The past two weeks have been full of examples that demonstrate how difficult it is to defend the United States from its enemies — as the saying goes — foreign and domestic. The Trump administration’s first step toward improved U.S. national security — the travel ban — was opposed by multicultural and therefore brain-dead political, religious, media, and academic elites in North America and Europe. As long as these paragons of idiocy are addicted to the genuinely stupid idea that you can make a political entity stronger by adding ingredients that erode its unity and pits its citizens against each other, domestic security will remain far over the horizon.
The last fortnight also has shown Americans — that is, those who voted for Trump — that 21 years after bin Laden declared war on the United States, U.S. policymakers, the media’s conglomeration of reading-from-the-same-lying-script experts, and the academy’s greedy authors of costly and universally failed de-radicalization programs continue to refuse to tell the truth. That obvious and irrefutable truth is that minor things like the travel ban, water-boarding, and rendition are matters of little or no interest to America’s Islamist foes, except as propaganda themes that incite America’s most dangerous enemies, namely, the elites of Europe and North America. The items that have caused such pain and fun occasions for demonstrating among the elites will never win the Islam war. They are, at most, useful complements to the use of overwhelming and indiscriminate conventional force against the Islamists. That, of course, is one of only two choices by which America can avoid bankruptcy and final defeat in the Islam war. The other, quicker, and smarter one is getting out of the Arab world, thereby letting Arabs, Persians, and Israelis sort out their destinies. That is, after all, the Wilsonian idea of “self-determination” that the Trans-Atlantic elites always sing the praises of and claim to be seeking to advance. For once, I agree with them.
Finally, and sadly, there have been a number of Trump administration announcements that show how deeply embedded in the national government are interventionist fanatics and disloyal Democratic apparatchiks hired by Obama and Hillary Clinton. Specific cases of this interventionism are noted below, but if President Trump is serious about implementing an America First foreign policy, there is no better first step than to fire the 900 war-wanting State Department employees who signed a document opposing the travel ban. You could get 900 better Americans simply by offering posts to the experienced, worldly, and patriotic military officers that Obama pink-slipped out of their careers.
Travel ban
If you woke up this morning and heard pundits claiming that the temporary U.S. travel-ban placed on seven Muslim countries will give IS and other Islamists fodder for preaching violence against America, you might believe that you were in 1996 and that the media had learned nothing about the Islamists in the last 21 years. And if that thought occurred to you, good for you, as you would be correct.
The travel ban may have provoked America’s most dangerous enemies — Schumer, Obama, Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood buffoons, milennials, the EU mandarins, etc. — but no matter what those foes claim publicly, the Islamists will be delighted with travel ban. Among both Wahabbis and Salafists — the bulk of our Islamist foes — there is an intense doctrinal bias that opposes Muslims moving to and living in non-Muslim countries. The job of Muslims, for the militants, is to remain in Muslim territory, defend that territory, and raise families that breed manpower for the faith’s future defense.
As always, it is best to ignore the experts on America’s war with Islam and simply read-up on what the militants believe. No doubt Islamic State and al-Qaeda leaders will publicly say the travel ban is one more manifestation of the West’s war on Islam, and they may well stage an attack and claim that it was in respsonse to the ban. Privately, however they will see the ban as an asset for their cause, and probably hope the national government would ban all immigration of Muslims. Most especially, ignore the idea that we may be attacked specifically because of the ban. This is another false Pelosian mantra, not unlike the transparently false Obama claim that we were attacked because of water-boarding and Guantanamo Bay. These issues are the smallest possible fish in the sea of issues that motivate Islamists, and hold little space in their minds when compared to the U.S.-led destruction of Libya, the re-interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, those old reliables, support and protection for Israel and the Arab tyrannies.
There is also a bigger point to be made here. Muslim immigrants to the United States will not magically lose their historic inclination toward an austere religion, jihad, and accepting authoritarian rule — whether by church or state — simply by putting foot on American soil. Such an expectation can only be held by those intoxicated with the malign ideas of multiculturalism and diversity. This is not hatred bigotry or racism, it is simply common sense. And Muslims, of course, are not alone in this characterization. Hispanics, Indians, Russians, Pakistanis, Africans and others from around the world who grew up and experienced adulthood in political and economic systems that only work because of bribery, economic corruption, and citizens’ fear of strong-armed leaders will never lose those inclinations simply because they trod the soil of Wyoming. Reversing the situation makes the same point in a different way. An American, for example, would be just as likely to be unable to adapt to living permanently in Russia or almost any Latin American, African, or East European country where little gets done without corruption, each citizen is treated as a peasant, and all have a healthy and fearful respect for the authoritarian crook-leader of the day.
