Elite Afghan forces bring U.S. training to Tehran, according to whistleblower interviews
Elite Afghan soldiers trained by the United States fled to Iran with weapons and specialized combat training following the Biden administration’s bungled withdrawal from the country that let the Taliban regain power, according to a report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee based on interviews with whistleblowers and internal State Department documents.
“A ‘significant’ number of Afghan special forces and about 3,000 Afghan security forces, including high ranking officers, crossed the border into Iran,” according to the report, which was released on Monday to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Some brought military equipment and vehicles with them. We believe this happened because they were not evacuated by the U.S. or our allies, and therefore had no other option.”
These forces were trained in combat by U.S. special operators, in some cases within the United States, and “could be a serious national security threat to the United States if they are captured or turn,” according to the report. They “know not only our tactics but who these elite [U.S.] military officials are.”
The findings detail months of chaos following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and indicate that the tumult in the country has provided an opportunity for regional enemies like Iran to regain a foothold in the war-torn country. Details of Iran’s ties to these U.S. trained fighters comes as new threats from Iran are making headlines across America, with the arrest of an Iranian national who’d put a bounty on former White House national security adviser John Bolton’s head, as well as the attempted murder last week of the novelist Salman Rushdie, who has long faced threats from Iran’s clerical regime.
“The recruitment of former Afghan military and intelligence personnel poses a major national security risk due to the fact these Afghan personnel know the U.S. military and intelligence community’s tactics, techniques, and procedures,” the report concludes.
In addition to the weapons and military equipment these special forces brought with them to Iran, they have an intimate knowledge of the U.S. military and its tactics in the region, know-how that is highly sought after by Iran’s terrorist proxy groups and other jihadi militants.
“These commandos are trained, highly trained, on how we do signals intelligence, how we do human intelligence, how we operate,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran, said in the report. “We know that the Taliban are hunting them down. They are seeking to force them through coercion to hand over that information so that they can use it and they can understand how we operate.”
Beyond Iran, Russia and China are also looking to recruit these forces for their inside knowledge about American military tactics.
“It is possible these former Afghan military and other intelligence personnel could be recruited or coerced into working for one of America’s adversaries that maintains a presence in Afghanistan, including Russia, [and] China,” in addition to Iran, according to the report.
The State Department said in October 2021 that it is aware of the threat posed by Afghan soldiers trained by the United States, though it has done little since then to find them and get them to safety.
“Afghans who possess the knowledge specific to security operations, intelligence collection, other aspects of security and defense forces that if it were to fall into terrorists’ hands would pose a national security risk to the United States, those people will have a special category, I think there is just no way around it,” a senior State Department official quoted in the report told Congress.
The Pentagon was to create a list detailing “critical Afghan personnel that would warrant prioritization in being evacuated.” But, as of February 2022, “the Pentagon list had still not been shared with the State Department Task Force, meaning several months of inactivity with regards to evacuation,” the report disclosed.
Afghan military personnel also do not qualify for the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program that has brought in scores of vulnerable Afghans, the report says. The administration is still only evacuating remaining Americans, green card holders, and pre-approved SIV applicants.
It also has not been made clear if Afghan military members would qualify for refugee status, and, if they did, they would be responsible for getting themselves out of the country without American assistance, according to the report.
The number of Americans stranded in Afghanistan after the evacuation also is far higher than the Biden administration admits. While U.S. officials repeatedly said “about 100” Americans were left in the country after the military left, the State Department is known to have evacuated more than 800 American citizens since Aug. 31, 2021—a number that does not include the scores of Americans evacuated by outside groups.
August 15, 2022, marks one year since the Taliban retook the Afghan capital of Kabul following the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. In that time, Afghanistan has become “a nation in anguish,” Axiosreported.
The Taliban has banned women from attending school, cracked down on the media, and committed mass executions of civilians. Since the terror group took control, the country’s economy has plummeted more than 60 percent, a World Bank report found. The economy and a drought have resulted in about 20 million Afghans going hungry, a U.N. study found.
Joe Biden’s poll numbers began to plunge after he botched the U.S. withdrawal, resulting in the deaths of 13 American service members. Biden’s administration was unprepared for the Taliban’s rapid conquest of Afghanistan following the withdrawal, the Washington Free Beacon reported, even as the president told the American people that the evacuation went off “as designed.”
While the Taliban swore it would not harbor other terrorists, a U.S. drone strike this month killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. The Taliban government condemned the strike.
Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley told the Free Beacon this month that “Afghanistan is once again a safe haven where terrorists operate freely,” blasting Biden’s withdrawal as “a slap in the face” to combat veterans.
WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.
The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.
One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)
In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!
Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.
There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.
The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.
The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”
In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”
Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.
During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”
“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.
“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.
It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”
“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”
Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.
“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”
“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.
“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.
“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.
“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”
Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.
Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.
Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”
Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.
“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”
I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.
Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.
Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.
Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”
“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”
Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.
In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.
“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”
Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”
‘Weaponization of the Justice System’
“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.
Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”
A member of the Secret Service in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.
“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.
“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”
America ‘No Longer Respected’
In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”
Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”
“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.
U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load people being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force via AP)
“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.
“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.
“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”
‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’
Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”
“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.
“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.
“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.
“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.
The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”
Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.
Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.
“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.
Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)
Soaring Inflation, Recession
During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.
Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.
In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.
“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”
Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.
Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.
A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.
Joe Biden gives remarks during a meeting on the economy with CEOs and members of his Cabinet in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on July 28, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Worse Than Recession
In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.
“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.
“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”
During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.
“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.
Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.
During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.
“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.
Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.
Tax Hikes
According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.
This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.
In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.
Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.
“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.
“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.
‘We Have to Win’
During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.
“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.
“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.
“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.
The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.
President Donald Trump said on Aug. 7 that if he returns to the White House in 2025 he’ll rehire the service members who lost their jobs by refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think it’s a disgrace what happened to them,” Trump said, answering a reporter’s question.
Trump was responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday.
“I’d let them back. I’d give back pay,” Trump said. “So I would give them their back pay and I would let them back, and they understand that. They know it.”
Back pay is “a common remedy for wage violations” where “the employer makes up the difference between what the employee was paid and the amount he or she should have been paid,” according to the Department of Labor.
Trump’s comments came weeks after the U.S. army announced plans to cut more than 60,000 guards and reserve soldiers for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.
“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” a July 1 statement on the U.S. Army’s website reads.
More than 19,000 U.S. Army personnel have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, as of July 14, 2022, according to U.S. Army data. The Army approved a total of 24 medical and 19 religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine.
Jan. 6 Pardons
In response to another question, Trump said he’ll “very strongly” consider pardoning nonviolent political prisoners who have been indicted as a result of participating in the January 6 Capitol breach.
“We’ll certainly be looking at it, and very strongly,” Trump said, adding that he has made previous statements about potentially pardoning January 6 political prisoners.
“I think many people are being treated very unfair … having to do with that. And we will be looking at that very strongly,” Trump said. “I think you know the answer.”
The president hinted strongly at but stopped short of announcing a 2024 run.
“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said. He raised the same point in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year, when he said he’s undecided on whether to announce his decision on a 2024 run before or after the midterms.
“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”
“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history“—and the border crisis.
“So we’ll be making an announcement in the not-too-distance future.”
Joe Biden touted the killing of al-Quaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri as a win for his administration on Monday, but experts said he was ignoring some major facts.
“On Saturday, on my direction, the United States successfully concluded an air strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed the emir of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri,” Biden said on Monday.
“You know, Zawahiri was [Osama] bin Laden’s leader. He was with him all the…whole time. He was his number two man, his deputy, at the time of the terrorist attack on 9/11. He was deeply involved in the planning of 9/11.”
The United States has killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, who oversaw the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, alongside the group’s founder, Osama bin Laden, announced Biden. pic.twitter.com/lfX0yY5wDs
Biden went on to tout the killing as the fulfillment of a promise he made to Americans when pulling out of Afghanistan nearly a year ago.
“I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond,” Biden said. “We’ve done just that.”
“I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan…We’ve done just that,” Biden says on the killing of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri nearly one year after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/61fUv6ahZY
While eliminating this terrorist is undoubtedly a positive development for the country, the fact that he was even in Afghanistan highlighted Biden’s previous failures.
In trying to justify his hasty withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan on Aug. 20, 2021, Biden declared al-Qaeda was no longer in Afghanistan.
“Look, let’s put this thing in perspective here,” Biden said according to a White House transcript. “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al-Qaeda gone?
“We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as — as well as getting Osama bin Laden. And we did.”
Of course, Biden’s botched withdrawal ultimately led to the Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan and cost the lives of 13 American soldiers.
Given that the leader al-Quaeda leader was in Afghanistan on Saturday, it seems the group is in the country at this point. This means one of two things, neither of which are good for Biden.
Either Biden was lying when he said al-Quaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan last year, or the group has re-entered the country since Biden’s botched withdrawal. In both scenarios, Biden failed to achieve the stated goal of “getting rid of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”
As Biden celebrated the killing of Zawahiri, some terrorism experts pointed out this inconvenient fact.
“The killing of Al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri will be sold as a counterterrorism success,” Long War Journal terrorism analyst Bill Roggio wrote on Twitter. “But that narrative masks the undeniable truth that Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is a safe have for Al Qaeda.”
1) The killing of Al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri will be sold as a counterterrorism success. But that narrative masks the undeniable truth that Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is a safe have for Al Qaeda. https://t.co/CGc5Fs8oMw
In another tweet from the same thread, Roggio explained the implications of Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul.
“Zawahiri could not operate in Afghanistan — particularly in Kabul — without the consent of the Taliban,” Roggio wrote. “He wasn’t in the remote mountains of Kunar, Nuristan, or Nangarhar, or distant provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, or Kandahar. He was in the Taliban’s capital.”
4) Zawahiri could not operate in Afghanistan – particularly in Kabul – without the consent of the Taliban. He wasn’t in the remote mountains of Kunar, Nuristan, or Nangarhar, or distant provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, or Kandahar. He was in the Taliban’s capital.
International security professor Max Abrahms made a similar point in a tweet of his own.
“Taking out #Zawahiri isn’t the categorical win Biden says,” he wrote. “The Taliban was supposed to prevent Al Qaeda leaders from hiding out there for goodness sake.”
Taking out #Zawahiri isn’t the categorical win Biden says. The Taliban was supposed to prevent Al Qaeda leaders from hiding out there for goodness sake.
Once again, Biden is attempting to take credit for taking steps to solve a problem he created, at least in part. While Zawahiri’s death is a good thing, it is not the end of terrorism problems in Afghanistan, and we have Biden himself to thank for that.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a drone strike was carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday.
In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that a strike took place and strongly condemned it, calling it a violation of “international principles.”
Joe Biden will deliver remarks on Monday at 7:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) on what the White House described as a “successful counter-terrorism operation.”
(Reporting by Idrees Ali. Editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool.)
The U.S. Army announced on July 21 that it has approved just 20 permanent religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine amid thousands of requests.
Out of the 8,000 applications for a permanent religious exemption, a total of 1,465 have been reviewed by the Army. Just 20 have been approved—an approval rate of about 1.37 percent.
All those who had their applications approved were in the active Army. None from the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have received an exemption.
That leaves 6,535 applications for a permanent religious exemption yet to be reviewed by the service.
Meanwhile, the Army has reviewed 1,045 permanent medical exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine, out of 1,100 requests. It has approved just 34 of the requests, which is an approval rate of about 3.25 percent.
“Army officials review each request on an individual basis to determine whether an exemption is appropriate,” the Army stated. “Medical requests are reviewed primarily by healthcare providers, while religious accommodation requests include interviews with the Soldier’s chaplain, recommendations from the chain of command, as well as a public health and a legal review.
“All Soldiers who refuse the order to be vaccinated without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to certain adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to continued service, and official reprimands.
“Soldiers who continue to refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption may also be subject to additional adverse administrative action, including separation.”
Ninety-six percent of the active Army, 88 percent of the Army National Guard, and 90 percent of the Army Reserve are fully vaccinated, according to the military branch’s statistics.
Over 17,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Refusals
More than 17,000 Army troops have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, data indicated. Most of the refusals come from the Army National Guard, where more than 10,700 soldiers have refused to be vaccinated.
Out of 1,425 active Army members who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, 1,379 have been separated; no troops in the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have been separated.
Since July 1, under orders of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, members of the Army National Guard or Army Reserve who have refused the vaccine and don’t have a valid exemption “may not participate in federally funded drills, training, and other duty nor receive payment or retirement credit,” the Army said.
While the Army’s vaccine mandate continues to be in force, the U.S. Air Force has been temporarily blocked from enforcing its vaccine mandate after a federal district court in Ohio issued a temporary restraining order in mid-July. The order prevents Air Force authorities from disciplining any service members who are unvaccinated after having their religious exemption applications denied.
Plaintiffs in the case had contended that the class action suit would include more than 12,000 airmen.
According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, more than 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests, while only 104 have been approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the branch.
Army Facing Personnel Shortfalls
The figures point to a low rate of permanent COVID-19 vaccine exemption approvals from the Army at a time when the service branch forecasts it will have significantly fewer troops than originally planned by the end of fiscal 2023.Members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment deploy to Germany in Savannah, Ga., on March 2, 2022. (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
Army Gen. Joseph Martin, vice chief of staff for the Army, told a House military personnel panel on July 19 that the projection for the estimated total number of troops in the force by the end of the 2022 fiscal year, on Sept. 30, is 466,400—a drop of 6,600 from the original target of 473,000.
He also said that the estimated number of troops for the end of 2023 fiscal year is 445,000 to 452,000, which is 24,000 to 31,000 troops less than the original target of 476,000.
“Right now, what we’re experiencing—the ‘why’ of what we think is going on right now—is we’ve got unprecedented challenges with both a post-COVID-19 environment and labor market, but also private competition with private companies that have changed their incentives over time,” Martin said.
He said the Army can manage to handle personnel shortfalls in the short term, but it could have an impact on readiness if it persists.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of the House Judiciary and Armed Services committees, took to Twitter on July 19 to advocate for the end of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the military, noting the drastic projected reductions in strength for the Army.
“Army Reserve and Army National Guard reductions will be even worse. We must depoliticize the military and end the vaccine mandate,” he said on Twitter.
Johnson in late June accused the Biden administration of having destroyed the Army’s readiness “by creating an unnecessary recruiting and retention shortfall, and trying to make up the difference by lowering other crucial education and fitness standards.”
Vets on Duty chairman Jason Church is ‘laser-focused’ on ‘advocating for a strong national defense’
A coalition of veterans dedicated to strengthening America’s military has been uniformly slammed as racist by their critics. It’s a surprisingly callous take on a group chaired by a Purple Heart recipient who lost both his legs in Afghanistan.
Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army captain, joined with other veterans of the war on terror to ensure the United States retains military supremacy. Their group, Veterans on Duty, is warning that progressive bureaucrats have taken control of the armed forces and are forcing troops to sit through diversity, equity, and inclusion seminars when they should be training for battle. The newly formed nonprofit aims to reverse this trend by recruiting veterans to leadership roles and supporting lawmakers and policies that will help keep the U.S. military battle-ready.
To mark the group’s launch, Church penned a New York Post op-ed laying out these problems and enumerating Veterans on Duty’s proposed solutions. Critics immediately accused him of racism.
The progressive group VoteVets tweeted that Church “makes the same arguments that were made against integration over 70 years ago.” VoteVets, which is chaired by Jon Soltz, who still has both of his legs, has spent tens of millions of dollars backing Democratic candidates, also slammed Church as a “loser congressional candidate.” Church entered a 2020 special congressional election in Wisconsin in an effort to continue serving his country “even though the Taliban took my legs.”
VoteVets CEO Janessa Goldbeck, who also has both of her legs, struck a similarly harsh note, calling Vets on Duty members “assholes” after saying, “50 years ago these people would have been mad about racial integration. Today they are mad about women and LGBT people in the military.”
At no point in Church’s Post piece does he call for the military to exclude soldiers based on race or sexual orientation. But he isn’t surprised by the reaction to Veterans on Duty’s launch.
“The radical left has long used baseless accusations of bigotry to browbeat dissenters as it bends American institutions to its will,” Church told the Washington Free Beacon. “This tired tactic should be ignored. We are laser-focused on our mission of advocating for a strong national defense and combating progressives’ efforts to corrode the military from within.”
As Church points out, that corrosion couldn’t come at a worse time. In his Post piece, he notes that Iran is close to obtaining nuclear weapons, and the Chinese Navy last year “surpassed our own as the world’s largest,” all while Russia is marching its armies through Ukraine.
Members of the media were also quick to criticize Church’s piece.
“I’m just woke enough to say you … are a fucking idiot,” MSNBC pundit Malcom Nance tweeted at Church. Nance, who tweeted “#DealWithIt” after terrorists killed 13 U.S. soldiers outside Kabul Airport in Afghanistan last summer, called Church “another pro-Trump Summer Soldier begging to be given a public paycheck for exhibiting asshattery & beclownment above and beyond the Call of Duty.”
“Just imagine how all these right-wingers would have reacted with horror if they had been around when Harry Truman desegregated the military,” tweeted Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist who has not served in the military. “Now that was woke!”
Jeremy C. Hunt, a black military veteran who serves on Veterans on Duty’s board, quickly rebuffed Boot’s accusation. “We care about a military that wins,” Hunt wrote. “If you want an example of modern segregation in the military, look no further than the Biden administration’s racist DEI protocols that you defend.”
Those protocols include instructional videos that teach Navy cadets how to use gender pronouns, and “gender identity” training for Green Berets, the Free Beacon originally reported.
Still, Boot tells the Free Beacon that he stands by his claim “that the right-wingers who today decry the supposedly ‘woke’ military would have opposed the integration of the military in 1948.”
“How do I know? Because that was the conservative position back then,” said Boot, adding that “this whole ‘Vets on Duty’ exercise looks to be mere partisan politics designed to bash Democrats—not a serious attempt to protect the military.”
Jay Kramer, executive director of Veterans on Duty, says that politics is precisely what puts the military at risk.
“At a time of growing threats to the United States, progressive ideologues are pushing radical policies that undermine the men and women of our military,” Kramer told the Free Beacon. “While out-of-touch commentators focus more on messaging than substance, we are joining with like-minded veterans nationwide to do the hard work to ensure our military remains lethal and effective.”
VoteVets and Goldbeck did not return Free Beacon requests for comment. Nance could not be reached for comment.
ANALYSIS: Does wearing a fancy top hat indoors to conceal your unsightly bald dome make you dumber?
Washington Post columnist Max Boot wears a fancy top hat—indoors and outdoors—to conceal his freakish bald head. It may or may not be making him dumber, given the profoundly stupid tweet he posted while attempting to insult a group of veterans who actually did serve their country in uniform.
“Just imagine how all these right-wingers would have reacted with horror if they had been around when Harry Truman desegregated the military,” Boot wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform. “Now that was woke!”
Boot’s ridiculous and racially charged comment came in response to a New York Postop-ed written by Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army captain. Church argued that our military should focus more on preparing for armed conflict with bad actors around the world and less on embracing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ethos of government bureaucrats.
“The Navy is producing instructional videos on gender pronouns while its poorly maintained ships crash at sea,” wrote Church, citing a Washington Free Beaconreport. He also suggested—quite reasonably—that lowering the military’s physical fitness standards in the name of “inclusivity” was not a good thing. Other changes designed to make the military more “woke,” Church argued, have “weakened training, lowered morale,” and “diminish[ed] the fighting spirit, cohesiveness, and reputation of America’s Armed Forces.”
Boot, who never served in the military but has written several books about war, had responded with the cerebral heft of a Salon commenter, and Church let him know it. “With respect to @MaxBoot, this is beneath you and the Post,” he wrote. “We are right to be worried about politicizing the military and @VeteransOnDuty will voice these concerns. Smugly dismissing this as bigotry is cheap and wrong.”
Church, who joined the Army in 2011 and received a Purple Heart in Afghanistan, is the chairman of Veterans on Duty, a national membership organization dedicated to “exposing how the woke revolution in the services works” and compelling the military to “get back to basics” by electing like-minded policymakers.
Jeremy C. Hunt, a black Army veteran and member of the Veterans on Duty board, also blasted Boot’s smug commentary. “We care about a military that wins,” he wrote in response to Boot’s tweet. “If you want an example of modern segregation in the military, look no further than the Biden administration’s racist [diversity, equity, and inclusion] protocols that you defend.”
Boot attempted to defend himself, once again channeling the intellectual rigor of the Salon comments section. “Diversity makes the military stronger,” he wrote. “Will you criticize Trump as well as Biden?”
Church, Hunt, and their fellow Veterans on Duty members fought for democracy by defending their country against foreign enemies. Boot “fights for democracy” by writing boring columns in the Post.
On Sunday, for example, Boot defended Biden’s meeting with bone-saw dictator Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, whom the president once pledged to make a “pariah” until flip-flopping as soon as rising gas prices threatened Democratic prospects in the midterm elections.
The Ron Paul Institute featured at its conference last month a former United Nations weapons inspector who spent time in jail on child sex charges.
During the June 4 conference, Scott Ritter, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, blasted the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine against Russia’s military invasion in a speech titled “Two-Front War: Biden’s Mouth is Writing Checks the U.S. Military Can’t Cash.”
The former U.N. weapons inspector, who has been arrested at least twice for attempting to solicit underage girls, was convicted of and served jail time for exposing himself online in 2009 to a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. A similar 2001 charge was reportedly dropped after he participated in a pre-trial probation program.
The isolationist think tank’s decision to host a speech by Ritter comes after another non-interventionist group, the Quincy Institute, removed an article written by Ritter from its website following an outcry from social media posters who noted that he was a convicted sex offender.
The Ron Paul Institute, which has been promoting Ritter’s speech on its website and social media, did not respond to a request for comment about its choice to feature a convicted child predator to tee off against the bipartisan effort to aid the embattled Ukrainian government.
It’s not the first time the institute and its namesake founder, former congressman Ron Paul, have partnered with controversial figures as part of a larger effort to promote isolationist policies that help America’s foreign adversaries.
Several of the group’s founding leaders have long-held ties to pro-Kremlin organizations, including a public relations shop created to shore up Vladimir Putin’s image. Paul also claimed the U.S. government had foreknowledge about the Sept. 11 attacks and intentionally let Osama bin Laden remain at large for years to justify foreign wars.
The former congressman also spoke at a conference hosted by a Holocaust denier whose group accused “Zionist billionaires” of “financially raping” the Russian people.
Ritter, a contributor to the Kremlin-funded Russia Today, last year wrote an article for the Quincy Institute that downplayed Russian cyber attacks. The Quincy Institute removed the article after Twitter users raised concerns about Ritter’s sex offender record.
Congressional Republicans want to mandate that any immigrant who applies for a U.S. visa disclose ties they might have to Iran and its terror affiliates, according to legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Those seeking entrance into the United States are not currently asked on immigration forms if they have ties to the hardline Iranian government and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s paramilitary fighting force responsible for orchestrating terror attacks on Americans.
The bill, led by Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) and a coalition of 14 lawmakers affiliated with the House Republican Study Committee (RSC), comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report detailing the Biden administration’s decision to loosen immigration laws so that individuals with known ties to designated terror groups can more easily enter the country. The amended law permits foreigners who provided “insignificant material support” to designated terror groups to receive “immigration benefits or other status.”
“Opening the border to members of a hostile terrorist army violates the Biden administration’s constitutional obligation to protect states from invasion,” Banks said. “Unfortunately, House Democrats have prioritized appeasing Iran above all else.”
Banks and his colleagues say the administration is opening “the floodgate for supporters of IRGC terrorism to enter the United States,” according to an RSC-authored memo circulating among Republican offices on Capitol Hill and obtained by the Free Beacon.
The Republican legislation, called the “Protecting America from IRGC Terrorists Act,” seeks to close these loopholes by mandating that every foreigner applying for a U.S. visa or citizenship disclose any ties to Iran and the IRGC on relevant immigration forms. The Republican coalition says the legislation is particularly important as Iran and its terror proxies actively plot to assassinate current and former U.S. government officials.
“I am shocked that disclosing Iranian and IRGC affiliations was not already a requirement for U.S. visa applications,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R., Mich.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee and one of 15 Republican cosponsors of the bill, told the Free Beacon. “Iran has shown us time and time again that they are no friend of the United States.”
The legislation, which is likely to garner widespread Republican support but stall in the Democrat-controlled House, would force the State and Homeland Security Departments to “ask about an alien’s affiliation with the Iranian state and the IRGC on visa, permanent residency, and naturalization application forms,” according to a full copy of the bill.
“By requiring these carefully crafted questions in our immigration vetting process, the bill aims to strengthen immigration accountability and transparency and provide more data for the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security to better evaluate potential US national security threats,” the RSC wrote in its internal policy brief on the legislation.
The Biden administration made several changes to federal immigration laws late last month that allow individuals who provided “humanitarian assistance” or “routine commercial transactions” to designated terror groups to obtain residence in the United States.
A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon at the time that the changes were made to facilitate the immigration of vulnerable Afghans who may have been forced to work alongside terror groups operating in the country.
Former U.S. officials and experts, however, pointed out that the policies do not mention Afghanistan and apply specifically to designated terror groups. The Taliban, for instance, is not designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The broad nature of the changes drew accusations that the special immigration benefits could apply to IRGC members—though the State Department disputes that charge.
The changes “are an effort to address issues related to Afghanistan,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon in July, when the policy change was first announced. “The circumstances between Afghanistan and Iran are very different.”
Republican House lawmakers, led by Banks, launched a formal probe into the policy change earlier this month, as the Free Beacon first reported.
The order was “released just weeks before negotiations with Iran over restoring the nuclear deal recommenced,” Banks and three of his colleagues wrote in a letter to the White House demanding in-depth information about its justification for amending immigration law. “Your administration may be trying to entice Iran back to the nuclear deal by using broad executive authorities to weaken the penalties connected to the [foreign terrorist organization] designation without requiring the IRGC and other Iran-supported terrorist organizations to verifiably cease their terrorist activities.”
Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), a cosponsor of the bill and member of the Armed Services Committee, said the legislation “will help ensure these terrorist supporters are barred from our homeland.”
“Over the last two decades, the IRGC is responsible for the killing of over 600 U.S. servicemembers and continue to threaten U.S. public officials who dared challenge their terrorism,” Waltz said. “Allowing any individuals into our country who may have assisted these terrorists would be a direct national security threat to our citizens.”
Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.
The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.
“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.
Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.
Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.
“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.
Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away
For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.
As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.
Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.
The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.
Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 2, 2022. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.
That deepened the discontent among moderates.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Humanity Against Censorship rally in front of Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on May 19, 2022. (Mrs. Hao/The Epoch Times)
A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.
“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.
The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.
Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price
Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.
According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.
Gas prices are displayed at an Exxon gas station in San Francisco, Calif., on July 05, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.
However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.
A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.
How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms
Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.
“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.
She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.
Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.
“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.
“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”
“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.
The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.
Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.
Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.
Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.
In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.
Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.
On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.
He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.
Straightforward from here:
1. Biden announces not running again.
2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.
3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.
4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.
As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.
Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.
“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.
“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”
At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.
Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.
The Army suspended a decorated general for criticizing a tweet by first lady Jill Biden, USA Todayreported.
The branch released retired three-star lieutenant general Gary Volesky, a veteran of the wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from advising senior officers because of his June 25 response to a Jill Biden tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade.
“For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies,” the first lady tweeted. “Today, that right was stolen from us.”
“Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” Volesky replied.
Volesky’s tweet has since been taken down.
Volesky was likely talking about Biden’s support for transgender rights, a cause the military has also embraced. As Russia this year began its bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army was training officers on “gender pronouns” and “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” the Washington Free Beaconreported. Top-ranking General Mark Milley, who secretly promised to warn the Chinese People’s Liberation Army about U.S. military actions, has in recent years embraced left-wing causes, saying he wants to “understand white rage” and apologizing for appearing with former president Donald Trump.
This is the second time this month that the Army has punished service members for disagreeing with someone in the Biden White House. The Army announced July 1 that it will deprive soldiers of pay and benefits if they do not comply with the administration’s vaccine mandate.
Volesky, who retired in 2020, received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest decoration for valor, the New York Postreported. He served as the Army’s chief of public affairs from 2012 to 2014 and commanded the 101st Airborne Division.
Scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft cut bait
A few years ago, the Koch brothers and George Soros had a dream. What if the anti-war left joined forces with the isolationist right and worked together to bring U.S. foreign policy back to the 1930s?
From this unholy alliance sprung the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The mission: make America neutral again. Finally appeasers in Washington had a safe space to apologize for Russian oligarchs, Iranian terrorists, and Chinese communists.
Well, all good things must come to an end.
An all-star in the Koch-Soros foreign policy alliance, Joseph Cirincione, announced on Thursday his resignation from the Quincy Institute: “They excuse Russia’s military threats and actions because they believe that they have been provoked by U.S. policies,” he toldPolitico.
Cirincione is not just some disgruntled scholar. He is the former president of Ploughshares, a grant-making organization that was not just a recipient of the Soros organization’s politicized philanthropy, but a gatekeeper and driver of it—deciding which pinkos would prosper and which would starve. Mother Jones reports that Cirincione helped connect Quincy to major donors in its early days.
His change of heart on Quincy is surely a weathervane for other elements of the Soros network. Indeed, Soros himself has been signaling in the last year that he favors a much tougher policy on China than the one offered up by the Quincy crowd, which released a major study in June that found the Chinese military build up was nothing to worry about and has warned of the perils of “threat inflation” when it comes to China’s military expansion.
Soros, by contrast, came very close to endorsing regime change. “It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad,” he told an audience at the Hoover Institution in January, calling Xi “the greatest threat that open societies face today.”
Trita Parsi, a co-founder and executive vice president of Quincy, as well as somebody who could be confused for an Iranian agent—at least according to a federal judge—told Mother Jones he’s bewildered that Cirincione would suggest the think tank was avoiding criticism of Russia. But he acknowledges that Quincy is “not going along with the idea that it’s a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.”
As the Quincy Institute demonstrated so spectacularly in Afghanistan, one sure fire way to end endless war is to lose the war quickly and all at once.
As for the interpersonal drama that we assume is engulfing the Quincy Institute, and the enmity growing between teams Koch and Soros—may that war truly be endless.
The Western world’s “total failure of deterrence” is largely to blame for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a foreign policy speech Wednesday in London.
The West’s decades-long failure to confront Putin and other malign regimes like China and Iran should serve as a warning that prompts a “fundamental shift in how the West approaches our enemies,” Haley said, according to an early transcript of her remarks obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. She said it is time for the Western world to cut economic ties with Russia and China to send a message to these regimes that their subversion of the international order will no longer be tolerated.
Haley, who is positioning herself as a Republican prospect for the 2024 presidential election, previewed how a future Republican administration would handle the globe’s most pressing foreign policy matters. She harshly criticized the Biden administration’s appeasement of countries like Iran but also said Europe shares blame for the world’s instability—criticism that is usually expressed behind closed doors when a foreign leader travels abroad.
“It was Western weakness that convinced Putin he could get away with attempting to swallow Ukraine,” Haley said. “He saw America as too internally divided and distracted, and Europe as too bureaucratic and soft to stop him. And sadly, I have to say he wasn’t wrong.”
Decades of appeasement—and fears about directly confronting the Russia-China-Iran axis—led to the worst European war in nearly 80 years.
“We should have made crystal clear to Putin the full implications of his actions ahead of time. We didn’t,” Haley said. “And now we have the worst war in Europe since the Second World War. This dereliction of duty was years in the making. For too long, the West wrongly feared provoking Putin, instead of taking the steps needed to prevent him from starting a war in the first place.”
The Biden administration’s recent foreign policy blunders, primarily the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, provided the fuel that sparked Putin’s war machine, Haley said.
“It pains me to say it, but if there had been no Afghanistan disaster, there would likely have been no Ukraine invasion,” she said. “Putin saw our lack of resolve in Kabul and assumed nothing meaningful would happen once his tanks rolled into Kyiv.”
But the conditions that led to Putin’s war weren’t created overnight. The United States and Europe spent decades trying to integrate Russia and China into the global economy while ignoring their totalitarian tendencies and mass military buildup.
“The West’s foolishness was boundless,” Haley said. “Whenever Russia tested us, the West shrugged off the necessary strong response, fearing it would do more harm than good.”
“It is critical that we all understand this central point: Appeasement never satisfies the appetites of tyrants. It only makes them want more,” Haley said. “Trying to be ‘inoffensive’ only emboldens our enemies. It leads to wars—like the one we are now witnessing right now in Ukraine.”
Russia is not the world’s most present threat, however, according to Haley. That distinction goes to China.
There can be “no doubt that China is the biggest national security threat the world faces,” she said.
There is only one solution to reassert Western dominance, Haley said. “We must economically detach from our enemies and rely more heavily on ourselves and our friends.”
“That means breaking the Western addiction to Russian energy,” Haley said. “It means securing strategic supply chains completely free of Chinese control or leverage. It means expecting our businesses to do their part to uphold our interests rather than those of our enemies.”
The belief that “economic interdependence with hostile regimes” would dampen their worst tendencies has been “painfully disproven,” according to Haley. If the West does not abandon these foolish ambitions, “our pain and vulnerability will only increase.”
The Western world stands at an “inflection point,” facing a “set of powerful and fanatical dictators with dreams of conquest. Imperial Russia, Communist China, and Jihadist Iran pose existential threats to us and to free peoples all over the world,” Haley said. “The Western way of life depends on deterring these threats.”
A stalemate, she said, “is not good enough. Victory is required.”
In a stirring and spot-on campaign email, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis declares war on the Far Left calling it a “Radical Vigilante Woke Mob.”
While I’ve seen my share of them over the years and sent out a few myself, campaign fundraising emails are notorious for appealing to the hard-core base of both parties.
So, most of them are taken with a grain of salt by political observers.
However, the email I just received from the DeSantis re-election campaign really hit home. It accurately defined and summarized the aggressive domestic threat posed by the extreme Left to our nation’s very core:
Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.
This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.
A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.
We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”
DeSantis omitted the LGBTQ brainwashing of our young children and the collusion of major woke companies like Disney in doing so, but he has been at the forefront of battling both these evils in Florida.
The DeSantis campaign continues, noting something that impacted me directly on the huge social media platform LinkedIn: “We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.”
And of course, the last piece of the massive leftist effort: “We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.”
Referring to himself as the “Governor of the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis then goes on to make his pitch for how he will fight this grave threat to America, at least in Florida, with “faith, with reason, and with freedom.”
