RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/22/civilization-requires-deterrence/

Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends, or your interests—without a major war. 

Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed.

It’s an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence still remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited. 

The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitler’s serial aggressions. 

Hitler’s Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscow’s lost deterrence after its lackluster performances in Poland and Finland, its pact with the Nazis, and its recent purges of its own officer corps. 

Deterrence is omnipresent and also applies well beyond matters of war and peace. The current crime wave of murder and violent assault in our major cities is the wage of loud efforts to defund the police and contextualize crimes as somehow society’s rather than the criminal’s fault. 

As a result, lawbreakers now believe there is a good chance that robbing people or hurting or killing them might result in monetary gain or at least bloody satisfaction. They no longer fear a likely sentence of 30 years in prison. So, they see little risk in hurting people. And innocents suffer.

With a border wall, an end to catch and release, and tough jawboning of the Mexican and Central American governments, a new American deterrent stance in 2019-20 discouraged once unstoppable waves of illegal immigrants. 

Northern bound migrants knew that even if they reached and crossed the border, there was a good chance all such effort would be for naught, given quick apprehension and deportation. 

So, in their rational calculations, illegal aliens waited at home for less deterrent times. And they found them when Joe Biden stopped construction on the wall, renewed catch and release, and eased pressures on Mexico to interrupt caravans headed northward. 

Abroad, Donald Trump restored the strategic deterrence lost by his predecessor.

Barack Obama had dismissed the murderous ISIS as “JVs”—and they thrived. He shrugged when China stole territory in the South China sea to build military bases. He dismantled missile defense in Europe to coax Vladimir Putin to behave during his own 2012 reelection campaign. 

Obama loudly announced redlines in Syria while never intending to enforce them. He gave the Taliban back their incarcerated terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of the American deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And he sent the Iranians nocturnal cash to coax them to conclude an appeasing Iran Deal. Aggression followed as U.S. deterrence eroded.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/10-bidens-afghanistan-aid-will-go-taliban-daniel-greenfield/

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.

Lyons 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 sued after being abandoned afterwards.

Sirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted terrorist with a $10 million FBI reward on his head.

“It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging with the de facto authorities,”  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned.

The de facto authorities being the Islamic terrorists of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The 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.

Without 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.”

The 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.

And “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.

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

 On September 20, I was sitting across a table from the foreign editor of a European news publication. Demons must have lurked and listened to our conversation. “Is there any American thinker who you find fresh and challenging?” the journalist asked me.

“You mean apart from Angelo Codevilla?,” I returned. A traditional Jew from the Old Country would have said “Angelo Codevilla, kein hora,” or “keine ayin hara,” a mix of Yiddish and Hebrew that means “no Evil Eye.” It is an imprecation against Fate’s envy of the truly gifted.

The next day Angelo was dead at age 78, reportedly run down by a drunk driver.

There were two former senior intelligence officials who knew enough where enough bodies were buried in the Global War on Terror to scare the American Intelligence establishment. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was one, and the spooks got to him within days of his appointment as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser.

Angelo Codevilla was the other. Flynn is a working-class kid who worked his way up the chain of command from reserve officer training at Providence College, while Angelo was an Italian-born connoisseur of Western culture, multi-lingual and the master of many disciplines, fiercely independent and contemptuous of attempts to co-opt him.

Codevilla was an expert on Afghanistan starting in 1979, as chief of staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee, before the CIA could find the benighted country on a map. He knew that the Global War on Terror was a scam, a goof, a lavishly-funded reality show – and he told the world what he knew.

Here is what he wrote on August 24 in his last posting at The American Mind, the opinion site of the Claremont Institute where Angelo was a senior fellow:

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-foreign-policy-amateur/

Since Joe Biden was elected in part as a salve for Donald Trump’s perceived foreign policy blunders, it seems reasonable nine months in to go searching for the Biden Doctrine, to assess his initial foreign policy moves, to see what paths he has sketched out for the next three years.

…is that a tumbleweed?

Well, OK, there was Afghanistan, Biden’s most significant foreign policy action. Biden won election in November and took office in January. There was ample time for replanning and renegotiating anything that had been left behind by Trump, especially since Biden and his team had muddled in Afghanistan during the Obama era and knew well the mess they’d helped create.

