What's the PLAN for IRAN?

As soon as POTUS (or Bibi) confides in me, or I figure it out by myself, I'll let you know.

VIDEO: Taliban fighters being trained by British officers!

Further to our report on the outbreak of hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan, we pass along this shocking video, which reveals that British army officers -- the first one shown is a Scot, the second English -- are training the Afghan Taliban for combat!

 

We don't refer to this as "boot camp" becauase it appears that these soldiers of the Prophet have no boots. Perhaps, after the battle, they will be able to get some off the feet of the other soldiers of the Prophet. Good luck lads!

Muslim civil war flares up again

While we were preoccupied with ICE, Cuba, Epstein and other things closer to home, the followers of the Religion of Peace(TM), having tired (for the moment) of attacking Jews and Christians, have resumed attacking each other.

Pakistan's defence minister said yesterday the country is in "open war" with Afghanistan, after Islamabad launched airstrikes on Kabul as part of a wave of attacks across the country. "Our patience has now run out," said Khawaja Muhammad Asif following the attacks. 

The strikes came after the Afghan Taliban [You mean there's more than one Taliban? Ed.] announced a major offensive against Pakistani military posts near the border on Thursday night. Thanks to "Angry_Old_Man_2" at Blazing Cat Fur, we have a photo of Talibaners being trained for the assault.

The latest attacks follow months of clashes between the two neighbouring nations, despite agreeing last October to a ceasefire, which has proven to be more an idea than a reality.

Walt sez: Have at it boys. May the best Muslim win, and may Allah step lightly on your heads.

VIDEO: "Allahu akbar!" in the Horn of Africa

Well, that does it! Somalia is off Walt's bucket list! The Liido Restaurant (pictured) in Mogadishu, the shithole's capital, serves excellent mystery-meat burgers, but enjoying one on the beach could cost you your life. Time for the latest news from Liido Beach, followed by a history lesson.

The news today is that at least 32 people were killed in a suicide attack at the popular beach, carried out by al-Shabaab militants. Hassan Ben-Sober [Ed., please check name], a police spokesthingy, told the meeja that "around 63" people were also wounded, some of them critically.

Video footage showed a number of bodies and injured people in Mogadishu's Abdiaziz district. Al-Shabab controls large parts of southern and central Somalia. The group is affiliated to al-Qaeda and for two decades has waged a brutal insurgency against a government backed by the Disunited Nations.

If you (like 99.99% of Americans) have forgotten about Somalia, let me remind you that the government of William Jefferson Clinton (Democrat) sent American troops there to wage peace in the 1990s as part of a UN snafu known as "Operation Gothic Serpent".

Mogadishu was the site of the infamous "Black Hawk Down Incident", of 3-4 October 1993, part of the Battle of Mogadishu, between forces of the US of A against the forces of the so-called Somali National Alliance (SNA) and armed irregulars. The battle was part of the then two-year-old Somali civil war, just one of the Muslim civil wars in which America has foolishly intervened. 

The UN initially sent troops to alleviate the famine of 1992, but then began trying to restore a central government, establish democracy, yada yada yada. In June of 1993, UN peacekeepers suffered their deadliest day in decades when the Pakistani contingent was attacked while inspecting a SNA weapons storage site. That's what happens when you look into the barrel.

UNOSOM II (the UN task force) blamed SNA leader Mohammed Farah Aidid and launched a manhunt. In July, American forces raided the Abdi House in search of Aidid, killing many elders and prominent members of Aidid's clan. Big mistake, Dr Jones! The raid led many Mogadishu residents to join the fight -- not on "our" side -- and in August, Aidid and the SNA deliberately attacked American personnel for the first time. And that's why slick Willy dispatched Task Force Ranger to sort things out.

On 3 October 1993, US forces planned to seize two of Aidid's top lieutenants during a meeting deep in the city. The raid was only intended to last an hour, but morphed into an overnight standoff and rescue operation extending into the daylight hours of the next day. Here's the trailer for the slightly biased movie version of what happened.

What really happened was this. As the battle progressed (or not), Somali forces used RPGs to shoot down three American Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Two of them crashed deep in hostile territory (read: anywhere in the city). A desperate defence of the two downed helicopters began and fighting lasted through the night to defend the survivors of the crashes. In the morning, a UNOSOM II armored convoy fought their way to the besieged soldiers and withdrew, incurring further casualties but rescuing the survivors.

No battle since the Vietnam War claimed so many American casualties -- 18 dead and 73 wounded. You won't see much about the other forces in the movie, but Malaysian forces suffered one death and seven wounded, and Pakistani forces had two injured. Somali casualties were far higher -- between 133 and 700 dead.

The part that really wasn't a good look for the Clinton government was that, after the battle, dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by enraged Somalis, in full view of a vast [or half-vast. Ed.] TV audience.

The UN gave up on Somalia in 1995, and, as today's news illustrates, the state is now a lawless and dangerous shithole, with no effective government -- a place to be avoided like the plague (which is said to be present there). Fear of another PR disaster kept the US government from increasing its involvement in Somalia and other regions. 

Some students of history (Republicans perhaps) say that what is now called "Somalia Syndrome" influenced the Clinton administration's decision not to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. However, the lesson of Somalia was apparently forgotten when new Muslim civil wars broke out in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

VIDEO: For real, this time: "Allahu akbar!" in Sydney

Walt has already apologized (see below) for suggesting that the late Joel Cauchi (note the initials) was a fanatical follower of the Religion of Peace (TM). Turns out he was merely an "incel". His father told the meeja he killed all those innocent people because he wanted a girlfriend. Seems like a funny way to go about getting one, but there ya go.

However, there's no mistake about this one. His Grace, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, was preaching the homily during the Sunday liturgy at Christ the Good Shepherd Assyrian Orthodox Church in the Sydney suburb of Wakely, when this happened.

