The end of an era: AllahPundit leaves HotAir.com

Some very sad news, after 16 years, AllahPundit is leaving HotAir.com.

He is leaving the site for the same reasons, that I really have not been writing very much on this blog.

Quote:

Partisan media serves two masters, the truth and the cause. When they align, all is well. When they conflict, you choose. If you prioritize the truth, you’re a traitor; if you prioritize the cause, you’re a propagandist. One recent example of the latter is the left mocking Republicans who accepted PPP loans during the pandemic for opposing Biden’s student debt bailout. The differences between those two programs would be evident to a reasonably intelligent fourth-grader but the imperative to serve the cause by rationalizing Biden’s giveaway forced liberals to treat it as a smart own. I think some even talked themselves into believing it. Propagandists lie to others, then lie to themselves to justify propagating the original lie. Propaganda rots the brain, then the soul.

That’s one reason why, when I’ve been forced to choose, I preferred to be a traitor than a propagandist. Here’s another: What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.

The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.

I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.

I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.

Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.

As much as I hate to admit it; he is absolutely correct. The Republican Party has become a shadow and bad parody of itself.

Gone are the days of the statesmen, like Ronald Reagan. Gone are the intellectual Conservatives, like William F. Buckley. Gone are the moderates like Jack Kemp. Gone are the real Conservatives like Patrick J. Buchanan, who actually loves America, and wants to keep American jobs. Unlike the two-bit phony like trump, who only cares about his supposed “Brand.”

On another aspect, it is truly the end of a blogging era. AllahPundit was a pen name, that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks in NYC. It was basically a parody of Islamic Fascism. Starting with “Allah’s in the House” blog and continuing with his writing over at HotAir.com.

It also represents a change in the landscape of the blogosphere.  Where people like Michelle Malkin were the superstars of the Conservative Blogging world and the movement itself.’ Malkin has been relegated to the corner of the extremists. with her friendship with the “proud boys.” Strange case, that one was.

This is what happened after President Bush’s term ended, the right united against Obama. Then Trump ran and won. The cult of personality around trump was divided into two camps, Pro Trump and Anti-Trump. Alliances were destroyed, friendships ruined and the Conservative movement fractured badly. Now, the conservatives are slinging it out between anti and pro Trump camps and slinging mud at President Biden; who is by the way, the worst President since Jimmy Carter. In fact, Biden is much, much, worse.

Even I have changed in my political beliefs since starting blogging in 2006. I, in fact, started out as a Populist, but nothing like the Conservative Populism that Trump represents. More of this kind here. However, in the years since then, mainly because I have gotten older, (I turned 50 this year.) I have honestly come to realize that left wing politics is a dead end. Leftism is nothing more a religion of hate; black against white, Jews verses Gentiles, Poor against Rich, Haves against Have-nots.

It is all rather exhausting honestly and I got quite tired of being on the side of hate. Equally tiring is the battle of conservatives against each other. For goodness sake, are not we supposed to be fighting against the far left and their lunacy? Instead we are fighting against each other, over a man, who could give a wit about the Republican Party, Conservatism, and America in General. He has his money, and he really does not care about anyone or anything else. The White House was an ego thing for him, and that was it.

We should be fighting against the loony far left. We should be fighting back against Joe Biden and his idiotic policies, we should be fighting against assault against our freedoms, by the left. Instead conservatives are fighting each other, and media is obsessed, left and right; about a President that lost an election 2 years ago! Enough! The media, the conservative movement, and everyone else needs to move the hell on!

That is my opinion and I would like to know yours.

 

 

Video: Idiots React to Coronavirus

This….is….excellent: via Paul Joseph Watson on YouTube:

 

Religion of Peace?: Another Islamic Terrorist Stabbing in London

Here we go again. But, first the video made after the London police killed the terrorist:

Via BBC:

Quote:

A man has been shot dead by police in south London after he attacked people on a busy high street.

The man was under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which police believe to be an Islamist-related terrorist incident.

He had a hoax device strapped to his body, police said. Three people were injured, with one person in a life-threatening condition.

Gunshots were heard on Streatham High Road just after 14:00 GMT on Sunday.

Reports suggest a man entered a shop and started stabbing people. It appears he then left the shop and stabbed a woman.

Witnesses reported hearing three gun shots and seeing a man lying on the ground, as armed police approached.

The BBC’s Daniel Sandford said the events appeared to unfold after witnesses saw an unmarked police car pull in front of another car near Streatham Common, forcing it to stop.