And of course, he asks for our financial support.
In my view, this email accurately and effectively summarizes the threat we face from the extreme Left in America today. DeSantis is on the front lines of this battle in Florida, but he also seems to be preparing to take the fight nationally as well.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Columnist Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” asserts that after two years of pandemic policies, people in free societies are behaving more like those in authoritarian societies.
Wolf maintains that America is now less free, and becoming almost unrecognizable.
“A handful of bad actors” including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) used the pandemic to “exploit the crisis in such a way as to reengineer our free democratic open societies, especially in the West, especially in the United States, into a post-free society, a post-humane society,” said Wolf during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
The Biden administration in April extended the 2-year-old coronavirus public health emergency for another 90 days.
Wolf said, based on history, the ongoing lockdowns and extension of the public health emergency indicate society is in the last phase of a tyrannical takeover, because with emergency powers, laws protecting liberty can be suspended.
According to Wolf, there are 10 steps every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10, said Wolf. Some of the other steps include demonizing whistleblowers and critics, calling dissent “treason,” “espionage,” or “subversion,” and controlling the media narrative.
During the last two years of lockdowns and mandates, Big Tech and the elites have profited while the average Americans have seen the American Dream slowly “closing” on them, she said.
“And so often, when a democracy is dying, or a regime is turning the screws on freedoms to create an established new form of tyranny, it happens intentionally in a very incremental way,” said Wolf. “And you really see this from 1930 to 1933 in Germany.”
She said humanity is witnessing the formation of a two-tier society of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, in which people who would never discriminate against others based on categories of race and sex are now discriminating against the unvaccinated.
“Suddenly, they’re happily embracing a discrimination society in which some people are cast as clean and valuable members of society and other people are ostracized and marginalized and ‘othered’ and described as sort of dirty and causing infection to others,” said Wolf.
She argues that big tech companies had an active role in creating these perceptions and in “shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us, and then the vaccine rollout, in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society,” said Wolf.
Wolf cited the emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s role in getting the right public health “messages out” during the lockdowns.
Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images; Greg Nash/Getty Images)
People had no choice but to rely on tech platforms while they were locked down, and Big Tech used that to manipulate the public, said Wolf.
“What I do trace in the book is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person,” she said. “And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly.”
Wolf thinks big tech companies will not stop at just harvesting data on the computer, but that they want to dominate peoples’ bodily autonomy with vaccine passports.
“What these companies want more than anything is to leave the parameters of your computer and to colonize other currently non-colonized spaces, notably the human body,” said Wolf.
This would give these companies and governments the ability to switch off peoples’ access to commerce, travel, and other goods and services if they did not comply with a particular mandate, Wolf added.
Some forms of digital tracking and surveilling are already here in the United States, she said.
“You’re now expected to swipe these QR codes just to see the menu, or just to get in. And the QR code uploads your data to a central database,” she said, adding that she’s seen the software “that maps the relationships of everyone sitting at that table, and then builds databases and networks of relationships.”
This illustration photo shows a person looking at the app for the New York State Excelsior Pass, which provides digital proof of a Covid-19 vaccination, in Los Angeles on April 6, 2021 (Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images)
Wolf said that on a scale of one to 10 on the Chinese social credit system, the United States is currently at a three.
“There’s a change that’s happened in American cities in the last two years,” she said.
Because most people around the world, particularly in U.S. cities, use digital apps to travel, do banking, and shop, a digital social credit system similar to China’s is imminent, she said.
Our data is being harvested and used by the “global technocratic elite” to control human behavior, said Wolf.
“We’ve assumed that the worst it can be is data are harvested from us with everything that we choose to do using our free will as human beings,” said Wolf.
“But what I’ve seen is that digital technology has its own logic, and it isn’t restricted by what human beings want to do. So once digital platforms and their oligarchical masters can figure out how to change people’s behavior to suit technology, there’s nothing, moral or ethical, that will keep them from changing people’s behavior to suit their technology, and to suit their business plans,” she added.
The pandemic has revealed how this type of digital control is playing out, because humans, before the prevalence of digital technology, did not choose to “socially distance” to fight pandemics, said Wolf.
“The dream of our digital overlords is for technology to tell humans what to do, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” said Wolf.
While some people might label her a conspiracy theorist, her opinions are based on a long career as a journalist, political consultant, and now tech CEO, Wolf said. Furthermore, she has witnessed firsthand the powerful elites making historical decisions under the radar, she said.
Wolf was well acquainted with this group of powerful people until recently when she was ejected from their circles for writing oppositional pieces on lockdowns.
“But it’s really true that the global technocratic elite have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow Germans or Americans or Russians or Chinese, and they now are able to align above the level of nation-states,” she said.
The panel ‘Leaders for Europe’s Digital Decade’ at the 2022 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on May 25, 2022. The yearly meeting takes place from May 22 to 26 with heads of governments and economic leaders. (Eric Lalmand/AFP via Getty Images)
For example, one of the WEF’s goals is to make nation-level decision-making less and less important, and the World Health Organization’s goal is to make public health decisions on a global scale, bypassing countries’ own authorities via the pandemic treaty, said Wolf.
“These technocratic elites really do believe that they can order the world better than you and I and that they have the right to,” she said. “That’s really scary.”
Little by little, humanity’s tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism has grown.
“The war wasn’t just on us as a political entity, the war was on American culture, and is on American culture,” she said. “And they’ve succeeded largely, unless we wake up, because we were a kind, decent, inclusive culture that respected other people’s boundaries and freedoms. … And now a CCP-style cruelty is something that we tolerate.”
What people believe is largely determined by the news they consume, said Wolf, and many people only watch news outlets that give a skewed picture of pandemic treatments and policies, largely funded by wealthy people like Bill Gates.
“I do trace in ‘The Bodies of Others’ how millions of dollars flowed and are flowing from entities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the BBC and the Guardian and NPR and other formerly very credible, objective news outlets.”
Because most people get slanted news coverage, the country is more divided and many people on the left refuse to consider any other narrative or look at primary source documents, because they believe only government sources are giving them “scientific” information, said Wolf.
This skewed messaging has been able to convince people that the mandates and lockdowns are more American and important than liberty or critical thinking.
Wolf said the most brilliant aspect of the pandemic messaging was that it was framed altruistically.
“You know, ‘You’ve got to exclude those people for the good of the community,’ or ‘You’ve got to mask yourself and your child to save your child,’” said Wolf. “This really brilliantly upended American culture because it cast freedom as selfish.”
Now that those in power have effectively conditioned people to be fearful and submissive, they can keep reinstituting emergency powers, she argued.
“That’s what emergency law means,” she said. “They can do whatever they want, basically. It’s a weaponization of boards of health, it’s a weaponization of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [Department of Health and Human Services].”
Wolf said although the situation is dire, people can do something to push back against this tyranny by being informed about what is really going on in the country, assembling in groups, and getting involved politically on the local level.
As it stands now, “I will say that each side is being fed narratives and stereotypes about the other that would persuade each side that the other is absolutely insane and dangerous, dangerously insane,” said Wolf.
“I get that conservatives think, ‘liberals don’t know what a woman is.’ That is not actually literally true, and liberals think ‘conservatives all want to torch our democratic processes, storm the Capitol, and are misogynist, racist thugs who are trigger happy,” said Wolf.
The last two years have conditioned people to fear each other and so the conversations that would have normally occurred when people gathered are not happening and keeping the country divided, said Wolf. She said she will gladly talk to people on the right.
Communist Party cadres hang a placard on the neck of a Chinese man during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The words on the placard state the man’s name and accuse him of being a member of the “black class.” (Public Domain)
“People I love think I’m doing something wrong in even talking to conservatives and libertarians. That’s very dangerous. The left, especially, has decided that you’re morally complicit if you have a conversation across the aisle,” Wolf said. “That is censorship, that is cancel culture, that’s un-American, that is an importation from Communism.”
She urges people to remember what makes America unique and a beacon to other nations: to remember we are the great experiment where neighbors talked to each other, listened, and didn’t “rat” each other out if they did not agree with each other, Wolf said.
Fox Business host Larry Kudlow didn’t hold back on a recent segment of his show and told his audience the full extent of the Biden Administration’s failing economic policies.
In part of the segment, Kudlow gives an insight into the latest Fox News poll numbers which show waning confidence in the President’s ability to lead an economic recovery.
He also refuted a common talking point the left often uses about wealthy individuals and major corporations not paying their fair share of taxes.
Notably, Kudlow actually agreed on a few observations recently made by resident Biden about issues plaguing the nation – before highlighting the fact that Biden’s own policies have led to the problems he wants to solve.
The FBI is investigating the president of the Brookings Institution for secretly lobbying for the government of Qatar, court documents show.
FBI agents last month executed a search warrant for the email account of John R. Allen, according to documents released Tuesday. Allen, a retired four-star general, in 2017 allegedly lobbied the Trump White House and Congress on behalf of Qatar, an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has been accused of sponsoring terrorist groups. According to an FBI affidavit, Allen in a 2020 interview lied to the bureau about the nature of his work and failed to turn over “incriminating” emails to investigators, including one where he asked for a “speakers fee” to meet with Qatari officials to discuss their strategy to influence the Trump administration.
According to the FBI affidavit, investigators have “substantial evidence” that Allen and his colleagues intentionally violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires lobbyists to disclose their work for foreign governments.
Brookings announced Wednesday that it had placed Allen on administrative leave.
The investigation marks a stunning development for Allen and Brookings, one of the world’s most influential think tanks. Brookings has long been accused of operating as a shill for Qatar and other foreign governments that fund the think tank. The embassy of Qatar donates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Brookings. The Qatari government in 2014 pledged $14.8 million to Brookings to build a satellite campus in Doha.
Allen, who oversaw NATO forces in Afghanistan, was a senior fellow at Brookings at the time of his alleged work for Qatar. He was tapped in October 2017 to lead the think tank.
Details of Allen’s work have become public through a case against Richard G. Olson, who served as ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates under former president Barack Obama. Olson pleaded guilty to making false statements in federal ethics paperwork and to illegal lobbying. Court documents show Olson began cooperating with federal prosecutors on August 31, 2020, “with the express goal of assisting them in bringing criminal charges against General Allen.” Allen and Olson worked on behalf of Qatar with Imaad Zuberi, a Pakistani-American businessman convicted in a separate illegal lobbying scheme.
Allen has not been charged in the case. His spokesman said Allen has “voluntarily cooperated” with federal prosecutors.
Allen, who in 2015 retired from the military, played a major role in shaping the Trump White House’s views toward Qatar during a tense 2017 standoff with neighboring Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, the FBI alleges. Allen on June 9, 2017, asked then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to issue a statement calling on the nations to ease a blockade against Qatar. Then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson later that day issued a statement along those lines.
In a meeting on June 10, 2017, Allen allegedly advised the Qataris how to influence the White House, as well as how to “own the narrative” in the United States about the blockade. According to notes Olson took in the meeting, Allen told the Qataris they could “shape” then-president Donald Trump’s opinion through McMaster. He also suggested using Al-Udeid Air Base in Doha as “leverage” to force the administration to take a friendly position toward Qatar. Olson’s notes also show Allen suggested that Qatar use “the full spectrum of info. ops,” including “black and white” operations, to advance its messages in the United States. Black ops commonly refer to illegal hacking activity.
Allen received $20,000 to meet with Qatari officials in Doha. He was pursuing business deals in Qatar at the same time on behalf of Spark Cognition, an artificial intelligence company at which he served as a director.
Update 5:31 p.m.: This piece has been updated to note that Brookings has placed John Allen on leave.
Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.
This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.
A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.
We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”
We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.
We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.
Well, friend, the time for listening and watching from the sidelines is over.
This enemy has taken over media, educational institutions, corporate boards, professional sports, foundations, and professional institutions. They have left no corner of our lives untouched. But all hope is not lost.
We The People still have a say. We know the truth, you and I, about America and the country she is and can be. We must fight to defeat these false pretenses and predetermined narratives.
I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom. As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up rather than tears it down.
Together we can ensure that our children are raised to know they live in the greatest state in the nation, the greatest country in the world and that they have an opportunity to continue making them even greater.
The Biden administration is illegally withholding information about its bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, including information that could show senior U.S. officials knew prior to the withdrawal that the Taliban would quickly rise to power and trap scores of Americans, according to a nonpartisan advocacy group focused on U.S. national security issues.
The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) is petitioning a district court in Washington, D.C., to force the State Department to release communications records related to the 2021 Afghanistan evacuation. This would include information “related [to the] vetting of Afghan refugees, and the number of U.S. citizens and lawful residents that were or were not evacuated from Afghanistan,” according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Biden administration has yet to provide the American public with a full accounting of those who were left behind in Afghanistan once the Taliban took over and American troops left the country, including the exact number of U.S. citizens and Afghans who aided the American government during the 20-year war. U.S. officials also have evaded congressional investigations into the matter and misled lawmakers for months about the number of Americans trapped in the country once the Taliban cut off access to airports. The Biden administration has thus far rebuffed congressional efforts and those from outside groups to determine how it is vetting scores of Afghan refugees that have been brought into the United States since the withdrawal, including how these individuals are being screened for terrorism ties.
CASA, which attempted to obtain these documents through Freedom of Information Act requests filed in January 2022, argues that “without litigation, [the State Department] will not produce the requested documents,” which are likely to shed light on the chaos that played out behind closed doors within the administration as the evacuation effort spiraled out of control. The State Department “wrongfully withheld agency records requested by CASA by failing to comply with the statutory time limits for making a determination on these FOIA requests, and by withholding from disclosure records responsive to CASA’s FOIA requests to DOS,” the group maintains.
The group wants the State Department to turn over all of the requested documents and stop stonewalling CASA’s FOIA requests, which have sat in administrative limbo for months. In addition to information about vetting and those trapped in Afghanistan, CASA wants the State Department to provide it with internal communications that could detail the administration’s efforts to downplay security concerns.
“The criminal and terrorist networks in Afghanistan are real and they are extensive,” CASA said in a statement about its lawsuit. “Americans have a right to know the people being brought to our country are not tied to them. Yet the U.S. government continues to hide the records surrounding the vetting process of refugees from the country who were admitted to the United States. Nor is State willing to reveal the real number of Americans left behind or if legitimate warnings were brushed aside.”
During and after the evacuation, Biden administration officials claimed for months that the number of Americans stranded behind enemy lines in the country was around 100. Lawmakers from both parties, however, disputed that number and disclosed that they were in contact with thousands who had trouble getting help from the State Department. To this day, it is unclear how many Americans were left behind and if any remain trapped in the country. Nonprofit organizations say at least 78,000 Afghans who worked with the United States were left behind.
The evacuation, CASA argues in the suit, was “conducted in a country controlled by a hostile government previously overthrown by U.S. forces, [and] was marked by chaos and ambiguity regarding who was, and who was not, being evacuated. That ambiguity extended to, for example, how many [U.S.-aligned Afghans]—at risk due to their support of the U.S.— were evacuated; furthermore, it was unclear whether the U.S. was vetting Afghan evacuees to ensure that they did not pose a national security, or other, risk to the U.S.”
Internal communications between the State Department and other agencies are likely to corroborate reports that the Biden administration ordered evacuation flights to be packed with unvetted Afghans.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), disclosed in October 2021 that an internal Biden administration directive ordered officials to overfill flights. “Total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available. Err on the side of excess,” an Aug. 16 email stated. “This guidance provides clear discretion and direction to fill seats and to provide special consideration for women and children when we have seats.”
CASA argues in the suit that the State Department has “wrongfully withheld agency records” related to its screening process and failed “to comply with the statutory time limits” for providing the requested documents.
“Americans witnessed the mismanagement and chaos of the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” CASA director Adam Turner said in a statement on the suit. “Yet the State Department is unwilling to reveal what happened around this humiliating episode—were warnings of Afghanistan’s rapid collapse ignored, how many Americans and others we had committed to evacuate were left behind, were those admitted to the United States properly vetted? Americans deserve the answers to these and other questions. State’s lack of transparency is gravely concerning.”
Former First Lady Melania Trump gave her first interview since leaving the White House, providing a hint that her husband may be seeking another term in office and saying “it’s sad to see” the state of the country under the current administration.
“I think we achieved a lot in four years of the Trump administration,” Melania told Fox News in a Sunday interview, adding that “never say never” when asked about whether she could be again living inside the White House.
“I like Washington, D.C. I know it operates completely different than any other city, but I really like it there. And I enjoyed living in the White House. To be first lady of the United States was my greatest honor. I think we achieved a lot in the four years of Trump administration. I enjoyed taking care of the White House. It was my home for a while. I understood it is people’s house. And it was, it was a privilege to live there,” she continued to say.
When asked by Fox host Pete Hegseth about former first ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton appearing on the cover of Vogue, Melania, a former model, criticized the magazine. Melania appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2005 when she was photographed alongside former President Donald Trump in her wedding dress.
“They’re biased and they have likes and dislikes, and it’s so obvious. And I think American people and everyone sees it. It was their decision, and I have much more important things to do—and I did in the White House—than being on the cover of Vogue,” Melania told the broadcaster.
The former first lady, a native of Slovenia, weighed in on the state of the United States under the Biden administration.
“I think it’s sad to see what’s going on, if you really look deeply into it,” Melania said, adding: “I think a lot of people are struggling and suffering and what is going on around the world as well. So it’s very sad to see and I hope it changes fast,” Melania added.
Donald Trump has not definitively said whether he will run for reelection, although he has suggested in interviews that he might.
Last month, Trump, 75, told the Washington Post that his health could play a role in whether he decides to run or not. In 2024, Trump will turn 78, and should he run—and win—the presidency, he’ll be 82 when he departs. President Joe Biden is slated to turn 80 this November.
“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again,” he told the outlet in April. ‘That’s not good when they use the word ‘again,’” Trump added, saying he is currently in good health.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki leaves the Biden White House today after more than a year overseeing a dishonest operation that helped a partisan and malleable press keep the American public in the dark.
Dishonesty was a calling card at Psaki’s briefings. As President Joe Biden hid from the press in an unprecedented fashion, Psaki asserted, “It’s just not accurate to suggest that he isn’t accessible or doesn’t answer questions.” And while pledging to fight “disinformation,” she used her bully pulpit to spoonfeed it to the national media.
She was dishonest as the Biden administration grappled with the pandemic. She pushed for masks in schools amid a growing consensus that it harmed children. She obfuscated the administration’s school reopening strategy, flip-flopping on how much in-person learning would constitute a “reopening.” In March, Psaki claimed “we don’t know” whether COVID is less dangerous to children, even though there has been plenty of evidence it is.
In recent days, Psaki suggested no one could have predicted inflation would soar to record highs, even as liberal economists warned Biden’s policies would create that exact problem. And she claimed the Biden administration had the situation at the southern border under control amid horrific reports of children trapped in facilities at 1600 percent capacity.
But the worst of her deceits came during the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Psaki served as the stonewaller-in-chief and shared blatantly dishonest assessments. She waved away criticisms from her own party, claiming the administration had the situation under control as American evacuees were trapped in enemy territory due to a lack of intel.
When journalists asked how many Americans the Biden administration left behind Taliban lines, Psaki leaned on her trademark condescension, dismissing as preposterous the idea that the administration could keep tabs on every American overseas.
Psaki treated Fox News’s Peter Doocy, one of the few White House reporters to challenge her, with hostility and contempt. She wrote off his legitimate questions, likened him to Russian and Chinese propagandists, and said he sounded like “a stupid son of a bitch.”
DOOCY: “Does the White House think 16 cents off a bbq has more of an impact on people’s lives than gas being a dollar more?@PressSec: “I would say if you don’t like hot dogs, you might not care about the reduction of cost.” pic.twitter.com/WYmxekL5FS
Psaki once argued anyone banned from one social media platform for spreading “misinformation” should be banned from all other platforms. Some would see this as a call for Big Tech censorship. But not the media, who fawned over and adored Psaki. Poynter, the media research group that runs PolitiFact, called her “one of the best press secretaries ever.” Our rating: pants on fire.
In her penultimate briefing, Psaki slammed as a “conspiracy theory” the Washington Free Beacon‘s report that the Biden administration was funding a $30 million harm-reduction program that will fund the distribution of free crack pipes in “safe-smoking kits.” With one quip, Psaki insulted a journalist and dismissed deeply sourced reporting that exposed inconvenient facts.
In that respect, her outburst serves as a perfect capstone to her tenure—one that was condescending and dishonest, hostile to the truth and those seeking it.
As the U.S. government diverts military equipment and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the famine in Afghanistan has become so dire that some people are engaging in organ harvesting and human trafficking to survive, according to the latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance increased to 24.4 million this year from 18.4 million a year ago, the April 30 SIGAR report stated.
The United Nations declared a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan last December. The SIGAR report concurred, adding that the crisis is worsening.
“NGOs have reported some families resorting to selling kidneys or other organs, and even selling their children to survive,” SIGAR said. “Media reports indicate that organ sales have become particularly widespread in Afghanistan, with the price of a human kidney dropping by over half due to high supply since the Taliban seized power.”
The SIGAR report attributed some of the increase in starvation to a historically severe drought.
“The onset of spring traditionally brings relief from food shortages; however, with Afghanistan in the grips of the worst drought in three decades, below-average winter precipitation means the spring harvest is unlikely to improve food security for vulnerable families,” the report said.
SIGAR also partly attributed the war in Ukraine to the worsening crisis in Afghanistan.
“The spillover effects of the war in Ukraine threaten to worsen the crisis in Afghanistan, as food and fuel prices surge and supply chains falter,” the report said. “These disruptions drove a 9-percent increase in the price of fuel in the second week of March alone.”
Additionally, the report said that some humanitarian assistance is being sent to Ukraine instead of Afghanistan.
SIGAR noted that the United Nations requested international donors representing 41 countries to contribute $4.4 billion to Afghanistan, but the U.N. received only $2.44 billion—which included a $204 million pledge from the United States.
“While it is not unusual for donor pledges to fall short of humanitarian appeals, Western officials noted that donor interest at this conference may have been diverted by the war in Ukraine and dampened by distaste for the Taliban’s increasing repression,” the report said.
SIGAR further reported that the Pentagon is taking military equipment initially intended for Afghanistan and rerouting it to Ukraine.
The report said the Department of Defense (DOD) exercised its “dispositional authority” last December to reappropriate equipment that had belonged to the now-defunct Afghan security force, which collapsed last August as the U.S. military withdrew from the country.
In January, the Pentagon developed plans to transfer five former Afghan Mi-17 helicopters that had been undergoing maintenance in Ukraine to the Ukrainian government, the SIGAR report said. Ukraine’s government accepted the transfer in March, the report said.
Additionally, the report said the Biden administration promised last month to send Ukraine 11 additional helicopters originally intended for Afghanistan.
“DOD also transferred 16 million rounds of varied nonstandard munitions, originally procured for Afghanistan, to Ukraine,” the report said.
The former ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama testified virtually during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, calling President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal from the country a “stain” on our national honor.
Ryan Crocker now serves as a non-resident senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“We have accrued a great debt there that extends also to the thousands of Afghans who helped us in their mission. The [special immigrant visa] process has let them down,” Crocker testified.
Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Afghanistan under Obama, calls Biden’s disastrous troop withdrawal “a stain…on our national honor.” pic.twitter.com/cv9JTDoBi0
“A member of the advisory committee for a group called No One Left Behind that has for years sought to move interpreters to safety [said] we left thousands behind. And that I think is a stain, again, on our national honor,” he added.
“So we need to figure out ways to go ahead. It won’t be easy. We gave up the leverage we had. We cannot give up the fight.”
“The list of damage to our national security and our values is long. We have allowed the Taliban and al-Qaida to reunite. The threat this poses to our own security is not theoretical — 9/11 actually happened, brought to us from Afghanistan by these same actors,” he wrote.
“At the same time, our complete withdrawal has degraded our intelligence capabilities. The strike in Kabul on what was supposed to be an Islamic State target but wasn’t foreshadows the future,” he added.
Crocker also said Afghan women and girls will “pay the price” for America’s failures in Afghanistan.
“We urged Afghan women and girls to step forward, into parliament, private enterprise, the classroom and the military. They did. And now they will pay the price for our lack of strategic patience,” he said.
“That has already started. Afghan interpreters and others provided direct assistance to our military and civilian personnel. They were critical to our efforts, and put their lives and those of their families at risk by working with us. … We left thousands behind.”
The former ambassador concluded with a shocking story that encapsulated the changes in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
“One of the projects that had the greatest impact in Afghanistan cost the least amount of money. It was the reconstruction of Ghazi Stadium in Kabul to FIFA standards, meaning that it could host World Cup matches,” he said. “For a soccer mad country, this was huge. But there was a deeper meaning.”
The stadium is now used by the Taliban to “carry out public punishments after Friday prayers, including beheadings and the stoning of women.”
Writing for RealClearPolitics, Professor Andrew E. Busch of Claremont McKenna College finds that “one reason for Americans’ increasing political discomfort—the feeling that politics has become a blood sport in which traditional protections and safety nets are no longer present—is that the nonpartisan insulation protecting the rule of law and consent of the governed has frayed. There is a broad pattern of offices that require political neutrality being converted into offices that are genuinely partisan in their operation.”
What, I wonder, was his first clue?
Understandably, Busch concentrates on the most recent examples of this creeping partisanship in places that are supposed to be non-partisan, since the Biden administration represents a quantum leap in the politicization of everything, but especially of the law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, he writes, “has already used the Justice Department to advance his own party’s version of the stolen-election story by suing to stop state legislative efforts to enhance ballot security, then threatening to sic the FBI on parents who complain to their local school boards about left-wing political indoctrination in the classroom.”
By contrast, Busch praises the non-partisan spirit of former Attorney General William Barr for resigning rather than supporting President Trump’s demand for a thorough investigation of election irregularities.
But then he can’t help noticing the concerted legal efforts by Democratic Attorneys General in swing states last year to change voting laws in order to create those irregularities—and, with them, the opportunities for cheating.
You can see why Busch wants to be even-handed and pretend that the partisan takeover of supposedly non-partisan institutions is coming from both sides, but he can’t quite obscure the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of these efforts have been made—and successfully made, thanks to the compliant media—on behalf of Democrats.
There is nothing like a Republican equivalent, for example, of the partisan takeover of the FBI under James Comey. “The course of the Russia investigation,” writes Busch, “complete with the obvious biases of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, implied that the bureau had picked sides.”
Implied? Can there be any doubt about which side these and others in the bureau were on? Or which side Robert Mueller and his team were on? If there were any doubt about it, it must have been dispelled by the recent revelations, and indictments, coming out of the John Durham investigation.
Busch might also have mentioned the disparity in federal law-enforcement’s treatment of the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6 as constituting an “insurrection” and its almost complete lack of interest in the hundreds of riots, the billions of dollars in property damage and the many deaths that took place around the country last summer.
You don’t have to be particularly good at spotting “implied” biases to tell that the difference between the two was that the first was in support of Donald Trump, the others opposed to him. And, violently, opposed to the police. But why would we expect the federal police, ostensibly there to uphold the rule of law, to care about that?
Also, as I pointed out last summer in these pages, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the nation’s armed forces, traditionally our number one non-partisan institution, along with the judiciary, testified before Congress on behalf of the Democratic talking point by asserting on the basis of zero evidence that the Capitol riot was motivated by “white rage.”
Milley is also charged with weeding out of the services those identified by the extreme left as members of the “extremist right.”
But the perspicacious could have picked up hints of the erosion of the “nonpartisan insulation” of key institutions long before 2016.
The politicization of the judiciary, I would argue, began at least as far back as 1987 when a certain Joseph R. Biden, newly appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put the kibosh on President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court for transparently political reasons.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who once said of his fellow judges that “we don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” has gone to heroic lengths to keep up the pretense of non-partisanship in the judiciary, but then he is also the man who, apparently without irony, once called the U.S. Senate “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
The politicization of the armed services began even earlier. As the late Colin Powell cheerfully put it in 2007, presumably with reference to his own military career, which started in the Vietnam era, “Anybody who becomes a senior officer had better have some political instincts or you’re going to get ground up. We are a political nation. It is not a dirty word.”
What he meant to say, perhaps, was that it is only a dirty word when applied to constitutionally non-political institutions. Like the military.
I understand that he was talking about the internal politics that are inevitable in any large organization, but in the military, whose most senior officers are appointed by civilian (and political) authority, those politics are always bound up with the other kind.
Under President George W. Bush we learned, at least if we were paying attention, of the politicization of the CIA, which regularly briefed the media (anonymously, of course) against their ostensible commander-in-chief.
Under President Barack Obama we learned, even if we weren’t paying much attention, of the politicization of the Department of Justice and the IRS.
And, as everyone now knows, under President Donald Trump we learned of the politicization not only of the FBI and (again) the Justice Department but also of the State Department. All three, while ostensibly serving the President, were actually undermining him.
It should not be necessary to point out that all of these encroachments of the political onto officially non-political territory have been in one direction and one direction only—leftwards. It’s as if there were some law of political inertia analogous to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
Maybe this is what the progressives mean by saying that they are “on the right side of history,” If so, it means that the rest of us, who still treasure what we think is our right to be non-political, must be on the wrong side of history.
FREDERICK COUNTY, Va.—Veterans Day is a “very special day” for Austin Riddell, a fourth-grader at Redbud Run Elementary School in Winchester, Virginia.
“It’s a day set aside to recognize bravery, courage, selflessness, a day to show our military veterans that our country loves them,” the 8-year-old said.
To pay tribute to this, Austin organized an event on Nov. 11 to push the local school board to observe Veterans Day as a school holiday.
“I could never get away with an event like this in North Korea, China, lots of other places; only in America are we this free,” Austin said during his opening speech at the event, held at the football field across from the school. “And it’s all because of our courageous veterans who gave me a voice to go in front of the Board of Education, to go in front of the Board of Supervisors to change the world starting right here in Winchester.”
As a boy born into a family with four generations serving in the Army, Austin said he never had perfect attendance, because he doesn’t go to school on Veterans Day. On Aug. 10 and Nov. 3, he urged the Frederick County School Board to make the day a school holiday. The board has yet to take any action.
“Apple Blossom Festival is a day off at the schools, but Veterans Day isn’t. That made me mad,” Austin told The Epoch Times.
Austin’s mother, Priscilla Bellido, thanked the local community for making the event happen. “We started with 35 flyers when he said he wanted to put together today’s tribute. Mama ran off 35 flyers, passed them out. And then it just spread like wildfire,” Bellido said at the event.
Several veterans spoke at the event, and Lt. Governor-Elect Winsome Sears was also present. A former Marine and Jamaican born, she lives with her family in Winchester.
Austin Riddell, a fourth-grader at Redbud Run Elementary School, gives an American flag to Virginia Lt. Governor-Elect Winsome Sears at a Veterans Day event in Winchester, Va., on Nov. 11, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“I’m always amazed that someone so young is so driven. And you wonder what is it, and can we bottle that and sell it? Clearly, this young man is destined for greatness. He’s already shown true leadership. And he recognizes sacrifice and love of country,” Sears told The Epoch Times.
“It is always good when a nation honors its veterans knowing that they could have died in service to them,” she said. “And we want to encourage our young people to continue to serve their country because America is worth fighting for, worth dying for.”
Virginia Lt. Governor-Elect Winsome Sears at a Veterans Day event in Winchester, Va., on Nov. 11, 2021. (Courtesy of Pegah Fowler)
Describing himself as “an 8-year-old boy not only with dreams, but with plans to lead our country and represent our great Americans” to the county school board, Austin said he wants to be a U.S. senator. His goal is to run in 2052 when he turns 40.
Austin decided to become a U.S. senator at about 2 years old, his mother said. She said she was switching TV channels when Austin asked her to “go back” to C-SPAN. He asked her: “Who are those people? What are they doing?” After she explained to him about what was being displayed, a congressional hearing, he said, “I want to be one of those when I grow up.”
Asked if she gave Austin any help writing his speeches at the school board meetings, she said she only helped with punctuation and “removing curse words.” Bellido said the 8-year-old missed his iPad time and bedtime to come up with his speeches.
Miles Adkins, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Frederick County School Board member-elect, presented a Certificate of Appreciation to Austin Riddell (L) on behalf of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, at a Veterans Day event in Winchester, Va., on Nov. 11, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
The Democrat who has battled to keep the Biden administration and far-out liberals from spending their way off an inflationary cliff can count on a Republican to back him in the next election.
Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, a Republican and a billionaire, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he will raise funds for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
For weeks, Manchin has rejected multiple elements of the spending plan proposed by the Bidenistas in Congress, saying last week, “I for one won’t support a multitrillion-dollar bill without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects of inflation,” according to WDJT-TV.
“I don’t see leadership any place in this country. Thank god for Joe Manchin. The guy gots guts and courage … I’m going to have one of the biggest fundraisers I’ve ever had for him. He’s special,” says Ken Langone on @Sen_JoeManchin. pic.twitter.com/HUkZHdI41a
“Thank God for Joe Manchin. The guy’s got guts and courage.”
Although Langone has never supported Manchin before, he will now. Manchin is up for re-election in 2024.
Will the Democrats still end up spending too much money?
“He’s a Democrat, I’m a Republican; I’m going to have one of the biggest fundraisers I’ve ever had for him,” Langone said. “He’s special. He’s precious. He’s a great American.”
But Langone was far more somber as he turned to a subject that vexes him and Manchin – inflation.
“Let me give you a warning — this inflation is a lot worse than people think. It is not transitory. The little people … they’re going to suffer,” Langone said.
Inflation rose 6.2 percent in the 12 months that ended in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday.
That’s the biggest monthly increase in 30 years, according to CBS News.
Fuel oil prices are up nearly 60 percent, gas is up about 50 percent, and average food costs are up over 5 percent. Beef is up about 20 percent, and pork is up approximately 14.
US crushed by an inflation crisis, energy crisis, supply chain crisis, employment crisis, border crisis (to name a few). In response, Dems planning to vote for a bill that spends trillions, taxes energy, offshores supply chains, pays people not to work & abolishes migration caps.
Inflation is now at 6.2%, which represents a huge tax increase on the working class. Joe Biden is a much worse version of Jimmy Carter & the idea that the government spending trillions more is going to make inflation lower, which is what they are arguing, is absolute insanity.
Manchin said the report shows that the Biden party line of inflation being just a tiny passing cloud is way off.
By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not “transitory” and is instead getting worse. From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.
“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse,” Manchin said on Twitter. “From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.”
Forbes has reported that Langone has donated over $2.4 million to Republican causes since 2019.
