Trump Wins!

He did it again. He delivered a powerful and clear foreign policy vision, and did it in the belly of the sclerotic beast known as the United Nations.

I thought President Trump's address to the 72nd UNGA was a masterful performance. You can read the text here. I am starting to like his speaking style; it's not classical rhetorical, nor polished Reagan Hollywood recitation. It's plain, easy to understand, and very clear in presenting his vision of America and of America's place in the world,

We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation. This is the beautiful vision of this institution, and this is foundation for cooperation and success.  

Strong, sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect. 

Strong, sovereign nations let their people take ownership of the future and control their own destiny. And strong, sovereign nations allow individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by God. 

In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch. This week gives our country a special reason to take pride in that example. We are celebrating the 230th anniversary of our beloved Constitution -- the oldest constitution still in use in the world today. 

This timeless document has been the foundation of peace, prosperity, and freedom for the Americans and for countless millions around the globe whose own countries have found inspiration in its respect for human nature, human dignity, and the rule of law.  

The greatest in the United States Constitution is its first three beautiful words. They are:  “We the people.” <...>

In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people, to our citizens -- to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values.  

As President of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first.  

It is a return to seeing the world as a collection of nation-states, each with its own interests and culture; states which can and should find areas of mutual cooperation while living their own lives and allowing others to live theirs. It is a step back from the silly borderless globalism which has produced the multi-cultural havoc we see in Western cities, and along our southern border. He puts our interests first, and asks other leaders to do the same with their countries. Revolutionary.

He then plunged into describing the state of our world and the challenges it faces--the real ones, not the fake Al Gore ones,

The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries.  

If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength. 

No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more.  

We were all witness to the regime's deadly abuse when an innocent American college student, Otto Warmbier, was returned to America only to die a few days later. We saw it in the assassination of the dictator's brother using banned nerve agents in an international airport. We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea's spies. 

If this is not twisted enough, now North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life.

It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would arm, supply, and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict. No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. 

The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

Now, of course, some of the bien pensants in the media and among the traditional foreign policy establishment have lost their minds because of the words "totally destroy North Korea." He was not threatening North Korea; he was being honest. He provided an honest even obvious description of what a war provoked by North Korea would produce, to wit, the destruction of North Korea. Is that an accurate description? Yes. "Rocket man" and his defenders need to remember that. 

He also put Iran on notice that he is not fooled by the absurd Obama/Kerry nuclear deal with Iran (here, here),

It is far past time for the nations of the world to confront another reckless regime -- one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.  

The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.  It has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.  The longest-suffering victims of Iran's leaders are, in fact, its own people. 

Rather than use its resources to improve Iranian lives, its oil profits go to fund Hezbollah and other terrorists that kill innocent Muslims and attack their peaceful Arab and Israeli neighbors.  This wealth, which rightly belongs to Iran's people, also goes to shore up Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship, fuel Yemen's civil war, and undermine peace throughout the entire Middle East.  

We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles, and we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program.  (Applause.)  The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.  Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States, and I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it -- believe me.  

He did not hesitate to use the taboo phrase,

We will stop radical Islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation, and indeed to tear up the entire world.  

We must deny the terrorists safe haven, transit, funding, and any form of support for their vile and sinister ideology.  We must drive them out of our nations.  It is time to expose and hold responsible those countries who support and finance terror groups like al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and others that slaughter innocent people. 

The United States and our allies are working together throughout the Middle East to crush the loser terrorists and stop the reemergence of safe havens they use to launch attacks on all of our people. 

He also showed an understanding of the humanitarian havoc wrought in Latin America by the progressives' favorite regimes in Havana and Caracas. He also produced an epic line re socialism,

We call for the full restoration of democracy and political freedoms in Venezuela. (Applause.) 

The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. (Applause.) From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.

Sure the speech was a little on the long side, and had the customary boiler-plate praise of the UN ideal--to be expected--but he also called out he UN for its waste and incompetence and reminded that that we pay for a disproportionate share of the UN budget.

