RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17679/congress-afghanistan

But the oversight — the real-world exercise of the constitutional separation of powers, checking and balancing each other — that is what our host leadership wanted to avoid.

Importantly, it was the leadership–not those who served under them, often on the front lines–who resented the very thought of oversight and resisted at every turn. The troops and embassy staff were always thrilled that we took the time and ran the risk to see first-hand what was happening… Members of Congress, on the other hand, were just everyday people who knew nothing about what needed to be done or how to do it.

People are dying. America is suffering humiliation. And the president and the bureaucracy are trying to get away with it. Hats off to Meijer and Moulton, both military veterans, by the way, for showing us all that Congress is an equal branch of government — and for refusing to let the Biden administration cover up its catastrophic failure in Afghanistan.

Congratulations to the two members of Congress, Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who had the exceptional courage to pay an unannounced visit to Kabul. The situation in Afghanistan is screaming for immediate congressional oversight. Right now, before it’s too late, Congress might still be able to exercise an influence over, and perhaps help change, the disastrous Afghanistan policy of the Biden administration. Americans should applaud Meijer and Moulton for bucking the corrupt Washington system, despite intense pressure to bow to it.

When I heard about this “unauthorized” trip yesterday I knew exactly what would happen. The bureaucracy, congressional leadership, and the media would all strongly criticize the effort. Washington scorns and derides those who disrupt the system and don’t play by its rules. I felt that same pressure for 18 years as a member of Congress. The Washington elite consider themselves the ruling elite. They dedicate immense effort to controlling the story line in DC. They keep members of Congress in the dark, like mushrooms. They tell the elected representatives of the people as little as possible, and only divulge information when necessary.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/ami-horowitz-video-left-think-its-abuse-refuse-ami-horowitz/

In this new Daily Wire video, Ami Horowitz takes to the streets of New York, the woke capital of the world, to ask bystanders what they think about hormone therapy and gender reassignment for children. The results are disturbing. Don’t miss it!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/forty-years-misunderstanding-islam-bruce-thornton/

The debacle in Afghanistan is first and foremost the consequence of the Biden foreign policy team’s spectacular incompetence. Setting a date-certain withdrawal was in itself a blunder, signaling the Taliban that all they had to do was to keep telling us what we wanted to hear and then wait, but withdrawing troops and abandoning Bagram airbase before evacuating our citizens was willful stupidity. It left the Afghan army vulnerable, and ceded the skies to the enemy. So too was leaving behind billions in advanced armaments for the Taliban. There’s no question that Biden’s name will forever be linked to one of the worst military blunders in the postwar period.

But an older error set the stage for bad decisions that have empowered modern jihadism for forty years––the failure to understand the true nature of Islam as documented in 1400 years of practice and doctrine. As a result, we have pursued policies based on delusion and false paradigms.

The first mistake was our misreading of the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution and the kidnapping of our embassy staff in November 1979. Jimmy Carter’s feckless response followed the stale narrative of anti-colonial resistance to our Cold War self-interested disregard for aspirations to national self-determination, political freedom, and human rights. Our ally the Shah of Iran, despite Iran’s geostrategic and economic importance, fell victim to Carter’s naïve belief that “moral principles” and “idealism” were more significant than military readiness and a realist willingness to use force to protect our national interests and allies. Misled by that paradigm, Carter withheld support from the Shah, assuming that a secular coalition would replace him.

Locked in the paradigm of neo-imperialist resistance to movements of nationalist self-determination, Carter failed to understand the true origins of the Iranian Revolution. In reality, the revolution was a religious phenomenon, a response to the Shah’s modernization and secularization policies such as emancipating women and protecting minorities like Jews and Baha’is. The Ayatollah Khomeini, godfather of the revolution, made this motive clear in 1963 when he said the Shah’s regime was “fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class.”

Missing too from Carter’s thinking was the historical role of jihad in Islamic reform movements. Khomeini’s sermons and books, the latter dismissed by our security agencies, were clear on the religious obligation to create a political-social order based on Islam and Sharia law. And the means for achieving it was jihadist violence and martyrdom. After he took power in Iran, Khomeini articulated the violent nature of jihad: “Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.” And its goal is the global triumph of Islam: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be jihad.” Such statements are consistent with Koranic verses such as “Slay the idolators wherever you find them,” or “Fight those who do not believe in Allah,” or “O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness,” or “Kill them wherever you find them.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/its-dawning-on-the-democrats-biden-harris-will-drag-them-down/

So did National Review, with rare exception tie its prestige and probity to a pair of losers in their intemperate and relentless bashing of Donald Trump….rsk

They’ve tied their party to a pair of losers.

T he Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket was well-placed to run against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. History may show that, beyond that, it turned out to be fit for no other purpose.

