Biden’s First Strike and the International Law of Self-Defense

by Adil Ahmad Haque for JustSecurity

The United States carried out airstrikes in Syria early Friday morning, killing several people and destroying several buildings. The Pentagon says that the airstrikes were a response to a rocket attack that occurred on Feb. 15, some 10 days earlier, at Erbil airport in northern Iraq, some 400 km away. That rocket attack killed a Filipino contractor, wounded four American contractors, and wounded a U.S. soldier.

It’s not clear whether the U.S. airstrikes targeted the group responsible for the rocket attack, or other groups affiliated with it. The Pentagon says “the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian backed militant groups including Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada.” It did not mention Awliya al Dam, the group that claimed responsibility for the rocket attack in Erbil.

The U.S. airstrikes almost certainly violated international law, for two basic reasons. The airstrikes did not repel an ongoing armed attack, halt an imminent one, or immediately respond to an armed attack that was in fact over but may have appeared ongoing at the time (see here and here). And the airstrikes were carried out on the territory of another State, without its consent, against a non-State actor (or two, or more) (see here). These two reasons, combined, are decisive. It cannot be lawful to use armed force on the territory of another State when it is clear that no armed attack by a non-State actor is ongoing or even imminent.

The Pentagon says that the attacks were launched “in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel.” The Feb. 15 attack was clearly over and not ongoing. And ongoing threats are not imminent attacks. The United States is free to take lawful action in Iraq to improve the long-term security of its forces and contractors in Iraq. It may not legally take military action in Syria to improve the long-term security of its forces and contractors in Iraq.

The U.S. government has not yet explained its decision to strike inside Syria rather than take lawful action inside Iraq. According to one former official, “[t]he decision to strike in Syria instead of Iraq was likely to avoid causing issues for the Iraqi government.” Needless to say, it is unlawful to bomb one country to avoid “causing issues” with another.

A few days ago, the State Department said about the rocket attack in Erbil that “we will respond in a way that’s calculated within our own timetable and using a mix of tools at a time and place of our choosing.” That is not how international law works. The use of armed force is lawful only if, when, and where it is necessary. The U.S. government appears to concede that it was not necessary to strike inside Syria. It was merely convenient.

The Pentagon says the airstrikes were a “proportionate military response” to the rocket attack in Erbil. International law permits a proportionate military response to an ongoing armed attack, or perhaps an imminent one. A proportionate military response to a previous armed attack, that is clearly over, is not proportionate self-defense. That is an armed reprisal. And even proportionate armed reprisals are illegal (see here and here).

The U.S. airstrikes were not defensive. They were expressive. The Pentagon says that the operation “sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.” The operation sends another message: President Biden will violate international law, much like his predecessors.

Image: A picture taken on November 12, 2018 from al-Qaim in Iraq’s border al-Anbar province shows the Syrian border city of Albu Kamal in the Deir Ezzor region. Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images

Khashoggi’s Death Is Being Used to Further Destabilize the Middle East

Jeff Carlson reporting for The Epoch Times

The media uproar over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi continues. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” The Washington Post has reported that the “CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination.” A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment in response to the Post’s inquiries.

President Donald Trump said he has spoken with CIA Director Gina Haspel and a full report is to be made public on Nov. 20.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert issued a statement on Nov. 17, noting: “Recent reports indicating that the U.S. government has made a final conclusion are inaccurate. There remain numerous unanswered questions with respect to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.”

A ‘Player’

Khashoggi was a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist. But as noted in an opinion piece in the Financial Times authored by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat who famously met with former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, Khashoggi’s activities went beyond that of a simple journalist.

“My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point, he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed,” Downer wrote.

“Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organization dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate.”

Khashoggi’s recent actions in Turkey placed him in direct conflict with the reformist actions undertaken by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, writes Downer:

“Khashoggi—a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of MBS’s reform program—was in the process of setting up a center to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September, they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know.

“This man wasn’t some Western-oriented liberal brutally murdered because of his passion for freedom. This man was a player.”

Worth noting is that Downer isn’t just an Australian diplomat. For 11 years, Downer served as Australia’s minister of foreign affairs. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), a direct counterpart to the CIA, is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The director of ASIS reports directly to the minister of foreign affairs.