Overall, I give the speech an eleven out of ten. It was a refreshing and bracing dollop of reality and honesty. I hope and trust he follows up with action what he has laid out in words.

Battle of Britain Redux

Given that history "repeats itself," sort of, it's only appropriate that on the 77th anniversary of the original Battle of Britain, we see a new one underway.

As we have read, "somebody" tried to commit mass murder on a British commuter train; a "bucket" bomb went off inside a rail car injuring around 30 persons. Seems pure luck that we have no fatality to lament; it appears the bomb-maker was not exactly a master of his/her/xi craft, and the device failed to work "properly." Instead of a massive detonation in a packed and confined rail car, the bomb "merely" generated, per the press, some sort of "fireball" that produced serious but non-lethal injuries and a stampede. The media, no doubt, will let us know where the bomb-maker failed so that future ones won't repeat the same errors.

OK. Let us not jump to conclusions re the who and the what behind this latest atrocity. Let's put aside the giddy ISIS endorsement of the act. Let us not conclude, without evidence, who is the likely perp. I won't, therefore, jump to conclude that the bomber is a Mormon missionary, an Amish tourist, an Orthodox Rabbi, or a Catholic Priest. I also won't conclude that it is some Nazi upset about the result of the 1940 Battle of Britain. Somehow, however, despite all these non-jump cautions, I think we all know who and what lie behind the bombing. Dare we say it? I don't want to invoke a Google ban . . . so I will allow each reader to whisper, "Religion of Peace."

London, once one of if not the greatest of cities, is now a place of heavily armed cops, troops, and concrete barriers; its criminally idiotic mayor delivers platitudes about "not giving in to terror" when, in fact, London has (here and here). The mayor, himself, previously lectured the world about how terrorism is just something we have to expect in a major city, so carry on smartly, nothing to see here, immigrants, and refugees still welcome . . . white English people, not so much . . . I guess it's cheaper and easier to turn Western cities into armed zones and "no go areas" that to control whom enters and stays in the country: more politically correct and less "triggering," and, after all, isn't that what modern life is all about? Not offending guests. What's a bombing or acid attack by and among friends, eh?

As we have ranted on for years, London is not alone; this is not just a battle of and for Britain any more than the original 1940 battle. All of Europe is under assault, occupation even, by a hostile, murdering, totalitarian ideology that masquerades as a religion--I leave to my intrepid readers to utter the name of that "religion." On the same day as the London attack, we saw knife and hammer attacks in France, and reports of police preventing other "Religion of Peace" attacks elsewhere in Europe.

About 2 1/2 years ago, I wrote,

IT. IS. THE. ISLAM. (Ben Affleck, please read this over and over, slowly, so that it can sink into your Hollywood/progressive head) 

That's it. It's Islam: not some radical minority version of it, but mainstream, central core Islam that drives people to acts of murder and intolerance. Not hard to understand if you ever have studied Islam, spent time in Muslim countries or with Muslims in the West. It is a creed for the unbalanced, the fearful, the hate-filled. It is no wonder it thrives in prisons. Islam is a psychotic creed, not a religion as we understand religion. Islam is about conquest and, above all, about revenge: endless acts of revenge for endless slights real and imagined throughout history. 

As I repeatedly have said, you can be a good person or you can be a good Muslim. The Venn diagram showing an overlap between those two categories does not exist except in the minds of apologist hacks, progressive idiots, and Hollywood--which is to say the same thing. It is with Islam as it is with Communism, Nazism, or KKKism, you can be an honorable and good person, or you can believe in that mind-rot. 

Once upon a time that retrograde ideology, Islam, was confined largely to places most of us could not care less about. The Sudan had its Mahdi with his delusions of leading a global conquest for Islam; Jerusalem had its Nazi-loving Grand Mufti, and so on. They were Muslim crazies in lands of Muslim crazies. Thanks, however, to modern technology and Western soft-headedness, those Muslim crazies have set up shop in our countries. We in the West seem to have forgotten something we knew during the Cold War against the Communists, and during the Second World War against the Nazis and the Fascists, to wit, belief in freedom does not mean signing a suicide pact. We are not required to import millions of sworn enemies into our homes.