We hear an enormous amount these days about the problem of “Flight 93-ism” on the American right, but a great deal less about the concomitant panic that has led the Democratic Party to behave as if last year’s election represented its last gasp. Since Joe Biden took office in January, his party has been busy cramming everything it has ever wanted to do into a series of multi-trillion-dollar, must-pass bills; hawking a patently unconstitutional elections-supervision bill that would hand it full control of America’s democratic infrastructure; and engaging in a frenzied attempt to pack the Supreme Court, discredit the Senate, abolish the filibuster, and add new states to the union by simple majority vote. If you ask for an explanation of this preposterous behavior, you will be told that it is the product of the Republican Party’s dastardly scheme to implement Jim Eagle. If you look more closely, however, you’ll sense something else: fear — that, in a desperate attempt to remove President Trump from office, the Democrats tailored themselves a straitjacket from which they will struggle mightily to escape.

This fear is well-founded. Joe Biden is an aging, incompetent mediocrity whose main claim to fame, like the Delta Tau Chi fraternity from Animal House, is his long tradition of existence. Kamala Harris, his vice president, is a widely disliked authoritarian whose last run for the White House was stymied by her inability to garner support from more than 3 percent of the Democratic-primary electorate. If, prior to the disaster that was the last fortnight, the Democrats hadn’t sensed that they’d tied their party to a pair of losers, they sure as hell must have now.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/is_apple_gearing_up_for_chinastyle_internet_control_in_the_us.html

Recently, Apple announced that it will deploy a new algorithm, NeuralMatch, to monitor iMessages and images on its devices. The ostensible purpose is to scan for photos containing nudity sent by or to children and also for photos of nude or seminude children. If a number of suspect images are backed up to an iCloud account, they will be decrypted and inspected, and the user reported to law enforcement. Police could then investigate or prosecute the user for possession of child pornography or for child sex abuse or other offences. But, well-intentioned as the motive may sound, this is a matter of grave concern for privacy. Once such surveillance is begun, it opens the gates for other tech firms to follow suit, and worse, for warrantless scans for nefarious government purposes.

Coming as it does from Apple, this is a curious development in the U.S. For although Apple has bent over backwards to please the Chinese government on its surveillance and censorship needs, it has vehemently resisted assisting the U.S. government. It has refused to unlock cellphones for criminal investigations and prosecutions, citing concerns about protecting the data and privacy of its customers. It has received — and objected to — at least 10 requests from federal courts for extracting date from locked iPhones. But now, in a complete turnabout, if Apple thinks (or its algorithm decides) that certain images are illegal, it will cooperate with the authorities.

In 2016, the FBI asked Apple to unlock a phone used by one of the Islamic terrorists who attacked the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, murdering 14 people and injuring 22. Apple declined, citing a corporate policy to never undermine the security features of its products. Following another terrorist attack at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, in 2019, Apple again rejected a government request to unlock the perpetrator’s phone. Then-Attorney General William Barr insisted that tech companies have an obligation to give law enforcement access to encrypted devices, but Apple refused. It said doing so would weaken encryption and thus jeopardize the data security of its customers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/borax-door-to-door-salesman-statesmanship-joe-biden-presidency-administration-11629921697?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Joe Biden is the 46th U.S. president, the military’s commander in chief, leader of the free world. So why can’t I take him seriously? When he steps out to make a speech or give a rare press conference, he looks as if he is setting out to do a commercial to sell me gutters or roofing shingles. Mr. Biden strikes me as the Borax Man—a term from my Chicago youth for that slick salesman, whom you are always mistaken to allow in your house.

The Borax Man was a familiar type when I was growing up. So familiar that I dropped such a character, whom I named Sy Bourget, into a short story of mine called “Kaplan’s Big Deal.” In that story I wrote: “Bourget—he didn’t pronounce the t in his name—was so good, it used to be said, that he could sell aluminum siding to people who lived in high-rise buildings.” A main chancer, he studied human motives “toward the end of manipulating others to say yes.” Everyone, he believed, “was an operator, or at least wanted to be, and the only difference between people was that there were those who operated successfully and those who didn’t. Winners and losers, the old story.”

The problem Mr. Biden presents is that it is difficult to believe anything he says. The reason is that it is hard to believe that he himself really believes in much of anything, except getting ahead. As the American president—thanks to his good luck in having Donald Trump for an opponent—he has now surely accomplished this in excelsis.

Yet Mr. Biden lacks the convincing solemnity of manner, the gravitas that all world leaders, the fate of millions riding on their decisions, require. Instead he comes off as a man with little introspection and even less penetration into the problems facing the world. At a moment of crisis, these deficiencies carry grave consequences.

https://jimtreacher.substack.com/p/biden-sank-afghanistan-and-now-hes

As a wise man once said, you should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. But when it comes to current events in Afghanistan, the Biden administration is spewing out plenty of both.

Biden gave yet another “press conference” Tuesday, although none of them have been actual press conferences. He just reads off a teleprompter for a few minutes, and then turns around and walks right out as the press yells at him.

