Worldwide Clashes, Confrontations & Quarrels - Time For a History Review

When, If Ever, Can We Lay This Burden Down?

8/20/2019 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

Friday, President Donald Trump met in New Jersey with his national security advisers and envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is negotiating with the Taliban to bring about peace, and a U.S. withdrawal from America's longest war.

U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, in a war that has cost 2,400 American lives.

Following the meeting, Trump tweeted, "Many on the opposite sides of this 19 year war, and us, are looking to make a deal -- if possible!"

Some, however, want no deal; they are fighting for absolute power.

Saturday, a wedding in Kabul with a thousand guests was hit by a suicide bomber who, igniting his vest, massacred 63 people and wounded 200 in one of the greatest atrocities of the war. ISIS claimed responsibility.

Monday, 10 bombs exploded in restaurants and public squares in the eastern city of Jalalabad, wounding 66.

Trump is pressing Khalilzad to negotiate drawdowns of U.S. troop levels from the present 14,000, and to bring about a near-term end to U.S. involvement in a war that began after we overthrew the old Taliban regime for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

Is it too soon to ask: What have we gained from our longest war? Was all the blood and treasure invested worth it? And what does the future hold?

If the Taliban could not be defeated by an Afghan army, built up by the U.S. for a decade and backed by 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010-2011, then are the Taliban likely to give up the struggle when the U.S. is drawing down the last 14,000 troops and heading home?

The Taliban control more of the country than they have at any time since being overthrown in 2001. And time now seems to be on their side.

Why have they persevered, and prevailed in parts of the country?

Motivated by a fanatic faith, tribalism and nationalism, they have shown a willingness to die for a cause that seems more compelling to them than what the U.S.-backed Afghan government has on offer.

They also have the guerrillas' advantage of being able to attack at times and places of their own choosing, without the government's burden of having to defend towns and cities.

Will these Taliban, who have lost many battles but not the war, retire from the field and abide by democratic elections once the Americans go home? Why should they?

The probability: When the Americans depart, the war breaks out anew, and the Taliban ultimately prevail.

And Afghanistan is but one of the clashes and conflicts in which America is engaged.

Severe U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have failed to bring down the Nicholas Maduro regime in Caracas but have contributed to the immiseration of that people, 10% of whom have left the country. Trump now says he is considering a quarantine or blockade to force Maduro out.

Eight years after we helped to overthrow Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Libya is still mired in civil war, with its capital, Tripoli, under siege.

Yemen, among the world's humanitarian disasters, has seen the UAE break with its Saudi interventionist allies, and secessionists split off southern Yemen from the Houthi-dominated north. Yet, still, Congress has been unable to force the Trump administration to end all support of the Saudi war.

Two thousand U.S. troops remain in Syria. The northern unit is deployed between our Syrian Kurd allies and the Turkish army. In the south, they are positioned to prevent Iran and Iranian-backed militias from creating a secure land bridge from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut.

In our confrontation with Iran, we have few allies.

The Brits released the Iranian tanker they seized at Gibraltar, which had been carrying oil to Syria. But when the Americans sought to prevent its departure, a Gibraltar court ruled against the United States.

Iran presents no clear or present danger to U.S. vital interests, but the Saudis and Israelis see Iran as a mortal enemy, and want the U.S. military rid them of the menace.

Hong Kong protesters wave American flags and seek U.S. support of their demands for greater autonomy and freedom in their clash with their Beijing-backed authorities. The Taiwanese want us to support them and sell them the weapons to maintain their independence. The Philippines wants us to take their side in the dispute with China over tiny islets in the South China Sea.

We are still committed to go to war to defend South Korea. And the North has lately test-fired a series of ballistic missiles, none of which could hit the USA, but all of which could hit South Korea.

Around the world, America is involved in quarrels, clashes and confrontations with almost too many nations to count.

In how many of these are U.S. vital interests imperiled? And in how many are we facing potential wars on behalf of other nations, while they hold our coat and egg us on?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

Illegal Immigration -- America's Frankenstein

Illegal Immigration: A Lawless Frankenstein in the ‘Land of Is’

7/5/2018 - Will Alexander

When the first bud sprouted that made light of illegal immigration a few decades ago, it was hard to be alarmed because such sentiments strayed so far from basic common sense.  “The law is the law,” we thought.  Simple. 

Democrats thought so, too:

Chuck Schumer: “Illegal immigration is wrong; plain and simple.” (2009)

Hillary Clinton: “… I am adamantly against illegal immigration.” (2003)

Harry Reid: “If making it easy to be an illegal alien is not enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant? No sane country would do that, right? Guess again. If you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship …” (1993)

Dianne Feinstein:  “Mexico must do its share because the day when America could be the welfare system for Mexico is gone.  We simply can’t afford it.” (1993)

Bill Clinton: “… we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace... We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws.” (1995)

Back then, illegal meant illegal.

Today, the little bud has grown legs, and it walks around the country like a stitched-up Frankenstein knocking over centuries-old legal structures.  

