RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/blinken-gives-chinese-government-his-congrats/

The well wishes for the 72nd anniversary of the PRC come a month after Beijing’s new envoy told U.S. officials to ‘please shut up.’

S ecretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday congratulated China on the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the latest in a flurry of activity that could undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to address Chinese atrocities and malign activity around the world.

The statement’s wording particularly could inflame worries that officials are willing to make concessions on core issues in order to jumpstart stalled cooperation.

“On behalf of the United States of America, I would like to extend our congratulations to the people of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the country celebrates its National Day on October 1. As the United States seeks to work cooperatively to solve the challenges we all face, we wish the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity over the coming year,” Blinken said.

In addition, China’s newly arrived ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, tweeted a message on Tuesday evening thanking Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and others for joining a virtual reception at the Chinese embassy.

Although Kritenbrink, who was confirmed to his role this month, did not appear on video, a State Department spokesperson confirmed that he “sent digital greetings to the Embassy extending his congratulations to the People’s Republic of China on their national day and wishing the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity.”

Like Blinken’s own statement, Kritenbrink’s is fairly anodyne, but it’s worth asking whether the department should have sent its greetings at all. For one, Qin arrived in Washington with a stridently anti-U.S. message. As National Review exclusively reported, during a virtual welcome event attended by members of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations at the end of August, Qin was asked how the two countries could rebuild their relationship. “If we cannot resolve our differences, please shut up,” he advised U.S. officials, in remarks that shocked meeting participants and indicated the hard line he will take in this post.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/biden-administration-blocks-rescue-persecuted-raymond-ibrahim/

The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.

This information surfaced on August 26, 2021, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.  Through his charity, the Nazarene Fund, Beck had managed to charter planes to airlift 5,100 Christians out of Afghanistan and into neighboring nations.  Before long, however, U.S. officials intervened and prevented the escape of a batch of 500 Christians, mostly women and children, who were ordered outside of the airport’s protection zone:  “I have pictures of them pleading to get back through the gate,” Beck continued:

And then I have pictures of blood and body parts and nothing but death in that same area [where they were confined].  We believe that our State Department is directly responsible…  I don’t know how many [of these 500 Christians] survived.  The State Department has blocked us every step of the way.  The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem.  Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety.  The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way.  In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people, as we were trying to get them off of the tarmac here, to keep the airport flowing, and getting these Christians out. We haven’t really been able to move anybody for about 12 hours.  Our mission is now changing greatly.  We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.

Beck, it should be noted, is not exaggerating.  According to one recent report, “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians.”  Similarly, any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone is executed.  “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghani said earlier this year on condition of anonymity.  “But we are tired of all the death around us.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-forever-diplomacy-iran-nuclear-inspections-iaea-ebrahim-raisi-11632772480?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

That was quick. Two weeks ago Iranian officials reached a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that allowed limited entry to nuclear sites, and, wouldn’t you know, Tehran hasn’t held up its end of the bargain.

“Iran’s decision not to allow agency access to the TESA Karaj centrifuge component manufacturing workshop is contrary to the agreed terms of the joint statement issued on 12 September,” the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in a Sunday statement. It was clear at the time that the agreement wasn’t really an achievement, as it merely allowed international inspectors to service surveillance equipment without accessing data. But this makes Iran’s refusal even more embarrassing.

“Any decision taken by Iran on monitoring equipment is only based on political rather than legal considerations and the Agency cannot and should not consider it as one of its entitlements,” an Iranian official tweeted. He claimed that the site—which was sabotaged in June, likely by Israel—was never part of the agreement. Yet the IAEA has said otherwise since the deal was reached. This saga follows news this month that Iranian guards harassed female nuclear inspectors on multiple occasions this year.

Iran’s initial agreement was meant to avert a censure during the IAEA Board of Governors meeting this month, and Tehran achieved its goal. No one should be surprised that its shenanigans continued after avoiding punishment. “We call on Iran to provide the IAEA with needed access without further delay,” the U.S. said in a statement Monday. “If Iran fails to do so, we will be closely consulting with other board members in the coming days on an appropriate response.”

