… we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them. …
UPDATE I: Genghis Bush (corrected the title) was talking about the January 6 Trumpsters or “the sixers,” as Musil Ken calls them. Not in a million years would I have imagined that any America Firster would misconstrue this evil man to be defending Robert E. Lee and the like. Our side is hopeless if someone thought thus.
UPDATE II: For heaven’s sake; when Genghis Bush laments the destruction of “national symbols,” he doesn’t mean confederate or other historic monuments; he means The State; Uncle Sam; The Ultimate Predator.
Fox News celeb anchors continue to trip over one another to talk up the wonders of our Afghan allies and the affront of failing to lift them to safety.
Between the Republicans and the Democrats, there isn’t a country in the world that could not be a target for resettlement in America. (“DHS Official: Afghans Without Visas Being Brought to U.S.” On what moral basis are the lot at Fox News objecting?)
Truth be told, I’m deeply repulsed by legions of Americans, ex-soldiers and other emotional sniveling wrecks, rushing to bring Afghanistan to the US. I’m an American. Who’s rescuing people I love in South Africa? Many are subjected to race-based depredations and all are far more compatible with life here, although my South Africans have a comorbidity: they’re white.
One of the networks interviewed one Tim Kennedy, a teary, hardened military man from Special Forces. On August the 26th, as he packed his bag, Kennedy waxed fat about dying for anyone who wants to fight for a freer world. And off he went to fight for his people, the Afghans. (He is on Twitter, too, promoting the Special VisasAfghanSIVApplication@state.gov.)
I find it hard to respect this kind of deracinated soldier of empire.
I can’t listen to Kennedy’spat neoconservative rants (never with any journalistic proof) about the Taliban and their crimes. These soldiers of empire remain so vested in homelands not their own, this as their own homeland is being invaded and is filled with poor, sad people.
If members of the US Military had a moral core, they’d disobey orders en masse and head to the THEIR OWN COUNTRY’S South-western border.
Or, help such pathetic, helpless and hopeless Americans like “The Whittakers: An Inbred American Family,” living like animals in the United States of America. There is so much unutterable suffering in the US. The bravado of the typical, tough-talking military man, gushing over—and rushing to—Afghanistan not only doesn’t impress, but turns my stomach.
As I watch the wretched of the world living within America’s borders, I think of the words of Cullen Murphy, superb author of “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome”:
“Imperial overstretch” is “the idea that one’s security needs, military obligations, and globalist desires increasingly outstrip resources available to satisfy them” (Are We Rome, p. 71).
Outsized and excessive: The above is a perfect description of the improper and misplaced exhilaration of this Kennedy ex-Special Operations, on his private mission to Afghanistan. Everything about it is outsized and excessive. Such a military sickens, as a military is designed to defend the homeland and the homeboys.
UPDATE (9/7): “Here’s another ex-Special Forces guy bragging about the massive global effort he and a GOP Congressman put forth to import foreign Muslims into our neighborhoods,” writes a Twitter friend. He is Cory Mills.
“We’ve seen picture of US service members at the Kabul airport cradling babies,” puled Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Yes, and how it nauseates any person with a solid understanding of what the mission of the US military ought to be: defend the homeland and its inhabitants.
Perhaps if “our men and women in uniform” exemplified less “compassionate courage” for The Globe, as Blinken describes the cradling Marines, and better, more spry situational awareness—perhaps they’d have their eyes peeled and would have spotted suspicious, shifty strangers about to detonate themselves in their midst.
On the other hand, this is what the Marines, paid for by US taxpayers, are trained to do: Be a “global force for good.” In fact, in 2009, this was, for a short time, the motto of the Marines, until it met with objection. That objection would no longer be noticed.
The image you see here shows “inside a U.S. Air Force C-17 plane that left Kabul for Qatar on Aug. 15 (Courtesy of Defense One).”
Media “reporting” on Afghanistan is not reporting, but, rather, an unremitting gush, in an effort to create a state of heightened sentimentality, sentiments of the right kind, of course. That involves a constant reference to the “American retreat from Saigon, Vietnam, in 1975.” Truly repulsive.
The pilots initially thought 800 passengers were on board, according to an apparent audio clip from the flight, in a plane that can carry up to 164,900 pounds. “How many people are on your jet,” an unidentified person asks the flight. “800 people on your jet? Holy cow.”
“Make no mistake,” slobbers Forbes, “lifting six times more people than an aircraft is designed to seat is a heroic achievement of logistics, skill and sheer grit.”
Not that these inept journalists ask for an accounting—but reading between the lines, it is my impression that very few Americans—in the mere hundreds—have been airlifted to safety. I guess Americans are not quite as pushy.
Besides, while funded by Americans, the US military’s allegiances are global and humanitarian. Our soldiers are trained to be “a global force for good.” In 2009, that indeed was “the U.S. Navy’s recruiting slogan,” for a while.
The slogan was ditched then, but it is perfectly apropos now, since recruits are inculcated with a thoroughly cosmopolitan, even anti-American, sensibility.
By the sounds of it, very few Americans are on these flights.
A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes, guarded by a temporary U.S. military deployment that’s building to 6,000 troops. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.
Biden said 169 Americans had been brought to the airport from beyond its perimeter, but he provided no details.
UPDATE (8/22):
MORE PLEASE: Young, military age men:
The duopoly pundits seem thrilled that the US is bringing in plane loads of young, strong men, unburdened by women and children. The hallmark of a good immigrant my foot. #KabulEvacuationhttps://t.co/qSE4flyO92