  

 

Ahe man dressed in black -- so far unidentified -- approaches the bishop, and stabs  him repeatedly in the head and upper body. Members of the congregation, including a nun, can be seen screaming and rushing to the bishop's aid. Amidst the commotion, the assailant can be heard shouting "Allahu akbar!" as he is wrestled to the floor. The bishop and three congregants, including a priest, were injured.

Sydney police, who are got a lot of practice dealing with this kind of thing this weekend, arrested a suspect, whom they have so far declined to name. Don't be surprised if it's "Mohammed". They are also saying that his motive is "unclear". Well, some people can't recognize a blackberry in a saucer of milk.

An ironic sidelight to this story is that, according to AFP, the neighbourhood is a hub for Sydney's small Assyrian Christian community, many of whom have fled persecution and war in Iraq and Syria. We know the religion of those who are fighting a civil war in the Middle East, don't we. The trouble is that the Muslim Civil War, and the Islamic jihad against "infidels", is being fought all over the world. No place, not even remote Australia, is safe.

A sensible view of demands to retaliate against Iran

Most of Walt's readers don't read (or haven't heard of!) the National Post. Founded by Conrad Black, sometime Canadian (when he wasn't busy being Lord Black of Cross Harbour) and arch-conservative, the Post (and its group of Sun newspapers) is the only media outlet in Canuckistan which takes a reasonably balanced view of the world. 

One of the Post group's premier columnists is Kelly McParland, who wrote an excellent piece today on the stupidity of the Excited States of America's entering yet another war in the Middle East. Mr McParland argues that the Republicans who are pressing Crooked Joe Biden to hit back at Iran for the drone strike that killed three US soldiers [How come all three were black? Ed.?] are all but insane to advocate such folly. 

Worse, they are urging a course of action which President Trump has rightly and repeated condemned. I've emphasized Mr Trump's words in Mr McParland's column, which I'm reposting, in a slightly shortened version. (To read the entire column, click on the headline link.) 

Biden pressed to start another 'stupid' war

If you disliked Donald Trump but were determined to say something positive about him, you could always cite his consistent criticism of “stupid” American wars. It’s a position that hits home with a lot of people — Democrats as much as Republicans — who have lost loved ones in distant countries over matters a lot of Americans don’t view as their responsibility to solve.

Trump has been nothing if not consistent on the point.While campaigning for re-election in 2020 he boasted of his efforts to reduce U.S. military deployments overseas and pledged to "keep America out of these endless, ridiculous, stupid, foreign wars in countries that you’ve never even heard of."

He regularly assails the Biden administration over its defence performance — particularly the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, insists he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours as president, and says the White House "has brought us to the brink of World War III."

His admirers like to cite his record of having "no wars" during his four years in office — a claim with some merit compared to recent predecessors. One 2017 study concluded that crucial Trump victories in three key states in the 2016 election may have been helped by concern over high casualty rates under previous administrations. All of which makes it a bit odd that top Republicans are loudly demanding the sort of retaliatory action against Iran that history suggests would be an excellent way to start yet another ill-fated U.S. military entanglement....

"The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East. Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief," said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is backing Trump’s renewed bid for the presidency. 

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell charged in a statement that "the entire world now watches for signs that the President is finally prepared to exercise American strength to compel Iran to change its behaviour."

He said U.S. enemies would continue to be emboldened "until the United States imposes serious, crippling costs — not only on front-line terrorist proxies, but on their Iranian sponsors who wear American blood as a badge of honour." Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn both fired off tweets insisting the White House aim hits directly at Iran, while Trump himself used the attack to criticize Biden for his "weakness." 

Given the Middle East’s status as one of the world’s most relentlessly volatile regions, Iran’s success in spreading its tentacles throughout the region, the tensions already centred on the bitter confrontation in Israel and Gaza and the growing boldness of Iran’s determination to taunt western powers, it’s difficult to see how yet another one-off U.S. retaliatory effort could accomplish anything other than increasing the danger the region’s many festering hot spots erupt into one giant conflagration.

In other words, just the sort of "endless", "stupid" foreign war that Trump has so often derided, and just the sort of quagmire the mullahs in Tehran would love to see sweep over the region. Chaos and conflict work to the benefit of regimes like Syria’s and Iran’s, helping focus hatred on foreign powers rather than the brutality and repression they inflict on their own people. 

A few quick missile strikes on known Iranian dependents in Syria or Iraq, or even Iran itself, might raise cheers for a day or two in Washington but would be yet another opportunity for Tehran to recruit the sort of fanatics who think spilling more blood is a good reaction to all the blood that’s already been spilled. Jumping impulsively into doomed conflicts is indeed a trait that has brought the U.S. tragedy and humiliation time and again. 

Vietnam was a quagmire. It was far harder for the Obama and Trump administrations to get US troops out of Iraq than it was for the Bush White House to get them in. The US disaster in Benghazi may not have killed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign all on its own but was certainly a nail Republicans hammered at enthusiastically. And Joe Biden’s rush to flee Afghanistan was a fiasco from which he’s never managed to recover.

It’s easy to understand the temptation to use Washington’s immense military might to strike back at a country that works so hard to bring despair to so many people. But in pressing Biden to risk lives for the sake of a quick headline or two, Republican leaders are demanding a response that’s diametrically opposed to what their favoured candidate has been preaching since the day he entered politics. 

Would they be making the same demand if it was a Republican sitting in the White House, forced to confront the prospects of setting off a regional explosion, complete with body bags being shipped back home? If so it would be evidence they’d learned no more about the dangers of stumbling into foreign wars than the presidents who sent U.S. sons and daughters into Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and came to regret it.

"But we won, in the end, right?"

"I mean, we ended the Muslim civil war, we brought peace and democracy to Iraq and all those other places, and we saved the world from Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. So we won... right?"

Errr... actually, NO! Ever since WWII, and particularly since the fall of the Twin Towers, the Paranoid States of America has considered itself the World's Policeman, on a mission to spread freedom, democracy, and the American way of life (ugghhh, brrrrr) throughout the rest of the world, whether ROTW wants it or not.

