WHY DID PUTIN INVADE?

WHY DID PUTIN INVADE?

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ARMED FORCES, BIDEN FOREIGN POLICY, JOE BIDEN, RUSSIA, UKRAINE

I guessed wrong on this one. I thought Putin would bluff and bluster, and then cash in his chips. I thought the weak Western powers would agree to a partition of Ukraine, with the largely Russian-speaking Eastern provinces going to Russia, along with other considerations, unrelated to Ukraine, that would be more or less secret. But Putin invaded instead, and seems bent on conquering all of Ukraine and perhaps more besides.

What made Putin so bold? A key factor no doubt was the weakness of Western leaders, pre-eminently the doddering Joe Biden. But the West’s weakness is not a function of a few individuals. You likely have seen tweets that contrast recruiting ads for the U.S. Army, featuring cartoons and lesbians, with recruiting ads for the Russian and Chinese armies. The contrast is painful.

Along the same lines, Russian generals no doubt have followed closely the introduction of Critical Race Theory into U.S. military training and have drawn appropriate conclusions about the cohesion of our armed forces. And of course there was the Afghanistan debacle.

Putin and his minions also witnessed the bizarre spectacle of the Biden administration suppressing production of American oil and gas, returning the U.S. to a state of energy dependence and driving up the global price of petroleum, thereby enriching Russia. How formidable can an enemy this stupid possibly be? And let’s not forget that the USSR bankrolled the American environmental movement for decades. Was that a good investment, or what?

And as for the United Nations–I believe Russia currently chairs the Security Council–this tweet by the Secretary General says it all:

All we are saying is give peace a chance. Right.

The natural cycle, it has been said, runs from tragedy to farce. So let’s move from the tragedy of a great nation “led” by a senile political hack to a farce that typifies the decline of American culture into sissification. This comes from an actress and “human rights advocate” of whom I had not heard until now, but it fits with the pathetic culture that we have created:

I thought Putin would respect the risk posed by American military prowess, however degraded it might be. I was wrong. With hindsight, that result was perhaps overdetermined.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/why-did-putin-invade.php

DHS Terrorism Bulletin Warns of Terror Threat From People “Spreading False Narratives” That Undermine Trust in Government

DHS Terrorism Bulletin Warns of Terror Threat From People “Spreading False Narratives” That Undermine Trust in Government

by Matt PalumboPosted: February 8, 2022

Fight tech tyranny. Join Dan on Parler @dbongino.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Prepare to be on a watch list?

The Department of Homeland Security has just warned of a “heightened extremism threat,” but it isn’t ISIS or Al-Qaeda that’s their main cause for concern.

“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” the DHS bulletin issued February 7th reads.

“These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.”

One part stands out when it comes to who this is targeting: “While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”

They lead with that – it’s only after the “proliferation of false or misleading narratives” that the government puts calls for violence and calls by foreign terrorists for attacks as risk factors. In other words, the person(s) who wrote this bulletin are seemingly more worried about the supposed misinformation (i.e. disagreement) coming out of the Joe Rogan podcast than jihadists calling for violence.

Below is a picture of the bulletin in the event that it’s revised or removed.

This comes following the FBI deeming parents showing up to school board meetings to protest liberal insanity as a threat that required their attention.

https://bongino.com/dhs-terrorism-bulletin-warns-of-terror-threat-from-people-spreading-false-narratives-that-undermine-trust-in-government/

Kansas Schoolteacher Joins ISIS, Plots Jihad Massacres in U.S., Leads All-Female Terrorist Battalion

Kansas Schoolteacher Joins ISIS, Plots Jihad Massacres in U.S., Leads All-Female Terrorist Battalion

BY ROBERT SPENCER 

 

(Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, a schoolteacher from Overbook, Kan., has been accused of organizing and leading an all-female battalion of jihadis for the Islamic State (ISIS). The Department of Justice announced Friday that Fluke-Ekren has been charged with “providing and conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization.” She was caught in Syria and was scheduled to appear Monday at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va.

It’s not your average career trajectory for a Kansas schoolteacher, but Fluke-Ekren, who also went by “Allison Elizabeth Brooks,” “Allison Ekren,” “Umm Mohammed al-Amriki” (that is, the mother of Muhammad the American), “Umm Mohammed,” and “Umm Jabril,” seems to have been a true believer. She “traveled to Syria several years ago for the purpose of committing or supporting terrorism.” While she was in Syria, Fluke-Ekren kept herself busy by putting together a battalion of female ISIS jihadis, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah. This wasn’t exactly a knitting circle: the women trained to fire AK-47s as well as use hand grenades and even suicide belts. In her spare time, Fluke-Ekren trained children in all this as well.