The lesson to be drawn from all of this is pretty much that the American way of life, at this stage in our history, cannot be loved, respected, and abided by unless one is born and raised to adulthood under it. To think otherwise is a symptom of madness or, in the case of the Democrats, an unending effort to bring into America enough human beings who can be bribed by government programs, are afraid to oppose the government that supports them, and who therefore will vote reliably for their Democratic overseers forever.
If it is in his power, President Trump ought to temporarily ban all immigration for two years, and devise a statistical basis for drastically reducing the number of any type of visa for the citizens of the countries whose citizens have the highest documented rate of overstaying or otherwise abusing the U.S. visa system. There is nothing remotely discriminatory in either action, and together they would give U.S. law-enforcement agencies at all levels of government the chance to identify, jail, and/or deport visa-overstayers, illegal aliens, criminals, terrorists, and other such vermin. Thereafter, perhaps, a fair-minded and commonsense America First immigration policy could be established and obeyed under either party’s governance. I doubt it, but you never know.
Syria-Iraq and the Islam war
This is a no-brainer, but it still is beyond the grasp of Democrats, the media, far too many Republicans, and — there are rhetorical indications — President Trump and his advisers. All seem to have been seduced by wishful thinking into believing that if the multitude of nations that are bombing and killing IS fighters and untold numbers of Sunni Muslims succeed in taking — in addition to Aleppo — Mosul, Raqqa, and other cities, the Islamic State’s back will be broken and the war will be won.
Well, no. Even if IS loses every city it now holds — and it might — it will simply shift to Plan B and return to what it does best, namely, insurgency, and after that shift it will be stronger over the long-term. We tend to forget, I think, that between 1776 and 1781 British politicians and generals thought they could defeat General Washington’s army by taking the main American cities and harbors. (NB: Readers may recall that the Soviet and American military invasions of Afghanistan quickly captured all major Afghan cities, but Moscow and Washington still lost their Afghan wars.)
The British were highly successful in this regard. The British army held but evacuated Boston, captured New York and held it for the rest of the war, captured America’s capital city of Philadelphia, and in their spare time captured and held Savannah and Charleston. But who won? The Americans. They won because, after trying to defend but losing New York City to General Howe, Washington and his best generals realized that they could never be defeated by simply losing cities to the British. Such losses were disheartening but they were not fatal. The American leaders kept their army in the field, trained during the winter, used France-provided monetary, ordnance, naval, and manpower effectively (NB: Just as IS is doing with aid from the Sunni tyrannies today), and maintained armed fronts in multiple geographic areas to prevent British power being focused squarely on one.
IS has lost and will continue to lose cities. It will, however, maintain and probably expand the size of its military force because the US-led opposition, formerly composed of the nations of Christendom and Arab tyrannies, has been joined by apostate Iranian and Lebanese Shia forces and the Russian military, still remembered and hated across the Sunni world as the butchers of Sunni Afghans.
It hard to believe that either IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his religious and military lieutenants, or any other senior Islamist leader could have expected that Allah would be so pleased with their worldwide jihad that He would send an ensemble of Islam’s most lethal military and religious enemies to attack the jihad in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Libya. In so doing, Allah gave the Islamists not only proof of his approval of their actions, but a solid-gold recruiting tool, one with an unrivaled potential for expanding Islamist manpower so long as the current array of Islam’s enemies remain in the field. Looking at the Almighty’s gift from the Islamists’ perspective, an exclamation by them of “Allahu Akhbar!” seems to be a perfectly appropriate reaction.
It is more than likely that the war against IS will become more savage and and geographically widespread after IS has lost some or all of its cities. The post-cities war, moreover, cannot be fought only with air power and not-meant-to-win-wars organizations like the Special Forces and CIA. The post-cities wars — if the U.S. and its genuinely odious associates really intend to win — will require the use of very large numbers of ground troops who are sure to be engaged in close-quarters combat. This reality will insure far higher numbers of U.S. and Western casualties in overseas combat, and an increasing number inside the United States and the European nations as the millions of unwanted, unneeded, and unvetted young Arab male immigrants begin to pick up the pace of the military attacks they entered America and Europe to wage.