After 9/11, the words "al-Qaeda" became shorthand for Islamic terrorism anywhere in the world. The cry "Allahu akbar!" was  heard in London, Paris, Berlin [That's enough world cities. Ed.] and is still our best guess any time there's a suicide bombing or mass shooting or terror attack anywhere in the Middle East or the Western world.

With the US of A as the unwitting midwife, Al-Qaeda begat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The Muslim civil war in Iraq begat the same in Syria. The American-led (but really America-only) missions in Iraq and Afghanistan ended in ignominious retreat. 

Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghadafi were deposed and killed, but today the countries they ruled remain no-go zones for Westerners, as does the entire Muddled East from the Mediterranean all the way to Pakistan. (The possible exception is Israel, although it has its own wars with Palestinians and Hezbollah to worry about.) 

Instead of bringing the Islamic republics, sheikdoms, etc into the New World Order, American intervention (read: meddling) has turned the region into one huge shithole, stuck in the mentality of the Middle Ages and intent on bring the ROTW down to its level. I call our mission a failure, utter and complete.

Further reading: And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East, by Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent, NBC News. Simon & Schuster, 2016. Clear and concise, not overly biased, easy reading.

Footnote: Regular readings should know that Walt fully supports Ukraine and Ukrainians in their reistance to the illegal Russian invasion and occupation of their land. Слава Україні! Героям слава! 

I believe we should give the Ukrainians as much humanitarian and military assistance as we can, short of putting US or NATO boots on the ground. Why stop at that? Precisely because of the mess America has made of every foreign intervention since (and including) Korea. That kind of "help" is the last thing Ukraine needs!

Everything happened at once, Part 3

21 years ago today

Yes, I am well aware that this is the 21st anniversary of 9/11. And I know the topic of who dunnit and what happened after that has been done to death. But I think it's worth revisiting as Americans ask themselves which is the right party to entrust with national security in these ever more troubled times.

Recommended reading: The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Penguin Press, 2006. As you would expect, considering who Mr Rich worked for, the book is an attack on President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the Republican Party. 

But... in revealing how the American people were suckered into supporting an unprovoked war on Iraq (and later Afghanistan), Mr Rich reveals how Deep State, which is non-partisan, co-opted his newspaper and the rest of the lickspittle media. 21 years later, the same mass media are conspiring, at the behest of Deep State and the WTF giants who fund them, to gull you into believing that you should overlook the disastrous failures of the Biden administration and leave them in control of Congress. "Don't worry folks, everything's gonna be OK. Trust us (again)!"

When the Islamic extremists -- the jihadis -- attacked the US of A on 9/11, Americans almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president. The papers, notably but not only the NYT and WAPO, and the TV networks, particularly CNN, organized the cheerleading, which went on 24/7 until years after the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq had been passed.

That there was no basis whatever for the claims that the Iraqis had, or were about to have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), or that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda, was ignored or suppressed, just as all those stories about the nefarious dealings of Son Hunter are being suppressed today. 

One is reminded of the story of the famous American painter, Frederic Remington, who was sent by William Randolph Hearst, the master of yellow journalism, to cover the incipient Spanish-American war. When he reported from Havana that there was nothing going on, Mr Hearst allegedly replied, "You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war."

So it was after 9/11. The priority of the Deep State behind Dubya was not to vanquish Al-Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention. Thus it was that America was led for a second time to intervene in the Muslim civil wars, and attack a small and impotent country which had never attacked it.

The Republicans and the lickspittle media intimidated the Democrats into incoherence and impotence, and turned the presidential election of 2004 into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery and same-sex marriage. Mr Rich's book shows, with a day-by-day timeline, how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions -- the mainstream news media -- were too often left powerless by the administration's relentless attack machine and their own unquestioning political correctness. 

Nothing has changed. If anything, the situation has worsened. The Biden administration controls the media. Deep State controls the administration. Are Americans going to be fooled again?!

One final thought. Among the political leaders who rallied behind the Bush War effor was none other than Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.  During the run-up to the last election campaign, Demented Joe claimed that despite voting to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002, he opposed the Iraq war from "the moment" it began. That's a lie. Read "Biden's Record on Iraq War", FactCheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center), 10/9/19. What follows are excerpted from the article.

Biden never outright opposed military action in Iraq in the immediate days after the start of the invasion, as he claimed. He now admits his recent comments went too far. During the second Democratic primary debate on July 31, Biden said his “bad judgment” in voting to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq in 2002 was “trusting the president saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in.” 

In a speech days before the 2002 vote, Bush did say approving the resolution “does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable,” but he also laid out in detail why military action “may” be needed. And on the day the war broke out, Biden acknowledged, “We voted to give him the authority to wage that war. We should step back and be supportive.” 

It wasn’t until Nov. 27, 2005, that Biden acknowledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq was “a mistake.” “It was a mistake,” Biden said. “It was a mistake to assume the president would use the authority we gave him properly. … We gave the president the authority to unite the world to isolate Saddam. And the fact of the matter is, we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan.”

Right now, the Democrats and their propaganda machine are manufacturing -- just as in 2001 -- "threats to national security", which they are trying to lay at the feet of President Trump. Don't listen to them. Listen to me! The greatest threat to the safety, security and well-being of America and Americans does not come from within Mar-a-Lago, but from within the White House. Keep that in mind when you vote in November.

OK, al-Zawahiri is dead... but al-Qaeda is not. What now?

President Brandon announced yesterday that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by an American drone strike which struck a "safe house" in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was said to be hiding. The Taliban had promised, when they took over Afghanistan after the American bugged out, that the country would no longer be a haven for Islamic terrorists. But they lied, and everyone knew that.

Al-Zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought most of us in the West our first knowledge of al-Qaeda, the organization of Islamic extremists responsible for terrorism in the name of Allah which has killed many 1000s worldwide. Bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in Abbotabad, Pakistan on 2 May 2011, but al-Qaeda lived on, and lives on now. 

A good question to ask, then, is: what happens next? Let's not kid ourselves that the Islamic terrorism will stop. The execution of al-Zawahiri, just though it certainly was, may well have opened up the hornet's nest. Americans would do well to sleep with one eye open.