We argued two weeks ago that a rebuke would send an important message, even after Iran’s temporary and limited cooperation. Any nuclear agreement is pointless without a legitimate inspections regime, and an IAEA censure could in theory prompt U.N. sanctions. Supporters of appeasing the Islamic Republic argue that criticizing or pressuring Tehran isn’t productive and could derail nuclear talks. But blame for ending negotiations will lay with Iran for not cooperating with the IAEA—not the West for calling out bad behavior.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17801/china-climate-deal-genocide

The Beijing regime has, over the course of decades, attacked fundamental U.S. interests by, among other things, inciting violence on American streets, deliberately spreading COVID-19 beyond China’s borders to America and the rest of the world, exporting fentanyl to the U.S. despite agreements to the contrary, stealing U.S. technology and other intellectual property, rejecting the principle of freedom of navigation, threatening to grab territory from American allies, and proliferating nuclear weapons technology.

The critical question now is this: What, in addition to the human rights of China’s minorities, is the Biden administration willing to give up to get a climate deal with Beijing?

Democracies tend to deal with each other as Kerry evidently envisions, where cooperation on one issue can lead to warm relations and warm relations can lead to agreement in other areas.

Unfortunately, that is not the way communist states, especially China’s, operate. Kerry’s immediate predecessor as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found that out the hard way in February 2009…. China did not return Clinton’s gesture of cooperation. On the contrary, Beijing pressed the advantage and went on a bender. The following month, for instance, Chinese craft harassed the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the South China Sea and even attacked it, trying to sever its towed sonar array.

China puts its brightest diplomats to work on human rights issues precisely because it knows it has no defense, especially now when Beijing is committing not only genocide but also other crimes against humanity. Mass rape, slavery, torture, and killing of minorities are impossible to justify. When the Biden administration does not talk about these crimes, it relieves great pressure on the Chinese regime.

Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China.

If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness.

“Well, life is always full of tough choices in the relationship between nations,” said John Kerry, responding to Bloomberg’s David Weston on September 22. Weston had asked him, “What is the process by which one trades off climate against human rights?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17785/iran-mullahs-taliban-empowered

Not only did the Biden administration – whose sole purpose in Afghanistan was to prevent another “9/11 attack” – hand the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran a major political and strategic victory, it also rewarded them with sophisticated, state-of-the-art US weapons worth $85 billion – courtesy of American taxpayers — which these terrorists will undoubtedly use to launch an even more deadly “9/11 attack” to kill American taxpayers.

The US withdrawal to the Taliban was so poorly planned that the Biden administration actually delivered seven brand new helicopters to Afghanistan just a month before announcing that it would be withdrawing from the country.

It is mind-boggling that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan without any plans either to secure billions of dollars of US military equipment, but made not the slightest effort to recover or destroy it.

The Taliban and the Iranian regime now are not only able to unleash US-made weapons against the US and its allies, but Iran, Russia and China can also utilize this military equipment for research, reverse engineering, reproducing and selling it.

The Biden administration’s poorly planned surrender to Afghanistan has been causing tragedy and disaster one after another, all while empowering the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran.

The Iranian leaders have close ties to Taliban; both share a deep hatred towards the United States and Israel. Iran, as well as Pakistan, has also long provided shelter to Taliban leaders.

Iranian leaders have therefore applauded Biden administration’s decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif characterized the US withdrawal as a positive action, while President Ebrahim Raisi described it as a defeat for Washington’s Middle East policy that “must become an opportunity to restore security in Afghanistan.” The Iranian regime had evidently been preparing for a Taliban takeover and meeting with Taliban leaders. In January 2021, a delegation from the Taliban had already been publicly consulting with senior Iranian officials, including then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. According to him, both parties held productive talks, and discussed their ties and the future of Afghanistan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17784/left-afghanistan-still-at-war

I never liked that term, “war on terror.” Terrorism is a tactic; it is not the enemy we fought every day. The term has done more to confuse us than enlighten us.

[O]ne can see why the phrase “war on terror” became the widely accepted nomenclature. It was neutral. Gone would be the difficult references connecting the terrorist movement to Islam and Muslims. The need to define good Muslims versus bad/extremist Muslims would be eliminated. We would just paper over the difficult discussions that needed to take place but did not.

The terrorists, and their Islamist apologists in the West, actually used our response to their benefit. They widely labeled those who tried to connect al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to Islamic dogma as Islamophobes and anti-Muslim.

