RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17773/afghanistan-persecuted-christians

“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… 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.”   — Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson Tonight, August 26, 2021.

Although nearly 80 percent of all persecution Christians experience around the globe is committed in the Islamic world, Afghanistan is actually the worst of all Muslim nations.

According to the World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations in which Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is the second-worst nation in the world, followed on the heels of the worst nation, North Korea…. That report was published nine months ago — when a U.S.-supported government ran Afghanistan. Since then, matters have only significantly worsened for Christians….

Even worse, because U.S. and Western leadership are careful not to show any interest in Christian minorities — a sentiment that goes hand in hand with Western acquiescence to “Islamic sensibilities” — they are more prone to turn a blind eye to the persecution of Christians than even some Muslim governments.

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, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17733/managing-biden

As we bear the humiliation of Biden’s surrender, remember: the United States has the power to affect whatever it wishes…. It is only a question of political will. Deadlines, such as the artificial August 31st withdrawal from Afghanistan, mean absolutely nothing if we do not wish it.

The US could financially squeeze Pakistan — the country that has harbored and funded the Taliban for two decades — and change the entire operating environment in Afghanistan. Overnight, the circumstances could have be reversed 180 degrees at 100 mph — yet, for this administration, it seemed not “desirable.”

Nothing was “missed.” …. Similar deceit and double-talk have surrounded Biden’s crisis and national security disaster at our southern border.

Are we to expect to be lied to, placated, deceived, or misdirected by our administration?

WWII was predicated on an unconditional “war guarantee” by France and Britain to defend Poland, should any country attack Poland…. At the end of WWII, who got Poland as a war prize? Stalin. Thanks, FDR. Twenty years of combat following the Taliban/al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, and to whom does Biden surrender Afghanistan? The Taliban. Thanks, Joe.

“America is back!” President Joe Biden declared, in February 2021.

If so, what happened?

The last eight months have been a rolling U.S. disaster domestically and internationally. We have witnessed the collapse of U.S, political and moral will to continue in Afghanistan and pretty much anywhere else in the world. Given the daily headlines of the last two weeks, what is the Biden administration’s message for Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and South Korea? Not to mention, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico?

The most disturbing part is that apparently SOMEONE in the US government — or someone whose hands are on the levers of the organs of the state — wants it exactly this way. It is not random, an accident, or a mistake. “They” want a return to the “managed decline” that served as the hallmark of the Obama administration’s eight-year-long “fundamental transformation” of America. Given President Biden’s apparent decline in mental acuity, we are compelled to conclude that whoever is REALLY in power in the United States is not Biden. This is a planned, coherent (NOT BIDEN) strategy. Biden is weak.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/09/joe-bidens-pox-americana/

I was wondering how long it would take for American commentators to come up with semi-plausible reasons for continuing to support a President who has overseen the most comprehensive and humiliating defeat in US history. Until recently we’ve had to be content with the usual blather from the palace eunuchs of main-stream media anxious to protect a cognitively challenged Joe Biden, supported by ridiculous utterances from Washington’s swamp creatures, such as a call from the State Department for the Taliban to include women in its government.

Well, what may charitably be interpreted as a plausible justification has now emerged in an article by Kevin Baker published by the American political news site Politico on August 28.  It’s entitled, The Old Cliché About Afghanistan That Won’t Die and it characterises Biden’s decision to “move on” as “a gutsy decision, however chaotic its execution has been,” which necessarily implies that Biden broadly agreed with Trump’s Doha agreement, but as Orange Man must be blamed for everything, perhaps that’s not something to be emphasised.

As an aside, the article comments on nineteenth century European imperial fantasies, the popular but supposedly racist concept of “a gallant band of doomed, white warriors fighting to the last while helplessly outnumbered by ‘savages’.”  Of course, we now know that in accordance with the doctrines of multiculturalism, savages don’t exist and any publicity glorifying those who resisted deadly attacks by people so misclassified is always racist.

