Bringing in Afghan Refugees with All of Their ‘Luggage’ What’s not being talked about. Dr. Stephen M. Kirby

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/bringing-afghan-refugees-all-their-luggage-dr-stephen-m-kirby/

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing.  As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country.  And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.

To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.

What is not being talked about are the values, ideas, and culture those refugees are bringing with them.

In order to better understand the people many are calling to be brought in by the tens of thousands, let’s look at some considerations about the society from which these refugees are coming.

National Security

There are two national security issues that must be acknowledged.

First, a 2019 study found that 13% of Afghans had a lot of (4%) or a little (9%) sympathy for the Taliban.[1]  This means that for every 100,000 Afghan refugees brought into the United States, we could expect about 13,000 of them to have varying degrees of sympathy for the Taliban.

Then we need to take into consideration that 39% of Afghans think that “suicide bombing” in defense of Islam is often or sometimes justified.[2]  If we use the 4% number for those with a lot of sympathy for the Taliban, this means that out of every 100,000 Afghans we could have up to about 1,560 Afghans believing that “suicide bombing” could often be justified.[3]

Combining these two issues means we could be bringing in a potentially significant base of support for a jihadist group; and that base of support could include a large number willing to engage in jihadist attacks in the United States using explosives.

The Eternal Jihad Understanding what really happened in Afghanistan. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/eternal-jihad-raymond-ibrahim/

Although August 15, 2021 will forever live in infamy as the date when the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, for over 13 centuries that date was famous for another event—Constantinople’s defeat of the caliphate, August 15, 718.  While these two events separated by exactly 1,303 years are vastly different in nature—not least that in 718 Islam lost, while in 2021 it won—they both confirm one irresistible point that the confident West should take to heart: the tenacity of Islamic jihad—this relentless snake of war that always bides its time, even if by remaining coiled for many centuries, before striking.

Consider the first event.  In 718, the Eastern Roman Empire (“Byzantium”) repulsed, in dramatic fashion, the Arabs.  It was such a spectacular victory, and Muslim losses were so bad, that, for many centuries, the caliphates never dared make another attempt against the walls of Constantinople.

Put differently, for many centuries after the year 718, anyone living in Constantinople would have thought—and would have apparently been justified for thinking—that the Islamic threat, whatever it was elsewhere, was well behind them.

And yet, in the early 1400s—700 years after the people of Constantinople had thought they’d seen the last of jihad—it was back again besieging them, with the city finally falling to Islam on May 29, 1453.

More significantly, those who besieged and conquered Constantinople in 1453 had little to do with those who besieged it in the eighth century.  The latter were Arabs, under the Umayyad caliphate centered in Damascus.  Those who actually conquered Constantinople were Turks, whose capital was Adrianople (now Edirne).

On the surface there is no connection or continuity between those who in the eighth century tried to conquer, and those who in the fifteenth century did conquer, Constantinople—except, of course, for one thing: both were Muslims, and both articulated their hostility for and need to conquer Constantinople in distinctly jihadist terms: like every other infidel, the Christian kingdom had two choices before it: submit to Islam—which it rejected—or fight.

Three Takeaways from Afghanistan for Us at Home By Shoshana Bryen

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/three_takeaways_from_afghanistan_for_us_at_home.html

First, remember our troops, living and dead, who served the United States in Afghanistan since 2001.  They are owed our gratitude for their steadfast presence in a difficult country and our help as they and their families, and the families of the dead, navigate the emotionally terrible terrain of a defeat inflicted not by the enemy, but by our government’s failure to plan properly for the end of their mission.  If it was time for the U.S. to leave, then so be it.  But there is nothing the civilians or the military higher-ups can say that will make Americans believe they knew what they were doing.  Resignations are in order.

Spare a moment, too, for the 182,071 soldiers in the Afghan Army and Air Force and the 118,628 members of the police and paramilitary security forces serving as of July 2021.  Yes, the Afghan force collapsed — but only after the U.S. withdrew its air power and intelligence capabilities, both of which the Afghans had relied upon under our tutelage.

