For the Love of War

“We will reap what we sow. And what we have sown is impulsive wars." ~ Dr. Qanta Ahmed

Scene from Game of Thrones, inspired by the firebombing of Dresden

I keep thinking about the phrase “And so it goes…” Humanity lost a chunk of its soul with Kurt Vonnegut’s passing.

Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden by hiding in a slaughterhouse, inspiring his iconic book Slaughterhouse 5, where the phrase “and so it goes” comes from. As Jonathan Creasy of the Los Angeles Review of Books lays out, the book, as well as the phrase, makes the point that “massacres such as Dresden happened; they always have happened and they always will happen.”

Our “fearless” leaders love war. They instigate it, revel in it, feed off of it. For every soldier who dies in a ditch believing he fought for an ideal, there are generals above him replacing his body with another expendable pawn. And with each death, the power of the highest elite grows. One need only to look at Afghanistan to see the madness of their machinations. As someone said, it took the USA four presidents, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and twenty years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

This is not the end of a war. It is merely stoking the flames of another one.

To say this war has ended is beyond insulting for the 3 million Sufis who now fear massacre; the millions of women and girls whose freedoms are being erased; the thousands who face death for aiding foreign governments; the some 85,000 asylum seekers who the United States abandoned to the Taliban.

“We will reap what we sow. And what we have sown is impulsive wars. Betrayal of our allies — diehard allies like the Kurds — the decent Afghanis, the long-suffering Iraqis, the defenseless Yazidis, all of whom have held more strongly to our ideals than we have ourselves. That’s why the shock of Kabul will reverberate from Washington to London, from Baghdad to Jerusalem, on to Islamabad and beyond.” ~ IWF Senior Fellow, Dr. Qanta Ahmed

Extend that list to the heightened worry of those living in Ukraine, Pakistan, Taiwan. The list never goes away, it only grows longer.

Julian Assange, speaking in 2011 said, “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

Put this image in your mind: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing Kabul in a helicopter so stuffed with cash that some of it was left lying on the tarmac.

That is who our leaders really are—all of them. Ghani reveals them all as small-time con-artists who prostitute themselves for the price of a bigger car, a bigger mansion, a flashier photoshoot. Wheeling and dealing, slipping and sliding, and then jumping ship when it gets too hot to stick around.

I wonder in what manner Biden will jump ship? Although if he actually had to jump in or out of anything I doubt he’d make it. Watching this doddering old man claim the “chaos” of the Afghan withdrawal was “inevitable,” seemingly without any concern for the lives of those now in jeopardy, is shocking. Seeing him give his squinty-eyed teleprompter speech, lying about how surprised he was at the speed with which the Taliban took Kabul, and then totter back into hiding, should speak volumes to every ordinary citizen about how weak and morally bereft our leadership has become.

The United States is doing a great job of destroying itself from the inside out. We have become so confused we can’t even recognize it. The Washington Post’s Mark Seibel informed us: “Why Trump’s banned and the Taliban aren’t: they play by the rules.”

The propaganda arm of the United States is assuring us that it’s okay to murder your subjects and enslave your women, as long as you maintain a good cover story. But dare to question that cover story and you will be destroyed.

We are in the middle of a spiritual warfare far greater than any war played out on a battlefield. This is a war of words and it has been set up for years. A war that has so confused the public with doublespeak that most of us can’t tell the difference between lies and truth and even worse, we don’t really care anymore.

When Jesus came before Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judaea did not want to take on the responsibility of setting him free because it would anger the people and jeopardize his career. In frustration, as if to justify what he is about to do, he says, “What is truth?” He then goes out to speak to the people, telling them he can “find no fault” in Jesus. Like a true “leader” he absolves himself of guilt, justifying Jesus’ crucifixion as the will of the people. And the people, true to form, behave with mob mentality, condemning him to death.

This is how most leaders have always behaved. This is how our leaders are behaving. As opportunists. Why would we believe one word they say when we see, played out before us, time after time, blatant lies.

Yet, incredibly, the more they lie, the more compliant the believers become. They are in too deep to turn back now. Like a gambler who knows his only chance to win is to risk everything, they commit wholeheartedly, even though the odds are against them. And because of this, they turn with ever increasing viciousness on those who refuse to comply.

We aren’t there yet, we aren’t at a place where neighbors are killing each other over a virus, but we’ve grown used to violence, we’ve seen the riots of last year and accepted the stories of the reporters that they weren’t really happening. And even if they were, so what? They were necessary.

