RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/detached-from-afghanistan-reality-joe-biden-lloyd-austin-taliban-11629496129?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“A nation that hesitates to rescue its people for fear of the Taliban is behaving like a pitiful, helpless giant.”

President Biden provided an update Friday on the emergency evacuation effort in Kabul, and as usual he was his own worst advocate. The President’s optimistic view doesn’t fit the chaos on the ground or the fact that the mission continues to be hostage to the goodwill of the Taliban.

“We’ve made significant progress,” Mr. Biden said, taking credit for “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history.” If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was describing a humanitarian airlift in Haiti rather than the desperate rescue of Americans trapped behind enemy lines.

***

It’s good news that U.S. troops finally control the Kabul airport and its single runway, though that’s all the allies control. It’s also good that 18,000 people have been evacuated since the Taliban took control of the capital. But the U.S. still doesn’t know how many Americans are in the country, and the U.S. Embassy warned this week that “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage to the Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

Mr. Biden said Friday that “we’re in constant contact with the Taliban,” who he says are letting Americans with passports through their checkpoints. But it’s distressing to hear a Commander in Chief admit that he’s relying on the promises of jihadists who have spent years killing Americans. Mr. Biden even suggested they’ll let Americans pass because, well, they need to make a good impression on the world community. Lovely.

The situation is worse for the thousands of Afghans who have applied for entry to the U.S. through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program. Including families, they total 50,000 or more. Mr. Biden vowed to evacuate them as well, as a matter of national honor.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/freedom-man-ii/91627/

The image of the United States Marine reaching over the razor-wire-topped wall outside the Kabul airport to lift to freedom an Afghan infant from its parent’s hand is no doubt going to become one of the most famous photographs in the history of the Corps — not to mention our country. Even in the depths of our national humiliation, it turns out, millions still want to hand up their children to the arms of the United States military.*

That is something to cherish and remember amid the scramble to rescue Americans and their allies from the revenge of the Taliban. No matter how many mistakes Americans have made, our national motives have always been animated by high ideals and friendliness. It’s a point on which President Reagan launched his 1980 campaign, when he spoke to war veterans about Vietnam.

“It is time we recognized that ours was in truth, a noble cause,” he said at a time when almost no one else was saying it. The declaration about a war that America’s Congress had turned against helped him carry 44 states and win the White House. The idea clearly stayed with him, almost like a refrain, throughout his eight years in office. So much so, that he offered an echo of it in his farewell speech.

Reagan delivered his farewell remarks in January 1989. “I’ve been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant and mean,” Reagan said, “And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one — a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea.”

“The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/19/a-life-destroyed-for-parading-at-the-capitol/

After Robert Reeder was arrested in February and charged with four misdemeanors for his involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6, he lost his job as a truck driver for FedEx. “As a result of his arrest in this matter, he has been placed on administrative leave/has been terminated,” Reeder’s attorney wrote in court filing. “He has not been able to secure steady employment since being charged in this matter.”

Reeder, like many Americans who attended Donald Trump’s speech then walked to Capitol Hill, went alone. He is a registered Democrat but supported some of Trump’s policies. The Maryland resident decided to travel to Washington on the morning of January 6, a “spur of the moment” decision, according to his attorney.

After suffering the effects of tear gas and sting balls launched by police officers outside the building—a reality the news media still refuses to cover—Reeder went inside the building to look for water to rinse his eyes. From all accounts, he was allowed into the building. While inside, Reeder marveled at the beauty of the Capitol and urged others “do not destroy anything.” He asked police how he could get out of the building as the situation between law enforcement and protesters escalated.

Reeder took selfies and videos of his experience. “I’m leaving now . . . I got tear gassed at least four times inside the Capitol . . . I saw the lady they say got shot, I walked right past her in a pool of blood,” he said in one video. “And it’s just . . . completely crazy in there.” After he entered a second time—police were not allowing protesters to exit the grounds so Reeder was looking for a way out through the building—he said in another post that he was “gassed several times . . . and shot with pepper balls.”

Although Reeder has no criminal record and prosecutors admit he did not commit any violent crime on January 6, Biden’s Justice Department wants Reeder to go to jail for two months. He pleaded guilty to one count of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building,” a common low-level charge levied against hundreds of Americans who entered the Capitol building on January 6. Prosecutors want to make an example of Reeder despite the fact he essentially turned himself in to law enforcement and quickly negotiated a plea arrangement.

