Biden's Appalling Mistake is a Watershed for the West - Gwythian Prins

 

by Gwythian Prins

What is needed now is a swift cold shower of geo-strategic reality in our political classes. The time for self-harming distractions with "wokus pocus," obsessing about sexual dysmorphia, Marxist "critical race theory" and "climate catastrophism" ... -- all of which the Chinese Communist Party is glad to encourage -- must end.

• The main mission was and should have remained one of self-defence. Once this was forgotten, muddle and a sapping of will set in. Moral ambivalence about our values and ourselves, which our enemies do not have about themselves, expressing itself as an embarrassment about using force in our self-defense, meant that softer edges were attached.

• We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and we shall pay a heavy price.

• This withdrawal is therefore a set-back for the Free World as we square off to defend our way of life against Xi Jinping's communist command group which, like the Taliban, does not understand win-win. "We win, you lose" is the next game.

• [O]ur political class ... was utterly naïve at "12/11" when the PRC was let into the WTO, expecting it to become like us. This was like letting the fox into the hen-house in the expectation that it would behave like a hen.

• What is needed now is a swift cold shower of geo-strategic reality in our political classes. The time for self-harming distractions with "wokus pocus," obsessing about sexual dysmorphia, Marxist "critical race theory" and "climate catastrophism" ... -- all of which the Chinese Communist Party is glad to encourage -- must end.

We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and we shall pay a heavy price. Pictured: US and South Korean soldiers stand guard in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Korea on September 16, 2020. (Photo by Park Tae-hyun/AFP via Getty Images)

Of course we, the Western Alliance, were going to withdraw from Afghanistan sometime. But not now and not like this. The twenty-year expedition in Afghanistan has been a litany of strategic and tactical errors starting with the failure to follow through on the success of Task Force Dagger to crush the Taliban when we most easily could have done so. The operationally brilliant first intervention by the Green Beret Special Forces "Horse Soldiers" of Alpha 595 (known to cinema-goers from the film "Twelve Strong" and now immortalised in an equestrian statue at 9/11 ground zero in New York), partnered with the Northern Alliance at the end of 2001, vectoring in modern Air Force fire-power from horse-back.

The Taliban were out of Kabul and on the run by November 2001 and Osama Bin Laden was on his way to the Tora Bora caves. US President George W. Bush's decision to open up war in Iraq before the Afghan job was done was a costly deflection. In the second phase, the Afghanistan mission lacked focus. Crushing terrorist bases? Nation-building? Narcotics suppression? Educational programmes for girls? Which? All?

Our mission should have been kept perfectly clear and the maintenance of aim should have been constant. It should have been about our national security first and last. Security from Islamist terrorist attacks was to be maintained by dominating these hard lands to the exclusion of others, as the British had done with some success for decades after General "Bobs" Roberts culminating victory over Ayub Khan in September 1880 at Kandahar in the Second Afghan War. This was called the Great Game. Geo-politics are facts on the ground. It is the Great Game still.

This week, not in military defeat but by just walking away, the West surrendered its hard-won dominance over this strategic space -- this pivotal crossroads -- in the modern version of that same old Great Game. The tactical expression of our strategic mission was to exclude the influence of our enemies, Russia, Iran and now Communist China, plus that of our "frenemies" Qatar and Pakistan, both active supporters of the Taliban. The Pakistani ISI intelligence service was the Taliban's great enabler -- with Chinese Communist support -- along the longest contiguous border. Remember that Osama Bin Laden was eventually found and killed hunkered down in the Pakistani military cantonment of Abbottabad. Now, maybe in a fit of absent-mindedness, President Biden has ceded our position in the most humiliating and morally indefensible way possible. The doctrine of R2P - "The Responsibility to Protect" - which was an honourable motif of twenty-first century Western military interventions, died in those mountains and deserts on the weekend 14-15th August 2021.

Now our enemies, who were enemies of each other, seem to be cutting deals with each other simply because they are our enemies. Shi'a Iranians from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force are reported to have been assisting Sunni Taliban at their countries' common frontier. Has Communist Chinese oblique military support channelled both ways to the Taliban, through Pakistan and through Iran, and prompt diplomatic recognition, bought their silence and even their active support against their co-religionists, denying them sanctuary (for which there is some evidence) in the on-going Uighur genocide in Xinjiang? Neither the Taliban nor the Chinese Communists care a whit about human rights. They do not figure at all because the rights of the individual are entirely subordinate to those of their respective all-dominating ideologies.

Yet, having been silent over the fatal weekend, in his first statement British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab misjudged the moment. He talked in traditional diplomatic bureaucratese that is wholly disconnected from the changed facts on the grounds after the fall. Sounding like one of his professional diplomats, he spoke of "contact groups", of G7 "pressure", of "sanctions" when there is now zero leverage. He even mused about increasing "development aid" to the Afghan people next year, to be supplied independent of the Taliban. What has he been smoking? We read authoritative reports that the Taliban may be preparing to boost poppy production next planting season to flood the West with heroin.

Taliban Afghanistan will now join the next empire, the People's Republic of China's Belt and Road form of neo-imperialism, which thereby deprives us and gives to the PRC access to un-mined gold reserves and the wealth of Afghanistan's minerals, including rare earths and enormous lithium deposits. The PRC uses them as part of a developed strategy to put a strategic economic arm-lock on us through the current self-harming western obsession with the thermodynamically incompetent orphan technology of lithium-ion battery electric vehicles. Meanwhile the PRC hoovers up oil supplies from our traditional suppliers -- it is already the world's leading oil importer -- and plans to double its oil consumption and its internal combustion engine vehicle fleets by 2040 using our primary intellectual property. Through "Net Zero" we are also giving away to the PRC western dominance of global transport systems too. Everything is interconnected in strategic terms.

Make no mistake, the educational and other benefits to the Afghans from the Western presence these last two decades -- and the benefits were immense but will now be erased along with the hopes and life chances of a rising young generation -- were a most welcome collateral, but they were collateral. The main mission was and should have remained one of self-defence. Once this was forgotten, muddle and a sapping of will set in. Moral ambivalence about our values and ourselves, which our enemies do not have about themselves, expressing itself as an embarrassment about using force in our self-defense, meant that softer edges were attached. These came to confuse and obscure the primary mission. It also appears that there was also an almost unbelievable intelligence failure in assessing the readiness of Afghan government forces to stand and fight. How did that happen? If it was indeed so, and not simply Biden ignoring the advice that he was given, it must rank as one of the greatest such failures in US intelligence history. Biden's withdrawal order had also swept away the "enablers" -- the people who kept helicopters and critical air support for Afghan Government ground forces flying. No wonder they gave up.