How much longer can this go on? As we head into the second year of the President Joe Biden “administration,” with the country in a shambles and heading no place good but full speed ahead, it’s time for all real Americans to take stock of our situation and formulate an emergency plan, with no time to spare.
Back in March, I wrote in these pages: “Biden’s Presidency Seems Ready to End.” In fact, Biden’s sham presidency never really began and whatever there was to it is now long over.
But then Brandon—excuse me! Biden!—isn’t really the president, simply the President in Name Only. Sure, he dutifully signs whatever executive order—increasingly authoritarian and blatantly unconstitutional—is put under his nose, which, at least until the next election, has the force of law until a federal court says otherwise. Even should a court block its implementation, as happened over the weekend with the illegal vaccine mandate being imposed on private industries by the Nixon-era excrescence of OSHA, the White House’s advice is to ignore it.
Biden also makes pro forma appearances on the international stage, including a mysteriously long audience with the former Cardinal Bergoglio (who’s every bit as much a pope as Biden is a president) that instantly gave rise to embarrassing rumors. And from time to time he even makes the short walk from West Wing to the Old Executive Office Building in order to stage something for the cameras in a studio-set version of the Oval Office.
But everybody in Washington knows the puppet presidency has no agency of its own, but is instead controlled from Kalorama by Barack Obama and his minions, including Ron Klain, who now serves as Biden’s chief of staff.
Meanwhile, the country he ostensibly leads is going to hell. We’ve gone from energy independence to passing the gasoline begging bowl, even as the forces behind Biden are busy choking off the domestic energy industry. Perhaps you’ve noticed the effects of this malicious policy at the gas pump.
Our long-neglected infrastructure, which is properly defined as roads, bridges, and buildings, remains a national disgrace, and the recent passage of a pork-laden $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill—with turncoat Republican help—not only won’t help a bit but will be paid for with imaginary money.
Overseas, right in Biden’s vaunted “foreign policy” wheelhouse, the Chinese are testing advanced missiles and expanding their fleet of aircraft carriers while what’s left of our Defense Department celebrates awarding four stars to a man in a skirt and hailing him as a “historic” female admiral.
A Navy sub’s trio of commanders was recently cashiered when the USS Connecticut struck an underseas mountain its crack officer corps somehow didn’t notice, while in San Diego the amphibious assault ship, Bonhomme Richard, was destroyed by an arsonist and a crew too incompetent to put out the blaze.
Oh yes, and the Marines recently got their tails kicked by the British in a desert-warfare exercise at their base at Twenty-Nine Palms in southern California. (The woke Marine Corps, of course, denies it.)
But the void in the White House is really the least of our problems, most of which we have brought upon ourselves. You get what you vote for and the American people, in rejecting Donald Trump, have voted for anarchy. As former New York City mayor Ed Koch said after being defeated for re-election in 1989, “the people have spoken, and they must be punished.”
Punishment is coming from every angle, principally from the criminal organization masquerading as a political party known as the Democrats. We now know that the vindictive but cunning loser Hillary Clinton set in motion the entire “Russian collusion”—in part with the collaboration of the Russophile leftist think tank, the Brookings Institution, and in part through the medium of a British spy channeling deliberate Soviet-style disinformation.
From the jump, it was obvious that the “Steele dossier” was a farrago of standard ex-KGB dirty tricks—in Russia and in Eastern Europe I’d seen this movie a dozen times—and I said so publicly at the time, practically from the day Buzzfeed published the “dossier.”
The American media deliberately weaponized this disinformation—which they knew at the time was false—against the lawfully elected president of the United States and crippled his presidency over it. And then they awarded themselves Pulitzer Prizes for their “reporting” of something that never happened.
Par for the course for the American version of Pravda. If you don’t think the New York Times hasn’t been in love with its Russian socialist confreres—and often actually been in bed with the KGB, its forebears, and its descendants—for the bulk of the 20th century, you need to wake up. Until the power of the Times is broken, the American Republic-as-founded will never have a moment’s peace.
But the weaponization didn’t and doesn’t stop there. “Former” members of the intelligence community now lie brazenly and openly on some of the “news channels,” such as CNN: the spooks are out of the shadows and in your living room.
The FBI is now investigating the alleged theft of Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary—a document that if genuine offers even more repellent insights into this stunningly dysfunctional family. How this is a federal matter is beyond me, unless the FBI has now become the Biden family’s private police force with a mandate to suppress bad news about the family. And if you don’t believe me, ask Hunter Biden.
Americans, quite properly, sense there’s something “off” about Biden and his crew, which is why his approval ratings continue to crater. But as long as the radical Left holds the media high ground, it’s hard for most people not obsessed by politics to grasp just how malignant these people are. For decades, they’ve made no bones about their desire to replace the United States of the founding with something “progressive.”
They’ve overtly collaborated with the Soviets, infiltrated the civil-rights movement, absorbed the legacy media, corrupted the lawmakers, overpowered academe, seized hold of the education of our children and now, in their moment of triumph, are forcing us to live in a fantasy world of their own psycho-sexual device, while their pet shrinks tell us that we’re the crazy bigots, via the media.
In the wake of the accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in September, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) introduced the Secure America Act on Oct. 13 to stop Afghan refugees from being granted “parole status” into the United States with “zero vetting whatsoever.”
In an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report,” Rosendale said the Biden administration’s accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan has in fact created “an excuse to bring hundreds of thousands of refugees” into the United States.
In response, the Secure America Act was introduced to let Congress “reclaim authority to how many refugees will come into our country on any given year,” he said.
Furthermore, if refugees are to be sent to specific states, the governor of such a state will direct “Homeland Security and the FBI to create a good, new, thorough vetting system.”
Under the new act, the executive branch will no longer be able to grant refugees entry and the ability to “travel freely” within the country with “zero vetting.”
Rosendale said the new bill ensures “anyone who comes in is vetted for criminal activity.”
The vetting process will also involve checking that incoming refugees do not have “deeply held beliefs or practices that are at odds with our Constitution.”
“That way, we can be assured that they’re going to embrace our culture and our way of life and and contribute to the American dream,” said Rosendale.
Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) also warned of a “flawed” Afghan refugee vetting process in an interview with Fox News on Oct. 7.
“We already know there’s weakness in the vetting process and the screenings, and we want to make sure as this continues, we can make sure the American people can feel safe and secure about the entire process,” Herrell said.
Herrell gave the interview shortly after visiting Fort Bliss, Texas, where a female soldier reported being attacked by Afghan refugees.
“We can confirm a female service member supporting Operation Allies Welcome reported being assaulted on Sept. 19 by a small group of male evacuees at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico,” Lt. Col. Allie Payne, director of public affairs for Fort Bliss and the 1st Armored Division, told ABC7.
“We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Payne added.
While Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in early September confirmed that people on U.S. watch lists were among the tens of thousands of people airlifted out of Kabul, he denied any allegations of ISIS members making it into the country as Afghan refugees.
“We have a multilayered, multiagency screening and vetting process to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mayorkas said, according to the The Washington Times.
An official within the Biden administration stated during a Sept. 14 briefing that the government has put in measures to “enhance the screening and vetting operations” without compromising national security.
“The U.S. government’s work includes ensuring evacuees are thoroughly and appropriately vetted prior to arrival in the U.S.,” the official said. “We’ve also made sure that evacuees are thoroughly screened at ports of entry and tested for COVID upon arrival, with less than a 1 percent positive rate thus far.”
Finally!! Someone else seconds my view of the current administration: Idiocracy, the movie, embodied!! [US Patriot]
The heroic sacrifices of U.S. soldiers are being shelved in an effort to erase our humiliating defeat in Afghanistan — a defeat caused by politicians and generals, not the soldiers themselves.
An enormous collection of Afghanistan War footage has been removed from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service by the Pentagon, according to a report in Task and Purpose. More than 120,000 photos and 17,000 videos have been removed from the DVIDS official record.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the images that were archived, so Afghans who helped the U.S. in the war will not be put in danger. The problem? A large number of the archived images do not show any Afghan soldiers or civilians.
If you feel like you’re living in “Idiocracy,” you’re not alone.
A significant percent of the archived images are portraits of U.S. service members on patrol and in combat.
In one example, photos showing U.S. Army soldiers in the Kandahar province are no longer on the DVIDS, though they remain in outlets such as the Los Angeles Times. A significant number of the archived images can still be found online.
The DVIDS houses a prodigious amount of public domain material available to the public and the press. It is the place reporters, historians and other interested parties go to to help them construct reliable narratives concerning the Afghan war.
Is the Biden administration attempting to create a reality based on false narratives?
The Taliban, since their victory in August, has targeted and brutalized Afghans, from those who participated in the former government, to female judges to the families of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government. There are many in Afghanistan facing grave danger to this day.
The Defense Department began archiving the imagery in August and September as it was working to get Afghans out of the country, according to Kirby. Are they so foolish as to believe that most if not all relevant DVIDS images of men and women who helped the U.S. in the war had previously been downloaded and stored elsewhere?
And what about all the archived images of U.S. Service members, many of them presumably dead or severely wounded in the war, that have compromised a total of zero Afghan soldiers or civilians? Why are they now missing from the DVIDS?
Kirby claimed his decision was not prompted by a specific security threat but said there was ample reason for the move. He also claimed the archived images will be republished at the “right time.” He didn’t give a hint as to when.
No specific threat? No timeline to republish? Is this just one more colossal blunder of a incredibly inept administration?
Many people wonder if the abrupt and disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was due to gross negligence. How about erasing American soldiers from the official historical record in an attempt to rewrite a history more favorable to the administration? Is this gross negligence or is it hubris?
It’s not wise to attempt to fool reality by creating false narratives, and there’s far too much of it going on these days. Reality always wins in the end. Always. Count on it.
The Biden administration’s reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan will never be forgotten, no matter what lengths they may go too to erase it.
Men are not gods who can create reality to their liking. To try to do so is an act of hubris.
In a representative republic, elected officials must negotiate reality to the best of their ability, not for themselves, but in the best interest of their constituents.
The U.S. troops who served bravely and with honor in Afghanistan were and are American citizens. They will not be forgotten.
Republicans in Virginia gained control of the state’s House of Delegates after Democratic leaders on Nov. 5 conceded that the GOP has gained the majority.
The concession by the Democrats means Republicans have completed a sweep of the elections, which already included the race for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.
House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn acknowledged the Republican majority shortly after Democratic Del. Martha Mugler conceded defeat in a race against Republican challenger A.C. Cordoza in the 91st House District. Mugler’s concession gave Republicans 51 seats in Virginia’s 100-seat House chamber.
“While the results of the election were not in our favor, our work for the people of Virginia goes on,” said Filler-Corn.
Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, said Filler-Corn called Gilbert on Friday.
“The House Republican caucus appreciates her pledge to a smooth transition to the incoming majority,” Shipley said.
Democrats held a 55–45 majority heading into the election on Nov. 2.
Top Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, saw the election on Tuesday as a barometer for key national races in 2022, which will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate. President Joe Biden won the state by a 10-point margin in 2020, making the election sweep a major red flag that the president’s progressive agenda is not playing well with voters.
The Republican statehouse victories are being seen as a backlash against a Democratic majority that has pushed through a series of progressive reforms over the past two years, including the repeal of the death penalty, a loosening of abortion restrictions, and the legalization of marijuana.
In the House of Delegates races, Republican Kim Taylor scored a surprise victory over three-term incumbent Democratic Del. Lashrecse Aird, giving Republicans the 50th seat on Nov. 3. Aird claimed victory late Tuesday, but a late surge by Taylor gave her a 741-vote win.
Democrats are still in control of the state Senate, holding a 21–19 majority until at least 2023. Republicans will nonetheless have veto power coupled with control of the lower chamber.
Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the most-watched 2021 race on Tuesday. Republican Winsome Sears beat Democrat Hala Ayala in the race for the lieutenant governor’s office. Republican Jason Miyares beat Democratic two-term incumbent Mark Herring in the race for the attorney general’s office.
Youngkin’s victory and the near-defeat of New Jersey’s Democratic governor have sparked fears that Democrats are on course to lose control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan seems to be the gift that just keeps on giving.
In the midst of the destruction and Taliban takeover, it is actually the Islamic State that is now benefiting greatly from President Joe Biden’s poor planning, and the U.S. is the loser in the grand scheme of it all.
During all the years that the U.S. was present in the country, they were training elite Afghan military units. Now, some of those U.S.-trained officers are joining the Islamic State-Khorasan in defiance of the Taliban.
The Taliban and ISIS-K are bitter enemies, and the war between them in Afghanistan has never ceased. In fact, when the Taliban took over the country, the fighting increased as the groups began targeting each other’s fighters and leaders. But now, ISIS-K could gain the upper hand as they gain elite Afghan officers.
According to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, the group of Afghan defectors to ISIS-K is still small but may be growing.
“Importantly, these new recruits bring to Islamic State critical expertise in intelligence-gathering and warfare techniques, potentially strengthening the extremist organization’s ability to contest Taliban supremacy,” the WSJ reported.
Various Afghan officials told the paper of previous members of the Afghan military and intelligence branches who disappeared and then reappeared as fighters for the Islamic State.
“In some areas, ISIS has become very attractive,” said Rahmatullah Nabil, a former head of Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security.
Though ISIS-K may appall many, it does make sense that Afghan officers would be joining its ranks. After years of working with Americans to stave off the Taliban, it’s logical that they would then join the only real organized resistance to the Taliban.
Should the U.S. work with the Taliban to fight ISIS-K?
No matter what else ISIS-K is embroiled in or planning, it has set itself up as the main opponent of the Taliban.
Besides just being the resistance to the Taliban, ISIS-K could also provide protection to Afghan officers who previously were allied with the United States. The Taliban promised amnesty to those who worked with Americans, but there seems to be little trust in this promise.
“Hundreds of thousands of former Afghan republic intelligence officers, soldiers and police personnel are unemployed and afraid for their lives despite pledges of amnesty from the Taliban,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Along with protection from the Taliban, the WSJ also heard reports that ISIS-K is offering significant compensation to new members in Afghanistan.
This whole development is deeply concerning to the U.S., and rightly so. Not only has the government inadvertently funded ISIS-K terrorism as Afghan officers they trained are joining the organization, but the terror of the Islamic State will eventually be directed at America. In a way, the U.S. may have funded an attack against itself.
While ISIS-K may not have the ability to launch an attack on the U.S. immediately, senior Pentagon official Colin Kahl said recently, “We could see ISIS-K generate that capability in somewhere between six or 12 months,” CNN reported.
Originally, it might have been assumed that the Taliban would be able to curb ISIS-K, but Kahl clarified that, though the Taliban are highly motivated to beat down the Islamic State, “their ability to do so, I think, is to be determined,” according to Middle Eastern news site Gandhara.
ISIS-K seems to be showcasing its new surge of power and has already been responsible for several bombings in Afghanistan just in the last few weeks, Human Rights Watch reported.
So it is certainly not helping that now, U.S. trained Afghan officers are strengthening ISIS-K against the Taliban.
In this violent fight between the Taliban and ISIS-K, the U.S. is caught in the middle with hostility coming from both sides. There are simply no winners in this triangle of conflict, and the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw American troops simply brought everything to a head.
Former President Donald Trump released a statement Monday blasting President Joe Biden over his failures in Afghanistan and beyond, claiming world leaders are “laughing at Biden.”
The statement was released following videos of Biden apparently falling asleep during Monday’s COP26 conference in Scotland and later apologizing to world leaders over America leaving the Paris Accord, blaming Trump for “putting us behind the eight ball.”
“It is very interesting that Afghanistan, and our horrible and incompetent withdrawal, losing soldiers and leaving $Billions of military equipment, was when people really began to realize how horrible this Socialism/Communism direction for America has become,” Trump said.
NEW!
“It is very interesting that Afghanistan, and our horrible and incompetent withdrawal, losing soldiers and leaving $Billions of military equipment, was when people really began to realize how horrible this Socialism/Communism direction for America has become… pic.twitter.com/NgFjuHxwT7
Trump also said Biden is being laughed at by world leaders during his time in Europe.
“We have never been thought of so poorly as we are right now, including the fact that the leaders of foreign countries, all of whom are at the top of their game, are laughing at Biden as he makes the rounds in Europe,” the former president said.
“So low and so bad for America,” Trump added. “There has never been a time like it!”
“There has never been a time like it!” – President Donald J. Trump
Biden was criticized across social media after apparently falling asleep during the COP26 Climate Summit opening speeches, closing his eyes at one point for approximately 20 seconds.
Biden traveled to the United Nations climate conference on Monday to support a new legislative framework destined to become the largest in America’s history to address climate change.
As the speaker said, “You are in a position of extraordinary power,” Biden’s eyes closed, with his arms folded while sitting upright in a chair among other attendees.
After the video plays for almost a full minute, an assistant appears at the president’s side to wake him with what was apparently an important message. The speech then ends with Biden and the audience applauding.
The day of reckoning over the Western world’s self-destructive indulgence of the excesses of the environmental movement must now be almost at hand.
An important part of the Bidenization of America has been the frivolous discarding of America’s status as an energy self-sufficient nation after 75 years of oil imports.
As if completely deaf to the many and urgent warnings of the cost of shutting down the XL pipeline from Canada and groveling to the environmental agitators by rolling back offshore exploration and fracking, President Joe Biden and other administration spokespeople have, apparently unselfconsciously, lowered themselves to beseeching the Russians and Iranians, countries with whom the United States notoriously possesses no reservoir of goodwill, to join with the rest of OPEC in increasing oil production.
This initiative is of a piece with Secretary of State Blinken’s scolding of the Taliban regime the White House and the Pentagon helped usher into office in Afghanistan, for insufficient “diversity” in the selection of the new regime’s cabinet ministers, with John Kerry’s degrading petition of China for greater respect for the conjured dangers of climate change, and with the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Millie, volunteering from the Ruritanian vastness of his hyper-beribbonned tunic that the recent testing of Chinese and Russian hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles was “a Sputnik moment.”
Where were Millie and his colleagues, prior to their masterly performance in Afghanistan, and former Defense Secretary Mattis, when President Trump provided the Defense Department the funds to do everything it needed to assure American military superiority?
All of these reflections indicate the other-worldly preoccupations of this administration. This is the mentality that admits thousands of likely COVID carriers illegally across the southern border into the United States every day while failing to discourage Democratic civic administrations in New York and elsewhere from laying off policemen and firefighters, most of whom have a COVID immunity from having previously contracted that illness and recovered from it, for declining to be double vaccinated.
Apart from being unjust and probably illegal and absurdly inconsistent, this is a policy that inevitably accelerates the skyrocketing rates of urban violent crime in most American cities.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
But it is the saga of self-inflicted economic wounds in appeasement of climate change hysteria that most vividly illustrates the lethal toxicity of Bidenization. The spectacle of the president of the United States going cap-in-hand to the Kremlin and the ayatollahs is more demeaning than the indignities of the helicopters leaving the embassy compound in Saigon in 1975 and the seizure of the embassy hostages in Tehran in 1979.
And as the rites and antics of Bidenism accumulate, the major oil companies of the world have effectively ceased exploration, graciously introducing the eco-fairyland in Washington to the implications of supply and demand. That is, the supply of oil will decline as the demand increases and the price to ungrateful Americans increases.
If Biden imagines that the Kremlin and the ayatollahs or even our esteemed allies in Saudi Arabia (who cut the price of oil in the late Obama years in order to put a rod on the backs of the ayatollahs and in doing so saved Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia from Putin’s efforts to revive the Soviet Union), are going to palliate the violence eco-Bidenism has done to scores of millions of American households by raising gasoline and home fuel prices for the American public, he is more cognitively beset than is generally reckoned. (Ironically, the United States in the last twenty years, including the Trump term, had a brilliant record in reducing carbon emissions.)
Writing on Nov. 1, I expect the elections in Virginia on Nov. 2 will provide a sobering lesson in electoral arithmetic. This will be followed by the draconian comeuppance that the whole country is reserving for the Bidenists next year and especially in 2024. But we will have to endure these upcoming years with Job-like patience as the executive branch leads America into ever greater unnecessary energy expenses and evermore absurd “sustainable” energy boondoggles.
Referendum?
But there is a ray of hope that arises in mother England and in the contemporary plebiscitary spirit. It is not widely realized what an important geopolitical development Britain’s vote to depart the European Union five years ago was. And it is possible that a sequel is in the making.
The European Union was the successor to Cold War associations of European states that essentially strengthened the West in the Cold War by deepening the bonds that held Western Europe together and enabled it to resist the threats and blandishments of the Soviet bloc.
But after the Cold War ended satisfactorily, it became the pursuit of “an ever closer Europe” that would steadily aggregate into one confederal superstate that would enable Europe to reenter the world as a great power and, accordingly, a rival to the United States, rather than the meeting place of America’s principal allies.
For Great Britain, one of the worlds five or six most important countries and one of its very most distinguished nationalities, to secede from such a combination of states and resume the status that enabled it to be the principal ally of the United States in both world wars and in the Cold War, though it was not presented in this way to the British voters, was an act that reinforced America’s geopolitical position.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led the campaign to depart Europe while maintaining cordial trade and political relations with it, all in the framework of the Western Alliance, is, inexplicably, a climate change enthusiast who in his more animated moments stops only slightly short of Biden’s parroted bunk about the “existential threat” of climate change.
But the British public, like the French “yellow jackets” who rioted and demonstrated for an entire angry year about gasoline and home heating fuel price increases due to additional taxation to combat climate change, have real reservations about Boris’s current hobby-horse.
As this is an issue on which it will be difficult to impose party discipline, as public resentment over the cost of reducing carbon emissions with higher taxes and prices becomes clearer, some are already foreseeing a British referendum on this issue, a “Climate Chexit.”
Historically, Britain is rivaled only by the United States and France as the most politically influential and widely emulated country in the world, and a British referendum on the cost of combating climate change, whatever its result, would generate substantial pressure for a similar consultation of public opinion in the United States.
Congressional and parliamentary democracies tend not to like referendums. The history of both systems favors the election of legislators to work out the precise wording of legislation and even in France the history of referendums prior to the current Fifth Republic was of rubber-stamps of questionable accuracy of the most self-serving initiatives of the emperors Napoleon I and Napoleon III.
The United States has no history of such nation-wide plebiscites but any reasonably worded question about the desirability of proceeding with the Biden administration’s $550 billion carbon suppression program triumphantly unveiled in Glasgow this week will almost certainly produce an unambiguous vote for rejection.
Since the faddists dominate the political class and the national political media, it would be a magnificent act of self-liberation for the United States to consult itself, and puncture the giant hot-air balloon of faddish and generally mindless environmentalism.
President Joe Biden’s administration is withholding information about Afghanistan, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko said during a speech on Friday.
As an example, Sopko said, the Department of Defense (DoD) withheld information on the performance of Afghan security forces, including unit strength, training deficiencies, and casualty data, or, “in essence, nearly all the information you needed to know to determine whether the Afghan security forces were a real fighting force or a house of cards waiting to fall.”
“In light of recent events, it is not surprising that the Afghan government, and likely some in DoD, wanted to keep that information under lock and key,” he added.
Sopko said he was forced to relegate the information into classified appendices of a recent report his office released detailing flaws in the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan.
“This information almost certainly would have benefited Congress and the public in assessing whether progress was being made in Afghanistan and, more importantly, whether we should have ended our efforts there earlier,” he said.
“DoD is well aware of the Special Investigator for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s recent report. Its assertions that DoD deliberately withheld information on the Afghan Security Forces lacks context as the department took significant effort to ensure that the availability of data on Afghan forces was treated similarly to how DOD would manage such data on U.S. forces,” Major. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The Pentagon maintains that the Afghan government wanted to classify the data and that it recommended against it but “abided by the decision of the original classification authority.” Overall, the department says it has cooperated with SIGAR since the office was created by Congress.
The State Department, meanwhile, wrote to Sopko shortly after U.S.-backed Afghan forces were routed by the Taliban terrorist group as the U.S. moved to fully withdraw from the country.
“Shortly after the fall of Kabul, the State Department wrote to me and other oversight agencies requesting to ‘temporarily suspend access’ to all ‘audit, inspection, and financial audit … reports’ on our website because the Department was afraid that information included in those reports could put Afghan allies at risk,” Sopko said.
While the watchdog believes Afghans at risk should be protected, the State Department was never able to describe any specific threats nor could they explain how removing the reports “could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide.”
Sopko complied reluctantly with the request but became more puzzled when the agency reached out asking for redacting roughly 2,400 items in the reports, including the name of former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. A review found all but four requests “without merit.”
“In my opinion, the full picture of what happened in August—and all the warning signs that could have predicted the outcome—will only be revealed if the information that the Departments of Defense and State have already restricted from public release is made available,” said Sopko.
The speech was delivered to a conference in Arlington, Virginia.
A State Department spokesperson said in an email that the agency has worked to address challenges SIGAR identified in its report and recognizes the importance of the watchdog’s work.
“Due to safety and security concerns regarding our ongoing evacuation efforts, we requested some reports be temporarily removed to redact identifying information from public records and protect the identities of Afghans and Afghan partner organizations. SIGAR has the authority to restore the reports when it deems appropriate,” the spokesperson said.
“To protect the identities of Afghans and Afghan implementing partner organizations, the Department of State has worked to remove identifying information from multiple public records. The identifying information are the only details intended to be shielded. Because of the volume of information, some entities temporarily removed reports or full datasets,” they added.
Good! Bumbling Biden’s Build Back Better budget bill has imploded.
After renegotiation by the Democrats behind closed doors, all that remains is their “Weaker Woker Worsen” program.
It’s still a wasteful trillion-dollar socialist welfare wish list authorizing massive new spending of money we don’t have and levying taxes that will stall the economy amid the new hyperinflation eating away personal savings and threatening household independence.
The Democrats’ reckless budget must be defunded and defeated.
America must get back to work and concentrate on making money rather than just spending it. America’s exceptionalism will reappear when Americans’ work ethic, damaged by Biden’s $1.9 trillion handouts last March, is restored.
In only nine months, the Biden administration has demoralized a great nation. Its most spectacular failure — the dishonorable exit from Afghanistan — has made America weaker and our enemies stronger. Weakness is dangerous: It invites disaster.
Instead of designing “social infrastructure,” the real urgency is to reform defense leadership and restore respect and morale for American forces at home and abroad.
Will the Democrats’ radical agenda be defeated?
Our enemies must be made wary of harming any Americans anywhere ever again.
“On the day that we were sworn in together, the Vice President toppled a barrier to women’s participation that had stood for more than 200 years. Our Cabinet and senior staff are the most diverse and genderbalanced in history.”
Just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, an old madness has taken hold — a U.S. president smiles vacuously and proffers feeble jokes in answer to serious questions; his vice president cackles inanely over grave border violations in the south.
The sovereignty of the United States of America is crumbling while the Biden administration is focused on novelties and distractions, e.g. the Department of Justice initiative to investigate “domestic terrorist” parents who resist woke ideology threatening their children.
Right now Biden is preening himself for the leader’s mantle at a gigantic “the end is nigh” alarmism conference in Glasgow. He hopes to launch a lavish spendathon nationally and internationally on Green New Deal fantasies. Supposedly a huge number of U.S. jobs and industries must be sacrificed to avert the apocalypse of climate change, which Biden says is an “existential threat.”
Meanwhile, he studiously ignores real and present dangers — the rise of China with its nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles; and here at home the worsening economic outlook — runaway inflation, growing fuel dependency on unfriendly nations, skyrocketing food prices, empty shelves, rising energy prices.
Dems Want a United States Socialist Republic – A New USSR?
The Dems’ radical revolutionary policies were never honestly explained before the election.
In a constitutional republic, responsible voting takes place only after careful consideration of specified policies presented upfront before Election Day and spelled out and explained honestly by candidates.
Emotional voting — hyped up by social media — turned the 2020 election into a noisily contested popularity poll. The election did not allow voters the opportunity to make a fully informed decision primarily because the alarming extent of the policies being revealed only now in the Build Back Better bill were withheld from the people.
The extreme changes proposed in this bill were never fully publicized, nor were they seriously evaluated before the election. They were never the electoral choice of informed voters. The details, even now, are being decided behind closed doors.
The 2020 election was orchestrated into an election of opposing personalities that distracted voters from examining opposing policies. Personalities, not policies, dominated social media. This diversion from the real issues at stake was set up and executed deftly by an amalgamation of the leftist-dominated media, academia and the entertainment industry.
Big Tech moguls, backing Biden, manipulated the messaging and vetted the messengers allowed to post. There was a steady drumbeat of woke groups threatening riots, arson and looting should the Dems not win.
The election was won by a wafer-thin majority of rattled Democratic and independent voters who mostly voted against Trump personally and not for the Dems’ policies, which remained interred with Biden in his bunker throughout the lead-up to the election.
Dems Presented a Pig-in-a-Poke Election
The Dems’ plan for a radical transformation of the whole nation and their ambitions to halt the natural tides of climate change that have benefited our world for eons would have been too large for voters to take in before the election.
We would not find out what we voted for until after the Dems won. Only then did they draw up their massive 2,465-page bill to transform our constitutional republic into a socialist republic ruled by big government. As Speaker Pelosi said once of another bill, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
But genuine democratic elections are about controversy — about opposing sets of policies. That’s how a true democracy works. Informed, responsible voting is every American’s duty.
Regrettably, the Dems’ radical-left tax-and-spend agenda was not raised in any clear way until after the election. Nor were voters given any real understanding of the Dems’ planned redistribution of not just wealth but of people — some 1.7 million illegal aliens exploiting an open-borders policy.
It was a pig-in-a-poke election. It was a largely superficial choice of president between two flawed men — not a truly democratic choice between substantially different policy initiatives.
Elections must never again be reduced to mere rallying cries and political propaganda that hustle Americans to vote against the incumbent president portrayed as an enemy of the people. The real achievements of the Trump presidency were disparaged.
Slightly more than half of the American voters swallowed the lie that a Biden win would return the nation to a pre-Trump era “stability.”
Indeed, the radical left wing of the Democratic Party secured a coup — an “Animal Farm” revolution:
“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
Biden-Harris good, Trump bad.
How Democracies Die
In genuine democracies, those elected to power must be held to their pre-election programs. The American people, perhaps distracted by COVID, should not have been tempted back to the follies exercised of old in the making of kings.
Once crowned, kings were awarded divine rights to implement any and every law they could imagine or desire. Kings weren’t obliged to give their people any prior knowledge of or require any “people’s consent” to their autocratic plans and policies — no matter how radical.
The divine right of kings was the kind of government that the American revolutionaries so bravely fought against and won.
Elections in the democratic republic set up in the U.S. Constitution do not award any party a blank check to introduce trillion-dollar bills to transform the republic into a socialist, big-government, one-party dictatorship.
In a genuine democratic republic, the contestants must bring a plan — an accurate layout of what they will establish, what they will maintain and what they will change, and an honest estimate of how much it will all cost and how it will be funded.
Good old American know-how must prevail once more. Americans’ famous bulldust meters must begin to work again. And the real goodness deep down in the hearts of all decent Americans of all colors, sizes, faiths and family histories must rise up and shine so that God will bless America, to become once again one of the finest countries on earth, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Biden’s promises to get Americans out of Afghanistan are proving to be empty lies. Now, a disabled American citizen from Liberty, Kentucky, is finding this out the hard way.
“Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” Biden said back in August, according to NPR.
Abdul Samad and his family are desperately wanting to come home, but they can’t. They are in extreme danger, but due to the incompetence that led the American withdrawal, the Samad family is having to hide and beg the American government to bring them home.
Samad is originally from Afghanistan, but after losing his hands and left eye in a landmine explosion when he was a teenager, he came to the United States. The founders of Galilean Children’s Home took Samad in, and he became a citizen, building a life in Kentucky.
In August, however, Samad, along with his wife, four children, and mother-in-law, went back to Afghanistan to visit a sick relative. Then devastation struck when the American troops suddenly withdrew and left Samad behind. Samad’s wife and children are also American citizens, and his mother-in-law has a green card.
“I’m really confused because I don’t know what to do because the airport is closed and the border with Pakistan is closed. So I don’t know how to get out,” Samad told Lex18 News.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Samad has heard from the American embassy. He has twice filled out the re-repatriation request form they asked for, but still has no way out. He has kept his family on the move continually, and they are afraid to sleep in the same place.
“I’ve been moving with family members from place to place to stay with them, so people will not notice we are from the United States,” Samad said.
Should we still have troop in Afghanistan?
The government has miserably failed their own citizens and has put them in harm’s way.
“We are in a very helpless situation because we cannot really say much and we cannot do much unless we found a way that we can really get out safely,” Samad said.
Sadly, Samad’s story of helplessness is just one more piece of incriminating evidence against Biden’s absolute failure in Afghanistan.
Thanks to Biden’s hasty decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Samad is now having to hide from the Taliban. Just about two months ago he and his family were peacefully living in Kentucky; now, they are suffering for Biden’s foolishness. It is the height of injustice, and Biden is to blame.
Biden’s ample lip-service to the idea of American safety has done nothing.
“The United States stands by its commitment that we’ve made to these people,” Biden said, according to NPR.
Then why is Samad stranded?
When people were hanging from plane wings and nearly killing each other to get on the leaving American planes, Biden acted like it was just business as usual.
“There’s no way we would have been able to leave Afghanistan without there being some of what you’re seeing now,” he said, CNBC reported.
Of course withdrawals are messy. But that doesn’t mean it’s simply fine to ignore the pleas of citizens that are trapped. Biden made promises.
But now Samad is hiding helplessly, and his pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears.
Biden should be utterly appalled and sick that he has done this to Samad — and so many other American citizens.
Take some refugees, please, the Biden administration is now asking veterans and private groups.
With about 55,600 Afghan refugees currently parked at military bases, the Biden administration wants to leapfrog the existing system of refugee resettlement agencies, according to CNN.
It wants to create sponsorship circles of veterans and others who will provide money for refugees to have housing, furniture, silverware and a variety of other expenses — as well as develop a resettlement plan for each refugee.
To hurry up the process, the Biden administration also wants to place refugees beyond the former 100-mile limit from a resettlement office.
Former Democratic Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, who is leading the effort to resettle Afghan refugees, gushed about the plan.
“This is just an amazing opportunity to, frankly, do what our veterans have been asking us to do, which is provide a safe and dignified welcome to Afghans who served by our side in Afghanistan, and who now want to build their own lives here,” he said.
As the Biden administration pushes to resettle those who arrived this summer as fast as possible, Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico said thorough vetting is important, according to KECI-TV.