I wonder what stories we will be told this winter and what greater horrors we will come to accept?

At least what’s happening in Afghanistan could never happen here. We are not fanatics. We are reasonable folk. We follow the science.

I was listening to two mothers at the playground the other day. One was saying how her daughter is being tested once a day at school. She said her daughter’s nose was bleeding. She worried about this, but what was the alternative? Until there is a vaccine, no one is safe from this virus. And there are parents who make trouble by saying kids shouldn’t be masked—horrible people! They shouldn’t be allowed to send their kids to school.

I had the urge to scream at her, shake her, demand of her to wake up. Doesn’t she realize what she is saying? That she is condoning child abuse? That by turning on those who don’t accept the child abuse, she is well on her way to accepting the cleansing of those protesting parents from society?

Yet, I didn’t say or do those things. She would not have listened anyway, so thoroughly has she been indoctrinated to believe she is “protecting” her child by obeying the “science.” All I could do was stand in helpless silence, appalled that two mothers were discussing brutal invasions of their children, eagerly awaiting the day when they could be injected with an mRNA vaccine that is a copy of the genetic code used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to make the spike protein, when we don’t even understand what the long-term consequences of this technology will be on our children.

There those two mothers sat, in terrifying ignorance, trusting the fate of their children to an industry that has a long history of lying to us about the drugs they’ve addicted us to, as if a stranger sticking a swab up a child’s nose is of no more consequence than a child scraping their knee on the playground.

A few days ago, an American businessman on a trip to China described being in quarantine for two weeks. Another businessman was in the room next to him, with his family. This other businessman was moving to China with his family. My friend described how he could hear the screams of the man’s four year old daughter as officials swabbed her nose.

“They don’t mess around in China,” my friend told me. “They stick it way up there. They don’t care if you are 2 or if you are 40.”

This will be the future for that businessman’s children. It is already the life of millions. Tested regularly for an illness that hardly affects them. In China, no one moves from one area to another without permission. Everyone single person is controlled by technology. When China first locked down, we followed their lead. And we’ve been doing it ever since. There is no reason, judging by the progression we are seeing, to think anything other than that we will be doing exactly what China is doing within the year.

It would seem the more people who get vaccinated, the more restrictive life becomes. The more fanatical the rules we must adhere to. Vaccinated family members are refusing to see unvaccinated family members. I spoke with a grandmother who is morally against the vaccine and yet felt she would do it because if she didn’t, she would never see her grandchildren again. The despair when she spoke of this was hard to witness. It was as if this decision was destroying her spirit.

The callousness of the woke, or the “fundamentalists,” toward those who wish to maintain their freewill is frightening. With more unrest and uncertainty at home and around the world, the stress, anger, and resentment will only escalate.

In a California public hearing today, vaccine passports were compared to Nazism. More than a hundred people spoke against mandates that would require citizens to wear a face mask in public, and have proof of having taken the vaccine or weekly tests at workplaces including school districts and health care facilities. How many vaccines will a person be required to have? How many boosters? How will they continue to monitor this?

They will not keep doing it with a piece of paper. And it won’t just be your vaccine status that they monitor. It will be a chip under the skin giving informing them of everything about you. Your heartbeat will identify you. If you even think a rebellious thought, they will know about it.

Fear is debilitating: fear of pain, fear of the unknown, fear of the “other.” People will do almost anything, they will obey the most irrational rules, they will submit to the most corrupt and vicious leaders, if they believe by doing so, the fear will go away.

Images of women being erased in Kabul

We are in the process of erasing our Western culture. We are doing this to women, as surely as the Taliban is doing it. But we are so twisted in our mentality, we do not see it. While the Taliban relegates women to separate spaces, imprisoning them in the home, taking away all rights to work, study, beating them if they do not adhere to a strict moral code, erasing them from society, in the west we elevate trans rights above women, destroying women’s spaces, women’s sports and even the right to be called a woman and everything that it entails. Biden is busy replacing old words with new words, as if we now have a new moral code to save your soul. At least the Taliban acknowledges that women exist. In Biden’s Woke 2022 budget, the very word “Women” has been replaced with 'Birthing People' and breast feeding with ‘chest feeder.’

