Message from an American on the ground in Afghanistan
We are passing along a message received by Clarice Feldman from Mary Beth Long, who is on the ground in Afghanistan. She wrote about the situation there 6 days ago in American Greatness. Following the message is some background information about Ms. Long provided by Clarice. The unedited message is as follows:
For those of you interested in the REAL status on the ground:
- we are still working several USCITS who have been waiting DAYS and STILL cannot get in the gates;
- AMCITS required to fill out a local form with a face foto and passport open (we got a family turned away several hours ago because the father’s nickname on the on-site paper did not match his blue passport name, although foto clearly does). They had to start over;
- we are told not to bother with green card holders (not going to open the gates for them) or SIVS;
- about 22 beaten Christians — I am not clear whether they are the same Christians kicked OUT of the airport yesterday — are still trying to get in (Cheney and Graham working, but Taliban blocking);
- Childrens’ music school torched and them chased for the last day. They too in a bus trying to get in;
- MOI biometrics unit (yes, we don’t want the bad guys to get that info) and a USAID convoy also still waiting trying to get in;
- Ukraine offer of plane to get folk out refused;
- we are told CIA also not permitted to fly planes in at this time for evac.
The situation is dire and a confused mess.
Civilian groups seem to be the only ones working. Last night we got over 300 SOF, nearly 100 girls, probably 100 DIA sources and several Americans in by working unofficial rat lines.
Horrific. Someone needs to be held accountable.
Here is background information on Mary Beth Long:
The Honorable Mary Beth Long is founder of M B Long & Associates, PLLC, an international legal and advisory firm. From 2007-2009, Ms. Long served as the first woman confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as Chair of NATO’s High Level Group (HLG), responsible for NATO’s nuclear policy. In her defense department roles, she also acted as Principal Deputy Secretary of Defense on the Middle East, Africa, the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and Southeast Asia; and was the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Counter Narcoterrorism with a budget of over $1 billion. To those credentials, she adds more than a decade of Central Intelligence Agency operational experience (1986–99) on terrorism and other security issues.
After leaving government, Ms. Long founded Metis Solutions LLC. Under her tenure as CEO, the company was recognized in Inc. Magazine’s List of America’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2014, 2015, and 2016. She was recently featured in Forbes magazine’s Women Business Leaders. Ms. Long advises several Fortune 500 companies on international defense markets. From 2013-2016, she served as a Senior Subject Matter Expert for the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and as a Senior International Advisor to the Minister of Defense of Colombia.
Ms. Long has advised several Presidential candidates and appears regularly on Fox News, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English and NPR on Middle East issues and the Intelligence Community. She is a licensed lawyer and, from 1999 until 2004, was an associate specializing in civil litigation matters at Williams & Connolly LLP. Ms. Long travels regularly to the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and Afghanistan and has offices in Abu Dhabi and Kabul. She is an Honors Graduate of Pennsylvania State University, magna cum laude, and in 2016, Ms. Long received the Distinguished Alumni Award, the University’s highest honor presented to its alumni. She received her J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Image: newsonline via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).
Not Incompetence: Afghanistan and Globalism
Is the Biden administration's messy withdrawal from Afghanistan incompetence, or is it exactly as planned? Is there a hidden globalist plan aimed at empowering Islamic governments in the Mideast? If yes, how would empowering the Taliban fit in the larger plan of globalists and believers in the New World Order?
Socialists and globalists, whose home today is in the Democrat party, have been speaking about their lofty plans for decades, constantly testing the waters of public opinion and speaking from both sides of their mouths. They insert insane ideas in the American psyche, then quickly deny they really said what they said. After speaking about her dream of an open border, Hillary Clinton denied her comments by saying she meant only to call for reforms but not open borders. But if we dare take their comments seriously, we are branded conspiracy theorists.
After decades of listening to the far left, by now we, the people of America, should more or less know where the modern-day Democrat party intends to take America and how these people envision the world. Now it's up to us to put two and two together and start uncovering what the deceptive left is really telling us. Those who reject globalism and the New World Order should start analyzing and exposing globalist policies. We should stop accusing the left of being incompetent because it is not.