I wouldn't dare post that now, and risk a Google or Twitter ban . . .

September 11

I know that I have written ad nauseam about the September 11, 2001 horror. I will try not to repeat myself too much, but if we are ever able to eke out a victory over the forces that seek to destroy us, the West, the entire West, we can only do so by remembering that horror and all the others that have followed at the hands of the Religion of Peace,

Islam is not like other religions. It, in fact, is not a religion as we understand religion. Islam is more akin to Communism or Fascism: as previously noted, it offers a complete totalitarian political, economic, and cultural system demanding iron-clad obedience. Islam, in addition, promises sensual rewards in the afterlife for those who die defending or spreading it violently. As with Communism and Fascism, it preys on and takes over the minds and the emotions of the world's losers, of the aggrieved, of those who blame others for their own failings.

We in the West refuse to understand that simple fact, to wit, when Islam says it seeks to conquer us, it means it. Period.

Back on September 10, 2015, I noted that following the September 11, 2001 attack,

While the progressives and their enablers wrung their hands and looked for the causes of Muslim anger, ordinary folks--American, British, Australian, Canadian, and others around the world--went to war. I can tell you as somebody serving overseas at the time as Charge of a US Embassy, there was an electric current running through the air. The Bush people spoke loudly and clearly and laid down one of the great foreign policy lines of our time: "We appreciate your expressions of sympathy and condolences, but now you are either with us or against us." Captained by a furious United States President with blood in his eye, the Western allies moved at record speed and with overwhelmingly lethal force. At home, everybody it seemed was flying the flag; the military recruitment centers were overwhelmed with volunteers. Those were heady days to be an diplomat in the hard countries. Foreign officials listened very intently to what you said; those not particularly well-disposed to us knew that the American diplomat standing in front of them represented a President who had and would pull the trigger. Not many wanted to risk being seen as "against us." The Al Qaeda gang and their Taliban backers never knew what hit them. In weeks they were dead, or on the run. <...>

The West, and the USA, in particular, seemed to have an unassailable position of strength. Alas, that was not to last. Even at this moment of victory, the seeds of defeat had begun to germinate.

As I wrote elsewhere, in the wake of the Paris attacks, "delusions can get you killed,"

I see articles arguing over whether the attack is Al Qaeda or ISIS. Whether this attack is typical of this group or that one. I have said this so many times that I am reluctant to say it again. The issue is not Boko Haram, Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Jamyat Islamia, or any other terrorist band. The issue is not Islamist "extremism," or a nutty fringe of Islam. The threat we face comes from Islam and the progressive delusions that have allowed Islam to plant itself in our midsts and flourish, grow and operate with near impunity. My friends, as I have written many times (here, for example) progressivism will get you killed. Progressivism, also a totalitarian belief system, is clearly now the deadliest creed on the planet, and has formed a Molotov-Ribbentrop-type pact with Islam. 

Progressivism, above all, is about denying reality and promoting delusion.

Are we finally getting over our delusions?

Well, we took a major step in the USA by electing Donald Trump. It seems from the  limited reporting on it, that we are successfully pursuing a policy of turning large numbers of AQ, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc., into bloody jelly. As we have always known, the Islamists are good at torturing and killing flight attendants and other unarmed civilians,  but they don't do well when confronted by Western military know-how employed as it's meant to be employed. Trump deserves credit for, in effect, putting an end to the ISIS "Caliphate" in Iraq and Syria. That is an achievement not to be slighted. As, however, I noted before (sorry for all the links and links within links) when discussing the execrable Obama/Kerry misadministration's reaction to the attack in Istanbul,

I favor bombing Raqqa into the dirt, and killing these ISIS creeps by the bushel in Iraq and Syria, but it's too late for only that. A desultory bombing campaign against ISIS is not a strategy in what is a global assault against us. Thanks to progressive delusions, laws, and policies, the enemy have boots on the ground in Europe, America, Asia, Australia, and throughout Africa. Their field of operation is not restricted to dusty corners of Syria and Iraq. They have gone global by going local. Thousands of mosques all over the world, including in America, Australia, and Europe, serve as logistical and recruitment centers with social media serving as coordination and communication mechanisms--and all the while our societies' obsession with political correctness provides them protection.

