Posted on 08/19/2021 8:13:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the face of actual violence from real terrorists, the best our tech and media elite can do is mutter inane platitudes.
The fall of Kabul has exposed, in horrifying and dramatic fashion, the incompetence and folly of the Biden administration.
The reports and images coming out of Afghanistan are dire. As many as 10,000 American citizens are trapped behind enemy lines, stranded in and around Kabul in what amounts to a massive hostage crisis. It remains unclear whether they will be allowed to leave or even if they can even make it to the airport safely.
Moreover, tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military are also trying to leave before the Taliban find them and their families. The White House seems to have no plan to get any of these people out, and the Pentagon has suggested it might not be able to do so.
All of this speaks to the corruption and ineptitude of American political and military leadership, for which Biden and his deputies must be made to answer. But the reactions to these events, not just from our political leaders but also from our tech and media elites, have exposed a deeper rot: the weakness and moral bankruptcy of the west, and the hollowness of modern secular liberalism.
For days now, liberal news outlets have been repeating, as if to reassure us, that the Taliban have pledged to respect women’s rights, “within the framework of Islamic law.” But we all know what that means. Already there are reports of Afghan women and girls being forced into “marriages” with Taliban fighters, the closure of girls’ schools, and the killing of a woman who appeared in public without a head covering — likely the first of many.
In response, the White House issued a joint statement with dozens of other countries on Wednesday saying they are all “deeply worried about Afghan women and girls, their rights to education, work and freedom of movement. We call on those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan to guarantee their protection.”
INBOX: US, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, European Union, Honduras, Guatemala, North Macedonia, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Senegal, Switzerland, & UK call on Taliban to protect rights of women & girls pic.twitter.com/pm2GjBP9WC
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) August 18, 2021
The joint statement goes on to declare that all Afghan women and girls, “deserve to live in safety, security and dignity.”
Surely, they do. But if ensuring Afghan women’s rights was really a priority for the leaders of these countries, they would have seen to it that the Taliban, of all people, didn’t seize control of Afghanistan.
As it is, the Taliban are now very much in control, and it does not seem to occur to our leaders that the new rulers of Afghanistan, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Sharia law, have wholly different definitions of safety, security, and dignity for women and girls. Our elites cannot even imagine the mindset of jihadists who believe that western feminism, for example, is an assault on the sanctity of the family and an affront to Allah. They scarcely believe that Taliban fighters are actually motivated by sincere religious convictions.
Even if they could believe such a thing, the notion that the Taliban regime would allow Afghan women to vote, work, or live according to the norms of women in the European Union is ridiculous. The idea that Taliban theocrats would give a second thought to the abject pleading of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who said, “What we want to see is women and girls being able to access work and education,” is pure fantasy. It would be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious.
Yet this is all our political elites can muster in the face of abject defeat at the hands of jihadist utopians: a strongly worded letter, a stern warning while we hasten to the exits. That’ll show them.
Or consider the moral insanity of Twitter, which banned former President Donald Trump for saying things Democrats dislike but announced this week that it will allow Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid to continue to post to his 322,000 followers — as long as he doesn’t get too violent. In what seemed a parody of doublespeak, the company said in a statement that, “Twitter’s top priority is keeping people safe, and we remain vigilant.”
Picking up on this thread, the Washington Post published an article Wednesday unironically headlined, “Today’s Taliban uses sophisticated social media practices that rarely violate the rules.” Framed as an explanation of how sophisticated the Taliban have become in the age of social media, the article quickly descends into absurdity, citing experts who aver that “Trump’s posts for years challenged platform rules against hate speech and inciting violence. Today’s Taliban, by and large, does not.”
According to the twisted moral logic of Twitter, Trump’s mean tweets are tantamount to the incitement of violence and require his removal from the platform, but dissimulation from an actual terrorist group, infamous for its brutality and actual, mind-boggling levels of violence, is fine so long as they parse their tweets carefully.
All this shows that our elites don’t actually care about violence or even incitement to violence, any more than they care all that much about the rights, dignity, or safety of women. In the face of real evil, real violence, they are reduced to inane platitudes.
The truth is, it does not occur to our elites that the world they wish to impose on the Taliban might be only slightly less morally repugnant than the world the Taliban wish to impose on Afghanistan. Our leaders govern societies that systematically deny the rights of the unborn and the elderly, that aggressively violate their citizens’ rights of free speech and free exercise of religion. They seek to create a world where parents have almost no rights over the education and rearing of their children, where toxic ideologies about race and transgenderism are forced on young and old alike, and parents are afraid to oppose these ideologies for fear of the state.
In other words, they do not really believe the things they say about rights, equality, and dignity. They are morally bereft. That’s why, when confronted by the bloody moral absolutism of the Taliban, they sputter nonsense and do nothing.
It would be better, at this late hour, if our leaders said nothing and quietly went about the business of evacuating our citizens. The time for lectures on morality is long past, and they have no standing to speak.
The moral bankruptcy was not just planned by the Cultural Marxists and mavens of the sexual revolution but by the demonic spiritual powers behind them.
I disagree. Yes, the establishment and progressives in western culture are morally bankrupt while the morality of genuine conservatives is just fine.
I never accept the royal “we”.
I am not responsible for what I cannot prevent.
If the author had chosen to say “the moral bankruptcy of the western elites”, I would have accepted that. But no, he cannot lump all of us in with the western elites.
When I think about Biden, I long for the days when Jimmy Carter was in the WH.
