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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
Samuel Johnson once said, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Last week Texas House Rep. Wesley Hunt recounted a story from Donald Trump’s negotiations with a Taliban chief that riffed off this quote. While discussing the conditions for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump said, “If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m gonna kill you.” Then he handed him a satellite photograph of the chief’s house, and walked out of the room. Not a single American died in Afghanistan during the following 18 months.
The lesson is, deterrence depends on credibility. The enemy whose behavior you want to change has to believe that lethal consequences will follow a warning if ignored. We have lost that credibility, and Joe Biden’s disastrous foreign policy blunders, and our weakened power of deterrence are the wages of that lost prestige.
The most dangerous foreign policy blunder is appeasement, concessions that signal weakness. Trump projected strength to the Taliban chief by talking in a way that he could understand. Joe Biden, on the other hand, approached the withdrawal from Afghanistan in a way that projected weakness, itself the consequence of his return to the Iran nuclear that deal Trump had left, and the subsequent concessions to the mullahs, especially the lifting of sanctions and the transfers of billions of dollars.
Such unrequited concessions have also been deemed weakness by our other enemies and rivals. After all, what else would you call concessions to a sworn enemy of some 40 years, an enemy who had, with impunity, formally declared war on the U.S.––dubbed a theological enemy by the epithet the “Great Satan” ––and kidnapped its diplomats, murdered its troops, attacked and slaughtered its regional allies, and was actively pursuing nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose of reprising the Holocaust by destroying Israel.
Hence, Biden’s disastrous skedaddle from Afghanistan was a huge failure not just of policy but of execution––U.S. citizens and Afghan allies left behind, the latter now targets of the vengeful Taliban; as well as billions in sophisticated weapons, a state-of-the-art military base, and worst of all, 13 dead American soldiers. Can anyone doubt that Xi, Khamenei, Vlad, Kim, and our other global enemies saw this fiasco as a sign of weakness––just as Osama bin Laden did in his sermons to recruits that catalogued U.S. withdrawals from Saigon and Mogadishu as the signs of a “weak horse”?
What makes Biden’s foreign policy folly even more egregious is that history has shown that appeasement begets more appeasement. The epitome of appeasement, the capitulation to the Third Reich by the more powerful France and England at Munich in 1938, was just the culminating act in the 20-year tragic farce that produced the most destructive war in history.
For example, in 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, a gross violation of the League of Nations and other multinational treaties––all of which Italy had signed–– that proscribed seizing and occupying other sovereign nations. Yet the League’s members did nothing other than bluster, and sanction Italy’s economy––except for oil, the most important resource for achieving Italy’s aim to take over and rule Ethiopia.
So, it’s not surprising that a year later, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, not just a violation of the Versailles Treaty, but a blow to France’s national security, as the Rhineland had been the jumping off point for two earlier invasions by German. The Allies’ appeasement of this act is made more reprehensible by the puny size of Hitler’s force: 34,000 soldiers and policemen facing 100 French divisions on or near its eastern border. Again, neither France nor England did anything other than complain.
This act of appeasement, enabled by the earlier appeasement of Mussolini, similarly encouraged yet another, the Anschluss, or annexation, of Austria in 1938. Don’t take my word for it; Hitler explicitly mentioned the unchallenged remilitarization of the Rhineland while browbeating Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, who alluded to his support by France and England. Hitler scoffed, “England will not lift a finger,” and said of France, “When we marched into the Rhineland with a handful of battalions––at that moment I risked a great deal. If France had marched, then we should have been forced to withdraw . . . but for France it is now too late.”
It was indeed, for less than two years later, Germany invaded and after a brief war, occupied France.
Other factors facilitate an unwillingness to use force when checking aggression from an enemy. Foreign policy idealism, the belief that diplomatic engagement and multinational institutions could resolve conflict without force, creates the moral hazard that leaders politically averse to war will promote policies like diplomacy in order to avoid the risks and unforeseen consequences of action.
