If the political signs are correct, this will be the last Memorial Day under the corrupt, inept, anti-American Biden regime. The Administration not only repeatedly dishonors the brave service members who died for our country, it added 13 names to their ranks during the disastrous Afghanistan pullout. So desperate are Biden’s leftist minions to misrepresent his strategic blunder and subsequent callousness that ex-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki lied about both in her new book, Say More. Psaki wrote that Biden did not check his watch during the transfer of bodies at Dover Air Force Base three years ago. When the visual evidence utterly refuted her, she had to remove her falsehood from future editions of the book, as the dead heroes’ loved ones rightfully lambasted her. For the first time in 26 years, no May film will cross the $175-million threshold. One of them was Steve Nikoui, the father of slain Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, arrested last March for shouting out his son’s name during Biden’s State of the Union address. “If the American people want to keep these people in office or keep these people on television and give them, you know, multimillion-dollar jobs [Psaki is now the high-paid hostess of the MSNBC show, Inside with Jen Psaki],” Nikoui said, “Well, they have to answer for that when they die, not me.” (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Leftist Exorcism Has Begun) This humiliation didn’t stop the Biden Administration from further desecrating the honored dead. Last week, the National Park Service denied permission for the Knights of Columbus to celebrate the traditional Memorial Day Mass at Poplar Grove National Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia. The Knights have held a Mass on the site every year since the 1960s, but this year the NPS said nyet, adding Marxist anti-Christian fervor to its anti-military brew. Fortunately, two factors combined to repel the federal secular tyranny. The Founders inserted Freedom of Religion into the Constitution to countermand precisely such despotic repression. And Virginia state government went Republican in 2021 to no longer be controlled by the likes of Democratic governor Ralph Northam, who once advocated for infanticide even post birth. Infamous quote by Northam: “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.” So, the Knights of Columbus filed a restraining order against the NPS dictum, represented by the First Liberty Institute, one of several crusading nonprofit law firms stymying government repression. Intimidated by the Knights, the Constitution, and tough Cuban-American Attorney General of Virginia Jason Miyares, the Biden Administration capitulated to permit Memorial Day Mass at the cemetery. Miyares delivered the oratory coup de grace. I’m pleased that the Petersburg Knights of Columbus was granted access to observe Memorial Day and gather to pray and mourn the loss of fallen military personnel,” Miyares said. “The First Amendment very clearly allows religious and non-religious groups to hold these types of gatherings on government grounds. It’s shameful and un-American that they were denied in the first place. Instantly and astutely contrasting himself against Biden’s unpatriotic agenda, presidential frontrunner Donald Trump made the perfect Memorial Day Weekend move. According to the Daily Caller, the Trump campaign will soon announce “Veteran and Military Families for Trump”, a coalition with over 175 endorsements from decorated Veterans and Gold Star families ahead of next Veteran’s Day. The accompanying press release reads, “Unlike Biden, President Trump has honored America’s veterans.” Doubtless, most soldiers and sailors — plus the Navy Seals summarily expulsed by the Biden Pentagon for refusing to take the undertested COVID-19 vaccine — and their relatives will be pulling the lever for Trump on November 5th. (READ MORE: Farewell to the Legend: Roger Corman) This Memorial Day month also made a less political and more culturally significant mark. For the first time in 26 years, no May film will cross the $175-million threshold, according to Gitesh Pandya of Boxoffice Guru, and probably only one will gross over one hundred million. The tentative number-one movie of the weekend, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, barely earned $25-million, a fraction of its $168-million budget, and may still lose to The Garfield Movie. I predicted in this space three weeks ago that Furiosa would be a massive flop. That the male audience it catered to has had enough of the ridiculous uber woman action genre displacing their masculine heroes. That it’s yet another entry depriving them of both female sexuality and femininity, and their ageless ideal of rescuing and winning the damsel. That the entire concept is an unpopular feminist fever dream. “Men know that in a Mad Max world, the Amazonian warrioress Furiosa would be decapitated, raped, or turned into some barbarian’s slave girl,” I wrote. “Just as in the real world, the most mediocre male athlete can trounce the personal best women while insulting them by pretending to be them. We know what true barbarians did to Israeli women last October 7th,. They raped them, murdered them and their children, and took many of them hostage. And there wasn’t a Furiosa among them to stop it.” As I’ve also oft stated, Hollywoke folk don’t care about reality. Today, they would rather fail with Furiosa than make an actual Mad Max picture, then have to explain the success of a toxic male hero to their feminist and eunuch peers. It’s especially sad that 79-year-old Australian writer-director George Miller, whose original Mad Max franchise made Mel Gibson into a superstar and influenced the action film for generations, was neutered into this fiasco. But just like Miller himself in 1979, there are young male filmmakers way outside the Hollywoke orbit conceiving believable heroes such as Mad Max that men will applaud. While Hollywood sinks into the bleak dystopian future that Miller so presciently envisioned. The post The Last Woke Memorial Day appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration released a report that said that the two worst Mexican drug cartels are operating in all fifty states and are fighting each other for control of the drug trade in several U.S. cities. The DEA said that we are enduring the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.