We needed strategic patience of the sort that has kept US forces on the Korean peninsula, or British forces in Cyprus, for a lifetime of decades. Our leaders, and mainly one, lacked the vision to have that patience and to understand that the insurance premium to keep western dominance of the Afghan strategic space in the modern Great Game was modest compared to the geo-political benefits it bought us. Conversely, the cost of suspending that insurance payment means that we shall henceforth pay a heavy price in diminished reputation and influence around the world, as well as in increased risks of future conflict - and ironically heavier costs. This defeat was not inevitable, and the assumption being peddled that it was, must be firmly rebutted.

President Biden's decision to cut and run has given the world the image of the Chinook helicopter evacuating US Embassy Staff from Kabul in a replay of Saigon in 1975 and then, far worse, the images of desperate Afghans who had trusted us but were now swarming over and clinging to a USAF Globemaster transporter airplane, even as it rolled on the runway, so frantic were they to escape the enveloping darkness that the return of the Taliban to Kabul has brought them. Two fell to their deaths. The era of the Twin Towers ended as it had begun with innocent bodies falling from the sky. President Biden's decision to cut and run has mercifully avoided the bloody chaos of the retreat from Kabul in 1842, but without Biden's decision none of this would have happened; and Elphinstone's memory would have remained in obscurity.

Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the initial responses to 9/11, was completely correct in saying that the signal of the Taliban's return for the 20th anniversary of that attack is the worst possible: not just for Afghanistan but for the credibility and perceived reliability of the Free World. Although the British disapproved of Biden's order, we could not resist it and knowing that it was the wrong thing to do, we too have had to evacuate. Biden has damaged us as well, for this humiliation will make building "global Britain" after the liberation of "Brexit" that much harder.

In Afghanistan, late in the day the British and US Governments seem to have accepted a moral responsibility to evacuate all our interpreters and their families, as our rightly furious former field commanders demand. But it now may be too late for many, as Ben Wallace, a former soldier and British Secretary of State for Defence admitted. In addition, as with Hong Kong, we have a duty to open an escape route for all the educated Afghan democrats -- an entire young generation -- and especially for the young women. Like the Hong Kongers, we would be lucky to receive them. Again, the speed of the collapse brings this all into question.

What lessons should we learn? First, that the responsibility for this terrible self-inflicted defeat lies squarely with President Biden. Trump had many successes in his foreign policy (the Abraham Accords; preparing to deter Xi Jinping) but failings also, of which his naive attempt to "cut a deal" with the Taliban was one of the worst. The Taliban do not do negotiation, nor keep any word, and Trump should have known, or have been made to understand, that. The "Doha deal" and draw-down was a grave error: it disheartened the Afghan government and it encouraged the Taliban. So Trump does have his share of the blame, but not in the way some would suggest. A strong narrative is building in the usual anti-Trump quarters that tries to blame the current catastrophe entirely on Trump. Biden, who has so far distanced himself from all of Trump's other policies, tried that line in an apparent attempt at self-exculpation by teleprompter on 16th August. After reading it out, he marched off, refusing all questions, perhaps wisely. Last weekend's disaster cannot be laid principally at Trump's door. Biden's 8th July Press Conference will go down as one of the most damaging ever by any President. His petulant refusal to heed his own military and intelligence advisers -- or maybe to understand them -- and the assertion that we would never see what we have just seen five weeks later, a repeat in Kabul of the 1975 helicopter airlift from the Saigon US Embassy, have indelibly defined his Presidency.

In the USA, another slow fuse has also been lit this week. The Democratic Party will soon have to explain how it foisted such a manifestly impaired candidate as Biden upon the American people and by extension upon the Free World at any time and most especially at a time of such strategic transformation. There will be a great reckoning within our greatest ally. The American people want their troops home, as is normal and natural, but not in such circumstances that render the Free World in even more danger than before 9/11, not to mention the utter humiliation wrought at the hand of no enemy, but that of their own President.

Suzanne Raine, the formidable former Head of the British Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre and now at the University of Cambridge, has been at the epicentre of the fight against Islamist terrorism for the last twenty years; her words carry much weight. Her first public assessment on 18th August is that when the President argued that we should focus on today's threats, not yesterday's threats, there is a "logical inconsistency" in Biden's justification of his withdrawal. As she crisply observed, yesterday's threats are only not today's -- and tomorrow's -- threats by dint of all that has now been surrendered. We have lost our eyes and ears by surrendering dominance of the Afghan space in the modern Great Game (my words); and specifically she observes the known links between individuals in the current senior Al Qaeda leadership and the new rulers of Kabul. Under the western dominance of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was pushed to the failed state spaces in Libya and Iraq but will now have the option of flowing back. The escape route from Afghanistan to Libya and Iraq was through Iran; so Iran can be the route of return, about which we can now do nothing. We are once more in a more passive than active mode. In sum, Ms Raine's view is the old message: that we should trust deeds not words. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and Biden has just made that task immensely more difficult.

Biden's unexpected announcement of US withdrawal by an arbitrary date against the advice of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Central Intelligence Director William Burns, will be the most consequential decision of his presidency. Nor can it be denied that Biden's failure to consult his closest allies has weakened the Western alliance.

The US withdrawal has, in addition, precipitated the worst failure in British foreign policy since the Suez debacle of 1956, when the unilateral action of the Eisenhower administration, threatening to trigger a run on the British Pound, strong-armed British abandonment of its military operation on the very cusp of success. The Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, has correctly made that comparison. It was creditable of the UK government, after the shock announcement, to seek to assemble a rump alliance without Biden's America, but the chances of this succeeding were always slim. The real fighters like the Scandinavians, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia were too few and the paper tiger of the EU's ambition to present itself as a military power was exposed for what it was.

Suez was followed by an era of anti-Americanism and of "declinism" -- learned helplessness -- in the British establishment which became one of the groundwater springs that nourishes still the unreconciled remainer/remoaner/rejoiner losers of the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the EU. We must guard against this resurgence at a moment when the solidarity of the anglosphere is more important than ever.

Second, this withdrawal is therefore a set-back for the Free World as we square off to defend our way of life against Xi Jinping's communist command group which, like the Taliban, does not engage in deal-making nor understand win-win. "We win, you lose" is the next game. The Chinese are highly organized and strategic -- as we must swiftly become after this defeat. They understand us incredibly well. They have sent their leadership cadres through our universities for three decades. In comparison we know hardly anything about China because we do not have that depth of experience in our political class which was utterly naive after "12/11" when the PRC was let into the WTO, expecting it to become like us. This was like letting the fox into the hen-house in the expectation that it would behave like a hen.

