Newt Gingrich calls Joe Biden a 'sickness'
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Biden's Surrender in Afghanistan
Just in time for 9/11.
Joe Biden probably thought this Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, would be a great moment for his presidency. All American troops would be out of Afghanistan. Our country’s longest war would be over. And he’d be the guy who had the courage to end it.
Instead, we may well have hundreds if not thousands of Americans hiding across Afghanistan, terrified of the Taliban’s barbarism. Remember, the media only reports on Kabul, the Afghan capital, but there are Americans all over the country. And Afghanistan is a big place, full of mountainous areas where people are isolated and tough to reach.
In short, Sept. 11 this year is going to be more painful than normal. It’s one thing to remember. It’s something else entirely to witness the place where the attacks were planned return to its pre-9/11 state, with the Taliban in charge and al Qaeda set to enjoy a country-wide haven.
The bottom line is this: Biden made a decision to surrender to the Taliban, regardless of the consequences. And now he seems angrily determined to ride it out, as a tribe longing for the seventh century dictates terms to the most powerful nation on earth.
The terrorists saw this coming. In a letter dated May 2010, Osama bin Laden warned al Qaeda not to target then-Vice President Joe Biden, hoping he would one day become president.
“Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis,” bin Laden wrote. The late al Qaeda leader knew an eventual President Biden would embody a victory for jihad. As the ongoing debacle in Afghanistan makes quite clear, he was right.
Of course, Biden is blaming President Donald Trump for creating the framework of a deal with the Taliban to allow U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan. But the Trump administration’s plan was ultimately conditional, based on the Taliban meeting various American conditions. And when the Taliban didn’t meet those conditions, the U.S. took military action.
Biden, on the other hand, announced a specific deadline to withdraw and simply proceeded to leave, in one fell swoop. The Taliban took Kabul in days.
What’s most striking is just how botched the Biden administration’s policy really is. Think about it: There are more troops in Afghanistan now than before the withdrawal, and more Americans are being killed now than before the withdrawal. That’s simply indefensible.
I discuss Biden’s astonishing failures in Afghanistan and how it compares to Trump’s approach on this week’s episode of my podcast, “Newt’s World.” My guest is Stephen Miller, who served as a speechwriter and senior policy adviser in Trump’s White House. Since leaving government, Miller helped launch America First Legal, a new conservative legal organization dedicated to challenging left-wing initiatives in the courts.
Unlike Biden, Miller recognizes that the Taliban represents a completely alternative civilization from the one that Americans enjoy. Members of the Taliban don’t regard dying the same way we do. They don’t want to be citizens of anywhere other than their caliphate. And they’re non-negotiable. They must be deterred, not emboldened.
Tragically, Biden has done the latter, and after 20 years of war, the terrorists have so far won. Consider all the American lives and money lost, all the time focused on seventh-century savages rather than major opponents like Russia and China. Biden has made it all a waste, giving up any gains we had.
Once the current crisis subsides, the key question will be whether the U.S. military and bureaucracy learn from this fiasco. The jihadists won’t stop plotting, so we need to be ready.
Newt Gingrich is former Speaker for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Bringing in Afghan Refugees with All of Their ‘Luggage’
What's not being talked about.
Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing. As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country. And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.
To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.
What is not being talked about are the values, ideas, and culture those refugees are bringing with them.
In order to better understand the people many are calling to be brought in by the tens of thousands, let’s look at some considerations about the society from which these refugees are coming.
National Security
There are two national security issues that must be acknowledged.
First, a 2019 study found that 13% of Afghans had a lot of (4%) or a little (9%) sympathy for the Taliban.[1] This means that for every 100,000 Afghan refugees brought into the United States, we could expect about 13,000 of them to have varying degrees of sympathy for the Taliban.
Then we need to take into consideration that 39% of Afghans think that “suicide bombing” in defense of Islam is often or sometimes justified.[2] If we use the 4% number for those with a lot of sympathy for the Taliban, this means that out of every 100,000 Afghans we could have up to about 1,560 Afghans believing that “suicide bombing” could often be justified.[3]
Combining these two issues means we could be bringing in a potentially significant base of support for a jihadist group; and that base of support could include a large number willing to engage in jihadist attacks in the United States using explosives.
