RUTHFULLY YOURS

Chancellor Angela Merkel, campaigning at a Munich beer garden this Memorial Day weekend, certainly delighted American citizens as they paused to remember their sacred war dead, including the 236,000 men who died in Europe’s 20th-century wars. “The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days,” Merkel said. “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.” Although Merkel meekly attempted to walk her initial statement back in the face of American complaints, she clearly intended it as a forceful response to the tongue-lashing the American president, Donald J. Trump, gave alliance members regarding their low levels of defense spending during their meeting at NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels last week.

Such a statement by the German chancellor would normally be viewed with concern by members of the American foreign-policy and national-security establishments, who view the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a cornerstone of the post-war global order. But coming from Merkel, it was the height of arrogance.

Germany and the other European members of NATO have chronically underfunded the alliance for the past generation, as their defense spending dropped precipitously from an already low average range of 2–4 percent of GDP in 1991 to 1.2–2.5 percent today. Europe has spent the past 25 years focused on growing its social safety net and attracting new immigrants to offset lower birth rates, rather than on the more traditional threats to its east. Merkel’s Germany, the largest and most robust economy in Europe with a GDP of $3.8 trillion, could be contributing significantly to the alliance’s defense if it met the 2 percent of GDP defense-spending goal established at NATO’s Wales Summit in 2014. Instead, Merkel’s Ministry of Defense expends a miserly 1.2 percent of GDP, which ranks 16th among the alliance’s 28 member states.

A lot of ink has been spilled decrying President Trump’s failure to verbally commit the United States to the NATO Article V statement that an attack upon one alliance member shall be considered an attack upon all. This is troubling, especially since the only time that Article V has actually been invoked, it was on behalf of the United States, following the 9/11 attacks. This was a lost opportunity for Trump, to be sure. However, it should also be understood that many NATO members do not agree on meaning of Article V itself, which states that if an alliance member is attacked, each member state of the alliance will take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” Many members have made it known that in the event of an attack their responses could range from a diplomatic note to a declaration of war. The United States has been one of the few members of the alliance to consistently state that it considers a military response to be its primary option in an Article V scenario.

The basic truth is that NATO leaders simply haven’t found the topic of their own security to be all that important. This is not true of the U.S. population, which still generally supports NATO and its mission. Nevertheless, President Trump’s skepticism of NATO also reflects the doubts of many Americans. While 80 percent of the nation backs NATO, 31 percent of the Republican party, which controls both houses of Congress and the White House, either opposes the alliances or remains ambivalent.

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?

Reality doesn’t go away just because you wave a “Refugee Welcome” sign. Syria is a terror haven where much of the country supports some flavors of Islamic terrorism. Bringing Syrians or any Islamic migrants to the West is asking for terror. And those who ask, will have their requests met by the generous Ummah of the believers in Allah and Mohammed.

German police have arrested a teenage asylum seeker suspected of planning a suicide attack in Berlin, Brandenburg state officials say.

The suspect, 17, was arrested in the Uckermark district, Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schröter announced.

But Brandenburg police say they have not confirmed reports that the teen, who entered Germany in 2015, is Syrian and was definitely planning an attack.

It’s doubtful he really was 17. It was habitual for these “unaccompanied minors” who were really grown men to lie about their age.

Special forces arrested the teenager after police received a tip-off, Brandenburg police tweeted (in German). He had sent a message to his family saying farewell and that he was joining the “jihad”, the police said.

Investigators are looking into whether the suspect may have falsely registered as a Syrian, police spokesman Torsten Herbst told the AP.

Half these migrants also claimed to be Syrian. You can’t, despite Obama’s lies and the media’s complicity in those lies, vet people from a war zone.

Some 280,000 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last year, a drop of more than 600,000 compared to 2015.

How many of them will kill next? How many of their children, like the Manchester Arena terrorist, will?

It seems all too possible that puerile leftist posturing will go on undermining enlightened Western civilisation. Waiting in the wings is its Dark Ages replacement. I have prayer. My prayer is that God-given reason eventually prevails, but there are many moments when it is very difficult to keep the faith.

At my Anglican church on a recent Sunday the lady giving ‘the prayers of the people’, having delivered the accustomed collective environmental mea culpa, asked that we pray for Palestinians in Israeli jails who were apparently on hunger strike, to thank God for our multicultural and diverse society, and to help us resist hate speech. She made no mention of Jews killed by Palestinian terrorists, or of Christians being persecuted in the Middle East, or of underage Muslim girls in Australia being wedded off or subjected to FGM.

She brought her political agenda before the congregation and God. I have political views but there is a time and place to express them. And the time and place is not Sunday morning in church. There are standard words that all we Christian churchgoers of different political views can sign up to. Here is an abridged example, which I plucked randomly from a particular Episcopalian church service:

Let us pray for the nations and peoples of the world [for] justice, peace, and prosperity [for] those who are sick, those who suffer, and those who struggle and who have died.

The dissonance exhibited at my church stems from believing that one’s political agenda has moral authority, even godly authority. It is an extraordinary conceit. It is delusional. This kind of delusion is rampant within Christian churches from top to bottom. It is even more rampant, sans the godly part, among modern-day leftists who dominate public services, the media, universities and schools, and who infest our well-to-do suburbs.

Go back some decades and I doubt that nearly as many people — common sense was more abundant — would have conflated their personal political beliefs with moral authority. As it is, leftists now put a moral badge on their cockamamie views and therefore regard those who don’t share them as fair game for abuse. Virtue signalling passes for thinking and spawns deplorable childlike behaviour.

We see conservative speakers being refused venues and shouted down. And those who would provide them a stage intimidated by violence and threats of violence. Absurdity flourishes. Trade union bosses throw their members to the wolves by promoting pointless policies to curb CO2 emissions.

How did we get here? It is hard to say. The feminisation of schooling may have played a part. Tongue in cheek I have suggested alien body snatching. Let me go to something earthbound. I wonder whether the evolving structure of work has also played a part.

The industrial revolution has profoundly changed the structure of work since 1750 but only in more recent decades has it resulted in the wholesale switch out of manual work. In the US, for example, Greenwald and Kahn (Globalization) report that from 1970 to 2005 employment in managerial and professional roles grew by 153%, in service occupations by 123%, while employment in traditional manufacturing roles fell by 10 percent. It is a safe to assume that this trend has not abated.

Manual work is grounding. You see first-hand that materials, power and effort are required to make things. Now there are far fewer workers down the pit, or on the factory floor, or on the docks; and, correspondingly, large segments of the population have no contact with them at all. Think of the inner-city latte sets.

In this sanitised world goods just appear, as though out of thin air. Let me speculate. The upshot is a cargo-cult mentality among the weak minded; and, more generally, an infantile disconnection from reality. Thus the wind and sun can replace coal, oil and gas and create millions of clean green jobs. Here is a mixed selection of more:

Ever more generous provisions of welfare, health and education are ‘rights’, the denial of which on the basis of affordability is unconscionable.
Taxing the rich is a bottomless wallet for making affordable the unaffordable.
Palestinians are willing to live in peace with Israel, even though their children are taught from infancy to hate, despise and kill Jews.
Islam is a peaceful religion no matter how much godless violence is preached and practised in its name; no matter how clear are the violent riding instructions in the Koran and Sunna.
Our Western past is shameful and we must be penitent in the ways of Obama.
All refugees must be welcomed across our open borders and everything will be fine.
Free speech is a right provided no-one outside of white men is offended; in which case it is hate speech.
Traditional marriage, and male and female demarcations, are dispensable affectations of less enlightened times when gender fluidity was not so de rigueur.

The list goes on.