We are, however, not without resources for this Great Power contest which is already in train as a "grey war," with PRC "ghost attack" by economic means, in which it encourages us to follow policies -- notably "Net Zero" fantasy green economics -- that they think, correctly, are disadvantageous to both our economy and defence, and hence in their strategic interest. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance is still peerless. Our combined military deterrence, grounded in the world's leading military cultures, still gives us superior capability across the full spectrum of future conflict so long as we do not compromise it further in worrying ways, for example by allowing "woke" identity irrelevances or green virtue-signalling to distract commanders and injure the chains of command. Furthermore, in democracies, however flawed, power derived from the ballot box is always more legitimate in the eyes of those governed than rule by fear in autocracies.

Third, with the loss of Afghanistan we cross a watershed. What is needed now is a swift cold shower of geo-strategic reality in our political classes. The time for self-harming distractions with "wokus pocus," obsessing about sexual dysmorphia, Marxist "critical race theory" and "climate catastrophism" built on Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness that mistakes hypothetical scenario projections for real data -- all of which the Chinese Communist Party Ministry of State Security United Front Work Department is glad to encourage -- must end.

Biden's terrible mistake must be turned into the wake-up call for the Free World to pull itself together after two years in which, one way or another, the Chinese Communists made the world sick, causing the deaths of more than four million people and injuring the economies of many nations -- all, to date, with no accountability. We must clear for action, which means that to defend ourselves by credible deterrence, we must start by dumping overboard all extraneous impediments.

The challenge of the defence of Taiwanese freedom -- first, by strong deterrence -- plainly approaches. The regional democracies Japan, India, and Australia stand ready as the 2021 Japanese Defense White Paper shows; and the USA must once again stand tall.

Gwythian Prins is Research Professor Emeritus at the LSE and a past member of the British Chief of the Defence Staff's Strategy Advisory Panel

 

Gwythian Prins

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17657/biden-appalling-mistake

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Tehran ready to pounce on Afghanistan as it reels from Taliban takeover - Ariel Ben Solomon

 

by Ariel Ben Solomon

The collapse of the Afghan military could serve as further motivation for Iran to target US-allied Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as countries like Jordan.

 

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei | File photo: AFP via the Iranian Supreme Leader's website

Newly installed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi celebrated the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the failure of the United States to leave smoothly after 20 years entrenched in the country, marking the beginning of what's likely to be a more aggressive stance there and on other fronts in the Middle East.

American leaders have accused Iran of backing the Taliban in the fight against its military forces in Afghanistan. While a withdrawal was announced by the Biden administration earlier this year, what has happened over the course of the past few days was certainly not what they had in mind.

"America's military defeat and its withdrawal must become an opportunity to restore life, security and durable peace in Afghanistan," Raisi pronounced on Monday, according to Iran's state TV, reported Reuters.

Iran has had a complicated relationship with Afghanistan and the Taliban. The Shi'ite Muslim country shares a 560-mile border with mainly Sunni Muslim Afghanistan and hosts some 3.5 million Afghan refugees. In the late 1990s, Iran almost went to war with the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan after several Iranian diplomats were killed, and the Islamic Republic had cooperated with the United States early on in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 with intelligence support before relations deteriorated during the Bush administration.

Nevertheless, the embarrassment of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the swift Taliban victory over the Western-backed government represents an opportunity for Iran to take a more defiant posture against an America on the retreat from the Middle East.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the reign of the will of the wronged people of Afghanistan has always created security and stability," said Raisi. "While consciously monitoring developments in the country, Iran is committed to neighborly relations."

Allies Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have all come out praising the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They see it as a model for defeating the United States and Israel in the Middle East.

Raisi presented a cabinet of hardliners last week, including Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as interior minister. He is a former defense minister wanted by Interpol for his alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 and injured hundreds.

Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer on Iranian politics at IDC Herzliya in Israel, told JNS that the new Iranian government and its composition is a message to the international community that Iran will not be so forthcoming and as during the previous term of President Hassan Rouhani. "The latter was at least more accommodating rhetorically. But those days are over," he said.

Javedanfar sees Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as being the impetus behind the new government.

In terms of what actions can be expected from the new government, Javedanfar predicted that "you could almost call it the Khamenei government; the people now in charge can be assumed to have been appointed directly from the leader himself."

As per the ongoing negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, he said it's too soon to speculate if this new government signals the end of the talks. "I do think the composition of the new government means Iran is sending a tougher message to the US negotiators, but an agreement might still be possible," said Javedenfar.

The International Atomic Energy Agency stated in a report presented to members states on Monday and seen by Reuters that Iran is advancing its work with uranium metal.

"On 14 August 2021, the Agency verified … that Iran had used 257 g[rams] of uranium enriched up to 20% U-235 in the form of UF4 (uranium tetrafluoride) to produce 200 g[rams] of uranium metal-enriched up to 20% U-235," said the UN nuclear watchdog.

Such work is not going to help advance talks that are already at an impasse.

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told JNS that "the Iranian president does not necessarily represent a belligerent line, but lessons learned by the Iranian state in the past decade are likely to lead to a more confrontational approach."

He wrote in a recent article that this aggressive approach is likely to continue due to four main lessons learned by officials in Tehran.

First, proxy wars secured military victories in Syria and Yemen. Second, Iran survived the Trump administration's nearly four-year "maximum pressure" campaign. Third, no military retaliation came for attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And fourth, the coronavirus pandemic has led to more government control of the country, rather than less.

Add Afghanistan to this list of countries where Iran is likely to push to increase its influence drastically after the US military withdrawal.

The collapse of the Afghan military could serve as further motivation for Iran to aggressively target American-allied Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as countries like Jordan.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

 

Ariel Ben Solomon

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/19/tehran-ready-to-pounce-on-afghanistan-as-it-reels-from-taliban-takeover/

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Separatist Sentiment In Iran Is Rising - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Lessons for Western leaders to never capitulate to the regime.

 

 

The street protests that have taken place in Iran this summer are of two kinds. First, there are continued protests against the mismanagement of the economy, the corruption of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, and the continued transfer of Iranian wealth to support such proxies and allies as the Houthis in Yemen, Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, and especially, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the terror group supported by $700 million transferred annually from Iran. Second, there are the demonstrations by ethnic minorities, who make up 50% of Iran’s population, and bristle under the continued dominance of the Persians.

A report on the recent displays of separatist sentiment, focusing on Arab-populated Ahwaz Province, is here: “Dismantle the Islamic Republic,” by Mordechai Kedar, Algemeiner, August 12, 2021:

In recent weeks, mass demonstrations have taken place in three peripheral provinces of Iran populated by non-Persian ethnic groups. The most prominent is the Arab-inhabited Ahwaz province, located on the banks of the Persian Gulf. Mass demonstrations were also conducted in the Kurdish and Azeri regions in the north of the country.

Iran’s economic crisis has resulted in a lack of investment in, among other things, water infrastructure. The Persian region of Iran has suffered severe drought for years. To address that problem, the Islamic regime diverted streams from the province of Ahwaz to the Persian region. This resulted in thousands of cows, sheep, and goats in Ahwaz dying of thirst. Because those animals are the source of many of their livelihoods, the people of Ahwaz consider the water diversion a theft….

