RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s what? ten? no, eleven days since the attacks in Spain that left 14 people dead in Barcelona plus one woman in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils. For once there wasn’t even the pretense that this was a “lone wolf” terrorist. It was an extremely large cell, organized by an imam called Abdelbaki es Satty, who prematurely self-detonated the night before when he and his conspirators accidentally blew up the house they’d filled with TATP.

I thought these novel aspects might hold the attention of the media. The imam/cell leader would seem to belie the view of the US National Security Advisor H R McMaster that Muslim terrorists who commit terror in the name of Islam do so out of “ignorance” of their faith – a view so fiercely held by Mr McMaster that it has resulted in the systematic cleansing from the White House of all those who dissent therefrom. And had Imam es Satty managed to get the TATP into the back of the van the death toll would have been many times higher.

But he didn’t, so it wasn’t. And fifteen dead on a glamorous and glittering European boulevard at the height of the tourist season now barely rates a #JeSuisWhatever hashtag, never mind an all-star pop concert with an audience of sorrowful, tilty-headed locals promising that no matter how often you blow us up we won’t change – by, say, adopting a less tilty-headed and sorrowful expression. The imam’s plan – to destroy the spectacular landmark church of the Sagrada Família – is oddly similar to the plot of Brad Thor’s new thriller, Use of Force, where the equivalent Spanish target is the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Indeed, the imam’s van driver has the same name as Mr Thor’s key plotter: Younes. But what’s thrilling in a thriller in now just the humdrum background music of real life in the new Europe.

So Barcelona came and went before I had a chance to write about it. So did Finland. You don’t remember that one? No imams, no TATP. Just a lone stabber going full Allahu Akbar in a shopping mall in Turku. Two women dead, eight injured. As it happens, I was in Turku last year, driving up the west coast of Finland all the way to Kemi, a somewhat unprepossessing burg at the top of the Bay of Bothnia, where I’d had an extensive conversation, in the pedestrian shopping arcade, with an elderly “refugee” in a dingy dishdash. And I’d intended to write something about how absurd it was that clothing designed for the deserts of Araby was now a not unfamiliar sight in southern Lapland, in a town that’s more or less the last stop before Santa’s Grotto.

But ten stabbing victims in Finland barely makes the papers at all: Foot-of-page-27 “News in Brief” stuff. Just the umpteenth confused fellow acting out of “ignorance” of his religion. If only H R McMaster had become a bigshot ayatollah and opened a seminary in Qom or Cairo, all this “ignorance” could have been avoided.

There was more “ignorance” afoot in Europe last night. On the boulevard Émile Jacqmain in the heart of Brussels a Somali was shot dead after yelling “Allahu Akbar” and taking his machete to a bunch of soldiers, and Buckingham Palace was reported to be in “lockdown” after another guy with another machete and another cry of “Allahu Akbar” took on another security detail. As A A Milne put it:

They’re stabbing the guard at Buckingham Palace
Christopher Mahmoud went down to kill Alice…

Lest you detect a pattern of behavior here, the Palace perp is reported to be “a 26-year-old man from Luton”. The Brussels stabber is not from Luton. So no general conclusions can be drawn: It’s not like Charlottesville, where one Caucasian in an automobile is an indictment of the entirety of American history necessitating the demolition of Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore.

The Queen is older than almost all those around her, certainly older than her guards and the 26-year-old Lutonians lunging at them with machetes. And she must occasionally reflect that not so long ago one didn’t hear words like “machete” and “lockdown” in connection with Buckingham Palace: “baldachin”, “porte-cochère” certainly; but not “lockdown”. Yet, if such thoughts should rise unbidden in one’s mind, it is prudent to suppress them. Consider the cautionary tale of Sarah Champion, Member of Parliament for Rotherham and spokesperson for “Women and Equalities” in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. Ms Champion penned a column for The Sun earlier this month:

Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.

There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?

This is the first installment of a small RealClearWorld series on the crisis in Venezuela. The views expressed are the author’s own.

Left-wing commentators are struggling to come to grips with Venezuela’s economic collapse. In early August, Stanford University professor Terry Lynn Karl joined the chorus claiming that falling oil prices are the problem. It’s true that the price of oil fell from around $100 per barrel in 2014 to around $50 in 2017. But socialist policies exacerbated the oil crisis and created the poverty we see in Venezuela today.

