+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We have a president who broke his pledge of office to defend and protect our nation by allowing our southern border to be invaded. This same president acted in an impeachable manner through dereliction of duty regarding his evacuation choice/management in Afghanistan and finally he acknowledged he probably broke the law with his contempt of The Constitution regarding rental.
Radical Democrats impeached Trump on specious charges about Russian collusion and a Ukraine telephone call which was within his legal right to make as president.
Yet:
And:
Biden is merely the boil that has now burst on a diseased body politic
By Melanie Phillips
The sickening if utterly predictable atrocities at Kabul airport have brought yet more calls for US President Joe Biden to be removed from office in disgrace.
There’s no doubt that he owns this lethal catastrophe. Yes, it’s true that the misbegotten policy of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan was laid down by President Donald Trump last year.
But it was Biden who not only failed to repudiate that policy (as Justin Webb points out in The Times, Biden signed up to isolationism back in the seventies as a result of Vietnam) but actually accelerated the date of withdrawal — grotesquely, just for the PR stunt of being able cynically and misleadingly to announce “mission accomplished” in Afghanistan on the iconic date of 9/11 this year.
It was the Biden administration that then compounded this disastrous error by failing to grasp what was plain to anyone with eyes to see — let alone with the whole apparatus of US intelligence to inform him — that the Afghan army was collapsing as a result of the imminent US withdrawal and that the Taliban were rapidly taking over the country.
It was the Biden administration that brought about the astonishing situation in which the world-beating might of the US armed forces was unable even to secure a civilian airport.
It was the Biden administration that created the panic driving thousands of desperate Afghans to the gates of that airport, and who were then trapped between the murderous Taliban and the overwhelmed American and British soldiers who were unable to process such a huge number within the Biden-imposed deadline.
It was the Biden administration that turned those Afghans, along with the US soldiers themselves, into sitting ducks for the human bombs of the jihad.
Now Politico has reported that the Biden administration actually gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to to be allowed entry into the Taliban-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport (dwarfing the story in today’s Times that, in the panic to flee the British embassy in Kabul, Foreign Office staff left scattered on the ground at the British embassy compound documents with the contact details of Afghans working for them as well as of locals applying for jobs).
The Biden administration’s decision to provide specific names to the Taliban has horrified American law-makers and military officials, as well it might. Politico reports:
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean”.
Yet Biden takes no responsibility for any of this. Instead, he has repeatedly doubled down on the rightness of his decision. The carnage he has facilitated apparently has nothing to do with him. And of course he blames it all on Trump.
Now, obscenely, he is voicing outrage over atrocities that he himself made inevitable, and is trying to project a power that he himself has squandered. The New York Times reports:
“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: we will not forgive,” the president said. “We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay”.
How, when he is removing all American forces from the country in four days’ time and is also destroying US intelligence capacity there?
Some people have suggested that this level of self-delusion confirms the long-standing suspicion that Biden is in the grip of physical cognitive decline. And perhaps he is.
But the suggestion misses a key point. For self-delusion is the signature characteristic of the Democratic party and the western left.
Their certainty that a Palestinian state would end the century-old Arab war against the Jews in the land of Israel is delusional.
Their belief that, if the west offers Iran a path to western acceptance, it will abandon its genocidal nuclear weapons programme and transform itself from a terrorist state into a model global citizen is delusional.
Their obsession that Trump was responsible for all the ills of the world, leading to their protracted attempt to lever him out of office by subverting the constitution and the rule of law on the basis of nothing other than a politically motivated fiction, was as delusional as it was corrupt.
At home, they support the delusional agendas of identity politics, from denying biological sex differences to claiming that the demonisation of all white people is “anti-racism” — and then further demonising as “terfs,” “racists” or “Islamophobes” all who call any of this out for the madness that it is.
The seamless robe of this lunacy, stretching from American campuses to Kabul, is glimpsed in this nugget by Zuhdi Jasser and Karys Rhea in the Washington Times:
Mr. Biden also hid from us that part of the two trillion spent in Afghanistan included educating Afghanis in gender identity politics — woke programming that the locals inevitably resisted, creating tension with their American overseers.
In their own way, these left-wing ideologues now in control of the Democratic Party are as fanatical and delusional as those in the grip of communism or Islamism. They are utterly convinced of their own virtue, utterly certain that all who oppose them are evil — and utterly ruthless in stamping out all who dissent. In the grip of such fanatical self-delusion, they will never, ever take responsibility for the appalling harm they do and never ever admit they are wrong.