He said this could be linked to the subsequent stabbings and police shooting and it was possible somebody was stopped, before being followed by undercover officers.

[….]

Eyewitness Emma, from Streatham, told the BBC she saw an injured woman lying in the street.

She said she was told by another woman that an attacker had pulled out a knife in a shop before leaving and stabbing the woman.

Another eyewitness saw the shooting of the man take place in front of Boots pharmacy.

“I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer,” he told the PA news agency.

“The man was then shot. I heard three gunshots.”

Karker Tahir said he then saw police approach the man, before telling people nearby to move back in case a bomb went off.

More video:

If anyone, including President Trump, thinks that the War on Terror is over, you’re fooling yourselves. It’s still here and it will never end.

Others:

One America News Network, NPR, Breitbart and The Daily Beast, NBC

A MUST READ: Joe Biden and Iraq

This is a must read on Joe Biden and his involvement in the Iraq War.

In September, former Vice President Joe Biden attempted to portray himself as an opponent of the Iraq war he voted for 17 years ago. Sure, as a U.S. senator, he voted to authorize the war, Biden told an NPR interviewer who asked about his foreign policy judgment. But that was only after Biden got a “commitment” from George W. Bush, the war’s architect, that the former president “needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program.” Alas, he continued, “before we know it, we had a shock and awe”—the opening aerial bombardment of the March 2003 invasion—and then “immediately, the moment it started,” Biden opposed the war. His mistake, he said, was trusting Bush.

Source, The Daily Beast: How Biden Kept Screwing Up Iraq, Over and Over and Over Again

A very good read. I highly recommend it.

Finally: Justice for Islamic terrorist Arabs Accused of Plotting 9/11 Attacks Is coming 2021

Via NYT:

WASHINGTON — Moving toward a final reckoning as the nation approaches the 20th anniversary of the day that led to the longest war in American history, a military judge on Friday set a date for the death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay of the five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The judge, Col. W. Shane Cohen of the Air Force, set Jan. 11, 2021, for the start of the selection of a military jury at Camp Justice, the war court compound at the Navy base in Cuba. It is the first time that a judge in the case actually set a start-of-trial date.

The case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other men, should it proceed, would be the definitive trial tied to the Sept. 11 attacks. Until now, only foot soldiers of Al Qaeda have been tried at Guantánamo, and many of their convictions have been overturned.

Mr. Mohammed and the four others face the death penalty in a conspiracy case that describes Mr. Mohammed as the architect of the plot in which 19 men hijacked four commercial passenger planes and slammed two of them into the World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon. The fourth, which was believed to be aimed for the Capitol, crashed into a Pennsylvania field instead. The other four men are described as helping the hijackers with training, travel or finances.

[….]

In July, a prosecutor, Ed Ryan, urged the judge to set a date saying, “Our client, this nation, deserves a reckoning.”

In a lengthy exchange with the judge, Mr. Ryan argued that “dates energize and mobilize” people to prepare.

On Friday, defense lawyers on the case said that many of the judge’s milestones toward trial were dependent on the prosecution meeting a series of deadlines.

“For a January 2021 trial date to happen, the government would have to drop its obstructionism and produce a lot of important evidence and witnesses,” said James G. Connell III, the lead defense counsel for Mr. Baluchi. Mr. Connell said he had received more than 25,000 pages of case-related documents since July and expected that many more were coming.

Selection of the jury — 12 members and four alternate members — is expected to last months, with American military officers shuttled by air to and from the base in groups because of the limited housing at Guantánamo.

Besides conspiracy, the men are charged with committing murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians and terrorism. Should the men be convicted and sentenced to death, it is up to the secretary of defense to determine the method of execution.

It’s about damned time that these sleaze ball motherfuckers got to trial and are tried and killed. As someone who lived through 9/11 and struggled with depression, Anxiety; of which I am now on medication for…. I hope these rat bastards get the firing squad.

Screw them and their false religion and Pedophile prophet!

Quote of the Day

The war in Iraq ended only nine years ago, but it might as well have never taken place, given the curious lack of acknowledgement in our press and political debates. As families mourn their children, babies are born with irreversible deformities, and veterans dread trying to sleep through the night, America’s political class, many of whom sold the war to the public, have moved on. When they address Iraq at all, they act as though they have committed a minor error, as though large-scale death and destruction are the equivalent of a poor shot in golf when the course rules allow for mulligans.

As the Robert Mueller fiasco smolders out, it is damning that the Democratic Party, in its zest and zeal to welcome any critical assessment of Trump’s unethical behavior, has barely mentioned that Mueller, in his previous role as director of the FBI, played a small but significant role in convincing the country to go to war in Iraq.