The article notes that the British got their revenge for the debacle of 1842, in which the Afghans wiped out Major General Sir William Elphinstone’s withdrawing army, when they invaded Afghanistan a few months later, crushed all Afghan forces pitted against them and sacked Kabul.  After yet another war, the situation was stabilised during Lord Curzon’s time as Viceroy of India through patronage and multiple agreements with tribal leaders and obtaining supporting fatwas from relevant authorities.

The Russian intervention that commenced in 1979 ultimately failed, forcing a withdrawal that began in 1988.  International media were invited to observe it with its accompanying ceremonies and parades.  As units withdrew, the media accompanied them through Kabul, up to Mazar-e-Sharif and across the Oxus or Amu Darya River into Uzbekistan, where there were more ceremonies and parades. On 15 February 1989, international media watched as the last remaining Soviet soldier, supreme commander General Boris Gromov, walked alone across the Oxus River Bridge back into the USSR.  The regime they supported and left behind managed to survive for another couple of years.

https://news.yahoo.com/afghanistan-blame-game-shifts-u-112954023.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

-Secretary of State Antony Blinken beat back criticism of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Monday at a contentious congressional hearing where at least two Republicans called on him to resign.

In five hours of often testy exchanges with lawmakers, Blinken defended President Joe Biden’s decision to pull out and pushed back on accusations that the State Department should have done more to help Americans and at-risk Afghans to be evacuated, blaming the previous administration for lacking a plan.

He repeatedly noted that Republican former President Donald Trump had negotiated the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, and said Biden’s administration could not renegotiate because of threats from the group to resume killing Americans.

“There’s no evidence that staying longer would have made the Afghan security forces or the Afghan government any more resilient or self-sustaining,” Blinken said.

“We inherited a deadline. We did not inherit a plan,” Blinken said, referring to the Trump administration’s agreement to remove all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1.

Members of Congress – Biden’s Democrats as well as opposition Republicans – have pledged to investigate since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last month after a rapid advance.

Blinken appeared on Monday before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and was to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the first Biden administration official to testify publicly to lawmakers since the Islamist militant group’s takeover.

Fireworks had been expected, given the amount of finger-pointing over how the two-decade-long war ended. Many Republicans, particularly those closely allied to Trump, interrupted or even shouted over Blinken during the House hearing, a departure for a committee known for bipartisan cooperation.

Others offered harsh criticism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17724/afghan-fallout-india-china

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately — and perhaps most adversely — affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

India saw the Afghan government as a friend in blunting extremism in neighboring Pakistan, which has always defined itself as India’s enemy.

The Biden administration may in fact be willing to defend Taiwan, but that is not all that counts at this crucial time. What also counts are perceptions, and the perceptions that especially count are those in Beijing. Chinese propagandists promoted two narratives as Kabul fell: The United States will not defend Taiwan and an America unable to deal with the Taliban cannot hope to stand up to China.

Those two narratives appear to in fact reflect Chinese thinking, especially because the withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled to Beijing a complete failure of the U.S. intelligence community, the Pentagon, and the White House national security apparatus. Chinese exercises in areas adjacent to Taiwan in August and an August 13 simulated attack on Taiwan with a short-range missile are, in this context, ominous.

India’s close ties with Vietnam are an indication that India perceives its security as dependent on an open South China Sea and even East China Sea. Taiwan, which sits at the intersection of those bodies of water, is essential in keeping sea lanes there open.

President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has ruined, perhaps for decades, America’s most important bilateral relationship of this era.

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately — and perhaps most adversely — affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/09/the-greatest-victory-since-napoleon-left-moscow/

Maybe someone should hire Joe Biden to teach philosophy, or at least be in the classroom. You don’t have to be Ludwig Wittgenstein to appreciate the important philosophical lesson that our understanding can be bewitched by language. This can happen in a number of different ways, many of them illustrated daily by the President of the United States.  One lesson revolves around the unpalatable truth that saying something is so does not make it so. Joe Biden gave a sterling illustration of that lesson the other day at one his weirdest press conferences to date.  His withdrawal from Afghanistan, he barked madly at the cameras, was an “extraordinary success.” 

