After America
Now that the US has pulled up its drawbridge, how will the Free World defend itself?
22 comments
Visit MelaniePhillips.substack.com.
Much deserved opprobrium has been heaped upon US President Joe Biden for his shameful recent remarks justifying his decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. He blamed everyone but himself for the Taliban’s expedited return to power, and accused the Afghan army — who have lost almost 70,000 soldiers fighting the Taliban — of having
collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight… American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves… We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.
The Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat subsequently made an emotional and blistering speech in the House of Commons emergency debate. You can watch his speech here.
Tugendhat served in Afghanistan both as a soldier and as an adviser to the governor of Helmand province. He spoke about the soldiers who had died in Afghanistan, the good men he had watched going into the earth and who had taken with them “a part of all of us”. He said how proud he had been to be decorated by the American 82nd Airborne Division after the capture of Musa Qala in 2006. Making an effort to compose himself, he went on:
To see their Commander-in-Chief call into question the courage of men that I fought with, to claim that they ran; it’s shameful. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have.
He went on to raise the issue that must now be preoccupying all who have depended upon the United States as the principal defender of the free world. For as I wrote here, the US has now shown itself to be a faithless ally and the weak link in that defence.
As a result, said Tugendhat, there was now a need to
reinvigorate our European NATO partners, to make sure we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, but that we can work together with with Japan and Australia, France and Germany, with partners large and small and make sure that we hold the line together.
It was patience, he said, that had won the Cold War, achieved peace in Cyprus and brought prosperity to South Korea where America had stationed more than ten times the number of troops than it ever had in Afghanistan. He went on:
So let’s stop talking about “forever wars”. Let’s recognise that “forever peace” is bought not cheaply but hard, through determination and the will to endure. And the tragedy of Afghanistan is that we’re swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.
Fine and prescient words. But alas, the prime minister Boris Johnson who opened the debate sounded a very different note. Observing correctly that the purpose of the American and British troop presence in Afghanistan was to prevent any further attacks on the west after 9/11, he declared:
we succeeded in that core mission.
But the sole reason for that success was the presence of the American and British military. The withdrawal of US troops has led to a Taliban takeover and the probability that Afghanistan will once again serve as the launchpad for more attacks on the west. The work of the past two decades has been undone, and the sacrifices in blood made by both NATO and Afghan troops have effectively been in vain.
Yet when taxed with this obvious point, Johnson merely reiterated that the core mission had been achieved. When asked by the former prime minister, Theresa May, whether he had discussed with NATO’s Secretary-General an alliance to replace US troops, Johnson spoke against deploying troops to fight the Taliban and said it was also an “illusion” that any of the UK’s allies wanted a continued “military presence”.
It follows inescapably that, like Biden and other western leaders, Johnson is abandoning the attempt to prevent another 9/11 or worse emanating from Afghanistan; and by fatuously claiming “mission achieved,” he is insulting everyone’s intelligence into the bargain.
Although Johnson’s remarks in the debate went down with MPs like a bucket of ordure, Tom Tugendhat’s principled stand is a lonely one. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, advertised the utter uselessness of the UN, along with his own vacuousness, when he told the UN Security Council:
The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan….It is essential that the hard-won rights of Afghan women and girls are protected.
The Wall Street Journal starkly notes, however, that the UN will do nothing to turn these sentiments into reality; nor will France or Germany, despite their similarly pious hand-wringing. As the WSJ writes:
without US leadership, Europe lacks the will and capacity to stop the Taliban or other global rogues.
The Afghan people are once more on their own, with no world leader prepared to protect them. And now that America has abandoned the defense of the free world and pulled up its drawbridge, so are we.
Posts
European countries need to establish secure borders for themselves, not depending on the EU for border protection.
Being an honourless cad who says a whole load of nothing and then does even less seems to be the order of the day now. Only a matter of time before western civilization collapses altogether and gets taken over by those who have no problem whatsoever revelling in violent expansion and conquest, facilitated by their leftist allies who are always banging on about the evils of imperialism (they're the biggest imperialists IMO!). We used to believe in something and were willing to fight for it too at one time. Now we just seem to be waiting for someone to put us all out of our collective misery. This is what happens when you let lefties tell you for decades that your culture is evil and should be entirely dismantled (or alternatively that you don't have a culture to speak of at all and are simply a non-entity in terms of values and customs, "so just shut up and accept everyone else's!") A pox on these people who've ruined everything!