Nor were her jihad terror activities limited to Syria alone: Fluke-Ekren is also accused of plotting jihad massacres at a college campus and a shopping mall inside the United States. According to Heavy, for the campus plot, she and her accomplices would dress “like infidels (non-believers) and drop off a backpack with explosives.” The shopping mall plot was similar; Fluke-Ekren “allegedly explained that she could go to a shopping mall in the United States, park a vehicle full of explosives in the basement or parking garage level of the structure, and detonate the explosives in the vehicle with a cell phone triggering device.” She wanted this to be a mass casualty attack. “Fluke-Ekren allegedly considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources. As alleged by the same witness, Fluke-Ekren would hear about external attacks taking place in countries outside the United States and would comment that she wished the attack occurred on United States soil instead.”

Before all this, Fluke-Ekren was a teacher for New Vision International School in Overbrook. She “had more than one son, who was 5 or 6 years old at the time and one was observed holding a machine gun. She was also raising a child whose parents had participated in a suicide bombing together in Syria on behalf of ISIS.” One person who knew Fluke-Ekren said she was an “11 or 12” on a 1 to 10 scale of radicalization.

The government case against Fluke-Ekren doesn’t explain how a schoolteacher from Overbrook got the idea to join ISIS and plot the mass murder of her fellow Americans. Family photos show an older daughter in a hijab, but no other sign that the Fluke-Ekren family is anything but an ordinary American family. The sheer oddity of her story should not distract investigators from studying how and where she converted to Islam, and how she got the idea that her new religion, which non-Muslim authorities all over the Western world assure us is completely peaceful and tolerant, commanded her to try to murder as many non-Muslims as possible.

Related: Florida Teen Converts to Islam, Murders 13-Year-Old Boy

These questions are never asked, much less answered, despite the fact that converts to Islam turning to jihad violence is a distressingly common phenomenon. American intelligence and law enforcement officials don’t want to do anything to give the impression that they don’t accept the dogma that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The fact that converts to Islam such as Allison Fluke-Ekren, Damon Joseph, Corey Johnson, and so many others have somehow gotten exactly the opposite idea doesn’t arouse in them any curiosity.

All that willful ignorance accomplishes nothing other than to ensure that there will be many more Allison Fluke-Ekrens, as improbable as her story is. The Biden administration’s all-consuming focus on a fictional “white supremacist” terror threat only ensures that those who converted and taught Allison Fluke-Ekren and others like her will have a freer hand than ever to recruit and train new jihadis. In this case as in so many others, Biden’s handlers’ willful ignorance and politicization of counterterror activity comes at a high human cost.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/01/30/kansas-schoolteacher-joins-isis-plots-jihad-massacres-in-u-s-leads-all-female-terrorist-battalion-n1554436

THE FBI’S STATEMENT ABOUT THE TEXAS TERRORIST AND THE JEWS

THE FBI’S STATEMENT ABOUT THE TEXAS TERRORIST AND THE JEWS

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN ANTI-SEMITISM, FBI, TERRORISM

In a briefing about the terrorism at a synagogue in Texas, an FBI spokesman said the demands of the hostage taker, Malik Faisal Akram, were “specifically focused on an issue not directly connected to the Jewish community.” There is a sense in which this is true. The issue the terrorist specifically focused on was the imprisonment of a jihadist, Aafia Siddiqui. He demanded her release.

That issue obviously has implications for the Jewish community, especially given the blatant anti-Semitism of Aafia Siddiqui, but it arguably is not specifically or directly a Jewish issue. The imprisoned jihadist is a threat to Jews and non-Jews. Her conviction was for trying to murder American soldiers and officials in Afghanistan

The FBI’s statement has been attacked as an attempt to portray the terrorism at a synagogue as not targeted at the Jewish community — as not specifically or directly anti-Semitic. Lindsey Graham construes it to mean the FBI “does not believe the hostage taker’s demands had anything to do with the Jewish faith.”

The FBI might have been trying to say something along those lines. But its statement actually conveyed, at least to me, is quite the opposite.

That a terrorist would select a synagogue as the target of an attack “not specifically focused on an issue directly connected to [Jews]” demonstrates anti-Semitism of the most free-floating, virulent, and dangerous kind. And it precludes the frequent dodge that the terrorist’s quarrel is with Israelis and Zionists, rather than Jews.

A jihadist demanding, say, an end of U.S. support for Israel would naturally pick a Jewish target. A jihadist demanding the release of a prisoner could take any sort of hostages to use in a trade.