Iranian leaders made their choice: they have spent, and continue to spend, billions of dollars on their nuclear project, the care and feeding of the IRGC, and on proxies and allies from Yemen to Lebanon — money that has not been spent on infrastructure to conserve water resources, on desalination plants, on the production of water from the air (a method now perfected by Israel’s Watergen company), and on drip irrigation.

During the last few years, there has been a severe drought in the Persian-populated parts of central Iran. In response, the government has chosen to divert water from Arab-populated Ahwaz in the south to central Iran. Ahwaz farmers paid the price: their livestock – cows, sheep, and goats – have died of thirst, impoverishing many of the Arab farmers. They naturally have been angered by Teheran’s water policy, its diversion of water to the north seen as one more example of the Persian-dominated central government’s inattention to their plight.

The Iranian government has not invested in “smokestack scrubbers” that could greatly decrease the amount of toxic emissions; it appears indifferent to the health of the Ahwazi Arabs. Since all the oil and gas in Iran comes from the Ahwaz region, it is the Ahwazi Arabs alone who continue to suffer the consequences of the toxic substances emitted by the oil and gas industry. The “uncaptured” toxic substances enter the soil, where they the poison the fruits and vegetables that the Ahwazis produce, and poison, too, the waters of the Gulf, and thus the fish that the Ahwazis rely on for food. This exposure to such poisons through their diet causes many Ahwazi women to give birth to deformed babies. Yet the Tehran government continues to ignore the need to clean up the oil-and-gas toxins emitted into the atmosphere that could be “captured” at the source through a “ smokestack scrubbers” policy.

The Ahwazi charge – that the Persian rulers wanted to situate the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Ahwaz, where in case of any accident or meltdown, it will not be Persians but the local Arabs who will be harmed – is entirely consonant with Persian policy toward the Ahwazi Arabs, one of criminal indifference to their health and wellbeing.

The Ahwazis began protesting over the issue of water being “stolen” by the Persians – i.e., diverted from Ahwaz to the north – and metamorphosed into a demand that Ahwaz become independent from “Iranian occupation.” The Iranian government will never agree to that, for it would mean losing all of its oil-and-gas production, but the very fact that such a demand for Ahwazi independence is now being made is terrifying to Tehran. It must wonder who else is behind that demand? Is it Sunni Arab states in the Gulf, such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, who want to tear away from Iran its main source of wealth, and are offering Ahwazi separatists financial and military support? Or could Israel itself be promising to supply the Ahwazis with weaponry and training to help them withstand, by force, any attempt by Tehran to crush the Arab separatists? Most likely, both the Sunni Arab states and Israel will be offering support, should the Ahwazi Arabs manage to break out in a large-scale open revolt that the Iranians are unable to suppress, for Israel and its Gulf allies want to encourage the Ahwazi separatist movement, as a simple way to threaten the economy, and undermine the security, of the Iranian state, and to keep it preoccupied with suppressing that revolt in the country’s oil-and-gas bearing south. It’s not only the Ahwazi revolt that in itself threatens the security of the state, but the effect of such a revolt on other ethnic minorities, including the Azeris, the Kurds, and the Balochis, who would be heartened by, and want to emulate, the Ahwazi example.

In response to the Ahwazis’ demand for independence, the regime cut off the Internet in the province. People from the area now have to film events in Ahwaz and travel to other areas to get the images out to the world.

Concurrently with the outbreak of demonstrations in Ahwaz, demonstrations broke out in support of the Kurdish and Azeri regions in northern Iran, as well as in Tehran, where slogans like “Death to the dictator” [the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei] and “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, the money for Iranians” were chanted.

The 20 million Azeris in Iran constitute about one-quarter of the country’s population, and right next door to the Azeri-populated parts of western Iran is the state of Azerbaijan, which has 10 million Azeris and a well-trained and well-supplied army. Azerbaijan could serve as a conduit for arms and money to the Azeri separatists – whose goal is not a separate state, like that desired by the Ahwazi Arabs — but rather, the incorporation of the Azeri-populated areas of Iran into an enlarged Azerbaijan. Were that effort to succeed, it would dramatically decrease Iran’s size, and strengthen its neighbor Azerbaijan, which just happens to be a close ally of Israel. Israel has long been a major supplier of weaponry to Azerbaijan. And Azerbaijan, in turn, has been mentioned as a possible site for an Israeli forward operating base in any future conflict with Iran. It’s a lot easier to bomb Iranian sites from Azerbaijan than from Israel. No wonder the Iranians will move heaven and earth to keep the Azeri separatist effort from succeeding.

It is important to note that despite widespread opposition to the Islamist regime among Iranians of Persian descent, they oppose the demand of ethnic minorities for disengagement from Iran. Indeed, when I [the author and former IDF intelligence analyst, Mordechai Kedar] raised in meetings with Persian-Iranian exiles the possibility that Iran would be partitioned into ethnic/national states (Persians, Arabs, Baluchs, Kurds, Turkmen, etc.) similar to what happened in the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, their response was always completely negative. They aspire to remove the ayatollahs from power, and some even speak of the return of the Shah’s son and the renewal of the monarchy, but they unequivocally support Iran’s continued existence in its current form, which perpetuates Persian control of the country’s many ethnic minorities….

Persian Iranians in exile, though ferocious enemies of the Islamic regime, are also, however, proud Persian nationalists, who oppose the separatist movements – by Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, and Balochis – that would reduce Persia’s power and size. They want a change of regime, not a much diminished homeland.

Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, and Balochis, who for years have been conducting their own unconnected campaigns for greater rights, have been — according to the senior Israeli intelligence analyst Mordechai Kedar — more recently collaborating with each other, keenly aware that if they were to simultaneously rise in revolt, the Iranian army would have a hard time suppressing four distinct separatist groups “on the edges of Iran.” These include the two million Ahwazi Arabs in the south, on the Gulf, whom Sunni Arabs might be eager to aid, not just out of ethnic solidarity, but to deprive the Islamic Republic of the oil and gas production on which its wellbeing is completely dependent; the three million Balochis – Sunnis persecuted by the Shi’a Persians — in the far east, who could obtain reinforcements and weapons from the eight million Balochis right across the border in Pakistan; the 20 million Azeris in Iran who can count on the support of the 10 million of their fellows in Azerbaijan, well-armed and battle-hardened from the war in Nagorno-Karabakh; and the twelve million Kurds in northwestern Iraq, who can receive various kinds of aid (weapons, money, and volunteers) from the twenty-five million Kurds who live in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

An end to the current Iranian regime, and the replacement of the ruling Islamists by secular democrats, would put an end to Iran’s regional aggression, that had been undertaken by the Islamic Republic to help other Islamist groups, from the Houthis to Hezbollah, in order to spread the Iranian revolution, and Iran’s power, across the Middle East.