Canuck pols rush to condemn attack on Toronto-area mosque

Canada's state propaganda agency ["broadcaster", shurely! Ed.] was quick to post a lengthy tut-tut when Statistics Canada reported recently that the number of hate crimes reported to police across Canuckistan went up 37% in the first year of the Covid "crisis" compared with the previous year. 

Police-reported hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity rose 80% in 2020 compared with 2019. Of course, the CBC opines, the real numbers much be must higher. since such crimes are horribly under-reported. Besides, it is well known that white Canadians are incorrigible racists.

Statscan says reported hate crimes targeting East or Southeast Asian people went up 301%, those targeting black people went up 92%, those against Indigenous people went up 152%; and those against South Asian people went up 47%. 

Statistics on hate crimes categorized by religion were not given, but incidents of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic crimes, such as the spray-painting of hateful graffiti on schools and "places of worship", have been much in the news lately, especially in the "Greater" Toronto Area.

The latest such incident occurred Saturday morning in the GTA bedroom community of Mississauga ON, when a man walked into a mosque and attacked worshippers with a hatchet and, errr, bear spray.

Speaking on behalf of the mosque, Nadia Hasan of the National Council of Canadian Muslims said a group of about 20 men were in the middle of a dawn prayer when the attack happened."Some of the men turned around and they very bravely decided that they were not going to let him attack them," she said, "so they tackled him to the ground and apprehended him until the police showed up."

Inspector Knacker of the Peel Regional Police said some congregants at the mosque received minor injuries from the bear spray. People were shaken up but are recovering, Ms Hasan said, "but for the most part, folks are still processing what’s happened and are trying to kind of see how they can ensure that their communities remain secure."

Canadian politicians of all parties, from all levels, were quick to signal their tolerance and virtue on Twitter. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his "heart goes out to the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre community who were attacked this morning. There is NO place in our province for such evil and hateful acts. We must ensure those responsible are brought to justice."

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie said she was "shocked and angered" by the assault. "This unprovoked attack on a place of worship is absolutely unacceptable and I strongly condemn it." The leader of Ontario's far-left "New" Democratic Party, Andrea Horwath, said "in response to an evil, violent act of Islamophobic hate, the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre community acted courageously to keep folks safe. We all stand with them."

Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca said she was "appalled by this frightening attack in Mississauga." Then, quick to score a political point, he tweeted, "This is why @nccm’s #OurLondonFamilyAct to take meaningful action against Islamophobia is so important. Ontario Liberals continue to stand with the Muslim community against all acts of hate." 

Toronto Mayor Jello Tory said he was "shocked to hear about the violent attack" on the congregants of the mosque. :We stand with the Muslim community in Mississauga, Toronto and across Canada in the wake of this assault." He said any violence against the Muslim community or any community in a place of worship is "totally unacceptable. Our work to make sure everyone can pray in peace without fear, threats or violence must continue."

It should be noted that all these pols are all white, native-born Canadians, who, if not practising Christians, are not members of other "faith communities". The same may be said of Canuckistan's Prime Minister, Just In Trudeau, if you look underneath the blackface makeup. 

Mr Socks was one of the first to raise the flag of virtue, calling the attack "incredibly disturbing. I strongly condemn this violence — which has no place in Canada — and I'm keeping the community in my thoughts today," he tweeted. "I also want to applaud the courage of those who were there this morning."

Imagine his embarrassment, and that of all those who assumed that the attacker was a whitey, like those responsible for attacks on Muslims in Québec City and New Zealand, when the cops announced late yesterday that the perp was 24-year-old Mohammad Moiz Omar. 

He has been charged with assault with a weapon, administering a noxious substance with intent to endanger life or cause bodily harm, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, uttering a threat to cause death or bodily harm, carrying a concealed weapon, and mischief to religious property. Apparently no "hate crime" charges have been laid. 

Mr Omar's ethicity and immigration status have not been disclosed, but it can safely be assumed he is a follower of the Prophet whose name he bears. The question is: what kind of Muslim is he? Is he Shia or Shiite or a member of some other branch of the "religion of peace"? 

From here it looks like the Muslim civil wars, still raging in the Middle East, have been brought to Canada by some of the "refugees" the politicians welcomed with open arms. Is anyone surprised?

Dr. Ron Paul: Twenty years on, we’ve learned nothing from 9/11

Ed. here. What follows is Dr Ron Paul's column from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prospertity, reposted with permission. Thank you, Dr Paul, for your clear and constant warning abouot the dangers of big government and the folly of meddling in foreign affairs which are none of our business.

Nothing upset the Washington Beltway elites more than when in a 2007 presidential debate I pointed out the truth about the 9/11 attacks: they attacked us because we’ve been in the Middle East, sanctioning and bombing the civilian population, for decades. The 9/11 attackers were not motivated to commit suicide terrorism on the Twin Towers and Pentagon because they dislike our freedoms, as then-President Bush claimed. That was a self-serving lie.

They hated – and hate – us because we kill them for no reason. Day after day. Year after year. Right up until just a few days ago, when President Biden slaughtered Zemari Ahmadi and nine members of his family - including seven children - in Afghanistan. The Administration bragged about taking out a top ISIS target. But they lied. Ahmadi was just an aid worker, working for a California-based organization, bringing water to suffering Afghan village residents.

This horror has been repeated thousands of times, over and over, for decades. Does Washington believe these people are subhuman? That they somehow don’t care about their relatives being killed? That they don’t react as we would react if a foreign power slaughtered our families?

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously suggested in an interview that killing half a million Iraqi children with sanctions designed to remove Saddam Hussein from power was “worth it.” It was an admission that the lives of innocents mean nothing to the Washington elite, even as they paint their murderous interventions as some kind of “humanitarian liberation.” The slogan of the US foreign policy establishment really should be, “No Lives Matter.”