We must rally and regain control of Congress and then nominate DeSantis in 2024. The Democrats cannot be trusted on issues of national security and domestic policy
People like biden and obama and others like them have enriched themselves living in the only nation where they could cut the throats of the people and get away with it because they have the right to be what they want to be. No where else in the world could they have gotten away with what they have done and still be walking around free. Yet they take pride in trashing America, one has to wonder when the American people will start taking back what people like, biden and obama and their party members, have taken from them.
To WJ, Don't forget that both Obama and Biden, but especially the democrats, haven't done the things they have to our country without the full support of at least half the country. And our international wrongs were begun by previous presidents and politicians that deliberately, after WW2, set up America as both welfare service of the world and as protector of the world. In one article I read today, one western nation's politician, after bemoaning at length the perfidy of the USA in Afghanistan, declared that western nations must end their dependency on one nation to keep the peace and band together with other nations large and small to do this themselves. For me that says everything needed and clearly supports my earlier statement about the international position the USA has taken for closely to 80 years. These nations have relied on the USA all these years for annual subsidies of hundreds of billions of dollars and to fight their wars for them. So, yes, the US needs to stop this providing everything for them and let them all take care of themselves with some temporary help from us only when necessary. And this position of reliance on America has lead to an insane national debt for the USA, a total avalanche of poor/uneducated/unskilled foreigners from corrupt third world cesspit nations that haven't changed in generations, an avalanche that is bleeding our country dry and changing it negatively forever. The USA is becoming weaker and weaker through the constant invasion of economic opportunists foreigners, all categories, having no love for or stake in America, and the constant use of our military and money to provide things like border security for other nations while refusing to do the same for us. We should, and always have, be charitable to our neighbors of the world, but the success and security of our own nation and our own people should always be ensured first just as it is for all these nations.
WJ: Leaders of countries all around the World are doing what Biden-Obama-Clinton Cartel are doing and still walking around free, and even still in charge of their country, the problem is that Americans never thought it could happen to American Leaders...Such actions happen daily all over the World. Perhaps you need to get out more..
You are correct about needing to get out more, but my bride of 51 years is disabled physically and is very dependent on me anymore. As a young man I did get around most of the world as a US Marine, fought in the war nobody liked and am seeing what those draft dodgers and loud mouths of that era have done to the country. I am only one voice, just like you and everyone else on this site, one of the things I see very little of being pointed out, and I am guilty, is not enough is being said about the role of the leftist media in all of this. I think they need to be pounded into the dirt for all their lying and covering for those doing this country dirty. Dirty leaders need a dirty media to keep making them look good and cover their evil works. One, no, all, of what we are seeing anymore is coming right out of the scriptures of prophecy from the Bible, I know no one wants to talk about it or bring it up any more, but that is the truth. The world is on the brink of a war that is going to take out one fourth of the worlds population initially, another fourth will die from the left overs of that war. I have been in war and know the ugliness of it, much of what is said in the scripture is a mystery, but lately the mystery is being taken out and the truth is being exposed and the players of evil pushing the world into what is now being exposed are in place. The show must go on and all of us have a front row seat in the drama that is going to play out. My suggestion is to not be sitting when it starts, a moving target is much harder to hit, if you catch my drift.
so we 'pulled up the drawbridge', haven't seen the southern border lately then? The US doesn't exist to protect the world, we can't even protect ourselves. Let the neocon dream die like it should have long ago.
To Gumby2, Do not say the USA can't even protect itself because that is not true. America COULD protect itself and its American citizens, but has chosen not to do so. At least, that decision to destroy America and Americans was made long ago by a certain group and their plans have escalated over the past couple of decades.
What's your own dream and how would you get there?
"Now that the US has pulled up its drawbridge, how will the Free World defend itself?"
ANSWER: The Free World does NOT EXIST ANYMORE. We will all be killed in a massive Holocaust.
To GOP Congress, That statement, "Now that the US has pulled up its drawbridge, how will the Free World defend itself?" Makes me so angry. The USA is just one of hundreds of nations on this planet, many of them just as rich and successful as the USA. So, where has it ever been written that the USA is totally responsibile for the entire world, all its nations and their people, and all the global organizations. These nations including our so-called allies have exploited America for their own gain for many decades, but when the day comes that the USA collapses and fails as a nation, I have doubts that ANY of them will be there to help us, but I have no doubts that some will collaborate to take over America while the rest just stay quiet. Actually, Israel might, might, help us, but will not be able to because they will be fighting for their lives.