Along with a change in its regime, the disintegration of Iran, through the success of separatist movements among the Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and Balochis, would ensure that even were Iran, most implausibly, to again revert to Islamism, it would be so reduced in size and wealth as to no longer constitute a threat to Israel, or to the Sunni states of the Gulf, or to the mullahs’ “Great Satan,” America.

The international community must therefore vigorously support the struggle of the ethnic/national minorities in Iran against the Islamist regime (as well as the struggle of the Persian majority against this regime) and their efforts to dismantle the Iranian state. President Biden must immediately abandon any intention to return to the nuclear deal or to remove sanctions from the regime, and instead invest significant resources — overt and covert, civilian and military — in helping the Iranian minorities free themselves from Persian suffocation.

An excellent idea from Mordechai Kedar, with his 25 years of experience as a senior intelligence officer for the IDF. The Bidenites should stop their policy of capitulation to the Iranians, forget about a return to the disastrous 2015 Iran deal that Iran, whatever it promises, has no intention of observing, keep in place those most effective sanctions, that have been wreaking havoc with Iran’s economy, and instead, direct American efforts to supporting the various separatist movements inside Iran – with weapons, with training, with money — whose success will put paid to any further dreams of geopolitical glory by a diminished, even dimidiated, Iran.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/separatist-sentiment-iran-rising-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Nasrallah: Afghanistan exit shows Israel cannot rely on US - i24NEWS and ILH Staff

 

by i24NEWS and ILH Staff

Hezbollah leader slams US withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling the Taliban takeover the "moral downfall of America."

 

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah speaks on Aug. 7, 2021, marking 15 years since the 2006 Second Lebanon War | Screenshot: Al-Manar TV via Reuters

 Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah slammed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in a televised speech Tuesday night carried by official Hezbollah media, saying that the Taliban takeover is the "moral downfall of America."

The leader of the radical Shiite group said that the lesson to be taken from America's hasty retreat from Afghanistan is that the US is not a reliable partner, specifically mentioning Israel.

"Those watching most closely and drawing conclusions from this are the Israelis," the terrorist leader said.

Nasrallah said that US President Joe Biden was willing to "accept a historic failure" to prove a policy shift that the US will in the future not fight wars for other nations, asking rhetorically what the new American foreign policy would mean for Lebanon and its neighbors.

In a speech at the White House, Biden said he stood by the decision to leave the central Asian nation, despite the Islamist insurgents quickly conquering the entire country, including the capital, Kabul.

Biden said that the goal of the Afghanistan invasion almost 20 years ago was to respond to the 9/11 attacks with a narrow focus on counter-terrorism and was "never supposed to be nation-building."

He said that the US would focus on today's threats that go beyond Afghanistan, while threatening a "devastating" response if the Taliban targeted US interests.

"Everybody must consider it and meditate upon it," Nasrallah said, referring to the Taliban's victory. "Those who most need to draw conclusions and wisdom from this are the peoples of this region."

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

 

i24NEWS and ILH Staff 

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/19/nasrallah-afghanistan-exit-shows-israel-cannot-rely-on-us/

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Netanyahu: I refused Kerry's proposal to apply Afghan model to Palestinians - Ariel Kahana and i24NEWS

 

by Ariel Kahana and i24NEWS

"I predicted that as soon as the United States left Afghanistan, everything would collapse. Unfortunately, that is what happened: an extremist Islamic regime has conquered Afghanistan and will transform it into a terrorist state which will endanger world peace," former prime minister says.

 

Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu | File photo: Marc Israel Sellem/Pool

In the wake of the Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan this week, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the United States had indeed offered him to apply its "Afghan model" in Israel by having US-trained Palestinian forces provide Israeli security.

"In 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry invited me on a secret visit to Afghanistan to see how the United States had established a local military force capable of fighting terrorism alone," Netanyahu said. "The message was clear: the 'Afghan model' is the model that the United States also seeks to apply to the Palestinian cause.

"I politely declined the offer and predicted that as soon as the US left Afghanistan, everything would collapse. Unfortunately, that is what happened: an extremist Islamic regime has conquered Afghanistan and will transform it into a terrorist state which will endanger world peace.

"We would achieve the same result if, God forbid, we handed over control of the homeland to the Palestinians. They would establish a terrorist state in Judea and Samaria."

The opposition leader said that time proved he made the right decision and warned that Israel "must not trust others to ensure our safety, we must defend ourselves against any threat."

However, "the Lapid-Abbas-Bennett government is doing the exact opposite, endangering our security and our very existence. They have agreed on a 'no surprises' policy with Iran, a dangerous policy that restricts Israel's operational freedom of action," he concluded.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

 

Ariel Kahana and i24NEWS 

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/19/netanyahu-i-refused-kerrys-proposal-to-apply-afghan-model-to-palestinians/

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Netanyahu may offer Gantz rotation-free premiership, sources say - Mati Tuchfeld

 

by Mati Tuchfeld

With all signs pointing to the state budget passing as planned, opposition members are said to be working on a no-confidence vote to topple the government, but it is unclear whether Blue and White's leader is on board with the plan.

 

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and former PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, August 2020 | Photo: Oren Ben Hakoon

With all signs pointing to the state budget passing as planned, there are almost no ways left for the opposition to topple the government. Polls showing that approval ratings for the coalition are dropping while Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu's numbers rise are useless without the government somehow crumbling apart.

Attempts to drive a wedge between the coalition members in hopes someone rebels and votes against the budget will continue until the very last minute in mid-November, but at the same time, the Likud is scrambling to find other ways to undermine the government.

These actions come from the understanding that the government funds are readily and abundantly available to anyone demanding them to remain a "well-behaved" coalition member and that the safety net provided by the Joint Arab List is too solid to break, so the image of the "fragile coalition" does not necessarily reflect reality.

This is why for Likud, the possibility of turning Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is, in fact, the only option on the horizon.

Gantz does not bother denying it – his status in the government is emboldened by the coalition members' fear he may bolt – and the Likud makes no secret of the attempts to approach him.

Just this week Gantz said, "I could be prime minister, and I think I can be prime minister at any political point in time." Right now, it seems he fears the media will turn on him, but in the event that the government continues losing ground in public, he will be justified in making a move.

Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has no intention of biding his time. He knows that the relationship between him and Gantz is a significant obstacle to realizing this plan and he also knows that Gantz will not make any move before the vote on the budget – after all, the last thing Blue and White's leader needs is to become the PM only to try to pass the budget in a vote that could spell the current Knesset's demise.