In short, there’s nothing going on in Iraq and Syria, at least from the American perspective, except that the national government is busily digging an ever deeper and more lethal hole in which to pour young American men and women in uniform, military personnel who will pay a price in the lives and limbs far beyond what their deceased predecessors have already paid for the accomplishment of nothing expect an ever broadening, unnecessary, and interventionist war.
Any way out of the mess? Only one sure one, get all U.S. forces out of Syria and Iraq and let the Sunni-vs-Shia sectarian war begin and consume the region.
More interventionism
This past week has heard some disheartening nonsense from the Trump administration in the form of foreign-policy pronouncements. After a great start with the travel ban, the week went down hill.
Romania: The U.S. State Department publicly expressed “U.S. concern” about Romanian government actions that “threaten the rule of law” in that country. Now, there are not a dozen non-elite Americans who give a a damn about Romania, let alone the rule-of-law there. Why not leave the Romanians alone to solve their own problem in their own way. Nothing they are doing remotely concerns genuine U.S. interests, and the State Department’s elitist know-it-alls might take a second to look around and see that U.S. officials are in no position to lecture foreigners about the rule of law when obvious criminals like the three Clintons, Obama, Sharpton, Emanuel, de Blasio, and millennial rioters have not even been indicted
Israel: It has been a mantra in this space for years that each and every nation has an absolute right to defend itself as it sees fit. This week, the White House chose to condemn Israel for announcing plans to build 3,000 more settlements. Because the Israel government believes settlements are a key part of its national security requirements, the United States really ought to ignore the event, and not intervene in another nation’s attempt to defend itself. It also is time for the U.S. governing elite to get a grip and accept the commonsense conclusion that the idea of a two-state solution is long and truly dead. What happens in the Israel-Palestine-Arab world confrontation is irrelevant to U.S. national security and surely not worth having a position on if that means — which it surely does — involving the United States in a war-breeding irrelevancy. President Trump out to be able to understand this easily as he just saw an absolutely essential ingredient in U.S. national security — the travel ban — overturned by interventionism at the hands of foreign governments, foreign media, foreign demonstrations, violent, quarter-baked American millennials, sleep-around actresses, and ideological, elite-appointed judges.
Iran: Iran is a threat to the United States for reasons that are all attributable to the U.S. government. (a) Its immigration policy has allowed Iran to massively infiltrate the republic with its intelligence service, the IRGC, and members of Lebanese Hizballah, this to the point where they control parts of major urban centers in Michigan, New York, California, and Texas. (b) Its effete military behavior has failed to make the only point to Iranians that they will understand, which is “hit was with a pebble and we will drop an anvil on one of the things you value most.” (NB: The other side of this coin is, of course, leave us alone and we will leave you alone.) (c) Its interventionist addiction blocks the view that Iran is a regional power that must be handled by the region. If Israel and the Sunni Arab tyrants do not have the gumption to keep Iran at bay, too bad for them. If the Israelis and Sunnis are cowards, they deserve to find themselves forced to learn to speak Persian.
Ukraine: Okay, make sense of this. The U.S.-NATO-backed Ukrainian government launches attacks on Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels and the U.S. UN ambassador reads the riot act to the Russians. This is another issue that is irrelevant to the United States, except for Senators Graham and McCain, and the Russia-hating Neocons, and the Israel-Firsters. Ukraine — like Iran — is a regional problem caused by the EU’s democracy-mongering intervention that brought down Ukraine’s pro-Russia government. The EU caused the Ukraine problem for the region, and so it is up to the region to solve the issue amicably or go to war with Russia over it. Ukraine is of absolutely no concern to U.S. citizens, poses no threat to U.S. security, and therefore ought not be be an impediment to U.S.-Russian relations. The EU intentionally started this regional mess, so let its sorry lot of so-called leaders find a way out of it, or let them fight with war with Russia, which is the most logical outcome of their mindless intervention in Ukraine. But first, president. Trump, get us the hell out of NATO or we will end up fighting the Russians on behalf of the arrogant, demilitarized, and all-talk EU countries.