That this jihadist selected Jewish hostages makes the case, if anything, all the more disturbing for Jews. And, of course, it reaffirms the link between jihadism and anti-Semitism that the FBI may have been trying to obscure.

The FBI has now acknowledged the obvious — that, whatever the focus of the terrorist’s demands, “the Jewish community was targeted.” It would have been well advised to do so at the outset.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/01/the-fbis-statement-about-the-texas-terrorist-and-the-jewish-community.php

LOOSE ENDS (139)

LOOSE ENDS (139)

• Does anyone think that in the entire NFL over the last decade Jon Gruden is the only senior person who expressed impure thoughts on email or other internet media? As usual, the Babylon Bee has this covered accurately:

• Speaking of the Bee, its latest scoop is exposing that The Atlantic magazine’s Emma Green really is as vapid as most everyone else in the mainstream media. Green interviewed Bee impresario Kyle Mann, and the exchange includes these impossible-to-top bits:

Green: You guys wrote an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claiming that Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in an American strike. What makes this funny? I know that’s the worst question to ask somebody who writes jokes.

Mann: It’s funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half-mast. Get it?

Green: But that’s what I’m saying. Besides just saying the joke again, what makes it funny?

Mann: Do you want me to explain the joke to you? Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad. If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you’re not the audience for the joke. The funniest part is that it got fact-checked because it was so believable that Democrats would do that. That’s a real honor. . .

Green: I want to talk about one of the drawings in your new book—one at the beginning of Chapter 2, which is about race. It has three little stick figures: one that’s peach-colored that says “bad”; one next to it that’s gray that says “better”; and one to the right that says “best.” That one is black. Why do you think that is funny?

Mann: Well, it’s because being peach is not good. Being gray is better. And being black is best.

Green: Right, but you’re not just talking about stick figures. You’re making a joke about how progressives think about the hierarchy of race.

Mann: I’m not going to sit here and deconstruct and explain every joke to you. We’re taking this ridiculous position in order to mock something—to make fun of this idea that your skin color matters in setting up a hierarchy of the oppressed versus oppressor class. If you really don’t get the joke, I can’t help you.

Give up, Kyle. There is indeed no stopping people like Green from making fools of themselves, and providing you with more material.

• I noticed Friday when the news broke of the stabbing murder of British MP David Amess that initial news reports omitted any detail about the suspect arrested for the attack. The longer authorities and the media were silent about this, the more you suspected what was sure to come. A major clue came with authorities said the attack was likely “terror-related.”

And guess what? The BBC couldn’t conceal the news forever:

Whitehall officials told the BBC the man being held was Ali Harbi Ali, a British man of Somali heritage. The 25-year-old is being held under the Terrorism Act and officers have until Friday to question him. The BBC understands Mr Ali was referred to the counter-terrorist Prevent scheme some years ago, but was never a formal subject of interest to MI5.

So another lone “known wolf.” At least there isn’t the usual “we don’t know what his motive might have been” nonsense.

Early investigations revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamic extremism, police said on Friday.

Chaser—A reminder from earlier in the week:

Bow-and-Arrow Rampage in Norway Treated as Apparent Terrorist Attack

A 37-year-old man was charged on Thursday in connection with a bow-and-arrow rampage in a small town in Norway that killed five people and wounded three others, in what the authorities said was an apparent act of terrorism.

The police identified the suspect in the grisly assault in the town of Kongsberg, about 50 miles southwest of Oslo, as Espen Andersen Brathen. . .

Officials said Thursday that the assailant was a Danish citizen who lived in the town and who had converted to Islam, but did not say when that happened, why his conversion had raised concerns or what action the authorities had taken.

“We have previously been in contact with him regarding worries about radicalization,” Ole Bredrup Saeverud, the regional police chief, said at a news conference before the suspect was named. Asked whether the assailant might have been motivated by extreme religious ideology, he added, “We don’t know that, but it’s natural to ask the question.”

“Natural to ask the question.” You don’t say.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/loose-ends-139.php

THE WAR ON TERROR, NOT BAD FOR GOVERNMENT WORK

THE WAR ON TERROR, NOT BAD FOR GOVERNMENT WORK

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN TERRORISM

Based on what I’ve read and seen, the prevailing narrative on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is that the war on terror went pear-shaped. 9/11 presented a test, and we failed it.

On September 12, 2001, America was unified as it hadn’t been for decades. Our allies were fully behind us. But we blew it, or rather the Bush administration did by plunging us into war in Iraq. So I keep reading and hearing.

I disagree. My view is that we won the first 20 years of the long war on terror. Sure, we made many mistakes, as always happens in difficult wars. But there hasn’t been an attack on our homeland of anything remotely like 9/11’s scale in 20 years.

