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September 2021

MacArthur was fired; Milley should be court-martialed By John Mastronardi

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/macarthur_was_fired_milley_should_be_courtmartialed.html

Douglas MacArthur was one the nation’s greatest generals.  In his time, there was no more revered, lauded, and beloved military figure.  He graduated first in his class at West Point, where, after service in WWI, he served as its superintendent.  During WWII, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army in 1944 and given command of all Army forces in the Pacific.  On September 2, 1945, it was MacArthur who accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender, ending the war.  Following the surrender, he served as the military governor of Japan, helping to usher in a modern government and economy.  When North Korea invaded South Korea, in June 1950, it was MacArthur whom Truman put in command of the U.N. forces to repel the invasion and prevent South Korea from falling to communism.  It was a no-brainer.

After MacArthur drove the North Korean forces back across the 38th Parallel, the official demarcation line between the North and the South, beginning with a brilliant landing at Inch’ŏn harbor, the Communist Chinese sent massive forces into Korea in support of the North and drove the U.N. forces back below the 38th Parallel and into South Korea.  After recovering, MacArthur once again commanded his forces to send the enemy back into North Korea.

Unfortunately for MacArthur, he had an ego to match his brilliant military acumen.  It was this brash and flamboyant side that resulted in his being unceremoniously relieved of command of the U.N. forces.

Truman’s stated policy was for a more limited war in Korea to limit casualties and not risk a third world war.  MacArthur disagreed with this policy and wanted to expand the conflict to continue the advance into China and said so, publicly.  In doing so, he defied the commander-in-chief, President Truman, and thus, he was deemed to have threatened the civilian-military control balance.  For this transgression, along with several other earlier episodes of defiance, on April 11, 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from his command for insubordination.  In a statement made to the American people regarding the firing, Truman explained he had done it “so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”  In short, the civilians are in charge and set the policy, not the generals.

It has now come to light that while Trump was president, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley, on his own initiative, in a demented effort at professional courtesy, contacted a top-ranking Chinese general to give him the “heads-up” that if the U.S. were to attack, he would call ahead to let him know.  In addition, Milley communicated to and apparently coordinated with speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and then–minority leader Charles Shumer, in the waning days of the Trump presidency, to limit Trump’s abilities as the constitutionally designated commander-in-chief by improperly inserting himself into the nuclear launch sequence.  Not only were these acts insubordinate, but they arguably constitute conspiracy to commit treason.  They make what MacArthur did look like an infraction of failing to salute a superior officer.

Talk about a mixture of irony and idiocy in Israeli COVID policy By Ruthie Blum  

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/talk-about-a-mixture-of-irony-and-idiocy-in-israeli-covid-policy-679607

When Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz was caught on a hot mic on Sunday admitting that the “green pass” system is a necessary means of pressuring the public to get vaccinated — and not based on epidemiology — his remarks were treated by Channel 12 as a big scoop. His words were also held up by anti-vaxxers as evidence of the government’s allegedly unjustified coercion.

“We don’t want to do things that have no medical justification,” Horowitz was heard telling Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, in response to her saying that the restriction on outdoor dining should be lifted. “But I’m telling you that we have a problem. The ‘green pass’ isn’t even being enforced; certainly not in the Arab sector, where it doesn’t exist at all. And I’m seeing the effect on the hospitals.”

At this moment, Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern approached the pair and chimed in, “It’s annoying that they’re taking up the [hospital] beds,” he said.
“Those in intensive care, yes,” added Horowitz.

It’s pretty funny that the exchange caused such a stir. Anyone exposed to the changing regulations as much as to the virus itself knows that his revelation contained both truth and inherent contradictions.

Indeed, Israelis have come to grasp that the only real consensus among health officials these days surrounds the efficacy of inoculation – though some doctors have been questioning the need for or wisdom of a third jab. The rest of the incessant discussions and debates to which we are treated on a daily basis sound like background noise.