Downer personally oversaw all the intelligence operations of Australia for 11 years and is uniquely positioned to know of what he speaks of.

Realignment Over Extremism

The Middle East has been undergoing a dramatic realignment, dividing itself between those regimes that support extremism and those that oppose it. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a political and economic alliance of six countries in the Arabian Peninsula, has been at the forefront of these efforts against extremism.

Led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, most members of the GCC have chosen to stand against extremism. One exception is Qatar, which has quietly, yet consistently, chosen to align itself with extremists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar supported the extremist factions in Syria throughout the civil war. And Qatar has subtly aligned itself with Iran–in direct opposition to the Saudi/Egypt-led efforts to align Arab nations against the Iranian regime.

Qatar is currently under a blockade imposed from the other members of the GCC for its alignment with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is Khashoggi’s recent ties with Qatar that may have ultimately proved to be his undoing:

“The real crime was that Khashoggi was backed alone by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, namely the Qatari regime and the Turkish government,” Downer wrote. “A writer in Okaz, a daily in Jeddah, accused him of meeting with the Emir of Qatar at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York and of having ties to ‘regional and international intelligence services.’ If true it may have sealed his fate. Qatar is now the No. 1 enemy of the Saudi regime—arguably worse than Iran.”

Overlooked in the heated rhetoric is the larger issue of stability in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia plays a crucial role and is strategically important to maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East, and as Downer notes, the Persian Gulf.

On Nov. 17 at the 2018 Halifax International Security Forum, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented on the Saudis’ critical importance, noting: “Saudi Arabia has been an important partner to regional security in the past. I expect they will be in the future. … Their cooperation, their interoperability, in my judgment, is a good thing. Their cooperation, interoperability, capability if you will, would be a stabilizing force on the region. Has been a stabilizing force in the region.”

A continued weakening of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s newly established regime would prove destabilizing for the entire region. His removal could prove disastrous. But that hasn’t stopped some for calling for exactly this type of response.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a tweet on Nov. 17:

“Trump must accept (for once) his intelligence experts’ incontrovertible conclusion: Crown Prince MBS is culpable for Khashoggi’s monstrous murder. This brazen killing must have consequences—sanctions, prosecution, removal of MBS & others, not continued cover-up, enabled by Trump.”

Risking Instability

Worth asking are two simple questions:

Why should we continue to insert ourselves into the internal politics of Saudi Arabia, and why would we be willing to risk the exacerbation of further instability in an already volatile region?

As correctly noted by Downer: “Abandoning the relationship with Saudi Arabia would further weaken the interests and influence of the Western powers in the Middle East. And if you think that doesn’t matter, you’re quite wrong. The Middle East is volatile enough without adding to that volatility by creating new power vacuums.”

Claims that the Saudis are fully responsible for Khashoggi’s death may be proven correct. Saudi Arabia is no standard-bearer of human rights. It is an authoritarian government, a monarchy run by the House of Saud. It might even be shown that bin Salman ordered the assassination.

It may be equally possible that an opposing faction within the Saudi government may have been responsible for Khashoggi’s murder in an effort to destabilize Salman’s rule.

There are also other players, such as Turkey and Iran, who stand to gain from a weakening or destabilizing of the U.S.–Saudi relationship.

No matter the outcome, to dictate our foreign policy and support for one of the primary stabilizing forces in a historically unstable region over the death of an individual with questionable ties seems a foolhardy venture.

As Downer notes: “You can in government be swept up in the prevailing media narrative, and if you design your foreign policy on that basis, you will achieve nothing. The wise government is the government which has a clear strategic direction and manages ephemeral events often driven by others with ulterior motives.”

Joe Biden: Unconscious Maoist

Our republic needs an American restoration; 

not a Maoist cultural revolution —

be it conscious, unconscious, or comatose.

by Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

During his half-century in the federal government, Joe Biden proved himself a plagiarist, a grifter, and a middling partisan hack. Newly installed into the presidency, Biden is now proving to be an unconscious Maoist, critical race conspiracy theorist, and aspiring totalitarian.