[A]ttempted penetrations of military bases by foreign nationals “is happening more and more.” This is yet another byproduct of President Biden’s open border policy. According to the DEA report, “The deadly reach of the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels into U.S. communities is extended by the wholesale-level traffickers and street dealers bringing the cartels’ drugs to market, sometimes creating their own deadly drug mixtures … Together, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have caused the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.” (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Biden’s Bogus Executive Privilege Claim) But it’s worse than that — far worse — because that report tells only a fraction of the story. The Mexican drug cartels control many of the people who smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S. About seven million have come into the U.S. during Biden’s presidency, been “arrested,” and released into the nation since Biden was inaugurated. That doesn’t count the “gotaways,” who number about an additional two million, who slipped through our open borders and managed to evade the Border Patrol altogether. The “gotaways” are comprised of drug smugglers and others who are eager and able to commit crimes against Americans and America itself. Forget the drug smugglers and other criminals for a moment. Let’s concentrate on the dangers of terrorists — Islamic jihadis — coming into the country. There is an area in South America where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil share borders. In this Tri-Border Area (TBA) there is a very large Shiite Muslim population. According to my research, since the mid-1980s Hizballah – the “Party of God” controlled by Iran – has been recruiting operatives and adherents in the TBA. Pretty much every other Islamic terrorist group is also present there and in other parts of South America: Al-Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, and essentially all the other terrorist networks we have come to know since 9-11.  The TBA is a convenient area for them to gather and recruit more terrorists. Moreover, these terrorist groups have gained success as far north as Venezuela. Last September, Biden granted legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are already in the US, enabling them to get work permits. In 1994 Hizballah, following Iran’s orders, attacked the Argentine-Israel Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. They killed at least 85 people and injured another 300. They, and the others, have not been idle since then. It is absurd to believe these groups are smuggling people into our country and not planning attacks on the U.S. According to a report by the American Military University, many Muslim terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda, have a strong presence in South America. They are particularly active in the Tri-Border Area (TBA), the region where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet.” [Please note that the AMU report, essentially a government document, uses the bowdlerized version of “Hizballah,” i.e., “Hezbollah.”] The AMU report goes on to say, “The most active group is Hezbollah with its contacts and support from the Iranian regime. The support of the Iranian government and Hezbollah’s relationship to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the IRGC-Quds Force make Hezbollah an exceptionally powerful and dangerous adversary.” Which brings us back to the “gotaways.” The terrorists can pay the Mexican cartels to smuggle their jihadis into the U.S. and into our cities. The FBI is certainly trying to detect these attackers but the convenience of the Mexican cartels mean that the FBI’s intelligence information is almost certainly not good enough to stop their planned attacks. The mystery is why none of the “gotaway” jihadis have yet made attacks on this country. What are they waiting for? As the 9-11 attacks, which took months or years to prepare, proved these terrorist networks can be enormously patient. (READ MORE: Biden Wants Hamas ‘Refugees’) There is some scant evidence that people — possibly terrorists — are testing some of our defenses. On May 3, two Jordanian men attempted to gain access to the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia. When they were apprehended, they claimed to be delivering goods for a subcontractor to Amazon. Both were in the U.S. illegally, one of them having overstayed his student visa. That attempt alone proves nothing but the growing frequency of such attempted penetrations does. Last week, U.S. Fleet Forces Command boss Admiral Daryl Caudle told a Fox News interviewer that attempted penetrations of military bases by foreign nationals “is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.” Those foreign nationals come from all different nations and many times have passports and papers according to that Fox News report. Those passports and papers are likely forged. It’s pretty obvious that terrorists who have entered the U.S. over Biden’s open borders are testing our vulnerabilities. They can, I suspect, find many small ones and a few big ones. When they can coordinate attacks on them, we will lose dozens — perhaps hundreds or thousands — of American lives. Foreign leaders around the world — both ally and enemy — must wonder at how stupid we are for letting just anyone cross our borders. It is simply amazing. The post Our Border and the Gotaways appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