We also realize by now that the frequently incomprehensible rules were put in place for those who were likely to follow them. Knocking on an open door is always easier than trying to bang down a closed one, after all.

HOROWITZ IS probably kicking himself while wiping egg off his face for having his honesty aired unwittingly. But the “green pass” and “traffic light” systems are and have been pointless, particularly in a state like Israel.
Let’s not forget that it’s a country whose citizens – Jewish, Arab, haredi, National-Religious or secular – are used to and adept at finding loopholes. This is especially the case when directives appear illogical. Yet even when they make sense, the populace is perfectly content to ignore them.

Israelis of all stripes can be seen puffing away next to “no smoking” signs, for example, or playing Frisbee under “keep off the grass” placards. Ditto for picnickers who leave behind garbage on beaches and in parks, despite admonitions and an abundance of trash cans.

Nevertheless, most of the public rushed to receive the first and second doses of the vaccine, and nearly a third of the population has already been treated to No. 3. It’s not for nothing that Israel is noted for its impressive inoculation drive.

Afghanistan Through Michael Scheuer’s Eyes If only our “experts” had listened to his prophetic warnings. Andrew Harrod

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/afghanistan-through-michael-scheuers-eyes-andrew-harrod/

Many Western observers “have ignored the very real accomplishments and popular acceptance of the Taliban government in Afghanistan,” then-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer wrote anonymously in 2002. His previously-analyzed book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, contains sobering analysis, which foresaw the failure of American-led nation-building efforts in Afghanistan 20 years later.

Scheuer had focused on Afghanistan while tracking Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit in the years before and after September 11, 2001. Although since his 2004 retirement from the CIA he has exposed himself as an anti-Israel, conspiracy-mongering crank, his 2002 writings about attempts to liberalize  Afghanistan were highly thought-provoking. Already at the time he had criticized that the “Afghan war, then, is an opportunity for social work of international scope, not an opportunity to destroy al Qaeda.”

Afghanistan’s recent history of the mujahedeen defeating Soviet occupation in the decade 1979-1989 demonstrated for Scheuer the foolhardiness of any Afghan Islamic democracy project. “In fact, it is vital to recall that, next to the Soviets, the biggest losers in Afghanistan were the Muslim world’s Western-minded scholars, politicians, and intellectuals,” he wrote. He explained:

The Afghan jihad confronted the theoreticians of democratic Islam with a hard reality. The Red Army was not defeated by a democratic revolution, but by an Islamist revolution grounded, guided, and steeled by God’s words as found in the Koran and explained by the Prophet. Driven by their faith, the mujahedin used bullets, not votes, to win one for Allah.

Quoting Harvard University political scientist Tarek Masoud, Scheuer noted a “basic political fact” about democracy in Islam’s Arabic heartland. Masoud had observed that

there exists no grassroots movement for democracy in the Arab world, largely because democracy does not resonate with the average Arab. It has no basis the Arab past and is tainted by its association with the West.

Scheuer cautioned Americans who celebrated the quick American-led overthrow of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers following 9/11. Many of these Westerners “have taken their lead from Mrs. Jay Leno and the Hollywood wives and equated the fall of Kabul with the liberation of Dachau.” But he noted how the Taliban’s sharia supremacy had found favor among many Afghans, for now the “murder, bribery, kidnapping, and extortion that the Taliban had all but eliminated have again become commonplace.” “Although reviled by the West as violent medieval madmen, the Taliban teamed its imposition of strict Islamic law with a slow process of rebuilding and modernizing Afghanistan’s war-ravaged infrastructure,” he added.

Election Officials Don’t Know What Happened to 15 Million Mail Ballots in 2020 Election Real data — from a federal agency. J. Christian Adams

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/election-officials-dont-know-what-happened-15-j-christian-adams/

As any casual observer could tell, the 2020 election was a mess. Now we have real data—from a federal agency, no less—that proves it.

Based on data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an analysis by the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows almost 15 million mail ballots effectively disappeared after election officials gave them to the U.S. Postal Service to deliver to voters.  

