quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:
I have a funny feeling that the next 24 hours are going to be interesting....

unfortunately I agree.

I believe it serves a purpose to remember past events, not just through the lens of today, but also in the context as they occurred. Events as they were, not just as they are.

Never Forget. 20 years ago:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi2SNFnfMjk




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA8-KEnfWbQ




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYnx-c8pF34




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS2Y46zknHA




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToECtXPMvNM

A collection of Cliff May's 20 years of September 11th anniversary column perspectives:


---------------------------

Twenty 9/11 anniversaries- the sleeping giant nods off again


Clifford D. May
Founder & President

September 8, 2021 | The Washington Times

On the first anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks, I wrote a column about a BBC radio program on which I had been a guest along with “activist” Bianca Jagger, and Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite. Neither evinced sympathy for what Americans had suffered at the hands of al Qaeda and its enabler, the Taliban. On the contrary, Ms. Jagger accused the Bush administration of killing “thousands” of innocent Afghans and failing to pay “reparations.”

A year later, I wrote an anniversary column praising Sen. John Kerry, then a presidential candidate, for calling the attacks “our generation’s Pearl Harbor.” But I questioned whether he grasped the implication: Had our enemies awakened a “sleeping giant” and filled him “with a terrible resolve” (as Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is reputed to have said)? I also suggested that if President Roosevelt had been asked how long we’d be at war with the Axis powers, he’d have answered: “For the duration.”

My 2004 anniversary column noted with chagrin that editors at Reuters had begun asserting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Two years later, it seemed to me that, “we have begun to understand that we have enemies, that they pose a serious threat, and that we must fight them.” I referenced the Bush administration’s National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which declared that the U.S. would “kill or capture the terrorists; deny them safe haven and control of any nation; prevent them from gaining access to WMD.”

My 2007 anniversary column observed that Gen. David Petraeus had taken “command of the 28,000 reinforcements he needed in order to change course in Iraq” targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq which had been “suicide-bombing mosques and markets in an attempt to foment a civil war from which they expected to benefit. He also began to challenge the Iranian-backed Shia militias that had gained power by responding to the AQI attacks.”

On Sept. 10, 2009, I expressed support for President Obama’s decision to surge 21,000 additional troops into Afghanistan but criticized him for appearing ambivalent about the mission at a time when too many, on both the left and the right, were “arguing for retreat.”

I added: “Any time infidels flee, declaring ‘This is a war that can’t be won!’ or even ‘This is a war that can’t be won militarily!’ the jihadis gain. By contrast, any time jihadis flee because they can’t stand up to ‘the strongest tribe,’ they lose more than that engagement and lines on a map.”

The next year, I focused on President Obama’s contention that “open-ended war” does not “serve” American interests. If he wasn’t going to commit the resources necessary to defeat America’s enemies but didn’t want to accept defeat at the hands of those enemies, the only option remaining was the one he was rhetorically rejecting: a long war, a “low-intensity war,” to prevent our enemies from triumphing. That war would have to be fought, I wrote, “on a variety of fronts. Afghanistan is one of them.”

On the 11th anniversary of the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia terrorists killed four Americans at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. My column lamented that, nevertheless, on “television and in the editorial pages of newspapers there was almost no discussion of who our enemies are, what they believe, what goals they seek to achieve, and what strategies they are pursuing.”

Two years ago, I wrote that “despite his misgivings, Mr. Trump has maintained a small contingent of American troops in Syria whose main mission is to enable Kurdish and Arab partners to continue to diminish the Islamic State, which emerged following Mr. Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.”

But I expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s dialogue with the Taliban –especially his plan to meet with Taliban leaders at Camp David. “Can you think of a better way to send a message of legitimacy and encouragement not just to the Taliban but to all jihadi groups and regimes in the Middle East and beyond?” I asked.

Though Mr. Trump canceled the meeting, talks continued, culminating in a bad deal that the Taliban soon violated but which President Biden now claims he couldn’t reject (as he has so many of his predecessor’s other policies).

Last year’s anniversary column drew from Congressional testimony by FDD’s Thomas Joscelyn making clear that al Qaeda branches, and those of its offshoot, the Islamic State, have been “waging insurgencies” and setting up “terrorist networks” in a growing list of countries on several continents.

“These groups have not launched a catastrophic terrorist attack in the West in recent years but that’s not because they wouldn’t like to,” I posited. “It’s in large measure because the U.S. and some allies have taken the fight to them.”

At that point there were fewer than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan – down from more than 100,000 at the end of President Bush’s second term. With only that small contingent supporting Afghan forces, wrote Gen. Petraeus, al Qaeda was being prevented from reestablishing the infrastructure it had “under the Taliban prior to its ouster from power in late 2001.”

“Rather than a safe haven for extremists to plot devastating strikes on the United States and its allies,” he added, “Afghanistan over the last two decades became an outpost from which the United States and its allies could project power against the terrorists.”

But, as he and others feared, President Trump’s bad deal, implemented with stunning incompetence by President Biden, has squandered those gains. We’re back to Sept. 10, 2001, except that both our enemies and our allies are now watching the sleeping giant return to his slumbers. Expect serious repercussions to follow.

Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

quote:

Expect serious repercussions to follow.

And—perhaps—the scales to finally fall from at least an eye or two when they do.

Thank you for that.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Expect serious repercussions to follow.

And—perhaps—the scales to finally fall from at least an eye or two when they do.

Thank you for that.

