By Peter Burrows 8/22/21- elburropete@gmail.com -
https://wordpress.com/view/silvercityburro.com
Nobody should be surprised that the Taliban have retaken control of Afghanistan. It was inevitable, regardless of who was in the White House. The spectacular incompetence of the Biden administration is acutely embarrassing, but that's just the culmination of decades of embarrassing incompetence, bipartisan incompetence.
Our Afgan defeat began when President George W. Bush, less than a week after the 9-11 attack, made his infamous "Islam is peace" speech at, of all places, the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. I was appalled that a President could be so ignorant about a religion with 1400 years of God-driven hatred toward Western civilization.
Since then, I've learned that when it comes to Islam, our ignorance is "invincible," as the late Bill Buckley would have said. The price we have paid for this invincible ignorance is incredible, and there is no end in sight. Many more Americans are going to die because of our abject failure to follow a 2500-year-old rule of warfare: If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
We do not "know the enemy." To do so would mean knowing the enemy's motivating ideology, which is his religion, Islam. Sun Tzu, who wrote "The Art of War" in 500 BC, also wrote that war is deceit, something the founder of our enemy's religion, Muhammad, also famously said.
The Muslims delight in deceiving us, and they haven't been subtle about it. It's perhaps more accurate to say we are deceiving ourselves as we follow the dictates of political correctness. This is something the enemy knows about us, and they hammer us with our stupidity all the time. If you're reading this and you think I am a racist Islamophobe, you prove my point.
The planner of the 9-11 attack on the Twin Towers was Osama bin laden, who openly declared war on the U.S. in a 1996 fatwa, which is a religious ruling in Islam. He followed that with another fatwa in 1998 which he begins by quoting the Koran's best-known verse:
Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)";
The "Book" is the Koran, and the quote is from Verse 9:5, known as "The Verse of the Sword." In my little essay, "How to read the Koran (and understand Islam)" I write that my standard question to defenders of Islam is to ask them if the Verse of the Sword has been abrogated. If you don't understand the question, you should read the essay:
https://silvercityburro.com/2020/10/26/how-to-read-the-koran-and-understand-islam/
It's only 15 minutes or less, introduction to summary, after which you will know more about Islam than Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Pope Francis combined. Sadly, that is NOT a high bar.
Bush's responsibility for the Afgan mess began with his ignorant, politically correct, declaration that "Islam is peace," and culminated in U.S. approval of Afghanistan's new constitution, ratified with our approval on 1/26/2004, when Bush was still president. Article One of that constitution begins: Afghanistan shall be an Islamic Republic.
Game over.
Our advisors in Kabul probably thought they were acting like MacArthur in Tokyo when they were actually Chamberlain in Munich. From that moment on, there was no reason for us to stay. We were simply an occupying force of infidels, hated by most and tolerated by one side in a never-ending civil war.
The Afgans were only obeying the Koran, a fact we should have known, but didn't -- and still don't. For anybody who's interested, I'll post on my website an addendum to this article that details the Koranic foundation for an Islamic nation's governance. It's also in "How to read the Koran," Appendix Two.
For another, and much better analysis, of the roots of our Afgan problems, I strongly recommend the following by John Guandolo, founder of Understanding the Threat, and one of America's foremost Islamic experts. https://www.understandingthethreat.com/the-cost-of-not-knowing-the-enemy/
For those readers who need more convincing, I recommend Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad by Stephen Coughlin, available at Amazon.com. It is an incredible work of scholarship and, if I was Mao for a day, it would be required reading for every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and every member of Congress.
Since that's not going to happen, the best we can hope for is that someday we get a president who knows what Islam is all about. My favorite would be Allen West, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and ex-Congressman from Florida. He is now head of the Republican Party in Texas and may run for governor. I read his book, "Guardian of the Republic," and was very impressed.
It may be too late. Our defeat will embolden Iran to develop and use nuclear weapons. Hopefully, Israel will stop them. However, China may see our weakness as an opportunity to take over Taiwan, and who is going to stop THEM? Joe Biden and our "woke" Generals? God help us.