That lethal obsession born of delusion continues,

We should be at war; instead, we are under attack. It should be a total war, not just restricted to drones and incursions in far away hamlets in Pakistan and North Africa. We need to look, inter alia, at our energy policies that send billions of dollars to corrupt Islamist regimes, and at our immigration and public assistance policies that let the enemy into our countries and then pay them to live here, and transform our societies into a copy of the corrupt societies from which they came.

We see the enormous resistance by our media-political-educational-bureaucratic elite to any effort to restrict Muslim migration to the West or to label the true enemy. This would be akin to our having successfully launched D-Day and a massive bombing campaign against Nazi Germany while simultaneously welcoming Nazi, SS, and Gestapo officials to come with their families and live in our cities, and implementing speech restrictions on our citizens that forbid "smearing" all Nazis for the actions of a few twisted individuals who have perverted the philosophy of Nazism.

We are going to win the battle overseas and lose the war at home. That still remains my bleak assessment on this sixteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 massacres.

DACA is a SCAM

The coverage of hurricane Harvey and its aftermath didn't last long, nor did the possibility of impending war with the NORKs.

The media is on a horse with which they feel more comfortable, one they figure Trump can't ride well. I refer, of course, to DACA  (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). That horse lets them ride to the barn full of racist pigs, white supremacist hawks, and nativist rattlesnakes--and, of course, of lachrymose brown babies waiting to be deported to certain, uh, certain . . . Mexicaness, I guess. It seems, per prog logic, that it's better for all those oppressed aliens to remain in our white-supremacist, racist, neo-Nazi country rather than have them go home to enjoy their own culture free of the oppressiveness of white appropriation and privilege . . .

Back in the long ago dark ages of 2012, I wrote about the Obama announcement that led to DACA (here and here). I noted,

It is another ill-thought-out patch on our already chaotic immigration laws, regulations, and policies, and does nothing in the long term to deal with the ostensible problem it seeks to solve, i.e., dealing with young illegal aliens. It throws under the bus legal aliens who have played by the rules, already hard-pressed American workers looking for scarce jobs, and ongoing efforts to develop a rational approach to immigration.

It is an electoral stunt that leaves many important questions unanswered and highlights the hypocrisy of this misadministration. To start, the details are hazy. How will Homeland decide whether an illegal meets the requirements? Presumably that involves the alien confessing to being illegal, and, in the process, likely ratting out his parents, and perhaps other relatives. What happens to illegal alien spouses of such aliens? Do they benefit from the new status as "quasi-legal?" For how long can a person remain as a "quasi-legal?" 

and,

There is so much wrong with what President Obama did last Friday unilaterally abrogating a portion of our immigration laws, and so little strong negative reaction.

That absurd speech of Obama's led to a memo from DHS that stated,

On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status.

Well, it seems that the issues I raised so long ago have burst forward yet again. None of the questions got answered, and it became obvious that it was a stunt to get votes for 2012 and 2016. It had nothing to do with kids.

Also realize, contrary to MSM reporting, that DACA is NOT law, it's NOT even an Executive Order. Nope. It's, at best, an extra-legal temporary ("certain period of time") policy created by an Obama speech, and a subsequent memo from the-then DHS Secretary announcing that we would not enforce our immigration laws when it came to a certain class of illegal alien, i.e., "childhood arrivals." What we have, therefore, is a speech by an ex-President and a memo by a former cabinet member substituting for and defying the law of the land.