History of Violence
Then there is Afghanistan’s violent history. What is the impact of this history on many of those refugees we are bringing in? Consider this 2018 article:
…Afghanistan is home to nearly two generations that have grown up knowing only conflict and war. As a result, violent and aggressive behavior—particularly from young men—has become an accepted norm of Afghan society…a significant number of Afghan youth have become involved in organized crime or other illegal—and often violent—activities to fulfill their perceived obligations and duties to family…In many parts of Afghanistan, displays of aggression and intimidation represent a rite of passage for adolescent boys and a symbol of manhood for men. The social acceptance of such behavior, however, heightens the risk that intolerance of diversity and interpersonal violence, including violence against women and children, become an everyday fact of life. A 2009 report…described violence as “an everyday occurrence in the lives of a huge proportion of Afghan women.”…a majority of Afghans are exposed to violence beginning at an early age, including physical abuse at home by parents and relatives as well as the liberal use of corporal punishment at mosques, madrassas, and schools. Children witness their mothers and sisters being violently abused at the hands of family members, which comes to be accepted as a social and cultural norm, resulting in the acceptance of violence as a first—and sometimes only—option for resolving conflicts.[4]
We are importing from a culture of violence.
Rights of Women
What is the attitude many of these refugees have toward women? Here are two assessments:
Women and girls in Afghanistan continue to face widespread discrimination and human rights abuses. The country ranks among the least favourable on the Gender Inequality Index and the literacy rate for women is among the lowest in the world. Violence against women and girls is rife and the majority don’t go to school.[5]
And,
About two-thirds of men thought women in Afghanistan had too many rights and that women were too emotional to become leaders, compared to less than a third of women. And while nearly three quarters of women said a married woman should have equal rights with their partner to work outside the home, only 15 percent of men agreed. More than half of men also agreed with the statement that “more rights for women mean that men lose out”.[6]
Wife-beating is largely acceptable in Afghanistan:
Overall, 92 percent of women in Afghanistan feel that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife for at least one of these reasons: going out without telling the husband, neglecting the children, arguing with the husband, refusing sex, and burning the food. Seventy-eight percent of women believe that going out without telling the husband is justification for beating, while 31 percent think the same about burning the food…The Afghanistan survey added an additional question to reflect local attitudes—wearing inappropriate clothes. Sixty-three percent of Afghan women feel a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife if she wears inappropriate clothing.[7]
94% of Afghans completely or mostly agree that a wife must always obey her husband,[8] and two-thirds of Afghan men agree or strongly agree with the statement, “Women in Afghanistan have too many rights.”[9]
Considering the information in this and the previous section, it is not surprising to hear this warning from Pierre-Marie Seve, the director and spokesman of the French think tank Institute for Justice. He noted that migrants are over-represented in nearly all categories of crime [in France] and stated that Afghans, in particular, commit more crimes than asylum seekers from other countries.[10]
Prepubescent Marriage
Prepubescent marriage is acceptable in Afghanistan. In 2016, the Pew Research Center released a report titled “Many countries allow child marriage.”[11] An appendix to that report titled “Marriage Laws around the World” provided this interesting information about approaches to child marriage in Afghanistan:[12]
Despite a law setting the legal minimum age for marriage at 16 (15 with the consent of a parent or guardian and the court) for girls and 18 for boys, international and local observers continued to report widespread early marriage… By law a marriage contract requires verification that the bride is 16 years of age, but only a small fraction of the population had birth certificates…some girls as young as six or seven were promised in marriage, with the understanding the actual marriage would be delayed until the child reached puberty. Reports indicated, however, that this delay was rarely observed and young girls were sexually violated by the groom or by older men in the family, particularly if the groom was also a child.
Will instances of prepubescent marriage soon be coming to your community or to a community nearby?
Sharia as the official Law of the Land
Afghans almost uniformly agree (99%) that Sharia should be the official law of the land.[13] And among those Afghans who say Sharia should be the law of the land, 61% say it should apply to all citizens.[14]
81% of the Afghans who support Sharia as the official law of the land favor corporal punishments for theft; 85% favor stoning as the punishment for adultery, and 79% favor the death penalty for apostasy.[15]
In terms of honor killings for pre- or extra-marital sex, 60% of Afghans believed honor killings of women were often or sometimes justified; 59% believed the same about killing men in those circumstances.[16]
These are majority views among Afghans that are incompatible with American values and laws.
Integrating into American society
The Afghan values and beliefs mentioned above are major hurdles to the idea of Afghans integrating as a group into American society. In addition, only 5% of Afghans speak English,[17] and the adult literacy rate is only about 43% (although the numbers vary). 66% of Afghans believe Western popular culture harms morality in their country,[18] and 96% believe that trying to convert others to Islam is a religious duty.[19]
These are not harbingers of widespread social/cultural integration by these refugees into American society.
Conclusion
Those on the side of bringing tens of thousands of Afghan refugees into the United States have been able to rely on noble sounding rhetoric and emotional arguments to confront those who are not as enthusiastic about that venture.