Of course, the people responsible for the atrocities at Kabul airport are Islamic State. The people responsible for the atrocities already being reported against Afghan women, and the hunting down and murder of Afghans who helped coalition troops, are the Taliban. Nevertheless, those who paved the way for these fanatics to do these terrible things must also bear a measure of responsibility for what has already happened and what is now set to happen still further.
In the first instance, the Biden administration bears that responsibility. But behind that administration are those who helped inflict it upon America and the world.
All those who voted for Biden as US president bear responsibility for bringing this calamitous individual to high office.
All those in the media who minimised, denied, ignored or failed to ask the necessary questions about Biden’s history of gross political error, the allegations against him of corruption and the apparent evidence of his cognitive decline also bear that responsibility.
All those precious, preening, posturing personalities who cheered Biden on while demonising all who stood against the Democrats or their left-wing agenda bear responsibility for swelling the fetid cultural sea in which this administration swims.
The point of saying all this is not to point fingers gratuitously and inappropriately in the wake of a tragic and still-unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan. The Taliban and Islamic State are responsible for the savagery there. The Chinese Communist Party, Russia’s President Putin, the Islamic regime of Iran and their Sunni jihadi counterparts, not to mention Pakistan and North Korea, are the enemies of the west and the free world.
But along with swathes of the western left, the Democratic Party is currently a fifth column in the defence of America and the west against these enemies. The point of calling this out is to warn about the supreme danger of ever putting the left into power.
The Democrats have shown themselves to be institutionally unsuitable for high office. They currently constitute a menace to the cultural integrity and continued strength of the United States, are placing individual American lives at terrible risk and are presenting a mortal threat to the security of the free world. And if Biden were to be removed, he would merely be replaced by the Vice-President, Kamala Harris, who is an even worse proposition; and after her in the constitutional pecking order comes the ineffable Nancy Pelosi. Say no more.
Unlike other societies, the people who live in democracies have a choice about who rules them. What’s happened in Afghanistan should be a graphic warning to the west to snap out of its complacency about the left. Their track record, both in and out of office, shows that they are generally as delusional as they are incompetent.
And they will never change. The notion that the Democratic Party has been hijacked by a few extremists is itself delusional. Just look at what the universities and schools are teaching the young — to hate their country and western values, to internalise the Marxist trope that all relationships are defined by power, and to believe that lies are truth and truth is lies.
These ignorant, spoiled, viciously indoctrinated young people are the future of the Democratic party. And this educational subversion has been going on for decades — with the mainstream media its most conspicuous and degraded advertisement.
Where have all those “centrist” Democrats been all this time? Either being sucked into the madness by telling themselves that their political tribe is virtue incarnate and so everything it does is right and good; or else covering their eyes and ears and pretending that this cultural meltdown, and their side’s role in it, isn’t happening. And exactly the same thing has happened to Britain’s Labour party and wider “progressive” circles.
Biden is merely the boil that has now burst on a diseased body politic. As soon as they are able to do so, decent Americans should use their votes to remove the Democrats from office and, unless the party repudiates what it has become, prevent it from gaining power in America ever again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Israel's meting with Biden could not come at a better or worse time depending on how you see the current circumstances. Israel must know Biden's word is worthless so any commitment is not worth spittle.
I submit, Biden is being manipulated by Obama's Trojan Horses because he wants his agreement with Iran enforced. Obama wants Israel to be under the existential threat from Iran because he wants the Middle East ruled by Arabs, Muslims, Radical Islamists. Otherwise why would he press for Iran to become a nuclear power and ignore the fact they are the premier dispenser of terrorism?
Israel in Afghanistan’s Shadow
The new PM lobbies Washington on Iran amid chaos in Kabul.
By The Editorial Board
President Biden’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was postponed Thursday for a day after the attack on American forces in Kabul. The botched exit from Afghanistan looms large for American strategy from Europe to the Far East, but perhaps especially in the Mideast as the U.S. tries to manage diplomacy with its ally Israel and a revisionist Iran.
Mr. Bennett’s Washington visit comes as U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran are at a crossroads. The Prime Minister said before his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the two would address “primarily how do we fend off and curtail Iran’s pursuit to dominate the region and its race to a nuclear weapon.”
The Biden Administration came into office signaling its eagerness to re-enter Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which gave Tehran access to capital in exchange for weak promises not to pursue a nuclear weapon. Yet the Islamic Republic, which has since accelerated its uranium enrichment and construction of advanced centrifuges, is driving a harder bargain than the Administration anticipated.