We know war is filled with sorrow and loss. And yet, we turn to books, films, and relics of war to remind ourselves of the human potential for heroism. Homer’s Iliad, a myth, is among the most unforgettable tales of war, and its heroes — Achilles, Hector, Odysseus — become real the moment we hear their names.   The technology of warfare evolves, but how individual people confront death in combat remains largely unchanged.  Unlike Star Wars, there is no digital finesse to the horror of the Trojan War, no special effect to smooth over the aggression of close combat. You won’t find a heartwarming anecdote about teamwork or doing the right thing when the going gets tough, or about patriotism and loving your country so much you’ll die for it. Instead, you confront fundamental truths, including that war is brutal; it’s real blood and real bones. In the world of The Iliad, what had been a talking, living man can, in an instant, become merely a thing — more like a stone than someone’s father or son. The poem’s greatness lies in its simplicity — how we kill and, more importantly, why we kill. It opens famously: Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles It’s Achilles’ story but he sulks in his tent for most of the poem, inconsolable after the Greek king takes from him a young woman named Briseis, a war prize won by Achilles in an earlier conquest. Achilles is more like a petulant teenager than the Terminator, lounging in his room and playing his lyre while comrades suffer against prince Hector and the high-spirited Trojan warriors. (READ MORE from John Waters: Out Here, War Is a Precious Memory) Not until his friend is killed does Achilles rouse himself to fight. In the world of heroes, justice amounted to personal vengeance, and so Achilles enters battle to avenge the killing of his friend Patroclus, a second self. He slaughters Trojans, one after the next, piling their bodies so deep in a river it dams up, until the river god himself appears to fight back a raging Achilles. In each spear thrust through a man’s throat or chest, Homer obsesses over the body, the blood draining from a wound, the darkness covering a dead man’s eyes. Returned to action, Achilles embodies the hero’s gamble that, in single combat, he is the one who will kill first and stand over the dead body of his enemy.  ***** I began at Annapolis in the summer of 2005, suffering through the mid-Atlantic humidity as I marched from one end of base to the other, climbing ropes, crawling through mud, sweating my way through what was, in hindsight, a mild initiation into the military. That first year on the Yard, I watched the upperclassmen — with shaved heads and crisp creases in their khaki uniforms — as they moved a step quicker than the plebes. The Iraq War was in the news and on our minds. The Academy’s most ambitious Midshipmen wanted their share of the action. I remember a particular first-class Midshipman who happened to share my last name. He was a captain of the crew team, intense but easygoing among friends, expected by his classmates to be a future leader of a combat arms unit. For young men with his combination of athleticism and confidence, to serve aboard Navy ships or submarines — really, to be anything other than a Marine or Navy SEAL — was a disappointment. I wanted to be like him. I commissioned into the Marines and completed specialty training as an infantry officer and, later, in ground intelligence. By the time I left training in 2011, the action had moved from the urban desert of Anbar Province, Iraq, to the rural desert of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where I joined thousands of infantry Marines in a place roughly the size of West Virginia. I provided them with intelligence, maps, satellite pictures of roads and mud-brick compounds, as well as answers to whatever questions were on the minds of 20-to-25-year-old Marines walking foot patrols. Question: “When will the war end?” Answer: No idea. Question: “Will we ever see a real Taliban fighter?” Answer: Possibly. Question: “Has anyone ever been killed by the rabid dogs who roam the village?” Answer: No, but don’t be the first. Marines poured into the country ahead of the summer fighting season as part of President Obama’s surge, and they patrolled constantly during daylight hours. But the real action, I discovered, happened at night. A nondescript plywood office was operation central for an elite troop whose mission was to capture and kill terrorists. Visit the office during the day and you might find a few people sitting at desks. After nightfall, however, the troops loaded into a white school bus parked outside their office, made the mile or so drive to the flight-line, then boarded helicopters destined for terrorists’ homes and hideouts, where they fought up-close. After capturing or killing their targets, the men would gather up whatever intelligence treasure they could find and head back to camp. (READ MORE: World War True) On one occasion, I located a compound used by Taliban fighters, then provided the details to someone who occasionally worked out of that nondescript office. He wrote me an email a few nights later: “Dude, thanks for the grids. We called a HIMARS shot on the position. Check it out and keep ‘em coming.” I opened the PDF to find photographs of three dead Afghan males. They looked to be in their late teens, tufts of facial hair along their cheeks. It was my first glimpse of dead enemy fighters, and they were younger than I imagined. Somehow, I hadn’t expected this would happen when I found the fighters’ hideout or passed along its grid coordinates. It was strange looking at their pictures on my computer screen.  ***** Men waged war first with blunt objects and tools. Then came swords, spears, javelins, and arrows. The invention of gunpower ousted the knight and put the killing weapon in the hands of commoners. Gone was the duel, and with it the rules of a fair fight. Whichever side was better organized to the mass application of violence had an often-decisive advantage in the wars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the blaring sirens, the whistle and crash of an artillery bombardment in World War I, came the whisper of drone strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the return to bombardments in present-day Ukraine and Gaza. The technology of warfare evolves, but how individual people confront death in combat remains largely unchanged.  In the myth, when Hector and Achilles meet, we get the crux of a human life in Hector’s final moments. First, he leaves behind the safety of Troy’s defenses for the open plain, so the Trojans gathered along the city’s walls can watch and cheer. Then, when Hector sees the great Achilles approaching, he panics and runs, feeling he is trapped in a nightmare. Finally, he stops running. Hector faces the greater Achilles, and says: And now my doom has come at last. But never let me die without a struggle and without acclaim. Let me achieve some greatness and be known to people in the days to come. Let me at least die gloriously, with a struggle, and do some great deed that men will praise for all time. For most of us, the reality of war doesn’t match what we expect, just as our own lives don’t unfold exactly how we intend. And still, in each new generation, young men voluntarily risk death to prove themselves worthy of a legacy that can be raised to the heroic, to achieve with their lives what Hector sought in the final moments of his. To speak only of war’s horror and brutality is to avoid an inconvenient truth: the reason we seek battle has not changed in 3,000 years. John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster). He lives in Nebraska, where he was born.  The post War: Where Men Win Glory appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Sometimes two events come together to remind us of a very special moment in history. A few days ago the 2024 edition of the “Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage” concluded. This is an annual event in which devout Catholics, typically numbering more than 15,000, make a 60 mile trek from Paris to the renowned gothic cathedral of Chartres to celebrate the feast of Pentecost. The pilgrimage, which has taken place for the better part of a millennium, occupies an important spiritual place, particularly among those who wish to see a revival of traditional Catholicism. It is especially fitting that it should culminate with a Mass celebrated at a 12th Century cathedral, described in its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as “one of the most beautiful and historically significant cathedrals in all of Europe.” [I]t nonetheless deserves our attention, a reminder that the so-called “dash across France” was never the bloodless romp that the history books want to portray. UNESCO also notes that the cathedral is well-preserved, which takes us to the second event, and with it, a very special story for this Memorial Day weekend. In August 1944, General George S. Patton’s Third Army had just been activated as part of Operation Cobra, the “breakout” from Normandy that marked the beginning of the destruction of the German armies west of the Seine and the liberation of France. Racing across France, the XXth Corps of the Third Army had liberated Le Mans and Angers and was in the process of outflanking Paris to the south. The small city of Chartres stood squarely in its path, a logistics hub for the German army and the location of an important Luftwaffe airbase. Although the rapid advance had disrupted any coherent line of defense, the Germans still fought desperately to defend as many key strongpoints as possible. One such strongpoint was Chartres, a place where several key roads came together, with important bridges over the river Eure. For the Wehrmacht, holding Chartres, if only for a few critical days, meant allowing more units to escape eastward and reconstitute a defensive barrier. For Patton, seizing Chartres on the run meant trapping more Germans, maintaining the momentum of the Third Army’s drive toward the German border, and, above all, making sure that the retreating Germans remained off-balance. Two divisions of the XXth Corps, the 7th Armored and the 5th Infantry, were tasked with taking Chartres, the armored if it could be seized on the run, the infantry if a more deliberate assault proved necessary. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: Pro-Hamas Panty Raids: A Destructive Dynamic) On August 16, 1944, the 7th Armored had run into increasingly heavy resistance as it pushed from the outskirts into the center of Chartres. The city is located on the plain of Beauce, the center of farming country, the terrain flat for miles around. The cathedral sits on the only hill of significance, and its towers, the tallest some 371 feet high, are visible for miles around. For the approaching American GIs, not simply visible, but oppressively so, for such dominant features were almost always associated with German artillery observers, looking down with binoculars from on high, calling down the dreaded 88s on anything that moved. Even as the 5th Infantry moved in to take over the fight, riflemen of the 7th Armored found themselves drawing sniper fire from the cathedral, significant in and of itself, all the more so because it seemingly confirmed that the Germans were using the cathedral as an observation post. As these riflemen returned fire, the call went up the chain of command for an artillery barrage to flatten the cathedral. At XXth Corps Headquarters, the request came to Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, a young colonel and the chief of Operations (G-3) on the Corps general staff. Griffith had already been in the city the night before, and, while he knew of the reported sniper fire, he also knew that the order to destroy an historical structure of such significance should not be given lightly. With only his jeep driver as an escort, he drove to the front lines around the cathedral, then through no man’s land to the entrance to the cathedral itself. He entered the cathedral and searched it, including climbing hundreds of steps up into the bell tower. Satisfied that the Germans were no longer present, he blocked the order to bombard the cathedral. Welborn Griffith, West Point photograph, 1925. Col. Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr., is credited with personally saving historic Chartres Cathedral during World War II. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. A happy ending then? Sadly, not entirely. Already far forward of his post back in the rear echelon at Corps Headquarters, he continued to reconnoiter, soon encountering a  strong German patrol. He withdrew, found an American tank and some infantry, and led them forward to deal with the German patrol. Standing exposed behind the turret of the tank, directing the tank and the infantry forward, he was shot and killed. French villagers maintained a vigil over his body until it could be recovered. A plaque now marks the place of his death, and his courage was recognized with the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Today Colonel Griffith’s body lies alongside some 4,404 of his comrades in the Brittany-American Cemetery in St. James, France. Less famous than the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach, smaller than the Lorraine and Luxembourg American cemeteries, filled with those killed in the massive slugging matches at Metz, the Siegfried Line, and the Battle of the Bulge, it nonetheless deserves our attention, a reminder that the so-called “dash across France” was never the bloodless romp that the history books want to portray. I grew up with the story of the decision not to destroy Chartres Cathedral. As I’ve recounted elsewhere, my dad was a junior officer in the 5th Infantry Division, and the fight for Chartres was among the stories he read to me from the division history. But the story of Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith was absent from that narrative, largely because it was written in 1946, and Griffith’s heroism received little public recognition in the U.S. until many years later — and this largely because of the French in the little community where he was killed. On this Memorial Day weekend, I think he deserves to be remembered with a hero’s salute. He deserves to be remembered alongside the hundreds of thousands of Americans who, over the life of our nation, have given their lives to protect our freedom. But he also deserves his salute because of the moral character of his actions on August 16, 1944. It would have been easy to allow the artillery bombardment to go forward. Not doing so meant potentially risking the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of the GIs for whom he was responsible as a senior officer. And many other officers would have made the decision, one way or the other, from the relative safety of his Headquarters, and no one would have faulted them for doing so. But he decided that it was important enough to risk his life to make sure, and then to risk his life yet again doing something that colonels might reasonably have delegated to a lieutenant. (READ MORE: Gentlemen, Scholars, Thugs: The Real Heroes Behind The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) On this Memorial Day weekend then, a week after thousands of believers enjoyed the inspirational beauty of Chartres Cathedral, let’s pause to remember Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith of Quanah, Texas, West Point Class of 1925. November 10, 1901 — August 16, 1944. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region, and a forthcoming sequel carries the Reprisal team from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post The Hero Who Saved a Cathedral appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

This is the lede from Euro News in Brussels just five days after the Hamas committed its atrocities against the people of and guests within the Jewish state: October 12, 2023 – Israel has the right to defend itself, but some of its actions since Hamas’ unprecedented assault on Saturday “counter” international humanitarian law, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Tuesday evening…. Speaking to reporters following an extraordinary meeting of EU foreign ministers … ” I have often considered most of the meetings of the EU to be “extraordinary,” given the vacuous comments and inane promulgations often forthcoming from such august colloquia. But that is an issue for another essay. The above pattern of Israel responding under duress to the caprice of her “allies,” prevailed during each of her engagements from 1948 to 2024. You will no doubt already have heard the above familiar (and safe) refrain a multitude of times unless you have been incommunicado somewhere north of the arctic circle and your short wave hasn’t been working for six months. The news is full of pontificates on both sides of the political divide trying to be the first and most vocal (perhaps persistent) to have their “two cents” worth of support for Israel reported by the mainstream liberal media. But give it a few months and my, how things change, especially the views of those “clinched fisted” Israel supporters. The mantra is no longer Israel’s “right to defend itself.” The rhetoric becomes: Israel’s “right to defend itself, BUT” only with back-handed caveats, to which Israel must subscribe or there will be consequences — political and economic consequences from the “international community.” In other words Israel’s “close allies” (Britain, U.S., and the EU ala France) do not want there to be political fallout in the Middle East, because they do not want a similar backlash at home from Israel’s response, especially since these “close allies,” provided overtly or covertly economic, political and/or military support to Israel in its response to the slaughter of innocent people at the hands of Hamas. But let us be clear about that support — it comes with “strings” attached. In the case of the U.S.