Also contrary to much press reporting and angst-ridden declarations coming from prog ponds around the nation, DACA does not "protect" children. As succinctly explained by FAIR, a good organization absurdly labelled a "hate group" by the increasingly deranged and corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center (my emphasis),

The Obama administration marketed DACA as a way to keep high school valedictorians, gifted students, and other high achieving young people in the United States. However, the demographic data on DACA applicants belies those claims. Most applicants were adults at the time they enrolled in the DACA program.

DACA accepts applications from qualifying illegal aliens who were 31 years old or younger on June 15, 2012. That means 36 year olds will be able to apply in 2017, provided they were 16 or under when they arrived in the United States. Clearly this was not a program aimed at protecting children from deportation

We see, thus, that for the denizens of the prog ponds a 36-year-old is a baby (readers, insert joke here). 

President Trump has played this well. I would have declared the whole DACA thing illegal, unconstitutional, and dropped it, but the President is more politically astute than I. He has given it six more months on paper, and challenged Congress to do something legal about it. Let us reflect on how clever this proves. Despite giving it six more months on paper, he has killed it. If you were an illegal "childhood arrival" would you go to renew your permit now and give ICE your current address and place of employment? I wouldn't, certainly not with Trump as President. He has put the burden on Congress, many of whose members face tight election battles next year. I want to see one of those Republican Congressmen in a tight battle who comes out for restoring DACA, and that on top of the Obamacare repeal disaster.

Well, I am looking at the TV right now, and one of the networks is running some tearful story about a handicapped "dreamer" now fearful of being deported, and no longer being able to access U.S. -taxpayer funded medical care. We're going to get a lot more of that stuff. 

Stay strong, Mr. President.   

The President as the Healer-in-Chief? No,Thanks

A quick one about a pet peeve of mine, to wit, putting politicians, especially the President, in the role of "healer" after a national disaster of some sort. I don't want it. Period.

I don't want or need the President to call for prayers and issue some platitudes about standing united, or depositing a teddy bear at some makeshift shrine, etc. I found it despicable, for example, when Queen Elizabeth II, a person of much class and dignity, got forced into participating in the over-the-top hype surrounding the death and funeral of Diana--a person of no real consequence except as a celebrity. I had my fill of Obama holding memorial services, e.g., Ft. Hood and Dallas massacres, and immediately turning them into "look at me" sessions with an adoring press heaping praise on him for his words and his graceful speaking style . . . . Empty calorie nonsense; I can drink beer or a sugary cola for that.

We see in the wake of the leftist-staged idiocy in Charlottesville, and the flooding in Texas, the lefties are deriding President Trump for his lack of skills as a "healer." They even generated a false "backlash" over FLOTUS wearing stylish heels as she was boarding the plane for Texas--crying about the "message" such foot gear sends (huh?) They also, of course, blasted Trump for going to Texas too early, and if he had waited a couple of days, of course, would have blasted him for going too late. They also blasted his speech in Texas for its "lack of empathy"and the Twitterverse is all atwitter with prog criticism of the President for his poor skills as a "healer."

All nonsense, of course.

I don't want a "healer" for President. I can go to a doctor or a priest for that. I want the President to be a hard-ass realist who does his or her duty in line with the Constitution, especially the requirement to protect the country from all threats. FDR was not a "healer"; after Pearl Harbor he promised the Imperial Japanese defeat and rallied the country to war. Lincoln? Churchill? Few statesmen in modern times have faced the number and strength of crises that faced them. They confronted those crises honestly, openly, did not sugar-coat the challenges facing their nations and called for victory. Even the much-maligned George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 did a masterful job (on the whole) of committing the nation to bringing the scoundrels who murdered thousands of our citizens to heel, note, not to heal.

I had noted many times before that I have had enough of candle-light vigils, "we are not afraid" marches, teddy bears, and empty words. We need real leaders who will confront issues openly and view them without politically correct glasses.