The Washington foreign policy elites – Republicans and Democrats – are deeply corrupt and act contrary to US national interests. They pretend that decades of indiscriminate bombing overseas are beneficial to the victims and keep us safer as well. That is how they are able, year after year, to convince Congress to hand over a trillion dollars – money taken directly and indirectly from average Americans. They use fear and lies for their own profit. And they call themselves patriots.

The Washington establishment lied to us because they did not want us to stop for a second and try to understand the motive for the 9/11 attacks. Police detectives are not apologists for killers when they try to look for a motive for the crime. But the Washington elite did not want us to think about why people might be motivated to suicide attack. That might endanger their 100-year gravy train.

What was the real message of 9/11 to Americans? Give up your freedoms for the false promise of security. It’s OK for the government to spy on all of us. It’s OK for the TSA to abuse us for the “privilege” of traveling in our own country. We must continue to bomb people overseas. Don’t worry it’s only temporary.

So, twenty years on what have we learned from 9/11? Absolutely nothing. And we all know what the philosopher George Santayana said about those incapable of learning from history. I desperately hope that somehow the United States will adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy, which would actually protect us from another attack. I truly wish Americans would demand that their leaders learn from history. The only way to make us safe is to end the reign of the Washington killing machine.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

"Allahu akbar!" in Kabul: 12 US service personnel reported dead

Breaking news from Afcrapistan is that two separate suicides bombings around Kabul airport have left at some 40 dead -- including 11 United States Marines and a USN medic -- and scores wounded and injured. Is anyone surprised?

The bombings occurred outside the airport, where large crowds of people trying to flee Afghanistan have gathered as they await flights out of the country. Western nations had warned earlier in the day of a possible attack there in the waning days of a massive airlift.

Earlier today, several countries urged people to avoid the airport, with one saying there was a threat of a suicide bombing. But just days before the evacuation effort is scheduled to end, few appeared to heed the warning.

Over the last week, the airport has been the scene of some of the most searing images of the chaotic end of America's longest war and the Taliban's takeover, as flight after flight took off carrying those who fear a return to the militant Muslims' brutal rule.

Already, some countries, inclluding Canada, have ended their evacuations and begun to withdraw their soldiers and diplomats, signalling the beginning of the end of one of history's largest airlifts. The last Canadian Armed Forces flight out left just a few hours before the bombings.

Suspicion for any attack targeting the crowds would likely fall on a splinter Islamic State group called ISIS-K, not the Taliban, who have been deployed at the airport's gates trying to control the mass of people. The Taliban have so far honoured a pledge not to attack Western forces during the evacuation, but insist that foreign troops must be out by Sleepy Joe Biden's self-imposed deadline of this coming Tuesday.

This Mohammed here has been identified as the perpetrator of the "martyrdom operation". 

He is now in Islamic Paradise, one presumes, being serviced by 72 virgins.

This debacle, 20 years in the making, is the fault of the total and ajbect failure or the foreign policies of the Paranoid States of America and its Western Allies. For two decades, the USA, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has insisted that it had a responsibility to protect the poor people of not just Afghanistan but the entire Middle East, and that the best way to do that is to act as peacekeepers and "nation-builders". Ha!

I'll say once again that we set ourselves up to be referees in a Muslim civil war which was none of our business -- none whatever! This War for Nothing -- if I may coin a phrase -- has cost the Western nations 1000s of lives and billions of dollars. All for nothing. And now four more Americans are added to the casualty list. Will they be the last? Five days to go. Stay tuned.

UPDATED: Coming home soon...

Further reading: "Harris says she had key role in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal decision", Politico, 25/4/21. The lede: The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing US troops.

Actual photo (from Reuters) of US chopper over Kabul, today.

Also reported by Reuters today: "Afghan Pres Ghani leaves for Tajikistan". I love modern times, when you can watch the rats desert the sinking ship, in real time!

And from Breitbart News: "Biden's Vietnam: Historic Humiliation Unfolds", 15/8/21.

And don't forget who told ya so. "Biden reveals Afghanistan exit strategy", WWW 17/5/21.

UPDATE ADDED 15/8/21 at 1250: AP reports from Washington DC that Sleepy Joe, having ordered 3000 American soldiers (on top of the initial 1000) to go to Afghanistan right sharpish to cover the retreat, has decided 4000 won't be enough, and is sending another 1000 today. Errr... isn't that how the US of A got mixed up in that shithole in the first place? We have to wonder how many of the 5000 (and counting) will come home again.

Islamic takeover of Europe feared 1338 years ago

Archaeologists excavating under London's Fleet Street during road works have unearthed a fragment of a seventh-century newspaper in which concern was expressed about the spread of Islam across North Africa and into Europe.

OK, ya got us. This little spoof appeared in the UK satirical magazine Private Eye in February of 2013. In 683 A.D., the followers of the Religion of Peace (TM) were, even then, engaged in not the First but the Second Islamic Civil War. 

In September of that year, Yazidi besieged the holy city of Mecca, and bombarded it with catapults. The Kaaba -- the holiest site in Islam -- was severely damaged, and the Black Stone inside it split into three pieces. It was later rebuilt, and the reassembled fragments of the Black Stone set into a silver frame, now remounted them in the Kaaba's eastern corner, where devout Muslims throw stones at it during the Haj.

There are still Yazidis in the Middle East, living mostly in "Kurdistan" -- the disputed territories of northern Iraq and eastern Turkey where both Sunni and Shia Muslims regularly attack them, and vice versa. 

The Islamists no longer attempt to invade Europe by force of arms. Nowadays they do it as "refugees" and "asylum-seekers" who cross the Mediterranean from North Africa by the 1000s and are welcomed by the bleeding heart liberals and others  (Hello George! Hello Francis!) trying to preciptate the end of Christian civilization.

Biden reveals Afghanistan exit strategy

Readers with longer memories than those of the lickspittle media may recall that when President Trump announced his plan to bring American forces home from Afghanistan by May 2021, the fiercest critics of his plan were two presidential wannabes: Sleepy Joe Biden and Hellery Clinton. Both of them were strong supporters of the US invasion of that country following 9/11, for which followers of the Prophet Mohammed were blamed.