Second, retire the word “privilege” as used in the U.S. to denigrate those perceived to have some inborn, unearned advantage.  Whatever your color, race, or sex; whether you are the sixth great-grandchild of slave or fifth great-grandchild of Chinese railroad slaves or the second-generation Vietnamese refugees or the remnants of the Holocaust — if you live in the United States today, you are privileged.  You have the advantages of freedom, liberty, and a Constitution.  You have access to education, food, medicine, and bathrooms.  If you doubt your privilege, watch CNN.

Above All, Do No Harm, In Medicine Or Politics Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/02/above-all-do-no-harm-in-medicine-or-politics/
We’ve been betrayed by elected officials who follow the hypocritical path of pandering and self-interest.

Physicians are taught in their training the principle, “First, Do No Harm,” one of the primary precepts of patient care, and which is found in early versions of the Hippocratic Oath. By contrast, many politicians seem to abide by the hypocritical oath, treating inconsistency, irrationality, and harm as incidental and subordinate to their self-interest. Lately, this approach to public service has become, literally, lethal.

Two prominent issues illustrate how embracing the hypocritical oath can inflict serious harm. The first is the handling of the pandemic, and the second is the dangerous distortion of the criminal justice system in many parts of the country.

It was just last year that numerous Democratic politicians, including then-vice-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, stated unequivocally that a vaccine developed under President Donald Trump could not be trusted. It was as if she and others believed that the Trump administration’s career civil-servant regulators would cut corners and issue premature, risky approvals. Although there was pressure exerted on the FDA to act according to political timetables, nothing suggests that either product development or governmental review was inappropriately rushed.

Of course, after Joe Biden won the election, these same politicians could not pivot fast enough. Universal vaccination suddenly (and justifiably) became the mantra of the new administration. Unfortunately, some people seemed not to heed the volte-face, and the seeds of doubt planted last fall have borne fruit in the form of vaccine hesitancy. This is by no means an indictment of the vaccines. Rational people with no medical reason to hesitate should undoubtedly be taking the shot. The vaccines may not pose zero risk, but they are extremely safe; and for almost everyone, the risks of contracting COVID-19 are far, far greater, and prevention offers the added “bonus” of avoiding “long COVID” symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, and loss of taste or smell, that persist in between 10% and 30% of those who recover from even mild cases.

U.S. In More Trouble Than At Any Time In Its History

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/02/u-s-in-more-trouble-than-at-any-time-in-its-history/

Candidate Joe Biden said last October that we were nearing the “most important election of our lifetime.” He was right. What made it so crucial was keeping him out of the White House.

President Joe Biden is visibly exhausted. His mental decline that began long before the 2020 election appears to have now gone straight over a cliff. The first seven months of his term have depleted him so thoroughly that the toll taken by eight years of the modern presidency look mild in comparison.

His errors and poor judgment continue and compound. Never in possession of an abundance of sound thinking, he’s been drained of what little wisdom he ever had. And he’s only going to get worse.

Biden’s record of failure is well-documented. He’s been a train wreck in progress for decades. Just added to his resume of misery is the ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan where Americans have been murdered and abandoned; historic inflation that threatens economic growth; a workforce that feels work is optional; dire conditions in which businesses can’t find enough workers; an open wound on our southern border; and a greenlighting of terrorism both in the U.S. and abroad.

President Ice Cream has also caused further political and social division, increased gasoline prices through perverse energy policies, and forsaken allies while inviting enemies and rogues to test American resolve. Given that his handlers often call a lid on his workdays before afternoon tea, he’s often been able to make a hash of things before lunch.

Almost Four Decades After Its Birth, The Diversity Industry Thrives on Its Own Failures by Heather Mac Donald

https://quillette.com/2021/07/12/almost-four-decades-after-its-birth-the-diversity-industry-thrives-on-its-own-failures/

JULY 2021

Campus diversity advocates have pulled off their greatest coup to date: They have declared “diversity” to be a freestanding academic discipline, thus injecting their bureaucracy-heavy apparatus into the very heart of the academic enterprise. As of this month, Bentley University, a business-oriented liberal arts school in Waltham, Mass., will offer a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Sciences degree in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). By all accounts, this is the first undergraduate major dedicated to churning out more diversity bureaucrats and consultants. It will not be the last.