The rush for the last plane out was a fully expected unexpected event. Yet the Biden administration did not quietly start the evacuation in February with high-value personnel, nor did it negotiate ahead of time the third country landing rights it knew would be needed. Mistakes made in Vietnam evacuating locals who worked with us were clear, yet Biden did not kick start processing SIV visas until literally the last flights were scheduled out of Afghanistan. The entire evacuation appeared as an unplanned free fall, just ‘land some planes and see if that works’.

Biden placed the fate of the evacuation, all those lives, in the hands of the Taliban, depending on them to uphold agreements, provide security, vet Americans en route to the airport, and generally play nice to save face as the door hit us in the ass on the way out. While the National Security Council spokeswoman called the Taliban ‘businesslike and professional’, Biden played like a rube. Even assuming good intentions (!), the Taliban are loosely organized, with plenty of local warlords and Isis spinoffs to ensure things can go wrong — like the terror bombing that killed 13 Americans and basically ended the evacuation.

Biden’s follow-up? Lie about the success of a revenge drone strike to make sure America’s final official act was to kill civilians. That capped the most amateurish foreign policy execution seen in a long time. Mistakes? How about assuming your enemies share your goals, negotiating after you have lost and hold no cards, failing to plan for anticipated events and then blaming your predecessor? For a foreign diplomat sitting in London, Tokyo, Beijing or Paris, the question had to have been ‘who if anyone is in charge in Washington?’

Biden’s other foreign policy gesture, the recent submarine agreement with Australia which alienated the French, raises the same question.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/22/how_russiagate_became_a_story_of_old_friends_indeed_795476.html

The indictment of Washington attorney Michael Sussman — accused of lying to the FBI in order to smear Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign — reveals the ace up the sleeve of high-powered Democrats. It’s a card they played time and again to advance the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory: friends in high places.

They used friends in law enforcement to launch secret investigations; they used friends in the federal government to broaden those investigations; and they used friends in the media to spread the word about Trump and his organization being under investigation.

Michael Sussmann: Securing a meeting with the FBI’s top lawyer can’t have been easy, but for him it was.

CSPAN

James Baker of the FBI: Sussmann came to him “based on a preexisting relationship.”

RCP

The Russia fiasco metastasized in large part because those involved in advancing the false allegations had important connections. They used friendships with powerful federal officials to encourage investigations against team Trump. Those targeted by Sussmann and others were unabashed outsiders, and as such lacked the sort of connections the insiders exploited so adroitly.

Sussmann was a partner at the Washington law firm Perkins Coie in 2016, which represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. But, according to the indictment handed down by Special Counsel John Durham last week, when he met with the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, to allege that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, Sussmann claimed he was representing another client. The indictment alleges this was false.

Securing a meeting with the FBI’s top lawyer can’t have been easy. But for Sussmann it was.

President Joe Biden’s address to the United Nations on Tuesday drew criticism from Republicans for failing to adequately address adversaries, including Russia and China. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) slammed Biden for failing to identify China as an enemy, and warned that the world sees the commander-in-chief as laughable.

“I think a lot of the world sees Joe Biden and just laughs at the statements he made yesterday. You just mentioned or played a clip there, he said we don’t seek a new Cold War. Well, of course we don’t seek a new Cold War. We would rather have peace with all nations. But when China is waging a Cold War against the United States, we don’t have a choice whether we’re in it or not. We only have a choice to win or to lose. But beyond that, he didn’t even mention China’s name,” Cotton said during an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s like he was scared to mention China’s name. Now, I know the White House is doing damage control today, saying that was by design. Let me give you a contrast. In 2014, after Russia invaded Crimea, Barack Obama, who’s no one’s idea of a chest-beating American nationalist, used Russia’s name more than 10 times in his United Nations speech. So I think Xi Jinping and China’s communist leaders in Beijing are laughing today at Joe Biden. And that’s a dangerous thing for China not to take the American president seriously.”

Rather than confronting adversaries, Biden spent much of his speech addressing climate change.

https://www.city-journal.org/bidens-politicized-vaccine-booster-plan

Both before and after the 2020 election, Joe Biden complained that President Donald Trump had politicized the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden insisted that he, in contrast with Trump, would “follow the science” and listen to the experts at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. And yet, President Biden has pushed vaccine booster shots for all adults despite opposition from the very agencies he touted as sentinels of science. Now an outside advisory panel to the FDA has overwhelmingly rejected the Biden plan, opting to recommend boosters only for a high-risk subset of those who have received the vaccine.