Gone, like the Bermuda Triangle of the election.

Some of the mail ballots may have ended up on the floors of apartment complexes. Some were sent to deceased registrants. Some went to addresses where the registrant no longer lives. Some may have gone to vacant lots and businesses. Some, having never been requested by the voter, were never returned.

In 2020, we put the election in the hands of the people who regularly deliver you your neighbor’s mail.

The data also shows that an additional 1.1 million ballots were sent to the wrong addresses in 2020 – the U.S. Postal Service saying they were “undeliverable.” Think on that. One million ballots went to the wrong house or apartment.

This report proves that mass voting by mail leads to chaos, is ripe with opportunities to commit fraud, and disenfranchises voters.

What was the effect on the election outcome?  That depends on other unknowns.  What we do know is that massive numbers of lost ballots present enormous potential for abuse.  The fact of untracked, nearly 15 million ballots triggers an unavoidable cascade of serious, fundamental, deeply troubling questions. 

Such as, how many of those were voted by unintended recipients?  This can’t be known.  Another obvious question is, how many people failed to vote because their ballots went astray?  This too can’t be known.  Another question is why are the voter rolls so inaccurate that wrong addresses are so common? 

Places like Pennsylvania had to be sued to be forced into correcting them.  Another question is why do so many election officials not care?  

To put that 15 million figure in perspective, consider this in Pennsylvania 440,000 mail ballots went missing or were undeliverable in the 2020 election. President Biden won the state by only 81,000 votes.

Mark Milley Exposes the Myth of American ‘Democracy’ By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/16/mark-milley-exposes-the-myth-of-american-democracy/

Milley’s attack on civilian control of the military is the latest indication that our wokeist ruling class will take no prisoners in its assault upon the pillars of the American constitutional order.

This week’s deeply unsettling revelation of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s alleged late Trump administration-era perfidy, bordering on high treason, is but one glaring fusillade in a years-long crusade by America’s decrepit ruling class to condemn and ultimately subjugate us “deplorables,” “wrong-thinkers” and all others with a conservative or traditionalist worldview. It is a shot across the bow in that roiling cold domestic conflict, and a clarion call as to the relevant stakes. It is also a brazen assault on one of the most rudimentary defining features of America’s constitutional order — an assault that exposes the lie that the ruling class and its left-wing echo chamber denizens care one whit about the very “democracy” they invariably claim to cherish.

To recap, a leak of a forthcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, “Peril,” claims that two days after the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, Milley was so bothered by former President Donald Trump’s demeanor and conduct that he deemed it necessary to take unilateral action outside the formal chain of command. Specifically, Milley allegedly convened a rogue meeting with senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s de facto war room, to tell them not to accept military orders from anyone unless he was personally involved.

In effect, Milley, haunted by hysterical cable news-induced nightmares and caving to delusions of grandeur, took impetuous action to cut out the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces himself from the formal chain of command. He did so, we are made to believe, out of fear the lame-duck president might launch a high-scale attack or nuclear weapon strike, perhaps against China.

Although the qualifier “allegedly” is perhaps strictly necessary to describe Milley’s actions, it is worth noting that Milley’s office responded to the leak by issuing a nonapology “apology.” Milley’s “calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with (his) duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” the response statement from spokesperson Col. Dave Butler read.

Taxpayers Spend More To Prop Up Government Than They Do On Themselves

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/17/taxpayers-spend-more-to-prop-up-government-than-they-do-on-themselves/

One would think that in a nation founded on liberty that we’d be free to spend more on personal consumption than the government takes from us. But that’s not the case. Americans are paying more in taxes than they spend on themselves. Anyone who thinks this is healthy has a profoundly warped sense of right and wrong.

In 2020, according to Terence P. Jeffrey at CNS News, who did the arithmetic using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, American “consumer units” – a BLS term – “spent a net total of $17,211.12 on taxes” sent to Washington, state capitals, and local halls of government. Meanwhile, they spent “only $16,839.89 on food, clothing, health care and entertainment combined.”