In a recent “appearance” with his fellow genocidal communist China appeaser, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for the umpteenth time Mr. Biden mumbled through the patent, conspiratorial slander that America is systemically racist—i.e., evil—and, in consequence, the racist citizenry must be reeducated by the self-anointed elites of the federal government, multinational corporations, and the dinosaur media. Per the “Big Guy”:

We both recognize our responsibility as leading democracies to defend our shared values around the world and to strengthen our own democracies at home, that means rooting out systemic racism and unconscious bias from our institutions and our laws as well as our hearts.

Yep, like their fellow Maoists, Biden and his tyrannical comrades on the critical race conspiracy theory pimping Left know what is in your heart and head better than you do. By dint of their totalitarian ideology, they have managed not only to be better than the rest of us; they also know how to make us better—or else. 

Who would have thought Biden could so succinctly capture Maoism’s totalitarian praxis, let alone advocate it being used upon the citizenry he, by constitutional design, is supposed to serve and not suppress? Then again, Mao was all about “unity” between a people and a party and had no qualms about how to achieve it. Apparently, neither does Comrade-in-Chief Biden.

While his son Hunter’s million-dollar payday from Communist China could be considered but another example of the grift by which D.C. and corporate elite line their families’ pockets, Biden’s unconscious Maoism clearly manifested itself when he excused Communist China’s genocide of the Uighurs. Believing there are good people on both sides of the genocide, Biden chalked it up to the Communist Chinese regime having a different “cultural norm.” Biden’s later decision to end reporting requirements for U.S. academic institutions receiving genocidal Communist China’s bribes . . . er, beneficences . . . was just the cherry on top of the mountain of renminbi. Who but an unconscious Maoist could pull that rationalization of genocide and foreign influence out of his . . . hat so quickly?

As Biden is far more demonstrably a Maoist than your typical Caucasian is a white supremacist, a conscientious citizen may feel compelled to object to having his thoughts and feelings so cavalierly branded racist. Further, a conscientious citizen might argue that the real “Big Lie” of systemic racism is but a tool of the tyrannical to expand their power, excuse their excesses, and advance their totalitarian agenda. But Biden would assure him that would be one’s “unconscious bias” talking, old sport. And it would only further “prove” to our governmental, corporate, and media overlords the need for citizens to be reeducated on matters racial to protect Our Oligarchy . . . er, Our Democracy™. 

Yeah, Mao would have yawned, “been there, done that.” Perhaps, though, he’d consider Mr. Biden’s imitation, however anile, a form of flattery (for little the latter does is sincere). 

In Frank Dikotter’s first book in his trilogy on Communist China, The Tragedy of Liberation, he lays out in detail how the Chinese Communist Party went about “thought reform”:

In October 1951, Mao announced that ‘Thought Reform, especially thought reform of the intellectuals, is one of the most important prerequisites for the realization of democratic reform and industrialization.’ Shortly afterwards, Zhou Enlai, dressed in a grey woolen Mao suit, lectured 3,000 eminent teachers in the Huairen Hall in the party headquarters in Zhongnanhai. The premier warned them that they were imbued with the ‘mistaken thoughts of the bourgeois class and the petty bourgeoisie’ and must work hard to ‘establish the correct stand, viewpoint and method of the working class.’ The lecture lasted a full seven hours. Wu Ningkun, an expert of English literature educated in America who had only just returned to China, against the advice of his brother in Taiwan and his elder sister in Hong Kong, gave up his perfunctory attempt to take notes after a mere hour. ‘Little did I know that the seven-hour report was nothing less than a declaration of war on the mind and integrity of the intelligentsia for the next forty years!’

Indeed, it was a declaration of war, repression, and extermination on all segments of Chinese society. As a contemporaneous party official explained how to be a good Communist when dealing with “counterrevolutionaries”: “You must hate even if you feel no hatred, you must kill even if you do not wish to kill.” And the CCP did—by the tens of millions.