Mueller testified to Congress that “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program poses a clear threat to our national security.” He also warned that Saddam could “supply terrorists with radiological material” for the purposes of devising a nuclear bomb. Leaving aside any speculation about Mueller’s intentions and assuming he had only the best of motives, it is quite bizarre, even dangerous, to treat as oracular someone who was wrong on such a life-or-death question.

Far worse than the worship of Mueller is the refusal to scrutinize the abysmal foreign policy record of Joe Biden, currently the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Of the Democrats in the Senate at that time, Biden was the most enthusiastic of the cheerleaders for war, waving his pompoms and cartwheeling in rhythm to Dick Cheney’s music. Biden said repeatedly that America had “no choice but to eliminate the threat” posed by Saddam Hussein. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his blustering was uniquely influential.

The former vice president now claims that his “only mistake was trusting the Bush administration,” implying he was tricked into supporting the war. This line is not as persuasive as he imagines. First, it raises the question—can’t we nominate someone who wasn’t tricked? Second, its logic crumbles in the face of Biden’s recent decision to hire Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, as his campaign’s foreign policy advisor. Burns was also a vociferous supporter of the war. An enterprising reporter should ask Biden whether Burns was also tricked. Is the Biden campaign an assembly of rubes?

Instead, the press is likelier to interrogate Biden over his holding hands and giving hugs to women at public events. Criticism of Biden’s “inappropriate touching” has become so strident that the candidate had to record a video to explain his behavior. The moral standards of America’s political culture seem to rate kissing a woman on the back of the head as a graver offense than catastrophic war.

Polling well below Biden in the race is the congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard. She alone on the Democratic stage has made criticism of American militarism central to her candidacy. A veteran of the Iraq war and a highly decorated major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, Gabbard offers an intelligent and humane perspective on foreign affairs. She’s called the regime change philosophy “disastrous,” advocated for negotiation with hostile foreign powers, and backed a reduction in drone strikes. She pledges if she becomes president to end American involvement in Afghanistan.

When Chris Matthews asked Gabbard about Biden’s support for the Iraq war, she said, “It was the wrong vote. People like myself, who enlisted after 9/11 because of the terrorist attacks, were lied to. We were betrayed.”

Her moral clarity is rare in the political fog of the presidential circus. She cautions against accepting the “guise of humanitarian justification for war,” and notes that rarely does the American government bomb and invade a country to actually advance freedom or protect human rights.

Gabbard’s positions are vastly superior to that of the other young veteran in the race, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend recently told New York that one of his favorite novels is The Quiet American, saying that its author, Graham Greene, “points out the dangers of well-intentioned interventions.”

Buttigieg’s chances of winning the nomination seem low, and his prospects of becoming a literary critic appear even lower. The Quiet American does much more than raise questions about interventions: it is a merciless condemnation of American exceptionalism and its attendant indifference to Vietnamese suffering.

Americans hoping for peace won’t find much comfort in the current White House either. President Trump has made the world more dangerous by trashing the Iran nuclear deal, and his appointment of John Bolton, a man who makes Donald Rumsfeld look like Mahatma Gandhi, as national security advisor is certainly alarming.

America’s willful ignorance when it comes to the use of its own military exposes the moral bankruptcy at the heart of its political culture. Even worse, it makes future wars all but inevitable.

If no one can remember a war that ended merely nine years ago, and there’s little room for Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic primary, how will the country react the next time a president, and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declare that they have no choice but to remove a threat?

GOP and Dem Senators introduce bill to force a vote on selling arms to the Saudi’s

I am with The American Conservative on this one, it is about time. For years, the United States has been fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIS, all the while ignoring the fact that these terrorists are in fact Saudi’s and Sunni Muslims.

Via NBC News:

WASHINGTON — Two senators plan to introduce a bill Monday designed to force a vote on current and future U.S. arms sales and other military support to Saudi Arabia, saying it was time lawmakers checked President Donald Trump’s attempts to bypass Congress on foreign policy.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who both sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, marks the latest counterpunch by lawmakers who strongly oppose selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and who are outraged at the Trump administration’s recent decision to sidestep Congress on an arms deal worth billions of dollars.