Apparently the tribute paid to government isn’t enough. Americans just have to “give” more. The Biden administration is expecting to extract trillions more from us to pay for government programs it hopes will cement a permanent Democratic majority in Washington. We’re told that the agenda will be paid for by hiking taxes on the rich, but the reality is, “in the end, average Americans, not the rich,” will have to “pick up the tab.”

A few on the left who are more honest about the plans and the worldview that informs those schemes will make the claim that every penny earned belongs to government, and we’re allowed to keep some of it for ourselves because government is a kind and charitable institution. Americans are certainly free to hold that opinion. But not one of them has the moral right to put such a perverted idea into practice.

Yet it happens every day. Politicians, not all but enough to engage in large-scale racketeering, believe the dollars they rob without a conscience from Americans belong to them.

Biden Administration Blocks Rescue of Persecuted Christians from Afghanistan by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17773/afghanistan-persecuted-christians

“The State Department has blocked us every step of the way. The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem.  Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety. The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way. In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people… We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.”   — Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson Tonight, August 26, 2021.

Although nearly 80 percent of all persecution Christians experience around the globe is committed in the Islamic world, Afghanistan is actually the worst of all Muslim nations.

According to the World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations in which Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is the second-worst nation in the world, followed on the heels of the worst nation, North Korea…. That report was published nine months ago — when a U.S.-supported government ran Afghanistan. Since then, matters have only significantly worsened for Christians….

Even worse, because U.S. and Western leadership are careful not to show any interest in Christian minorities — a sentiment that goes hand in hand with Western acquiescence to “Islamic sensibilities” — they are more prone to turn a blind eye to the persecution of Christians than even some Muslim governments.

The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.

This information surfaced on August 26, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

Roger Kimball :The Great Unraveling The Biden administration is an unmitigated disaster unfolding in real time

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/great-unraveling-biden-administration/

The smart money says that Donald Trump will not run in 2024. The smarter money says that he might, but that he shouldn’t because he’s too old and too divisive. I have no accounts at either of those depositories, so am not going to participate in that panel discussion. Instead, I propose to make a few obvious points. If they’re obvious, why make them? Because the obvious is not always so obvious.

René Descartes is widely detested by all the clever people, for whom ‘Cartesian’ is term of snobbish contempt. I think Descartes was a great genius but one who was wrong about a couple of important things. No, I do not mean what he says about ‘extended substance’, the ‘Cogito’ or any of his other epistemological and metaphysical flights.

I am thinking, rather, of his bold claim in Discours de la Méthode that ‘Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée’: ‘Common sense is the most widely shared thing in the world.’ That, I submit, is almost Panglossian in its optimism. Indeed, experience tells us that something close to the opposite is the case. Really, common sense is the among the least common of virtues.

That is obvious point number one, and for confirmation I invite you to consider the phenomenon of the Biden administration. I am not one of the sensible, smart-money people who believes, or says he believes, that Joe Biden fairly won more electoral college votes than Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential. Contrary to The Narrative, I believe that the Big Lie is that the election was on the up-and-up. But — and this is obvious point number two — it doesn’t matter, by which I mean that there is nothing that can be done now to alter the outcome of the election.

Then why bring it up? Because (moving on to OP number three), the Biden administration is an unmitigated disaster unfolding in real time. It is a disaster fully owned and operated by the people that brought you the hysteria of NeverTrump and, as a part of that long-running entertainment, told us repeatedly (indeed, ad nauseam) that with the installation of Joe Biden the ‘adults’ were back, America was back and ‘normality’ was back.

That was about 15 minutes before the Great Unraveling commenced. It started on the domestic front as Biden’s economic policies stepped like a rhinoceros into the dinghy of the American economy, swamping it with eye-watering levels of debt, out-of-control inflation, an energy crisis and an unsustainable labor situation in which people are paid to stay home and not work.