Time to demand that Biden and his crew resign.
CCP owns Joe Biden. He did what he was told to do. CCP owns much of major media and leverages its market power over social media. Plus they have big politicians on the take. Our moral bankruptcy stems from the ability of a few greedy people to manipulate our open political system for their own enrichment.
For most Democrats, it would not bother them much if the Taliban slaughtered all 10,000 Americans. They will continue to support Biden and vote Dem if it means they retain power. That’s all they care about. If lives must be lost for them to gain and maintain power, so be it.
“ I disagree. Yes, the establishment and progressives in western culture are morally bankrupt while the morality of genuine conservatives is just fine.“
80 million and their kids.
No we are not morally bankrupt. I know I am not. Nor are the Sons and daughters of the Deplorables
What IS bankrupt is the intellect of western journalism as evidenced by this vapid piece
Not of The West. Of the Democrat wing of the CPUSA
What moral bankruptcy of the West? The Afghan abandonment is a staged Potemkin Village meant to demoralize Americans into thinking there is moral bankruptcy. Look, Biden’s cabinet is run by 19 people with dual-citizenship in another country. Would we let Germany, China or even Canada run our country? Then why do we let this country run it? This happened previously in US history during the FDR administration when Communists from the same nation ran our government (Alger Hiss, Rosenbergs, etc). The key question now is not moral collapse, but where are the Joe McCarthy’s, Dick Nixon’s and Whitaker Chambers?
The fall of Kabul has exposed, in horrifying and dramatic fashion, the incompetence and folly of the Biden administration.
The incompetence and folly of the Biden Administration is just a very small part of it. There are more important things to consider.
The United States Department of State...an agency filled with some of the most radical, American Hating Leftists in the USofA. I drove them around Baghdad and I’ve listened to their conversations
An antiquated behemoth from a time when it took months or weeks to get somewhere in the world and communications were done by a human courier or telegraph. Now with the ability to be anywhere in the world in far less than a day and the ability to talk securely with anyone on the planet, the time for having massive embassies with hundreds, if not thousands of employees, should be over. There is absolutely ZERO reason for the embassy in London to be as big as it is. All the taxpayer does is provide salary, housing and travel benefits(business class flights, mind you) to employees of the state dept to go anywhere they want and party their a$$es off.
Do you think the embassy staff was worried about much a week or two prior to what happened a few days ago? I can assure you they did not. Yes, they had to deal with an occasional rocket or mortar attack, but they live in a fortress that can repel that stuff. And, in Kabul, not only did they have the US military there, they had a few hundred guys with guns guarding the wall and taking them out and about when they needed to.
The United States doesn’t need much of that anymore, when all the White House has to do is ask the UK Ambassador to the US, who is in Washington, DC to come by the White House for a visit.
Some will say....Wait a second, there’s more going on there. We have Intel assets, etc, there. The same ones that tried to oust a duly elected President? The same ones that didn’t foresee Kabul being taken over in 12 hours? Go ahead with your bad self.
We have people in that embassy that are in the, Econ Section. What exactly is some kid who graduated with an MBA going to accomplish or tell the folks that pretty much invented the modern banking system we have? Absolutely nothing.
Donald J Trump, stated brilliantly on the campaign trail in 2016, that instead of having folks from the State Dept with ZERO experience in business, negotiating our trade deals he was going to get the best from Wall St. In fact, I think he said something like....I’ll get the meanest guys on Wall St. Some you wouldn’t invite to your house for dinner, they’re so nasty, but they’ll get the best deal possible for the country and its businesses.
What have we had instead? Idiots that hate America, who know nothing. President Trump’s approach worked.
USAID and other NGOs....
These are more of the folks that LOVE giving away our tax dollars, for projects that never get finished or where all the money is stolen. They love setting up contracts that will enrich their buddies, so they can get that kickback after the papers are signed.
Military Industrial Complex....
Not much needs to be said. Eisenhower warned us. The Iraqi’s purchased F16s from Lockheed. The US trained the pilots. There is/was a contract to teach the Iraqi’s how to maintain them and run an airbase properly. They were supposed to reimburse the US for all expenses. Do you think they kept up with their bills? Who do you think was paying those bills? Lockheed got their money, for sure. Recently, the Iraqi’s stated that it’ll cost $300,000,000 a year to keep those things flying. Does anyone think they’ll pay that, given that the country isn’t too far away from what is happening in Afghanistan? The only folks that have it right in that country are the Kurds, but they’re fighting on 3 fronts to survive. Without the US, I think they’d be toast.
My .02
What is wrong with that man? I could have lived just fine without seeing the president’s tongue. ICK! GROSS!
And they're pretty effective at it.
Governor Cuomo had to go not because he effectively caused the deaths of thousands of grandmas in nursing homes but because by groping able-bodied women he got between the Democrat party and white suburban female voters.
Equally, the Democrat party is not worried about Afghan women and girls, it is worried about suburban women voters.
The Afghanistan Debacle Has Exposed The Moral Bankruptcy Of The West Democrat Party, its supporters, its henchpersons, its propaganda machine, those who vote for its candidates, and the rest of "the left."
Jimmy Cahtuh v2.0
Amen! This is the bottom-line point about what western leadership has become in the age of resurgent communism in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
>>All of this speaks to the corruption and ineptitude of American political and military leadership, for which Biden and his deputies must be made to answer.<<
I totally agree with the first part of this comment, but strongly believe the demented jackass Biden will NEVER have to answer for it.
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