You would have thought that once the Taliban was (supposedly) defeated, its leader killed, and democracy restored, there would have been no need for the US of A to continue to occupy that shithole, wasting 1000s of American lives and billions of US dollars on... may we be frank... a mission which was none of America's business in the first place. That argument was put forward by such voices of reason as Dr Ron Paul and (ahem) yr obdt servant. To no avail. 

Osama Bin Laden was killed ten years and a fortnight ago, not in Afghanistan but in Abbotabad, in neighbouring Pakistan. The Prez was the Commander-in-Chief at the time, Sleepy Joe was the 2IC and Mrs Bill Clinton was Secretary of State. We can all remember the photo of Hellery and the Prez and assorted hangers-on watching the report on the Clinton News Network.

Some folks thought the end of the adventure nigh. So it was, but not for American troops, only Canadians who wrapped up their combat role in 2011, and withdrew the last of their "training personnel" in 2014.

You might think that when the Canucks -- not known for suicidal tendencies -- pulled out, the Americans would see the handwriting on the wall and start packing. But noooooo... In 2014 the Prez still had another two years in office, and the well-known brave warrior John Kerry was Secretary of State. They saw fit to stay the course, lest the flickering candle of democracy be snuffed out again. It wasn't until President Trump got elected (in the last free and fair presidential election) that talk of a "drawdown" even began.

On the campaign trail in 2020, Sleepy Joe opposed President Trump's plans for withdrawal, saying that to bring our brave boys (and girls and in-betweens) home in May was to risk letting the Taliban retake control, yada yada yada. 

But everything would be different four months later, see? So President Biteme's plan, announced a few days ago, is to complete the withdrawal by September 11th. Geddit? The 20th anniversary of 9/11? Geddit now? 

You would expect that Hellery Clinton, having by now gotten over the humiliation of not being chosen by the Democrats for the task of defenestrating Trump, would be supportive of the alleged President's new plan, and all his other plans. You would be wrong. 

Apparently the Taliban, not content with finally forcing the Americans to leave Afghanistan, have taken to attacking other Afghans,just as they did before the US invasion. Mrs Clinton told her network, "This is what we call a wicked problem. There are consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving."

Asked about Sleepy Joe's decision, Mrs Clinton said, "Our government has to focus on two huge consequences", notably the resumption of activities by extremist groups and a subsequent outpouring of refugees from Afghanistan. She said the potential collapse of the Afghan government and a possible takeover by the Taliban could result in a new Muslim civil war. (OK, she didn't include the word "Muslim", but we know who's fighting who, right?)

 Mrs Bill also said it was important to protect the "many thousands of Afghans" who had worked with the US and NATO during the "conflict". She advocates the creation of a large visa programme to provide for any refugees who get out of the shithole alive, provided they are allowed to settle no closer than 1000 miles to Chappaqua NY.

So, campers, circle the date on your calendars. 9/11/21.  (Non-American readers please substitute 11/9/21.) It's the first real date President Biteme has given for the achievement of any of his many plans. Let's see if the withdrawal from Afghanistan really happens... Hellery Clinton notwithstanding.

Iraqi parliament wants US troops out of their country

Regular readers will know that, along with such right-thinking patriots as Dr Ron Paul, I am absolutely opposed to American involvement the Muslim civil wars in the Middle East.

It's not that I'm a pacifist or peacenik. I do believe in the doctrine of the "just war". It's just that I think it's foolish to waste 1000s of lives and billions of dollars on a war we can't win, in an affair which is none of our business.

So I was heartened to hear yesterday that the Iraqi parliament voted in favour of a resolution asking the government to expel US troops from their shithole country. Mostly Shiite factions voted in favour, while Kurdish and most Sunni members of parliament did not attend the session, presumably because they want the American presence in Iraq to continue.

The resolution says, "The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting 'Islamic State' due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory. The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason."

Like so many resolutions passed by so many politicians in so many talking shops around the world, this resolution is likely to come to nothing. It still needs to be approved by the Iraqi cabinet, which, under their system, is not responsible to parliament. However, interim Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi voiced support as he railed against US "violations of Iraqi sovereignty."

He was referring to the US air strike on Friday which killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, near Baghdad's airport. The force has been declared an Islamic terrorist organization, and the killing of its commander -- a man with the blood of 1000s on his hands -- was intended to prevent the execution of a major terrorist attack against Americans in the Middle East, while at the same time dealing a blow to the heart of Iran's Middle East policy.

About 5,200 US troops are deployed at Iraqi military bases -- built at considerable expense to American taxpayers -- to train and support local security forces, in hopes -- faint hopes -- of preventing a resurgence of ISIS. The troops are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government as part of an US-led international coalition against the Islamic extremist group.

The usual suspects (read: Democrats) filled the airwaves yesterday with complaints about the air strike, and dire warnings about immanentizing the eschaton. (You can look it up.) At the very least, they say, Still-President Trump's action has facilitated conditions for Iran to achieve one of its main regional objectives: removing the US military from its neighbour.

And I say: GREAT! What I see here is a brilliant plan to, at long last, get America out of Iraq and perhaps the entire sandpit, without spending at little cost in lives or money, and without losing face!
Previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat, got the USA into the Middle East quagmire (giggity!), without any realistic chance of victory, or any exit plan. The Prez promised to clean up the mess left by Bush, but just spread it further, into Libya.

President Trump said he'd find a way, and was attacked for preparing to bail out, abandoning the "good" Muslims, yada yada yada. What better way to end this colossal exercise in futility than to have the people that invited America to go in to "help" them, order the US to leave. Walt says, DO IT! NOW! Leave the Sunnis and the Shiites and ISIS and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to fight it out. And may all the jihadis get what they so richly deserve. Selah!

The Aghanistan war: It was all for nothing

When I began this blog in July of 2009 [! How time flies when you're having fun! Ed.], the two countries closest to my heart (and other organs), the US of A and Canada, were heavily involved and invested in the Afghanistan "mission".