Guilty of Sharing Memes

But as is the case in all January 6 prosecutions, the government is showing no mercy; Reeder, not charged with anything close to “rioting” or mob activity, nonetheless is branded a criminal by Joe Biden’s Justice Department. “[I]t is important to convey to future rioters and would-be mob participants—especially those who intend to improperly influence the democratic process—that their actions will have consequences,” assistant U.S. attorney Joshua Rothstein wrote in the government’s sentencing memo. “Picketing, demonstrating, or parading at the Capitol as part of the riot on January 6 is not like picketing at the Capitol some other day, without other rioters present.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/19/after-afghan-debacle-stop-the-nation-building-crusades-once-and-for-all/

Joe Biden’s haphazard, poorly executed troop withdrawal from the morass of Afghanistan has irrevocably sullied America’s reputation. Even those of us who have long supported drawing down the decades-old American military footprint from this strategically unimportant Third-World backwater have been horrified at the indefensible manner in which this extraction was done. Kabul is, unquestionably, now the younger generations’ Saigon moment.

From pushing back the withdrawal time frame Biden inherited from former President Donald Trump to coincide with the peak Taliban fighting season, to the obtuse overnight surprise evacuation of Bagram Air Base, to the impetuous and uncoordinated pulling out of ancillary air support that the Afghan military relied upon, to the images of Afghans falling to their deaths off hastily departing U.S. military planes, to the wholesale stranding of more than 10,000 American citizens on the ground with little exit strategy for them other than reliance upon the magnanimity of an internationally recognized jihadist outfit, this withdrawal was botched in every possible way. In a sane and just world, the U.S. House would already be drafting articles of impeachment.

But it’s also worth stepping back from the immediate Biden-orchestrated debacle in the Afghan “graveyard of empires” to focus on the broader lessons we can glean from this unceremonious end to America’s longest-ever war.

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan—the earliest and initially highest-profile theater of the sprawling President Bush-era “war on terror”—commenced in October 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The invasion was supported overwhelmingly in the aftermath of the then-ruling Taliban’s harboring of al-Qaeda and refusal to extradite 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, signed into law on September 18, passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House. The AUMF granted Bush (and subsequent presidents) the authority to deploy “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/19/money-power-and-revenge-the-truth-about-critical-race-theory/

Nearly six decades ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for a better world, imploring us to judge others by “the content of their character.” He offered a vision of an America that united people across racial, political, and economic lines — a vision that we can all believe in.

The proponents of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) offer no such vision. They only propose a world of endless grievances and revenge, petty cons, and abusing their power to ruin lives.

Where Dr. King saw a world of equals, CRT envisions only victims and vengeance. Where Dr. King called upon Americans to see the content of each others’ character, CRT calls for acts of theater and human sacrifices to cancel culture. Where Dr. King offered equality before the law — the only true, objective equality — CRT proposes only “equity,” the subjective decisions of petty tyrants over who gets what, when, and how. 

CRT is an enrichment scheme perpetrated by self-proclaimed “victims.” It is a sham that makes money for CRT’s rabid proponents, granting them power over the lives of others and exercising revenge for a seemingly endless stream of slights — real or imagined. CRT doesn’t solve problems; it shreds the social fabric of a nation by perpetuating an “us” versus “them” mentality.

While the proponents of CRT insist their platform only serves to expose America’s racist past, nothing about it offers a way to shape a better future. The evidence of CRT’s do-goodery is strikingly scarce. It lays the blame at the feet of all white Americans, no matter their thoughts or actions. If “whiteness” is inherently oppressive and evil, then America is a morally bankrupt entity that deserves nothing but reproach — then America is evil and so are all patriotic Americans, white or otherwise.

At the heart of CRT is the concept of “equity” (not “equality,” which is an important distinction). The proponents of CRT believe in equality of outcome, with all Americans ending up at the same place, rather than the meritocracy implied by equality of opportunity.

Which brings us to the fundamental question: What does CRT’s better world look like? I can see Dr. King’s vision of a world in which we are all equal before the law, treat one another as we wish to be treated, and succeed or fail based on our own merits. But CRT’s world of equity is indescribable at best and insidious at worst. What makes that world better for everyone?

In effect, CRT only exists to empower a select few in acting out their perceived sense of grievance through racist vengeance against those whom they determine are — always undeservedly, of course — better-positioned in life. CRT seeks to control the allocation of money — other people’s money — with its proponents grifting their way to success through seven-figure consulting contracts. It is a revenge-based form of propaganda embodied by the woman wishing death on parents who don’t buy into it. CRT’s proponents are in the business of punishing children who don’t bow down to them.