Free market societies are less affected by falling commodity prices, in part because their wealth does not rely on raw materials. Hong Kong and Singapore are two of the wealthiest economies in the world, with a 2016 gross domestic product per capita of $57,676 and $84,821, respectively.

What turned these resource-barren spits of land into thriving metropolises, with bustling commerce and a prosperous middle class? Economic freedom. It takes an average of just two days to start a company in Hong Kong — three in Singapore. Singapore has one business per 350 people, which means competitive enterprises constantly vie for consumers’ money with innovations and excellent service. Both economies encourage investment and trade, which allows consumers and businesses to benefit from the wealth and ideas of other nations.

According to the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World: 2016 Annual Report,” Hong Kong and Singapore are the two most free economies on earth. As the Fraser economists note, “countries with institutions and policies more consistent with economic freedom have higher investment rates, more rapid economic growth, higher income levels, and a more rapid reduction in poverty rates.” Free markets encourage trade, entrepreneurship, and investment, which create wealth.

By contrast, the poorest economies in the world are characterized by oppressive government intervention. In 2014, the 40 least economically free nations had an average per capita GDP of $5,471 (in 2011 dollars). Compare that to $41,228 for the freest 40 nations. Abundant natural resources cannot make up for a lack of freedom. Iran has over 150 billion barrels of oil reserves but is one of the 10 least economically free nations in the world. Price controls and industry subsidies crippled their economy for decades, and the government strictly limits access to financing for business. Iran’s GDP per capita in 2014, before oil prices fell, was just $6,007.

In Venezuela’s case, a government takeover of the oil industry reduced supply, sowing the seeds of future impoverishment. The oil industry was nationalized in 1976, but, wary of the mismanagement and corruption of other nationalized oil companies like Pemex, Venezuela let Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) operate as a mostly private company with decision-making freedom and competent business managers.

When Hugo Chavez took power in 1999, he curtailed this freedom. Chavez closed Venezuela’s oil fields to foreign investment and stopped reinvesting oil proceeds in the company. He fired 18,000 workers at PDVSA, replacing professional oil employees with inept but politically loyal workers. Bids started taking months longer to complete as staff kept changing their technical specifications. Fatal accidents and fires became more common, because Chavez’ yes-men didn’t understand how to safely run an oil refinery. PDVSA middle managers required Rolex bribes to schedule meetings.

Chavez pushed for a natural gas pipeline from Venezuela to Brazil. According to Luis Giusti, who competently ran the pre-Chavez PDVSA, this would, “bring gas that does not exist to markets that do not exist.”

Predictably, oil production collapsed: The Washington Post notes that production fell 25 percent from 1999 to 2013. PDVSA made its decisions based on politics rather than the needs of consumers, and output plummeted as a result.

Had Chavez instead privatized the oil industry, Venezuela would have enjoyed more oil, delivered more efficiently, and would have suffered less waste and corruption. When China privatized its agriculture industry, agricultural yields increased. In a working paper for the World Bank, economists Sunita Kikeri and John Nellis explain that privatization improves performance. When private companies compete and innovate, they can reduce waste and more efficiently manage resources to create more value.

WASHINGTON—A grand jury in the U.S. capital has issued indictments for 19 people, including 15 identified as Turkish security officials, who are accused of attacking protesters in May.

The indictments, announced Tuesday, charge the defendants with attacking peaceful demonstrators who were protesting the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Washington on May 17.

All 19 are charged with conspiracy to commit a crime of violence, a felony punishable by a statutory maximum of 15 years in prison. Several face additional charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

Sixteen of the defendants had already been charged in June; Tuesday’s indictment adds three new defendants, all Turkish security officials.

Two of the defendants were arrested in June and face an initial court hearing on Sept. 7. The rest remain at large.

While taking money from Swiss taxpayers, Abu Ramadan, a well-known Salafist, called for the introduction of Sharia law in Switzerland and urged Muslims to avoid integrating into Swiss society. He also said that Muslims who commit crimes in Switzerland should not be subject to Swiss laws.

“This scandal is so huge that it is difficult to believe. Imams who preach hate towards Christians and Jews, and who criticize the depravity of the West, are granted asylum and are living comfortably as refugees on social welfare. All this with the complicity of cowardly and incompetent authorities who give carte blanche to the complacent and naive assistants of the asylum and social welfare system.” — Adrian Amstutz, Swiss parliamentarian.