Few predicted this on 9/12, and the fact that the grim predictions of that time didn’t come true isn’t down to luck. It’s due largely to the war on terror.

This alone represents victory to me.

I would view things differently if the price of preventing major attacks had been a forfeiture of our freedom and core principles. But it hasn’t been.

Claims that America has become a surveillance state are wildly exaggerated. Indeed, we don’t hear them much anymore. When we do, they seem paranoid, at least to me.

This is not to deny that America is less free than it was 20 years ago. But our lack of freedom stems from speech codes, the cancel culture, and the pandemic, not from any overreaction to 9/11.

What about our obvious lack of national unity? This phenomenon too has nothing to do with 9/11.

It’s true that the Iraq war was extremely divisive, although not nearly as divisive as the Vietnam war. However, we largely overcame the divisions over the Iraq war, as we did with Vietnam. America reached a consensus (valid or not) that invading Iraq was a major mistake for which “neo-cons” were to blame.

The lack of nationality unity we experience today has next to nothing to do with Iraq or the war on terror. We’re bitterly divided because the left wants to transform America radically (it’s very open about this desire) and at least half the country — significantly more than half, I believe — doesn’t want major national transformation.

What about our relations with allies? Donald Trump alienated some of our allies through actions and words having nothing to do with that war. Joe Biden lost the trust and respect of many allies through his unilateral decision to pull troops out Afghanistan the way he did.

So yes, the way Biden is prosecuting the war on terror has harmed relations with our allies. But this isn’t what most commentators have in when mind they complain about what they consider the deleterious effect of the war on terror on our foreign relations.

Finally, let’s consider the state of play around the world when it comes to the threat of terrorism. In 2001, Iraq posed a threat. Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists. He plotted to assassinate George H.W. Bush.

As far as I can tell, Iraq no longer exports terrorism.

Afghanistan didn’t either for 20 years. With the Taliban back in power, Afghanistan might once again become a source of international terrorism. We can hope, however, that after 20 years of war the Taliban will be at least somewhat more inclined to deter al Qaeda and other such groups from attacking the U.S.

In 2001, the Saudis were key supporters of terrorism against the West. That’s no longer the case. The U.S. had something to do with this turnaround, although terrorist attacks within the Kingdom in 2003 and 2004 were a more important factor.

In 2001, the United Arab Emirates was one of only three governments in the world that recognized the Taliban — the others were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Now, the UAE has not recognized the Taliban, at least not yet. By contrast, as Fareed Zakaria observes, it has recognized Israel. Zakaria also points out that the UAE no longer panders to Islamist fundamentalists. Instead, it openly embraces most aspects of modernism.

What about the infamous “Arab street.” It too has been transformed. Zakaria cites polls about support for terrorism among Muslim populations. In 2005, 57 percent of the Jordanian public thought suicide attacks are sometimes or always justified. By 2009, that number was down to 29 percent. Zakaria cites similar results from “the Muslim” street in Indonesia and Pakistan.

The overall picture of the Islamic world that Zakaria paints is too rosy. He ignores instability in places like Libya, Sudan, and the Congo.

Zakaria also ignores Iran, a major exporter of terrorism in the Middle East and a potential exporter to the U.S. Of course, Iran’s biggest potential threat to world order isn’t its penchant for terrorism, but rather the likelihood that it will develop nuclear weapons. The war on terrorism didn’t produce this potential threat, but neither have we truly dealt with it.

In sum, I view the war on terrorism as a success because (1) for 20 years, we haven’t been attacked in anything like the way we were on 9/11, (2) we’re considerably less vulnerable to such an attack than we were in the months following 9/11 because of measures taken in response (coordination of intelligence gathering and heightened airport security, for example), (3) key state actors have turned against terrorism or, in some cases, been replaced by more benign regimes, (4) Islamic populations view terrorism far less favorably than they used to, and (5) we have accrued these benefits without forfeiting our freedoms and our principles.

Americans are considerably safer now than we were 20 years ago, though we aren’t fully safe.

Not great, but not bad for government work.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/the-war-on-terror-not-bad-for-government-work.php

Members of the U.S. Navy prepare to carry the remains of U.S. Navy Corpsman Max Soviak at the Morman Hinman Tanner Funeral Home in his hometown Berlin Heights, Ohio, on Sept. 8, 2021 in Berlin Heights, Ohio. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

VIEWPOINTS

What Afghanistan Teaches Us About Our Ruling Class

Lee Smith

Commentary

With our political and military establishment spending twenty years waging war in the mountains of central Asia, Americans now know that the old saying about Afghanistan and imperial ambition is a lie. A great nation with a keen pride in its own identity and the destiny defined by it doesn’t risk blood and treasure to convince primitive tribes to adopt its style of governance. Only a failing power that has lost all sense of what once made rivals shrink would spend the lives of its young men and women to plant its flag on a pile of inconsequential rocks. Afghanistan is not the graveyard of empires. Rather, it is where failing regimes go to be euthanized.

