The video in the post below this one ends with a quoted message from President George W. Bush.

But Bush has much to do with the final victory this year, 2021, of the jihadis whose fellow Muslim terrorists perpetrated the 9/11 atrocity.

Bruce Bawer explains why at Front Page:

On 9/11, the world was shown, in one horrific, indelible image, precisely what Islam is all about. Today, to write the previous sentence is to be guilty of Islamophobia. How did that come to be?

It began in the days after 9/11 itself, when George W. Bush – by repeatedly insisting that the cause of the jihadists had nothing to do with Islam – effectively ruled out of bounds any criticism of that religion, or any honest education and open discussion about it. Instead, Bush – who had gotten it into his head that all religions are basically good, and who was manipulated by advisors who wanted to project American power in a part of the world about which they knew very little – used 9/11 as an excuse to rein in Americans’ civil liberties and go nation-building abroad.

It was a massive folly, doomed to failure. Why doomed? Because Islam is utterly irreconcilable with American-style freedom and incapable of reform, at least not without a far more aggressive effort than America was willing to commit to. Unlike America, moreover, Islam has a long memory. Muslims recall their forebears’ foiled attempts to conquer the Christian West at Tours in 732 and Vienna in 1683; the attacks of 9/11 were part of a history of such actions that goes back to Islam’s earliest days. Yet few Westerners know about this history or are aware that 9/11 was part of it.

Indeed, how many Westerners know, even now, that the word Islam means submission? For a long time, America was the ultimate symbol of the refusal to submit: in World War II, we took on powerful enemies on two fronts and won; during the Cold War, we protected the Free World from Communist takeover. But the Muslim wars we entered into after 9/11 were different. We were hobbled by leaders who refused to name the enemy – and by a corrosive victim culture, born in the academy but rapidly spreading into the mainstream, that divided Americans into oppressed and oppressor classes. It was Muslims who had attacked us on 9/11, and had done so in accordance with their prophet’s directives; but even as our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan labored to overcome social ills in those countries that were the direct result of Islam’s baleful centuries-long influence, our elites began painting Islam as beautiful and peaceful while casting Muslims in the role of America’s ultimate victims.

So little did Americans understand about Islam as of 2008 that they elected as their president a man who was the son and stepson of Muslims and who’d spent much of his childhood in the Muslim nation of Indonesia, where he’d been registered at schools as a Muslim, taken Koran classes, worn Muslim garb, and attended mosque. … Delivering an address at Al-Azhar University in Cairo shortly after his inauguration, the new president hailed Islam’s purported contributions to human civilization, inventing an entire alternate history that replaced primitive violence with advanced learning and scientific discovery. If Bush had whitewashed Islam, Obama exalted it, shifting the Overton window even further away from candor about Islamic fundamentals in the direction of sheer fantasy – and deference. …

The only “misinformation” about Islam that persists in America is the kind served up regularly in places like the New York Times by way of prettifying what is, in reality, an exceedingly poisonous ideology.

By the Times’s highly dishonest standards … it’s an act of vicious bigotry to take Islamic theology seriously, to deal with Islamic terrorism responsibly, or to acknowledge the link between Muslim belief and violent jihad. As for that so-called surge in anti-Muslim violence, it’s as much of a canard as the bogus statistics on campus rape, spread by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its comrades on the left, none of whom ever dare to speak honestly about the violence (largely anti-Jewish) committed by Muslims in the West – or about the bloodthirsty decimation by Middle Eastern Muslims, during the last two decades, of Christian and Jewish communities in that region. No, Muslims must always be portrayed as victims – and that includes portraying them, unforgivably, as the leading victims of 9/11.

The election to Congress of someone like Ilhan Omar – a vile anti-Semite and America-hater with terrorist ties – is not something to celebrate. …

 In Western Europe … Muslims are approaching 10% of the population [bringing] the rapid spread of no-go zones, the huge rise in violent crime, the destructive force of mass welfare dependency [and] the official persecution (and prosecution) of critics of Islam. [The Times does not] cite any of the many deadly jihadist attacks that have taken place since 9/11 on both sides of the Atlantic. …

In a saner world, needless to say, it would be considered risible for the Times to run an article bemoaning the “fear-based narrative around Islam” at precisely the moment when the Taliban, having retaken Afghanistan, is back in business destroying artworks and musical instruments, beating up journalists, forcing women back into burkas and girls into sex slavery, and beheading apostates (among others) and desecrating their remains in the gruesomest of ways. But the West today is not that saner world in which it would be admirable to speak frankly about such matters; on the contrary, it’s a world that’s been shaped since 9/11 by people like those who call the shots at the Times – a world in which it’s unacceptable to admit that the Taliban’s current actions are thoroughly consistent with the teaching of orthodox Islam, but where it’s obligatory to condemn as racist even a tame effort by Donald Trump to prevent entry into the U.S. by devout Muslims who support the Taliban’s actions.