“The process we are setting in motion will allow Congress to weigh in on the totality of our security relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just one arms sale, and restore Congress’s role in foreign policy-making,” Murphy said in a statement.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators, including Murphy and Young, proposed nearly two dozen resolutions that would require votes on each of the arms sales that make up the $8.1 billion weapons package to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan announced by the Trump administration on May 24. By law, arm sales require congressional approval but the Trump administration avoided any review by lawmakers for the controversial deal by declaring a national security “emergency,” citing the threat posed by Iran.

Daniel Larson at the American Conservative writes:

Murphy and Young have been two of the most consistent and active opponents of our government’s despicable Yemen policy, and they have been fighting to reassert Congress’ role in matters of war for the last several years. Young, a Republican from Indiana, has been one of a handful of senators from his party to break ranks with the administration and vote to end U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen. It is encouraging to see many members of Congress are standing up against executive overreach and abuse of power. The Murphy-Young legislation is just the latest example of how the president’s obnoxious subservience to the Saudis and the UAE has provoked growing dissatisfaction and resistance among our representatives in Washington. Murphy and Young’s bill complements the bipartisan effort to stop Trump’s bogus arms sale “emergency,” and it goes beyond that…

[…]

Congress should use every tool available to it to challenge the administration’s unconditional support for the Saudis. Each time they succeed in passing new measures against arms sales and the war on Yemen, they increase the number of people in Congress and the public willing to speak out and criticize the noxious U.S.-Saudi relationship. Thanks to the Trump administration’s contempt for Congress and the Constitution and their equally strong enthusiasm for the Saudi government, that relationship is in worse shape than it has been in decades, and there is a large and growing backlash against our government’s continued backing for the Saudis and their crimes.

Agreed. If we are going to hold Iran accountable, we should hold the rest of the Arab world accountable as well and this includes the Saudi Government as well. Good to see that both sides are coming together, if just for this one issue.

The Neocons in the Trump Administration are steering America into another war

This also includes the Saudi Government as well. I say this, because of this piece of news here, via YNetNews.com:

A state-aligned Saudi newspaper is calling for “surgical” U.S. strikes in retaliation against alleged threats from Iran.

The Arab News published an editorial in English on Thursday, arguing that after incidents this week against Saudi energy targets, the next logical step “should be surgical strikes.”

The editorial says U.S. airstrikes in Syria, when the government there was suspected of using chemical weapons against civilians, “set a precedent.”

It added that it’s “clear that (U.S.) sanctions are not sending the right message” and that “they must be hit hard,” in reference to Iran, without elaborating on what specific targets should be struck.

The newspaper’s publisher is the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, a company that had long been chaired by various sons of King Salman until 2014 and is regarded as reflecting official position.

It seems that John Bolton is behind much of this:

Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with Iran.

We know this because he has been saying it for nearlytwodecades.

And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump’s top foreign policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East of the past two weeks.

Just after one month on the job, Bolton gave Trump the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully boxing in Iran’s nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton’s drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.

Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, it can achieve a “better deal” that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.

And Bolton has no qualms about manipulating or outright ignoring intelligence to advance his agenda, which is exactly what’s happening right now.

In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East, Bolton cited “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence. But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since said that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it “out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was”. Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week, saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.

Pat Buchanan observes:

After Venezuela’s army decided not to rise up and overthrow Nicholas Maduro, by Sunday night, it was Iran that was in our gun sights.

Bolton ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, its carrier battle group and a bomber force to the Mideast “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

What “attack” was Bolton talking about?

According to Axios, Israel had alerted Bolton that an Iranian strike on U.S. interests in Iraq was imminent.

Flying to Finland, Pompeo echoed Bolton’s warning:

“We’ve seen escalatory actions from the Iranians, and … we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. … (If) these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, whether that’s a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the … Iranian leadership directly accountable for that.”

Taken together, the Bolton-Pompeo threats add up to an ultimatum that any attack by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran-backed militias — on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or the Gulf states — will bring a U.S. retaliatory response on Iran itself.

Did President Donald Trump approve of this? For he appears to be going along. He has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions. Last week, he canceled waivers he had given eight nations to let them continue buying Iranian oil.

Purpose: Reduce Iran’s oil exports, 40% of GDP, to zero, to deepen an economic crisis that is already expected to cut Iran’s GDP this year by 6%.

Trump has also designated Iran a terrorist state and the Republican Guard a terrorist organization, the first time we have done that with the armed forces of a foreign nation. We don’t even do that with North Korea.

Iran responded last Tuesday by naming the U.S. a state sponsor of terror and designating U.S. forces in the Middle East as terrorists.