Recently, Netanyahu shared with opposition figures the possibility of reaching a deal with Gantz by which the latter will be named as prime minister through a no-confidence vote in the government and sans a power-sharing deal, meaning without a specified agreement on the date on which Netanyahu and Gantz switch the premiership role. This will see Netanyahu named PM-designate until the next elections are called, and it is believed that the opposition will be able to secure the 61-MK majority needed to push this type of move.

There is no doubt that if such an offer is made Gantz would have to at least entertain it, but he would still need a due cause to act on it.

 

Mati Tuchfeld

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/19/netanyahu-may-offer-gantz-rotation-free-premiership-sources-say/

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The Real Lesson of Afghanistan - Raymond Ibrahim

 

by Raymond Ibrahim

Muslim perseverance vs. Western myopia.

 

In an interview conducted back in 2005, al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri was asked about the statuses of Osama bin Laden, then leader of al-Qaeda, and Mullah Muhammad Omar, then leader of the Taliban—the two men most implicated for the September 11, 2001 terror strikes on the U.S. (bin Laden for masterminding it, Omar for providing him with logistical aid and sanctuary).

It had been four years since the U.S. had invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban, and sent jihadists of all stripes running; and there had not been a peep from either the leader of al-Qaeda or the leader of the Taliban for quite some time.

Al-Zawahiri’s response, which I translated for inclusion in The Al Qaeda Reader (2007), has always stayed with me.  He said:

Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time (p.182, emphasis added).

Consider the applicability—if not the prophetic nature—of this response in light of recent developments: twenty years ago, the U.S.A.—the world’s only superpower—invaded Afghanistan, one of the world’s weakest and poorest nations; it made quick work of its enemies and set shop, nation building and importing “democracy”; and it eventually eliminated its archenemies, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

To any casual Western observer, it was an unqualified and resounding U.S. victory.

And yet…. and yet, two decades, trillions of U.S. dollars, and thousands of American servicemen’s lives later, not only does the U.S. not having anything to show for it, Afghanistan is set to become a much larger threat than ever before (not least as the Taliban—a “radical Muslim” group that has just founded the “Islamic emirate” of Afghanistan—seized billions’ worth of American weapons and equipment).

So what went wrong?  Perhaps the following dichotomy—or rather dictum—may help:  Whereas Muslims take a long, patient view of history, Westerners take a very short, myopic view; whereas Muslims maintain their ways and bide their time in moments of defeat (“we may be down but—so long as we’re not out—we’re still in the game”), Westerners allot too much significance to the temporal—to specific achievements or markers in time and space.

Take a concrete example—the wild euphoria that took the media by storm after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.  Then, CNN security analyst Peter Bergen declared that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further counseled that “It’s time to move on.”

Another CNN analyst, Fareed Zakaria, assured us that “this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”

And yet … and yet, a full decade after bin Laden’s death, not only is his original safe haven, a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, back in action, but so too is al-Qaeda.

Why?  Again, to quote that terrorist organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri: “Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden … are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time.”

Kill this or that jihadist; conquer this or that Muslim nation; prop up this or that government and import this or that Western ideology or style of governance—so long as Islam is alive and well, so too will the “journey of jihad” continue, even if as an imperceptible pulse under the surface, revealing itself only when the time is right.

That you can always bet on.

 

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/real-lesson-afghanistan-raymond-ibrahim/

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Since New DHS Alert, You're a Potential Terrorist if You Oppose White House Lies - Gen. Michael Flynn

 

by Gen. Michael Flynn

Has our nation sunk to a new low?

 

This article originally appeared here at The Western Journal.

On Sept. 17, 2021, our nation will celebrate the 234th anniversary of our beloved U.S. Constitution.

The fact that this document has lasted for such a period is a remarkable feat. Legal scholars have reviewed national constitutions that have been adopted since 1789 and concluded that they lasted an average of only 17 years.

But as I travel the country, Americans are asking me, “How much longer do we have before our constitutional protections are wiped away? How long before our nation descends into a real tyranny?” One friend went as far as saying, “If you criticize this administration, they call it hate speech; if you disagree with their actions, they call you a domestic terrorist.”

My friend wasn’t exaggerating, reading the most recent Department of Homeland Security issuance on Friday of a nationwide terrorism alert message titled “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.”

To be frank, I was stunned and found myself asking, have we, the United States of America, sunk to a new low? Although we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against our nation, this terrorism alert does not say one word about Muslim extremism being a threat and it barely mentions al-Qaida.

Rather, this terrorism bulletin focuses on the Bidens’ political opponents. Its sweeping rhetoric was so broad that it could put under suspicion more than half of all Americans. Is the Biden administration redefining domestic terrorism? Will having a pro-American set of beliefs and using the word “patriot” get you labeled a domestic terrorist?

The alert focuses on those who resist the Anthony Fauci COVID-19 narrative, stating that “threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.” I wonder what “perceived” government restrictions they had in mind — aren’t the real restrictions damaging enough?

The alert also warns that “extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.” And it warns against “conspiracy theories concerning the origins of COVID-19 and effectiveness of vaccines.”

So if you are a small business owner who managed to survive the last set of shutdowns and are desperately trying to survive the next shutdown, you could be a terrorist. If you believe that vaccines are an irreversible threat to your health that must be avoided at all costs, as I do, you could be a terrorist.

The alert also warns that domestic violent extremists are motivated by “perceived election fraud.” Therefore, if you believe that the nation overwhelmingly elected Donald J. Trump as president of the United States in November 2020, as I do, you could be a terrorist.

Then finally the nation is warned, “Law enforcement have expressed concerns that the broader sharing of false narratives and conspiracy theories will gain traction in mainstream environments.”

So if you believe whatever narrative is being spun from the White House podium by Jen Psaki, you are automatically protected. If your tweets are never blocked, and your Facebook posts are never removed, you are a loyal American. But if you think the government is often lying and manipulating, you could be a terrorist.

The alert then promises that the government will tell us everything we need to know — by “advancing authoritative sources of information to debunk and, when possible, preempt false narratives and intentional disinformation, and providing educational materials to promote resilience to the risks associated with interacting with and spreading disinformation, conspiracy theories and false narratives.

The last provision of the alert is so reassuring — that DHS would take action against Americans “while protecting the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of all persons.”

I’m sorry, but DHS leadership must take us all for complete idiots. The real threat appears to be from our own government and their misperceptions of what are very real and dangerous homeland threats we do truly face.

This alert reads like something out of the 1930s. You’re a potential terrorist if you oppose lies coming from the most leftist administration ever to occupy the White House. There is not a word about antifa, or Black Lives Matter, or any of the leftist groups protected by the Biden White House while they conducted their reign of terror on American cities.

The alert had not one word about the study from Princeton University that violent BLM demonstrations (i.e. riots) occurred somewhere just under 220 locations all across the nation. These are the violent people who Kamala Harris worked to get out on bail through a nonprofit group. What a disgrace.