It did not matter that the terrorists invoked Quranic passages as justification, or that groups such as ISIS and others explicitly state that their ultimate objective is a global Muslim state governed by religious law.

President Biden can say what he wants but that does not mean it is so. The other side has a say in this. And as we saw as we were leaving Kabul, the jihadists spoke clearly, they are still at war with us. If the crack team of foreign advisers that the president is relying on, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, advised him that the United States is no longer at war, the world is in serious trouble.

On Tuesday, Joe Biden presented his first United Nations General Assembly speech as president. I labored through almost 32 minutes of the speech when a most profound announcement was proclaimed: “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war.”

It was an odd boast, considering how the United States left Afghanistan and what it means for the future.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/iran-nuclear-deal-shouldnt-be-munich-deal-joseph-puder/

The Biden administration, along with our western allies Britain, France, and Germany, are handling the Iran nuclear deal in an appeasement mode that reminds me a bit of Britain’s Neville Chamberlains dealings with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Eager to have a deal, Chamberlain sold out to Czechoslovakia, and ultimately the free world in his 1938 Munich deal. Let us hope that the Biden administration is not seeking a paper deal rather than a genuine lasting and effective nuclear deal that would protect America and its allies.

Frankly, whatever paper agreement would be signed eventually in Vienna or elsewhere, it will not stand. The Iranians have proven time and again that they will cheat, and deceive the western powers, who are more than willing to be deceived for the sake of “non-escalation” politics with Iran. In the end, the US and its western allies might end up selling out the security of its allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia in a Czechoslovakia-like deal.

Iran has already escalated matters by upgrading the centrifuges far beyond the level allowed by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). They are developing ballistic missiles that are aimed at reaching Europe and ultimately the US. They already possess missiles that might be able to hit Israel and Saudi Arabia. Frankly, they have positioned a huge arsenal of rockets in Lebanon, at the disposal of Hezbollah, to be used by the Hezbollah terrorist group when Tehran gives the green light. Similarly, the Ayatollahs have provided the Yemeni (Shiite) Houtis with enough missiles to paralyze the Saudi oil production and more…

The terror and instability Iran is causing in the region is not an issue the cowed western representatives in Vienna much care to bring up. They want to get along with the radical Iranian regime, and are fearful that the Iranians might bolt and walk away. The Iranians, sensing the weakness of the western representatives, and their eagerness to reach a deal at all costs, have hardened their bargaining position. They know that it is the US, and its western allies who will ultimately give in.

The Biden administration already handed down a victory to Iran’s Ayatollahs in the form of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US administrations admission to its total exhaustion with wars in the Middle East, and its intent to leave the region altogether will grant Iran the ultimate prize: expelling the US from the region. In fact, that is the dream of every jihadist and the Iranian mullahs in particular.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17766/biden-afghanistan-mistakes

Trump’s Doha Agreement only bound the United States to a “complete withdrawal of all remaining forces” with the “commitment and action” of the Taliban on its obligations as laid out in the accord. Those terms bound the Taliban not to “allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies,” as well as “not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies,” and to “prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies.”

Even prior to the final assaults on Kabul and the suicide bombings at Hamid Karzai International Airport, it was clear the Taliban was neck-deep in a proxy relationship with al-Qaeda via its relationship with the Haqqani network. Once again, the information that should have led to a pause and a hard-nosed assessment of how to complete the withdrawal in an orderly, safe way was ignored to meet a political deadline.

Instead, the Afghan men who helped the U.S., the women who breathed freedom for the first time, the military veterans from the U.S. and its allies who fought and died there all feel a sense of abandonment and frustration at this endgame incompetence. Those in the government who continue to hunt terrorist jihadis have lost their sources, bases of operation, and ability to quick-strike military targets that a resurgent al-Qaeda will now present there.

The details of the Biden administration’s inner planning prior to the pullout from Afghanistan are beginning to emerge, and they are not comforting. “Failure is an orphan,” as the old saying goes, but a paternity test is in order to explain a failed effort that will haunt the administration for years to come.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appearing before congressional panel recently, tried to defend the rationale for the hasty withdrawal, claiming, “We made the right decision in ending America’s longest war.” This, of course, dodges the question of how the withdrawal was conducted.