The Soviet Union was already crumbling when Leonid Brezhnev sent troops to prop up a Communist regime in 1979. Months after Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the last Soviet soldier in February 1989, the Berlin Wall was toppled. Russia survived and so will America. It is only the end of our ruling class, the curators of the new world order—globalism—that rose with the end of the Cold War. The impending collapse of this deracinated elite, like that of the Soviet Union, has simply been accelerated by its loss in Afghanistan.

It was not inevitable that what began in the wake of the Sept. 11 as an act of retribution would end in a theatre of self-pity. With lower Manhattan still smoking, Americans entrusted their political and military leadership with their safety and continued prosperity. Many of the most high-spirited among us offered America their service and some gave their lives.

But as the leadership class foundered in Afghanistan—Osama Bin Laden had escaped, Afghan democracy proved to be a fantasy, neither its army nor national police force could stand on its own, and so on—it saw that the failures prolonging the war in fact created opportunities for personal advancement. They used Afghanistan as a financial instrument to launder their spoils and purchase the power and prestige that are naturally owed victors. Like all habitual losers, America’s ruling class escapes the shame and humiliation it merits by forcing others to bear responsibility for the crimes it alone committed.

And that’s the context in which to understand the massive airlift for which the Joe Biden administration keeps congratulating itself. Never mind the thousands of Americans sent to their death for no strategic purpose and the trillions of U.S. taxpayer money wasted on the fantasy of turning Afghanistan into a democratic state. The message is: We’re good guys—we’re rescuing Afghans from the clutches of the Taliban.

The ruling class’ phony atonement comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. No one knows how many Afghans will be coming to the United States. Tens of thousands have been settled already, with others reportedly on their way, totaling according to some reports around 120,000. Government sources say that after refugees start bringing over family still in Afghanistan the final tally will likely reach a quarter of a million, maybe more.

The resettlement abuses the generosity of Americans, most of whom don’t understand that the Afghans sent to their communities are not the Afghans who helped Americans. The media, local political, social, and religious organizations have misled them to believe these are the interpreters and others who assisted US troops and other agencies. But according to reports, the Biden team left many of those Afghans behind. So, who are these people?

No one really knows. The problem is not that they are unvetted but that they are unvettable. The biometric information collected by U.S. authorities—and has now reportedly fallen into the hands of the Taliban—documented the Afghans who worked for them. Those among the warring tribesmen who opposed the U.S.-led coalition are undocumented, unless they are so notorious for shooting at Americans that they wound up on terror lists. Those Afghans are known. There are also records of those who committed crimes during earlier stays in Western countries and were deported. As for the rest, they pushed their way into Kabul airport, forced their way on to planes and now they’re here.

Gen. HR McMaster famously showed Donald Trump a 1970s photograph of young Kabul women in miniskirts to dissuade him from withdrawing forces. Trump’s advisor was trying to show that just underneath the country’s primitive violence was an open-minded and liberal core just waiting to be liberated.

But the type of people in those pictures are not part of this wave of Afghan migrants because all those open-minded and liberal Afghans left for the West years ago. The people coming now are poor and illiterate. They support strict Islamic law. Some of the tribal elders brought child brides with them. That is normal in traditional Afghan culture. So is raping young boys, which the Afghans call “bacha bazi.”

These Afghans can hardly be expected to assimilate American values and norms. And yet in one significant respect, these Afghans were shaped by their recent experience with Americans. The two-decade-long occupation trained them to be dependent on U.S. handouts. Thus, it is not entirely accurate to say the Afghans are fleeing the Taliban. Rather, they are following their source of income.

In this light, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Hamed Ahmadi, the 28-year-old Afghan refugee who tweeted out a picture of the meager meal he and other immigrants were served when arriving at Fort Bliss. Many commentators called him an ingrate, but see it from his perspective. He was eight when American forces landed. The only world he knows is the one in which the Americans give you money just so you won’t take up arms against them. The way he sees it, the Americans have no choice but to keep paying.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/what-afghanistan-teaches-us-about-our-ruling-class_3988130.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-09-09&mktids=865235025e5aabe7045066850a53ad29&est=zn4n%2BjvzeXfHq0rpnaRTUp5seGjHKZUXvjjJy7j7s92dy3UNiM9WNf9LkYD1