Statute of Limitations on Statues?

I was in Spain during the tumult following the death in 1975 of long-time dictator Francisco Franco. One of the things that struck me during those unsettled early years of the transition from dictatorship to democracy was the Spanish passion for tearing down statues and renaming the hundreds of streets and plazas that bore the name of Franco or of some other now politically incorrect former dignitary.  As an American, I found it curious and hypocritical (more below).

I remember, in particular, a small monument across the street from my aunt's home in San Sebastian, on the Avenida de Colon, in the now posh Gros neighborhood. Erected, I think, in the 1940's, it recalled the September 13, 1939 liberation/occupation (you decide) of San Sebastian by Franco's forces under General Mola; it stood in a small square, more of a triangular space really, near the Santa Catalina bridge that spans the Urumea river. If memory serves, it was a small, rectangular plinth with some kind of bronze laurels or swords on top and a greenish plaque that read along the lines of, "In commemoration of when the Marxist chains that held down San Sebastian were broken." Every September 13, the local Movimiento types would hold a short ceremony in front of the monument; they would lay a wreath, sing the national anthem, and maybe some other nationalist ditty. With the death of El Caudillo, this monument became an issue of contention, along with the names of various streets which had been de-Basqued during the long Franco regime. It must have been in 1976 or so, can't remember exactly, when somebody took a sledgehammer to the little monument, and ripped off the swords or laurels and the plaque and threw it all in the river. The Movimiento sorts, still around and fighting a losing battle to preserve Franco's legacy, rushed out, put up a new temporary wooden plaque and laid a wreath in front of the battered plinth. The new plaque and wreath, in short order, were floating down the Urumea to the sea. The Franquistas came back, put up another temporary plaque, and this time stood guard for a couple of days. As soon as their vigilance came to an end, well, you guessed it, more debris in the river, and another couple of whacks at the plinth. This went on for some time. As far as I know, the little monument is now gone and most youngsters in San Sebastian probably don't know it ever existed. I also doubt they know what September 13 was about.

All this, at the time, struck me as odd. I understood, of course, that Franco had not been everybody's cup of tea, to say the least. His regime initially had been exceptionally brutal--so brutal, in fact, that in the 1940s, the German Nazis, yes, those Nazis, the real ones, not the ones with Tiki torches, urged Franco to ease off on the executions as he was on the verge of wiping out the skilled working class. As the years went on, however, the regime settled down to a drab almost comical routine of pomp, empty pronouncements and corruption, but one that also brought unprecedented stability and prosperity to Spain, and even allowed a relatively high degree of personal liberty: Spaniards could travel abroad freely, open businesses, own property, worship, and complain about all sorts of things. It wasn't exactly Athenian or Jeffersonian democracy, but not exactly the USSR or the DPRK, either. Watching a Franco statue being removed in Madrid, I remember asking a somewhat lefty Spanish friend of mine what he thought this would accomplish. He said, "We want no trace of that odious dictatorship." I asked him if he thought all the dams, highways, bridges, airports, housing blocs, etc., built under Franco should also be removed in the interest of erasing the dictatorship. What about all the stuff built by Spain's long-line of autocratic monarchs? He smiled sheepishly and invited me to a drink and some tapas. Conversation over.

I used to bore my Spanish friends with how in the US we didn't go around tearing down statues or trying to erase history, and that it seemed we had greater respect for history than they did. I remember, quite specifically, citing the streets named for and the statues to Confederate generals, and the Confederate-inspired state flags in the South, as a sign of our greater enlightenment. I also pointed out that the US military names weapon systems after formidable Native American opponents. I guess, if my Spaniard interlocutors remember those long-ago conversations, they are probably having themselves a laugh at my expense. Go ahead, I deserve it.