Now, read “thought reform” as “unconscious bias training.” Read “imbued with the ‘mistaken thoughts of the bourgeois class and the petty bourgeoisie’” as “unconscious bias and racism.” Read “‘establish the correct stand, viewpoint and method of the working class’” as one must prove to be more than not biased but actually “anti-racist.” Only an unconscious Maoist like Joe Biden can be ideologically purblind to the dangers of a government arbitrarily branding a citizen as a “counterrevolutionary” (read “racist”).

Yet, there is also a price to be paid by those who would appoint themselves the coercive political reeducators of a nation. As Dikotter chronicles:

Lin Zhao [said] ‘my hatred for the landlords is the same as my love of the country.’ This she demonstrated by ordering a landowner to be placed in a vat of freezing water overnight. She felt ‘cruel happiness’ on hearing the man scream in pain, as this meant the villagers would no longer be afraid of him. After a dozen victims were executed in the wake of a rally she had helped organize, she looked at each of the corpses, one by one. ‘Seeing them die this way, I felt as proud and happy as the people who had directly suffered under them.’ She was barely twenty.

Now, read “landlords” as “racists.” Truly, as America’s tyrannical Left has proven in their zeal to “cast away illusions, prepare for struggle,” what one really jettisons to accommodate their totalitarian ideological aims and hatreds is reality, history, and one’s humanity. Consider the aforementioned Lin Zhao, whose fate Dikotter aptly records in an endnote:

Lin Zhao, like so many others, later became a victim of the regime. Arrested as a counter-revolutionary in 1960, she was secretly executed eight years later after writing hundreds of pages critical of Mao Zedong in prison, some of them in her own blood.

So let’s give a hard pass to Comrade-in-Chief Biden and his leftist cadres. Our republic needs an American restoration; not a Maoist cultural revolution—be it conscious, unconscious, or comatose.

Joe Biden’s Cabinet Nominees Prove His Unity Claims Are Garbage

Unity to the left means playing God and governing like kings & queens. 

by Gabe Kaminsky for The Federalist

In his first address on Nov. 7 to the nation after being prematurely crowned “president-elect” by legacy media, Joe Biden called for “a time to heal” and urged for “unity.” At his January inauguration, President Biden did the same.

“With unity we can do great things. Important things. We can right wrongs. We can put people to work in good jobs. We can teach our children in safe schools. We can overcome this deadly virus. We can reward work, rebuild the middle class, and make health care secure for all. We can deliver racial justice,” Biden said. 

Then Biden signed the most executive orders (15) in his first day than any other U.S. [resident in history—notably eliminating the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission to properly educate students about America’s founding. His cabinet nominations also do not spell unity. They indicate the opposite.

Throughout this week, the secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra sat before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Senate Finance committees for his confirmation hearings and notably dodged questions on his partial-birth abortion stance, and about suing nuns to force them into abortion coverage in 2017. The California attorney general is a far-left radical with zero public health experience or expertise.

Former Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security advisor under the Obama administration Antony Blinken, who was confirmed by the Senate to be Biden’s secretary of state on Jan. 26., allowed the State Department to conclude there is “insufficient evidence to prove genocide” by China against Uighurs on Feb. 20. Millions of Uighurs suffer in concentration camps at the hands of the Chinese Community Party, but while Blinken admitted that former “President Donald Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China” during his confirmation hearings, American citizens are waiting for warranted pressure on the totalitarian regime.

Janet Yellen, the secretary of Treasury and former chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, has called for a staggering $2 billion carbon tax on American taxpayers that would reportedly increase gasoline prices by 40 cents per gallon. In Yellen’s first public remarks after being nominated by Biden, she discussed pursuing “racial equity” policies to solve “racial disparities in pay, job opportunities, housing, food security, and small business lending that deny wealth building to communities of color.” Or, in other words, equality of outcome: communism.

Neera Tanden, nominated to be director of Office of Management and Budget, deleted thousands of tweets pushing conspiracy theories about the 2016 Russia collusion hoax, as well as attacks on Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, whose vote she will need for her confirmation. Tanden is the former president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, an organization that supports defunding prisons and police.