The BA track in DEI studies will prepare students for non-profit and community-based work by focusing on “theoretical approaches to social justice,” according to Bentley. The “sciences” track emphasizes the “importance of DEI in organizational strategy,” for students heading into the private sector.

Designing the new major was relatively easy, and would be easily replicable at other schools, its architects said. Bentley created just one new “foundational” course, while repackaging Bentley’s existing social justice-themed offerings under the DEI banner. “You may be surprised to find that your campus is already well on its way to forming a DEI major,” said sociologist Gary David. That is an understatement. Bentley is relatively conservative compared to other liberal arts colleges, yet was already awash in courses such as “Race and Racism in U.S. History” and “Gender and the Law.”

Bentley offers pragmatic justifications for this new academic field. The diversity-consulting business is white hot, having been turbocharged by the death of George Floyd. Any large corporation that had not yet hired an in-house diversity manager rushed to correct that omission in 2020. Other firms, already supplied with internal inclusion specialists, brought in outside diversity outfits to double down on their efforts to root out their own institutional racism.

“Diversity and inclusion roles have increased 71% globally over the last five years, with median salaries ranging from $84,000 to $126,000,” notes a Bentley communications staffer. “The racial justice movement has further accelerated demand, and industry experts predict continued exponential growth well into the future.” And Bentley’s newly minted diversity graduates will be well-positioned to meet what the school describes as “this burgeoning business need.”

Welcome to Cold War II by Ari David Blaff

https://quillette.com/2021/09/01/welcome-to-cold-war-ii/

In early June, with little fanfare or press coverage, the US Senate passed a 2,400-page bill called “The United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).” Heralded as “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades,” the bill will pump over $200 billion into a diverse spectrum of R&D initiatives over the next five years with the sole purpose of bolstering “competitiveness against China.”

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the alarming extent of America’s dependence on foreign countries. Nowhere was this more apparent or more dire than in the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as medical masks. “Medical supply chains that span oceans and continents,” note Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman in an article for PBS Frontline, “are the fragile lifelines between raw materials and manufacturers overseas, and healthcare workers on COVID-19 front lines in the US. As link after link broke, the system fell apart.” Mendoza and Linderman’s joint coverage of the issue followed a months-long investigation and reveals just how vulnerable America allowed itself to become. As the world turned inwards and borders began to close, complex global supply chains were paralyzed. Locked-down countries had entire industrial sectors knocked out at the very moment they were most needed. It wasn’t until February 2020, nearly three months after COVID-19 cases began to appear, that China restarted its medical factories.

This, as it turned out, was a problem unknown to many Americans. Even prior to the coronavirus, China manufactured well over half of the world’s masks. It has since “expanded production nearly 12-fold since then,” Keith Bradsher and Liz Alderman report in the New York Times. Moreover, China “bought up much of the rest of the world’s supply,” importing 56 million respirators and masks following the January lockdown in Wuhan. China’s medical dominance also accounts for over 60 percent of global antibiotics and sedative exports.

China—like any country—looked after its own citizens first. Rushing to contain COVID-19 domestically, medical supplies leaving the country shrank overnight. In February 2020, the Associated Press found a 55 percent drop in N95 imports to America as well as a 40 percent decline in hand sanitizer and swab imports. “The critical shortage of medical supplies across the US, including testing swabs, protective masks, surgical gowns and hand sanitizer, can be tied to a sudden drop in imports, mostly from China,” Mendoza and Linderman wrote in March 2020.

Once the scale of the pandemic and the importance of basic medical supplies became clear, many countries adopted a “Beggar Thy Neighbour” approach reminiscent of the Great Depression, scrambling to protect themselves at the expense of others. It wasn’t only China looking after its own interests; American allies including South Korea, India, Taiwan, France, and the United Kingdom all imposed export restrictions on a host of coronavirus-related products. The US was no different. President Trump invoked the Korean War-era Defence Production Act and demanded that 3M halt exports of N95 masks to Canada and Latin America.

Biden Job Approval Underwater in Most Swing States Amid Afghanistan Fallout By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-job-approval-underwater-in-most-swing-states-amid-afghanistan-fiasco/

According to a new national poll conducted by Civiqs, President Joe Biden’s job approval rating is underwater in most swing states. The military withdrawal and chaotic civilian evacuation from Afghanistan overseen by Biden left the country in Taliban control and led to the deaths of 13 American soldiers and countless Afghans.