It has a foul mouth, too:  “Abolish ICE!! Keep @#*& families together! Impeach @#*& Trump!”  

And why do we tolerate this stiff-legged patchwork of organized lawlessness?  Three reasons: Some are afraid of it because it’s grown so large, and it’s not going away without a fight.  Others find it useful for their own agendas. And many believe that the easiest way out is to tame it into something respectable.   

America’s Frankenstein is not a person, but a dangerously misguided idea: That we can openly defy explicit federal law for decades without letting loose a world of other institutional monsters. We’ve seen much of the mayhem being played out on TV already, all of it in support of openly defying explicit federal law.   

But ladies and gentlemen, pay no attention to the scary faces on the big screen that tell you that illegal is other than what it really is.  Today’s media operates in a “Land of Is” where those who hide behind the curtains of ulterior motives pull at the levers of twisted language to confuse Americans on what the real meaning of is, is. 

In the Land of Is, tough border enforcement is “terrorism”; a young criminal is a “justice-involved youth”; terrorism is a “man-caused disaster”; a tax cut is a “giveaway to the rich”; big government spending is an “investment”; a tax penalty is a “shared responsibility payment”; a conservative is “far right”; gradual socialism is “progress”; and an illegal alien is an “undocumented immigrant.”

But in real life, illegal is still illegal.  

No matter how compassionate you may be about your sick grandmother, you will go to jail if you rob a bank to get money for medical care.  If she’s an accomplice, she’ll go to jail, too.  

No matter how loudly your starving children cry for food and shelter, if you break into someone’s home to steal food and take over the house, you’ll go to jail – without your children.  

This is how we deal with “good” lawbreakers in desperate situations in real life. And it’s the only way we’ll solve this stubborn Frankenstein problem for good.  The problem will never be solved by renaming it Frankie, clothing it in patriotism, and splattering its face with cheap rhetorical cologne.

Today, we’re sitting on an institutional powder keg when organized mobs, illegals, lawmakers, activist journalists, and a hodgepodge of Trump-haters openly, loudly and consistently defy explicit federal law with no fear of repercussions.  

The untold billions we’ve spent over the years has amounted to putting lipstick on a pig.   We’ve drenched the airwaves with decades of media coverage.  Elected leaders, who swore to uphold the law, have broken countless promises to citizens who break their backs to pay their taxes, only to have them lavished on the unnecessary burdens of illegal immigration.  And we’ve had to listen to billions of empty words with the most soaring patriotic rhetoric about the virtues of immigration, which have absolutely nothing to do with illegal immigration.  After all of this, the pig is still a pig, and it stinks to high heaven.

Abraham Lincoln, in 1837, gave a speech in Illinois after he was struck with horror over the widespread lawlessness infecting the country at the time.  He called it mob law, or mobocracy.  In that speech, he had a warning and a remedy.  

The warning: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?  I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; … If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. … I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, … (where) the lawless in spirit is encouraged to become lawless in practice … Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores … depend on it, this government cannot last.”

The remedy: “How shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple.  Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. … bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force …  they should be religiously observed.” 

Lincoln had another warning in that speech. “Good men” – those who work hard, love tranquility, are quick to obey the laws, and would die to defend their country – would not remain silent under the burdens of lawlessness forever. 

“…seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered … and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, (they) become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.”

Today, all that good men and women are asking the people they elected to do, when it comes to illegal immigration, is to honor their oath:  Make good laws and enforce them.  Forget the politics, and let the critics fuss over the optics. 

Ben Has It Right! And It's Getting Worse Daily!

Why Can't We Unify in the Face of Evil?

8/7/2019- Ben Shapiro Townhall.com

This should be easy.

We're all on the same side. When a white supremacist terrorist shoots up a Walmart filled with innocents in El Paso, we should all be on the same side. We should be mourning together; we should be fighting together.

Instead, we're fighting one another.

We're fighting one another for one simple reason: Too many on the political left have become accustomed to castigating the character of those who disagree with the left on policy. Favor tougher border controls? This puts you on the side of the white supremacist terrorist. Believe in Second Amendment rights? You're a vicious, violent cretin covering for those who commit acts of evil. Cite Western civilization as a source of our common values, believe that police forces across the United States are not systemically racist, favor smaller government intervention in the social sphere -- in short, disagree with the program of the American left? Most of all, consider voting for Trump? You're an accessory to murder.

Now, there are many on the political left who are too smart for this sort of specious reasoning and character assassination. But not everyone. Charles Blow of The New York Times, for example, writes in a column this week that "terrorists" and "policymakers" are the two "sides of white nationalism." Blow clarifies: "White nationalist terrorists -- young and rash -- and white nationalist policymakers -- older and more methodical -- live on parallel planes, both aiming in the same direction, both with the same goal: To maintain and ensure white dominance and white supremacy." Who, pray tell, are these evil white nationalist policymakers? Those who favor "border walls, anti-immigrant laws, voter suppression and packing the courts." Never mind that many advocates of border security also advocate for broader legal immigration. Never mind that nobody actually favors voter suppression. To Blow, an R next to your name signifies merely a less militant Nazism than your neighborhood Hitler Youth.