City officials in Lund remain undeterred: They have launched a pilot project aimed at providing Swedish jihadists who are returning from Syria with housing, employment, education and other financial support — all thanks to the Swedish taxpayers.

A Libyan imam who called on Allah to “destroy” all non-Muslims received more than $600,000 in welfare payments from the Swiss government, according to the Swiss broadcaster SRF.

Abu Ramadan arrived in Switzerland in 1998 and was granted asylum in 2004 after claiming that the Libyan government was persecuting him for his affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, Ramadan has collected 600,000 Swiss Francs ($620,000) in social welfare payments, according to SRF.

Although Ramadan has lived in Switzerland for nearly 20 years, he can barely speak French or German, and has never held a steady job. Ramadan, 64, will soon be entitled to receive a Swiss state pension.

While taking money from Swiss taxpayers, Ramadan, a well-known Salafist, called for the introduction of Sharia law in Switzerland and urged Muslims to avoid integrating into Swiss society. He also said that Muslims who commit crimes in Switzerland should not be subject to Swiss laws. In a sermon Ramadan recently preached at a mosque near Bern, he said:

“Oh, Allah, I ask you to destroy the enemies of our religion, destroy the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the Russians and the Shiites. God, I ask you to destroy them all and to return to Islam its ancient glory.”

Saïda Keller-Messahli, a Swiss-Tunisian human rights activist, said that Ramadan is dangerous because of his opposition to Muslim integration: “This is someone who does not call directly to jihad but creates the mental breeding ground for it.”

Adrian Amstutz, a federal parliamentarian, blamed the situation on Swiss multiculturalism:

“This scandal is so huge that it is difficult to believe. Imams who preach hate towards Christians and Jews, and who criticize the depravity of the West, are granted asylum and are living comfortably as refugees on social welfare. All this with the complicity of cowardly and incompetent authorities who give carte blanche to the complacent and naive assistants of the asylum and social welfare system.”

Beat Feurer, a municipal counselor in Biel, the Swiss town where Ramadan has lived for 20 years, called on Swiss authorities to open an investigation: “Personally, I am of the opinion that such people have nothing to do here. They should be expelled.”

The Ramadan scandal is being repeated in countries across Europe, where potentially thousands of violent and non-violent jihadists are using welfare payments to finance their activities. A guide for jihadists in the West — “How to Survive in the West” — issued by the Islamic State in 2015 advised: “If you can claim extra benefits from a government, then do so.”

In Austria, more than a dozen jihadists collected welfare payments to finance their trips to Syria. Among those detained was Mirsad Omerovic, 32, an extremist Islamic preacher who police say raised several hundred thousand euros for the war in Syria. Omerovic, a father of six who lives exclusively off the Austrian welfare state, benefited from additional payments for paternity leave.

In Belgium, several of the jihadists in the Brussels and Paris attacks that killed 162 people in 2015 and 2016 received more than €50,000 ($59,000) in social welfare benefits, which they used to finance their terror plots. Fred Cauderlier, a spokesman for the Belgian prime minister, defended the payments: “This is a democracy. We have no tools to check how people spend their benefits.”

In Flemish Brabant and Brussels alone, dozens of jihadists who fought in Syria received at least €123,898 ($150,000) in unlawful benefits, according to the Justice Ministry.

The government of Iraq as well as the internationally recognized Syrian government in exile sounded the alarm about negotiations between the coalition of Hezbollah and the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State that allowed safe passage to more than 300 ISIS terrorists.

The agreement between the parties, following a Sunday ceasefire between Lebanese government forces and the Hezbollah-Assad forces, allowed ISIS fighters to get on tour buses that shipped them and their families from the Syria-Lebanon border to Deir ez-Zor province southeast of Raqqa. The final destination, the Associated Press reported, where they were traveling today and where housing was being prepared, was Al-Bukamal — a mere 13-minute drive from the Iraq border crossing.

In return, ISIS pointed to the burial location of several Lebanese soldiers kidnapped by the terror group in 2014. Bodies have been located and DNA tests are being conducted on the remains.

ISIS documents found in Qalamoun indicated that some of the fighters there were from Chechnya. Syrian state media released images of a fleet of air-conditioned tour buses waiting to load up with jihadists.