All we need to do is listen to globalists — their plans, lies, hidden agendas — and expose them even when they give us double messages aimed at throwing us off if we take their words seriously. We can't be intimidated when they accuse us of being conspiracy theorists. It's time to put the socialist-globalist agenda into perspective and connect it with their policies and behavior, instead of just calling them incompetent or accuse them of not caring about the unintended consequences. This is because the consequences are actually intended.
Western globalists aim at eliminating borders between nations, and they have no problem starting themselves, in America and Western Europe. Such an agenda, if fully understood, should explain why modern-day Democrats have no fear of China while fearing and hating their own patriotic citizens who oppose globalism and love American sovereignty. It's unimaginable that Democrats defended China over their own President Trump, calling him "racist" after he referred to COVID as the "China Virus."
The four-year hysteria against Trump is not an unexplainable hate syndrome. Democrats' actions are motivated by their goals. If we understand their goals, then their actions should be clear. Trump was the first serious Republican president who rejected globalism and believes in the nation-state — America First. That's why Democrats not only hated him but felt entitled to do anything and everything, legal or illegal, to stop him. Democrats were laser-focused on removing Trump from office, by waging an unprecedented daily media campaign against him, using our Intelligence Community to spy on him, impeaching him twice, and even fraudulently winning the 2020 elections.
With Trump, globalists and socialists now fear his 75 million supporters. They have become the new obstacle. That explains the intense hate campaign to tarnish them as racists, "white supremacists," and dangerous insurrectionists against the state. Democrats and their media are not looking for the truth or to dialogue with the Trump side over the pros and cons of globalism. Democrats want to keep their goals covert because if they're open about their plan, the majority of Americans will reject it.
Trump and his supporters believe that the world is better run with independent nation-states, where every head of state's first job is achieving the best interest of his own nation. Globalists, on the other hand, believe that the world will run better, more efficiently, and more peacefully (or at least more to the advantage of their own power and wealth) when there are fewer nation-states, perhaps dividing the world into four or five regions under One World Government. Democrats are not confident they will win the argument if they engage in honest debate and would rather do propaganda. (Incidentally and from personal experience, Islamists also refuse to engage in honest debate about their faith and what's written in their books and would rather engage in propaganda and shaming the opposition.)
Western globalists decided to start applying the concept of globalism to their own nations first before demanding it from the rest of the world. That is a risky decision they've decided is worth making.
Obama convinced globalists that the reason the Mideast is in constant turmoil and disunity is that the West is supporting moderate puppet military governments, which are usually less oppressive than Islamic full sharia states. Obama believed that nothing will peacefully unite the Middle East except an Islamic caliphate. Never mind that historically, the caliphate was never truly united or peaceful.
From his first day in office, Obama was more excited about the Muslim world than lifting up Blacks in America. He went to speak in Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood and succeeded in empowering them over the more moderate alternative. Obama believed he was going to go down in history as the hero of a newly created Islamic caliphate. He started to implement his vision in Egypt by giving the Muslim Brotherhood power, but that didn't work as planned.
After Obama's caliphate project failed in Egypt, he pivoted to Syria and used the name "ISIL" instead of "ISIS" because the L, meaning Levant, was going to include Israel in the caliphate. But that also didn't work, and it was Trump who defeated ISIS, not Obama. Yes, Obama did kill bin Laden but never interpret that as Obama wanting to eliminate those who wish for an Islamic state. Obama no longer had any use for bin Laden, who was a dead man anyway.
Having failed in Egypt and Syria, Obama turned next to Iran. Democrats never treated Iran as the true enemy that it is, and their plan for an Islamic Middle East kept moving along.
But with the election of Trump in 2016, globalists' hard work for many decades ended or had to be put on hold. globalists appeared unreliable in executing their global agenda.
Democrats, together with their propaganda arm the legacy media, went insane and eventually succeeded in taking out Trump after launching the darkest and most shameful four-year period in American political history. Nothing was off the table to take out Trump, even if Democrats were caught red-handed pushing bags of fake ballots under tables.
Democrats found the perfect puppet to happily sit in the Oval Office and lie and deceive with total ease. In the first two weeks of Biden's presidency, he signed 28 executive orders to reassure international globalists and erase anything Trump had done. The goal was to bring back trust and confidence in the promises American globalists have given international fellow globalists, especially China. The message was "we're back in charge," and "never mind the four-year Trump glitch; we'll erase it from history by impeaching him twice." Now they must rush to eliminate America's borders to pave the way for accomplishing the implementation of "Region 1."