What can and should we learn from this alert? Much, I think. We can anticipate the next steps by the Biden-Harris administration in suppressing legitimate, constitutionally protected dissent.

This alert foreshadows more lockdowns — probably nationally. The government may be hoping to provoke the American people to actively resist illegal lockdowns, and then to characterize that resistance to tyranny as a clear and present danger — a threat to the very existence of government.

But even if there is no strong pushback to new sanctions, this administration is not above ensuring that there are incidents that it can use to justify grabbing even more power.

This would not be the first administration that used a “false flag” event to gain power.

Every American should know what “false flags” are, and when acts of violence are blamed on American patriots to gain new government powers, especially with this gang in charge of the government and the FBI, this should be the first explanation we look at. Consider the role of the FBI in the claimed effort to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

I had no illusions about who the Democrats put on their national ticket in 2020, but the Biden administration is proving itself to be so much worse than even I thought. We have survived ineffective presidents in U.S. history. This administration is acting recklessly — dangerously — both at home and abroad. And it is acting against our own people.

DHS claims there are calls for violence against officials, law enforcement, government and religious buildings and people with opposing ideological views — but the bulletin casually admits it has no specific information about any of these threats of violence.

If you wonder about the timing, this bulletin came out the day after Mike Lindell’s cyber symposium in South Dakota ended. Such are the strategies of the rulers we’re now living under. God help us.

 

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn served as national security advisor to President Donald Trump.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/new-dhs-alert-youre-potential-terrorist-if-you-gen-michael-flynn/

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Biden’s Afghanistan Catastrophe Increases Terror Threat in US - Michael Cutler

 

by Michael Cutler

Biden administration, meanwhile, focuses solely on "domestic extremists".

 

The twentieth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 is just a few weeks away.

The first step in solving a problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem.

 

The good news is that the Biden administration acknowledges that America faces an increased threat of terrorism, especially as the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11 by al-Qaida approaches.

 

The bad news, even as the Taliban has now taken back all of Afghanistan because of the Biden administration’s abysmally failed policies, the Biden administration, incredibly, is entirely focused on the threats posed by domestic terrorists and extremists.  

 

Biden utterly ignores the failures of the immigration system that continue to undermine national security and public safety in this especially dangerous era. 

 

On August 13, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled, DHS Issues New National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin.

 

The focus of the press release, and as you will see, the NTAS Bulletin was Domestic Terrorism without a single reference to possible entry of foreign terrorists into the United States even as it addressed the elevated threats posed by various terror groups as the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11 is nearly upon us.

 

In fact, the above-noted press release included this excerpt:

 

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DHS has increased the development, production, and dissemination of intelligence and other actionable information central to countering threats in the current environment.  DHS has established a new, dedicated domestic terrorism branch within the Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A).  Further, DHS has established the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to help build local prevention frameworks to provide communities with the tools they need to counter terrorism and other targeted violence.   

 

In February, Secretary Mayorkas designated combating domestic violent extremism as a National Priority Area for the first time in FEMA grant programs. As a result, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments are required to spend at least 7.5 percent, or a minimum of $77 million, of their DHS grant awards toward combating this threat.   

 

These initiatives are taken in concert with the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Domestic Terrorism Strategy which highlights the whole-of-government approach being take to enhance the analysis and distribution of actionable intelligence to stakeholders; prevent domestic terrorism recruitment and the mobilization to violence; disrupt and deter domestic terrorism activity; and confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism. 

The National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin referred to above begins with this summary:

Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland

 

The Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the current heightened threat environment across the United States.  The Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment leading up to and following the 20th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well religious holidays we assess could serve as a catalyst for acts of targeted violence. These threats include those posed by domestic terrorists, individuals and groups engaged in grievance-based violence, and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences. These actors are increasingly exploiting online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity. Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.

This bulletin articulated concerns about domestic extremists and their numerous possible motivations.  When the bulletin did mention foreign terrorist organizations, the concern was limited as to how those terror groups could motivate domestic terrorists,  presumably Americans, via the internet.

Consider these two excerpts:

Additionally, leading up to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula recently released its first English-language copy of Inspire magazine in over four years, which demonstrates that foreign terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire U.S.-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences.

 

Foreign and domestic threat actors, to include foreign intelligence services, international terrorist groups and domestic violent extremists, continue to introduce, amplify, and disseminate narratives online that promote violence, and have called for violence against elected officials, political representatives, government facilities, law enforcement, religious communities or commercial facilities, and perceived ideologically-opposed individuals. There are also continued, non-specific calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with DVE ideologies or conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement, and responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases.

 

There was not a single word in the two DHS documents cited above, about concerns that foreign terrorists would seek to enter the United States to carry out terror attacks even as the Taliban was rampaging across Afghanistan, the country that provided safe havens for al-Qaida and other terror organizations before the attacks of 9/11 which prompted American military action in that country to help prevent future terror attacks against the United States.

 

Now even the Mainstream Media is alarmed over the loss of Afghanistan to the Taliban as  direct result of the abrupt way that the Biden administration essentially turned tail and fled from that dangerous country, even leaving the U.S. Embassy staff in harm’s way, ordering them to “Shelter in place” as the Taliban captured city after city, including Kabul. 

 

On August 15, 2021 Newsweek reported, Clip of Biden Saying People Won't Be Lifted Off Embassy Roof in Afghanistan Resurfaces as Just That Happens while on that very same day AOL posted the Associated Press report, Concerns over U.S. terror threats rising as Taliban hold grows.

 

The first paragraph of the preface of the official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel - Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” states: 

 

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Page 47 contained this excerpt:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.” Mohammed Salameh, who rented the truck used in the bombing, overstayed his tourist visa. He then applied for permanent residency under the agricultural workers program, but was rejected. Eyad Mahmoud Ismail, who drove the van containing the bomb, took English-language classes at Wichita State University in Kansas on a student visa; after he dropped out, he remained in the United States out of status.

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists 

 

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist 

groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.   Indeed, there is 

evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of 

terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.  With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.

 

The only conclusion I can come to is that inasmuch as the Biden administration is determined to ramp up the “Immigration Delivery System” as I have come to refer to the administration’s malfeasant immigration policies, there can be no acknowledgment that terror attacks from foreign terror organizations depends on multiple failures of the immigration system.

 

One of my earlier articles, Jihad At The Border, explained how the border crisis facilitates the entry of terrorists.

 

Given all of the foregoing facts I have provided today, my earlier article was all too prescient:  Biden Ends War On Radical Islamist Terrorists 'Over Here' and 'Over There'.

 

Michael Cutler

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bidens-afghanistan-catastrophe-increases-terror-michael-cutler/

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Biden's Clueless Afghan Double-Cross - Lawrence Kadish

 

by Lawrence Kadish

What must allies such as Taiwan or Israel be thinking now after watching poorly armed tribesman sweep aside an American ally we resolutely vowed to assist?