Biden associate attorney general nominee Vanita Gupta is the CEO and president of a far-left interest group that supports banning police from all schools. Gupta helped bail out rioters and looters this summer through the Minnesota Freedom Fund, like Vice President Kamala Harris, and advocates for “community policing,” not “real” policing, according to the 416-page report put out by her organization. Gupta has not yet been confirmed by the Judiciary Committee. Gupta has continually supported Marxist organization Black Lives Matter.

The only experience Secretary of Transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg, who was confirmed on Feb. 2, has in his new domain is announcing that his favorite board game is “Ticket to Ride,” as well as declaring his “romantic” and “personal love of transportation.” Buttigieg is also not remotely the moderate that the leftist media declares him to be. Buttigieg has advocated for packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and giving amnesty as well as taxpayer-subsidized college grants to illegal immigrants.

This cast of leftist characters who are already or likely to serve in the Biden administration is just a snapshot into the sort of individuals Mr. Unity has appointed. They are largely far-left and deep-state operatives.

Just as President Biden and the Democrats have vilified Republicans nonstop for four years as white supremacists and now purport to be leaders for “all Americans,” as Biden said in his inaugural address, it is very, very difficult to see where the left is not aiming to cram radicalism down Americans’ throats.

A sense of national unity sounds nice. It truly does. If you look around the country, you see endless and exhausting division. It’s sickening to think about the extent to which Americans today are unable to even be in the same room as those on the other side of the aisle. It’s a real shame.

But it is only fitting that after the Democrats finally ousted the bad orange man, they would incessantly call for “unity.” This could not have better exemplified than by the Bruce Springsteen commercial on Super Bowl Sunday, a tone-deaf and ironic plea after the musician has spent decades ridiculing conservatives with ad-hominem attacks.

It may very well be a “time to heal,” but Biden’s cabinet nominees make one thing very clear. Unity to the left means playing God and governing like power-hungry kings and queens.

Identity Politics Is Just A Mask For The Left’s Utter Ineptitude At Solving Real Problems

What American leftists like to describe as their commitment to greater fairness & equality almost always turns out to be a superficial rebranding of permanent dysfunction.

by Lewis M. Andrews for The Federalist

In the United States, the interest groups most strongly associated with neo-Marxist ideas would have been forced to operate more efficiently long ago, had they not assumed the mantle of social justice warriors. What American leftists like to describe as their commitment to greater fairness and equality almost always turns out to be a superficial rebranding of permanent dysfunction.

Consider, for example, how teacher unions have for decades used left-wing ideology to protect an education system that continues to rank poorly in comparison with other advanced countries. Despite adopting never-ending leftist palliatives over the decades such as bilingual instruction and Common Core, results from the 2019 biannual National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test of fourth and eighth graders show low-performing U.S. students have made absolutely no gains over the last 30 years. COVID shutdowns are likely to worsen the situation. 

The real solution to the academic failure of American public schools is no mystery to anyone who has looked at the data. It’s well-documented that school districts perform better when parents have a subsidized option to place their kids in private schools, home school, or use tutors.

But leftist teachers and administrators continue to push ideological policies instead, such as eliminating selective-admission public schools and recognizing multiple valedictorians at graduation time. Such feel-good social policies help save them from having to produce better academic results.

The same leftist thinking has also justified the $1.67 trillion college student debt problem. This debt problem is unnecessary, because there are many ways to substantially reduce the cost of a bachelor’s degree: giving more credit for online courses taken off-campus, reducing from four to three the years the time needed to graduate, more students taking freshman and sophomore years at less expensive community colleges, outsourcing health centers and other campus services, ending the athletic arms race (fewer than 20 collegiate sports programs make money), and collaborative purchasing.

Unfortunately, what today’s leftist universities consider far more important than making education affordable is expanding the ranks of their administrators, especially those with politically correct specialties. In the 1980-1981 academic year, according to Forbes, administrative spending comprised just 26 percent of American college budgets, while instructional spending comprised 41 percent. Three decades later, the two categories were virtually even. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that wherever we see an American institution that appears to be failing its basic mission, we can expect to find staffers who have traded the hard work of organizational innovation for the relative ease of leftist posturing. They have, as Center of the American Experiment analyst Katherine Kersten puts it, stopped being “the experts” and instead become “the elect.”