The chief U.S. negotiator, Robert Malley, conceded to Radio Free Europe this week that, after months of negotiations, “we don’t know if Iran’s intent remains to come back into compliance with the JCPOA.” Yet he appears eager to continue to make concessions to the regime to revive the agreement, saying the U.S. is open to “difficult compromises.”
The Iran deal is opposed across Israel’s political spectrum because it empowers a regime sworn to destroy the Jewish state. Yet U.S. Democrats especially resent former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because of his aggressive public campaign to undermine the agreement during the Obama years.
One bet of the Israeli coalition that brought Mr. Bennett to power in June was that it could forge better relations with the Biden Administration than Mr. Netanyahu could. Israelis hope warm feelings created by the new government might sway the Biden Administration to adopt a tougher Iran policy.
For its part, the Biden Administration would prefer that Mr. Netanyahu, now Israel’s opposition leader, not return to power. That gives it an incentive to work with Mr. Bennett on Iran so he can demonstrate his national-security bona fides to voters at home.
The big wild card now is how the Afghanistan debacle affects the strategic calculus in Jerusalem and Washington. Watching America’s supplicating negotiations with the Taliban can’t increase Israeli confidence in the Biden Administration’s tough-mindedness when it comes to the Iranian mullahs.
If the Biden Administration is savvy, it will see the Afghan humiliation as an indication that it needs to fortify relations with allies and project greater strength against adversaries. Yielding to Iran’s regional designs on the heels of the fall of Kabul might be politically unpalatable even for a growing number of Democrats.
Yet the Administration may be as bull-headed in its Iran strategy as it was on its catastrophic Afghanistan approach. That would further increase the risks of war. With jihadists now on the march in Central Asia, limiting Iran’s malign activities is all the more important to America’s Mideast interests.
And
Biden and Bennett are Permanently Wobbly
By Caroline Glick
Two weeks after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing an embargo and maritime blockade on Iraqi shipping. Then-President George H.W. Bush was trying to figure out how to forcefully enforce it, and he discussed the issue with then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher listened to Bush’s dilemma and warned, “Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly.”
Months later, after the U.S.-led coalition victory in the Gulf War, Bush presented Thatcher with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House. At the ceremony, he recalled the conversation and how influential it was on his thinking that day—and throughout the broader crisis.
As he put it, “We used that expression often and have used it during some troubling days.”
In theory, tomorrow’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Joe Biden in the Oval Office could be an opportunity for Bennett to fill Thatcher’s shoes, and for Biden to fill Bush’s.
Bennett will arrive at the White House in the midst of the gravest crisis of U.S. strategic credibility in American history. Biden’s failed leadership of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan has placed the U.S. and its allies under grave threat and empowered U.S. enemies. NATO allies in Germany, Britain and beyond have lost faith in U.S. leadership. China is wasting no time replacing the U.S. as the great power in Afghanistan.
Iran is also reaping the rewards of its partnership with the Taliban. Russia and China’s first response to the Taliban takeover was to accept Iran’s long-standing request to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It was followed by an announcement that they will be conducting joint naval exercises with Iran in the coming months.
The Russians and Chinese are embracing Iran as the ayatollahs move quickly to the nuclear finish line. According to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Iran has doubled the amount of uranium it is enriching to near bomb-grade level.
Bennett could theoretically be the voice of reason that Biden needs to hear. The U.S. leader continues to dismiss criticism of his surrender to the Taliban and his abandonment of U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan. Bennett could warn Biden of the consequences for the U.S. and its allies if he fails to take dramatic action immediately to safely evacuate Americans and allied Afghans from Afghanistan. He could also explain that the problems of Afghanistan were born in nuclear-armed Pakistan. U.S. reluctance to properly reckon with the nuclear-armed terror-sponsoring state was a key factor in its failure to destroy either the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
Since Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is what protected the Taliban and its terror partners, Iran must be blocked at all costs from becoming a nuclear state. As Iran’s near-breakout nuclear capacity demonstrates, nuclear diplomacy at this point is simply counterproductive. As a senior Arab official recently said in off-record discussions, “the nuclear negotiations are Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal.”
As the leader of Washington’s closest Middle East ally, Bennett could theoretically be the right man in the right place at the right time. Bennett could convince Biden that if the president wishes to begin repairing the damage to U.S. superpower credibility he just caused in Afghanistan, then he needs to work with Israel to militarily block Iran’s path to the bomb.