Yes, he really said that.  It was a success more or less in the same sense that Napoleon’s withdrawal from Moscow in 1812 was a success, that is to say, it was so extraordinary a success that it was an abject failure.  It was not quite so bad as the withdrawal of Maj. Gen. William Elphinstone from Kabul in 1842, perhaps—the only European to make it out alive from that debâcle was a badly wounded army surgeon—but it was certainly nothing to brag about.  

It will be many years before we get a full and accurate measure of the repercussions of this humiliating event. It has gravely damaged the already tottering administration of Joe Biden. It has disconcerted our friends. It has emboldened our enemies.  And it is marked another waypoint on the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of American power.  

The world has been especially stunned by two things the Biden administration left behind in Afghanistan.  The first was the huge armory of military hardware and supporting matériel. Estimates of the value of that gift to the Taliban have varied widely from many hundreds of millions to $80 billion. Whatever the figure, it was a lot.   

According to one assessment, the US left scattered in seven Afghan army garrisons across the country, from Kabul and Kandahar to Herāt, Mazār-i-Sharīf, and Kunduz, 22,174 armored Humvees, 42 pickup trucks and SUVS, 64,363 machine guns, 162,043 radios, 16,035 night-vision goggles, 358,530 assault rifles (the real ones, not the “assault rifles” that Joe Biden warns about in the United States), 126,295 pistols, and 176 artillery pieces. There was also plenty of ammunition to go along with all of that loot.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/international-puzzle-trust-and-deception-dr-shmuel-katz/

The United States controls the NSA and many other intelligence agencies. This fact on its own makes it incomprehensible that the current US leadership had no clue about what was happening in Afghanistan. The rumors are that they wanted it to unfold in a certain way for a variety of reasons. But it’s more likely that they have over played their hand with this last move.

This recent event clearly seems to be part of an intentional plan to weaken the United States. Let’s look at the following recent problematic policy changes – Open borders, energy dependence, inflation, decimated military, defunding the police, population control, limits on flow of information, indoctrination in the schools, rewriting of history, racial unrest, gender confusion, selective implementation of laws, undermining US international standing, etc.

This overall situation forces a serious question: Can the United States be trusted under these circumstances?

Good people must wake up if they want to have a free and democratic republic in the United State or in any other free country across the globe!! Independence, freedom, and self-reliance are imperative to be able to run a stable country. Terrorists and their supporters should not be trusted, as they will break any promise or agreement when they feel strong enough to do so.

Therefore, people must understand that giving away national treasures – or even simple assets of value – will never appease unreliable operatives with malicious intentions!! Eventual durable peace and reconciliation will be possible only if a solid long-term education of mutual respect and recognition is implemented in all educational institutions and media outlets. In addition, terror infrastructures must be dismantled, and incitement and misinformation must be stopped.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/our-friends-the-taliban-biden-administration-al-qaeda-haqqani-network-afghanistan-11630954075?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Taliban claimed Monday to have conquered the last major opposition to its takeover of Afghanistan, routing remnants of the former Afghan military and others in the Panjshir Valley. No doubt the abandoned U.S. military equipment helped. Let’s hope the Talibs feel grateful—because the Biden Administration plans to depend on them for years to come.

The White House hopes Americans forget about all this as it focuses on domestic affairs. But this is one of the more extraordinary political transformations in U.S. history. The Taliban, the sponsors of Osama bin Laden and killers of Americans for 20 years, have overnight turned into a courted U.S. partner.

“A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared recently, almost as if he was announcing a triumph like the fall of the Berlin Wall. “The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun.”

Mr. Blinken says the U.S. will now work with the Taliban to get the remaining Americans and Afghan allies out of the country, and he’s optimistic. “The Taliban has committed to let anyone with proper documents leave the country in a safe and orderly manner. They’ve said this privately and publicly many times,” said the Secretary of State.