However, the facts presented in this article show that in reality these refugees are coming from a culture and a land whose values and history are completely different from, and largely incompatible with, those of the United States.
What is being generally overlooked is that there are more socially/culturally compatible countries for these refugees that actually border Afghanistan. Perhaps what we might “owe” these refugees is assistance in finding refuge in those neighboring countries.
Dr. Stephen M. Kirby is the author of six books about Islam. His latest book is Islamic Doctrine versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials.
[1] “A Survey of the Afghan People, Afghanistan in 2019,” The Asia Foundation, p. 315, https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019_Afghan_Survey_Full-Report_.pdf.
[2] “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” Pew Research Center, April 30, 2013, pp. 29 and 70, https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/.
[3] For why it is not accurate to use the term “suicide bomber” in these circumstances, see my article “Suicide or Paradise?” Arutz Sheva 7 – Israel National News, June 7, 2017, https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/20604.
[4] Belquis Ahmadi and Rafiullah Stanikzai, “Redefining Masculinity in Afghanistan,” United States Institute of Peace, February 15, 2018, https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/02/redefining-masculinity-afghanistan.
[5] Gender Focus, UNICEF, accessed on August 27, 2021, https://www.unicef.org/afghanistan/gender-focus.
[6] Sonia Elks, “Afghan men oppose more women’s rights; elders less hardline,” Reuters, January 29, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-women-equality/afghan-men-oppose-more-womens-rights-elders-less-hardline-idUSKCN1PN0TZ.
[7] Donna Clifton, “Most Women in Afghanistan Justify Domestic Violence,” PRB, September 13, 2012, https://www.prb.org/resources/most-women-in-afghanistan-justify-domestic-violence/.
[8] “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” Pew Research Center, April 30, 2013, p. 93, https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/.
[9] “Afghanistan Flash Surveys on Perceptions of Peace, Covid-19, and the Economy: Wave 1 Findings,” The Asia Foundation, 2020, p. 43, https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Afghanistan-Flash-Survey-Wave-1_fullreport_.pdf.
[10] Chris Tomlinson, “French Think Tank Warns Afghan Migrant Increase Means Increased Crime,” Breitbart, August 28, 2021, https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/08/28/french-think-tank-warns-afghan-migrant-increase-means-increased-crime/.
[11] Aleksandra Sandstrom and Angelina E. Theodorou, “Many countries allow child marriage,” Pew Research Center, September 12, 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/12/many-countries-allow-child-marriage/.
[12] “Marriage Laws around the World,” Pew Research Center, https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/09/FT_Marriage_Age_Appendix_2016_09_08.pdf.
[13] “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” p. 15.
[14] Ibid., p. 48.
[15] Ibid., pp. 52, 54 and 55.
[16] Ibid., p. 89.
[17] “A Survey of the Afghan People, Afghanistan in 2019,” p. 336.
[18] “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” p. 136.
[19] Ibid., p. 112.
The Eternal Jihad
Understanding what really happened in Afghanistan.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Although August 15, 2021 will forever live in infamy as the date when the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, for over 13 centuries that date was famous for another event—Constantinople’s defeat of the caliphate, August 15, 718. While these two events separated by exactly 1,303 years are vastly different in nature—not least that in 718 Islam lost, while in 2021 it won—they both confirm one irresistible point that the confident West should take to heart: the tenacity of Islamic jihad—this relentless snake of war that always bides its time, even if by remaining coiled for many centuries, before striking.
Consider the first event. In 718, the Eastern Roman Empire (“Byzantium”) repulsed, in dramatic fashion, the Arabs. It was such a spectacular victory, and Muslim losses were so bad, that, for many centuries, the caliphates never dared make another attempt against the walls of Constantinople.
Put differently, for many centuries after the year 718, anyone living in Constantinople would have thought—and would have apparently been justified for thinking—that the Islamic threat, whatever it was elsewhere, was well behind them.
And yet, in the early 1400s—700 years after the people of Constantinople had thought they’d seen the last of jihad—it was back again besieging them, with the city finally falling to Islam on May 29, 1453.
More significantly, those who besieged and conquered Constantinople in 1453 had little to do with those who besieged it in the eighth century. The latter were Arabs, under the Umayyad caliphate centered in Damascus. Those who actually conquered Constantinople were Turks, whose capital was Adrianople (now Edirne).
On the surface there is no connection or continuity between those who in the eighth century tried to conquer, and those who in the fifteenth century did conquer, Constantinople—except, of course, for one thing: both were Muslims, and both articulated their hostility for and need to conquer Constantinople in distinctly jihadist terms: like every other infidel, the Christian kingdom had two choices before it: submit to Islam—which it rejected—or fight.