Darel E. Paul, an unusually brave professor of political science at Williams College, agrees. He believes identity politics has become the most popular expression of leftism precisely because it so effectively masks the failures of mediocre leaders. It gives managers and professionals who have either become lazy or outlived their usefulness a “much-needed social purpose,” he says. It assigns them the appearance of “noble tasks” while justifying their continued employment “to accomplish those tasks.”

We see this most clearly in large, liberal Democrat-run cities, where a half-century of being unable to win President Lyndon Johnson’s $22 trillion War on Poverty has left local politicians, community activists, and unionized social workers with only one way to rationalize their ongoing power: put a racial justice gloss on the status quo.

Instead of finding ways to make local streets safer, for example, San Francisco Mayor London Breed simply tells law-abiding citizens to accept petty crime as a legitimate, even admirable response to the white power structure. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio makes a similar case for releasing lawbreakers without bail, tolerating turnstile-jumping on the subways, and allowing public urination. 

Perhaps nowhere has leftism done more to protect a dysfunctional status quo than in the mainline religious denominations, which have been losing members at a stunning rate. Self-described Protestants are down from 51 percent to 43 percent of the U.S. population over the past decade, with Catholics down from 23 percent to 20 percent over the same period.

As Baylor University Distinguished Professor of History Philip Jenkins has noted, recent polling shows atheists and agnostics still make up no more than the same 9 percent of the population they always have. The real problem is that too many clergy have fallen into a trap scripture warns against—equating God’s service with some political scheme to perfect an earthly utopia.

The public school teachers whose students cannot pass the simplest tests, the university administrators who let their students take on unconscionable debt, the urban leaders presiding over the collapse of their own cities, the greens who force hardworking taxpayers to subsidize renewable boondoggles, and the clergy who substitute social justice for spiritual leadership: all have discovered left-wing pieties can save them from having to face up to what their institutions really need.

The good news, as the late economist Herb Stein famously observed, is that “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop”—meaning that no ideology can prop up a dysfunctional system forever. But he failed to add that if floundering institutions can come to an agreement on the same ideology, validating each other in the public square, then the decline can be stretched out over quite a long time, needlessly squandering society’s human and material resources in the process. 

To the extent that leftism has any real power, it is not to compel every social organization to join a successful crusade for greater fairness and equality, but to delay the time mediocre elites are finally exposed for the harm they have done to real progress. If there is one thing each one of us can do to hasten this day of reckoning, it is to treat leftism for what it really is: the callously deceptive face of self-serving stagnation.

 

Article by Patricia McCarthy in The American Thinker

 

RINOs, the scourge of the Republican Party

How clueless are the swamp RINOs?  Very, very clueless.  So confident that they can dismiss President Trump like last week’s news, a select few of them are hilariously destroying their own brands -- as if the 75+ m people who voted for Trump are just going to forget Trump, the best president they’ve had in decades, and go their establishment way.  This scenario could be a sit-com; that is how comical people like Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, and Mike Pence are at this sad moment in time.  They all thought, perhaps till think, that by denigrating President Trump, they would win over those 75m people.  They thought that by blaming him for what happened at the Capitol on January 6th they would be rid of the man who so threatened their cushy, establishment lives. 

How can these lifelong pols be so deluded?  Because they live in a bubble of their own making.  They presume without thinking that they are smarter than “we the people.”  Proceeding from that fixed belief, they have no doubt that they can mesmerize us to forget Trump and all the good he did, the promises he kept, the economy he built, the jobs he created, the energy independence he made possible, the control of the southern border he commenced, the wars he did not start, the rebuilding of the military after Obama, the sex trafficking he interdicted, and much more.  The man was and is the best kind of warrior for America.  

No wonder the left has hated and feared him with the “white hot intensity of a thousand suns.” (h/t Cheers).  Donald Trump was and is their worst nightmare; he actually does care about “we the people.”  That, for the leftists, is a deal breaker; the “people” are nothing more than units of labor to the left.  They should not have a voice or a vote.  For all their touting of their concern for “the people,” they have exactly none. 