“Honestly speaking, we are unhappy and consider it incorrect,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told reporters. “Transferring terrorists from Qalamoun to the Iraqi-Syrian border is worrying and an insult to the [Iraqi] people.”

“There must be no chance for Daesh to breath,” the Iraqi leader added.

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah claimed in a Monday televised address that ISIS “had asked for a ceasefire in order to negotiate, something that was out of question for us, but as Daesh found itself cornered it surrendered and collapsed — they had no choice but to accept our terms.”

“We have made a deal to which we must commit; we do not stab in the back and we do not betray,” he said of the pact.

The Lebanese military wasn’t so quick to declare ISIS flushed out of their territory, noting the need to clear affected areas and ensure ISIS didn’t leave mines behind.

According to pro-Assad Al-Masdar News, Nasrallah said ISIS was “made by the western intelligence services to serve Israel, and they fought for the sake of the Israeli scheme and the U.S. hegemony.”

Hezbollah began sending fighters to aid Assad in 2012, after the Arab Spring revolution began. CONTINUE AT SITE

This tale of Islamoprivilege comes to us from sunny Australia.

Justice Roslyn Atkinson had asked for information on prison conditions during the sentencing Muhumed Samow Ali, a Somali-born man accused of trying to kill his partner with a machete in 2015.

More accurately, he was convicted of it.

He drove his car head-on into his former partner’s vehicle near a train station and struck her in the head with a machete as she tried to flee.

Here’s how bad the attack really was.

Crown prosecutor Sarah Farnden showed the jury a photograph of the woman’s cut to the back of her head.

“It was 6 centimetres in length, it went through a head covering that she was wearing, a hijab, it went to the bone,” Ms Farnden said.

The court heard how after 7:30am on September 10, 2015, the woman was driving home from the train station when the accused drove head on into her car.

He then got out and grabbed the machete from his car, while the woman ran down the street screaming for help.

The prosecutor said the woman recalled being struck on the back of the head and the shoulder and fell to the ground.

Ms Farnden said the attack ended with the “intervention of a number of neighbours who threw items at him” and used “wheelie bins to push him away”.

“It relates to an attack on a completely vulnerable women, it relates to an attack where she is struck on the head and she is struck repeatedly on the back while she lay face down, defenceless on the ground,” Mr Power said.

Members of the Somali community were also in court, supporting the accused, who has an interpreter.

Of course they were. They always do. And he blamed PTSD.

Prior to his sentencing the court has been told Ali suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder related to horrific experiences in Somalia before he came to Australia as a refugee.

Don’t they all. They’re just poor traumatized refugees. With a bad habit of grabbing a machete and hacking away at people.

On the safe side, let’s avoid bringing in anyone from Somalia with traumatic experiences. They might be suffering from PTSD.

But the Somali Muslim refugee has found a sympathetic judge.

His lawyer, Ben Power, said he also had problems observing his religion in jail.

“The situation is there are also very few Muslims in jail; he has real problems with the food in the jail … Ramadan is very difficult because they don’t make allowances for fasting so he has to store up his food in order to eat it after dusk or dawn in order to observe Ramadan,” Mr Power said.

“He says he is often taunted during his required prayers.”

Taunted? That’s almost as bad as taking a machete to your ex-girlfriend’s head while she’s lying on the ground until it reaches the bone.

She said English lessons should also be investigated for Ali “so he is not so isolated”.

We wouldn’t want the psychotic monster to feel isolated. And in ten years, when he’s allowed to rejoin society, he should be able to speak English. How else is he supposed to buy his next machete?

So many are afraid to state the obvious, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.

After the La Rambla atrocity I hoped, although not with much conviction, that the Spanish might do more than engage in yet another resolute clenching of the collective jaw we have seen so often across Europe. I was right, sort of, because Spanish police did a very efficient job of first shooting dead the Islamists, but then it was back to the Continental norm – flowers piled on the site of the latest massacre, candles lit, cuddly toys for the dubious comfort of the dead. Oh, and resolute words, always those vows and pledges never to “let the terrorists win”, as countless politicians have said while the cameras roll. Quite likely they will have grabbed the nearest tame imam to stand beside them for the obligatory photo op. Perhaps someone is playing Imagine in the background.

