. South Vietnam fell. But due to our involvement (and the price we paid in blood), communism is no longer a potent force in Southeast Asia.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/03/sorry-afghan-war-isnt-over-until-those-we-left-behind-can-return/

In what can only be called a shocking lack of self-awareness, President Joe Biden this week bragged about his “extraordinary success” in Afghanistan. Now his handlers and the Democratic Party are urging Americans and, of course, the media to “move on.” But there is no moving on from his botched departure from Kabul, whose ill effects will be felt by Americans for decades.

Far from a success, the “evacuation” was in fact an ill-planned, incompetently executed, chaotic dash to cram as many human beings as possible onto planes and transport them away from Kabul. The new talking point is that “only” 100 or so Americans may have been left behind, despite Biden’s explicit promise that none would be.

The media, which for several days seemed actually to be doing their job, are now falling in line with the new White House-Democratic Party spin. Afghanistan is now a yesterday story.

As National Review noted on Thursday:

“Today is the day that the U.S. media begins its pivot away from Afghanistan. The front page of the New York Times features Hurricane Ida’s rains hitting New York City, and the Supreme Court’s declining to block Texas’ new abortion law. Those are the same two top stories at the Washington Post, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.”

While the administration, in one of the epic political spin jobs ever, lauds itself for its evacuation efforts, the truth is it likely left far more Americans and deserving Afghans in Kabul than estimated. That means victims and/or hostages for the now-jubilant, victorious Taliban, an intolerable situation.

Data from earlier this week estimated 116,700 people were evacuated from Afghanistan. “In fact, while only 5,400 or so Americans were brought to safety, only about 8,500 SIV holders were rescued, with the vast majority left behind,” RedState reports.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-reconciliation-entitlements-global-competitiveness-corporate-tax-hike-income-death-11630619861?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Joe Biden this week completed the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, in a humiliating military surrender to the Taliban. The president is more interested in working on a second capitulation—a wholesale economic surrender to China and other rivals.

Members of the House Ways and Means Committee were notified that markup will begin as early as next Thursday on Democratic plans for the largest tax increase in at least 50 years. House leaders have yet to provide any text for the committee work, since they continue to negotiate the details. But the White House and Democratic lawmakers have made clear the broad contours, which are best read as an exercise in U.S. self-sabotage—a gift to foreign companies and foreign workers everywhere.

Washington excels at spin, but few lines may prove more economically destructive than the continued Democratic claim that the 2017 tax law was about cuts for the “rich.” Even critics at the time acknowledged the law’s real highlight—its central focus—was its overdue and comprehensive reform of the corporate tax system. As this page’s editorial columns noted, the cuts on the individual side weren’t nearly “as ambitious,” making only marginal trims to top rates.

The corporate changes were specifically designed to restore America’s global competitiveness, which had eroded over decades. It cut the top corporate rate, which at 35% was the highest in the developed world. It got rid of a backward “world-wide” tax system, in which U.S. companies paid taxes in countries where they earned income and again if they returned money here. This was fundamentally a “pro-America” reform.

And it worked. An estimated $1.6 trillion flowed back into the U.S. from 2018 to 2020, which businesses poured into American factories, American jobs, American wages.