Herrell has sought information in an assault that took place at Fort Bliss in which refugees are accused of assaulting a female soldier and claims she has been stonewalled.
The incident has led her to call for stronger vetting before Afghan evacuees are plunked down across the country.
Should cities have a say on whether or not migrants will be moved there?
“The data and the vetting is only as good as what you can compare it to. So were they truly able to compare criminal backgrounds, security backgrounds?” she said. “What’s really sad is we already know Afghans made it to the nation who had been deported by Department of Homeland Security earlier on.”
“I think it behooves us to at least leave these Afghan nationals in other nations until we can do a complete analysis and vetting process on each and every one of them, guaranteeing the American people that we do know their criminal background, that they can pass security background checks, that they are actually Special Immigrant Passport Holders,” she continued.
“[W]e just don’t know who’s coming in, and we really don’t have faith in this vetting process, because we know that they have already made mistakes,” Herrell said.
Refugee agencies, which in the past have been funded by splitting the resettlement fee of $2,275 the federal government pays out, said they are just too impoverished to do much.
“We just didn’t have the capacity after the beating we took under the Trump administration,” said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, a refugee resettlement agency, according to CNN. “Necessity is the mother of invention. This is the outcome of that.”
Community Sponsorship Hub, part of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc., is trying to find places to stash refugees.
“It’s providing this opportunity for communities that said they want to stand up, to stand up. That’s the point. It’s to maximize this outpouring of desire to welcome,” said Danielle Grigsby, co-founder and director of external affairs at Community Sponsorship Hub.
Grigsby said sponsors can bring refugees into their homes temporarily as well.
“The housing issue is a challenging one for sure. Every American knows that housing is expensive and in short supply,” Markell said.
President Joe Biden has just been hit with impeachment paper and, in the charges, he has been accused of “treason.”
The Articles of Impeachment were introduced on Friday by Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“I have introduced House Res. 57, these are Articles of Impeachment on President Biden,” the representative said. “For abuse of power in regards to his willingness to use his position of power to aid his son Hunter Biden in his business dealings.”
“I have also introduced another Article of Impeachment on President Biden, which is H. Res 597,” she said. “This has to do with the national security crisis that President Biden has created with regards to the extreme threat at the southern border.”
“I have introduced House Res. 598, Articles of Impeachment on President Biden in regards to the failure in Afghanistan,” the firebrand representative said. “And I have introduced House Res. 596, Articles of Impeachment on President Biden for the Covid eviction moratorium and his willingness to use his position to try to do what he shouldn’t be doing. We have three branches of power.”
“Joe Biden swore an oath, he said ‘I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States and I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’ and he is failing to uphold his oath,” she said.
“Joe Biden is failing the American people by refusing to uphold the law and the Constitution,” the representative said. “But Afghanistan is where it really hurt. You see, Article III, Section 3, Joe Biden could be guilty of treason.”
“Our law says that levying war against the U.S., adhering to the enemies of the U.S., and giving ‘aid and comfort’ is treason,” she said. “President Biden did that by arming the Taliban with our taxpayer-funded U.S. equipment and weapons. He abandoned Americans in Afghanistan and seems to have no interest in getting them back.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “I have introduced House Res. 57. These are articles of impeachment on President Joe Biden for abuse of power in regards to his willingness to use his position of power to aid his son Hunter Biden.” pic.twitter.com/KXQPAg3ayQ
In a House of Representatives controlled by Democrats and led by House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the impeachment is not likely to go anywhere.
It is not the first time Articles of Impeachment were filed against Biden, as another Republican representative filed them for the crisis at the United States and Mexico Border in September.
Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Gibbs introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on Tuesday, citing his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border situation, attempt to expand the federal moratorium on evictions, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Republican Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Brian Babin and Randy Weber of Texas signed on as co-sponsors of the impeachment resolution.
“I take this seriously. I don’t think it’s haphazard. I’m not trying to get media attention for myself,” Gibbs told the Washington Examiner. “He’s done so much damage to this country in less than nine months, which is really scary.
“He’s not capable of being commander in chief, and that’s obvious by the actions since Day One when he took the presidency back in January,” Gibbs added. “Maybe something like this makes the White House think twice before they do some of this nonsense.”
Gibbs said that he and his colleagues began working on the articles of impeachment even before Biden’s rushed, manic, deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“We actually started working before the Afghanistan debacle because I was so upset” about what is going on along the border, as well as the president ignoring the Supreme Court’s opposition to extending an eviction moratorium.
“Obviously, it’s not going to go anywhere with Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi,” Gibbs said, acknowledging the political reality that Democrats currently are in the majority in the House and Senate. Nevertheless, “it shows that there are some Republicans that think that this president needs to be impeached, he needs to be removed from office one way or another,” he added.
“At some point, they’re gonna be held accountable for their actions, and this is kind of putting them on notice,” Gibbs said.
Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources held a forum Oct. 22 to discuss how President Biden’s exit from Afghanistan left massive, untapped reserves of rare-earth metals, lithium, and other vital minerals in Taliban hands, potentially opening them up to exploitation by China.
Speakers said the Biden administration has simultaneously worked to hinder key mining projects in the United States, such as Minnesota’s Twin Metals copper-nickel project and Arizona’s Resolution copper mine, which would allow the United States to produce many of those minerals at home, thereby avoiding dependence on the Taliban or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“It’s almost like it’s intentional, to stop U.S. production of these critical minerals and elements,” said Ranking Member Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.).
Westerman’s remarks were later echoed by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who said that some of the environmentalist groups fighting mining “we think are getting money from Russia, China, and other countries that are foes of ours.”
Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), whose district would include the proposed Twin Metals mine, spoke at length about the economic and security costs of relying on key minerals from abroad.
“For fifteen years, scientists from the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey], at a taxpayer cost of right around $81 million, found [in Afghanistan] massive amounts of lithium, gold, platinum, iron, coal, uranium, and more,” said Stauber.
“We know what happens next. The Taliban’s neighbor to the east, China, will swoop in and shortly thereafter control all of these mineral resources. There is no doubt at our current pace, the United States will have to purchase those minerals from China for our electric cars, our windmills, our iPhones, and our solar panels,” Stauber continued.
“Northern Minnesota has these minerals. We could look to union miners to supply them from my district. We have 95 [percent] of America’s nickel, 88 [percent] of America’s cobalt, and over one-third of America’s copper. It should be easy.”
Discussing the possibility of the imminent Chinese mineral exploitation in Afghanistan, Joe Felter of the Hoover Institute said it was plausible, though not certain.
“It depends. The challenges and calculated risks of mining rare earths and other minerals are significant in Afghanistan, and they could outweigh the opportunities in the near- and medium-term. One notable exception, I think, is China’s interest in getting increased access to lithium,” said Felter, who served in the Pentagon under Trump.
Felter recommended that the United States reduce its reliance on Chinese or Chinese-dominated supply chains.
Pressed by Stauber on where else the United States could source minerals, Felter responded that “almost any other country than China would be a better alternative” before noting that Australia was a U.S. ally with significant mining capacity.
Mary Hutzler, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, described the scale of the United States’ dependence on Chinese mineral resources for its renewable energy infrastructure, which dwarfs our past reliance on foreign oil before the United States achieved energy independence under President Trump.
“Our reliance on China is about 80 [percent] for these minerals right now, where the high for us in 2001 on oil from the Middle East was 23 [percent],” she said. “We’re going to be four times as dependent on China as we were on the Middle East.”
According to Hutzler, China’s competitive advantage in mineral processing and refinement stems in part from its reliance on cheap coal energy, which it is expected to expand.
Hutzler also stated that environmental permitting has stymied many recent mining projects in the United States, with the second proposed lithium mine in the United States, Nevada’s Thacker Pass, currently delayed by lawsuits.
In response to questioning from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Hutzler said that Europe’s present reliance on Chinese magnesium for automobile manufacturing offers a cautionary tale.
“With China’s crunch recently, they have closed 35 of their 50 magnesium plants. As a result, they are not exporting magnesium to Europe. Europe has only stockpiles to go through November. As a result, what’s going to happen is their automobile industry will become a standstill industry. That could happen to us because of our dependence on China,” said Hutzler.
Tiffany was among those who focused on the human rights abuses accepted by those who rely on minerals mined or processed in China.
He has introduced legislation aimed at preventing goods made with forced Uyghur labor from entering the U.S. market.
“We [Americans] are freedom-loving people. We do not accept that the Uyghurs should be enslaved,” he said.
“We shouldn’t expect anything different from China than their track record suggests—and it’s a pretty poor track record,” said Felter.
“When you’ve got these foreign-owned businesses run by the state that don’t have the same labor requirements we do, don’t have the same health and safety and environmental requirements, really, the only way I see you stop that is to penalize those imports coming into our country,” said Westerman.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) closed the forum by urging members to support his proposed legislation, the Stopping Terrorist Mineral Trade Act, which would prevent the importation of minerals, or mineral-derived products, originating in Afghanistan.
“I know that my colleagues at this forum wish this important topic was something we could approach on a bipartisan basis, grounded in factual discussions focused on solutions. Unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues see all American mining as unnecessary, and are hellbent on seeing that it doesn’t happen,” said Gosar.
“For some reason, they never can see the right mine or the right place in America for mining,” he added.
This might be brutal, but it’s 10000% true – can’t wait for Joe to see it
There’s a hero Republican politician in York County, PA who is putting his money where his mouth is, and he’s doing so by placing some very damning billboards up featuring Joe Biden, all over the county.
ABC 27 News covered the story and said the following: If you’ve driven along Interstate 83 in York County lately, chances are you’ve seen a giant billboard that features President Joe Biden in a military outfit along with the phrase “Making the Taliban Great Again.”
The billboard is operated by advertising company Trone Outdoor Advertising, which provides billboard advertising in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. The company is responsible for operating and organizing advertisements, but it is not responsible for what is included in the advertisements that are displayed.
“The individual that is responsible for the billboard is (former Pennsylvania State Senator) Scott Wagner. He gave us permission to make it known that he was responsible for the billboard,” Vice President of Trone Outdoor Brian Scott said.
Scott Wagner had one term as Pennsylvania State Senator, elected in 2014. He represented the 28th district in the state, which is a large portion of York County. He resigned in June of 2018 to run for Governor as the Republican nominee, a race in which he lost to Governor Tom Wolf.
“I saw the image (of Joe Biden), I got it from a friend a few weeks ago. The picture tells the story. We pulled out of Afghanistan too quickly, and we left so much of American equipment. Joe Biden has made us look like a fool. I feel so bad, words can’t describe what I would say to someone who was wounded or someone’s family who had a soldier pass away in the country after all this happened,” Scott Wagner said when asked for a comment.
Gee, between this and the F Joe Biden stuff, I don’t think ol’ Bumbling Joe is gonna wanna leave the basement ever again.
And truthfully, that’d be a good thing for the entire country.
The Biden Administration has been caught red handed flying illegal immigrants across the country in the dead of night, and should this behavior continue over the next three and half years, it will fundamentally alter the course of this country, as well as what it believes and of course, how it votes. Plus, Meghan McCain is speaking out about the ‘toxic’ behavior she received on the set of the view, but was she a part of the problem? Also, Trump has a new social media platform coming out, but will it be ‘the truth’ – or just another conservative echo chamber that lies to the fanbase?
In off-the-record call with congressional staff, Biden admin says nearly 400 still stranded
The Biden administration is in touch with nearly 400 Americans who are stranded in Afghanistan, a figure that far exceeds the administration’s claims that about 100 Americans were left in the nation following the United States’ hurried exit from Kabul, according to a senior congressional source who was briefed Thursday by the State Department.
With Afghanistan in the administration’s rear-view mirror, U.S. officials are providing exact figures on the number of Americans who are still stranded and want to leave—although they are doing so in private, off-the-record forums—according to two senior congressional aides, who relayed the contents of the non-public call to the Washington Free Beacon.
The United States is in touch with 363 Americans who are stuck in war-torn Afghanistan and around 176 U.S. permanent residents who are asking to be evacuated immediately, Biden administration officials said on the call with congressional staff, according to the source, who requested anonymity to discuss non-public information. These figures demonstrate that senior Biden administration officials routinely misrepresented the number of stranded Americans to the public and Congress for nearly two months.
The State Department further claims to have airlifted 218 U.S. citizens and 131 long-term permanent residents out of Afghanistan since Aug. 31, when senior Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, were publicly claiming that “around 100” Americans were still stuck in the nation. Psaki, for instance, said last month that only “a handful of American citizens” were trying to leave Afghanistan after the United States pulled its forces. The figures presented in Thursday’s briefing indicate the administration was citing the “around 100” talking point while privately being aware of nearly 600 Americans still inside Afghanistan.
The information presented in the call stunned participants and fueled accusations that the Biden administration lied about the dire situation in order to avoid public scrutiny of its rushed evacuation from Afghanistan that was widely seen as disastrous and ill-prepared.
“We now know this administration repeatedly lied to the world about the citizens of our country it abandoned in Afghanistan,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), whose office has paved the way for several families to come home, told the Free Beacon. “But it did something even worse: It broke a sacred bond of trust between Americans and their government. This isn’t close to over.”
While members of Congress often challenged the “around 100” figure, the administration stuck to the number and attempted to downplay criticism of its botched retreat.
“Everyone who has said these numbers make no sense got told we were lying, got told we were crazy, got told we were not on the ground,” said a second senior congressional source working on the issue. “The White House has said on the record that they’re turning the page and it becomes clearer all the time why: Every new detail that we find out about the reckless Biden policy in Afghanistan produces only more proof that they lied from day one.”
The State Department did not provide congressional staff with information about how it is coordinating with outside groups to fly trapped Americans out of Afghanistan. Many charter flights have been prevented by the Taliban from leaving Afghanistan. The State Department said it “didn’t have good guidance there for how to get a flight in and out of the country.” There were also “no clear answers” about how Americans board a private flight out of Kabul, where the Taliban controls who gets in and out of the city.
The United States has established a “technical channel” with the Taliban passport office to help stranded Americans get the paperwork needed to flee the country, according to the source who was on the call.
Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers, including Issa, were informed last week by American military officials that nearly 20 percent of the Afghan evacuees who were brought to the United States—around 12,000 in total—arrived with no paperwork, no identification, and no visa, as the Free Beaconfirst reported.
The Biden administration additionally blocked Issa and other lawmakers from accessing a U.S. holding facility located near Doha, Qatar, where Afghan evacuees are being held prior to being flown into America.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the call or its contents.
For al-Qaida, the war with the West is far from over. The Biden administration has invited the terrorist organization to America and they’re all too happy to take up the offer. Al-Qaida is picking up where they left off, and according to a new report, they could be headed to a neighborhood near you.
Panama Foreign Affairs Minister Erika Mouynes reportedly told Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzalez that over 100,000 migrants had crossed through her country on the way to the United States. That’s not the worst of it. Mouynes also told Gonzalez that Panama had apprehended 52 people associated with al-Qaida.
“I asked her one specific question: ‘Have you caught anybody on the terrorist watch list?’” Gonzalez related in an interview on the Real America podcast with Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. “She goes, ‘Funny you ask that, Tony, because in Panama we do biometrics and we have apprehended 52 people that are associated with al-Qaida.’”
People have speculated about al-Qaida’s eagerness to exploit Biden’s border policy, but Mouynes is the first government official to go on the record saying this is happening in real-time.
Panama uses biometrics to identify possible threats. When asked if she had reported this real threat to the Biden administration, Mouynes reportedly told Gonzalez, “There’s no one home. I’m here talking to you because the administration is absent.”
In January and March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested two Yemeni men on a terror watch list as they crossed the border illegally, according to Reuters.
Are Biden’s policies inviting terrorists into the U.S.?
It doesn’t take a lot of terrorists to commit a horrendous amount of murder and mayhem. The tragedy of 9/11 was committed by 19 al-Qaida militants who hijacked four airplanes and killed 2,996 people.
An immigration expert noted that “the reason Haitian migrants discard their Chilean and Brazilian ID cards over here on the Mex side is to obscure from asylum reviewers that they were already safely and prosperously situated for years and years before coming for the American upgrade,” according to The Post Millennial.
If this is true of prosperous migrants, what lengths might terrorists go to carry out jihad against their sworn and lifelong enemy?
In July alone, 213,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. It is estimated that another 1,000 illegal immigrants evaded capture every day, according to The Epoch Times.
By the same formula, over 500 migrants passing through Panama probably went undetected. How many of these were potential al-Qaida operatives, let alone other radicals who seek the ruin of the West?
Nevertheless, that some terrorists are entering the U.S. undetected and with malicious intent is highly probable. In all likelihood, considering the influx of illegal immigrants at the porous southern border, it is more than 19.
Former President Donald Trump has long warned Americans of the dangers of open-border policies, which serve to make the land of the free particularly susceptible to terrorism.
“We have them all the time; we have terrorists from the Middle East coming through our country through the southern border. That was before [the construction of the border wall] … Removing any of these measures would hamstring our workers, endanger our country, and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” Trump said in a January speech.
Why is the Biden admiration bent on an open border? Do they, too, seek the demise of the West as they dream of a global utopia?
It is difficult to say. Whatever the case, the Biden administration’s blatant disregard for border security cannot be attributed solely to incompetence, though there is a lot of that going around.
It becomes clearer and clearer each day: Where the border cannot hold, things fall apart. In a fallen world, utopia cannot be created by human means.
Where globalists lead, all hell is sure to follow.
Some Americans wanted Biden to pull our troops out of Afghanistan.
Others hoped some Afghan refugees, particularly those who aided U.S. forces, would be allowed into the country.
No one, however, asked for the federal government to place alleged rapists in their communities.
Nevertheless, that appears to be exactly what President Joe Biden and his administration did.
According to Montana Talks, on Sunday night, an Afghan refugee — 19-year-old Zabihullah Mohmand — was accused of raping a young female in Missoula, Montana.
Apparently, the alleged victim had just met Mohmand at a local Missoula bar, known as The Badlander. She then agreed to accompany Mohmand back to his hotel room.
When they arrived at the room, the victim claims she “told Mohmand that she did not want anything to happen.”
It was then that the Montana female says she was raped.
Mohmand has since been charged with one felony count of sexual intercourse without consent, according to Montana Standard.
Do you believe the Afghan refugees have been properly vetted?
A more recent report from the Montana outlet — published on Thursday — revealed an even more disturbing aspect of the story: Mohmand was placed in the state by the U.S. State Department.
Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte believes this tragedy may be the result of a lack of proper vetting.
“While I welcome our fully-vetted Afghan allies to Montana, this situation and others across the country raise serious concerns about whether the Biden administration is meeting its obligations to fully vet Afghans prior to resettlement,” Gianforte said in a statement, the Standard reported.
“I’m calling on President Biden to immediately halt resettlements to Montana until federal agencies provide me with adequate assurance that Afghans coming to Montana are fully-vetted in accordance with federal law.”
Additional reports indicate that the vast majority of Afghan citizens pulled out during Biden’s withdrawal debacle weren’t given proper vetting.
On Sept. 3, Bloomberg reported that “a small percentage of the Afghan citizens who got out are the ones the U.S. pledged to place at the top of its priority list: the thousands who had worked for the U.S. and its allies as well as employees of nongovernmental groups and media organizations.”
“Instead, initial findings suggest that while some who escaped were locally employed staff, many got out because they were part of the initial crush of people who made it to Kabul’s airport as the city fell to the Taliban or secured passage through airport gates thanks to luck or help from people in the U.S. or elsewhere.”
Biden’s hasty withdrawal effort left allies behind in Afghanistan, allies who helped our forces fight back against the Taliban. Many American citizens were also abandoned and forced to fend for themselves.
All while the Biden administration was settling at least one potential rapist within American borders.
The ominous ripple effects of President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan disaster affirm that his incompetent leadership has emboldened and incentivized more terrorism in the Middle East. This not only jeopardizes the unstable region, but is a direct threat to U.S. national security.
The Taliban’s acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, gleefully offered money and plots of land to the relatives of jihadi suicide bombers, according to Twitter photos posted by Qari Saeed Khosty, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Many of the victims of these attacks during the past 20 years have been American soldiers, who have been injured, maimed or murdered by jihadis.
Khosty said Haqqani met with the family members of fallen “fidayeen,” or jihadis who sacrificed their lives to advance radical Islamic terrorism.
He posted photos of the convocation on Twitter, where the Taliban and other terrorists are allowed to maintain massive accounts while former U.S. President Donald Trump is banned.
“Yesterday, H.E Interior Minister Alhaj Mullah Khalifa Sirajuddin Haqqani met the family members of martyred Fidayeen at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul,” Khosty tweeted Tuesday.
2/3- In his speech, the Interior Minister praised the jihad & sacrifices of Mujahideen & martyrs. He called them heroes of Islam & the country.
H.E told everyone about the memories of the martyred (Fidayeen) their piety & deeds. He called them heroes of the believing nation. pic.twitter.com/Td9Y52kbr0
Haqqani praised the jihadis as valiant martyrs who are the backbone of “the Islamic system,” Khosty tweeted.
Is Biden a bigger threat to national security than the Taliban?
“In his speech, the Interior Minister praised the jihad & sacrifices of Mujahideen & martyrs. He called them heroes of Islam & the country.
“H.E told everyone about the memories of the martyred (Fidayeen) their piety & deeds. He called them heroes of the believing nation.”
At the end of the meeting, according to The Associated Press, Haqqani rewarded the families of the suicide bombers by giving them 10,000 AFN (Afghan afghani, which is roughly $111), clothes and promised a plot of land to the families of every fallen jihadi.
He also exhorted them to “refrain from betraying the aspirations of our martyrs.” Essentially, this means that the jihad must continue unabated.
3/3- H.E Haqqani added: “Now you & I must refrain from betraying the aspirations of our martyrs.”
One Twitter photo showed Haqqani embracing an attendee in a packed auditorium. In a slap in the face to America, his security detail wore what appeared to be U.S. military garb.
At the end of the meeting, he distributed 10,000 AFN & clothes to the families of the martyred Fidayeen & promised a plot for each (martyr’s) family. pic.twitter.com/CBEaW4SACp
The sickening public spectacle of a terrorist organization rewarding suicide bombings underscores that Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal has encouraged more radical Islamic terrorism in the already-unstable Middle East.
As we’ve already seen, this terrorism does not contain itself geographically and has spread around the world. Just look at the countless jihadi attacks that have roiled Western Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and the United States.
While the Biden administration has praised the Taliban as “businesslike and professional,” the terrorist group said it won’t help America defeat ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for killing 13 U.S. soldiers during a suicide bombing in August.
While the Taliban refuses to cooperate with the United States, the Biden administration is handing out exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money to help Afghanistan.
The U.S. has given $330 million to Afghanistan this fiscal year alone while taking in tens of thousands of Afghan refugees — all while Americans struggle with rocketing consumer prices and a sputtering economy.
I get it. Terry McAuliffe is not a particularly happy man right now.
After all, this was supposed to be easy. Because of its odd-year state elections, Virginia’s gubernatorial race is one of the first referendums on how voters feel regarding the last presidential cycle. Furthermore, because of the growth of the Washington, D.C., suburbs and other liberal areas of the state, pundits have increasingly been saying that the Old Dominion has moved solidly into the blue column.
Moreover, McAuliffe is a fixture in Virginia state politics and the Democratic Party. He was Bill Clinton’s fundraising bag-man back during the 1990s, served as the head of the Democratic National Committee and was Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018. (The state doesn’t allow governors to serve consecutive terms.)
And yet, it hasn’t been easy. Polls have shown McAuliffe neck-and-neck with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin; as of Wednesday morning, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Youngkin within 2.2 points of McAuliffe, 49.5 percent for the Democrat and 47.3 percent for the Republican. The Cook Political Report now rates the race as a “toss-up,” a move from “leans Democratic.”
McAuliffe is a pro’s pro, though. You don’t end up with Terry’s resumé if you can’t handle a little pressure.
You buckle down and smile a bit more broadly. You kiss a few more babies and shake a few more hands — or whatever the socially distanced version of those two unctuous archetypes of insincere campaigning happen to be.
You hit the trail before the sun rises and don’t stop until the 11 p.m. local news fades into the “Tonight Show.”
Most importantly, you never let ’em see you sweat.
Or you abruptly end a 20-minute TV interview 10 minutes into it, telling the reporter he “should have asked better questions early on.” Whichever works.
Do you believe Terry McAuliffe will win the Virginia gubernatorial election?
According to the Washington Examiner, WJLA-TV gave both McAuliffe and Youngkin 20 minutes to talk about how they would lead Virginia were they elected next month. The sit-downs with reporter Nick Minock happened on Oct. 13 and 14, respectively; the interviews were posted on their website and on YouTube.
So, how’d it go? First off, it’s never good when a local news station has to air this disclaimer:
WJLA said on their website that McAuliffe’s campaign only agreed to a 10-minute interview in a text message with Minock. That said, the last two sets of questions were uncomfortable ones for McAuliffe — and they also just so happened to be when his campaign staffer interrupted him.
The first question had to do with crime, during which Minock pointed out Youngkin “said that the murder rate went up 43 percent when you were governor and the rape rate went up every single year when you were governor. What would you do differently in your second term to address violent crime and decrease violent crime in the commonwealth?”
McAuliffe responded that Virginia had “the lowest crime rate of any major state in the United States of America” during his tenure — which doesn’t mean crime didn’t go up, mind you, and which doesn’t point to McAuliffe as the cause of that low crime rate. (Also, what is a minor state, just out of curiosity?)
When asked how much he would invest in public safety, McAuliffe responded, “I don’t want to go through all the numbers we are dealing with.” Translation: No clue.
Minock then transitioned vaccines and vaccine mandates, which started off fine enough but quickly degenerated to McAuliffe firing off rambling denunciations of Youngkin as “an anti-vaxxer” and “a Donald Trump right-wing agenda” supporter who would “ban abortions.”
“Your viewers should be very clear on this,” McAuliffe said.
“He wants to ban abortions here in Virginia. He says election integrity is the number one issue. No, it isn’t. Health care, COVID, education, job creation.”
That’s when one of his staffers interjected and noted that “we are already over time.”
“Alright, we are over. That’s it. That’s it,” McAuliffe said. “Hey I gave you extra time. C’mon, man. You should have asked better questions early on. You should have asked questions your viewers care about.”
Nailed the landing. Beautiful.
I understand one has a lot of demands on one’s time when running for governor, but a 20-minute spot on D.C. local news for a Clintonista that ran the state in the not-so-distant-past shouldn’t be like a tooth extraction.
Not only could he not spare the extra 10 minutes, McAuliffe ended the interview with an unfocused rant about about abortion, Donald Trump and job creation, then told the reporter he should have asked better questions at the beginning. Given the scattershot attack at the end, one gets the notion McAuliffe simply wanted prompts that would have allowed him to transition into that rant much earlier.
And in case you’re wondering, Minock didn’t ask bad or unfair questions, to the extent he had time to ask many at all.
The reporter’s first line of questioning had to do with McAuliffe’s now-infamous remark that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach” during the final gubernatorial debate, whether he misspoke and what role he would play as governor in mandating what schools teach.
His next line of questioning addressed the various school board controversies in Virginia — in particular in Loudoun County — and whether he agreed with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum indicating the Department of Justice would get more involved with these contentious school board hearings.
Then came crime, then came vaccines and then it was time for McAuliffe to skedaddle — but not before firing off that strange and insulting peroration, as if Minock’s performance had been insulting or unprofessional.
No, Terry McAuliffe may not be a happy man right now, particularly when he looks at the polls.
With Hindenburg performances like this, however, he has only himself to blame.
“Recession” is a word that nearly every American is afraid to hear. The word brings flashbacks to 2008, when gas prices skyrocketed as the housing bubble burst, unemployment spiked and wages were depressed.
Unfortunately, Americans are now being warned of round two. The U.S. has already started into a recession that could be even worse than 2008, according to Dartmouth College professor David Blanchflower and University College London professor Alex Bryson.
In a paper published on Oct. 7, they predicted a massive downturn in the economy. Though unemployment has been declining, there have been significant drops in the consumer expectation indices from The Conference Board and the University of Michigan.
The former is down 5.9 points since August, while the latter is down 10.9 points since July. According to Blanchflower and Bryson, a drop of 10 points in one of those indices has helped predict previous recessions, and now seems to be no different.
Many economists are pointing to the fact that the economy is recovering from the damage inflicted by the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment fell 0.4 percent in September. Falling unemployment numbers, however, are only natural after the pandemic shut down the economy.
Deloitte Insights reported in September that “economic fundamentals remain strong,” “consumers are sitting on piles of savings” and worker productivity is on the rise.
“[C]ontinued government action in the form of the bipartisan infrastructure agreement should support the economy in the short term and foster even greater productivity growth in the long run,” Daniel Bachman wrote for Deloitte.
President Joe Biden has also promoted the narrative that the economy is doing well. In comments on Sept. 3, he declared that we are seeing “economic recovery that is durable and strong,” according to an official White House transcript of his remarks. He seems convinced that “The Biden plan is working. We’re getting results. America is on the move again.”
But Blanchflower and Bryson wrote that the government’s unprecedented meddling in the labor market during the pandemic has allowed employment to recover quickly and thus skewed the numbers that would be normally indicating and predicting an economic downturn.
Are we headed for another total economic collapse?
“As we have shown, ordinarily when recession is coming, we would expect to see an increase in the unemployment rate — our rule of thumb is a 0.3 percentage point upturn in consecutive months — and declining employment. This is not what is happening,” they wrote.
“On the other hand, there are clear downward movements in consumer expectations in the last six months which, according to our rules of thumb regarding 10-point declines, would suggest the economy in the United States is entering recession now (Autumn 2021) — even though employment and wage growth figures suggest otherwise.”
So do not be excited by the fact that unemployment numbers are going down a bit. That is not the only criterion of a healthy economy.
When there has been direct government interference with the labor market, the numbers cannot be considered completely accurate since the interference basically produces unnatural numbers.
It just takes a moment of looking at the broader picture to see that the U.S. economy is not in good health. Even though CNN is reporting on America’s recovery and showing that nearly all states are back to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity, many are overlooking the fact that there are still labor shortages, the supply chains are struggling, and inflation is at a 30-year high.
2008’s recession was bad, but this could be worse. And unlike 2008, when there were plenty of workers but a shortage of jobs, now the situation is the exact opposite.
“Pent up savings, trillions of dollars in federal stimulus and rapidly rising wages mean that there is plenty of demand. But companies are struggling to recruit workers and source the raw materials needed to meet it,” the U.K. Daily Mail reported Monday.
What is our president going to do about all of this?
So far, Biden has only talked about how great the economy is doing since he became president.
“Over the last three months, we’ve been creating, on average, 750,000 new jobs per month. Our economy is growing at the fastest rate we’ve seen in nearly 40 years,” Biden said last month, according to an official White House transcript of his comments. “Our recovery is unique in the world. We’re the only developed country in the world whose economy is now bigger than it was before the pandemic.”
And apparently, Biden thinks his “Build Back Better” plan will magically fix everything with its $3.5 trillion price tag. But how is free community college, universal preschool and 12 weeks of paid family leave going to pull us out of a recession? A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed called it “Joe Biden’s Economic Fantasy World.”
Biden’s boasting that the economy is coming back shows he does not seem to understand what the problem really is. And if he can’t see or understand the problem, there is no chance of his fixing it. Instead, Biden is fiddling on his roof while the economy burns around him.
So buckle up for another recession. Don’t be fooled by Biden or by faulty economic understanding into thinking the U.S. is about to enter a golden economic age. There are rough waters ahead.
Chants of “f*** Joe Biden” erupted on Tuesday night at the American League Championship Series postgame outside Fenway Park.
The anti-POTUS chants have been popping up at sporting events and concerts soon after President Joe Biden took office, when inflation started to spike and additional COVID-related restrictions were promised.
Following the Red Sox vs. Astros game, rowdy fans outside the park chanted “f*** Joe Biden,” Mediaite reported, claiming Fox “allowed” the chants to be broadcast, despite “muting” past chants with curse words in them.
“At one point during the broadcast, the at-home audience was able to hear four consecutive profane anti-Biden chants without disruption from the mute button,” the report said.
Mediaite noted that Red Sox fans’ support for Biden has changed course from last year:
While Red Sox fans joined the accrescent “f*ck Joe Biden” chants at sporting events, they depicted much more support for the current president one-year ago. Biden dominated Trump in Beantown, garnering 65 percent of the votes in Massachusetts and 80 percent in Suffolk County, where Boston sits.
As highlighted by The Daily Wire earlier this month, chants of “f*** Joe Biden” rang out following a NASCAR win from driver Brandon Brown. However, the NBC Sports reporter claimed fans were chanting “Let’s go, Brandon!” at the Talladega Superspeedway:
When NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast interviewed the driver following the race, she claimed the crowd was saying “let’s go, Brandon,” when they were clearly chanting “f*** Joe Biden” — a common chant repeated at concerts [and] sporting events in recent weeks.
“Oh my God, this is just everything we’ve hoped and dreamed for,” Brown said. “Everything I’ve ever wanted to do is take the trophy home to mom and dad.” But, as he continued thanking his sponsors and loved ones, the chants got louder.
“As you can hear the chants from the crowd — ‘Let’s go Brandon,’” the reporter said, pausing in the middle of her sentence to give the chant time to be fully heard, before asking Brown about his strategy for the race.
It’s unclear if Stavast was running cover for Biden, trying to clear up an uncomfortable situation, or really misheard the NASCAR fans.
Outkick reported in September on the outgrowth of “f*** Joe Biden” chants:
Fans chanting “F–k Joe Biden” at stadiums from Tennessee to Alabama to Oxford, Mississippi is quickly becoming the battle cry for football fans across the country as the citizens of this country continue to show disobedience to the great [Emperor] and his presidency.
The big news this week with the “F–k Joe Biden” chant movement is that it has spread from college football and into the baseball community, where New Yorkers chanted “F–k Joe Biden” during Fox Sports’ weekend coverage of the Subway Series. Fans could be heard sending a message to Biden as ARod and Big Papi dissected the Yankees-Mets game.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says President Joe Biden has a track record of errors on foreign policy.
Gates, who served under former President Barack Obama when Biden was vice president, was interviewed by Anderson Cooper for the CBS show “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
During the interview, Cooper mentioned comments Gates had made in his 2014 book, “Duty.”
The former defense secretary had written that Biden was guilty of “poisoning the well” with the military and was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” according to Politico.
“I think he’s gotten a lot wrong,” he told Cooper.