The administration announced plans for vaccine boosters beginning September 20 before any vaccine maker had even applied for booster approval. The first application, and thus far the only completed application ready for consideration, came from Pfizer on August 25, one week after the booster announcement. It seeks booster authorization for ages 16 and up. Pfizer’s supporting evidence was thin. Its application reported increased immune responses to the original viral variant following boosters in 317 subjects aged 18 to 55 and 12 subjects ages 65 to 85. Evidence on activity against the Delta variant that currently predominates was limited to just 11 subjects aged 18 to 55 and 12 subjects aged 65 to 85. No increase in severe adverse events related to boosters was found in the 329 subjects. Pfizer extrapolated safety and effectiveness for 16-17-year-olds from the adult data even though young males have the highest risk of heart inflammation (pericarditis/myocarditis) reported after initial vaccinations.

Politico reports that several CDC officials disagreed with the Biden administration’s booster plans, announced in mid-August. Many felt that the timetable was too rushed to allow the agency to complete studies and review vaccine manufacturer data that would justify the shots before the September 20 start date.

Two top FDA vaccine regulators, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause, announced their retirements shortly after the announcement in a move that many interpreted as a protest against the plan. Both joined with 16 other authors in a recently published Lancet article that concludes the booster policy is not supported by current evidence. They argue that vaccine efficacy remains high and that the unvaccinated remain the major drivers of transmission. Going ahead with boosters now, before adequate data and analysis are available, risks vaccine side effects that could undermine confidence in vaccines and undercut efforts to increase primary vaccinations. Moreover, they suggest that new vaccines, crafted against currently circulating variants, would likely be better boosters than administering additional doses of the original.

Other reports suggest widespread dissatisfaction among FDA staff and outside vaccine advisers who feel that White House political officials steered the announcement and cut key, career FDA employees out of the decision-making. Members of the CDC’s independent vaccine-advisory panel— the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—voiced frustration that the administration announced a plan before scientists had an opportunity to review the data and approve boosters.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17762/controlling-biden-presidency

To answer the question of who is controlling the Biden presidency, we should consider the Biden administration’s disastrous policy decisions. “Cui bono?” – Who benefits?

Why would Biden abandon Bagram Air Force Base? It is key to all of Southwest Asia – just 400 miles to China and 500 miles to Iran. It is a vitally important geopolitical, military and intelligence platform with consequences and “reach” that involve far more than just Afghan regional matters. Who, specifically, made the recommendation to just walk away from Bagram – and then who gave the order?

If we suggest that there is a combination or passing alliance of these various interests and groups, each seeking to advance their own agenda behind the official, hollow, front of “President Joe Biden” – then we run the risk of being branded conspiracy theorists. That is both dishonest and unfortunate, because asking questions of, and seeking accountability from, elected officials is not “crazy.” Interest groups do, in fact, lobby presidential advisors, White House staff, and even members of the president’s family.

We must press on – asking questions, examining records, seeking accountability and documenting facts. The truth will prevail.

The question has been asked dozens of different ways, depending on the questioner and the public policy issue. “Who is controlling the Biden presidency?”

One thing appears certain: It is not President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. He gives incoherent, rambling speeches, and often declines to take questions.

A May 2021 powder-puff profile of President Biden in the Washington Post was written as both a hagiography and a politically therapeutic assurance that there’s been a “return to normalcy” in the White House. The article’s author, Ashley Parker, was clearly given extraordinary access to personal details by White House staff and Biden handlers in order to compose her report. The resulting article is an interesting mix of Ms. Parker taking careful dictation from the White House, and her own ambition to pledge allegiance to the larger Biden “family.” In fairness, here is how Ms. Parker describes the sourcing of her article:

“This account of Biden’s daily schedule is based on interviews with seven people familiar with the president’s daily life, most speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose private details.”

There is genuine journalistic value in Ms. Parker’s work – and a mere four (+) months later – given the lightning fast and tumultuous downturn in the Biden presidency, 20/20 hindsight and review of her article may help answer our question: “Who is controlling the Biden presidency?”