The RINOs share this contempt for the American people with the Democrats.  How dare those people of “their” party support Trump?  How dare they believe the election was unfair?  Their concerns must be censored; there can be no talk of election fraud, none.  It’s the “big lie.”   The left should be more careful about from whom they steal their slogans.  That one was Hitler’s.   These people, the Democrats and their handmaidens in the media, actually think we can and should all be re-programmed, re-educated.  A few of them have suggested Trump supporters be subjected to “struggle sessions,” a form of public humiliation and torture favored by Mao.  Orwell wrote his novel, 1984, published in 1949, to demonstrate the horrific excesses of Lenin’s, then Stalin’s murderous totalitarian regimes.  Mao’s genocide was already underway; 65m killed.  

And now we have as President a man who is not only indebted to but is a tool of one of Mao’s successors.  And our left is littered with Sinophiles like Tom Freidman (NYT) and nearly every one of Biden’s cabinet appointees who support his submission to China.  While these pro-China, anti-American Americans advocate for China’s increased power over the US and the world because they favor globalism, a one world government, those of us who revere the American Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees for all citizens and our sovereign independence are not buying it; globalism is not for us.  Biden’s “America Last” is a recipe for civil and international disaster.  

America is a miracle of its own making and cannot, will not ever succumb to the whims of those who seek our submission to a global government.  But the Marxist Democrats are sure to make what is ahead a very nasty fight.  They are committed to transforming America into a Maoist form of totalitarianism.  All Republicans must stand up and fight against what this new administration is doing, transforming this Republic as fast as they can.

We are experiencing  tyranny by executive order and most of the Republicans are sitting still for it when they should, as a group, be on the steps of the Capitol every day warning the American people  about what is happening.  Our constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms are being stripped away so fast we should all be protesting at the armed camp that is now masquerading as the seat of our government while the southern border is suddenly and catastrophically open to tens of thousands of migrants seeking to live in what the left is teaching is the most racist nation on the planet.   Those migrants must know that is a big lie, but they will happily be taking the jobs that our own citizens had under Trump until the lockdowns put an end to them.

The RINOs need to go.  We all know who they are.  We also know who the good guys are:  Gaetz, Jordan, Johnson, Cruz, Stefanik, Hawley, Cotton, and others.  Sadly, they are too few in number, but they almost make up for their minority with their passion and commitment to the preservation of America as founded.  The RINOs are traitors to conservative principles.  They need to be exposed for who they are, and they need to be voted out of office if we are to save this nation.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/rinos_the_scourge_of_the_republican_party.html#ixzz6nfzqLdZJ

 

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The Bee Explains: The Equality Act

Babylon Bee🐝

What's this Equality Act you've been hearing about? Is it the end of American liberty as we know it? Is it a brave and bold step forward for human rights? Will it help you save money on your car insurance? Some of these questions will be answered in our handy explainer: 

What is the Equality Act?

H.R. 5, passed by the House this week, would implement special rights for a very small percentage of the population, in exchange for a very small cost: the rights of every woman in the nation. Seems like a great deal!

Is President Biden likely to sign it if it passes the Senate?

Yes, though he will probably be asleep at the time as Kamala operates his hand like a puppet.

What would this mean for religious institutions?

Wow, you're a bigot for even asking that.

What does this mean for women?

Wow, you're REALLY a bigot, aren't you!? Someone should notify your employer of your radical views.

Who are some opponents of the bill?

Biology, natural law, the full 6,000 years of human history.

Who are some proponents of the bill?

Some very fine, upstanding individuals, including virtually all Democrats, the most obnoxious people on Twitter, and the very worst, most self-righteous celebrities in Hollywood. Oh, and Satan. Satan loves equality.

Will the Supreme Court strike it down? 

Probably, if Biden doesn't appoint 1,700 new transgender judges to the Court before the case is heard. Which, if we're being honest, is pretty likely. So get used to introducing yourself with your pronouns!

Should I be worried?

No, dummy, you're a Christian who believes God is in control, so don't sweat it. If you're not a Christian, yes. Worry hard. And pray to accept Christ as the worship band plays this chorus of "Softly and Tenderly" one last time.