Gates indicated Biden’s track record on foreign policy is bad.
“He opposed every one of Ronald Reagan’s military programs to contest the Soviet Union. He opposed the first gulf war. That list goes on,” he said.
During the interview, Gates said he was troubled by the debacle he witnessed in Afghanistan in August, from the Taliban takeover to the U.S. withdrawal.
“It was really tough. For a few days there, I actually wasn’t feeling very well. And I realized it was because of what was happening in Kabul,” he said.
“And I was just so low about the way it had ended, if you will. And — and I guess the other — the other feeling that I had was that it probably did not need to have turned out that way,” he said.
Gates said Biden mismanaged his way into a crisis.
“Once President Biden reaffirmed that there was going to be a firm deadline date, that’s the point at which I think they should have begun bringing those people out. You’d have to be pretty naïve not to assume things were gonna go downhill once that withdrawal was complete,” he said.
Gates said that he and others who shaped U.S. policy in Afghanistan had made significant errors.
“I think that we created an Afghan military in our own image. And one that required a lot more sophisticated logistics and maintenance and support than, say, the Taliban,” he said.
“Instead of being light and tactical and basically self-resourced as the Taliban were, we created a logistics-heavy, sophisticated-equipment-heavy military,” Gates said.
That the military collapsed was not unexpected, he said.
“And when you pulled that rug out from under them, and you add on top of that the corruption of the senior military leaders and so on, it’s not a surprise to me that the Afghan army collapsed,” the former secretary of defense said.
Gates also said the Biden administration’s concept that it can gather intelligence without being on the ground is not likely to pan out.
“This notion that you can carry out effective counterterrorism in Afghanistan from a great distance, it’s not a fantasy, but it’s just very, very hard,” he said.
Two months after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, desperation is ravaging the people America left behind.
In White House remarks after the last Americans left Afghanistan, President Joe Biden said it was time to look forward “to a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure.”
But to Afghan families spiraling deeper into poverty with every passing day, the future is bleak and desperate.
A report in The Wall Street Journal quoted a woman it named Saleha, who said she sold a 3-year-old daughter to satisfy a $550 debt.
This is heartbreaking.
As Afghanistan Sinks Into Destitution, Some Sell Children to Survive U.N. warns that 95% of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat as winter approaches. https://t.co/5Ox3Gl79Dd
That child may be the lucky one, said Saleha, 40, who says she earns 70 cents a day and whose husband does not work.
“If life continues to be this awful, I will kill my children and myself,” Saleha said. “I don’t even know what we will eat tonight.”
The Journal report said that it tracked down Khalid Ahmad, who took the girl as payment.
“I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” he said. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.”
The Journal report is not an isolated incident.
The economic situation of the Afghan people is getting worse every day because there is no work, money, no salary&income, the cold, hard winter is coming, but it does not make any difference to the Taliban, yesterday they destroyed it with suicide, explosion. Today with Poverty. pic.twitter.com/XHZ1NCQ49l
Last month, former police officer Mir Nazir said he was expecting to sell his 4-year-old daughter for $580, according to a report in the New York Post that was originally in the Times of London.
The Biden administration on Thursday blocked a bipartisan delegation of House lawmakers from entering and inspecting a U.S.-run military facility near Doha, Qatar, where thousands of Afghan evacuees are being stationed prior to their possible relocation to America, according to a GOP lawmaker who participated in the visit.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who was part of a delegation that included House Foreign Affairs Committee members, told the Washington Free Beacon that lawmakers were barred from entering Camp As Sayliyah, an American-controlled compound where thousands of Afghan refugees are still being held since being airlifted to safety.
Issa’s office spent weeks petitioning the Department of Defense for access to these Afghan refugees on behalf of the delegation, but the lawmakers were denied access to the U.S.-controlled site when they arrived Thursday at Al Udeid Air Base in Doha for a scheduled briefing on the American evacuation effort. Camp As Sayliyah is about 40 minutes away from Al Udeid, a joint American-Qatari airbase that serves as headquarters for U.S. Central Command.
U.S. military officials stationed at the base “never let us meet with the 2,300 remaining America-bound refugees, maybe some of whom are American citizens and others who are green card holders,” Issa said from Doha in a telephone interview. “We think the number one classified piece that they were protecting is called embarrassment. Many of these people have stories of the difficulty getting out, the lack of cooperation or help by the State Department, and now they find themselves being artificially held longer in some cases. We think it’s just that they don’t want people telling their stories.”
More than two months after the Biden administration left the country, Issa and lawmakers from both parties have largely been stymied in their efforts to investigate the botched U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, which left scores of Americans stranded and even more Afghan allies at risk of being killed by the Taliban. Issa said the U.S. military’s refusal to permit lawmakers from carrying out their oversight duties is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration to keep the American public in the dark about exactly what unfolded in the war-torn country.
The White House National Security Council referred the Free Beacon to U.S. Central Command. Central Command told the Free Beacon it did not have any information on what took place. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“They’re pretty straightforward in denying members of both parties the legitimate oversight opportunities,” Issa said. “We gave them several weeks advance notice.”
Rep. Lou Correa (D., Calif.), also on the trip, was “equally furious” about being denied entry, Issa said. Correa did not respond to a request for comment.
Issa and his colleagues were permitted to receive a briefing from U.S. military leaders at the base, and the information provided was “shocking to a lot of members.”
The lawmakers were informed that more than 20 percent of those who arrived in Doha and were later brought into the United States—around 12,000 individuals—had no identification, paperwork, or visas.
“They came with nothing,” Issa said. “No Afghan I.D., no I.D. of any sorts. Those people were all forwarded on to the U.S., and that’s quite an admission. So many people had no I.D. whatsoever and yet find themselves in the United States today based on what they said.”
Since the Biden administration began permitting Afghan refugees into the United States, there have been numerous reports of refugees having criminal records.
Though Issa and other lawmakers made multiple efforts to gain access to the holding facilities, Central Command ultimately denied their requests.
“You know what they’re hiding? The latest Afghanistan disaster from the Biden administration,” Issa spokesman Jonathan Wilcox told the Free Beacon. “The White House is turning the page and closing the door.”
Illegal migrants from at least eight different nations, including Uzbekistan, crossed the southern border at Yuma, Arizona, on Friday as the migration crisis continues to escalate in the area.
Daily Caller reporter Jorge Ventura shared a video of a family from India illegally entering the U.S. through what is known as “The Gap.”
My first time encountering migrants from India crossing illegally into Yuma at ‘The Gap’. So far I’ve encountered migrants from 8 different countries today in Yuma pic.twitter.com/IujT57ACTu
Group of 80 migrants from Georgia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uzbekistan and El Salvador apprehended by border patrol in the Yuma sector pic.twitter.com/2fsKPqVOJZ
On Tuesday, Ventura reported that illegal Colombian migrants had crossed the border at Yuma.
“‘I didn’t even want to try’ says Colombian migrants that crossed illegally into Yuma, Arizona when I asked if they attempted to come under the Trump administration,” Ventura tweeted.
“I didn’t even want to try” says Colombian migrants that crossed illegally into Yuma, Arizona when I asked if they attempted to come under the Trump administration. I also interviewed Nicaraguan migrants that crossed illegally into Yuma that shared the similar sentiment pic.twitter.com/WMaCI0n2SG
Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs visited abandoned border wall supplies in Yuma, Arizona, on Thursday, demanding in a video that President Joe Biden restart construction “now” to address the surge of illegal immigrants.
Biggs tweeted a video of himself standing beside piles of steel beams intended for a border wall with Mexico.
“Down at the Yuma border. I’m surrounded by millions of dollars worth of wall material that is lying around, unused, because Biden cancelled the wall contracts. The border crisis worsens by the day, we need to start rebuilding, NOW,” Biggs wrote on Thursday.
Down at the Yuma border. I’m surrounded by millions of dollars worth of wall material that is lying around, unused, because Biden cancelled the wall contracts. The border crisis worsens by the day, we need to start rebuilding, NOW. pic.twitter.com/BZbKZdslK5
“This is Biden’s waste pile,” Biggs says in the video.
“This is about $2 million worth of fencing panels just waiting to be installed, but they won’t be installed. We’ll pay the contractors, but we’re not going to install these.”
“Shame on Joe Biden. Shame on [Homeland Security] Secretary Mayorkas. This stuff needs to be done. This fencing needs to be completed,” Biggs says.
In an earlier video, Biggs said he had watched Border Patrol agents apprehend five illegal immigrants as he stood at the border.
Massive amounts of border wall supplies continue to waste away at the southern border after the Biden administration canceled contracts with construction companies slated to build the wall.
Well, the Biden administration may deny that there’s a crisis at the southern border and that its withdrawal from Afghanistan was a horrific failure, but the convergence of those very real issues could soon put American lives at risk.
Rep. Tom McClintock of California, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, is warning that terrorists could try to breach our country at its weakest point thanks to the release of Islamic State prisoners by the Taliban in Afghanistan and our “porous southern border.”
I don’t care what you think about mean tweets and massive egos. I become more convinced with each passing day that former President Donald Trump will be remembered by history as having been absolutely right about the border.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday, McClintock expressed his “grave concern” about “the security risks posed by the release of 7,000 terrorists, including members of the Taliban, ISIS-K, and Al-Qaeda, from Bagram Air Base combined with the porous southern border.
“Shortly after the president ordered the unconditional surrender of Bagram Air Base to the Taliban, Taliban forces took control and released the terrorists that had been in U.S. custody,” he wrote. “Days later 13 U.S. servicemembers were murdered by a suicide bomber at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.”
The lawmaker noted that the Islamic State Khorasan suicide bomber behind the attack was one of the terrorists released by the Taliban from Bagram Air Base.
“The whereabouts of the [other terrorists] is unknown,” McClintock said. “It is possible, if not likely, that many will attempt to enter our country through Mexico with the purpose of committing similar terrorist attacks.
“In fact, we already know that aliens found in the Terrorist Screening Database have been apprehended on the southern border this year,” he continued. “The release of thousands of terrorists back into Afghanistan and the criminal cartels’ control of human smuggling on the southwest U.S. border, mean the terrorist threat is urgent.”
The Biden administration has confirmed that thousands of terrorists were released from the prison facilities at Bagram in the days leading up to the Kabul bombing, including Islamic State Khorasan fighters known to the U.S. to be dangerous.
The U.S. abandoned Bagram in July without bothering to do a thing about the known terrorists housed there, so when the Taliban swooped in after our hasty departure, what do you think they did?
They released a horde of Islamic extremists who have pledged their lives to waging war against everyone they view as an enemy to their mission to establish an Islamic state — and you’d better believe that includes the United States of America and its citizens.
As we know, it was only days later that one of these terrorists targeted U.S. troops facilitating the escape of American citizens and at-risk Afghans from the clutches of the new Islamic regime.
Nothing — least of all our southern border — will stop these ruthless killers from trying to destroy American lives.
McClintock asked Mayorkas to “help us understand the ongoing terrorism-related threats at the southwest U.S. border and how the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan affect border security.”
The Republican congressman gave Mayorkas until Monday to provide his panel with information about foreign nationals encountered at the border this year and the countries they are coming from.
It’s a rather tall order, considering this administration is handling the surge of illegal migrants about as well as it did the Afghanistan withdrawal.
It’s up for debate whether Biden can blame his predecessor for the Afghanistan debacle, but there’s no escaping the fact that he made a point of reversing border policies put in place by Trump within hours of taking office. Now, overwhelmed border officials are bearing the brunt of his disastrous approach to national security and immigration.
The Biden administration has admitted 160,000 illegal aliens into the country since March and released over 94,000 of them into the U.S. interior, a crippling influx that is causing massive logistical and security challenges for communities along the southern border.
Thanks, Joe. No, really — this week, illegal immigrants who had just managed to cross our border personally thanked Biden for their easy entry into the country.
Last week, 30 lawmakers sent a letter to Biden declaring that the American people are “fed up with false reassurances that the border is closed.”
The administration’s word that the border is secure is mud — so how can we possibly trust that it’s prepared for the eventuality that Islamic terrorists waltz across it?
U.S. Marine CorpsJudge Glen Hines has docked Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller $5,000 in pay and ordered a letter of reprimand against the combat veteran for his criticisms about how senior military officials handled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Hines handed down his sentence Oct. 15, concluding the legal matter. The Secretary of the Navy will decide whether Scheller receives an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions.
Defense attorney Timothy Parlatore said he thinks the sentence was fair.
“We were happy with the sentence. I think the judge carefully considered all of the facts and circumstances of this case, and the sentence was an appropriate reflection of what Lt. Col. Scheller did,” he said.
“After hearing what government said and going back and viewing videos, [the judge] found a lot more context to them than the cherry-picked statements the government presented,” Parlatore said.
According to Parlatore, Judge Hines criticized the government’s conduct, including for leaking case documents about Scheller. The judge said it’s not the court’s role to investigate the leak, but that there should be a probe into the matter.
“He commented on the severity of pretrial confinement for a case of this nature,” Parlatore added. “He saw a Marine in pain and in emotional anguish, which is pretty much what we argued.”
Parlatore said Scheller won’t comment on the matter until his discharge is processed. Neither the prosecution nor a Marine Corps spokesperson have responded to queries from The Epoch Times.
Scheller was charged for making statements such as, “Potentially, all of those people did die in vain if we don’t have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say we did not do this well in the end.”
At his Oct. 14 trial, the Marine apologized for being disrespectful, but renewed his calls for accountability.
“I believe the General officers have demonstrated that they are unable or unwilling to hold themselves accountable. As a result, I believe fundamental change needs to occur in the military,” he said. “I am being held accountable for my actions. The General officers should be held accountable for their failures.”
Scheller also criticized the Marine Corps for apparently leaking confidential records about him to Task and Purpose.
“I was painted as a violent extremist, fascist, and the journalist even made a connection to Hitler. Obviously, you can understand that I was very angry following the article,” he said. “After everything I’ve been through, I feel it’s reasonable to conclude that the Marine Corps and Task and Purpose were working together in an effort to smear my name.”
The Marine further pointed out that he hasn’t been charged with making false statements “because everything I have said is true.”
“If the Marine Corps could have charged me with it, they would have,” he said.
Some government officials, for their part, accused Scheller of fanning the flames of insurrection. Task and Purpose reported on case documents that purportedly show how Marine Corps officials believe Scheller’s comments about topics such as “revolution” violated Defense Department policy.
Scheller’s case captured the national spotlight, with numerous Republican lawmakers criticizing the prosecution as politically motivated. Reps Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) testified on Scheller’s behalf at the Oct. 14 hearing.
“It takes great courage to speak out against leaders who lead those under them to failure & to death,” Greene said yesterday after testifying. “It takes even more courage to plead guilty in the face of unknown consequences. Why is Scheller the one on trial?”
Greene said on Steve Bannon’s War Room that she would either hire Scheller or help find him a job.
Once a terrorist, always a terrorist? Don’t tell that to President Joe Biden.
A new report from Fox News revealed that Afghan citizens who were part of the repressive Taliban regime that was overthrown at the dawn of the Afghan war will be welcomed with open arms into America.
The report said that civil servants who helped the Taliban carry out its policies during the years from 1996 to 2001 will be exempted from rules that bar other terrorists from entering the country.
Fox said it obtained a draft document from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The document reportedly indicated the Department of Homeland Security will allow Afghan citizens who collaborated with the Taliban in the past, which would normally ban them on what are called terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds, into the United States — choosing not to hold their past against them.
The USCIS website says, “The definition of terrorism-related activity is relatively broad and may apply to individuals and activities not commonly thought to be associated with terrorism. As a result, Congress created a statutory exemption provision through which the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State may exempt individuals from the grounds of inadmissibility.”
The document tried to indicate that many of those the Biden administration wants to let into America might not have fully embraced the Taliban’s terrorist regime.
“Many individuals who worked in civil service positions before the declaration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996 continued to do so after the declaration,” the planning document said, according to Fox News. “Some did so under duress or other situations of hardship.”
“Some used their positions in humanitarian capacities to mitigate the repressive actions of the Taliban regime, often at great personal risk. Some of these civil servants later worked for or helped the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S. government or the Afghan government that was established in Dec. 22, 2001,” it said.
The Obama administration had first proposed the exemption that Biden, who was vice president during the Obama era, now seeks to implement. However, the exemption was proposed in January 2017, and the administration was out of office before it could act.
Fox said it was told by an administration official it did not name that the change would not alter other parts of the vetting process.
“The effect [of the memo] is that people who worked as doctors, grade school teachers, civil servants or low-level government employees wouldn’t automatically be barred from ever entering the United States because they worked in those professions,” the official said.
The document Fox reviewed said individuals who helped the Taliban carry out their brutal regime must pass “all background checks and pose[s] no danger to the safety and security of the United States, and other threshold requirements.”
The exemption comes in the context of the Biden administration seeking to resettle about 95,000 Afghan citizens.
Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico has said that after visiting Fort Bliss, where many Afghans are being held pending resettlement, she has questions and concerns, according to Fox News.
“We already know there’s weakness in the vetting process and the screenings, and we want to make sure as this continues, we can make sure the American people can feel safe and secure about the entire process,” she said.
Herrell said that despite the efforts of those working with refugees to care for their needs, the overall process is not what it should be.
“There’s no accountability, this was a rushed process by this administration,” she said. “We know it is flawed.”
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book, “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America,” is a prescient account of how the American conceptualization of citizenship has been eroded by progressive ideologues and those who wish to undermine the original intent of the Framers. He focuses on the categories of pre-citizens and post-citizens.
Hanson defines pre-citizenry as a concept that “reflects ancient economic, political, and ethnic ideas and customs that were once thought antithetical to the modern democratic state.” The pre-citizen category is subdivided into three different concepts: peasants, residents, and tribes. These concepts are separate and mutually exclusive because they reflect differing realities of how citizenship is viewed.
Hanson defines the post-citizens as elites who hold a unifying philosophy “that human nature has evolved since 1788, and the Constitution must catch up. In other words, it is now time to move beyond classical citizenship to accommodate a much different American and a new global community.”
The people in this group are subdivided into three categories: the unelected, the evolutionaries, and the globalists. Each of these groups works to undermine the traditional understanding of citizenship handed down through the political thought that predated the Founding and is the cornerstone of our country’s identity.
Cover of “The Dying Citizen” by Victor Davis Hanson. (Basic Books)
The overall tenor of the book argues that the cadre of leftists who are trying to subvert the tradition of American constitutional republicanism holds a philosophy that is alienated from American values. The history that Hanson presents is a critical outline of how these factions grew to dominate a competing majority of the American polity. In a word, the problem that America faces, according to Hanson, is existential. We are in a time of choosing:
Socialistic pseudoscience versus an industrial heartland.
Race-based political identification versus a common colorblind country and its values.
A globalist foreign policy versus adhering to America first.
These questions may present a no-brainer for many conservative and libertarian political activists, but the jury is still out for the apolitical rest of the country. The answer lies in how immigration has become such a pivotal issue.
If the progressive cadre can subvert the vote by allowing in more people, they can dilute the authentic voice of American citizens who are already here and were born here. One shudders to think that this book’s premonitions will not come to pass, but a cursory look at the border shows that the heel of globalism is already at America’s southern door.
Another factor contributing to how America will decide her fate is whether its people will learn its authentic history. Hanson looks at the ahistorical revisionism that has gripped the classrooms. It is no surprise to think that a country that does not know itself can preserve itself. Yet, Hanson warns that if his compatriots do nothing to combat the radicalization of the next generation, the likelihood of the “decolonization” of America coming to pass will be imminent.
A sympathetic yet cynical reader of American politics may see Hanson’s book and this review as nothing new under the sun. However, how long must the fire bell go off in the night, and how many rings must its cadences bring to rouse him from an apathetic stupor?
To the left, the American dream defined by the Founders and our forefathers’ generations before us is a delirium that we ought to break away from entirely. They may very well get their wish if traditionally-minded Americans continue to sit on the sidelines or become further detached. Citizenship is an honor and privilege of being born in a great nation, which revolutionaries want to dismantle entirely.
It is almost no surprise that the liberal progressives and globalists are using replacement migration to displace (or, in their words, marginalize) the American-born voting population. The result of replacement migration will use the benefits of being a citizen (such as welfare, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) as a political bribe to register the influx of voters as Democrats. These elites, therefore, will not have to win over independents or moderates to enact the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, or any other liberal public policy.
In all, Hanson’s book provides the reader with a historical-political choice that is up for each of us to choose and to persuade our fellow citizens likewise to adopt.
For many, the option will not be a difficult one to make, but the daunting challenge of battling institutionalized leftist globalism is a war that requires tact and cunning. With the decolonizers and revolutionaries having captured the forts of the West (academia, government, and enterprise), it is a purely uphill fight to reclaim these grounds for the America of the Framers rooted in the Western historical tradition.
The canceling of students and professors alike makes the process all the more challenging in the ivory tower; the minority status in the House and Senate makes it challenging to stymie the Biden Administration’s plans; and the surge at the southern border lowers the statistical odds that Americans will be able to beat the advocates of replacement migration.
A question to ponder is whether we have already crossed the Rubicon on our march toward the globalist-progressive revolution. Without giving away the book, the reader must use the facts presented by Hanson to do the work that the community organizers and change agents of the Left have been doing for nearly half a century. If there have genuinely been multiple revolutions in American politics, how many more can a country withstand without crumbling?
In summation of Hanson’s book, the main takeaway every reader will get is a profound sense of urgency, a need to civilly participate and engage with their neighbors, and prepare for the final chapters of the culture war.
As Hanson thoroughly notes, the issues, ideas, and people involved are not new phenomena in American politics. They have come in waves, eroding the rocky shores of the American identity for over a century. This book is much like the textbook one uses as a map when charting where you go in a challenging class, except that politics is in the real world.
This book, however, is more than just a neat reference guide; it’s an urgent call meant to explain the intricacies of our intellectual/political history in one concise volume. It is required reading for all those who seriously want to engage in the fieriest issues of our days at their most thoughtful levels of depth.
In the wake of President Joe Biden’s horrific Afghanistan withdrawal, American-made weapons that were abandoned by the Afghan National Security Forces were seized by the Taliban.
This was an $83 billion investment, according to The New York Times, flushed down the toilet because the Biden administration sloppily executed the removal of our troops from the fragile nation.
We trained and trusted the Afghan military to hold the line against the Taliban, which turned out to be a huge mistake.
Those weapons, which could be seen as American secrets in physical form, are now ending up in Afghan gun stores, according to a recent report from the Times.
Weapons dealers in southern Afghanistan told the paper that dealers have been paying off Taliban fighters for the equipment in order to resell it for their own businesses.
In Kandahar, it has now become a lucrative business for Afghans to sell these the matériel, which includes everything from guns to binoculars.
While some of these dealers are selling in the nation, others are reportedly smuggling them to Pakistan as well.
The Pentagon has conceded that American weapons still remained in the country after the bloody end of U.S. involvement in August but said that aircraft had been disabled.
“Since 2005, the U.S. military has provided the Afghan national defense and security forces with many thousands of small arms, ranging from pistols to medium machine guns,” Defense Department spokesman Maj. Rob Lodewick told the Times.
Some in the Taliban, however, vehemently deny that they are selling these weapons in the marketplace.
“I totally deny this; our fighters cannot be that careless,” Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi told the paper, despite others in the terrorist regime admitting that they are being sold.
“Even a single person cannot sell a bullet in the market or smuggle it.”
The dealers’ customers base was described by the Times as “entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens,” which is presumably not a bad thing.
There are likely thousands of Afghans looking for tools to fight back against the Taliban or defend themselves against other injustices in their communities.
On the flip side, these weapons being out for sale could mean that they get into the hands of extremists (again), which could ultimately bring harm to innocent civilians.
“American-made weapons are in great demand, as they work very well and people know how to use them,” an anonymous merchant told the Times.
Regardless of who will be owning these weapons, it is embarrassing for the United States to have taxpayer-funded equipment become this vulnerable.
The suicide bomber who killed 13 U.S. military members and dozens of other people outside the Kabul airport in August was released from the Bagram Air Base prison just days earlier, according to a new report.
“We now understand … that Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, the terrorist who from ISIS-K was responsible for killing 13 American service members and dozens of Afghans civilians trying to get out of the country, that he had been held at Parwan prison in Bagram Air Base,” CNN’s Clarissa Ward reported Wednesday.
“When the Taliban took power on that Sunday, the first thing they did before coming into Kabul was essentially to empty the prisons at Parwan Prison in Bagram and also Pul-e-Charkhi,” she added.
CNN: Kabul airport suicide bomber was released from Bagram Air Base by the Taliban days before the attack that killed 13 U.S. service members. pic.twitter.com/dozG4vzHRm
The Parwan prison housed several hundred members of the Islamic State group when the Taliban took control of the location following the departure of the U.S. military. The Taliban reportedly emptied both prisons, releasing the man responsible for the Kabul suicide bombing on Aug. 26.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a Capitol Hill hearing last week that the Pentagon was surprised by the Taliban’s quick rise to power. Yet Austin also confirmed the decision to leave Bagram.
“Retaining Bagram would have required putting as many as five thousand U.S. troops in harm’s way, just to operate and defend it. And it would have contributed little to the mission that we had been assigned, and that was to protect and defend our embassy which was some 30 miles away,” he said.
“Staying at Bagram — even for counterterrorism purposes — meant staying at war in Afghanistan, something that the president made clear that he would not do,” Austin said.
The deadly suicide bombing marked the fourth-deadliest day in terms of U.S. casualties during the 20 years Americans fought in Afghanistan.
On Aug. 6, 2011, the U.S. lost at least 30 service members when a helicopter was shot down. On June 28, 2005, 19 Americans died when another U.S. helicopter was shot down. That was roughly two months after at least 14 Americans died on April 6 of that year when a helicopter crashed.
The Daily Caller News Foundation had reported the Kabul suicide bombing was the third deadliest day in the Afghanistan war. However, the DCNF did not include the April 6 date in its report.
In its summary of the attack, The New York Times, citing U.S. officials as its source, said that the suicide bomber waited until just before he would be searched by U.S. service members to detonate the vest he was wearing.
The man wore a vest estimated to have been 25 pounds, much larger than the normal size of what suicide bombers wear, according to the Times. The bomb was packed with metal pieces that acted as shrapnel to mow down anyone nearby.
Those killed were not only men. Marine Sgts. Nicole Gee and Johanny Rosario Pichardo were killed in the attack, according to the Times.
“She believed in what she was doing, she loved being a Marine,” Gee’s brother-in-law, Gabriel Fuoco, said. “She wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”
Marine First Lt. John Coppola said Rosario’s “service was not only crucial to evacuating thousands of women and children, but epitomizes what it means to be a Marine: putting herself in danger for the protection of American values so that others might enjoy them.”
The ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), is demanding answers from the Biden administration about the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
McCaul rallied a group of GOP representatives to send a Resolution of Inquiry (ROI) to the White House, demanding that the administration, including the State Department, turn over all documents, communication, intelligence, and assessments related to ending the war and withdrawing from Afghanistan.
The ROI is one of the ways House members can get information from the executive branch within a two-week period.
“There should be no delay in the investigation into the disastrous events in Afghanistan,” McCaul said. “I and my Republican colleagues are hopeful that this Resolution of Inquiry will be supported by Democrat Leadership in order to hold this administration accountable for the actions that led to the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan and the deadly aftermath.”
During the committee’s hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal on Tuesday, McCaul criticized the Biden administration’s reason for the deadly withdrawal.
“President Biden and officials in his administration have continued to push the notion that only two options were available in Afghanistan: one, to fully withdraw in this chaotic and bloody way; or two, to keep tens of thousands of troops on the ground indefinitely,” said McCaul, adding, “But I believe this is a false premise.”
McCaul said Biden could have listened to the advice of U.S. military leaders who advised him to retain troops in Afghanistan until after the evacuation of Americans and allies.
“We have abandoned hundreds of American citizens and lawful permanent residents behind enemy lines. And we have left thousands of our Afghan partners behind—all with a bullseye on their backs and all at the mercy of the Taliban. If they are caught, they will surely be executed,” said McCaul.
“In other words, as General Milley said recently, our withdrawal from Afghanistan was a, quote, ‘strategic failure,’” McCaul continued. “So much is left to be uncovered and there are many lessons to be learned from this debacle.”
Chairman of the committee Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said the hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal is for the purpose of preventing such a mistake in the future.
“This committee’s oversight effort isn’t simply to determine whether we should blame the Bush or Obama or Trump or Biden administrations. This committee seeks to understand and learn what went right, what went wrong over the course of 20 years, so that we don’t again repeat the mistakes of the past,” said Meeks.
The White House did not respond to the request to comment on McCaul’s request.
Since the early 1970s, when the Baby Boomer acolytes of George McGovern took control of the Democrat Party, the Left has been telling us that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
That is to say, the more strongly you oppose the policies and moral values of your country, the more you love it. Like a devoted parent disciplining a wayward child, you are only showing it tough love in order to correct its ways, “fundamentally transforming” it (as Barack Obama might say) in order to improve it.
For those of you who did not come of age during the 1960s, this is a sloganized version of Herbert Marcuse’s infamous notion of “Repressive Tolerance”: you must tolerate us when we are powerless but we most certainly will not tolerate you once we have seized power.
Marcuse was perhaps the leading popularizer of Critical Theory, the bastard demon child of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, born of something called the Frankfurt School, imported by the United States in the personages of Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, and other “intellectual” refugees from Hitler’s Germany, and installed at the heart of the American system of higher education.
(For those desiring a philosophical and historical primer on the Frankfurters, my 2017 bestseller, “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace,” tells you all you need to know about this group of cultural sappers and their malign effect upon our country-as-founded.)
And so, for half a century,” dissent” we’ve had—in spades. From the anti-Vietnam protests (which were really anti-draft protests, and ended after Kent State and the abolition of the draft), to the soft Democrat-Media coup that brought down the Nixon White House less than two years after one of the greatest Republican landslides in history, to the protests against Ronald Reagan’s placement of Pershing missiles in Europe, to the stunned CIA silence that greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall—the Agency has always been anti-American—and into the modern era of the cult of Obama and the government-and-media-wide campaign to unhorse Donald Trump no matter how low they had to stoop, the Left has relentlessly assaulted the Republic with an eye to its eventual destruction.
Now—with a tied Senate, a tiny voting majority in the House, and Joe Biden in the White House—they feel their time has come.
The late Robert Conquest’s third law of politics reads: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” This goes double for the federal government under the McGovernite-Democrat Party, which was created by the disaffected, spoiled children of the Sixties, who had just come of voting age, precisely to oppose every aspect of America’s previous political and cultural history.
As the old question goes: if the Democrats really wanted to destroy our constitutional republic, what exactly would they be doing differently? As I dubbed them in my short monograph on the dreary history of this miserable party, they are a criminal organization masquerading as a political party, which at various times has made slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition planks in their platform.
In the South, they started the Civil War, while their northern brethren relentlessly opposed Abraham Lincoln’s war and Ulysses S. Grant’s relentless prosecution of it, going so far as to run the failed Union general, George McClellan, against Lincoln in 1864 and then assassinate him less than a week after their general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. They have been waging war on America ever since.
Which brings us to the Biden administration, whose lawlessness exceeds anything Real America has hitherto experienced. The obvious hinkiness of the last election leveraged the Fauci-induced irrational panic over COVID-19 to effect wholesale, unconstitutional changes in state elector laws and—just barely—deliver the tally to Joe Biden. Its punitive lockdowns destroyed our economy. Its reckless surrender in Afghanistan shamed our nation.
Meanwhile, incompetents have been elevated to senior positions in our armed forces. Our border with Mexico is now essentially undefended, while our boundary with a peaceful neighbor, Canada, which shares (or used to share) our Enlightenment values, has been slammed shut.
Meanwhile, a doddering figurehead commander-in-chief wanders around aimlessly, licking an ice cream cone and plotting the passage of multi-trillion dollar spending bills that will atomize our financial underpinnings and ensure that a Republican or conservative will never again win a national election.
The recent, defensively belligerent admission by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the unworthiest apparatchik ever to hold that august title, that he did indeed contact the Red Chinese in the waning days of the Trump administration “in order to assure strategic stability” by warning them in advance of any imminent attack should Trump go rogue, was simply astonishing—a prima facie act of betrayal that should have been immediately punished by his firing, reduction in rank, and loss of all pensions and benefits.
But, of course, he’s now a hero.
Forget dissent. Clearly, in Milley’s eyes and in the eyes of the Democrat-Media Complex that greeted his James Comey-like declaration of a “higher loyalty” with orgasmic bliss, treason is now the highest form of patriotism. And, with that principle firmly established, the persecution of traditional patriots is now on.
Both the “pandemic” and the puerile, pointless demonstration at the Capitol on Jan. 6 have provided the Left with all the ammunition it needs to hunt down and repress its political opponents. Via the social-media tech companies, which can shut down opposition without falling afoul of the first amendment, the government is now going after real dissent by branding it “disinformation” and even “domestic terrorism,” especially as a gradually awakening citizenry is becoming aware of just how deep the rot is: from the highest ranks of politics, the military, and corporate America, to the lowliest school boards, Critical Theory and its subversive offshoots have joined with “social justice,” “anti-racism,” and “wokeness” to usher in a new, ugly, Orwellian America.
Back during the John Kerry campaign in 2004, the vice-presidential candidate, John Edwards, often spoke of “two Americas”—essentially (although he couldn’t say so at the time), a rich, mostly white America and a poor, mostly black America.
Now, once again, we have two Americas—but this time the split is far more sinister. On one side, we have traditional Americans of all races, good and decent folks who wish only to live and let live, abhor racism, believe in precepts of the Constitution and in the promise of America, love their country despite her flaws, rally round the flag in times of trouble, and take pride in being citizens of the United States of America.
On the other, we have the Marcusans, children, grandchildren, and soon enough great-grandchildren of central-European red-diaper babies who have majored in deconstructionism at the public’s expense, believe they’re on the “right side of history,” see themselves as heroic “resistance” fighters against right-wing bogeymen of their media-jazzed imaginations, and who really do believe that the ends justify the means.
And by “means” they mean “by any means necessary.”
“Joe Biden just got caught in a lie about Afghanistan,” headlined the Washington Examiner on Sept. 29. I know, I know. So this is news?
What the paper was referring to was of course the testimony of two top-ranking generals and President Biden’s own Secretary of Defense to the effect that they had all recommended to the President leaving 2500 troops in Afghanistan after the American withdrawal. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Biden had denied that he had received any such recommendation.