It looked like a war to me, but politicians of both blue and red stripes, on both sides of the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM), kept assuring us that it was a peacekeeping mission. Or maybe a peace-making mission. Or how about "nation-building"? I called BULLSHIT on that from Day One of WWW, as did many skeptics including Dr Ron Paul.

No-one paid attention. Many demonized Dr Paul and other anti-war thinkers and writers as "unpatriotic". The pro-war types told us that this was, after all, part of the war against terrorism. (Back then, some even dared to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism".) "If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them there!" "Nation-building is the best way to defeat the Taliban!" More bullshit, piled higher and deeper.

Those who opposed the war argued that the Taliban weren't out to get us, so much as to get us out of their country. It was a Muslim civil war, we said, in which we had no business meddling... no dog in that fight. Let them duke it out.

This week, the Washington Post is serializing "At War With the Truth: a secret history of the Afghanistan war", a massive report, based on hitherto secret military documents, proving that... wait for it... the whole Afghan war was a blunder from the getgo -- a colossal waste of money and lives. Putting it another way, we who opposed the war were right, after all. Lifetime pct .979.

MSN carries Monday's part of the WaPo report under the headline "Wasteful spending and half-baked ideas: U.S. officials reveal how massive rebuilding projects in Afghanistan backfired". The newly revealed government documents raise profound questions about the execution and results of the war in Afghanistan and the massive nation-building effort that surrounded it. No wonder, then, that the American government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents -- 2000 pages of interview records -- under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare. With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

Through the interviews we hear the voice of Gen. Lute and scores of others who detail the core failings of the war that persist to this day. They underscore how three presidents -- George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump -- and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan. Here's a sample.

In 2015, US Army Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as the White House's Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers, "We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan -- we didn't know what we were doing. What are we trying to do here? We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.... If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction...." He blamed the deaths of 2400 American military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Since 2001, more than 775,000 US troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Besides the 2300 (that's the Dept of Defense number) who died in that shithole, 20,589 were wounded in action.

The number of Canadians who went to Afghanistan and didn't return was much smaller -- 158 soldiers and seven civilians died -- but proportionately greater than US casualties. 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served in Afghanistan. 158 soldiers and seven civilians were killed. Walt ran a body count, in those first years of WWW, each time asking the question "Why did they die?"

Another 2000 Canucks were wounded in a "peace-keeping/nation-building mission" (read" war) which began under a Liberal government and was then enthusiastically embraced by a Conservative government. In 2006 and 2008, Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament voted together to extend the "mission", at a projected cost of as much as C$18 billion. The Canadians finally realized the war was unwinnable, and bailed out (of military involvement, at least) in 2014. The Americans are still there.

The conclusions of the Post's report -- that the war lacked clear direction and purpose, that the American government misled the public about the war's progress, that the effort to establish a new government in Afghanistan was misguided and quickly corrupted, that billions of dollars in aid and development money were mishandled -- should trouble not just Americans, but citizens and taxpayers of every country meddling in the Muslim civil war. Can our politicians please just cut the BS, bring the trooops and "foreign aid" personnel home, and leave the Islamists to make of their countries what they will. Please!!!

Turks invade "Kurdistan" -- What next?!

And so it begins. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Twitter Wednesday that the Turkish offensive into northeast Syria has started. He calls it "#OperationPeaceSpring". The aim of the operation, he tweeted, is to "eradicate the threat of terror against Turkey." And the invasion will be good for Syria too, of course. "We will preserve Syria's territorial integrity," he wrote, "and liberate local communities from terrorists."

What kind of terrorists? Well, "PKK/YPG and Daesh terrorists", of course! You can't tell the players in the Muslim civil war without a programme, Walt will elucidate. "Daesh" is the name the PC media use for ISIS/ISIL, to avoid have to use the word "Islamic" (as in "Islamic terrorists"). "PKK" stands for "Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê" (= Kurdistan Workers' Party‎), a Kurdish far-left militant and political organization based in Turkey and Iraq. The Turkish government has been trying for years to suppress them, often by making them dead. "YPG" is the armed wing of the leftist Kurdish Democratic Union Party, closely allied to the Syriac Military Council, a militia of Assyrians.

The Kurds are an Iranian ethnic group native to Western Asia. Their mountainous "native land", known as Kurdistan, includes southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. The most widely practiced religion in the region is Islam. According to a 2011 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, nearly all Kurds (98%) in Iraq identified as Sunni Muslim, while the other 2% identified as Shiite Muslims.

The predominant branch of the Religion of Peace in Iran is Shia Islam. In Turkey, Sunni Muslims are in the majority, with about 80% of the populartion. 19% of Turks are Shiites.

So you might think that there should be no friction, in Turkey, between the Sunni Turks and Sunni Kurds. You would be wrong. The problem is that the Kurds of Turkey would prefer to be united with the Kurds of Iran, Iraq and, yes, Syria in an independent Kurdistan. That is what they have been fighting for, allying themselves with whatever other groups or powers may be useful. See "How goes the war against IS/ISIL/ISIS? It's a fiasco!", WWW 27/5/19 (includes video).

The problem for the Kurds is that they just lost their biggest ally, the Excited States of America. Still-President Trump's decision to withdraw American forces from Syria, opens the desert of northeast Syria for Mr Erdogan's "Operation Peace Spring". (Dontcha love how all these invasions -- no matter who leads them -- have names that include "Peace", "Freedom", "Liberation", etc?) A UK-based Syrian war monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported today that people were fleeing the border town of Tal Abyad, which Turkey is expected to attack first. And Turkish television reports said Turkish jets had bombed Syrian Kurdish positions across the border from Turkey.

And so it begins. What happens next? Will Shia Iran seize the opportunity to move against the Sunni Kurds in its westerly regions? Will the Arab Iraqis try to oust the ethnically different Kurds from the oil-rich northern party of their alleged country? Where will it all end? God (or maybe Allah?) only knows. But don't forget that south of Syria lies Israel, and within Israel lies... wait for it... Armageddon.