Western globalists are leading the way to eliminating Western nation borders without blinking and with no fear or distrust of China, the Middle East, or other untrustworthy regions in the world — no guarantees that other nations might not honor their promise to eliminate borders as well. The One World Government project could end up blowing up in the face of Western globalists, similar to how Afghanistan blew up at the end. This is totally blind and naïve trust by Western globalists, all for the sake of achieving a fantasy of a world united in peace and harmony under one government.
How could any sane person be sure that if America's sovereignty is weakened, globalist China will not double-cross the Americans? Democrats seem to have smarts, plotting, hatred, and distrust only towards their own countrymen, Republicans, and patriots, but never against China, Iran, or any other tyrannical regime around the world.
Facilitating Middle East unity under one Islamic authority seems to be the only explanation for the abandonment of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban while leaving behind a huge American arsenal.
When Trump tried to withdraw from Afghanistan, the media, Democrats, and the Pentagon were all against him, but now they're all silent or supportive of Biden's shameful withdrawal. Why is that? Because if Trump was going to withdraw, the Taliban could have ended up weakened. Globalist Democrats wanted to hand over Afghanistan to an empowered Taliban. The Taliban, armed with American weapons, brag to the Mideast that "Islam is the solution" after all.
Today, a huge continuous section of the Middle East is in the hands of radical Islamists — from Pakistan (with nukes) to Afghanistan, then Iran all the way to Turkey. Globalist's "Region 2" is coming along well.
Which region will fall to the globalist plan next? Will it be Taiwan, given to China? After giving Russia the pipeline, what's next? Ukraine?
The actions of socialist-globalist Democrats speak for themselves, and no, they are not incompetent; rather, they are deceptive. They're hell-bent on executing their globalist dreams without debate, elections, or transparency. They are reckless with the future of America and determined to move with a historically proven failed plan with no guarantees from tyrannical nations who are happy to be given a weakened America without borders.
Globalism is not a new idea. Empires rose, expanded, and fell in pursuit of ruling the world around them. Every tyrant in history wanted to rule the world. Globalists don't see the similarities and examples in history; nations and empires do expand, but they also often disintegrate and dissolve.
The Islamic unified caliphate is a fantasy that never was and never will be. Worldwide communism always ended up in disaster, disintegration, misery, despair, and poverty. But Western globalists really believe they will get it right this time!
Nonie Darwish is the author of Wholly Different: Why I Chose Biblical Values over Islamic Values.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
What Afghanistan Reveals about Joe Biden, Israel, and Iran
The powerful bomb blast attack by an ISIS affiliate, ISIS-K (Khorasan), a deadly terror group of jihadists from Syria and other areas, on American forces and Afghan civilians in Kabul on August 26, 2021, killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 90 Afghans. This was a dark day for the U.S., the deadliest day for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan since 2011.
Internal and international controversy will continue and mount over the debacle in Kabul and responsibility. President Biden has declared that the "buck stops" with him. But the mistakes of his administration are more compelling than the rhetoric: the debate will continue on the hasty exit timetable for the U.S. from Afghanistan; on the disagreements among U.S. military leaders and the president on withdrawal; on Biden's abrupt abandonment of Bagram Airbase, which could have been used for evacuation of Americans; alleged sharing of security arrangements; giving a list to the Taliban of Afghans who aided the U.S. It is a notable lack of success in a country with remarkable assets: 150 countries host U.S. troops, 200,000 U.S. troops are located abroad, annual military spending is $770 billion, and the fleet has 11 aircraft carriers.
The world has been left uncertain about the acumen and practicality of Biden's policy in foreign affairs after the chaos to end what he called the "forever war." In view of his inability to secure the drawdown of U.S. troops in an orderly way, the question arises: "Is Biden reliable as an American and world leader, or is he detached from reality?"
Foreign countries are concerned: Ukraine, whether Biden can help deter Russia; can Taiwan rely on U.S. protection from China; should NATO leaders now call for an independent European security operation from which the U.S. is excluded? Most immediately, there is the problem of whether Biden is genuinely, as well as rhetorically, committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power.