This is where we stand, 20 years after 9/11: the West is awash in lies and cowardice; while the shady likes of Omar and Rashida Tlaib flex their muscles in Congress, while hustlers … brainwash students at our most prestigious universities, while degraded legacy media like the Times continue to sugarcoat Islam, and while a perfidious pol like British MP Stella Creasy feels obliged to say in the House of Commons that the Taliban’s iniquities are “not Islam”, brave truth-tellers on the topic, like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Lars Hedegaard in Denmark, are put on trial, even as another, Robert Spencer, is banned from the U.K., and still another, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, must live with bodyguards around the clock. …

Well, we rained down hell on Afghanistan and Iraq. By force of arms, we repelled the Taliban and ISIS and al-Qaeda, but we then failed in the absurd drive to turn those countries into simulacra of the free society that America had once been but was quickly evolving away from. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush said that the terrorists had lost, because the attacks had brought Americans together. Would Bush say now that the terrorists lost? Twenty years on, under the disgraceful Biden, America feels like a damaged and diminished nation – its power weakened, its alliances shaken, its once-unshakable core beliefs largely shattered, not least by the suicidal compulsion to speak well of Islam (as well as of our enemies in China and of the savage gang members who flood across our Southern border, and whom Nancy Pelosi defended with as much passion – “we’re all God’s children,” she gushed about MS-14 – as Hillary Clinton brought to bear in insulting the “deplorables” of middle America).

To many Americans, especially the young, patriotism now sounds quaint, if not outright offensive; in the view of those who hold the future of America in their hands, saluting the flag and singing the national anthem are for “white supremacists”.

The America that al-Qaeda struck at on 9/11 is no more; and 9/11 itself, and our tragically misguided response to it, are a very big part of the reason why. Islam plays a long game.

President Biden’s indifference to the parents of the thirteen American armed-forces members killed in Afghanistan spoke volumes. All too many of our elites now view GIs who’ve been wounded or killed fighting Muslims as an embarrassment – as relics of a benighted era when we resisted Islam instead of bowing to it.

All those firefighters racing up the stairs of the Twin Towers on 9/11? Todd Beamer shouting “Let’s roll!” as he and some of his fellow passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 rushed the cockpit to foil the Al-Qaeda thugs? In the eyes of many of our most bien pensant types today, these are wince-inducing images – now worn into corny, cloying clichés – that no civilized individual would dredge up any longer except out of sheer Islamophobia.

The other day, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CENTCOM commander Kenneth McKinsey actually praised the Taliban for its cooperativeness, it seemed clear that the mantra of “America bad, Islam good” had triumphed utterly over the values that the overwhelming majority of Americans of both parties once shared.

So it is that, after the fall of Kabul, many of us who, not so long ago, considered America almost immune to the ideological plagues of Europe and elsewhere find ourselves nothing less than shell-shocked, haunted by Ronald Reagan’s cautionary words about freedom never being more than a generation away from extinction.

The last generation that valued America and freedom is passing away. The generation of their destruction – led by some still extant but aged pioneers of hatred for both – has now arisen.

From the Western Journal:

Operators of privately sponsored rescue flights are pointing the finger at President Joe Biden’s State Department, saying it is the sole barrier to getting Americans and Afghan allies out of Afghanistan.

White House officials have pushed back against that accusation.

The State Department has put up hurdle after hurdle to block private flights from landing in nearby countries.

Rick Clay, who runs the rescue group PlanB, was among those saying the State Department is the barrier to helping those desperate to escape the Taliban flee the country, the State Department has put up hurdle after hurdle to block private flights from landing in nearby countries.

“If we can get aircraft in and pick up people and bring them out, why can’t we take them t o Doha to the refugee center or other refugee centers?” Clay said. “This makes no sense.”

Concerns about private rescue flights follow comments from Republican Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas on Sunday that Taliban officials were not allowing six planes loaded with evacuees to leave from a northern Afghanistan airfield. McCaul said the U.S. could be facing a hostage situation linked to American recognition of the Taliban government.