• Globally, there is not a friend or foe who doesn't see that America's reliability as an ally has been demolished. Great Britain, which has troops in Afghanistan, was not even consulted.

• Thousands of Americans awaiting instructions and with no way to get to an airport whose access is now controlled by the Taliban are still trapped inside Afghanistan. Pathetically, they are being told to "shelter in place." Interpreters and their families, who were promised that in the event of crisis they would be rescued, are not just trapped; reports are that members of the Taliban with "lists of names" are going door to door looking for allies of the U.S. military.

• A strong argument was made for not pulling out at all. The objective was to ensure that America was never again attacked by a 9/11 type of terrorist group. To that end, the U.S. had a modest military footprint, like a small insurance premium, in Afghanistan.... The U.S. has, after all, had troops in Germany and South Korea for decades, and no one has been calling for their removal.

• What must allies such as Taiwan or Israel be thinking now after watching poorly armed tribesman sweep aside an American ally we resolutely vowed to assist? Worse, what must America's adversaries, such as China, Russia, Iran or North Korea be thinking now? That such cut-and-run behavior signals the perfect opportunity to strike the Ukraine or Taiwan?

• Communist China can see what America and the West did in response to its seizure of Hong Kong, its deceitful build-up of fake islands as military bases in the South China Sea, its attacks on northern India, its threats of a nuclear attack on Japan, its threats to attack Australia and its lies about the human-to-human transmissibility of its Covid-19 virus that have so far caused the deaths of more than 4,000,000 people worldwide and the devastation of countless economies -- exactly nothing.

Thousands of Americans awaiting instructions and with no way to get to an airport whose access is now controlled by the Taliban are still trapped inside Afghanistan. Pathetically, they are being told to "shelter in place." Pictured: Taliban fighters near Zanbaq Square in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 16, 2021. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

The horror of President Joseph Biden's deliberate retreat from Afghanistan is so immense and its geopolitical impact so severe, we have to fully comprehend the extent of the disaster.

In insisting on an immediate withdrawal Biden apparently rejected the advice of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the New York Times:

"Even as the number of American forces in Afghanistan steadily decreased to the 2,500 who still remained, Defense Department leaders still cobbled together a military effort that managed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks...."

Director of Central Intelligence William Burns also warned the U.S. Senate that a withdrawal would forfeit the ability to have human intelligence in the area to pick up what the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or Isis might be planning in their ongoing assault on the West.

Globally, there is not a friend or foe who doesn't see that America's reliability as an ally has been demolished. Great Britain, which has troops in Afghanistan, was not even consulted.

Thousands of Americans awaiting instructions and with no way to get to an airport whose access is now controlled by the Taliban are still trapped inside Afghanistan. Pathetically, they are being told to "shelter in place." Interpreters and their families, who were promised that in the event of crisis they would be rescued, are not just trapped; reports are that members of the Taliban with "lists of names" are going door to door looking for allies of the U.S. military.

According to the Washington Post:

"'I gave everything I had to the Americans, but once they are gone, I will be killed,' Abdul Rashid Shirzad told the journalists. The 35-year-old husband and father mastered English and risked his life to serve two years as a battlefield interpreter for Navy SEALs. Shirzad said his identity and those of other U.S. employees are well known to Taliban extremists: 'They keep track of us, and they don't shoot us like they do Afghan soldiers. If they catch me, they will behead me.'"

Other reports tell of the Taliban also going door to door and dragging out girls, some as young as 12, to make them "fighters' sex slaves" or for forced marriages.

Some military experts suggest that if a troop withdrawal had been planned for the winter when the Taliban return to Pakistan to escape the cold, rather than in the middle if the summer, evidently the fighting season, much of this calamitous outcome could have been avoided. Biden was hearing none of it.

A strong argument was made for not pulling out at all. The objective was to ensure that America was never again attacked by a 9/11 type of terrorist group. To that end, the U.S. had a modest military footprint, like a small insurance premium, in Afghanistan of 2,500 troops, six airbases including the largest, Bagram; and from its runways the ability to reach adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and other points in or near Central Asia. Those airbases are now in the hands of the Taliban.

To reach much of Eastern or Central Asia now, the U.S. would first have to fly around eight hours from the Gulf States, or perhaps from Pakistan – not the most practical approach, although the US has reportedly been looking for other airbases in Central Asia. The U.S. has, after all, had troops in Germany and South Korea for decades, and no one has been calling for their removal.

There are fears as well that after the Americans have gone, the treatment of women and girls will be beyond description. MSNBC reports:

"[A]ccording to Human Rights Watch, the Taliban have been summarily executing Afghan civilians linked to the government — a development Secretary of State Antony Blinken meekly said was 'troubling.' Already, the Afghans who put their lives on the line to assist the U.S. Army over the last decades are reported to have been beheaded, a grotesque dereliction of our duty to the Afghans who foolishly believed in the U.S."

What must allies such as Taiwan or Israel be thinking now after watching poorly armed tribesman sweep aside an American ally we resolutely vowed to assist? Worse, what must America's adversaries, such as China, Russia, Iran or North Korea be thinking now? That such cut-and-run behavior signals the perfect opportunity to strike the Ukraine or Taiwan?

Communist China can see what America and the West did in response to its seizure of Hong Kong, its deceitful build-up of fake islands as military bases in the South China Sea, its attacks on northern India, its threats of a nuclear attack on Japan, its threats to attack Australia and its lies about the human-to-human transmissibility of its Covid-19 virus that have so far caused the deaths of more than 4,000,000 people worldwide and the devastation of countless economies -- exactly nothing.

The new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will now be the center for a resurgent terrorism, a Mecca for terrorists. Terrorists in Europe, now emboldened, will have a command-and-control headquarters to draw on. Moreover, what is to stop them, and the thousands of terrorists, including senior Al-Qaeda operatives, released from Afghan prisons this week, from crossing into the U.S. through its newly open, non-existent southern border?

In June, President Biden announced that the Afghan army, 300,000 strong, was armed with "all the tools... and equipment of any modern military. We provided advanced weaponry." Much of this weaponry -- "massive amounts of US-supplied firepower" -- is now in the possession of the Taliban, potentially to be used against the U.S. and our allies throughout Europe.

Historians have the advantage of looking back at seminal events that occurred decades, generations, even centuries ago and, with hindsight, point to how the fate of nations were changed by decisions, indecisions, mistakes, or a failure of leadership. In this case, they won't need to wait to assign the verdict of history. It is now clear that the Biden Administration has profoundly and dangerously miscalculated, and the free world will pay the price. As we approach the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, the bitter irony won't be lost on many an American.

 

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17658/afghanistan-double-cross

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