“No. No one said that to me that I can recall,” he said.
Under normal circumstances, that would certainly seem to amount to being caught in a lie—at least if you disregard the perjurer’s life-preserver: “that I can recall.” But even allowing for the possibility of a sudden onset of dementia, I don’t think he can really have forgotten anything as important as that.
Perhaps recognizing that his having forgotten might actually look worse for him than his having lied, the White House press spokesperson, Jen Psaki, tried to explain away the lie by averring that the generals advising the President had been “split” on the question of leaving a residual force behind, and that he had gone with the recommendation of the unnamed and now absent ones who had supposedly advised against leaving such a force.
Why, then, did he not say that to George Stephanopoulos instead of saying that no one had given him such advice? Someone—three someones, as a matter of fact—definitely had.
No, it was unmistakably a lie. And then Psaki told another lie to cover it up.
But I think we have a problem with that little word “caught”—as in “caught in a lie.”
Way back in 1987 when Mr Biden first rose to national prominence, that was because he was caught in a lie.
He had appropriated a self-related episode from the life story of the then-leader of the British Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, also known as the Welsh Windbag, and represented it as his own experience.
Having been caught in the lie, the then-Senator Biden still had enough of a sense of shame to have dropped out of contention in the following year’s Democratic presidential primaries. Not that he would have stood more than the slimmest of chances of winning any of them anyway.
That’s what we mean when we say that someone has been “caught in a lie.” It implies some punishment to follow, or at least some shame felt by the liar on account of his exposure as one.
Does anyone believe that either punishment or shame will follow this lie?
If a tree falls in the forest when no one is there, does it make a sound?
The national (and international) press was certainly there for the big lie of 1987. As the media were then constituted, it would have been impossible for them not to have covered extensively what became known as the Biden “plagiarism” scandal and, therefore, for everyone not to have known about it—and, therefore, for the plagiarist not to have felt sorry, if only for himself.
That’s what it meant to be “caught in a lie.”
That was then.
It’s my belief that the media culture of today, a third of a century later, and the virtual disappearance of shame from our public life—certainly of any shame for being caught in a lie—are closely related phenomena.
Just look at the lie on which Joe Biden last year claimed to have based his whole campaign—the reason, he said, why he ran for president: the lie that Donald Trump had called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, “very fine people.”
That lie had already been exposed as a lie numerous times. It was an even more obvious lie than the one about a residual American force in Afghanistan, since there was documentary evidence in a transcript of the interview in which Trump had explicitly excluded the Nazis from his designation of the “very fine people” wishing to preserve a statue of Robert E. Lee—as well as those wishing to take it down.
But that tree fell in a part of the new media forest where there was no one around to hear it. The big media, the legacy media, the mainstream media have found that their readers, watchers, and listeners don’t care if they simply ignore news from the right-wing media ghetto that they don’t want to hear.
In other words, they’re never going to catch Joe Biden in a lie. And that means that even when a publication like The Washington Examiner or The Epoch Times does catch him in a lie, it will not resonate with the public at large who, unless they are readers of those publications, will never hear of it.
It’s as if he had never lied at all! There’s nothing for him to be ashamed of, even if he were any longer capable of shame.
Small wonder then that, having gotten away with it for so long, Biden’s lies have now become so shameless that he hardly even bothers to pretend that they aren’t lies.
“My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” he tweeted last week. Not, that is, that it would cost the $3.5 trillion that the media were reporting at the time and that the Democrats in Congress were desperately trying to keep at that figure in spite of the doubts of a few “moderates.” Let alone the $5.5 trillion that the Wall Street Journal thought it would cost. But $0.
If ever there were a lie to catch a man in—a lie that a child could catch a man in—it was that lie. And yet the mainstream media were ready to accommodate him.
Even famed Washington Post “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler only gave him two Pinocchios—on the grounds that he must have been communicating with fellow budget-wonks in a language that only they could understand.
I’m afraid we have to accept that, since there is no more any penalty accruing to being “caught in a lie,” nor even any shame in it, there’s no more catching people in lies either—and, therefore, no more lying in our public life, at least as reported by the media. Or, to put it another way, it’s all lies. Every word. Including “and” and “the.”
The recent actions and revelations of the conduct of Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley may be the greatest acts of insubordination by a very senior officer in U.S. military history.
Milley appears overstuffed in his uniform which is more laden with decorations than were those of Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and MacArthur combined. Milley’s shoulders identify him as both a Ranger and a paratrooper.
If it had not been in the midst of an election campaign, he would have been fired for his participation in an outrageous denunciation of the walk of the president and many other senior officials to St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House the day after the effort by the “peaceful protesters” to burn it down.
His telephone call to his analogue in the People’s Republic of China promising to warn them if the president whom Milley served attacked China, like his chatter with the rabidly partisan House Speaker Pelosi in which both of them referred to the president as “crazy,” and the attempted interposition of himself in the chain of command regarding nuclear weapons: these were all gross acts of insubordination that merited summary dismissal.
Despite kissing the undercarriage of the new administration, in testimony in the Congress last week Milley and others claimed to have warned President Biden of the consequences of his proposed withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Milley is grossly indiscreet in endlessly self-promoting with scurrilous political gossip-writers like Bob Woodward, while unctuously claiming to Congress that he didn’t read the books in which he was so heavily cited.
He must either accept some responsibility for the debacle in Afghanistan or resign in protest against being overruled by the president. He and the other service chiefs should also be called to account for why the United States is lagging behind China and Russia in hypersonic missiles and why they have moved so slowly to reduce the vulnerability of the Nimitz class aircraft carriers and far eastern bases, especially Guam, to sophisticated missile fire.
Nor should he and others responsible be excused for the promotion of Critical Race Theory in the Armed Forces. It is a disgraceful development.
Non-Political and Professional
Next to the principal authorship of the Declaration of Independence, the achievement of Thomas Jefferson for which he deserves the greatest gratitude but rarely receives it, is the establishment of the United States military Academy at West Point. This was intended to provide the country with a non-political and highly professional officer corps, and in general it has succeeded in both objectives.
This was never intended to ban senior officers from political life in the United States, only to ensure that serving officers did not become involved in politics. Jefferson would have known from the example of President Washington that successful senior officers were apt to be highly desirable political candidates, though Washington was obviously exceptionally meritorious.
Of course, the greatest American military-political controversy was between MacArthur and President Truman in 1950, after one of the greatest military operations in the 20th century—MacArthur had landed nearly hundred thousand men behind North Korean lines at Inchon in less than an hour and the North Korean invasion of the South collapsed in 10 days.
MacArthur’s orders from the president and from the United Nations whose forces he was commanding, were to proceed across the 38th parallel and up through North Korea with the presumed intention of reuniting the country.
In the midst of this operation the People’s Liberation Army, essentially a guerrilla army that had won the nearly 30-year China Civil War the year before, intervened heavily. MacArthur had been assured by his military intelligence that such a penetration by China would be impossible. The United Nations forces, (over 90 percent South Korean and American), were forced back briefly beyond Seoul, the South Korean capital, but MacArthur recaptured that city and stabilized the line at the original demarcation between North and South Korea.
Having been given the mission of reuniting Korea, he did not see why his mission should be changed although the president and other Allied leaders were waffling at the thought of conducting a war against China.
In military terms, MacArthur was undoubtedly correct. A little further effort in the West would have unified Korea; Chou En-lai confirmed to President Nixon in 1972 that Stalin would not have lifted a finger to help the Chinese. MacArthur was also basically correct when he told the Congress after Truman fired him, that a conscript army could not be sent to the ends of the earth at risk of their lives for any purpose less than victory clearly in the national interest.
He famously said to the Congress “In war there is no substitute for victory.” However, it was not acceptable for him to criticize the president’s policies publicly as he did, and Truman had little alternative but to remove him, though he could have done so more elegantly, given MacArthur’s distinction, (which made his dismissal an act of political suicide by Truman).
Officers in Politics
There have been nine presidents who had been generals: Jackson, both Harrisons, Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Eisenhower, and two senior officers, Captain McKinley, and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. There have also been Vice Presidents (Colonel) Richard M. Johnson, (General) Charles Gates Dawes, secretaries of state, (Colonel) Henry L. Stimson, Generals George C. Marshall, Alexander M. Haig, and Colin L. Powell, and unsuccessful presidential candidates-Generals Lewis Cass (1848), Winfield Scott (1852), George B. McClelland (1864), Winfield Hancock (1880), and the first Republican presidential candidate Colonel Charles Fremont (1856).
Traditionally, American generals who have rendered conspicuous service are deemed to be above party, demonstrable patriots, evidently people of integrity endowed with high qualities of leadership, and trustworthy and incorruptible.
The only modern occasion where there was a trace of an active senior officer participating in partisan politics is when in 1944 General Douglas MacArthur responded to a question from a Nebraska congressman, and then to Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, that he was available for the Republican presidential nomination but that of course because of his official and geographic position he could not conduct an active campaign. He would, however, yield to a spontaneous expression of national will that he become the president.
The idea that MacArthur imagined that he could retain his command in the Southwest Pacific while running as the absentee candidate against the incumbent commander-in-chief is illustrative of how superior the general’s military judgment was to his political judgment. Roosevelt considered MacArthur to be a potential “man on horseback” and not a fully committed believer in democracy, but he esteemed him as a military commander and believed that MacArthur was so out of touch with a popular electorate that he would be an ideal opponent. Roosevelt, running for his fourth term, was unbeatable.
General Milley, unlike all the others mentioned above, has not really been a combat general, though he puts on the airs of one: “I wasn’t born a four-star general,” he said to assure senators he had once been in war zones.
When asked why he hadn’t resigned when the president rejected his advice on Afghanistan, he replied, “My father didn’t resign in the middle of the action at Iwo Jima.” Combat in Iwo Jima required great heroism and resigning in the face of the enemy would have been desertion.
He shouldn’t be clinging to the furniture in his office after commanding a disaster like he did, and when his president denies Milley gave him the advice he claimed to have given, they should both go. But Biden can make it happen for Milley.
When President Joe Biden took the podium in Washington on Monday, he probably had no intention of telegraphing to the country just how much contempt he has for Americans.
A president whose short tenure in office has already been marked by a series of domestic gaffes and international humiliations should be determined, or at least coached, to never betray just how little respect he has for the thinking abilities of his countrymen.
But it came out anyway.
During remarks focused on building support for raising the nation’s debt ceiling even while Democrats are enmeshed in their civil war over ruinously expensive spending plans, Biden was informed by a reporter that an off-topic question about Ethiopian policy was in the offing.
Joe Biden says he won’t answer a foreign policy question because it would “confuse the American people” pic.twitter.com/8HP5fqDcwH
“Number one, I’m not answering Ethiopia,” he said. “Let’s stick on the debt so we don’t confuse the American people.”
From the tone and manner, Biden wasn’t speaking lightly. He wasn’t making indirect fun of a question that was likely utterly unrelated to the matter at hand. He was patronizingly referring to the country’s great unwashed, the ones outside a news conference full of coiffured and cologned intelligentsia.
Not in front of the children, he might as well have said.
Biden could have palmed it off with any number of responses — “I’m focused on the matter at hand. It’s too important for distractions” would have worked nicely. Instead, he betrayed both an astonishing lack of self-awareness and his own low opinion of the country he ostensibly leads.
Whatever self-image Biden might have of the Walter Mitty-FDR dreams that no doubt occupy his afternoon naps, a large part of the electorate has serious questions about Biden’s own mental capacity, and for obvious reasons.
For a man like that, with Biden’s barely hidden — and barely hideable — vulnerabilities when it comes to mental acumen, to insult the comprehension abilities of an entire nation is beyond risible.
To the liberal, mainstream media — the kind of bootlicking partisans who mainly staff these affairs — the comment was probably barely noticed.
But when it got out, it wasn’t popular. And the social media responses showed it:
Sad part is, no journalists will have the integrity to call him out on this BS.
This also speaks volumes of his views on the American people and how stupid we are to him.
— Boom Pow Podcast with Nikki and Ozzy (@ozzycorp1976) October 4, 2021
There were plenty of responses along those lines, some more amusing than others. (“Let’s go, Brandon,” put in an appearance, too. That one might have staying power.)
But this one summed it up:
It is indicative of how many in the Democratic Party think. My gosh, they almost all say their constituents are too stupid to follow election security rules. Some say it literally!
It’s been evident for years that Democrats, in their arrogance, consider conservative voters morally and intellectually inferior — Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” was just the most overt smear. But Biden wasn’t just talking about voters who oppose him.
He was talking about the American people as a whole, the nation that elected him but one he clearly considers too intellectually deficient to handle two divergent topics during the same discussion.
Add on his patently inept handling of foreign policy — a disgraceful exit from Afghanistan that will stain this country for generations, kowtowing to China, the only real rival to U.S. power in the world — and it becomes infuriating.
Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff comment made it clear how contemptuous he is of his fellow citizens.
It’s a good bet that in next year’s midterms, he and his Democratic Party are going to find out the feeling is very much mutual.
Chinese “wolf warriors” and their sycophants in China’s state-run media have been crowing for weeks about the strategic defeat suffered by the United States in Afghanistan.
During a telephone call on Aug. 16, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed that the U.S. Secretary of State expressed hope that China would help in “stabilizing Afghanistan.” Here is an agitprop headline from state-run China Daily on Sept. 27 that reinforces the Chinese regime’s goal to replace the United States in world leadership: “US leaving Afghanistan signals accelerating end of its hegemony.” The PLA Daily took its agitprop shot with an article titled, “Why US military interference constantly ends in debacles,” claiming that since the end of World War II, “the US has never stopped invading other countries, fighting ‘proxy wars’ and supporting pro-America regimes.”
Part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda offense has been aimed directly at Taiwan by planting seeds of doubt in President Tsai Ing-wen’s inner circle of military and domestic advisers as to whether the United States and its allies would truly come to their aid in the event of a cross-channel kinetic attack by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Toward that end, note this headline from China Military Online, “What US retreat from Afghanistan means for Taiwan.” That article claims that Taiwan is “just a card that can be played”—and as easily discarded—by the United States depending on the situation.
The preceding represent the propaganda associated with the messages that the CCP would have the world believe in support of its geopolitical goals to achieve world economic and military dominance: the United States is in decline, the United States cannot be trusted to live up to its agreements, the United States will bail out on allies when it is convenient to do so, etc. But are those the real “lessons learned” from Afghanistan, or are there some far more important lessons that are in the process of being learned?
As the world’s premier constitutional republic, the United States has been historically able to change courses of action and policies that have failed—through vigorous debate and the reaching of consensus, both within the political class and also among the citizenry at large, about strategic goals and objectives and associated required actions. The Civil War abolished the institution of slavery, with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and other legislation completing the process of fully integrating black Americans into U.S. society. Long-standing U.S. isolationism was set aside during World War I and World War II to deal with national security threats, with the defeated countries subsequently converted to strong allies through U.S. economic and security investments. South Korea was saved from being overrun by the Chinese military during the Korean War.
But since then, the commitment of the U.S. military to overseas ventures has seemingly gone off the rails for a variety of reasons.
The United Nations Command hosts a repatriation ceremony for the remains of a U.S. soldier killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, at UNC Knight Field in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 20, 2018. (Screenshot/Reuters)
Much has been written about the inept withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and much more will be discerned as Congress interrogates the decision makers who were involved in the debacle. Serious corrective actions are entirely possible, as the root causes are identified and debated. Some of these include the following:
The failure of the policy/political theory that “building democracy” can be easily achieved in countries with no democratic history or without the laying of the long-term foundations necessary over many decades for it to flourish.
The failure to address the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 that divided up the Middle East into arbitrary lines on a map without consideration of the ethnicities and tribal organizations of the indigenous populations, which sowed the seeds of inevitable future wars.
Lack of the political will to use all available means to achieve total victory when U.S. military forces are committed overseas.
The unchecked influence of interests heavily invested in prolonging endless overseas wars, including politicians, allies, military industrialists, U.S. flag and general officers, and others.
The demonstrated ineptitude of senior U.S. military leaders with respect to strategic and operational planning and execution.
The absence of clear-cut mission success and exit criteria that needlessly prolonged the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, as well as shifting rules of engagement that were politically motivated and not focused on achieving victory on the battlefield.
The CCP sees Afghanistan as an inflection point in world history that demonstrates that the balance of geopolitical forces is shifting in favor of its own long-term strategic goals. It would be happy if the United States were to retreat from treaty obligations, the defense of human rights around the world, and international conventions and organizations established in the aftermath of World War II. That’s not going to happen.
If anything, the last year and a half has red-pilled Americans and many other people around the world as to China’s long-term intentions and the aggressive means being used by the CCP in pursuit of those objectives. The CCP’s aggressive tactics include the following:
The lying and obfuscation about the origins of and medical forensic information associated with the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The hoarding of medical supplies during the “pandemic” and selling of those supplies to countries in need.
In light of the above CCP aggression, does the “rest of the world” wish to see the United States replaced as the world leader by communist China? Recent actions would indicate otherwise. As the old idiom goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.”
The aforementioned items have driven neighboring nations into each other’s arms. The following are a few examples:
A Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the “Quad”) has been formed by the United States, Australia, India, and Japan to improve “security and economic ties as tensions with China rise,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Japan and Vietnam have improved their defense cooperation by signing a new agreement that facilitates the transfer of Japanese defense equipment and technology to Vietnam.
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States entered into “an enhanced trilateral security partnership known as AUKUS,” according to the BBC, which is aimed at deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.
The British, French, and German navies have deployed ships to the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait in recent months for freedom of navigation operations and as a deterrent to PLA-Navy aggression in the region.
Chinese J-15 fighter jets on the deck of the Liaoning aircraft carrier during military drills in the South China Sea on Jan. 2, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
But what has the United States itself learned in the wake of Afghanistan, and how might the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul serve to reset U.S. foreign and national security policies, especially in the Indo-Pacific in response to continued Chinese aggression?
Republican senators (and others) are pushing the Biden administration for more forceful actions in responding to Chinese statements in the aftermath of the evacuation. They also seek accountability for the disorganized withdrawal and the poor decision making that was involved. Will this pressure result in a change in U.S. policy relating to the commitment and withdrawal of U.S. military forces overseas? The door could finally be opening for achieving consensus on a policy that involves the following key points:
Ensure that there are clearly defined mission success and exit criteria before committing U.S. combat power overseas. Ensure the top-level criteria are publicly debated and endorsed in Congress, and understood by the American people and the forces who are committed to battle.
Hold military leaders personally responsible for the operational planning and execution needed to achieve those criteria and associated objectives. Give those leaders the means and the flexibility to achieve the criteria and objectives.
Delegate the setting of tactical rules of engagement to the lowest possible command level (not to anyone out of theater).
When combat forces are committed overseas, use all means necessary to achieve total victory in the shortest time and with the least U.S. and allied casualties. All other considerations are secondary, including “bad press” (the Achilles heel of the current U.S. political class).
Broadcast the new policy as a deterrent against potential adversaries around the world.
Act decisively to execute the above policy when U.S. interests are threatened abroad, as well as in support of allies, alliances, and signed treaties.
Then, let the chips fall where they may, including in the South China Sea. In naval parlance, the new policy would be a badly needed “shot across the bow”—and decidedly NOT the U.S. lesson learned and corrective action from the Afghanistan disaster that the CCP is seeking.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the Department of Defense was trying to dispel the notion that there was any kind of security risk represented by Afghan refugees hastily airlifted out of the failed state by the U.S. military.
For Karen DeYoung and John Wagner’s piece — headlined “Pentagon seeks to tamp down concern about Afghan refugees as Trump, GOP question vetting” — the chief Pentagon dispeller and concern-tamper-downer was Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, head of the U.S. Northern Command. He said that among the 53,000 people who have been brought into the United States so far, there have only been what he termed a handful of security incidents.
“For a population of 53,000,” VanHerck said, “what we’re seeing is law enforcement violations on par with and in most cases significantly lower than in similar-sized” American cities.
This is a particularly sanguine way of looking at the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s also not terribly relevant as a parallel.
Most towns of 53,000 people, for instance, aren’t comprised of refugees on a military base who know they need to be on their best behavior to get permanent residence in America. There also aren’t a whole lot of reports of adult men with child “brides” taking up residence in 53,000-person towns; there have been an undetermined but not insubstantial, if reports are to be believed, number of those among the Afghan refugees.
There typically aren’t 28 people in towns of 53,000 who are flagged as potential national security threats — the same number of flagged national security threats, it must be noted, who had reached U.S. soil by Sept. 10, according to a previous report from the Post.
And in most U.S. cities and towns of 53,000 persons, you don’t routinely have over 700 people simply disappear because they no longer wish to be subject to the town’s jurisdiction.
On Friday, Reuters reported that the number of “independent departures” of Afghan refugees being housed at our military bases has topped 700 and could well be higher, according to sources. Over 300 of those came from Fort Bliss, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico border.
“Independent departure,” for those of you who can’t suss the meaning out, involves people walking off the bases without receiving resettlement services. The wire service reported that “the phenomenon is raising alarms among immigration advocates concerned about the risks to Afghans who give up on what is now an open-ended, complex and completely voluntary resettlement process.”
A Department of Homeland Security representative didn’t comment but said the individuals who had left “generally” had the resources to support themselves and ties to the United States via family and/or friends.
The chief concern of those quoted in Reuters’ article was whether walking off the bases might cost those who did it dearly. According to the wire service, “leaving early could cost other Afghan evacuees critical benefits — like expedited work permits – and create a slew of legal problems down the road, given the complexities of the U.S. immigration system.”
“It’s a giant can of worms,” a Citizenship and Immigration Services official said. “This could lead to years and years of terrible immigration status problems.”
A bigger issue might be the fact there’s no legal authority that the military has to keep the refugees on bases. According to Reuters, by leaving the bases, refugees break no U.S. laws, and there’s no legal authority by which military officials can hold the Afghans against their will.
Apparently, President Joe Biden isn’t willing to do anything to make this more difficult, either.
The news about the refugees walking off of bases, however, comes after a number of assaults at both Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Fort Bliss.
At Fort McCoy, as the Daily Mail pointed out Friday, one 20-year-old Afghan refugee is charged with three counts of engaging in sex acts with a minor and a 32-year-old man faces charges for assaulting his wife by strangling and suffocating her.
Meanwhile, at Fort Bliss, reports state that a soldier was assaulted by at least three Afghan refugees while she was reporting for duty.
There’s also the question of child brides. Yahoo News reported that a Sept. 5 Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis report said that “U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have found many incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the wives of much older men.”
The report went on to say “forced or coerced ‘marriages’ are indicative of the level of desperation Afghan families are willing to consider helping loved ones escape the Taliban and qualify for evacuation to Western countries.”
“The concern is, we’re seeing a lot of family units with very young girls. These girls are brought into the U.S. as wives,” an official familiar with the reports told Yahoo News. “It’s not a small number.”
“The reality is, overseas the vetting process sucks — there’s minimal vetting,” the official added. “So now we have a 60-year-old guy with a 12-year-old girl saying, ‘That’s my wife.’”
Sound like your 53,000-resident town?
And yet, when Biden put forth a vaccine mandate last month, part of the reason he gave was this: “My job as president is to protect all Americans.”
We’re supposed to assume that’s anything other than empty rhetoric when poorly vetted refugees can walk off military bases with no legal recourse?
A Gold Star family visiting Washington this week to lay their daughter to rest was attacked by a Politico reporter online after the family members toured the Capitol, and most of them were photographed without wearing masks.
KCRA-TV reported U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, who was among the 13 U.S. service members killed by a suicide bomb last month at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, was laid to rest on Wednesday.
The outlet previously reported that Gee, who was 23-years-old at the time of her death, was honored late last month in a ceremony in California where she was remembered as being passionate about her service.
In an Instagram post just before her death, Gee posted a photo of herself holding a baby.
One of the last Instagram posts from fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee in Kabul, who was killed in the suicide blast. She’s holding a rescued infant.
Gee was taken this week to her final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Her family, who had traveled to the Washington area from California, reportedly decided to visit the Capitol while they were in the area this week.
Semper Fidelis
Today, Sergeant Nicole L. Gee was laid to rest during a full honors funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
Republican Rep. Tom McClintock, the representative for the family’s district, had publicly grieved with the family after Gee’s death.
He posted a photo of the fallen soldier on Twitter after she was killed.
23 year old Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee from Roseville is the definition of an American hero. A selfless Marine who put her country before herself was lost in the line of duty while helping evacuate Americans and our allies in Afghanistan. Remember her name. pic.twitter.com/7DOkeYbyCM
McClintock was reportedly the reason Gee’s family was at the Capitol on Wednesday, as he had offered them a tour. This seemed to anger Politico reporter Heather Caygle.
In a since-deleted tweet, Caygle posted an image of the family touring the building.
“Masks requirement in the House,” she wrote to her 50,000 followers. “Tours not allowed… Yet here we are — group of 9, only 2 in masks.”
The tweet was taken down, but an archived version of it is still available online.
Former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint posted a screenshot of Caygle’s tweet and pointed out that after criticizing the grieving Gold Star family, it looked like the reporter gave an image of maskless reporters surrounding Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia her approval.
“Same reporter. Mocks family of fallen marine on small private Capitol tour without masks. 2 hours later celebrates photo of dozens of journalists on top of each other without masks. Vain media thinks of themselves as the true heroes,” DeMint commented.
Same reporter. Mocks family of fallen marine on small private Capitol tour without masks. 2 hours later celebrates photo of dozens of journalists on top of each other without masks. Vain media thinks of themselves as the true heroes. #JournalismIsDeadpic.twitter.com/0MHSeCk4Sw
As of Saturday, Caygle’s Twitter account has either been deactivated or deleted. When attempting to view posts from her account, a message from Twitter reads: “This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists.”
The U.S. Marine who called for accountability after the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is risking a lot for fellow Americans, his parents say.
“He is an American war hero. He has fought for his men and women that follow him. He’s fought on the battlefield for them. I believe he has risked his life for his fellow service people and Americans. He is now risking his livelihood for them. He saw a misjustice happening at the top and he felt that they should be held accountable for it,” Cathy Scheller, Stuart Scheller’s mother, said on NTD’s “The Nation Speaks.”
Stuart Scheller’s father, Stu Scheller Sr., said support from fellow Americans will greatly help his son.
The Marine Corps will “win the battle,” he said. “But America is going to help Stuart win the war.”
Stuart Scheller was dismissed from command after publishing a series of videos calling for U.S. military leaders to step up and own the “obvious mistakes that were made” during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The United States left over 100 Americans behind in the Middle Eastern country after completing the withdrawal on Aug. 30. Additionally, 13 U.S. service members were killed in a suicide bombing attack on the Kabul airport, which troops were holding for approximately two weeks to facilitate evacuations after the Taliban routed the U.S.-backed Afghan forces.
Military leaders have said they were shocked by how quickly the Taliban captured the country and were caught off guard.
But none have so far resigned and they have by and large painted the evacuation effort as a success, pointing to the over 120,000 people, primarily Afghan nationals, that the United States evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of before pulling out.
Stuart Scheller is suspected of violating four articles outlined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including Article 88, which prohibits the use of “contemptuous words” toward superiors, a Marine spokesperson told Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas).
Stuart Scheller’s parents are advocating for his release and helping raise funds for his defense. They and the Pipe Hitter Foundation have raised over $2 million so far.
“I do know that he broke rank and I know that he knows that there are consequences for that. But he didn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t do any violent crimes. He spoke up on Facebook. And yes, there is a chain of command and there should be punishment for that,” Cathy Scheller said on NTD.
“But that chain of command that we saw broken, we also just saw broken on the Senate floor. That chain of command was broken. Our son has been given a gag order and thrown in prison and strip searched and thrown in isolation and is facing prison for breaking his chain of command. I’m fine if that’s the exact punishment that is taken out all the way across the board for anyone who breaks command,” she added.
Scheller Sr. said that the congressional hearings this week, which saw Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie questioned sharply by members of Congress and appearing to lie about at least one matter, made evident that senior military leaders “are not accepting responsibility or accountability for their failures.”
“It would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign because my advice wasn’t taken. This country doesn’t want generals figuring what orders we’re going to accept and do or not,” Milley said.
Milley later called the end of the war a “strategic failure” while Austin defended the evacuation effort, noting that it moved many people out of the country.
Over 30 House Republicans on Friday sent a letter to Gen. David Berger demanding the release of Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. after the Marine was placed in a military brig in North Carolina because he spoke out against the Biden administration’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
According to The Washington Post, Scheller was relieved of his command shortly after he posted a video on social media that demanded that senior officials be held accountable for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August, an evacuation that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in an attack in Kabul.
“Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller Jr. should be immediately released from the brig and allowed to voluntarily resign from his post,” the House members wrote to Berger on Friday.
“American service members should not be punished for demanding our military leaders stand up and take ownership of their decisions. Especially when those decisions lead to the tragic deaths of 13 service members.”
Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs also spoke out on Twitter to urge Scheller’s release.
“Today, I sent a letter demanding the release of Lt. Col. Scheller who is currently being confined at Camp Lejeune for speaking out against his military leaders for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Biggs tweeted.
Today, I sent a letter demanding the release of Lt. Col. Scheller who is currently being confined at Camp Lejeune for speaking out against his military leaders for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
As of Friday afternoon, the amount had reached more than $1.8 million.
“LtCol Scheller is an infantry officer with an exemplary career of five deployments and multiple senior awards including a Bronze Star, Army Commendation with ‘V’ for Valor, 3 Meritorious Service Medals, 3 Navy Commendations.”
“With 17 years in the Corps, Stu was just a few years away from retirement with a pension and benefits awaiting him, but none of that mattered more than doing what is right – demanding accountability,” the fundraising post said.
Scheller’s original video, posted Aug. 26 to Facebook and LinkedIn, questioned military leaders who abandoned Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
“I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone?’” Scheller said.
“Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up?’”
The following day, Scheller posted on Facebook to announce he had been relieved of duty.
Scheller posted to YouTube afterward in a video that challenged military leaders, saying: “Your move.”
Meanwhile, Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and James Comer of Kentucky are demanding the Department of Defense provide information on the Scheller situation, Fox News reported.
A letter sent Thursday to Secretary Lloyd Austin gives the Defense Department until “no later than October 7” to brief the Committee on Oversight and Reform about the punishment of Scheller, which they say might be politically motivated and an attempt to quiet future whistleblowers.
Last week a mom read aloud to the Fairfax County School Board excerpts from library books found in an FCPS library.
Shocking sexually explicit material was included in these books. Fortunately, parents are more aware than ever of what students are learning and the resources that are available to them. But this is not a new fight in Virginia. Not by a longshot.
The final debate in Virginia’s gubernatorial campaign gave us a glimpse into the heart of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and a brief history lesson about parental rights in Virginia is now in order.
Does McAuliffe really believe it’s his responsibility to “not … let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions”?
Does he really believe what he said at the debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”? We know that he does, because he proved it at least twice in his previous stint as governor.
In 2016 and 2017, two separate bills (nicknamed the “Beloved” bills after the Toni Morrison novel) that provided notice to parents and students about sexually explicit material in assigned books were introduced in the Virginia General Assembly. Unknown to parents or students, within various assigned books (especially in AP courses) were instances of pedophilia, rape and even bestiality.
Since presumably, the teacher assigning the books would know about their content, simply notifying parents of that content is not much to ask. The education lobby maintained that parents should have to read all the assigned books to find out which ones had explicit sexual content. But if schools are truly partnering with parents, why the secrecy?
Why not disclose to the parents what is going to be read by their children, which the teachers well know is in the material? What about the rape victim in class who will be assigned a book that will depict the heinous crime committed against her? Does she have the right to know?
Both bills passed with bipartisan support as Republicans and Democrats agreed that parents should be informed when their child is assigned books containing graphic sexually explicit content. Remember when Republicans and Democrats could agree on things?
To be clear, both bills continued to give teachers complete autonomy in the book selection process. What both bills simply provided was a notice to both students and parents of potentially graphic sexually explicit content within the assigned material.
Students then had the ability to request an alternative book. Requesting an alternative assignment is not unusual or unprecedented. Some students have religious objections to animal dissection assignments in biology classes, for example. Those students are allowed an alternative assignment. Students who do not attend field trips for whatever reason are given alternate work.
Bowing to pressure from education lobbyists for teachers unions and publishers, in 2016, then-Gov. McAuliffe vetoed the first of the bills. Undeterred, parents continued to press for this modest request — simple notification that their child might be confronted with literature containing salacious descriptions of sexual acts.
Seeking to accommodate (overblown) concerns about “censorship” ginned up by groups like the ACLU and Pen America, the 2017 bill was more specific. While still ensuring teacher control over the book selection process, the bill required notifying parents of books that include acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Again, the books could still be assigned. The only requirement was parental notification about content considered a sex crime in the state where that material would be read by minors.
This allowed for the ability to distinguish between books like “Romeo and Juliet” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” and gratuitously explicit or age-inappropriate books containing acts that constitute felony sex crimes in most states.
The second bill narrowed the scope of notifying parents to those acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This way books like “Romeo and Juliet” would not be flagged, but books containing graphic depictions of rape, incest, pedophilia and bestiality would.
While there was unity between Democrats and Republicans as to this commonsense measure, McAuliffe decided to veto both bills. With a disdain for parents that was on full display at the final debate of this campaign, then-Gov. McAuliffe did the bidding of education lobbyists rather than honor the role that parents play in our children’s lives.
We don’t have to wonder who he will listen to if he wins again. It won’t be parents.
The Biden administration has spent been soft on communist China from the very beginning.
Such examples include rescinding Trump-era executive orders that result in economic benefits to the Chinese regime, appointing pro-Beijing apparatchiks who advocate resetting relations with China, and allowing a de facto “hostage swap” for a Huawei executive awaiting extradition to the United States for financial crimes, including fraud.
Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou entered into a plea deal (a “deferred prosecution agreement”) with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sept. 24. According to the statement released from the DOJ Office of Public Affairs, Meng “has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution.” In admitting her crimes, including knowingly making false statements about Huawei’s operations in Iran (which is under U.S. trade sanctions), she agreed “not to commit other federal, state or local crimes.” If she subsequently commits any of these acts, she would be subject to apprehension and prosecution for the deferred crimes listed in the agreement.
And by the way, the U.S. extradition request to Canada that was initiated by the Trump administration was rescinded, allowing Meng to return in triumph to China in exchange for two Canadians being held there, pending trials on trumped up charges. The DOJ sees no harm and no foul.