In six hotly contested battlegrounds during the 2020 election — namely Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas — Biden’s approval rating is underwater by ten or more percentage points.

In Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin too, more Americans disappointed in, rather than satisfied with, Biden’s job performance, but by a single digit margin. Biden beat Trump in each of these states in 2020.

Biden’s net approval rating has dropped from a positive five percent when he assumed office in January to negative eight percent in August, Civiqs calculated.

Some American Students Can Only Spell F-a-i-l-u-r-e By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/31/some_american_students_can_only_spell_f-a-i-l-u-r-e_791974.html

The U.S. Department of State is giving $275,000 in grants to organizations in Bolivia and Guatemala to teach people English.

The United States has a vested interest in having more people around the world speak English and the $100,000 for Bolivia and $175,000 for Guatemala isn’t exorbitant. However, many students in America can’t pass remedial reading tests.

The national average for fourth graders in public schools in 2019 is having 65% of students reading at or above basic levels and 34% at or above proficient.

Not exactly a high bar, students in 28 states test above the national average.

That includes in New York, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island, where 66% of students read at or above basic levels and in Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina and Indiana, where 67% of students read at or above basic levels.

The lowest levels of basic reading skills are seen in Alaska and New Mexico (53%), Louisiana (55%), Washington D.C. (57%), Alabama (58%), West Virginia (60%), and Texas, South Carolina, and Arizona (61%).

No state tops 45% of fourth graders reading at or above proficient.

Alaska, New Mexico, Louisiana and Alabama all have below 30% of their fourth graders reading at proficient levels.

Eighth graders fared better, with the national average being 72% of eight-grade students reading at or above basic levels. The national average for proficient dropped to 32%.

While 32 states have eight-grade students reading above the national “basic” average, only one state, Massachusetts, enters the 80 range (81%). Again, no states exceed 45% of students reading at proficient levels.

It should be an embarrassment that American children are struggling in reading.

NPR Trashes Free Speech. A Brief Response In an irony only public radio could miss, “On the Media” hosts an hour on the perils of “free speech absolutism” without interviewing a defender of free speech. Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/npr-trashes-free-speech-a-brief-response

The guests for NPR’s just-released On The Media episode about the dangers of free speech included Andrew Marantz, author of an article called, “Free Speech is Killing Us”; P.E. Moskowitz, author of “The Case Against Free Speech”; Susan Benesch, director of the “Dangerous Speech Project”; and Berkeley professor John Powell, whose contribution was to rip John Stuart Mill’s defense of free speech in On Liberty as “wrong.”

That’s about right for NPR, which for years now has regularly congratulated itself for being a beacon of diversity while expunging every conceivable alternative point of view.

I always liked Brooke Gladstone, but this episode of On The Media was shockingly dishonest. The show was a compendium of every neo-authoritarian argument for speech control one finds on Twitter, beginning with the blanket labeling of censorship critics as “speech absolutists” (most are not) and continuing with shameless revisions of the history of episodes like the ACLU’s mid-seventies defense of Nazi marchers at Skokie, Illinois.

The essence of arguments made by all of NPR’s guests is that the modern conception of speech rights is based upon John Stuart Mill’s outdated conception of harm, which they summarized as saying, “My freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose.”

Because, they say, we now know that people can be harmed by something other than physical violence, Mill (whose thoughts NPR overlaid with harpsichord music, so we could be reminded how antiquated they are) was wrong, and we have to recalibrate our understanding of speech rights accordingly.

This was already an absurd and bizarre take, but what came next was worse. I was stunned by Marantz and Powell’s take on Brandenburg v. Ohio, our current legal standard for speech, which prevents the government from intervening except in cases of incitement to “imminent lawless action”:

MARANTZ: Neo-Nazi rhetoric about gassing Jews, that might inflict psychological harm on a Holocaust survivor, but as long as there’s no immediate incitement to physical violence, the government considers that protected… The village of Skokie tried to stop the Nazis from marching, but the ACLU took the case to the Supreme Court, and the court upheld the Nazis’ right to march.