We’re getting used to this image by now:

Literally turning his back on Americans in trouble is becoming a daily ritual for Biden. If he knew we’d be seeing so much of him from this angle, he would’ve gotten some more of those plugs on top.

Biden was five hours late to his own scheduled “press conference,” and there was no point in having any reporters there in the first place. The only time he’s answered any questions about this Afghanistan debacle was when he humiliated himself in front of George Stephanopoulos, of all people.

Jen Psaki did take questions from the press, for all the good it did anyone. Remember when she got all theatrically outraged at the very idea that Americans are stranded in Afghanistan? That was Monday. The very next day, she admitted that yes, there are Americans stranded in Afghanistan:

Is it just me, or does she seem very nervous and twitchy?1 If she keeps yanking at her hair like that, she’ll have a big bald spot like her boss. The way this Afghanistan debacle is going, it’ll take a lot more than Democrat operatives making #PsakiBomb trend on Twitter to fool people into thinking she’s popular.

https://www.nysun.com/national/the-biden-soros-paradox/91629/

Americans elected President Trump in 2016 and President Obama and Vice President Biden before that on, in part, promises to end “endless wars” and bring our troops home. Now that Mr. Biden is following through on that in Afghanistan, polls show his job-approval sinking.

How to explain the apparent paradox? Americans seem to want to end wars and bring the troops home, but when they see the actual consequences of doing that, they blame the politicians.

Part of the apparent contradiction is in the incompleteness of the rhetorical framing, whether from the politician or a pollster. No presidential candidate who wants to get elected runs around Iowa and New Hampshire saying, “I’m going to end the wars and bring the troops home, even if that means the countries the troops were in revert to their previous status as terrorist bases and even if that means women’s rights in those countries are set back to the dark ages.”

No pollster asks, “How many two-year-old children trampled to death on the chaotic outskirts of the Kabul airport are an acceptable tradeoff for bringing the troops home?”

The most conflicted is the billionaire George Soros. The Washington Free Beacon illustrated its editorial on the Afghanistan humiliation with a photo of Mr. Soros, noting that he had funded, in the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a group that aimed to “bring the forces against endless war on the Left and the Right together.”

Yet Mr. Soros himself tweeted August 17 that his Open Society Foundations had created “a $10 million Afghanistan emergency fund to support Afghans in grave danger — including champions of human rights, women’s rights, and journalists.”

The press release quoted the president of the Open Society Foundations, Mark Malloch-Brown, as insisting, “We remain deeply committed to Afghans and their efforts to help the country advance toward a more open society. We call on funders to join us in our response to this urgent humanitarian crisis. There is truly not a moment to waste.”

The “urgent humanitarian crisis” erupted after Mr. Biden followed the policy course that the Soros-funded Quincy Institute advocated. I’m not sure whether the right word for it is hypocrisy or tragedy.

The Open Society press release said the money would “support sponsorship for humanitarian parole programs in the United States that provide a pathway to temporary refuge for those in harm’s way… bolster international relief organizations in their efforts to support Afghan citizens fleeing the Taliban advance.” The money would also “aid other efforts to deliver humanitarian relief to internally displaced Afghans and those fleeing to other countries taking them in.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-ice-cream-afghan-meltdown/

You have to hand it to the Taliban (or, if you are Joe Biden, the ‘Tally-bahn’): they are both a persistent and an infernally clever lot.

As to their persistence, recall that George W. Bush assured us that, ‘thanks to our military, our allies, and the brave fighters of Afghanistan…the Taliban regime is coming to an end.’ That was in December 2001.

As of August 2021, they control the country and are as I write issuing ultimatums to the President of the United States: everybody out by September 11, no, make that August 31 — otherwise, there will be ‘consequences’.

Oh, and by ‘everybody out’, we don’t mean Afghans who may have worked for the US: they have to stay.

There does seem to be a communications breakdown about radical elements in Afghanistan.

A few days ago, President Ice Cream said that al-Qaeda was ‘gone’ from Afghanistan, ergo (he did not say ‘ergo’) we had no reasons to be there, getting al-Qaeda after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 having been the original rationale for going into that godforsaken country in the first place.

Alas, just a few hours later that day, the Pentagon spokesman John ‘no imminent threat’ Kirby acknowledged that ‘al-Qaeda is a presence as well as Isis’ throughout Afghanistan.

There is quite a lot of that Yes-No, Did-Didn’t, whiplashing these days. Jen Psaki, the President’s press secretary, told us that no Americans were ‘stranded’ in Afghanistan, adding for good moralistic measure that it was ‘irresponsible’ to suggest such a thing.

Many observers close to the situation have a different assessment of what will happen; said one, ‘it is unavoidable that Americans, Green Card holders and those who worked with us will be left behind’. Hard cheese on those folks, but, as always, the Babylon Bee distributes solace, explaining that ‘Americans Trapped By Taliban With No Rescue Plan Happy To Hear They Are Not Stranded’.