Meanwhile, Chinese state-run media, which have been propagandizing for Meng’s release since she was arrested in Canada in December 2018, are crowing about her release and their “vindication” for several days now. On Sept. 26, the Global Times posted an article that featured a picture of Meng “wav[ing] to a cheering crowd as she step[ped] out of a charter plane at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, on Saturday.”
This giving into Beijing’s “hostage diplomacy” is just the latest in an ongoing series of the Biden administration’s giveaways to the Chinese Communists (ChiComs) that began virtually from the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency.
The precedent for future hostage exchanges with the ChiComs has now been set: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can secure future releases of Chinese citizens by arresting a few unwitting foreigners in mainland China and using them for trade bait for Chinese spies and others facing prosecution for real crimes committed in the United States.
A Chinese security guard gestures outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing on Sept. 12, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden administration has been seemingly hard at work in granting concessions to China, starting with various executive orders as well as the appointment of China-friendly apparatchiks, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, to positions from which future giveaways to China can be orchestrated.
The following items are just a few of the Biden administration’s gifts to China since January.
Cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order that canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have carried millions of gallons of Canadian oil to refineries in the United States. New regulations in that executive order were also designed to curtail domestic oil and gas production, and since then, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased dramatically, as shown in the chart below.
Canceling the pipeline was a direct economic gift to China because higher energy prices make heavily-subsidized green tech more economically viable, leading to increased demand for Chinese-built electric vehicle batteries and solar panels. Washington’s rejoining the Paris Agreement is also of a piece with increasing China’s future sales of green tech to the United States.
Facilitating ChiCom Involvement in the U.S. Power Grid. Buried in that same executive order that canceled the XL pipeline permit was a provision that rescinded President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System). The purpose of EO 13920 was to “ban, replace, and set new criteria on bulk-power system (BPS) electric equipment coming from a foreign country or national that poses a national security threat.” Envision a future in which Beijing can turn off—or at least disrupt—America’s lights in order to obtain geopolitical or economic advantage!
The “Xenophobia” Memorandum. On Jan. 26, Biden signed a memorandum ostensibly aimed at “combatting racism” titled, “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.” A key provision was the direction to federal agencies aimed at “mitigating racially discriminatory language in describing the COVID-19 pandemic.” That meant terminating any U.S. government labeling of SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus”—a major propaganda coup for the CCP, which has been trying to deflect from the known origins of the virus in China since early 2020.
Arms Sales Frozen to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On Jan. 27, the Biden administration imposed a “temporary” freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As discussed in a previous Epoch Times analysis here, a long-term CCP goal is to oust the United States from the Middle East, and freezing arms sales to U.S. allies in the region plays right into the ChiComs’ strategy.
Support for the ‘One-China’ Policy. Despite Beijing’s forced absorption of Hong Kong and the increasing intimidation of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force, the Biden administration publicly announced continued support for the “one-China” policy. What would Biden do if the Chinese military invaded Taiwan?
Appointment of a Pro-China Ambassador to the United Nations. Biden appointed Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. ambassador. She is on record for praising the CCP’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”), which uses debt trap diplomacy to capture control of foreign ports and other transportation infrastructure. She was actually paid by the CCP to give that speech at a Confucius Institute event in 2019. Hers words will doubtless be “harsh” when warranted, but real actions aimed at confronting communist China at the U.N. will be few and far between.
Revocation of a Ban on CCP Propaganda in U.S. Universities. As reported here, the Trump-era policy was implemented to “compel primary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions to disclose all contracts and transactions with the Confucius Institute,” with noncompliant schools losing their certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Biden rescinded that policy on Jan. 26, which reopens the door for continued subversion of American colleges and universities through China’s Confucius Institutes.
Holds on WeChat and TikTok Cases. In February, the DOJ placed holds on two important cases involving Chinese tech companies TikTok and WeChat. The Trump administration had banned the apps for security reasons, including surreptitious collection of user data and “malicious intentions” by Chinese actors/bots. In June, the U.S. Department of Commerce formally rescinded a list of transactions previously prohibited with TikTok and WeChat, opening the door for CCP subversion of Americans using those apps.
A reflection of the U.S. flag is seen on the signs of the WeChat and TikTok apps on Sept. 19, 2020. (Florence Lo/Reuters)
Labeling CCP Genocide a “Cultural Norm.”In late February, Biden publicly called the failure of Xi Jinping to speak on the genocide of Uyghur Muslims part of a “different norm.” He said, “What [Xi] is doing with the Uyghurs in the western mountains of China, Taiwan and one-China policy by making it forceful, and he gets it. Culturally there are different norms in each country and their leaders are expected to follow.” One logical interpretation is that Biden provided diplomatic cover for continued CCP aggression in East Turkestan, Tibet, Southern Mongolia, Hong Kong, and even Taiwan in the future!
CCP Sympathizer Overseeing the Review of Trump-era China Policies. Melanie Hart, Biden’s China Policy Coordinator to the Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, is leading a team that is reviewing Trump’s “Clean Network” Initiative, which encouraged countries to block Huawei from 5G networks. Except that Hart took a trip to China, which was sponsored by the suspected CCP-front China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), and contributed to a report by the Center for American Progress that “urged closer financial ties and military collaboration” between both countries. So much for being “tough on China.”
The Debacle in Anchorage. On March 18 and 19, China’s Politburo member Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered a verbal beatdown to national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. As expertly summarized by Sinoinsider here, the Chinese side’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy aimed at promoting the rise of Red China across a number of topics discussed, coupled with the decline of the United States and the West in general. And this was on the world stage for all U.S. allies to observe.
Canceling the Sea-Launched Nuclear Cruise Missile. In June, the Biden administration canceled the U.S. Navy’s sea-launched nuclear cruise missile program. This was done despite the rising threat from PLAN ship-launched cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. The move nips in the bud U.S. efforts to address the Chinese regime’s nuclear and conventional missile superiority in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.
Dropping Prosecutions of Chinese Nationals Accused of Espionage. In July, the DOJ dropped cases brought by the Trump administration “against five visiting researchers accused of hiding their ties to China’s military, prompting questions about the department’s efforts to combat Chinese national security threats,” according to The New York Times.
Not Backing Restitution for “COVID Damages” From China. In early August, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that Biden would not back the Trump administration’s demand for “COVID reparations” from China. The greatest fear of the ChiComs is that world consensus would develop that Beijing be required to pay restitution for economic and personal damages wrought by COVID-19. It seems the current administration let China off the hook in one fell swoop.
The Gift of Afghanistan’s Lithium. This is the greatest gift that the Biden administration has given Xi Jinping so far. The ongoing U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan has left the Taliban in charge of the country. The ChiComs are already planning to exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 to $3 trillion in lithium reserves for Chinese production of batteries and other products. This is a perfect economic coup for the ChiComs as the Biden administration pushes green technologies, especially electric vehicles and EV batteries. The debacle was also a major strategic geopolitical defeat for America, demoralizing U.S. allies in the region by the abandonment of Afghan allies.
Conclusion
On issues large and small, the Biden administration is gift-wrapping policies that favor Beijing. There are many other examples in addition to the above list. The giveaways will continue, as the administration has some political appointees who have been corrupted in the past by ChiCom bribery, academic sinecures, and various awards, and who are ready, willing, and able to provide Beijing with a handsome return on their investments.
Steve Cortes of Newsmax said Biden might consider the booing a win, “because in stadiums across America, something far more profane is being chanted about him.”
He was, of course, referring to the “F*** Joe Biden” chants that were first heard in college football stadiums about three weeks ago and have continued since then.
Cortes also said that Washington, D.C., is “the bluest of blue cities,” so the fact that Biden was booed “is really, really surprising to me.”
On Wednesday night, Sean Hannity of Fox News said Biden was quickly becoming the “most unpopular president to ever serve.”
After greeting the Democratic and Republican lawmakers in their respective dugouts, Biden left the stadium. His visit lasted under an hour. But it appeared everyone was OK with that.
Maskless Biden closely meeting and shaking hands with attendees at Nationals Stadium ahead of congressional baseball game. pic.twitter.com/gOqJHFKcEf
The chilly reception comes at a perilous time for the president.
It follows a series of spectacular blunders, from his mishandling of the southern border to his sloppy and tragic exit from Afghanistan. Making matters worse, three of his top military officials just contradicted his claim that none of them recommended he leave troops in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban at bay.
Biden is currently trying to shepherd his twin multitrillion-dollar spending bills through Congress, where he’s run into opposition from Republicans and two key members of his own party: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona
Former President Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration in a statement on Thursday, claiming Democrats are sneaking “unlimited” funding into a spending bill to support Afghan refugees.
“Snuck into the government funding bill, or CR, the Democrats are trying to pass, and just found, is unlimited money to random, unscreened, unvetted Afghan nationals. Republicans can’t let this happen,” Trump said in the statement.
“This is a further insult after Biden’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, that needlessly killed 13 Americans,” he added.
NEW!
“Snuck into the government funding bill, or CR, the Democrats are trying to pass, and just found, is unlimited money to random, unscreened, unvetted Afghan nationals. Republicans can’t let this happen. This is a further insult after Biden’s humiliating withdrawal… pic.twitter.com/UlCZGmKQFZ
The proposed $6.4 billion for Afghan refugee resettlement in a proposed continuing resolution “would allow for the tens of thousands of Afghans being brought in to quickly apply for permanent U.S. residency,” according to a Fox News report.
The resolution would allow Afghan refugees access to a green card within a year. A green card holder can then apply for U.S. citizenship within a few years, according to the report.
The former president called the policy change “a major immigration rewrite.”
“This is not a ‘clean’ government funding bill. It’s a major immigration rewrite that allows Biden to bring anyone he wants from Afghanistan for the next year — no vetting, no screening, no security — and fly them to your community with free welfare and government-issued IDs,” Trump said.
“from Afghanistan, that needlessly killed 13 Americans.
This is not a “clean” government funding bill. It’s a major immigration rewrite that allows Biden to bring anyone he wants from Afghanistan for the next year—no vetting, no screening, no security—and fly them to your…
Concerns with some Afghan refugees have already been discovered, according to Trump’s statement.
“We’ve already seen some of the horrible assaults and sex crimes that have taken place. But these terrible assaults will just be the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming if this isn’t shut down,” Trump said.
“community with free welfare and government-issued IDs. We’ve already seen some of the horrible assaults and sex crimes that have taken place. But these terrible assaults will just be the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming if this isn’t shut down.
The former president even referred to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as “an incompetent radical,” saying the bill must be opposed.
“The CR even covers people who don’t live in Afghanistan and haven’t in many years, as long as they used to live there. So Biden and Blinken can load up planes of former Afghans from Pakistan or elsewhere without any limits, checks or even a lawful visa or refugee status,” Trump said.
“The only ‘rule’ is that Mayorkas — an incompetent radical — give them a green light. This bill must be opposed!” he concluded.
The only “rule” is that Mayorkas—an incompetent radical—give them a green light. This bill must be opposed!” – President Donald J. Trump
“Joe Biden left behind thousands in Afghanistan who already have American citizenship, green cards, or pending visas,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted.
Now he wants to award unlimited green cards to people who didn’t serve alongside our troops and who may even threaten our safety and health—all while exempting them from the normal refugee screening process. https://t.co/rH9WqyaW7p
“Now he wants to award unlimited green cards to people who didn’t serve alongside our troops and who may even threaten our safety and health — all while exempting them from the normal refugee screening process.”
Pakistan’s support for the Taliban is not surprising. The international community needs to take stock of Pakistan’s moves in the Taliban-led Afghanistan, and to observe how the Pakistan-China nexus will be played out in the war-torn country.
The nexus is already taking root in Afghanistan as witnessed in the coordinated efforts between Islamabad, Beijing, and the Taliban. That is, while Pakistan called the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul “breaking the chains of slavery,” China has endorsed the new “interim government” of the Taliban by calling it a “necessary step” to restore order and “end anarchy.”
Furthermore, on Sept. 8, the Pakistani government led the initiative of organizing a foreign ministers’ meeting on the Afghan issue, which was attended by China, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. At the meeting, China announced that it would donate 200 million yuan ($31 million) worth of aid, including grains, winter supplies, and COVID-19 vaccines to Afghanistan. Speaking to the G20 foreign ministers via a video link, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged for humanitarian assistance to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan without any delay. Besides, Beijing has also expressed its interest in starting investment projects in Afghanistan when the situation becomes conducive.
While China has been quick to make its strategic moves in the war-torn country, it is still too early to gauge how China’s clout will play out in Afghanistan. However, what remains certain is that Afghanistan, under the Taliban, will become the new frontier of the Beijing-Islamabad nexus—further broadening the scope of the ties. This brings the “all-weather friendship” between China and Pakistan into perspective—India’s major concern.
India has always been wary over the “all-weather” ties between China and Pakistan. One of the key factors that bind Beijing and Islamabad is their common interest in the context of sovereignty and territorial dispute with India. This is exemplified by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, as known as “One Belt, One Road”) that connects the port city of Gwadar in the province of Balochistan with the Chinese city of Kashgar in the landlocked Xinjiang region. The CPEC violates India’s territorial sovereignty as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). However, Beijing dismisses New Delhi’s sovereignty concerns by arguing that the CPEC is an economic project and not aimed at any third country.
With the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan, India will have to face new dimensions of the so-called “two-front” scenario—the Taliban’s ties with China and Pakistan. This situation can be read in three ways. First, the extension of CPEC to Afghanistan will further add to India’s dilemma over Chinese intentions along India’s periphery. Second, China’s increasing affinity with the Taliban will provide a boost to Beijing’s interest to mediate between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And third, if Beijing succeeds in its role, it will try to export the “China model,” which will not be in India’s interest. While Pakistan has always been a concern for India regarding the Taliban, the added China factor will only make matters worse.
Therefore, India’s anxiety over Afghanistan is not just about the Taliban. To quell the risks, India held its first diplomatic talks with the Taliban this month and made it clear that “Afghanistan’s soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism in any manner, according to the Ministry of Affairs.
As the uncertainties loom large, New Delhi would have to make difficult and uncomfortable decisions to secure its interests in the Taliban-led Afghanistan. And more specifically, to counter the “all-weather”ties between China and Pakistan as both countries’ interests in Afghanistan have an India quotient.
The parents of a Marine who has been jailed for calling out senior military leaders through a series of social media posts and videos say the rules their son broke are nowhere near as serious as the level of trust shattered by those above him.
In the aftermath of the Aug. 26 terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 13 service members and almost 200 Afghans, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller released a video saying “People are upset because their senior leaders let them down, and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, ‘We messed this up,’” according to Task & Purpose.
Scheller is in the brig at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Sam Stephenson said, according to The Washington Post.
“The allegations against Lt. Col. Scheller are merely accusations. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” he said.
Scheller is accused of showing contempt toward officials, willfully disobeying a superior officer, failing to obey lawful orders and committing conduct unbecoming of an officer.
In addition to speaking out and naming names, Scheller posted on social media in violation of an order not to do so.
“They are trying to bury our son,” his mother, Cathy, said during a Wednesday appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” according to Fox News.
Tucker Carlson talks to the parents of imprisoned Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller: “His crime was speaking truth to power, and power couldn’t handle it.” pic.twitter.com/Ad92GMIhXM
Cathy Scheller asked Americans “to pray, to contact your congressmen, and to donate.”
Carlson commiserated with the Marine’s parents.
“This is one of the worst stories I’ve ever seen in 30 years of covering this stuff,” he said.
Scheller’s father, Stuart Scheller Sr., said his son acted deliberately on his convictions. What he did, Scheller Sr. said, was far better than the actions of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command.
“He knew this weekend when he posted again and he broke his silence that they were probably going to arrest him. He is a very intelligent man. He understands what’s going to happen to him,” Scheller Sr. said.
“He broke chain of command … his crime was speaking truth to power, and power couldn’t handle it … While he broke chain of command – Austin, Milley, McKenzie – they broke the chain of trust and confidence in the American people. We’re mad, we’re mad as hell,” he said.
On Tuesday, Scheller Sr. told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that their son’s superiors “broke the chain of trust and confidence of the American people. For that, they should be embarrassed. They should resign for that,” in comments quoted by the U.K.-based Independent.
“He could not stand by and could not fathom the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was asking for accountability, honest answers, and confessions of mistakes that were made,” his father said.
“They have turned their backs on him. They have tried to shut him up with a gag order, and when that didn’t work, they have put him in jail. It’s shameful.”
Cathy Scheller said the family wants more than the resignations of top military officials.
“We want them to resign and we want Stuart released. We would like him to have his pension reinstated and his hard-earned medical benefits that he will need after his many deployments. If they won’t do that, at least release him and let him out of the Marines.”
According to Task & Purpose, Scheller’s service record includes stints in Lebanon, evacuating Americans in 2006 during Israeli-Hamas fighting, time in Iraq as a company executive officer in 2007, and postings in Afghanistan.
His personal awards include a “Bronze Star Medal, a Combat Action Ribbon, an Army Commendation Medal with combat ‘V,’ and three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medals, according to his service record,” Task & Purpose reported.
“I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say ‘hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone,’” he said.
Scheller said he thought risking his future in the Marines was worth it.
“I thought through ‘if I post this video, what might happen to me?’ especially if the video picks up traction, if I have the courage to post it. But I think what you believe in, can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk. So if I’m willing to risk my current battalion commander seat, my retirement, my family’s stability to say some of the things I want to say. I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, accountability from my senior leaders,” he said.
Scheller also issued a defiant Facebook post on Saturday, noting he expected to be arrested.
“Fear cannot exist in the pursuit of love and truth. I believe in love. I believe in America. I believe in strength. I believe in honesty. I believe I am ready to go to jail based on these beliefs,” he wrote.
Calling the proposed Democratic budget package of progressive sugar plums “fiscal insanity,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Wednesday said he has not budged in his opposition to the mammoth spending bill.
Manchin and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have long been holdouts in the Senate and have indicated opposition to a bill that totals $3.5 trillion, a sum Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders has already said is “not enough” for what should be doled out to social programs.
This week, they were courted by President Joe Biden in an effort to get them on board, as CBS News reported. The two votes matter to Democrats because without them – and with continued united Republican opposition – the spending bill cannot pass a Senate that’s divided between the parties 50-50.
That makes Manchin’s announcement a huge roadblock to progressive plans.
Manchin explained his stand in a statement on his website.
“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question – how much is enough?” he wrote.
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” he wrote.
Manchin wrote that claims that spending will not fuel increased inflation are pipe dreams.
“Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax,” he wrote.
Manchin also expressed doubts that an unprecedented deluge of taxpayer dollars will create the version of nirvana its supporters claim will take place.
“Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery,” he wrote.
Manchin noted he supports tax code changes to address fairness concerns, but that there is a limit.
“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he wrote.
Manchin did not rule out further conversations about an appropriate amount of spending, but wrote that “I cannot – and will not — support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”
Manchin also hinted that the final solution may not be a one-party bill, as the $3.5 trillion package was designed to be.
“If there is one final lesson that will continue to guide me in this difficult debate ahead it is this: America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” he wrote. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”
Sinema is doing her negotiating directly with the WH and Schumer. She’s been at the WH for meetings 10 times since the summer. Durbin, No. 2, himself acknowledged being in the dark about her and Manchin’s demands. Sanders: “I don’t want to talk about Sinema and Manchin.” https://t.co/GvnwyQ8oYs
Progressives in the House of Representatives say they want to move forward regardless of what Manchin does.
“Progressives won’t back down on delivering paid leave, education, health care, child care, and climate action because of an arbitrary deadline,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, according to Fox Business. “We’re sticking to our deal and delivering for the people.”
Radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota indicated disgust with Manchin and Sinema.
“It is saddening to see them use Republican talking points. We obviously didn’t envision having Republicans as part of our party,” she said, according to The Hill.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin should rally Virginia parents over Terry McAuliffe’s statement that teachers’ unions – not parents — have the final say on children’s education.
I think Terry McAuliffe made a huge error in last night’s debate when he asserted that parents really should have no influence on what is taught to their children. This race can break wide open if Glenn Youngkin can focus, in a disciplined way, on rallying every parent and grandparent in the state who believes that parents should have a role in their children’s education. Employing this tactic will drive home the point that the teachers’ unions own McAuliffe. For the Democrats, it is about control and power, not freedom and personal choice.
Three of the U.S. military’s top officials have told Congress that they realized within hours that a botched Aug. 29 drone strike had killed innocent civilians—contradicting earlier military statements about what the government knew in the aftermath of the incident.
“We knew the strike hit civilians within four to five hours after the strike occurred, and U.S. Central Command issued a press release saying that,” Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie told members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) on Sept. 29, in responding to questions from Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.).
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also said the Pentagon knew about civilian deaths within “several hours” of the strike, as did Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
However, the latter part of McKenzie’s statement is false. CENTCOM statements following the drone strike don’t note civilian deaths.
The first Aug. 29 CENTCOM release regarding the incident said CENTCOM was “assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”
When media reports trickled out later that day about civilian deaths, CENTCOM issued a follow-up statement also failing to acknowledge the deaths.
“We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today,” the second release reads. “It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further.”
The same statements from CENTCOM also note that the drone strike eliminated an “imminent ISIS-K threat” to the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, and that secondary explosions may have occurred—both of which also proved to be untrue.
McKenzie also told HASC members on Sept. 29 that the Pentagon learned “a few days later” that the strike didn’t hit its intended target. But the Pentagon didn’t admit that until Sept. 17.
For weeks, U.S. military leaders repeatedly portrayed the strike as a successful attack, even as family members of the deceased insisted there was no connection between them and the ISIS offshoot.
“At this point, we think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike,” Milley said on Sept. 1, painting the strike as a proper course of action to retaliate against a suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members.
Journalists take photos of a vehicle damaged by a rocket attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 30, 2021. (Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/AP Photo)
But after a Sept. 10 New York Times investigation raised doubts about the veracity of the military’s claims, the Department of Defense admitted that the drone strike killed 10 civilians, seven of which were children—and no terrorists.
“We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or were a direct threat to U.S. forces,” Milley said Sept. 17. “I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport.”
Secretary Austin made similar remarks on the same day.
“I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed, including Mr. Ahmadi, and to the staff of Nutrition and Education International, Mr. Ahmadi’s employer,” he said, referring to Emal Ahmady, who said he translated for a U.S. company for three years starting in 2011.
“We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.
“We apologize, and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”
CENTCOM didn’t respond by press time to emailed requests for comment on the contradiction between what McKenzie told Congress and what the releases stated. When reached by phone, a public affairs officer told The Epoch Times that no one was available to answer the inquiry.
CENTCOM is conducting an internal investigation of the incident.
McKenzie and the other generals declined to answer other HASC questions about the incident—such as whether they knew a U.S.-registered NGO was in the target area—citing the investigation.
Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) at a Make America Great Again rally in Southaven, Miss., on Oct. 2, 2018. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
“There’s a lot of questions I have that have to be in a classified environment, but I hope that you guys know that I also sit on a different committee that has different insight on this, and I think it’s important that we know who authorized this, at what level—and that we hold the right people accountable,” Kelly said.
There’s the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs” but the real war our leaders fight with any perspicacity is the “War on Truth,” second only to that even older, perhaps oldest and most crucial of all, wars known colloquially as CYA.
The latter is fought to the bitter end and takes precedence.
We find this on display frequently in Washington, D.C. and Sept 28 was no exception.
During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, both Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie insisted, under oath, they had advised against President Biden’s precipitous and, to be as polite as humanly possible, ill-conceived exit plan from Afghanistan.
Milley said he urged Biden to leave 2,500 troops in place. This would have left enough military to guard Bagram air base and prevent it becoming the staging area for the Chinese air force it likely will become.
They also would have been able to arrange for either the destruction or the recovering of the 80+ billion dollars of U.S. weaponry, much of it high-tech, now in Taliban (and therefore Chinese, Russian and Iranian) hands.
It goes without saying too, most importantly, an operable Bagram could have saved myriad lives, American and Afghan, and would continue to do so.
President Biden denied hearing any of this. Or, more precisely, he didn’t recall hearing this.
The real question is—was he lying? Most likely, yes. From law school onwards he has plagiarized and lied multiple times. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, as they say.
But there are other possibilities.
One is that President Biden’s cognitive issues are so severe that he couldn’t understand or actually allow himself to hear what the generals were advising. He had been so completely locked into an idée fixe of getting out of Afghanistan on whatever schedule he thought politically useful (Sept. 11?) nothing permeated.
A yet more disturbing alternative is that he was counseled against the generals’ view by some of his own advisors. Normally, that would make little sense, considering the disaster that occurred, but many actions of the Biden administration can be read as being against the long-term interests of the United States, actually weakening it deliberately, and in favor of the globalists or the Chinese communists, assuming they are not, in reality, one and the same.
The recent indictments and leaks from the Durham investigation lend credence to this possibility. Many of the officials in the Biden administration, in the State Department and elsewhere, are holdovers from the Obama administration, just in different positions as if reseated in a game of musical chairs.
How many of these people really want a strong U.S. military in a position to be guardians of the free world as it has been for decades? Wouldn’t they prefer it to fall apart? It’s worth thinking about.
But enough “paranoid” speculation. What about the head man in this CYA fiesta, General Milley?
When Sen. Tom Cotton, among others, asked Milley why he didn’t resign after the Afghanistan debacle, he replied as follows:
“Senator, as a senior military officer, resigning is a really serious thing—it’s a political act—if I’m resigning in protest. My job is to provide advice—my statutory responsibility is to provide legal advice or best military advice to the president, and that’s my legal requirement.”
Perhaps the general has short-term memory loss.
No American general in this century has been more overtly “political” than he.
Has he forgotten that for some time he has been referred to as the “woke” general?
Nothing is more political than “woke.” Indeed, that is its intention, to turn everything in our lives into politics—the food we eat, the air we breath, our educational system, our entertainment, our press, who gets a job, who gets promoted, who appears in a commercial, who goes to a restaurant, what we can say on social media, who’s skin color is best, who’s the biggest victim, what sex we declare ourselves to be, our pronouns and on and on.
Not very long ago, General Milley made a speech sympathetic to that flagship of “woke”—critical race theory. That the chairman of the joint chiefs would do that is astonishing and, in a sense, revolutionary.
He has, in effect, politicized the military that is supposed, for very good reason, including winning wars, to be neutral.
Also with good reason, we could dub him General “Woke.”
But now, of all a sudden, in Senate testimony, he self-righteously claims the military should not be politicized. He would never do such a thing.
Actually his vision of politicization is, in itself, completely politicized. He wouldn’t resign from Biden, no matter what the issue, and the current one is unbelievably extreme, but could well have resigned from Trump.
It wasn’t that long ago that he made a public apology for merely accompanying the then president to the torched St. John’s Church:
“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
Learn what exactly? That the chairman of the joint chiefs is a hypocrite? We certainly learned that.
During his questioning by Sen. Marsha Blackburn we also learned Milley is a kind of creepy gossip who likes to make sure the likes of Bob Woodward know the general’s side of the story for the journalist’s forthcoming—is it fiction or non-fiction— best seller. After all, General “Woke’s” legacy is in play.
I’m not going to go into the telephone calls to the Chinese general, interesting as that may be, because I suspect more facts will be coming out.
What I will say is that, as usual “woke”—or in this case General “Woke”—is the opposite of really woke. What business was it of his to supersede the commander-in-chief and telegraph our intentions to the enemy?
Milley seemed to think that was his job, that he was just being internationally “woke.” Many would disagree.
Yes, CYA trumped the War on Truth, as it almost always does, in Washington Tuesday.
Democratic leadership in the House blocked a GOP-led measure to sanction trade between the Taliban and China, with the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee citing opposition to any move that could anger the Afghan terror group, according to congressional sources briefed on the matter.
House Republicans tried to attach an amendment to the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, the sprawling annual defense-funding bill, that would sanction any person or business that attempts to work with the Taliban to purchase rare earth minerals, a lucrative natural resource coveted by China and used to power most modern electronics. The Communist regime has used the American exit from Afghanistan to boost its presence in the war-torn country, in part to gain access to its natural resources, which are valued at anywhere from $1 to $3 trillion.
The GOP measure was rejected last week by Democrats on the House Rules Committee and by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.). According to congressional sources briefed on the matter, Meeks’s staff cited concerns about any legislation that could provoke the Taliban. Meeks’s office said it is concerned that any additional sanctions that target the Taliban could complicate ongoing efforts to rescue Americans still stranded in war-torn Afghanistan. Meeks aides also said that sanctioning the Taliban will push them to sell illegal drugs, which GOP sources say the terror group will do and is doing anyway.
Republicans will reintroduce the measure on Tuesday as a standalone bill in a bid to force Democrats into voting on a measure that will increase pressure on the Taliban, according to congressional sources familiar with the matter. GOP leaders say China’s increased focus on Afghanistan poses a national security risk, particularly as it seeks to work with Taliban leaders to export precious materials that U.S. companies will end up buying.
“House Democrats proved once again that they are unwilling to compromise with Republicans by blocking my amendments to the [National Defense Authorization Act],” Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.), who is spearheading the measure, told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s outrageous that Democrats would not even allow a vote on something so commonsense as banning the Taliban and China from profiting off of rare earth minerals. Pretty soon Americans will be carrying around products with rare earth minerals sourced from the Taliban due to the reckless policies of the left.”
The measure is part of a larger effort by the Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in Congress, to block the Taliban’s access to cash resources and stop the group from aligning itself with malign regimes, such as China, Russia, and Iran.
“The Taliban’s control of these minerals likely now makes it the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world,” the Republican Study Committee wrote Tuesday in a private memorandum sent to 154 GOP offices, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon. “Unless conservatives in Congress act quickly to limit the damage done by the Biden administration, it is likely that soon products as varied as iPhones to laptops to the electric vehicles championed in Democrats’ reconciliation package will contain raw earth minerals sourced from Taliban-run Afghanistan and developed by communist China. This would allow both the Taliban and China to profit and put American national security in jeopardy.”
Rare earth minerals have become an increasingly hot button topic. China controls around 35 percent of all rare earth minerals reserves in the world and exports a large portion to the United States for use in a range of consumer products. Around 80 percent of the United States’ rare earth mineral imports come from China.
China has prioritized an expansion in this market, injecting itself into a range of countries known for their stockpiles.
Since the United States withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, China has inked business deals with the Taliban that will expand its footprint in the country and also provide the Communist regime with billions in revenue. China inked a 30-year contract worth $3 billion dollars with Afghanistan’s former government and has expressed its willingness to follow through on the deal with the Taliban leadership.
While the Taliban is subject to many American and international sanctions, the Biden administration and Democrats have expressed a willingness to work with the terror group and recognize it as Afghanistan’s official government. Republican leaders in Congress want current sanctions enforced and additional ones implemented to prevent partnerships like the budding one between Beijing and the Taliban.
“It’s not enough that we left Afghanistan vulnerable to a Taliban takeover and let them seize $85 billion worth of our military equipment,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told the Free Beacon. “We’ve also left them access to $1 to $3 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, which they plan to develop and sell with China. Instead of working to stop them, House Democrats are enabling them. Is this part of a new strategy to reward the Taliban that they’re not telling us?”
The Department of Homeland Security is not allowing an evacuation flight of 117 Americans and Afghan allies to land in the United States, according to Project Dynamo.
Project Dynamo founder Bryan Stern told Reuters that 117 people, including 59 children are waiting at an Abu Dhabi airport to travel to the U.S.
“They will not allow a charter on an international flight into a U.S. port of entry,” Stern said, according to Reuters.
The 117 travelers at the United Arab Emirates capital include 28 American citizens, 83 green card holders and six holding Special Immigration Visas, according to the report.
Among the travelers are 59 children, including 16 under 3 years old.
“Right now we have 59 children sleeping on airport chairs and cold airport floors – not the warm bed with a hot meal that we’d arranged for all of them stateside – because the US Government denied our flight clearance into ALL US ports of entry. All of them. For a plane load of Americans,” the organization posted on Twitter Tuesday night.
“They escaped the regime they were running from only to have the government they were running HOME TO, turn them away. This cannot be what America does to Americans. Bring Dynamo 01 home. Now. Today,” the post added.
The delay was apparently an unforeseen development.
In a news release published only Tuesday, Stern’s organization was praising the State Department.
“We would like to thank the U.S. State Department and the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their cooperation in challenging circumstances to secure the safe return of these U.S. citizens, U.S. Legal Permanent Residents, and Afghan allies,” the news release stated.
“We would also like to acknowledge the Taliban for facilitating the departure of the aircraft by allowing those who want to depart Afghanistan to do so peacefully,” it added.
According to Reuters, an administration official interviewed was unfamiliar with the specific situation, but said the typical practice is for the U.S. government to verify the passenger manifest of charter planes before allowing them to land in the U.S.
According to a CNN report, “A State Department official said they ‘are not going to detail our involvement with any specific groups at this time.’
“The evacuation effort has been a monumental task and the U.S. government understands the need to coordinate across agencies, as we have done, but we also appreciate the desire of NGOs and private citizens to assist and have identified a greater need for coordination there,” the official said.
Several days after the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, President Joe Biden sat for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He insisted he had not been advised by his military to leave a small number of troops in Afghanistan to keep the country from falling to the Taliban.
“Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops,” Stephanopoulos said.
Biden abruptly cut him off. “No they didn’t. It was split. That wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.”
“They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out — in a time frame — all troops. They didn’t argue against that,” the president said.
Stephanopoulos tried again. “Your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?”
Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”
FLASHBACK: In August, Biden insisted that “no, no one” advised against his withdrawal timeline.
Today under oath, Generals Milley & McKenzie confirmed they recommended against Biden’s withdrawal timeline and warned him about the impending collapse of the Afghan government. pic.twitter.com/HejzUb5FIf
In addition to the fact that Biden’s remarks didn’t sound particularly convincing, two of his top military advisers contradicted him in testimony before Senate lawmakers on Tuesday morning. And a third testified he was sure the president had “received this input.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, addressed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
Both Milley and McKenzie said they had recommended leaving 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country, according to CNN.
Milley told lawmakers: “In the fall of 2020, my analysis was that an accelerated withdrawal without meeting specific and necessary conditions risks losing the substantial gains made in Afghanistan, damaging US worldwide credibility, and could precipitate a general collapse of the Afghan government, resulting in a complete Taliban takeover or general civil war.”
The Joint Chiefs Chair said his view all along was “that we should keep a steady state of 2,500 and it could bounce up to 3,500, maybe, something like that, in order to move toward a negotiated solution.”
McKenzie echoed Milley. According to Fox News, McKenzie told the committee, “I won’t share my personal recommendation to the president, but I will give you my honest opinion and my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation. And I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.”