David Leonhardt of The New York Times similarly argued this week that "American conservatism has a violence problem." While admitting that conservative America "is mostly filled with honorable people who deplore violence and bear no responsibility for right-wing hate killings" and that "liberal America also has violent and deranged people," Leonhardt lays the blame for an increase in political violence at the feet of "mainstream conservative politicians," who are somehow connected to "right-wing extremists."

There's something in the water at The New York Times, obviously. Jamelle Bouie, another voice on The Times opinion page, suggested a "connection between white nationalism" and my personal "ideological project." Never mind that I've been perhaps the loudest voice on the right decrying white nationalism for years; that I firmly fight for particular Western civilized values and small-government conservatism that foreclose and despise racism; that I've incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in security costs for my trouble; that I require 24/7 security to protect me from white nationalist blowback; and that just weeks ago, the FBI arrested a white nationalist threatening to murder me. Obviously, all conservatives are the same -- and all are complicit in the mission of white supremacy.

There can be no unity when one side of the political aisle firmly believes that the other side is motivated by unmitigated evil. No decent conversation about fixes can be had when you assume the person sitting across from you sympathizes with monsters who go to shoot up Hispanic Americans at a Walmart. If we can't at least assume that we're all on the same page in condemning white supremacist terror attacks and white supremacist ideology, we may as well pack this republic in. We're done.

Ben Shapiro, 35, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "The Right Side Of History." He lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Politics - A War of Words - A Dirty Game

A War Of Words

8/8/2019 - Derek Hunter Townhall.com

People on the right and the left have been warning of a “new Civil War” for some time now. There may or may not be something brewing in the future, where liberals and conservatives simply cannot live together, but we aren’t there yet. There is, however, a war raging right now, and it threatens our ability not only to avoid something horrible, but communicate at all.

Progressives are actively working to control what people say by controlling what words are acceptable to use. If you can control the language, you can control the people. And controlling people is the ultimate goal of the left.

Select words, particularly if they’ve been used by President Trump, are deemed to be “unacceptable” or see their meaning perverted, redefined by the left to mean something nefarious to put them out of public use, no matter how accurate they are.

“Infested” and “invasion” are the latest two.

As someone who lived in the city of Baltimore for 13 years (most people you see on TV attacking the president live in Baltimore County, which is very different), when the president tweeted about how the district represented by Congressman Elijah Cummings was “rat and rodent infested,” I knew firsthand he was right. I’ve seen it, I lived it. Walking home at night, it was common to see giant rats galloping across the street.

But the truth has very little place in modern political discourse, especially in election season.

Most commentators ignored the “rat and rodent” part of the quote, focusing exclusively on “infested.” Why? Because these talking heads want to paint the president as a racist.

By taking the word by itself, the people who decry Project Veritas as “heavily editing” their videos (which every news organization does) and taking things out of context, took the word out of context to imply Trump was talking about poor black people. This shifted the conversation from the very real plight of poor black people to race. Democrats want the focus on the latter, it allows them to emotionally manipulate people, the former only highlights the failings of generational Democratic Party loyalty and control.

So the word “infested,” which is the perfect and accurate word to describe the situation with rodents in Baltimore, is now portrayed as a “dog whistle” to racists, some sort of secret code.

Now it’s “invasion.” The president called more than 100,000 illegal aliens marching across the southern border an “invasion” because, well, is there a better word? With more than 1.3 million illegal aliens expected to enter the country this year, almost 10 times more than the number of soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy in 1944, what word or phrase would accurately capture that other than invasion?

But Trump having said it months ago is now being used by dishonest progressive cable news bile-spewers as the inspiration for the terror attack in El Paso. Conveniently, these arbiters of truth ignore the part of the monster’s manifesto that sounds like a direct rip-off of their “green new deal” talking points because “journalism,” or something.

They’ve also moved away from caring about the Dayton shooting because the killer there was one of their own. I know it’s fashionable for conservatives to point out that “we don’t blame them for the actions of someone who shares their politics,” like that will somehow cause leftists to act like decent human beings. To hell with that. These are their rules, we damn sure need to make them live by them.

Morning Joe and CNN’s prime time lineup share the politics of the guy who murdered 9 and injured dozens more in Dayton last Saturday. By their own rules, they not only have blood on their hands, their whole sets are covered in it. Why not? There’s as much evidence of that as there is for Trump’s complicity in El Paso.

We can’t keep playing by their rules while not holding them to the same. Taking the high road just gives you a nice view as you lose. Ceding the language and the use of words to these people is doing just that. No thanks. Unless and until leftists act in good faith, which is something they haven’t done in so long they’ll have to relearn it, we should hold their feet to the flames too. It’ll likely burn everyone, but it’s probably the only way to put out the fire.

Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.