I know the story of some of those statues and Confederate-inspired state flags. A lot of them appeared well after the 1861-1865 Civil War, and many were acts of rebellion by Democrats against growing demands for racial equality and against--horrors!--the Republican Party and its support for those demands. Democrats continued to control most of the South well into the 1990s, and had been the creators of the KKK, and the foremost proponents of Jim Crow. I have stated before (June 23, 2015),

My view on the Rebel flag and other Confederate symbols is clear. I do not, never have, and never will fly or paste any Confederate symbol, flag . . . over my house, or on my vehicles, clothing, or coffee mugs, etc. I spent my professional life representing one flag, that of the USA, and have no loyalty to any other. I admire the courage and fighting spirit, as well as the tactical and strategic talents of Confederate Generals and soldiers, love reading about the Civil War and visiting battle sites such as Gettysburg and Vicksburg. I, however, am pro-Union, pro-Stars-and-Stripes, anti-slavery, pro-Lincoln, pro-Grant, pro-Sherman, pro-Frederick Douglass just about all the way. I do not share in the sympathy for and romanticism of some for the Southern cause in the, ahem, "War of Northern Aggression." Slavery was an inherited curse on our nation which we should have dispelled long before it came to war--and, yes, I do see slavery as the overriding reason for the great 1861-65 war, and, of course, as the proximate cause for the creation of the Republican Party shortly before that war. Men such as Washington and Jefferson, both slave owners, knew slavery was evil, but compromised with that "peculiar institution" to our long-standing misfortune. Great men, great flaws. I fully understand why black Americans could and would find Confederate flags and other symbols offensive.

What we have going on in the United States, however, is not some movement led by offended black persons who want to remove offensive symbols put up, often, in the 1920s and 1950s. I personally know no black person who has ever told me that we should remove Confederate statues. Most, apparently, seem to agree with ex-NBA star Charles Barkley--Why doesn't he run for office?--that they have never paid any attention to those "stupid statues."

What we have is something else going on. As I hinted at in The Target is Never What it Seems, the real targets of progressive ire are not statues, rebel flags, gay marriage, bathroom signs, use of plastic bags, transgender military, gay Boy Scouts, climate change, gender neutral pronouns, etc. The real purpose of the progressives is

to create turmoil, chaos; keep society and its institutions reeling from one punch to the next. The only solution to this turmoil? Why, naturally, more progressive government and regulation.

It is an assault by trivia: the tyranny of trivial pursuit. If you give in on one, you are set up and undermined for the next assault. It is the old Indian chess story of how one grain of rice on a chessboard square becomes acres and acres of rice. The assault is not just restricted to the USA and Confederate items. We see the beginning of demands to tear down statues of Columbus, Peter Stuyvesant, Captain Cook, Admiral Nelson, Cecil Rhodes, Winston Churchill, Junipero Serra, and on and on. Soon it will be demands to tear down or close symbols of ancient "white repression" such as California's Spanish missions, or Europe's castles, manor estates, and other reminders of monarchy. It seems all must be seen though the lens of our present day sensibilities; if a great person who did wonders for the welfare of humanity is revealed to have had doubts about, say, gay marriage, or did not speak up about the evils of denying women the vote, well, then that person must be expunged from our memory.

All this, of course, is aided, abetted, and furthered by Western schools and universities churning out legions of uneducated, self-entitled, emotional brutes full of grievance and hatred for their own society and civilization. These are the children of the 1960s; I shudder to think what their children will be like.

Meanwhile, of course, the jihadis continue to murder us and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons . . . but at least that statue of Robert E. Lee won't attack anybody anymore.

Afghanistan, Done Right?

I have been writing a long screed about the progressive assault on just about everything, but I find myself repeating lots of stuff I wrote years ago. I will get back to it, but first I wanted to take a break and comment on the President's Afghanistan speech.

I thought it an excellent speech, and one that cannot be ignored.

So, of course, the mainstream media is trying to ignore it, with Bozos such as Jim Acosta of CNN sneeringly dismissing it in a tweet as not worthy of a presidential address to the nation:

Jim Acosta‏Verified account @Acosta  Aug 21MoreTypically a presidential prime time address comes with major policy announcement or marks pivotal moment for country. We didn't get that.