I have read every single page of this thread and, if posts contained only excerpts, I clicked on the link to read the full article. (with the exception of the Kurt Schlicter article, and various duplicate/triplicate posts posts from weeks and pages ago.) I've clicked and read or watched every single video or Tweet in this thread, or at least the ones that were still accessible without signing in or providing additional info.

As always, thank you for your perspectives, observations, and the WSJ articles you've posted. They've really helped inform and shape my own opinions...but I've come to rely on you for that.

Satire.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Balzé Halzé,

I believe that Twitter account is some sort of parody from a British columnist.

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
I believe that Twitter account is some sort of parody from a British columnist.

Yes, it's satire. I suppose nowadays it's not so easy to tell.

I guess not everyone knows about Titania, though he should. Titania McGrath is hilarious.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
I guess not everyone knows about Titania, though he should.

Which is why you should always indicate when you post a parody account. "Not everyone" is actually more like "very few people in this forum."

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan tomorrow. Link
He has a lot to answer for as to how he got it so wrong.

Who would have thought anyone could have outdone Hildabeast, but I think Blinken topped her with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and surrendering of Bagram Airfield.

This is a good 15 minute segment from Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures discussing the intelligent assets we lost with abandoning Bagram.



Joe Biden is now leading from behind — the Taliban, China AND Russia!

China is looking to take control of the abandoned Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

McCaul told Maria that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is now barking orders at Joe Biden.
The Russian president told Biden he is against any US base in the Central Asian “Stan” region.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
I believe that Twitter account is some sort of parody from a British columnist.

Yes, it's satire. I suppose nowadays it's not so easy to tell.

I guess not everyone knows about Titania, though he should. Titania McGrath is hilarious.

You learn something new every day, and today I learned this! All this time I'm thinking, what a clueless twunt that bitch is! Hence forth I shall chuckle at Titania!

The /sarc emoticon is always helpful and much appreciated...

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:
China is looking to take control of the abandoned Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Knowing that it's far easier said than done, there's a piece of me that still wants to ask, "if we're not going to use it, can't we just slide on across that area at night and destroy it?"

Grrr.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:

You learn something new every day, and today I learned this! All this time I'm thinking, what a clueless twunt that bitch is! Hence forth I shall chuckle at Titania!

The /sarc emoticon is always helpful and much appreciated...

Yeah, my bad.

That's her shtick though. And I tell you, there's nothing better on the internet than when she reels in a live one who comments on her posts. (Her being in reality columnist Andrew Doyle) Comedy gold.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/de...ke-fool-Lefties.html

During days when we didn’t just give up and go home from the wars we were involved in, destroying airfields so they couldn’t be repaired very quickly was about impossible.
The buildings? Yeah, and so?

I am sure Biden & Co. cut some type of deal with China regarding their future endeavor's in AFG.

I've previously shared my own story in which I badly wanted to join the military while in high school and in the years after, however I was a stubborn young man that, selfishly, only wanted to serve in one capacity, and the recruiters kept trying to steer me in different directions. At the outset of Desert Storm, seeing the potential for all-out full scale war, I updated my draft contact info that I had neglected for years...only to be thanked by the D.o.D. and informed that I was no longer eligible to be drafted.

The end result is that I've never served a day in a military uniform...and yet as a civilian without an ounce of military experience, even I have recognized that Bagram air base was essential to U.S. interests, both to local operations against terror groups like the Taliban, al Queada, and ISIS, and also just as importantly, it's strategic geopolitical location in the region, when considering the threats from China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and even North Korea.

The fact that China is moving to take over Bagram was predictable...and yet the elitist intelligentia in the Biden administration are apparently totally unprepared and unconcerned about that likely outcome.

...and now we can add the genocide of young Panjshir region boys to the Biden administration's rapidly growing list of 'accomplishments'

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:
China is looking to take control of the abandoned Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Thanks for the video interview, I'm planning on sharing it.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:
China is looking to take control of the abandoned Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Knowing that it's far easier said than done, there's a piece of me that still wants to ask, "if we're not going to use it, can't we just slide on across that area at night and destroy it?"

Grrr.

Assuming for a moment that the Biden administration is actually doing what they claim to be, and negotiating for the release of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies, attempting to destroy Bagram air base while hostages are being held in-country wouldn't exactly go over well with their Taliban captors. Bagram is now crawling with Taliban soldiers and leadership, and destroying the base, aircraft, and equipment on it would almost certainly include killing a significant number of their people. To begin with, killing any Taliban would violate the supposedly inviolate treaty, and I suspect that even if it were possible to destroy the base without killing a single Taliban soldier, Taliban leadership would still be plenty ticked off about losing that little gem of a war prize.

The Taliban would likely retaliate against our hostages if any action were taken against Bagram. I have, and continue, to believe that we should have maintained a continuing presence in Afghanistan and kept Bagram...but, if the decision was made to surrender it, it should have been completely destroyed, but only after all friendlies had been evacuated.

There is no way to destroy Bagram now, at least none that don't include significant messy repercussions.

quote:

Originally posted by Modern Day Savage:
There is no way to destroy Bagram now, at least none that don't include significant messy repercussions.

Very perceptive.
We may not like where we are now or how we got there, but this is where we are now.

It represents a large, static target. Something we really have not had in 20 years of conflict. Now, you can bet we would destroy/kill significant numbers of Tallie's and any large equipment that we left there.
I, for one, am completely comfortable with it being destroyed later on. After they get comfortable. They wanna live in the stone age, lets keep 'em there.

The bigger problem w/ destroying it later on is that it will likely be fully inhabited with Chinese or Russians.
Much harder to bomb them back into the stone age.
Bigger can o' worms.