 

Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker

 

The ‘Cat in the Hat’ isn’t black – and that’s a problem

Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, might be one of the most-read authors in the English (or, more accurately, the sort-of English) language. Since The Cat In The Hat was published in 1957, generations of American children have sounded out simple words while reading about the eponymous cat and the havoc he wreaked with Thing One and Thing Two on a boring, rainy day. However, the wokerati have now come for him, claiming that his weird, mostly zoomorphic creations are, in fact, racist.

I have a confession to make: Except for Green Eggs and Ham, I don’t like Dr. Seuss. I hated the anarchy in The Cat In The Hat, and I’ve always had disdain for the cheating behind his rhyming books. Frankly, it’s easy for anyone to rhyme if they can make up half the words as they go along. If you can’t find a rhyme for orange or sugar, just invent a musical instrument called a bomborange or a cooking utensil called a wampgugar. And while I love the song You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch, the Grinch’s story otherwise leaves me cold (and again, I hate all those stupid words he created for fake rhymes).

My point here is that I’m not emotionally invested in Dr. Seuss’s works and am inclined to be critical – and yet, never in my wildest imaginings would it ever have occurred to me that his vaguely anthropomorphic creations were racist. But just as, to a hammer, everything is a nail, to a wokerati, everything is racist. It was inevitable that Dr. Seuss would end up being run through the left’s racial filter.

Loudoun County Schools, one of Virginia’s largest and most affluent school districts, is firing the man who helped generations of children learn how to read because, the district claims, his books have “racial undertones.” This decision comes about thanks to input from Learning for Justice, a national educators group with a decidedly left-wing orientation:

Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the nation’s most affluent school districts, announced that it will no longer recognize Dr. Seuss on his birthday. In an announcement obtained by The Daily Wire, the school district said that Dr. Suess’s children’s books contain “racial undertones” that are not suitable for “culturally responsive” learning. 

If you’re part of the literati, as opposed to the wokerati, you know that Dr. Seuss once did an illustrated book for adults complete with decidedly unsexy pictures of naked ladies. And if you’re a history buff, you may have stumbled across the fact that, during World War II, Dr. Seuss created anti-Japanese cartoons, along with some anti-German ones too. Dr. Seuss’s depictions of the Japanese were not friendly and traded on the racial stereotype that they had buck teeth and squinting eyes. Additionally, in keeping with Democrat icon Franklin Roosevelt, Dr. Seuss supported interning American citizens of Japanese origin or descent.

Intellectually sophisticated people understand that different times mean different values – and WWII was an extraordinarily bloody war that saw over 111,000 American troops die in the Pacific fighting the Japanese, with another 21,580 horribly tortured in POW camps, and over 250,000 wounded. Moreover, with the passing decades, Dr. Seuss became increasingly leftist in orientation, culminating with the anti-capitalist Lorax.

But were Dr. Seuss’s post-war children’s books, which were mostly populated with odd animal-like characters, really imbued with racial characteristics that spoke to racial animus and degradation?

According to Learning from Justice, yes!

In a magazine article titled, “It’s Time to Talk About Dr. Seuss,” Learning for Justice cites a study from St. Catherine University that claims Dr. Seuss’s children’s literature is rife with “orientalism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy.”  

The researchers surveyed 50 Dr. Seuss books and concluded that there is not enough diversity in the children’s books, many of which were written in the 1950s. 

“Of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are 45 of color representing two percent of the total number of human characters,” the study reads. Of the 45 characters of color, 43 “exhibited behaviors and appearances that align with harmful and stereotypical Orientalist tropes.” 

Two things are at work here. First, we’re seeing again the leftist impulse to erase the past. Fundamentally, they never really believe their leftist utopia will be that great, and they want to ensure that there is nothing against which to compare it. Additionally, to the extent we are witnessing the leftist Religion of Woke in action, that faith has no place for remorse, repentance, and atonement. Once damned, always damned. And with Seuss’s shady, racially fraught WWII past – well, “Out, damn, Seuss! Out, I say,” as Shakespeare, another banned author, might have written.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/the_cat_in_the_hat_isnt_black__and_thats_a_problem.html

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