[…]

Today, Trump’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll has reached an all-time high, 46%, a level surely related to the astonishing performance of the U.S. economy following Trump’s tax cuts and sweeping deregulation.

While a Gulf war with Iran might be popular at the outset, what would it do for the U.S. economy or our ability to exit the forever war of the Middle East, as Trump has pledged to do?

In late April, in an interview with Fox News, Iran’s foreign minister identified those he believes truly want a U.S.-Iranian war.

Asked if Trump was seeking the confrontation and the “regime change” that Bolton championed before becoming his national security adviser, Mohammad Javad Zarif said no. “I do not believe President Trump wants to do that. I believe President Trump ran on a campaign promise of not bringing the United States into another war.

“President Trump himself has said that the U.S. spent $7 trillion in our region … and the only outcome of that was that we have more terror, we have more insecurity, and we have more instability.

“People in our region are making the determination that the presence of the United States is inherently destabilizing. I think President Trump agrees with that.”

But if it is not Trump pushing for confrontation and war with Iran, who is?

Said Zarif, “I believe ‘the B-team’ wants to actually push the United States, lure President Trump, into a confrontation that he doesn’t want.”

And who makes up “the B-team”?

Zarif identifies them: Bolton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

Should the B-team succeed in its ambitions — it will be Trump’s war, and Trump’s presidency will pay the price.

Buchanan also writes:

After an exhausting two weeks, one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, “Why is this our problem?”

Perhaps the most serious issue is North Korea’s quest for nuclear-armed missiles that can reach the United States. But the reason Kim is developing missiles that can strike Seattle or LA is that 28,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea, committed to attack the North should war break out. That treaty commitment dates to a Korean War that ended in an armed truce 66 years ago.

If we cannot persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for a lifting of sanctions, perhaps we should pull U.S. forces off the peninsula and let China deal with the possible acquisition of their own nuclear weapons by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Iran has no nukes or ICBMs. It wants no war with us. It does not threaten us. Why is Iran then our problem to solve rather than a problem for Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the Sunni Arabs?

Nor does Russia’s annexation of Crimea threaten us. When Ronald Reagan strolled through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988, all of Ukraine was ruled by Moscow.

The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro was established decades ago by his mentor, Hugo Chavez. When did that regime become so grave a threat that the U.S. should consider an invasion to remove it?

During the uprising in Caracas, Bolton cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. But according to President James Monroe, and Mike Pompeo’s predecessor John Quincy Adams, who wrote the message to Congress, under the Doctrine, while European powers were to keep their hands off our hemisphere — we would reciprocate and stay out of Europe’s quarrels and wars.

Wise folks, those Founding Fathers.

Bolton must go, if Trump wants to remain President. because those who elected him, who do not subscribe to the neocon foreign policy doctrine, will vote for someone else or not at all.

 

Two Serviceman killed in Afghanistan

Sad News:

Army Spc. Joseph Collette.
Sgt. 1st Class Will Lindsay, 33, of Cortez, Colorado

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Department of Defense on Saturday identified the two soldiers who died Friday in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, as a result of wounds sustained while engaged in combat operations.The deceased Spc. Joseph P. Collette, 29, of Lancaster, Ohio, was assigned to the 242nd Ordnance Battalion, 71st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, out of Fort Carson, Colorado. Sgt. 1st Class Will D. Lindsay, 33, of Cortez, Colorado, was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Carson, Colorado. Source: Defense Department identifies two soldiers killed in Afghanistan – U.S. – Stripes

With the defeat Al-Qaeda and ISIS, isn’t it about time that we pulled out of that region? I mean, Osama is dead, most of ISIS is gone and Al-Qaeda is all but dead. Let’s end this thing and be done with it.

Others: Townhall and Task & Purpose

US to withdraw from Syria and pull troops from Afghanistan

This was a bit of a surprise and I’ve got mixed feelings about it.

But, first, the story from the New York Times:


WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ordered the military to start withdrawing roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan in the coming months, two defense officials said Thursday, an abrupt shift in the 17-year-old war there and a decision that stunned Afghan officials, who said they had not been briefed on the plans.


President Trump made the decision to pull the troops — about half the number the United States has in Afghanistan now — at the same time he decided to pull American forces out of Syria, one official said.


The announcement came hours after Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, said that he would resign from his position at the end of February after disagreeing with the president over his approach to policy in the Middle East.


The whirlwind of troop withdrawals and the resignation of Mr. Mattis leave a murky picture for what is next in the United States’ longest war, and they come as Afghanistan has been troubled by spasms of violence afflicting the capital, Kabul, and other important areas. The United States has also been conducting talks with representatives of the Taliban, in what officials have described as discussions that could lead to formal talks to end the conflict.

