Tea at Trianon: The Lesson of Afghanistan

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 21, 2021

The Lesson of Afghanistan

From John Zmirak at The Stream:

We saw how utterly the invasion of Iraq failed. On the pretext of terror weapons that never existed, we shattered that fragile country. We dissolved its army and liquidated its whole structure of government. That unleashed ancient hatreds of Sunni for Shi’ite, Shi’ite for Sunni — and both brands of Muslims for Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and other helpless minorities.

Let’s be blunt: We enabled genocide, which our soldiers were ordered not to interfere with. Three-fourths of Iraqi Christians whose ancestors welcomed the apostles were “ethnically cleansed,” either killed or made refugees. They became the scapegoats for every foolish, careless, cynical decision American neocons imposed on a faraway country. Too much like Jesus, they bore our sins.

The neocons’ promised Utopia turned out such an earthly Hell that Barack Obama was able to sweep into power, and quickly abandon the place to ISIS. That group of particularly sociopathic sharia advocates upped the genocide ante. It even created computerized databases of non-Muslim sex slaves. To this day, Iraq has not recovered from the chaos. But hey, at least Iraq is a tacit ally of our enemy, Iran.

Nor have American Christians recovered from all the corrupt decisions of the Supreme Court Obama could pack with leftist activists. Jack Philips, Baronelle Stutzman, and millions of unborn children since aborted can thank the reckless fantasies of our party’s John McCains.

Nor has Afghanistan been transformed into a peaceful, tolerant suburb. It turns out that the Taliban better represents the aspirations and faith of Afghan citizens than the unspeakably corrupt, papier-mâché regime our brave servicemen and women fought to prop up. As ugly and bloody as the process will prove — and we’ll read countless horror stories in coming weeks — no other outcome was ever possible. And the GOP leaders who sent our soldiers there, and recruited those hapless translators and other US collaborators, knew it. Or should have known.

The only way to transform a Muslim culture is to convert it to Jesus Christ. Period. And that is not a task for the United States military.

Donald Trump took over the GOP on the strength of popular revulsion at our party’s elites and their cynical lies. In office, he tried to rescue Americans from the inexorable collapse of our futile efforts in Afghanistan. Insubordinate officers still married to neoconservative fantasies frustrated him, so now Joe Biden gets credit for plucking our last few fighting men from the sinking ship. For taking Trump’s plan and finishing it.

Any Republican who today tries to blame America for pulling its last soldiers off that vast national Titanic now sinking back into the Muslim sea is making you a promise: Put him in office, and we’ll invade more Muslim countries, then try to bomb them until they magically turn into New Hampshire. Elect him, and he’ll welcome millions more Muslim immigrants, on the fantasy that eating at McDonald’s and surfing Tindr will transform them into religiously tolerant patriots.

Pay close attention in coming days. Take notes. We need to know which Republicans intend to draft our sons and daughters and ship them off to die for nothing. Or worse, for the crass caricature of American patriotism that powerful legacy neocons (Liz Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Nikki Haley, Lindsay Graham, Mitt Romney) are still trying to foist on Americans. (Read more.)

From The Federalist:

The Biden administration also reversed several extremely effective policies Trump adopted to address the border crisis, including Trump’s decision to use Title 42 authority to expel aliens to Mexico or their country of origin, given the public health crisis presented by COVID-19. Biden also ditched the former president’s “remain in Mexico” policy that prevented illegal aliens from absconding within the United States while awaiting immigration hearings. These reversals quickly led to the now record-setting crisis on the Southern border.

If Biden believed it in America’s best interest to remain in Afghanistan for the long-term, for another year, or even for another month, as commander-in-chief he could have made that call. (Read more.)

From Fox News:

Trump said the scenes from the weekend where desperate Afghans clung to the side of an Air Force cargo plane's fuselage and later fell to their deaths when the aircraft reached altitude makes the U.S. Embassy airlift evacuation in Saigon in 1975 look small.

"I looked at that big monster cargo plane yesterday with people grabbing the side and trying to get flown out of Afghanistan because of their incredible fear – and they're blowing off of the plane from 2,000 feet up in the air, nobody has ever seen anything like that," he said. "That blows the helicopters in Vietnam away. That is not even a contest. It has been the most humiliating period of time that I've ever seen."

Trump said that he warned presumed Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in discussions last year that the United States will strike back tenfold if an American was harmed or the militants encroached on unapproved areas.

That deal, he said, appears to be mooted as the Taliban raged through the country and took Kabul within a matter of days; while Americans and Westerners are trapped within. (Read more.)

From The National Pulse:

Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” – which was designed to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support concerning Americans overseas was paused by Antony Blinken’s State Department earlier this year. Notification was officially signed just months before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.

“SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED,” an official State Department document from the Biden State Department begins, before outlining the following move the quash the Trump-era funding for the new bureau. The document is from the desk of Deputy Secretary of State Brian P. McKeon, confirmed in March by the United States Senate. (Read more.)

More HERE.