Our military is so busy extoling its “wokeness” that it cannot see the irony of abandoning Afghanistan to one of the most “unwoke” militaries in the world. All while shaking a grandfatherly finger of warning for them to behave themselves or—or what? How the Taliban must laugh at our inability to understand their abject hatred for us and everything we represent.

The plan is to erase all individualism, across all nations. Whereas now transgenders are celebrated as brave pioneers, they are just being used, like everyone else. Their heady moment of freedom is only a stepping stone towards stripping everyone of their freedoms. I cannot judge anyone for who they are or who they want to be. So I am not here to talk about that. I want to warn of how this condition that affects a small portion of the population is being pushed so intensely for a reason that has nothing to do with caring about transgender rights. Just as pushing Black Lives Matter or funding Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with caring about those demographics. Watch what will happen over the next five to ten years. The Black population could well be on the way to extinction. And transgenderism will morph into transhumanism. The individual will become obsolete.

Brazil’s transgender Beauty Pageant

transhumanism

Afzal Amin wrote more than six years ago of the West’s institutional failure to understand our enemies in Afghanistan—precisely for the very reason that we did not encourage individualism and pushed out those who did:

“…the personality type (in psychological terms) favoured across Nato in terms of recruitment, training, promotion and retention is the linear-thinking process-focused maintainer of the status quo, which was ideal for holding back the Soviets while keeping our force readiness at optimum levels. We didn’t want mavericks and non-conformists so we didn’t have them. But for the wicked problems that were Iraq and Afghanistan, mavericks were precisely what we needed, the problem-solvers and the independent thinkers.”

You would think the United States, a country founded upon the precepts of individualism, freedom for all and the “American Dream,” would value having such people in positions of command. But perhaps, no matter how free the common people try to be, we will always be ensnared by those who rise in power, always corralled and stifled. Always infused with fear, threatened, kicked and demeaned. And finally, beaten down and exhausted, the little people succumb to the powerful…until the little people rise up, turn around, and do the same thing all over again, mercilessly punishing those who once punished them.

And so it goes….

Qanta Ahmed states in The Spectator article A new world order will emerge from America’s humiliation:

“Every ally of the United States will now recalibrate their alliances with the United States with this defeat in mind. Americans are now confirmed as fair-weather friends and unreliable allies. Our military, supposedly the mightiest the world has ever seen, has been roundly defeated by chapli-wearing ragamuffin insurgents armed with RPGs and a rabid Islamist fundamentalism.

“Of course the Taliban will, for now, promise not to nurture any terrorists — this is the fig leaf that Britain and America will use to justify their retreat. …But the Taliban rules by Islamist totalitarianism: that is to say, it wants to control culture, faith and society more than it cares about the machinations of the state. Afghan women and girls will be the prime victims.” 

It’s a joke for the U.N. Security Council to call for the new government in Afghanistan to form with ‘Full Participation of Women.’ The Taliban is assuring the world that they will guarantee women’s rights under the 'limits of Islam' following the takeover of Afghanistan.

Key wording: ‘limits of Islam.’

If, as they claim, women's rights will be respected in accordance with sharia law, you can be sure you’d rather not be a woman living under the rule of these men.

Our leaders are no different. They made us promises during the past two years that they never intended to keep. From two weeks to stop the spread to never-ending lockdowns; from herd immunity to there is no such thing; from the vaccine is 99.9% effective to 42%; from now you can take your masks off to you will never take them off; from everyone has the right to make their own choice to there are no choices.

Every lie became easier for people to swallow. Every freedom taken from us was justified for the common good.

Biden’s administration and our military leaders have been busy revamping the military as a woke agency that proudly offers to pay transitioning costs for transgenders; seeks to weed out any service men and women (or what do we call them now?) who might be “insurrectionists,” meaning conservatives; as well as those who refuse to be vaccinated. Meanwhile, you can be sure the Taliban won’t be teaching gender fluidity to its forces, or making sure they all get vaccinated. Why would they? Are they dying in droves from the virus? Come to think of it, is the U.S. military dying in droves? To date, the grand number of deaths in the military due to coronavirus is 29.

The United States has the third largest number of active-duty troops (1.3 million) of any military worldwide, trailing China (2.2 million) and India (1.4 million). As well as substantially higher military spending, the U.S. military's unparalleled presence across the world also sets it apart from those nations. Earlier this year, it was reported that U.S. special forces alone deployed to 138 nations in 2016, an impressive 70 percent of the world.