Barack Obama campaigned on such idealism, and characterized the war against Iraq, which neutralized a brutal autocrat with programs to create weapons of mass destruction, as a failure of force because no stockpiles were uncovered by inspectors. For Obama and the Democrats, this was a “failure of diplomacy,” despite Iraq’s unpunished violation of 17 UN resolutions. When Obama announced his bid for the presidency in 2007, he had made clear in an article in Foreign Affairs his globalist perspective that conflict could, and should be resolved by multilateral diplomatic engagement.
In his article he argued that what he called Iraq’s “civil war” ––a duplicitous or naïve way to characterize a brutal autocrat’s efforts to obtain WMDs in order to dominate the region––required “a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help broker an end to the U.S.’s war in Iraq.” In other words, more talk that led nowhere. Such dubious faith in diplomacy reminds me of what Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty in Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet, observed after Munich–– that Hitler required not “the language of sweet reasonableness,” but “the language of the mailed fist.”
But when it came to Iran, Obama, like the military pygmies in the EU, opted for diplomacy, pacts, and bribes, all ineffective for stopping Iran’s push to acquire nuclear weapons, let alone checking the mullahs’ aggression against its neighbors and our forces in the region. Donald Trump later abandoned that feckless agreement, whose terms the mullahs serially violated, and put maximum pressure on Iran’s economy, as well as killing Revolutionary Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. But Joe Biden rejoined the deal and undid Trump’s progress at weakening Iran and restoring our deterrent power.
Finally, our foreign policy idealism carries a moral hazard: that weak or self-interested presidents or foreign policy officials will avoid the risks of action that threaten their political careers, and camouflage appeasement with “diplomatic engagement” and negotiated agreements that the enemy, as Iran has done, can violate or game, buying time until they can reach their objective––just as Iran has done, putting itself mere months from producing several nuclear weapons. Imagine the world today if the mullahs can hand off tactical nukes to one of its proxies, who have all sworn to subject Israel to another Holocaust, and to damage US interests by any means.
There are many reasons for a change in the White House, from a broken border letting in hordes of unvetted strangers, to an economy crippled by high taxes, hyper regulation, and policies that, as Rudyard Kipling put it, are “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.”
But in a world with an axis of autocrats eager to supplant us, more important is restoring to our foreign policy the realism that Donald Trump showed when he concentrated some Taliban minds.
Why assume naively that the ObamaBiden administration wants to serve, protect and strengthen America, that it has ineptly blundered, appeased, suffered from unrealistic idealism? Assume logically that all policy is deliberate and intended to destroy America (and Israel).
Then, all the pieces fit together and nothing’s gone wrong. It has all gone absolutely so right. Like how the wildly successful Hamas invasion, massacre and hostage taking led to the government feeding and negotiating for terrorists, encouraging Jew/Israel hatred across America, calling for a change of Israeli leadership while financing the Islamic terror regime. Absolute success. But apparently, not an election issue.
No need to crack one’s head to analyze, explain and ‘understand’.
This is a government of powerful traitor politicians and foreign agents deeply embedded in America. The staged, literally staged, debate ‘fiasco‘, as well as Jill’s staged Vogue photo of her, hard at ‘work’, sitting in the president’s chair, actor Clooney (husband of ICJ lawyer Amalia) playing his part, the media directed to act shocked, dazed, confused and dismayed – all scripted, nothing spontaneous, nothing reactive, acting on cue.
The whole of the Democratic Party has succumbed to the invasion of the body (politic) snatchers. They will kill to win – THAT is scary, not Trump.
The country is being run by people who despise their own country. Some with a deep and visceral hatred.. What could possibly go wrong?
Agreed that much of what we see currently is Kabuki theater and CYA ops to avoid accountability for the past four yrs (plus the period before the 2020 election) of deception and psyops to manipulate the perceptions by Americans and others around the world that a demented Manchurian puppet was actually making the decisions in the White House (and also keeping his finger on the button as the Commander in Chief of all U.S. forces). The real decision makers include Obama (in his 3rd term), Jill Biden, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, various current (and former) cabinet members, and a group of radical faceless staff members in the inner circle of the White House. It is a witches coven of Bolshevism.
Everything this puppet and his regime have touched has turned to shiite, but that has been their willful intent in their mission to “transform” America into Marxist-Leninist one-party state where they occupy the nomenklatura layer of party control and privilege.
My main worry is that all this staged theater and chaos is really a managed distraction from the real threat in the 2024 election, namely the party machine that is engaged in a massive ballot manufacturing and distribution operation that could decide the election 60 days before election day. For detailed insights of how this system operates, how ballots will be produced for Biden and the Democrats, how NGOs and dark money pools are involved, how the USPS contributes to this scheme, and how the CCP is contributing to this second coup d’état, read the articles by Jay Valentine posted to his substack at https://omega4america.substack.com/ and view his videos at https://omega4america.com/ . This content reveals the real storm that is gathering while we (and the RNC) monitor the chaos and pursue strategies that are doomed to fail (such as the army of lawyers and poll watchers, who will be on hand for an election that will already have been decided before they show up).
You have stated the ugly truth.
One key reason why I support Donald Trump is because I think that our country will be safer if he’s in the White House.
That’s because when it comes to matters of war and peace, leftists like Biden, Harris, and Obama, despite centuries, even millennia, of empirical evidence that shows otherwise, remain certain that the kumbaya approach of appeasement will make for peace.
Trouble is, while most people, including people in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, don’t want war, the leaders of aggressive countries and terrorist groups, who by their nature lust after power, don’t see appeasement and disarmament as signs of humanity and opportunities for peace, but as signs of weakness and opportunities for aggression.
Aggressive countries and terror groups are only likely to be deterred if there’s a credible threat of violence if they strike; in other words, “the point of a gun (or a ballistic missile) is the only thing that they understand.” And thousands of years of history prove that—the armed-to-the-teeth, don’t mess with us countries end up less likely to be at war.
For all his faults and shortcomings, Donald Trump is not someone to be trifled with and not someone to cross.
Yeah, you don’t fuck with Trumpy. That man withstands things that would break the best of us, The guy is made of iron.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
hamazz attacked Israel with US weapons left behind by TaliBiden in the intentionally sloppy Afghanistan debacle withdrawal August, 2021. – this high tech miliatary equipment is being reversed engineered. Joe Biden and his handlers are treasonous criminals! https://youtu.be/SqK_Wkmbetc?si=r9nDG3xslqgSepj6
hamazz attacked Israel with US weapons left behind by TaliBiden in the intentionally sloppy Afghanistan debacle withdrawal August, 2021. – this high tech miliatary equipment is being reversed engineered. Joe Biden and his handlers are treasonous criminals!
hamazz attacked Israel with US weapons left behind by TaliBiden in the intentionally sloppy Afghanistan debacle withdrawal August, 2021. – this high tech miliatary equipment is being reversed engineered. Joe Biden and his handlers are treasonous criminals! Open borders is letting in criminals and terrorists and cartel gangsters. It’s a matter of when will they strike jihad in USA because of Biden signature to keep the border open.
I am not a fan of Trump.
But the truth is that if Trump had withdrawn from Afghanistan the way Biden did, there is no question that Democrats in Congress would have begun another impeachment hearing against Trump, and with good reason.
The press would still be talking about it. It would still be front page news.
Congress and the press gave Biden a pass on the Afghanistan debacle because Biden is a Democrat and they don’t want Trump to win the next election.
Just one thing, your first sentence is an echo of “I’m not a racist, but…” Is it necessary to apologize first before commenting?
There is an Arabic saying, ” Kindness is weakness” Think about that.
Someone frees a Lion from the zoo and in the end they get eaten
Si vis pacem, para bellum.