Marilyn Griffin: You tell it like it is, clear precise, and too the point.. I wish I had a real woman like you beside me. President Trump took Troops out of Syria, Nasty Peelosi said "We are leaving our friends behind", no word as yet about who exactly those "friends" are but its my guess its either the Syrians, the Turks, or the Kurds, three people that have fought each longer than the USA has even been a country. President Trump claims the USA cannot be the Policeman of the World any longer, and The Left called him Hitler... Go figure... Upside down world we live in today.
All of the people on these planes should be dropped off at Martha's Vineyard or Joe's hideout in Delaware.................William
There is no Free World anymore in case you haven't noticed. France is communist, Spain is communist. So are the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Germany and Britain are half-communist, and so are most of the rest of the EU. Not so long ago in the Western Hemisphere, only Cuba was communist. Now the Marxist list includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua, Ecuador, with El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico being half-communist and Chile teetering on the blink. And the most important of all, we are pretty much communist. So where is the vaunted Free World? In China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos? I am sure you had Somalia in mind.
You're a Shill for satanic islamofascism!
You're always spewing on about communism when it's obvious they're helping Islamofascism...
In that photo I can see four women, and I think four children, one being a baby. The rest are men, mostly young men, so can they not fight for their country, or do they just expect the Western World, the infidel according to them, to fight for them in their country, or to feed and house them, while they maintain their own backward culture once settled in the Western World. muslims around the World are laughing in our faces at our level of tolerance as they see that as our weakness while we see it as our strength. Bring ALL Troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq,Syria, UK, Germany,Morocco, and anywhere else they are Stationed, and use the money to pick up each and every Military Vets sleeping on the streets in both the UK and the USA and help them get their life back on track, and spare no cost in doing so... Honour these men rather than leaving them to rot, and think of the wee girls in the UK before worrying about girls in a far flung country that most people couldnt find on a World Map.
To begin with, the 9/11/2001 heinous attack on America (and then several similar attacks in Europe, including London and Madrid) emanated not from Afghanistan, but from islam! In case of the 9/11/2001 the perpetrators were mostly the Saudi Arabia nationals!
Bush and the West were afraid even to acknowledge the real enemy (islam) and the most direct participant of the attack (the Saudis), chasing merely one particular islamic warlord hiding in caves of Afghanistan instead.
The situation "After America" started already on 9/12/2001, when America failed to retaliate onto the main islamic symbols (Mecca and Medina), choosing to chase one warlord in a far and unrelated place.
If the Afghan army, armed with the modern American weaponry, collapsed within a week before a horde of seventh century savages with AK-47, it proves only one thing: the people of Afghanistan (at least the vast majority of them) prefer the rule of Taliban. In this case, there is no point to keep a Western military presence there and suffer heavy losses in order to bring these Stone Age fanatics by force closer to the Western civilization. The West should make clear to Taliban that the next 9/11 from its territory will be met with the harsh Western response, style Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
How did all this Totalitarianism begin here? We he people nearly allowed these criminals to steal our presidential election. We ALL know Trump won by a land slide. WHY is this fool destroying our lives?? 80 million plus citizens should be standing in these criminals way. Why are only a few trying to get the truth and facts out???? They have found a way to silence the few, but can they silence 80+ million????
Jesus Melanie, take it easy! " And now that America has abandoned the defense of the free world and pulled up its drawbridge, so are we." So are we who, the UK? We would all be served better in the west to close off immigration to ALL muslims from now on. That would keep us safer than anything else we could do. The icing on the cake would be to stop doing ALL business with China, Russia, and islamic countries. They would dry up, have no where to go, descend into further chaos until the people rise up and expel islam from there own societies. It could arguably happen in 25 years if we pulled up the draw bridge immediately, and as tight as possible. Let the commies have islam - and good luck with that.
I am making $92/hour telecommuting. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $21 thousand a month by working on the web, that was truly shocking for me, she prescribed me to attempt it. simply give it a shot on the accompanying site---------------https://Www.NetCash1.Com