We have a 70-year long relationship with South Korea. We have 28,500 troops stationed there. President Donald Trump has previously described U.S. troops’ presence and activities in and around South Korea as ‘$5 billion worth of protection’.

Yesterday, I heard the press confront U.S. national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, with questions such as, “why shouldn’t we have a security presence in Afghanistan, such as we have in other countries?” There is no adequate answer.

And in fact, rather than withdrawing, we are now deploying 6,000 more troops to the country.

The Taliban looks at the United States as "the fat cow on the hill ready for slaughter,"  says former army ranger Matthew Griffin. In his writing, Griffin brutally highlights how the Taliban views America and American troops: "You recruit your warriors from a drug addicted, distracted, disillusioned population that’s obsessed with comfort and entertainment … You’re a false front — an empty shell. You lie, cheat, steal, and are easily defeated because you lack the spine to fight."

In the West, we have forgotten what we fight for and don’t understand the fervor of these “religious fanatics.”

Maajid Nawaz describes it perfectly.

“Barefoot Taliban conquered a palace. They believed in something and fought for nothing. I have lived with men like this in prison. It is difficult to describe just how seriously they take their cause. There is a lesson here for us in the West, if we are humble enough to see it.”

Taliban warriors

I have known men like this. I lived amongst them in Luxor, Egypt for almost three years. They smile to your face and then cut you down—but not until after they have picked your bones clean. This they do without a pang of guilt because they believe they are God’s warriors. You can find our more on my series of three essays starting with Why I Stand with Israel

My experience culminated with me standing up to a mob of violent men in Luxor, Egypt during the pandemic. I yelled at them, “I'm an American!” (among other things) Immediately, they backed down. They knew I had a strong president. Fact is, I doubt I would have survived if it had been Biden. They would have laughed in my face.

Are those men God’s warriors?

I certainly hope not.

Is there an ultimate right and wrong?

Is it important to find out?

But how to do it, when the pathway is so cluttered with confusion?

The great Egyptian feminist writer, Nawal El Saadawi said, “Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honor as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.”

Perhaps our leaders hate us so much, knowing they have sold themselves for the highest price of all: their souls. And they want us to join them in their coming torment.

When I studied Okinawan weapons, I had an extremely wise Master, Morteza Alborzi. He was from Iran and had been the captain of the Iranian fighting team. He’d stood up against the regime and been imprisoned for it. He described a harrowing moment when they put a hood over his head, took him to a desolate place and put a gun to his forehead, demanding he confess, to what he didn’t know. Miraculously, he survived. He faced death many times. Eventually, he was able to escape over the mountains and get his family out.

He told me that everyone has a price. You think you are noble, that you will never give in, but those in power know you better than you know yourself. They can look into your depths and find your weakness. They can threaten to take away what you hold most dear. Few people can withstand such threats.

Like the grandmother who believes it is morally wrong to take the vaccine, yet does it anyway for the sake of her family, those in power will find a way to bribe us all. This is why we should never judge one another. Those without sin cast the first stone.

We, the people, got ourselves in this position by turning our backs on our own faith, our own down-home sense of right and wrong. By compromising integrity bit by bit, we reached a point where it’s debatable that we can ever get it back again.

Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian feminist writer has said “When Westerners remain silent out of ‘respect’ for foreign cultures, they show support only for the most conservative elements of those cultures. Cultural relativism is as much my enemy as the oppression I fight within my culture and faith.”

Woke pundits like Mark Seibel can praise the Taliban for playing by the rules while Joy Reid can condemn conservatives for dreams of a Taliban-like theocracy.

Meanwhile, they promote the very theocracy they decry, with poster boys like Dr. Fauci as the high priests of it all.

As I write this, the Taliban opens fire on protestors raising the Afghan national flag in Kabul. You can watch the video of the common people in the street, rushing here and there, fighting for their ideals. We watch it from above, just as the overlords do, but their view is far far higher. They move the chess pieces, discarding pawns and replacing them with others. These overlords are not the kings and queens on the board. Those pieces are dispensable too. If the game ends, they just start another one.

Meanwhile, anyone raising the American flag is condemned as a White Supremacist and Newsweek tells us that QAnon Followers Think Afghanistan's Collapse to the Taliban Is a 'False Flag.'

The overlords laugh. It’s all so funny to them. The common people are so gullible.

Keep the lies coming.

Keep the dissention fomenting.

Never stop the endless wars.

And so it goes….