Thus, while the jihad was down in the eighth century, it was never out for the final count. It bided its time, even as empires rose and fell, and finally manifested itself again in the guise of the latest newcomers to the stage of world conquest, the Turks (who, even more ironically, were greater devotees and practitioners of jihad than even their Arab predecessors).
Seen this way, Constantinople’s mortal enemy was never really the Arabs or Turks; it was Islam, which, while experiencing highs and lows in the intervening centuries, still transformed its adherents, first Arabs then Turks, into existential enemies devoted to the slaughter and subjugation of infidels, whenever possible.
Now consider how this “ancient” and “distant” history applies to recent events. At the height of U.S. victory in Afghanistan in 2005, when both al-Qaeda and the Taliban had been all but rooted out, Ayman al-Zawahiri (current leader of al-Qaeda) was asked about the statuses of those two organizations’ leaders, who were missing in action. His response, which follows, has, in the aftermath of August 15, 2021, proven true:
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 (Al Qaeda Reader, p.182; emphasis added).
Similarly, consider what Muhammad Arif Mustafa, a Taliban commander, just said last week:
One day mujahedeen will have victory and Islamic law will come not just to Afghanistan, but all over the world. We are not in a hurry. We believe it will come one day. Jihad will not end until the last day [emphasis added].
When one considers the state of the world, the current military and economic dominance of the West, and the general weakness of the Muslim world, surely such claims sound laughable. As seen, however, time has a way of switching the tables, making what once seemed impossible imminent.
In short, as long as Islam exists, the jihad may be down but it is never out for the count. It may take years, decades, and centuries; its name and guise may morph and change from eighth century Arab caliphates, to fifteenth century Turkish sultanates, to the twenty-first century’s loose amalgam of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, etc.—but it is always there, often lying dormant, yes, though ever ready to strike at the first opportunity.
What will it be called, what guise will it take, and what new inroads will it have made in the decades and centuries to come?
It's 'hard to exaggerate' how 'dangerously bad'
US President Joe Biden is
The United States is 'literally leaderless'
Report: Cost of Wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Other
Deployments Exceeds $8T;
Estimated 900,000 Dead
As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, a study shows the massive cost of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters in both dollars and lost lives.
Brown University’s Costs of War project reveals the cost since September 11, 2001 exceeds $8 trillion and that wars have directly killed an estimated 897,000 to 929,000 people.
The Boston Globe reported on the university’s project, which was launched in 2010 and is housed at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. The institute released updates on its massive database on Wednesday.
The Globe reported that the $8 trillion figure “includes the costs of veterans’ care through 2050, which is trillions higher than researchers previously estimated.”
The Globe reported on the budgetary and human costs of wars after the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.:
Researchers for the project reported direct war costs, which include all Department of Defense Overseas Contingency operations funding and State Department war expenditures, and counter-terror war-related costs such as increases to the Pentagon’s base budget, care for veterans to date and in the future, spending by the Department of Homeland Security, and interest payments on borrowing for these wars.
Of the approximately $8 trillion estimated costs of the wars, $2.3 trillion can be attributed to the war zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, $2.1 trillion to the war zones in Iraq and Syria, and $355 billion was attributed to other war zones.
The total also includes $1.1 trillion of related spending by Homeland Security and an estimated $2.2 trillion earmarked for future veterans’ care, including future medical care and disability payments, over the next decades.
The estimates do not include money spent on humanitarian assistance and aid for economic development in Afghanistan and Iraq, future costs of interest payments on borrowed money to pay for wars after Fiscal Year 2023, or state and local spending for counter-terrorism and services for post-Sept. 11 veterans.
The project said the cost to the U.S. would have been much higher if not for the help and spending of allies, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Germany, and France.
“There has been no single U.S. government estimate for the total costs of the post-9/11 wars,” Neta C. Crawford, political science professor and chair at Brown and co-director of the Costs of War project, wrote in the report. “There are partial accounts of post-9/11 war costs.”
The lack of detailed expenses from the federal government was the impetus for the Costs of War project, Crawford wrote. The Globe reported:
In March, the defense department released its most recent estimate that emergency and overseas contingency operations spending for wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan cost a total of $1.6 trillion, or $8,094 per taypayer through Fiscal Year 2020. But those amounts entirely exclude non-defense department classified programs.
“Democracy can sometimes take a beating during war,” the report states. “Operations may be shrouded in well-intentioned but perhaps unnecessary secrecy, and mistakes are generally swept under the rug or downplayed.”
“The Costs of War Project hopes that this accounting, and our other work, promotes transparency and facilitates informed conversations about current and future wars,” the report states.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.
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