The ISIS massacre occurred about an hour before a meeting was to take place in the White House between President Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, who was to be the first foreign visitor to the White House since the Biden decision of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Bennett, head of a diverse coalition of left, center, and right parties, doves, and hardliners, of which Bennett is one, with a wafer-thin majority of one, avoids issues that are divisive. He follows twelve years of leadership by Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, with whom he has little in common except that they both speak perfect English. Bennett originally was an adherent of the Israeli right, a leader of a settler movement. He lived for a time in a settlement, and he even expressed an opinion for unilateral annexation of the West Bank. But he changed his views.
Bennett is anxious to make clear that he is not Netanyahu and is interested in bringing a "new spirit," a spirit of hope, goodwill, and cooperation to Washington with which Israel shares values of democracy and respect for human rights. Netanyahu, after Biden took office, reduced the flow of information that Israeli security officials conveyed to the U.S. about contemplated operations, above all in Iran. One can suggest four reasons: Bibi believed that the U.S. had leaked information about Israeli operations; intelligence-sharing had declined during the Obama administration; Bibi believed that U.S. spy agencies kept him under surveillance; Biden seems determined on returning to the Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 2015, from which the Trump administration pulled out in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on the Iranian economy.
There had been a change under the Trump administration. The U.S.; Trump; and the then–CIA director, Mike Pompeo, were the only foreign officials briefed before the Mossad attack on Iran's nuclear archives in 2018. Israel was made aware of Israeli bombing attacks, of the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and cooperation in the killing of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani, and another leader hiding in Tehran.
The close relationship cooled when Biden took office. He spoke of the "unalterable partnership" between the U.S. and Israel, but he also spoke of returning to the Iranian nuclear deal. When Israel was involved in striking the Iran nuclear facility in April 2021, the Mossad gave the U.S. only two hours' notice before the blast. Political differences emerged regarding Palestinians. Unlike Israel, Biden has mentioned the possibility of east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
However, what is most important is the issue of the Iranian nuclear accord. Bennett has called an Iranian nuclear weapon a "nightmare for the whole world." The issue is stark. Biden appears to persist in pursuing a deal with Iran. Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz holds that Iran is only two months away from acquiring the materials for a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear program could incite an arms race in the region and the entire world. Iran, an important power, is a manifest danger in many ways. It could operate through proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. It employs UAVs and guided missiles; it is able to disrupt maritime international trade, as shown by operations as in the Mercer Street attack. It operates in cyberspace.
By the JCPOA, the nuclear, agreement, Iran was prohibited from transferring weapons to other countries. Yet Iran, which possesses more than 1,000 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, has sent weapons to Hezb'allah, Hamas, and Iraq. It has rockets that can reach Israeli territory, including the Khorramshahr 2, with a range of 1,243 miles, and the Shahab-3.
Bennett has made no secret that Iran is Israel's top priority; that Iran is expediting its nuclear program; and that ties with the U.S. are essential on this issue to fend off and, as Antony Blinken remarked, to curtail Iran's attempt to dominate the region.
Biden on taking office made known his concerns; restoring millions in funding to Iran and providing relief from sanctions after Trump had ended this aid, including funds to UNRWA; repairing the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian Authority and the PLO; advancing a two-state solution; providing humanitarian assistance programs to the Middle East; and re-entering the Iran nuclear deal in return for promises not to pursue a nuclear weapon. But the reality is that Iran is accelerating its uranium enrichment program and building advanced centrifuges.
At the 50-minute one-on-one White House meeting on August 27, Biden again spoke of the "unshakeable partnership between our two nations" and of establishing a strong personal relationship with Bennett. An agreement was reached on some issues: U.S. support for Israel's Iron Dome system and progress on the U.S. Visa Waiver program, which would allow Israelis to visit the U.S., and vice versa, without a visa.
But differences remain: on a U.S. consulate to Palestinians in east Jerusalem, on the expansion of West Bank settlements, and above all on Iran. Iran is vital. On this, the U.S. position is enigmatic. Biden has said we're putting diplomacy first and seeing where it takes us. "If diplomacy fails, we're ready to turn to other options." The essential problem is whether Biden, regarding those "options," can carry a "big stick." Afghanistan has dented the cultivated image of Joe Biden as an experienced, wise, and capable leader.
Image: Chickenonline via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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