And after that? To be blunt, nothing. The boatloads of illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East keep coming, with nary the hint of consensus that a slow-motion invasion needs to be stopped, let alone how this might be achieved. Indeed, the exact opposite. When Poland and other nations swear they will not have their cultures overrun, they are denounced as Islamophobes and bigots. With few exceptions, that’s the pathetic extent of fearful Europe’s resolve in the face of terror.

Nobody seems to notice that terrorists could not care less about the immediate reactions of the societies they are changing and squeezing every day, the societies whose liberties and freedoms are being constricted in the name of security. It is a sure bet they are not intimidated in the least by Teddy bears and wreaths on blood-stained pavements. What future victims do immediately after the body parts and dead children are scraped off the streets does not matter to future killers. What does matter is that their targets are afraid, softened up for future submission.

Fear is the weapon of Islamic Terror International. It does not have color or texture, one cannot touch it or see it. One can smell it, though, the sickly, hopeless, constant whiff of unarmed helplessness. Cattle in the abattoir’s holding pen must catch the same scent. This fear is all-pervasive, shaped and crafted by the human bombs and van attackers to percolate through the interstices of our lives, our thoughts, our behavior. It works, too. How many AFL fans heading for the MCG will be thinking the shuffling lines outside the ground make perfect targets — queues waiting for the bag checks, wandings and pat-downs that Islam’s shock troops have made ubiquitous.

This fear pervades our public discourse, just as intended, clouding our responses, our plans and actions — and it is an incredibly cost-effective weapon against our freedoms. This fear is easy to introduce, debilitating in the extreme, insidiously corrosive and easy to pump up to saturation point. It distorts perceptions and inverts logic. Aggressive, intolerant Islam is the reason our malls and public spaces are dotted with bollards, why we are now asked to arrive at the airport a full and inconvenient two hours before flights. Yet what do our leaders tell us? Why, that the greater problem is Islamophobia! We’ve heard it all so often: “exclusion”, “marginalisation”, “disempowerment”, fear of “the other”.

That fear, it has many faces. So many are afraid to state the obvious loud and clear, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.

The recent massacres in the UK, France and Spain confirm that terror has become simple and cheap. Rather than the immense planning that must go into hijacking aeroplanes and flying them into tall buildings, knives and motor vehicles are the latest keys to martyrdom, paradise and the eternal orgasm with those 72 virgins.

This change in terror’s tools and tactics creates additional difficulties for law enforcement agencies by its unpredictability and lethal simplicity. Any Tom, Dick or Harry (or rather, Mohammad, Mahamad or Mohamet) with a cheap kitchen knife or a rented minivan can become a champion of Islam’s glory. In their personal fight against the infidel rest of us — the Dar al-Harb, the House of War by Islamist designation — the killing of kafirs is a sanctified pastime. Allah’s warriors make no distinction between Jews, Christians or Hindus, men or women, children or the aged, and it is working for them. It took just one man and six pistol shots to ignite Europe’s tinder box and start World War One. A sustained terror campaign ultimately led to the October Revolution. Arab hijackers and the Munich murderers of Israeli athletes were stepping stones on the path to a Palestinian state. Terror is effective because it infests entire societies with existential fear, thus destabilizing them. Even those terror campaigns which failed to achieve their political goals because they were vigorously opposed – here I think of the IRA and Tamil Tigers – achieved measures of success by imposing enormous costs on the societies they targeted.

I often compare Islamist tactics with those of the Communist USSR. While differing ideologically, both are similar in their aims and ways of achieving them. Both are messianic in their outlooks, convinced against all the evidence that their way of life and belief is superior to any other and, as such, will inevitably by adopted by all mankind, willingly or not.

In this context, the changes Muslim immigration and associated terror brought to the West deserve to be examined. The low-skilled and poorly educated migrants came from failed or barely functional, poverty stricken societies often torn by religious conflicts and further complicated by their endemic corruption. Many were traumatized by their experiences of living in what amount to semi-feudal states. The backgrounds of these immigrants have virtually nothing in common with the Judeo-Christian culture of the West, especially in their rejection of religious tolerance. If pervasive, open and vicious anti-Semitism is not enough, an aggressive and often violent Sunni/Shia schism will always be alive and well.