Unfortunately, neither Biden’s nor Bennett’s record give much reason to believe that either is cut from the same cloth as Bush and Thatcher. To the contrary, they both appear to have adopted wobbling as a career choice.
On Afghanistan, Biden is adamantly wobbly. His statements since the Taliban took over Kabul have been an exercise in indignant indifference to the plight of the tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans who worked with the Americans who are now stranded—and quite possibly doomed—behind Taliban lines. His apparent indifference to their fate is exposed not only by his words. Unlike his British, French and Ukrainian counterparts, Biden has refused to permit U.S. forces at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to leave the airport to find and safely evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan partners.
Likewise, Biden’s responsibility for the Afghan catastrophe has made no dent in his overall appeasement-based foreign policy. His envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told Politico last week that if the new Iranian government refuses to reinstate the restrictions the 2015 nuclear deal placed on its nuclear activities, the U.S. is willing to negotiate a completely different agreement with distinct parameters. Malley added that a second alternative would be to impose punitive responses in coordination with European allies, but he gave no details of what those might be.
Biden’s refusal to acknowledge the damage he has caused or to reconsider his foreign policy in light of the Afghanistan disaster stems from his own blinkered perception of the world. Biden’s team announced in April that he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan by September 11 and that conditions on the ground would not impact his decision. Biden would have the boys and girls home by the 20th anniversary of the jihadist terror assault on America, no matter what.
The message was clear. Biden intended to declare the war over and not give the Taliban a vote on the matter. The fact that Biden doesn’t get to decide whether the Taliban have a vote appears not to have occurred to him. And even now, as the Taliban is executing its vote—much as it did when it enabled al-Qaeda to attack Washington and New York 20 years ago—Biden refuses to acknowledge that it is voting and saying the war is still on.
Indeed, Biden, who sees America as the lone actor in the world, cannot understand that his actions have consequences. As he is condemned by the British Parliament and German Chancellor Angela Merkel implores Russia for help in evacuating German nationals and Afghan partners from Afghanistan, Biden and his advisors insist that U.S. credibility has not been adversely impacted in any way.
This brings us to Bennett. If Biden is the anti-Bush, Bennett is the anti-Thatcher. He doesn’t think an American president can go wobbly.
Ahead of his trip to Washington, Bennett’s office detailed his plan to work with Biden to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state. Bennett’s advisors noted that he opposes returning to the 2015 nuclear deal and added that he is convinced the good rapport he has developed with Biden will pave the way for cooperation on the matter.
Although Afghanistan will no doubt be on the top of Biden’s mind, a Bennett advisor told reporters, “The Americans still are saying this meeting is of top importance, which reflects the good rapport and the American commitment to Israel.”
Bennett’s good rapport with Biden is based on his own embrace of wobbling.
In the weeks preceding his trip, Bennett and his government opted not to respond forcefully when Hezbollah attacked Israel with missiles from the north. His government opted not to respond forcefully when Hamas attacked Israel with missiles and incendiary balloons from the south, or even when a Hamas mob violently stormed the border and a Hamas gunman shot an Israeli soldier at point-blank range and left him fighting for his life. As one of Bennett’s ministers explained in a radio interview, “Bennett can’t arrive in the U.S. …with a war in the south [with Hamas].”
Polling in both countries over the past week shows that neither leader will have the support of their publics when they meet at the Oval Office. Bennett is trailing his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu by 20 points in recent polling. Bennett’s party, which has a mere 5 percent of the seats in Israel’s parliament, is still polling at 5 percent. Such low numbers at this stage indicate that Bennett may not even make it into the Knesset in the next round of elections.
To survive politically, Bennett is completely dependent on all of his government coalition partners. Seventy-five percent of his government is comprised of parties on the center-left and far-left. Islamists aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood comprise 5 percent of his government. All of them have veto power over his policies because all of them can bring him down as prime minister. None of them are interested in confronting either Iran or Biden.
As for Biden, in his weakened political state, he will not abandon his base. And his base is full-on wobbly, particularly with respect to Iran. The administration forced Bennett to stand down in the face of Hezbollah’s missile assaults because it didn’t want to anger Iran. Under the circumstances, then, the chance that Bennett will steel Biden to confront Iran is nil.
Thatcher’s “don’t go wobbly” warning to Bush placed her next to Winston Churchill in the pantheon of foreign leaders beloved by Americans for their roles in bringing out the best in America. Tragically, at this dark moment, it is hard to think of a pair less capable of rising to the occasion than Biden and Bennett.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment