RUTHFULLY YOURS

KABUL—A bomb exploded near heavily guarded embassies and military bases in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, killing at least 80 people and wounding more than 300 others, many as they headed to work on foot or in buses, the interior ministry and witnesses said.

The death toll from the blast, which officials described as a suicide attack, was expected to rise as more bodies were discovered in the debris and the critically injured were transferred to hospitals.

The Taliban, Afghanistan’s most powerful insurgency, denied responsibility for the bombing, which occurred as the White House considers a Pentagon recommendation to send an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to the Central Asian country to advise and assist its military.

There was no immediate response to the blast from the local branch of Islamic State, which has gained a foothold in the country since thousands of foreign troops were withdrawn from the country in 2014.

In the past year, the Islamic State affiliate has moved from its redoubt in the east of the country and carried out large attacks in the capital. Along with other Afghan militant groups, it has urged an escalation of attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, now in its fifth day.

Wednesday’s blast rocked the capital, sending a mushroom cloud high above the city.

“I was in the makeup room preparing for my morning show. A huge boom shook the room and everything collapsed. It was terrible,” said Taban Ibraz, a presenter for Afghan television network 1TV, located near the blast.

“The entire studio, newsroom and offices have been destroyed.”

An employee of Roshan, a mobile phone company, said many of his colleagues were killed and wounded in the blast.

“The two floors of office building collapsed completely as a result of the explosion,” he said. “Then office’s generators caught fire as well.”

The explosion struck near the entrance of the so-called Green Zone, which encompasses the U.S. military headquarters and the American embassy here.

The North Koreans now have the range capability to strike the United States with a ballistic missile. “It is a matter of physics and math.” — USAF General John Hyten, Commander of United States Strategic Command, May 9, 2017.

“A major headache for the United States is that much of the financial and technological support for North Korea’s weapons programs comes from China.” — Joseph Bosco, Senior Fellow at the ICAS Institute for Korea-American studies.

North Korea just conducted its seventh missile test launch so far this year. No one should expect this activity to cease, and no one should be surprised by North Korea’s progressively more advanced weapons capabilities, analysts said at a recent Mitchell Institute forum on Capitol Hill, hosted by the author.

“During Kim Jung Un’s five years in power he has done twice, perhaps three times, as many launches of missiles as his father did in 18 years,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The North Korean dictator is not showing any signs of slowing down, and he is determined to push forward the country’s program to enhance the medium and long-range missiles and nuclear warheads that now threaten the United States and its allies.

Klingner estimates that North Korea has 16 to 20 nuclear weapons. “And then, of course, the question or the debate is how far along they are,” he said. “I think it is pretty clear they’ve weaponized and miniaturized the warhead, that right now the Nodong medium-range ballistic missile is already nuclear capable.” This means U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are under a nuclear threat today, he stressed. “It is not theoretical, it is not several years in the future as some analysts or experts will tell you.”

The threats posed by North Korea are wide ranging, Klingner noted. “They’ve got, we estimate, 5,000 tons of chemical warfare agents.” And it has a sophisticated army of cyber warriors. “They are, perhaps, in the top five or top three countries in the world for cyber attack capabilities.”

Missile attacks are, it seems, what worries U.S. policy makers the most. A rising concern are submarine-launched ballistic missiles because of the immediate risk they create for South Korea. “The North Korean subs can come out on the east or west coast and threaten South Korea,” Klingner said.

North Korea successfully tested a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile last year, and they “flew it to an unusually high trajectory,” he said. “Had they lowered the trajectory and fired it for effect, the estimates are it could have ranged Guam. So that’s a new threat to a key node for the U.S. defense of the Pacific.”

Keeping U.S. officials up at night is the possibility of an ICBM launch. North Korea has developed several systems. One of its most advanced systems is a space launch vehicle, Klingner said. “But it’s the same technologies you would need to fire off an ICBM warhead.”

As USAF General John Hyten, Commander of United States Strategic Command, said on May 9th at a Strategic Deterrent Coalition nuclear symposium, that the North Koreans now have the range capability to strike the United States with a ballistic missile. “It is a matter of physics and math” he explained.

While Corbyn seems to be saying that Britain’s foreign policy is the reason the United Kingdom is being targeted by Islamists, this view seems to be at odds with what the Islamists themselves have said. The Islamic State’s propaganda magazine, Dabiq, explained perfectly clearly: “The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

Defending what we value would seem the better choice.

Here we are again. According to the analysis of the newly elected Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, the Manchester suicide bomber “was a terrorist, not a Muslim” — despite all evidence to the contrary. After yet another mass casualty terrorist attack, elected leaders seems unable to attribute any of these attacks to the supremacist ideology that caused it: radical Islam.

At what point does an individual cease to be a Muslim and start to become a terrorist? Is there a definitive moment? Why can an individual not be a Muslim and a terrorist. Especially if that individual says he is?

Or is this just a racism of lowered expectations?

Refusing to name the problem also takes power away from Muslim reformers who are seeking to remove violence and bigotry from Islam, as well as other religious demands under which they would prefer not live — such as the lack of free speech, lack of separation of powers, subjugation of women and death penalty for apostasy.

Also, how come no one makes a distinction between religion and violence with any other faith? During the Inquisition, no one would ever claim that Torquemada was not a Christian. Why should this distinction apply only to radical Islam?

Perhaps it is just easier to put short-term political futures ahead of national security, and short term political gains ahead of addressing harsh political truths. That attitude only imperils the rights and Judeo-Christian values we may prefer to keep.

No one wants to blame the entire Islamic community for the actions of a few of its members — just as all Germans were not Nazis — but why can one not call Islamic terrorism exactly that and still emphasize that not all Muslims are terrorists?