-Israeli foreign policy arrangement that tether has a 10-year $40 billion political “carrot” at the end of it. And that means Israel will respond to the political winds gusting from Washington, not Jerusalem, during times of concern in the Middle East. Thus according to DC, Israel has the right to defend itself as long as it acts in compliance with what is in the best interest of Washington and Israel’s other “close allies,” Britain and the EU through France. It seems as though the ghost of Sykes-Picot is still manifest. (READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: Master of Our Own Consciousness or Slave to the State?) The political fallout at home for these countries is just a colloquial expression for several domestic issues which plague Britain and France, not the least of which is energy — an economic concern of their own making — as well as large restive Muslim populations. And in the U.S., an election in the fall of this year in which an incumbent left wing president is lagging in the polls. Every vote counts, or at least, this year, we hope so. Certainly, to the vast majority of those who peruse the pages of this magazine, much of the above is not necessarily news. The State of Israel has been with us since 1948 and the idea of such an entity since before Balfour in 1917. Moreover, the general contours of its history are well known to most. But if one considers what is occurring today in the context of Israel’s past, a pattern emerges that is undeniable. Since 1948 Israel has been engaged in 17 major conflicts (or wars depending on how one defines the latter). This calculus does not include the almost daily internal armed struggles with its detractors. This number is important because in each situation Israel has been either supported or otherwise by its “close allies” all because of the “prevailing winds” in the current geopolitical climate. In some engagements circumstances were such that Israel’s “allies” helped then hindered then impeded Israel in its effort to hold on to its right to defend itself. The current conflict in Gaza is representative of this latter situation, but there have been others. And each decision made was always done in the context of the politics of the moment. I say moment because presidents, prime ministers, and the vicissitudes of the political spectrum come and go — there’s an ebb and flow to politics. But with regard to the Jewish state, that hasn’t seemed to make much difference. The decisions made about and advice given to Israel regarding what the Jewish state ought to do before, during, and after each of the 17 engagements it fought was the same. It begins with the same vacuous refrain: Israel has the right to defend itself, but she is always told at the incipient stages to not engage unless no other choice avails itself; once engaged be quick about it and do everything that no other military in the world would even consider doing to avoid military and civilian casualties; do not let the fact that you are being attacked and that your population is at risk or being injured or killed influence your decisions with regard to any military response. And finally, at some point, if the engagement has not been completed within the timeframe agreeable to Israel’s “close allies,” the Jewish military must stop (irrespective of whether it has accomplished its military objective) because of the political imperatives warranted by these “allies.” The above pattern of Israel responding under duress to the caprice of her “allies,” prevailed during each of her engagements from 1948 to 2024. There were, of course, some differences regarding which ally or which ones were more emphatic in their caution or demands, but always with their own political agendas at the time driving Israel’s decisions because they bind Israel’s choices to only limited options. And lest we forget, one way or another the issues influencing the actions of Israel’s “allies” during the conflicts, including in Gaza, are a function of Sykes-Picot of 1916, which permanently altered the geopolitical schema of the Middle East. And this has been true much to the detriment of the peoples of the region, then and now. (READ MORE: US and Israel’s Humanitarian Mission to Gaza) Yet, today, even in the face of the Hamas atrocities in October of last year, Israel remains circumscribed by its “allies” to the degree that it is urged to defeat an enemy, but without civilian casualties or significantly disrupting infrastructure that is likely employed by the enemy for military purposes. Of course, say the “allies,” Israel always has the right to defend itself. But that is precisely the problem: Israel should not just have the right to defend itself. It has been doing that for 76 years in Judea and Samaria, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and recently in Iran, Lebanon again, and Gaza again. What Israel and its “close allies” need to understand is that since no nation state under international law has the right to exist, and since Israel has already been defending its determination to exist for 76 years, it has the right to live in peace if it can achieve this. And this is where we are today in the Middle East, especially with Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s right to live in peace is an entirely different concept — a uniquely different state of mind with profound implications about its present and future state of affairs. It no longer walks to the cadence of a foreign rhythm, but one emanating from the land of Judea and Samaria — with what is in the best interest of the Jewish people of Israel at its center. The latter was created 76 years ago for just that purpose. This by no means