Then there was the ongoing hysteria about COVID and the fraternity-house-like variants — that Big Pharma, the ‘experts’ and the media are exploiting for fun, limelight and profit. Trump confronted the novel virus, mobilized American ingenuity and scientific know-how and produced several effective vaccines in record time. His big mistake was engaging St Anthony Fauci and Lady Deborah of the Hermes Scarf as advisers. They muddied the waters and dispensed conflicting and contradictory advice. And they, at least he, would neither leave nor shut up.

The Taliban Just Received the Largest International Weapons Transfer in 50 Years By Joseph W. Sullivan

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-taliban-just-received-the-largest-weapons-transfer-in-50-years/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second

As a percentage of GDP, the arms left in Afghanistan represent the largest international weapons transfer in decades.

Economic statistics rarely deepen the sense of drama behind headlines. The Taliban’s new cache of American arms may be an exception. Each of the Taliban’s new American-made M4 assault rifles costs more than a year of per capita output in Afghanistan. The Taliban now cruise in some of the 4,700 Humvees transferred by the U.S. to Afghanistan between 2017 and 2019. Twenty thousand Humvees would cost the whole country’s annual GDP. The arms transfer that occurred as the U.S. withdrew and American-aligned Afghan forces surrendered in a haste really is as enormous as it seems. Relative to the size of the local economy, as the chart below shows, it’s the largest transfer of weapons the world has witnessed in decades.

The chart shows the world’s largest annual weapons transfers as a share of the receiving country’s GDP since 1960. The underlying data on weapons transfers come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Their data document weapons transfers to governments as well as other armed groups. In the 1980s, for instance, the data for Afghanistan document weapons transfers to the Mujahadeen, the Taliban’s predecessor, as well as to the Northern Alliance (the anti-Taliban opposition the U.S. aligned with in 2001) along with the central Afghan government. For each country in a given year, the value all arms transferred to any group operating within its borders is added up, creating a single value for arms transferred to armed groups in that country. This value of all weapons received in a given year is then divided by the annual GDP of that country, available from the World Bank. For this metric of weapons received as a share of GDP, the chart displays the largest value registered by any one country for every year since 1960, the first year for which these data are available. World War II and its aftermath almost certainly would have registered higher values than anything observed since 1960. The inferences permitted by the chart, then, are only about history since 1960.

Ron DeSantis Was Right about Monoclonal-Antibody Therapy By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/ron-desantis-was-right-about-monoclonal-antibody-therapy/

Florida’s governor was blasted by progressives for promoting Regeneron’s COVID treatment. Now, demand is so great the Biden administration is rationing it.

T wo months ago, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was being roundly castigated for promoting the use of Regeneron’s monoclonal-antibody treatment as part of his state’s efforts to fight COVID-19. Desperate to find something sinister in the push, DeSantis’s critics threw out every charge they could dream up. At first, the line was that Regeneron’s treatment didn’t work. Then, it was that Regeneron’s treatment worked fine, but represented a dangerous distraction from the vaccine. And, finally, it was that Regeneron’s treatment was part of a corrupt plot to enrich DeSantis’s donors.

Today, we learn from the Washington Post that, actually, none of that was the problem. Instead, DeSantis’s sin is that he has been relying upon monoclonal-antibody treatment too much, and that this is unfair to other states that now need it.

What a difference eight weeks make.

The Post informs us that the Biden administration has been so impressed by the impact that Regeneron’s treatment has made that it is now seeking to “stave off shortages” of the drug by “purchasing 1.4 million additional doses” and tasking the Department of Health and Human Services with setting “the rules for distribution . . . instead of allowing states, medical facilities and doctors to order them directly.” In explaining this move, the Post submits that “soaring demand for the therapy represents a sharp turn from just two months ago, when monoclonal antibodies were widely available and awareness of them was low” — which . . . is certainly one way of admitting that the same people who relentlessly condemned DeSantis for trying to raise that “awareness” “just two months ago” are today coming around to his point of view.