Update: four planes.

On Sunday, the State Department issued a general statement on the subject of private evacuation flights.

“We understand the concern that many people are feeling as they try to facilitate further charter and other passage out of Afghanistan,” the department said, according to The new York Times [the State Department’s lap dog].  “However, we do not have personnel on the ground, we do not have air assets in the country, we do not control the airspace — whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region.”

Because Biden gave them away.

The disastrous consequences of putting the fate of the world in the hands of an evil corrupt senile fool were not only foreseeable, they were foreseen, but those who could have stopped it happening – notably Republican governors of swing states, the conservative majority in the Supreme Court – would not do so.

Out of weakness or malice?

Are they weeping now? Or celebrating?

U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

The difference of degree between the death penalty and five years imprisonment plus a fine of $10,000 is so great, there must have been a very wide range of types of treasonous action in the minds of the lawmakers when those punishments were prescribed.

“President” Biden has obviously given aid, in many forms and huge quantities, to the Taliban enemy of the U.S. in Afghanistan, and – worst of all – unnecessarily given them victory. He has undoubtedly committed treason of an extreme type. 

Nothing short of the death penalty would be fitting for what he has done.

Joe Biden gave all this to a band of savages:

America has been vanquished by a band of savages; pestilence is spreading through the land; millions of aliens from backward countries are flooding in; the currency is losing value; half the citizenry has been disenfranchised by the other half’s tyrannical leaders; liberty is lost.

We cover our faces. We close our schools. We shutter the places of pleasure. We hear the gloating savages mock us.

Optimists still find “blessings” that remain to us.

But we resort to “counting our blessings” only when we feel many of them slipping away. Serious loss has us tightening our grip on what remains. “Be grateful for small mercies” is the counsel of despair.

We may also console ourselves by finding “bright sides” and “silver linings” to being suddenly poorer and afraid for the future. Or even joke about it in a “grin and bear it”, or “whistling past the graveyard” effort to keep up our courage.

Or we resort to concentrating our attention wholly on our private lives, working our personal ground.

As Voltaire advised long ago.

These are the concluding words of his Candide:

Pangloss would sometimes say to Candide:

“There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds. Had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.”

“Excellently observed,” answered Candide. “Let us cultivate our garden.”

Or is there something else we could do – something to recover self-esteem, dignity, strength, health, nationhood, wealth, and freedom?

With the “election” of the nasty idiot Joe Biden to the presidency, the era of American domination came to an end. The event that proves this was his insistence that the country he so badly leads – the mightiest military power in the world – capitulate to a band of terrorists in Afghanistan after twenty years of waging war on them.

With that, he rendered the service of American soldiers through all that time pointless, and the deaths of some 2,500 of them and injury of over 20,000 suffered in vain. The huge sacrifice of young lives, and the vast cost of  $2.26 trillion of American taxpayers’ money, was all a total waste.

Communist China is now already the dominant power in the world. Though it is not yet as rich as America, the US trade imbalance with China stands at over $74 billion in China’s favor. Though China is not yet a mightier military power than the US, it is far more likely to win the wars it starts.

It seems that this will be China’s century, as the last century was America’s, and the one before that was Britain’s.

Communism has won. Because a sufficient number of Americans chose to let it win.

Right or wrong?

If you think we are wrong, please tell us how and why.

A country without memory is a zombie. Deleting the past destroys the future. With left-wing extremists driving political debate, destroying monuments, attacking free speech, and censoring everything that displeases the Twitter mobs, America is on the path toward Communist-style tyranny.

So Nikola Kedhi writes at the American Mind.

He declares –

The American century appears to be coming to an ignominious end.

He thinks the end of America itself, as it has been from 1776 until now, is in sight, if not already upon it.

Nothing lives forever, and nations are no exception. The reasons for the downfall of great nations and empires are complex, but if you want to see a great country decline and crumble, it is enough to watch it cancel its culture and destroy its economy through an abandonment of values and fiscal irresponsibility.

Unnatural cultural and economic conditions will lead inevitably to social polarization and civil unrest. This leads to an erosion of democracy, less freedom, and less economic opportunity.

Such conditions are now hastening the end of the free American republic:

Due to the [Covid] pandemic, we have seen the global accumulation of power and centralization at the expense of individual liberty. The current Washington and coastal elites are forcibly imposing their cultural views on the American people. The country’s progressives in control of the media, academia, the corporate sector and almost every other institution present a vision of the U.S. as irredeemably racist, evil, and oppressive. Massive reconstitution of the nation is necessary to move forward, in this view.