is an impossibility or the voice of naivety. Israel has been moving in that direction since October of last year. She has taken on the respect and, of course, the wrath of the world in her determined efforts to rid Gaza and the region of the horror of Hamas. But such actions do not embody retribution or vengeance of which she regularly stands accused in the modern liberal press; rather, the calculus is both cautious and careful so as to not respond disproportionately. Israel knows what this hole is like — she has been here before. But the accusations of disproportionate response are without merit. If Israel’s aim is to no longer merely exercise her right to defend herself (in perpetuity which has been the case for 76 years), but to defend herself, her lands, and her people such that from this point forward she may live in peace, the Jewish state is pursuing a just goal in its military efforts in Gaza and Lebanon. The pursuit of a just peace, rather than interim periods of non-hostility, must continue to be the goal of Israel and the Jewish people, and it may take time to achieve. But if Israel accepts the wisdom of the text of Habakkuk in the Hebrew Scriptures to trust in the faith of God’s sovereign purpose for her, the Jewish state can live in peace and stop doing what she is expected to do — merely continue to defend herself against those that seek her demise and those who seek only what is in their own best interest, not Israel’s. If the right to live in peace is what Israel is currently pursuing with respect to Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran this will, for the first time in 76 years, be perhaps the first time a real chance for a just peace is actually upon her. Perhaps, Israel will become … …master of her own consciousness and slave to no other’s. The post Israel Has a Right to Peace appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The coming of spring is pretty much the same everywhere, but it is especially glorious in the Netherlands. The winters are cold and clammy, the sky almost constantly gray; most winters, in most Dutch cities, there is little if any snow, but the air always feels damp, the sun rarely if ever shows itself, and the rain can seem never-ending. Then, at around this time of year, it all changes, quite suddenly and quite gloriously: the rains cease, the sun not only emerges but shines with such intensity that you can feel the warmth in your bones; as if on cue, the café owners all put their sidewalk tables out again and the householders fill their window boxes with tulips. Looking around you, you’re reminded what an extraordinarily beautiful country it is.  [W]hat decent, liberty-loving individual could do other than to cheer the ambitions of Wilders and his coalition partners? So there was something especially moving about a statement Geert Wilders made at a historic press conference last week. Just under six months had passed since the November 22 elections in which his Freedom Party (PVV) won 37 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, making it the nation’s largest party for the first time since its founding in 2006. The results represented a spectacular upset for the ruling coalition of four parties, all of which experienced losses, as well as for the Dutch political establishment generally. Since that establishment has long considered Wilders a dangerous extremist, and since some of the fifteen parties that are represented in the lower house still want nothing to do with him, the question of how exactly his party’s success could be translated into the formation of a viable government representing the will of the Dutch electorate was not an easy one. (READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: Citizen Bawer: On Acquiring a Second Nationality) Indeed, it has taken many months of proposals, counter-proposals, and elaborate negotiations for the the PVV and three other parties — the VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), the NSC (New Social Contract), and the BBB (Farmer-Citizen Movement) — to work out detailed plans for a coalition government whose goals have been spelled out in a newly released 26-page document. Announcing this agreement at his press conference, Wilders promised to institute “the strictest asylum policy ever,” to lower taxes (including taxes on gasoline), to reduce development aid, to address the housing crisis, to take a “tougher approach to terror,” and to “work toward deporting criminal refugees.” In short, the coalition government will “set a new course for our country” under the motto “hope, courage, and pride,” and will seek to make Dutchmen “proud of this country again, of our beautiful Netherlands.” In short, as Wilders put it, “the Netherlands will become safer and the sun will shine again.” The sun will shine again! Yes, it was political rhetoric, but as a great admirer of Wilders and a lover of the Netherlands — especially of Netherlands in the spring — I found it moving.  The new government will be an unusual one. Half of its members will be non-politicians — business people and other experts in various fields. Neither Wilders nor any of the other party leaders will become prime minister. It’s not a bad idea. In parliamentary democracies, cabinets tend to consist exclusively of members of parliament who belong to the ruling party or parties; as a result, important ministries like finance or defense can end up in the hands of callow young people with no background whatsoever in these areas. (Of course, if the wrong person is in charge, the same thing can happen in the U.S., where a buffoon like Pete Buttigieg is named Secretary of Transportation simply because he fulfills certain identity criteria that have nothing to do with the duties of the job.) And of course in any system where career politicians run government departments, sensible decision-making can easily take a back seat to political considerations.  