Clearly, Cosmo didn't listen to the speech or had his tweet all ready to go, and wasn't going to cancel sending it.

The speech had lots of meat, both visible and some, I think, cooking away in the bottom oven out of sight.

He also did something very significant: he acknowledged that he had changed his mind about pulling out of Afghanistan after spending time studying the situation. It's not often you hear that from a politician.

The President summed it all up quite nicely here,

[T]he consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable: 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan, because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and Al-Qaeda, would instantly fill just as happened before September 11th. And as we know, in 2011, America hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq. As a result, our hard-won gains slipped back into the hands of terrorist enemies. Our soldiers watched as cities they had fought for, and bled to liberate, and won, were occupied by a terrorist group called ISIS. The vacuum we created by leaving too soon gave safe haven for ISIS to spread, to grow, recruit, and launch attacks. 

We cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq. Third and finally, I concluded that the security threats we face in Afghanistan, and the broader region, are immense. Today 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are active in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The highest concentration in any region, anywhere in the world. For its part, Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror. <...>

Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—toward a successful outcome. Some day, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen. America will continue its support for the Afghan government and the Afghan military as they confront the Taliban in the field. Ultimately, it is up to the people of Afghanistan to take ownership of their future, to govern their society, and to achieve an ever-lasting peace. We are a partner and a friend, but we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live or how to govern their own complex society. We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists.

That is the essence of the threat and job we face. It is not enough to confine the jihadis to some remote place; they will kill us in our homes if we don't kill them in theirs.

Back in the nineteenth century, for example, most of the world could ignore some lunatic such as the Sudan's self-proclaimed Mahdi, aka Muhammad Ahmad, and his followers -- sort of an ISIS/AQ of its day. His apocalyptic pronouncements and promises to build a Caliphate probably did not resonate much in London and New York. In the end, of course, the British defeated this caliphate (Madihya) in 1898, nearly 15 years after the Mahdi himself had died. That jihadi movement of the nineteenth century posed a very limited threat to core Western civilization.

Not so today.

They might be born and raised in fetid caves and hovels in some of the most benighted countries on earth, but thanks to modern technology, progressive immigration laws, and the pronounced suicidal bent in today's Western civilization, the jihadis are welcomed into our midsts, paid to live among us, and protected by our enlightened legal and political systems. Then, in return, well, you know what happens then: Paris, Barcelona, Turku, San Bernardino, Malmo, Orlando, London, Madrid, Boston, New York, Ft. Hood, Sydney and on and on. They kill us. It seems Trump is promising to return the favor.

President Trump also has, it seems, stopped pulling the punches when it comes to Pakistan.

[T]he next pillar of our new strategy is to change the approach in how to deal with Pakistan. We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe-havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond. 

Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists. In the past, Pakistan has been a valued partner. Our militaries have worked to together against common enemies. The Pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism. We recognize those contributions and those sacrifices. But Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars. At the same time, they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change. And that will change immediately.

He had a big shout out to India, reminding them of all the benefits they derive from their relations with the USA. That has to have them with sweaty palms in Islamabad.

The President also said he was unleashing our military and dropping many of the restrictions that had hampered them before. He also refused to announce deadlines or troop levels. All good.

OK. You can read the text for yourselves and decide.

Let me just add, that I think we are slowly moving to the Diplomad solution for Afghanistan: get out of nation-building (the US Army is not the Salvation Army); stop threatening them with Democracy, and use, even pay, the traditional warlords to help us to keep ISIS, AQ, Taliban in check; keep a potent military fist in Afghanistan that can strike quickly to provide either back-up or punishment for local authorities who don't keep their side of the bargain. This is not too dissimilar from how the British ruled South Asia. All that is new . . .

It is a good vision, well, as good as we can get given the mess we have this century. We, after all, are stuck with Afghanistan for the foreseeable future so might as well have a realistic approach to that particular mess.