Senior Afghan officials and Western diplomats in Kabul woke up to the shock of the news on Friday morning, and many of them braced for chaos ahead. Several Afghan officials, often in the loop on security planning and decision-making, said they had received no indication in recent days that the Americans would pull troops out. The fear that Mr. Trump might take impulsive actions, however, often loomed in the background of discussions with the United States, they said.

They saw the abrupt decision as a further sign that voices from the ground were lacking in the debate over the war and that with Mr. Mattis’s resignation, Afghanistan had lost one of the last influential voices in Washington who channeled the reality of the conflict into the White House’s deliberations.

The reduction of American forces in Afghanistan, one American official said, is an effort to make Afghan forces more reliant on their own troops and not Western support.

But some fear the move could only imperil the Afghan troops, who have struggled in the field against the Taliban and have suffered high casualty rates, even with the current level of American support.

Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a Pentagon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the plan to remove troops from Afghanistan.

The president long campaigned on bringing troops home, but in 2017, at the request of Mr. Mattis, he begrudgingly pledged an additional 4,000 troops to the Afghan campaign to try to hasten an end to the conflict.
Though Pentagon officials have said the influx of forces — coupled with a more aggressive air campaign — was helping the war effort, Afghan forces continued to take nearly unsustainable levels of casualties and lose ground to the Taliban.


The renewed American effort in 2017 was the first step in ensuring Afghan forces could become more independent without a set timeline for a withdrawal. But with plans to quickly reduce the number of American troops in the country, it is unclear if the Afghans can hold their own against an increasingly aggressive Taliban.

You can read the rest over at the NYT. We are also pulling out of Syria as well; and Turkey says they will take over that conflict.

Via Reuters:

ISTANBUL/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey will take over the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria as the United States withdraws its troops, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in the latest upheaval wrought by Washington’s abrupt policy shift.

The surprise announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump this week that he would withdraw roughly 2,000 troops has felled a pillar of American policy in the Middle East. Critics say Trump’s decision will make it harder to find a diplomatic solution to Syria’s seven-year-old conflict.


For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the United States. Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.

In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of the country – shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.

The news was less welcome for other U.S. allies. Both France and Germany warned that the U.S. change of course risked damaging the campaign against Islamic State, the jihadists who seized big swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014-15 but have now been beaten back to a sliver of Syrian territory.

Likewise, the U.S.-backed militia spearheaded by the YPG said a Turkish attack would force it to divert fighters from the battle against Islamic State to protect its territory.

Islamic State launched an attack in Syria’s southeast against the U.S.-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of militants.
“We will be working on our operational plans to eliminate ISIS elements, which are said to remain intact in Syria, in line with our conversation with President Trump,” Erdogan said, referring to Islamic State.

The Turkish president had announced plans last week to start an operation east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria to oust the YPG from the area that it largely controls. This week, he said the campaign could come at any moment. But on Friday, he cited the talk with Trump as a reason to wait.

“Our phone call with President Trump, along with contacts between our diplomats and security officials and statements by the United States, have led us to wait a little longer,” he said.

“We have postponed our military operation against the east of the Euphrates river until we see on the ground the result of America’s decision to withdraw from Syria.”

The Turkish president said, however, that this was not an “open-ended waiting period”.

Turkey has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it says is the slow implementation of a deal with Washington to pull YPG fighters out of Manbij, a town in mainly Arab territory west of the Euphrates in northern Syria.

Now, the neocon right is not happy about this. You can read that here, here and here.

Now here is my personal opinion on this subject. If ISIL or ISIS or Dash, as it is called; is truly defeated in Syria; then great, we are doing the right thing. If we are wrong about that, and ISIS regroups and starts again, we’ll regret we left that Country. As far as Afghanistan goes, we should have left that Country the day that Osama Bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan. The fact that we have been there, this long, is a terrible thing. Now, I would hate to see the Taliban come back there. But, we have no business being the policeman of the World.

The truth is, is that the Taliban were in power there years before; and we did nothing, until 2001 when the United States was hit by the terrorists. As far as Mathis is concerned, screw him. The President of the United States is the commander and chief of the military and what he says goes and if this guy did not like it. He should have quit long ago.

Many people will say that this was an olive branch to the left and also to many in Trump’s base. But, as far as I am concerned, this is something that should have happened a long time ago. We finally have a President that has a realistic sense of foreign policy.