As an aside, I find it grimly amusing to see Muslim clerics from countries with no histories of religious tolerance become sudden and ardent advocates of interfaith dialogue and universal brotherhood as soon as they arrive in Australia. When invited to Kirribilli to break the taxpayer’s bread with a prime minister hot for a multiculti photo-op, subsequent revelations that among his feted guests were would-be executioners of homosexuals and sexually active unmarried women are seemingly of no importance. Apparently it is only native Australians who can be hateful bigots. Sit tight and Waleed Aly will soon produce a column lamenting the racism and intolerance of those who baulk at “cultural differences”.

Palestinian Media Watch stated that “FIFA has a clear double standard when responding to violations of its statutes. PMW has reviewed hundreds of decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) (the highest court for sport) and has learned that FIFA and the football community act forcefully to punish even minor violations when committed by other football clubs or even their fans. Yet the PFA’s and Rajoub’s racism and terror promotion, all serious violations, are being ignored by FIFA.”

Swift action must be taken to remove Jibril Rajoub from his posts, and the Palestinian Authority needs to be pressured to replace him with someone whose passion for sports and sportsmanship exceeds that of his lust for Jewish blood. If this is not undertaken, FIFA should oust the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) from its ranks.

The same applies to the International Olympic Committee, which has a duty to remain true to its mission — “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” It has to threaten the Palestinian Olympic Committee that it will be ousted unless it rids itself of dangerous radicals such as Rajoub.

In its latest violation of the International Olympic Committee’s Code of Ethics in particular and the spirit of sports in general, Palestinian boxer Sultan Abu Al-Haj recently forfeited a match because it was against an Israeli — Druze contender, Amit Madah.

When asked recently by an interviewer on official Palestinian Authority television why he had “refused” to compete in the August 8, 2017 match at the Youth Muaythai World Championships in Bangkok, Abu Al-Haj replied:

“I didn’t make the decision. It’s my coaches and the [Palestinian] Olympic Committee that made the decision, and as an athlete, I cannot oppose them…The decision was reached that it is forbidden to compete with [Israelis] because it’s beneath my dignity and dishonorable to compete with them and recognize them [sic] the State of Israel.”

The Palestinian Olympic Committee (POC) is headed by Fatah Central committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, a senior Palestinian Authority (PA) leader. As the research organization Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented extensively, Rajoub — who also heads the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) — does not use sports as a means to building bridges or establishing peaceful relations between the PA and Israel, but rather as an additional tool to demonize the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

CNN International, which is widely watched in the Muslim world, has not been fair to the American position in the current clash between Islam and the West and Israel. Western media have a strong presence in the Middle East but refuse to bring much needed enlightenment to the Muslim public, and explain that the West has a legitimate right to self-defense against Islamic jihadist terrorism. As a result, the majority of Muslims in the Middle East, and many in the West, have no clue why America is in Afghanistan and why Syria is a huge security threat to Western nations.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, Islamic propaganda told Muslims that the US was intentionally poisoning its humanitarian food supplies in order to hurt the Afghani people. My own cousin, who received a good education in Cairo, called during the Afghan war to ask, “Why is the US poisoning Afghanis?”

It is hard for the Western mind to understand why the Muslim leadership and media are frantically trying to keep the public hostile and misinformed as to why the US is in Afghanistan. It is because the truth about violent jihad against the West launched from Afghanistan must be hidden and protected. There is an Islamic law that commands every Muslim head of state to conduct jihad and never abandon that sacred Islamic duty. Sharia dictates that leaders who refuse to conduct and support jihad must be removed from office. Such uncompromising Sharia laws regarding jihad imposed on Muslim heads of states are ignored and not taken seriously by Western leaders and the media.

It was refreshing to hear President Donald J. Trump define without reservation a US mission to fight terrorism and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, or any other terror groups, when he summarized the US presence in Afghanistan as no longer about nation-building, but rather about “killing terrorists.”

Many Americans, however, are still confused regarding our mission in Afghanistan. This is mainly because the media in general did little to keep the public informed of the complexities of the Middle East and to stay focused on why, after 9/11, the US needed to destroy the safe havens of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Reporting on Afghanistan — not just in the Arab media but also, unfortunately, by many in the US media – often appeared to portray America as the aggressor. That was perhaps a factor in why President George W. Bush overcompensated by including “nation-building” as part of the US mission in Afghanistan. Even though nation-building worked brilliantly in Japan, Germany and South Korea, it unfortunately has failed so far in Muslim nations, which clearly do not want to be “rescued” by infidels.