In the view that is, in the vision, of its Oh-so-highly-virtuous critics.

And so, to their insane satisfaction, the free republic is tottering and will fall.

Their moral condemnation anathematizes, and their active destruction of the institutions completes, the very idea of a nation bound together by a love of liberty and the rule of law. Their insistence that such an America is too evil to be allowed to exist has weakened the formerly mighty republic almost to death.

He explains why America cannot thrive any more.

Massive unproductive government spending with ever growing entitlements and never-ending quantitative easing have become the norm in recent years—largely with bipartisan consensus.

The United States has close to $30 trillion in debt. Interest rates will not remain low forever, especially if inflation continues to increase, which is a virtual certainty given the Biden plan to double or triple government spending. When rates rise, paying for this massive debt will be much costlier. The short sightedness of politicians is steering the American economy toward “Modern Monetary Theory,” a fancy name for socialism.

Governments cannot channel capital efficiently. Instead, they fund zombie companies, unproductive sectors, and political cronies. The data back this up: according to the Congressional Budget Office, the estimate for average real growth in GDP from 2020 to 2030 is 1.7 percent, while the unemployment rate is forecast to average 4.8 percent, despite trillions of dollars in stimulus packages. In the second quarter, after massive government intervention, annualized growth was at 6.5 percent, much lower than the 8.5 percent expected, while annualized real personal disposable income fell at a 30.6 percent rate, and inflation continues to rise.

In contrast, the pro-growth and pro-worker policies of the Trump administration led to median household income growing by 6.8 percent in 2019, which remains the largest annual increase on record. America gained seven million new jobs—more than three times projections and at what was supposed to be the end of an expansionary cycle. Middle-class family income increased nearly $6,000—more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration. Median household incomes rose among Hispanics (7.1 percent), blacks (7.9 percent), Asians (10.6 percent), foreign-born workers (8.5 percent), whites (5.7 percent), and for all native-born Americans (6.2 percent). Poverty rates during the Trump years fell to a 17-year low.

It was thanks to Trump’s policies that the American economy began to recover much quicker than Europe as soon as many states ended lockdowns.

[But] when the Biden administration, with the help of the Fed, started inundating the economy with needless and unaffordable money, the recovery cooled rapidly.

The current administration is intent on following through with unnecessary spending, an assault on the energy sector, increasing the size of government, and higher taxes which will lead to a decline in competitiveness, stagflation, and the immiseration of the American people. Republicans are enabling this fiscal insanity, as their support for the massive, unnecessary infrastructure bill shows.

Kedhi’s conclusion:

The American century appears to be coming to an ignominious end.

But he seems not to have given up all hope of the nation saving itself from the fate its virtuous haters wish upon it.

He softens his jeremiad a little with a warning. (Though by his own account it would seem to be coming too late.)

A total revision of American history, and a forceful implementation of progressive socialist values, will take place in the United States if the current momentum continues unchecked.

Wasn’t defeat in Afghanistan the coup de grâce?

The recent catastrophe in Afghanistan is a direct consequence of the weakened state America finds itself from internal attacks that have produced an ineffective and incompetent government. Soon, the United States will be unable to confront Chinese expansionism or other authoritarian threats.

But not absolutely inevitably?

It is a crucial moment for American society. However …

Conservatives can yet save it?

However, it is up to conservatives and traditionalists to be smart and swift enough to counteract the cultural and economic transformation and provide an alternative, which is not yet happening in any cohesive or convincing way.

Can it happen? Will it happen?

Or is the lesson that the American experiment – people uniting under constitutional law rather than according to ethnicity and place of birth – can only succeed for a relatively short time?

… delivered and not delivered.

We cannot find this message from President Trump to the nation anywhere but on Twitter.

So as a tweet we post it.  (As usual we overlook the “God” parts.)

He says what a president of the United States ought to say to and about the soldiers who fought for their country.

The goof of a “president” in the White House wouldn’t think of saying anything of the sort. His handlers, however, should think of it for him, if only for the “optics” of it, about which they are always most concerned, even now at this time of national abasement and global tragedy caused by their “president”.

President Trump's message for a grieving nation. pic.twitter.com/2o7kgLKdaR

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) August 27, 2021

Here is an unhappy but sober discussion of What Is Happening in the World now that America has been led into defeat in Afghanistan.

Niall Ferguson is excellent. John Cochrane is good. McMaster, in our view, patchy.