“I also have a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government,” he added.
To make things worse for the president, Austin was asked if he was certain Biden “received the input” from Milley and McKenzie. Austin replied, “Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure.”
It’s abundantly clear: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ignored the advice from the military and mislead the American people.
Biden’s botched Afghan withdrawal could have been prevented and American lives could have been saved. https://t.co/wUCd3C0xt0
Milley also told the senators, “I think that our credibility with allies and partners around the world, and with adversaries, is being intensely reviewed by them to see which way this is going to go. And I think that ‘damage’ is one word that could be used.”
I think so too.
Notably, both Milley and Austin blamed the Doha agreement negotiated by the Trump administration with the Taliban in February 2020 for a precipitous drop in the morale and the performance of Afghan troops.
This issue was raised when senators questioned why the Biden administration didn’t have a better sense of the limitations of the Afghan forces, according to CNN.
“It’s my judgment that the Doha Agreement did negatively affect the performance of the Afghan forces in particular by some of the actions the government of Afghanistan was required to take as part of that agreement,” McKenzie said. “[The Doha deal] did affect the morale of the Afghan security forces.”
This is more an excuse for poor judgment than a cause of the debacle. Biden has repeatedly blamed the chaotic U.S. exit on the Trump administration’s peace deal with the Taliban.
In fact, The Associated Press explored the veracity of that claim days after the fall of Kabul and found it lacking in substance. Its fact check determined that Biden was not bound by the Doha, Qatar, agreement. The deal contained an “escape clause.”Do you believe that Biden is responsible for the disaster in Afghanistan?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed,” the AP wrote. “They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.”
Former President Donald Trump and his officials were realistic. In defense of the Trump administration’s efforts, it must be said that they were well aware of the forces they were dealing with. They were always clear that the Taliban would be monitored and “conditions on the ground” would determine the path forward.
All along, Trump warned of significant military retaliation if the Taliban reneged on its obligations.
His administration was criticized for giving legitimacy to a terrorist group, but the Taliban is such a dominant force in the country, how could it have been otherwise? The U.S. and the Afghan government could ignore the group at their peril.
Biden was so determined to get out of Afghanistan that he ignored the most important words in the Doha agreement: “conditions on the ground.”
The Doha deal had not been ratified by Congress and it could and should have been changed as conditions changed. Biden had no problem with changing any other policy and program implemented by the Trump administration.
Milley says putting a specific date on withdrawal went against his advice, says conditions-based approaches are superior.
The other excuse offered by the generals was that the collapse happened so quickly. What they believed would take months occurred over 11 days, they claimed.
The report lists the key events since U.S. Central Command began its formal military drawdown on May 1.
Here are the most relevant developments.
June 22: “Taliban seize Sher Khan border crossing to Tajikistan.”
June 23: “General Milley says 81 district centers are under Taliban control.”
Jun 25: “President Biden meets with President Ghani and High Council for National Reconciliation Chairman Abdullah in Washington, DC.”
July 8: “Taliban capture Islam Qala border crossing in Herat Province, key trade route to Iran.”
July 12: “General Austin Miller relinquishes command of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and NATO Resolute Support Mission.”
July 12 – 15: “Four media outlets publish maps indicating Taliban control majority of Afghan districts, with many taken since May 1.”
July 14: “Taliban capture border crossing at Kandahar Province’s Spin Boldak, connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
July 17: “High-level Afghan delegation meets with Taliban in Doha to expedite stalled peace talks.”
July 21: “General Milley says Taliban control more than 210 districts [out of a total of approximately 400].”
The report indicates the Taliban was executing a preplanned, systematic takeover of the country, that U.S. military leaders were well aware of it and allowed it to continue.
By June 23, 20 percent of the districts in the country were under Taliban control. Milley told Congress about it.
Exactly four weeks later, on July 21, 50 percent of the districts were held by the Taliban. They had also captured at least three border crossings.
It’s likely the Biden administration knew long before June 23 that the takeover had begun. I would be willing to bet the administration was aware of it in real-time.
But even giving them the benefit of the doubt, officials knew about it for nearly two months rather than the 11 days Milley referred to at the Senate hearing.
The bottom line is that contrary to what Biden told Stephanopoulos, his military advisers recommended that he leave 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. The Biden administration could have torn up the Doha agreement at any time. And Biden officials were aware that the Taliban was sweeping through the country, swallowing up districts for far longer than 11 days.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a 17-year veteran, risked his career and pension when he posted a scathing rebuke of the senior military leaders who failed US servicemen serving in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden’s incompetence and corruption led to the death of 13 US servicemen and 15 more were critically wounded in a blast by a suicide bomber in Kabul on Thursday.
“I want to say this very strongly. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders: I demand accountability,” said Scheller.
“I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever. But I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up’?” Scheller added.
“I thought through, if I post this video, what might happen to me — especially if the video picks up traction, if I have the courage to post it,” he said. “But I think what you believe in can only be defined by what you’re willing to risk. If I’m willing to risk my current battalion seat, my retirement, my family’s stability to say some of the things I want to say, I think it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, and accountability from my senior leaders.”
Scheller is “currently in pre-trial confinement,” a spokesperson for Training and Education Command said of the officer’s status.
“The time, date, and location of the proceedings have not been determined. Lt. Col. Scheller will be afforded all due process,” the statement continued.
But the elder Scheller defended his son, arguing that he was only asking for “accountability” from the military’s top brass.
“He’s asking for the same accountability that is expected of him and his men,” he said.
“I’ve had Vietnam veterans contacting me applauding him for his courage because they too want to know: Was it all worth it?” he continued. “And by demanding accountability and honesty from his senior leaders, that’s all he was asking. And the way the Marine Corps has dealt with it: They have now put him in jail.”
According to a report from the Washington Times, a man who had been convicted of rape and deported from the U.S. was allowed to board an Afghan evacuation flight and reach the state of Idaho.
Ghader Heydari, a convicted rapist who was deported from the US in 2017, was arrested after catching an Ethiopian Airlines evacuation flight out of Kabul.
According to The Washington Times, Heydari came to the US as a refugee and was even granted a green card in 2000.
Heydari pleaded guilty to rape in Ada County, Idaho, in 2010, and he served more than five years in prison.
Roughly 400 Afghan refugees or more will resettle in Idaho in 2021 according to officials with the International Rescue Committee in Boise.
Over 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted to the United States this year under a program called “Operation Allies Welcome.”
The news comes as reports surface describing several attacks committed by the newly arrived Afghan refugees.
A female soldier was recently gang assaulted by several Afghan men brought over during the evacuation. Two other Afghan refugees have been arrested on charges of sexual assaults of minors, and the assault of another woman.
After a short stay at various processing centers, the more than 50,000 refugees will be resettled in states across the country.
According to reports, many of the refugees are being sent to Spokane, WA, Boise ID, Missoula, MT, and parts of Minnesota.
Lawmakers say report could be used to target terror group’s funding channels
The Biden administration is withholding from Congress a legally mandated report on Hezbollah’s financial empire, information that lawmakers could use to increase pressure on the Iranian-backed terror group.
Congress ordered the State and Treasury Departments in early 2019 to produce a publicly available report on Hezbollah senior leadership’s funding channels as part of legislation known as the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of 2018. The bill mandated a report be produced 180 days after it was passed, by April 2019. The Trump administration never produced a report and the Biden administration is withholding it too.
Republican lawmakers and congressional sources familiar with the matter say the report has become increasingly critical as the Biden administration considers lifting economic sanctions on Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon as the country grapples with a massive cash crunch. Both the State and Treasury Departments declined to provide the Washington Free Beacon with information about the report or answer questions about why they have failed to comply with the law.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R., Texas), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Free Beacon the report could be used to target Hezbollah’s senior leadership and crack down on their efforts to steal cash and international aid meant for the Lebanese people. This information would also make it harder for the Biden administration to justify rolling back sanctions on Lebanon and providing the country with an economic bailout that could further enrich the terror group.
“I’m not surprised that after botching the retrograde in Afghanistan, the Biden administration is now not complying with reporting requirements stated in the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of 2018,” Fallon said. “Additionally, the possibility that this administration will bailout and lift sanctions on Lebanon is a play straight out of the Neville Chamberlain foreign policy playbook. Hezbollah alone is responsible for Lebanon’s economic ruin.”
As part of that 2018 legislation, Congress mandated a public report on the estimated net worth of Hezbollah’s senior leaders, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his closest associates. The report was also to include information of Hezbollah associates, including those working in Lebanon’s government, which continues to serve the Iranian-backed terror group.
Congressional sources say the Biden administration does not want to disclose the extent of Hezbollah’s financial empire as it considers going along with international plans to provide Lebanon with a cash bailout. The issue has received increased congressional scrutiny amid separate reports the Biden administration is prepared to waive economic sanctions on the Assad regime in Syria to facilitate an energy deal with Lebanon.
Congress decided “the unclassified portion of the report required … shall be made available to the public in precompressed, easily downloadable versions that are made available in all appropriate formats,” according to the legislation.
One senior congressional source who worked on drafting the original legislation told the Free Beacon that the report could help illustrate to the world and the Lebanese people how much money Hezbollah is stealing to fund its terrorism enterprise and stockpiling of weapons.
“Lebanon is collapsing because of Hezbollah’s corruption, that is why this report is so important,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak on record. “It is one of the few reports Congress ever designed on Hezbollah that we required to be publicly available on the internet for the world to see. The world deserves to see how much Hassan Nasrallah and his gang have stolen from their own people. Maybe instead of bailing out Hezbollah and lifting sanctions on the brutal Assad regime, the administration can concentrate more on stopping Hezbollah’s corruption. We shouldn’t reward Hezbollah and their buddy Assad for Hezbollah’s own corruption.”
Congressional Republicans also have been pushing a package of far-reaching new sanctions on Hezbollah that they say would cut off the group’s access to funding. The Hezbollah report’s findings would help lawmakers identify the funding channels that should be shut down.
Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Monday attacking the Biden administration for releasing “17,000 illegal immigrants” from Del Rio, Texas, into America as part of a twin debacle alongside failure in Afghanistan, arguing, “Our Country is being destroyed!”
“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are,” Trump began in his statement posted to Twitter by spokeswoman Liz Harrington.
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are. pic.twitter.com/BiqEkdthNa
Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a briefing on Friday that approximately 30,000 mostly Haitian migrants had been encountered in Del Rio since Sept. 9, with only about 2,000 deported to Haiti.
Many were given a notice to appear for an asylum hearing and were released after being removed from a camp under the Del Rio International Bridge that included about 15,000 people at its height.
Trump also criticized the Biden administration for releasing the Haitian migrants without COVID-19 testing or other health checks.
“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation,” he said in the statement.
“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation.
The former president argued that the Biden administration’s open border policies have resulted in America being “humiliated like never before.”
In addition to the border crisis, he also noted President Joe Biden’s “embarrassing” withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!” Trump said.
“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing “withdrawal” from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!”
The Biden administration withdrew all U.S. military personnel on Aug. 31, leaving hundreds of Americans behind under the rule of the Taliban.
In addition, the military departure included leaving behind vast amounts of military equipment, providing tremendous resources to arm the Islamic extremist group.
Further, 13 U.S. military personnel were killed during a suicide bombing in August outside the Kabul airport.Should Trump run for president in 2024?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
In response, the Biden administration authorized a drone strike, originally reported to have taken out an Islamic State group leader.
A later report revealed the drone strike accidentally hit an innocent target, killing 10 people, including seven children.
An unknown number of Americans and allies remain in Afghanistan nearly a month after the Biden administration’s military departure.
Despite a federal judge’s ruling that the Deferred Action in Childhood Arrivals program was outside the law, the Biden administration is moving forward with its plan to make it permanent.
According to a report Monday in The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Homeland Security will publish a proposed regulation that will allow the illegal immigrants protected by DACA — known as “Dreamers” — to continue to be part of the program.
The proposal is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.
DACA allows illegal immigrants who entered the country as children to remain, as long as they meet certain conditions. The program was started through an executive order of then-President Barack Obama.
In July, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the program could not accept new applications but could continue for those already enrolled until the case eventually makes its way through the court system, according to CNN.
The description of the rule says, “On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed a Presidential Memorandum, Preserving and Fortifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), requiring DHS, in consultation with the Attorney General, to take all appropriate action to preserve and fortify DACA, consistent with applicable law. Consistent with the Presidential Memorandum, DHS intends to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to preserve and fortify DACA.”
The regulation was crafted, in part, to address concerns of the judge who put the brakes on DACA that there was no sound administrative rationale for the program Obama created with the stroke of a pen in 2012.Do you think DACA should continue?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Legislative efforts to make DACA part of federal law have failed. Last week, an attempt by Senate Democrats to create a path to citizenship for DACA recipients through the $3.5 trillion spending bill they hope to pass was dashed when the Senate’s parliamentarian said the proposal could not be part of the massive package.
After the DACA regulation is published, there will be a 60-day comment period for the public to weigh in.
As noted in the document, mail comments are not being accepted.
“You may submit comments on the entirety of this proposed rulemaking package, identified by DHS Docket No. 2021-0006, through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the website instructions for submitting comments,” the document says.
As envisaged by the new rule, illegal immigrants covered by DACA would pay $495 for a two-year work permit and could come and go from the country as they pleased.
DACA recipients not interested in working could stay if they pay an $85 fee, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The DHS analysis of its DACA proposal says costs to local communities from the illegal immigrants it protects are “unlikely to be significant, and it may well have a positive net effect,” according to the report.
The rule says that “it is not generally the best use of those limited resources to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived since early childhood and whose languages they may not even speak.
“It recognizes that, as a general matter, DACA recipients, who came to this country many years ago as children, lacked the intent to violate the law, have not been convicted of any serious crimes, and remain valued members of our communities.
“It reflects the conclusion that, while they are in the United States, they should have access to a process that, operating on a case-by-case basis, may allow them to work to support themselves and their families, and to contribute to our economy in multiple ways.
“This proposed rule also accounts for the momentous decisions DACA recipients have made in ordering their lives in reliance on and as a result of this policy, and it seeks to continue the benefits that have accrued to DACA recipients, their families, their communities, and to the Department itself that have been made possible by the policy.”
The rule estimates that through this regulation, the DACA population will grow, reaching 956,863 by 2031.
For a guy with the support of billionaires, millionaires, China, Mainstream Media, and Social Media, his numbers are WAY worse than Trump ever [US Patriot]
President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a new record low at just 40 percent, according to a poll released on Monday by Rasmussen Reports.
The poll of likely U.S. voters also revealed 58 percent of likely voters disapprove of the president’s job performance.
Among those, 50 percent selected “Strongly Disapproved.”
In contrast, only 21 percent selected “Strongly Approve.”
The current approval rating places him below former President Donald Trump, who was at 43 percent approval at this point in his presidency, according to Rasmussen.
The daily poll has followed Biden’s approval rating since his first day in office.
He ranked as high as 55 percent approval on May 26. Since then, his approval has dropped by 15 percent.
According to a Rasmussen Reports Twitter post Monday, the majority of Americans oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill, his plan to raise the debt ceiling and his pandemic restrictions.
Coming Up Today:@JoeBiden daily presidential job approval % is – now at a new record low.
– Majority Oppose $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill – Majority Against Raising Debt Ceiling – Majority Now Believe Pandemic A Trojan Horse For Permanent Socialism pic.twitter.com/XB2r7zFGQF
The Democratic spending bill will be a central focus this week as Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeks a House vote on Thursday. The California Democrat has claimed to have the votes to pass the bill, but some House members remain uncertain.
Biden’s recently announced vaccine mandates for federal workers and companies with 100 employees or more has also led to widespread frustration with many Americans. Several states have opposed the measure through letters and across social media.
Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem have both vowed to sue the Biden administration over the issue.
Daily tracking results for the daily poll are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis, according to Rasmussen Reports.
The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
A poll from Fox News last week showed Biden’s approval rating with independent voters had experienced a strong drop. Since January, his approval rating plummeted 24 points.
WATCH: Joe Biden’s approval rating collapses 24 points among independent voters. pic.twitter.com/a8YxNMmyQJ
The Taliban could gain control of nuclear weapons as a result of their lightning conquest of Afghanistan and the Biden administration’s hurried abandonment of the county, according to former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
“The Taliban in control of Afghanistan threatens the possibility of terrorists taking control in Pakistan too. … If the whole country gets taken over by terrorists, that means maybe 150 nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists,” Bolton told host John Catsimatidis a WABC-AM interview on Thursday.
Bolton elaborated upon the threat in an Op-Ed in The Washington Post last month in which he said that Pakistan could become an extremist country in the aftermath of the fall of Afghanistan.
“For decades, Islamabad has recklessly pursued nuclear weapons and aided Islamist terrorism — threats that U.S. policymakers have consistently underestimated or mishandled. With Kabul’s fall, the time for neglect or equivocation is over,” he wrote.
The Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan elevates the risk that Pakistani extremists will increase influence, or threaten to seize control. Pakistan could have well over 100 nuclear weapons, which in the hands of an extremist regime is an unthinkable threat. https://t.co/kueRiCB6zH
“The Taliban’s takeover next door immediately poses the sharply higher risk that Pakistani extremists will increase their already sizable influence in Islamabad, threatening at some point to seize full control,” he wrote.
Bolton said the nuclear threat could be even worse than that from Iran.
“While Iran still aspires only to nuclear weapons, Pakistan already has dozens, perhaps more than 150, according to public sources,” the former national security advisor wrote.Has Joe Biden set back hopes for world peace?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“Such weapons in the hands of an extremist Pakistan would dramatically imperil India, raising tensions in the region to unprecedented levels, especially given China’s central role in Islamabad’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs,” he said. “Moreover, the prospect that Pakistan could slip individual warheads to terrorist groups to detonate anywhere in the world would make a new 9/11 incomparably more deadly.”
Bolton said the United States must ensure Pakistan does not become either an ally or a client of the Taliban.
“Acknowledging the enormous uncertainty, given Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, the United States must now come down hard on Islamabad if it continues supporting the Taliban and other terrorists,” he wrote.
America must also avert a potential disaster, Bolton said.
“Most important, we must devote maximum attention to Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles and weapons-production facilities. If a future terrorist regime in Islamabad (or even today’s government or like-minded successors) appears ready to transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, we should take preventive action,” he wrote.
Bolton, who was national security advisor to former President Donald Trump from April 2018 to September 2019, said during his Sunday interview that President Joe Biden embarrassed himself and the nation with his bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Allies are “wondering if he has a grip on his own administration’s foreign policy,” Bolton said in the Aug. 23 Op-Ed.
He said China is more of a threat than the Biden administration seems to understand.
“China, which already has a lot of influence in Pakistan, is going to increase its influence and put more pressure on India. This is a big development in that part of the world,” Bolton wrote.
“I think the United States must look at China and the threat it poses across the board. They’ve been stealing our intellectual property for decades … They discriminate against foreign companies and investors. They manipulate the World Trade Organization. They are building up their military… And they are very aggressive politically,” he said.
“The United States needs to come to grips with this threat … and needs to be prepared for a long struggle across the full spectrum of potential power — economic, political and military. …
At the end of his magisterial book “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,” Adrian Goldsworthy compares the fate of imperial Rome with contemporary America.
The dominance of a civilization, he notes, depends not only on resources and military prowess but also on “culture,” that hard-to-define yet palpable mixture of confidence, savoir-faire, and commitment to foundational principles beyond the calculus of individual profit or aggrandizement.
Beginning in the third century, Goldsworthy writes, Rome began to turn away from that cultural compact and decline wove itself into the sinews of Roman society.
“The rot,” Goldsworth observes, “began at the top, and in time a similar attitude pervaded the entire government and army high command.”
I predict that future historians, seeking to understand the decline of the United States, will settle on the annus horribilis of 2021 as the terminus a quo.
Immersed in the moment, it is often hard to disentangle the main story from the cacophony and chatter of mere events.
But can anyone who is not Jen Psaki contemplate America’s leadership and not discern the rot at the top?
Goldsworthy mentions the army high command. Take a look at the American high command, beginning with SecDef Lloyd “stand down” Austin and Mark “White Rage” Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to assess them both, their surrender to identity politics and to the corrosive sentimentality of political correctness.
General Milley’s treacherous effort to circumvent the chain of command and pretend that America’s military answered first of all to him, not the President, has attracted some measure of the obloquy it deserves, but he continues on in his position instead of being courtmartialed.
I doubt that he will be able to remain for long in the army—public sentiment against him is strong and growing—but I also doubt that he will be disciplined.
The rot that he himself embodies is too widespread to require it.
Indeed, “rot at the top” describes our situation to a T.
At the pinnacle we have an erratic practitioner of glossolalia whom everyone, friend and foe alike, understands is well on the road to senility.
Then cast your eye down the line of succession: Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellin, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
A depressing cavalcade, isn’t it?
But the rot is not confined to political figures.
What Robert Frost called “the slow smokeless burning of decay” has installed itself in the heart of many of our most cherished institutions.
I already mentioned the military. What about our intelligence and crime fighting institutions?
It must be dismantled, and not just the leadership “but the whole organization and everyone in it.”
With every passing week, its role in concocting and disseminating the whole “Russia Collusion” narrative against Donald Trump becomes more obvious and more disgusting.
And note well that its activities on that front are not done and over with.
Christopher Wray, the Director of the Bureau, is assiduously pursuing the successor to the Russia Collusion Narrative: the Jan. 6 insurrection hoax, according to which American citizens exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech are branded as “domestic extremists” and hunted down.
The closer you look at that institution, the worse it looks.
Even the mild mannered Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, argues that the Bureau “should be scrapped and something new built to replace it.”
And what about other institutions, higher education, for example? It speaks volumes, I think, that Harvard’s new chaplain, Greg Epstein, is a self-professed atheist.
Reflecting on the experience of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy notes that when “governments or agencies forget what they are really for, then decline will occur.”
Moreover, he writes, “bureaucracies are stubborn” and “tend to expand on their own and develop their own agendas.”
The rot that was likely yesterday becomes inexorable tomorrow.
Can the trend be reversed? Maybe. But Goldsworthy is right. “If the trend is to be reversed, then this process needs to start at the very top.”
What do you suppose the prospects of that are?
Perhaps it is an illustration of Franz Kafka’s mordant observation that “there is hope, but not for us.”
Afghanistan’s justice system is returning to a pre-U.S. form of barbarism as suspected criminals are subject to being strung up in public spaces under the rule of the Taliban.
The Associated Press, citing a witness within the country, reported that in the major city of Herat in western Afghanistan, an alleged kidnapper was killed by gunfire and then hanged from a crane on Saturday.
A man who operates a pharmacy in the city told the AP that the Taliban was responsible for securing a man’s body to the crane and then displaying it in the city’s main square.
Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi said that four men were killed during an attempted kidnapping. He added that one of the men was hanged in the Herat main square.
The other bodies were dragged away to be displayed in other areas of the city, he said.
Such displays were once common under the Taliban’s previous rule over the country. But the 2001 U.S. ground invasion of Afghanistan put hard-line Islamists on the ropes.
Throughout the last two decades, many Afghans have enjoyed a relatively westernized system of justice. But Herat was taken by the Taliban in mid-August, as were many other areas.
With Sharia law in place across the country, or set to be enacted, public and brutal displays are resuming.
A high-ranking Taliban official and the enforcer of its view on justice told the AP on Friday that people accused of crimes will not be subject to a system of due process common in westernized countries.
Public executions, torture and amputations for shoplifters are going to be used, said Mullah Nooruddin Turabi.
Turabi carried out enforcement of the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Sharia law in the 1990s. He brushed off criticism about his use of public spaces to punish accused criminals in the past.
In the 1990s, he and others in power sometimes used a Kabul stadium for executions and amputations, the AP noted.
“Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” Turabi said during an interview with the AP. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.”
The man tasked with enforcing Sharia for the Taliban wants to take the country’s legal system back to where it was before 2001.
“Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security,” he said during his Friday interview. He and other Taliban leaders are currently working to adopt a policy with regard to handling public punishments.
Speaking on amputations in particular, Turabi touted them for their ability to deter crime.
The goal, per Turabi, is to bring back a system of strict punishment while keeping in place some social reforms accomplished during U.S. occupation of the country, such as having female judges.
The FBI has been called in to investigate an alleged assault of a female soldier by a group of Afghan refugees being held at Fort Bliss, Texas.
“We can confirm a female service member supporting Operation Allies Welcome reported being assaulted on Sept. 19 by a small group of male evacuees at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico,” said Lt. Col. Allie Payne, director of public affairs for Fort Bliss and the 1st Armored Division.
The service member was given medical care and counseling, Payne said, according to KVIA-TV.
“We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Payne added.
Jeanette Harper of the FBI’s El Paso division said “we received the referral from Fort Bliss and our office is investigating the allegation.”
“Task Force-Bliss is also implementing additional security measures to include increased health and safety patrols, additional lighting, and enforcement of the buddy system at the Dona Ana Complex,” a statement from the fort said, according to Fox News.
“We will cooperate fully with the FBI and will continue to ensure the service member reporting this assault is fully supported.”
Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico called the incident a “tragic failure.”
“My prayers are with the courageous soldier and her family. This is yet another tragic failure in the vetting process for Afghan nationals,” Herrell tweeted on Friday. “The American people deserve answers.”
My prayers are with the courageous soldier and her family. This is yet another tragic failure in the vetting process for Afghan nationals. The American people deserve answers.https://t.co/UB8ehTjCwO
Sen. James Lankford and four other Republican senators have demanded details from the Biden administration on how Afghan refugees are being vetted, according to Fox News.
“The Biden Administration has yet to provide my staff, members of Congress, or the public with basic answers about its vetting procedures for Afghan parolees or demographic information about the Afghan parolee population,” a letter from the senators said.
“How many Afghan nationals are waiting on background checks at a transit site? How many Afghan nationals have been paroled into the United States?”
“What specific categories, classes, or criteria constitute the Administration’s definition of ‘vulnerable Afghans’? How many individuals who have been paroled into the United States fall under each category, class, or criteria?” the letter said.
Lankford has said he has grave concerns.
“We already have reports of some of the locations where some Afghan parolees are being held that there’s been some sexual assaults that have happened in those locations, and we’re trying to get more information about that and to find out what happened to those individuals and where things go,” he said.
The Justice Department recently announced two unrelated indictments of Afghan refugees housed at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.
Bahrullah Noori, 20, faces charges of attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against the victim, including three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor and one alleging the use of force.
Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, faces charges of assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her.
There are days when one wonders why the Republican Party thinks they deserve the support of conservatives.
The Reagan revolution turned 40 this year. What do we have to show for it? Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned, although there’s a glimmer of hope on that front. There’s no hope on spending; Republican presidents and Congresses might slow the deluge a bit, but they’ve never managed to successfully turn off the debt spigot and have proved especially useless during the last three presidencies.
Our debt now stands at almost $29 trillion — but now the GOP is really putting their foot down on the debt ceiling. Seriously, guys, they mean it this time. It’s not like all of the other times where the Republican establishment has performatively held up passing a debt ceiling increase, only to capitulate shortly thereafter.
And, yes, anti-establishment conservatives have made inroads since 2016 and Donald Trump’s election. The establishment still remains standing, though, and it’s so thoroughly rotten that 134 GOP representatives voted to approve a defense spending bill that all but ensures women will be subject to the draft.
In fact, more Republicans voted for it than against it. The $778 billion National Defense Authorization Act for 2022 passed by a 316-113 vote on Thursday night, according to The Hill. Only 75 Republicans voted against it.
In fact, the only thing stopping the NDAA from passing smoothly was the House Freedom Caucus. The Washington Examiner noted that GOP Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was the most vocal opponent of the bill, making a motion to adjourn the House during the debate in protest of Democratic leadership not allowing a vote on a proposed amendment to remove the draft provision. The motion forced the entire House to vote and delayed business in the lower chamber.
“I will always vote against any bill that permits the government to draft my daughter and I will not support any Republican who votes in favor of its final passage, regardless of excuse,” Roy said.
While we haven’t had a draft since the Vietnam War days, 18-year-old men still have to register with the Selective Service System. The NDAA removes the language specifying “male citizen” or “male person” when it comes to who needs to register, replacing it with “citizen” and “person,” respectively.
(2/9)
First, this bill forces young women to register for the draft, which Rep. Roy has been against from the start.
That wasn’t the only woke provision of the NDAA, however. Roy’s office cataloged some of the other unpleasant changes wrought by the Democrats, including red-flag laws for summarily seizing the firearms of service members and a proposed Office of Countering Extremism which sounds every bit as Orwellian as the name implies.
(4/9)
It also creates an “Office of Countering Extremism” which could expel troops who engage in so-called “extremist activities” or belong to an “extremist organization”
Given the rampant wokeism we’ve seen in Biden’s Pentagon, you know EXACTLY how this will be used. pic.twitter.com/8p84rkhE0k
There’s also language that stipulates “any new non-tactical Federal vehicle purchased by the Department of Defense for use outside of combat should, to the greatest extent practicable, be an electric or zero-emission vehicle.”
“Not later than September 30, 2022, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress a plan to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the Department of Defense, including Department of Defense functions that are performed by contractors, in line with science-based emissions targets,” the NDAA reads.
It also contains a “plant-based protein pilot program” which stipulates that the term indicates “edible products made to approximate the taste and texture of livestock-based protein, or vegan or vegetarian meat alternative product made using plant and other non-livestock-based proteins that are consistent with the nutritional properties of meat products.”
(6/9)
And if electric military vehicles aren’t your thing, maybe we can interest you in some fake meat?
The NDAA directs the Navy to spend time on a pilot program to offer plant-based protein options at forward operating bases. pic.twitter.com/b3MO445bJS
A woke military that drafts our daughters, wastes resources on Green New Deal garbage, holds no one accountable for Afghanistan disaster, and prioritizes playing leftist politics over destroying our enemies.
If you want to find out if your representative voted for the NDAA, you can the roll call here. Keep in mind that it’s not just the list of the usual GOP disappointments who voted yea on this one. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California voted for it, as did House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Elise Stefanik of New York — usually names one would hope to see on the opposite side of the ledger.
Banks defended his position to the Washington Examiner by saying he didn’t want his daughters drafted either, but, you know, we’re going to keep on debating whether or not that happens.
“The NDAA is never perfect, and this is the case where the good far outweighs the bad,” Banks said. “I have daughters, I don’t want them drafted into the military. I want our military to be a volunteer force. But I think those debates are going to continue to occur even after the NDAA goes into effect.”
Not really, Rep. Banks. You just voted for an NDAA that ends that debate entirely. And, if your GOP brethren in the upper chamber have the same attitude, they’ll pass it, too.
GOP Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, meanwhile, said just because a woman is drafted doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be on the front lines.
“There are still physical requirements for certain jobs that you have to be able to perform and fulfill,” said Wenstrup, a former Army surgeon, to the Examiner. “It doesn’t mean that, you know, if there is a draft, a woman necessarily has to go be in the infantry.”
A draft implies a lack of choice in the matter, however — and whether or not a woman wants to serve in the military or whether they want to serve on the front lines has always been a choice.
For that matter, it’s been a voluntary matter for men since the Vietnam War, as well. However, the Selective Service requirements have always reflected a bedrock cultural value: that, if military conscription is required due to the exigencies of warfare, it’s a uniquely male responsibility to answer the call.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to throw that shared value out the window.
It’s no surprise Democrats voted that way; the left currently seeks to eliminate any difference between male and female, no matter how glaringly biological or natural that difference may be. Protecting the right of women to stay out of the draft is less important than protecting the right to soy meat, as far as the Democrats are concerned. That 134 Republicans joined them in their delusions is a disgrace, however.
Congress is better in Republican hands than in Democrats, but there are days you wonder how much better.
Has the GOP earned your vote through their actions? Ask your daughter when she fills out her Selective Service card.
Fox News on Wednesday ran a scroll listing the many controversies plaguing the Biden administration during its eighth month, and the moment really put things into context.
We’re n deep trouble.
Not that we didn’t already know our country has descended into complete chaos. That much has been obvious for some time. It’s everywhere you go, actually.
Grocery stores, gas stations, airports and the passable portions of the country’s southern border are all reminders of how terrible President Joe Biden has been for America.
Walk by a TV, though, and the larger picture comes into focus.
That was especially true on Fox News when “America Reports” anchors Shannon Bream and John Roberts rolled out a list of the ongoing crises, tragedies and other disasters plaguing the country and its inept leadership.
“It’s been eight whole months, but it looks like the honeymoon is over,” Bream said while Fox viewers were reminded of the many failings of the Biden administration.
A graphic displaying “current controversies” scrolled upward as the pair commented on the 18 different issues the network had keyed in on. Bream declared that not even the “mainstream media can ignore” all the trouble.
Those troubles include reports that thousands of Haitian migrants who have been camped out along the border in Texas are being released into the country. That occurred after the White House assured that no such thing would happen.
Roberts then noted that Biden was “getting called out for not calling out China by name at the United Nations” when he addressed the global body this past week and managed to make no mention of the world’s largest human rights abuser.
Fox’s scrolling Biden crisis graphic reminded viewers that while they face being treated as second-class citizens if they’re not vaccinated against the coronavirus, no such mandates exist for people who are literally breaking the law by being in the country.
It also pointed out Biden’s mixed messaging about COVID-19 booster shots, which are now not being recommended for the general population by the Food and Drug Administration. Biden sure stopped talking about that subject quickly.
The adults are back in charge, right?
The current administration has managed to anger France, the country’s oldest ally, while also moving to leave the Israeli people vulnerable to attacks from Hamas terrorists.
In case anyone had forgotten that the U.S. military surrendered full control of Afghanistan to the Taliban last month, Fox’s crisis meter reminded them.
That’s all going on, and we can expect, any day now, a capitulation to Iran over nuclear weapons. It feels like a matter of time before pallets of cash start landing in Tehran.
There was also present on Fox’s list the fact that not one single person in the White House or the president’s Cabinet has claimed responsibility for a drone strike in Kabul that killed seven children. There has also been no accountability over the fact that the Pentagon left American citizens behind in Afghanistan as troops were ordered out.
Labor shortages, rising prices on basic commodities and high gas prices are all still with us as domestic issues to remind everyone just how bad the Democratic Party’s ideas are.
The opening segment from Bream and Roberts on Wednesday served as a sobering reminder of just how much trouble this country is in. Simultaneously, it somehow also failed to capture the magnitude of the situation.
The good news: There are just under three and a half years left of this madness — if we’re lucky.