Needless to say, the Netherlands’ legacy media has no interest in giving Wilders’s coalition a chance. In the view of the editors of NRC, a leading newspaper, the Netherlands was now “joining a sad European trend” whereby “right-wing radical parties … are coming to power by sharpening their sharpest edges.” Responding to Wilders’s use of the word “pride,” NRC lamented that it seemed “to refer mainly to a Netherlands that is anxiously turning inwards, no longer wanting to look beyond the dikes.” Wilders, NRC charged, was leading the Netherlands full-speed into a “climate crisis” and was putting “the ‘ordinary’ Dutchman” ahead of “asylum seekers, Muslims, nature, Europe, the cultural sector” — a patently unacceptable choice. Sound familiar? The problem for NRC, obviously, is that Wilders’s program is, to all intents and purposes, a Dutch variation on Trumpism — favoring natives over illegal immigrants, national sovereignty over subordination to international organizations (the UN) or superstates (the EU), the voting power of “deplorables” over the tyranny of a small unelected elite, and common-sense environmentalism over radical climate ideology. To sensible people, every bit of it makes sense: but to NRC it’s “raw right-wing conservatism.” NRC does admit that this “is what a majority of voters who voted for these parties apparently want.” But NRC, like many mainstream media in the U.S., isn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of actually allowing the electorate to choose its own country’s leaders and chart its own country’s path.  The Dutch media are particularly uneasy about the coalition’s possible actions on immigration, especially of the Islamic variety. Wilders, of course, has for years been his country’s most prominent voice on the subject — a role formerly occupied by, in succession, Pim Fortuyn (who was murdered in 2002), Theo van Gogh (who was murdered in 2004), and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who left for the U.S. in 2006). Owing to his frank talk about Islam, Wilders has lived for years in a bulletproof house, is driven to work in an armored car, has the most secure office in the Dutch Parliament (believe me, I’ve been there), and goes nowhere without a full-time cohort of six bodyguards. In other words, he’s told the truth and fought the good fight at great personal sacrifice. (This is the man about whom the editors of NRC have the audacity to say: “Wilders has not cared about his voters for years.”)  To be sure, some of Wilders’s plans don’t sound as sweeping as one might wish: during last year’s campaign, his proposals included banning mosques and madrassas and even the Koran. (For my part, I’d send every household in the Netherlands a booklet containing all the most incendiary passages in the Koran.) But given that he’s working under the constraints that go along with being part of a coalition, the bullet points in the agreement with regard to Islam, immigration, and integration seem like a reasonable start: freezing decisions on asylum cases; deporting people without valid residence permits; ending the current practice, in the allocation of public housing, of prioritizing refugees with temporary residence permits over native-born Dutch citizens; tightening border controls; imposing stricter policies for admitting refugees, which includes an end to the practice of rewarding refugees who’ve discarded their identity documents; tightening “family reunification” policies; shortening the appeals process for refugee applications; making it possible to deport criminal aliens quickly; taking stricter action against asylum seekers in “reception centers” who commit acts of violence against women, gays, or Christians; punishing those who’ve failed to comply with deportation orders; and taking a more aggressive approach to integration, which, the coalition agreement specifies, means, among other things, requiring a higher level of competency in Dutch and extensive education about the Holocaust. (READ MORE: Biden Is George III. Who Does That Make Trump?)  Is this new start for the Netherlands too little, too late? Perhaps. But if Wilders’s coalition can put its program into effect, and carry it out with enough force and (yes) toughness, it could make a positive difference. It could encourage politicians in other Western countries who share Wilders’s determination to preserve their own countries’ freedom, tradition, and values — and who recognize the rampant ongoing Islamization of Western Europe as a cataclysmic threat to these things — to amp up their own efforts. In any event, when one turns from Wilders’s program to (for instance) the British government’s approach to Islamic perfidy — as exemplified by its long-term whitewashing of Muslim rape gangs, its hands-off approach to even the most violent participants at pro-Hamas rallies, and its brutal attempts to silence (or even destroy) critics of Islam like Tommy Robinson — what decent, liberty-loving individual could do other than to cheer the ambitions of Wilders and his coalition partners? Better, after all, to go down fighting than to yield power to a merciless enemy all the while hoping desperately and pathetically for mercy.  The post Will the Sun Shine Again in the Netherlands? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“Iran Gets Great Price on Chinese Helicopter,” editorial cartoon by Shaomin Li for The American Spectator, May 26, 2024. The post Iran Gets Great Price on Chinese Helicopter appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Press For Truth:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Eric Zuesse, The Duran: U.S. President Joe Biden is now seriously considering the recommendations by his neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken and by the neoconservative Victoria Nuland (whom Obama had assigned to plan and oversee the 2014 U.S. coup in Ukraine, which started the war in Ukraine) — their recommendations that America must now send to Ukraine […]