Further reading (and viewing):
"Meanwhile, in the Middle East, something big is on the horizon", WWW 10/11/17 (includes video from Ron Paul Liberty Report)
"Scrapping the Iran deal: another milepost on the road to Armageddon", WWW 10/5/18.

VIDEO: Ron Paul comments on long-overdue US withdrawal from Syria

In case no-one noticed, our blog quietly passed its 10th anniversary back in July. [If I'd remembered I'd have baked a cake. Ed.] How time flies when you're having fun! One of the themes that I write about again and again [and again and again. Ed.] is the folly of America being entangled in foreign wars that it can't win, especially the oil wars in the Gulf and Middle East. See, for example, "Will America never learn? The persistence of bad foreign policy" (WWW 2/5/13).

It's not that I'm a pacifist, or anti-Israel, or an apologist for the Islamists. I'm just a realist, like Ron Paul, and think it's stupid to waste tens of thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars meddling in and tens of thousands trying to act as referees in Muslim civil wars. Here's what Dr Paul has to say about Still-President Trump's announcement that US forces will be withdrawn from Syria, starting yesterday!



IMHO the withdrawal is long overdue! We have (dare I say it?) no dog in those fights. The USA will be no better off no matter who wins, and no worse off no matter who loses. The usual suspects say the Bushes, Slick Willy, and the Prez sent American forces to the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, and kept them there, not just to convert the feudal Arab states to modern Western democracy, but to keep the Saudis and multinational companies in control of the oil that lies beneat the blood-stained desert sands.

I call BS on that. With the development of fracking and shale oil, and the slowly lessening use of plastics and other oil-based products, America is virtually self-sufficient in oil. And if the liberals on both sides of the Canada-US border would smarten up and support the development of Canada's oil sands and the import of Canadian oil through pipelines which the leftists don't want to be built or expanded, oil self-sufficiency would be guaranteed. Who needs Arab oil?!

Mr Trump's announcement late Sunday has set the lefties' hair on fire. Expressions of shock and horror are being heard from all liberal quarters, notably Brussels, the capital of the European Union, and (of course) the commentariat of America, Britain and Canada.
* America is leaving its Kurdish allies in the lurch!
* America is surrendering! Another failure for Trump!
* America is caving to Assad!
* The Turkish invasion of Syria will be disastrous!
* More millions of refugees will be washing up on our shores!
and, inevitably
* We're inviting a resurgence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS!

Walt says, who cares?! Let the Islamists duke it out. And if a humanitarian disaster ensures, let the Europeans and Canucks take care of it, if they're so minded... and can afford it. Getting out of the Middle East is absolutely the right thing to do. As Dr Paul and Dan McAdams say near the end of the video, it's not going to happen overnight, but this week's decision by Still-President Trump is a step in the right direction.

Further reading: "Worried for Kurds in Syria, abandoned by US? Here’s an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD", by Nebojsa Malic, on the Ron Paul Institute website, 8/10/19.

UPDATED: Iraq at Sweet (?) Sixteen - Why are we still there?

UPDATED ADDED 25/3/19 - This comes under the heading of "Further reading", but I just became aware of it this afternoon. Click here to read a transcript of Dr Ron Paul's speech to Congress opposing the authorization of military force against Iraq. If only they'd have listened!

Today is the 16th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then... chaos. The Paranoid States of America and its "Coalition of the Willing" involved themselves in the endless Muslim civil war -- a four-cornered one featuring Sunni Muslims vs Shia Muslims vs ISIS vs Kurds -- and there we are, still... 16 years later, after the expenditure of trillions of dollars (literally) and the loss of 1000s of lives of American and other Westerns. 16 years...

Is there any sign of the conflict in Iraq ending? NO! POTUS and our top military people tell us ISIS is "just about" defeated, reduced to a few hundred jihadis encircled in a shithole somewhere in Syria. Once they surrender, we can declare victory... again... and go home. Errr, not the part about going home. There will be a drawdown of some of the US personnel, sometime, but there will be a US presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because there is still a power vacuum, with no united and effective national government in place. And because ISIS has not been vanquished, but is merely going to ground. They will resurface at opportune times, whether in Iraq or Syria... or the Netherlands... or the USA!

I said "American-led" in the first sentence to emphasize that the US is not alone! In 2003, America's gallant ally, Canada, decided to take a pass on Iraq. Apparently the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien asked itself what the point of the mission was, and decided discretion was the better part of valour. A couple of years later, to repair relations with their disgruntled neighbours, the Canucks joined in the invasion of Afghanistan. After 160 troops lost their lives, the Canadians pulled out, leaving the US holding the Afghan bag.

But that was OK (they said) because they'd changed their mind and would send a token force to Iraq instead, to help with training and, like, you know... anything that didn't involve more body bags being repatriated. No more motorcades along the "Highway of Heroes", please! And more than a decade later, the Canucks are still there, working with the American forces to bring peace, order and good government to the shithole that is Iraq. Isn't that wonderful?

How appropriate, then, that Canuck Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan (a Sikh person) and Diplomat of the Year (2018 -- look it up) Chrystia Freeland (the one not wearing a turban) picked yesterday to announce that Canadian armed forces, almost 200 strong (!), will stay in Iraq for another two years... like it or not. That should come as a great relief to the US military. What would the "Coalition of the Willing" be without Canadians?! What do Canadian voters think of this exercise in peacekeeping and nation-building, and other initiatives of Just In Trudeau's Gliberal government? We'll see in October.

Further reading: The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer. Farrar Strauss & Giroux, New York, 2005. Mr Packer's thesis is that President Bush II and his advisers (Hello! Messrs Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) had no idea what they were getting into when they pressed ahead with the invasion of Iraq even though Saddam posed no threat to the USA or even his Gulf neighbours, and no plan whatever for stabilizing and rebuilding the shithole once the invasion was over. And remember, he wrote this book in 2005. Things only got worse after that. Where and when will it all end?!