Lt. Michael Byrd of the Capitol Police is a conservative hero, but in the strictly small-c sense. People who identify with the Conservative movement in America tend to hate him, because his action did more than anyone else to stop an insurrection which would have installed Conservative politicians in a coup. What Byrd did, though, was act to conserve the institutions he was sworn to protect. If you truly believe in conservatism with all the respect for authority and adherence to societal norms that entails, you should laud Byrd as an everyday champion.
Is Lt. Byrd a conservative hero? He shot an unarmed woman that posed no threat to anyone in her immediate vicinity, including armed Capitol Police officers that were directly behind her not in another corridor as was Lt. Byrd. Nor did he ‘do the most’ to prevent an ‘insurrection’. Only last week, the FBI conceded there was no evidence of an organized attempt to mount a coup at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
What he did contribute to, unwittingly though successfully, was an end to any Congressional oversight of the administration of the 2020 US election, that might have allayed some of the suspicions that the election was not conducting according to law. Given the extent of the changes to election law largely brought about by executive orders and administrative discretion in many of the States, which is contrary to Article 1, Section 4 of the US Constitution, on the grounds of COVID, Congressional oversight was entirely justified.
Rather than destroying the equipment before leaving the country, Joe Biden decided to leave the nearly $85 billion worth of US military equipment to the Taliban.
2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s -75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc -45 UH-60 Blachhawk Helicopters -50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers -ScanEagle Military Drones -30 Military Version Cessna’s -4 C?130’s -29 Brazilian made A?29 Super Tucano Ground Attack Aircraft 208+ Aircraft Total -At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition -61,000 M203 Rounds -20,040 Grenades -Howitzers -Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds -162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear -16,000+ Night Vision Goggles -Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes -Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles -10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets -Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR) -Laser Aiming Units -Explosives Ordnance C?4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT -2,520 Bombs -Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops all operational -Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency -Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber -Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor -US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics -Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators
It’s almost like they were outfitting the Taliban on purpose.
AS nobody ever said, “when we win the war in Afghanistan…” Think about it. At no time in the last 20 years did any ‘leader’ of the defunct Coalition of the Willing – political, military or otherwise – ever speak of victory. Nor did they encourage their publics to believe victory was even desirable. It didn’t matter how many warriors were killed in action. Bushes, Blairs, Howards and Obamas didn’t envisage a grand march for the winners; they didn’t want one. When President Trump organised a long overdue Washington parade in 2019 to salute America’s long-battling heroes, DC politicians (all Democrats) were concerned the city’s asphalt would be traumatised. There is nothing shocking about the Afghanistan debacle but, rather, something tragically familiar. War without end serving crisis-addicted pretenders in government, media and corporations. The goal was never enlightened democracy – any more than the end game of the ‘pandemic’ is ‘freedom.’
For the post-Soviet superpowers (paying attention), impossibility in Afghanistan was already axiomatic in 2001. Rushing in anyway was ominous enough. But having done so, to then look upon triumph as undesirable, as something vulgar to be shunned? That was depraved. Depraved lassitude, in fact, is the leitmotif in harmonica of our time. It amplifies nihilism like Henry Fonda’s dying breaths in Once Upon a Time in the West.
In Australia, defeat might seem like the unfair result of unyielding loyalty to the United States and therefore be no great – or, at least, no particularised – disgrace. This seems to be the op-edocracy’s reading of the ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan – albeit that absurd versions of old doctrinal schools are now brawling for scraps about how an army should surrender and skedaddle in an elegant way. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” announced moustachioed Teddy Roosevelt impersonator John Bolton in the priapic lead-up to the Iraq War, “but real men go to Iran.” It can only be a matter of time before the inverted hawks of the upside-down 20s insist that everyone abandoned Kabul but real men abandon Taipei… or Canberra.
No, Australia isn’t a hapless victim of its own dependable nature. The world isn’t a Paul Hogan skit and we’re not Strop. The Howard government committed soldiers to Afghanistan for a good cause but its successor governments kept them there for an age as a cut-price deposit for US backing in some future travail of our own. For that alone, as it happens, 43 of our finest young men died. The thinking behind the realpolitic was defensible but Australia’s unwillingness to mobilise for combat none but a small, constantly re-inserted vanguard of commandos was usurious. As for the down payment on alliance, how sure can we be that it will be honoured by a woke Pentagon in the service of a Pelosified Washington establishment?
There’s a good reason why Joe Biden hasn’t been mentioned till now: the Acting President is not to blame for the Afghanistan mess. He is responsible for the worst withdrawal and evacuation in US history. As an Endless War G.I. Joe, two-term Vice-President during the conflict and lifelong geo-strategic imbecile, Biden is by no means blameless. Those of us who remember the early years of the War on Terror also know that Afghanistan was very much the left’s Good War. The Democrats wanted George W. Bush to lose the Bad War – in Iraq – so they could regain the White House in a Nixonian fog of scandal and military humiliation. To Bush’s credit, he refused to go quietly. Note that a President in his 50s has a lot more vim for defiance than a 79 year-old whose idea of a surge is an extra scoop of choka choka chip.
Not only is there a lot of ruin in a civilisation but a lot of blame – and gradations of blame – for the ruin. When Australia formally called it a day in Afghanistan, commentators predictably opined on “our longest war.” Except it wasn’t ours – few citizens were called upon to assist in any sacrificial way – and therefore it wasn’t really a war at all. There were no petrol coupons or scrap metal drives in the suburbs. The notion that the West could fight a true war abroad while insulating for political reasons the vast majority of jaded voters was the foundational perversity of the enterprise. We lost in Afghanistan for three reasons: we didn’t want to win, we weren’t involved and – saddest of all – we’re not as morally superior to the Taliban as we used to be.
Finally, look not to Biden and the Democrats but to Scott Morrison and the Liberals for what may be the most shameful evidence of this same misanthropic pomposity: having rotated a small band of specialists into Afghanistan over and over – and over – again to kill the enemy, Liberals then facilitated an attempt to jail them for murder. The sainted Johns – Howard and Anderson – did the rotating but neither spoke up for their bloodied champions.
Climate change, benevolent sexism, lockdowns for areas without a trace of Covid-19 – this perpetual war of distraction plagues us whilst the US Embassy in Kabul tweeted a Pride flag, as the Taliban wearing little more than sandals and AK47’s in the scorching sun, readied to attack. The role of the Australian Infantry is to seek out the enemy, kill or capture him, seize and hold ground, and repel attack by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain. It is not to seek out the enemy, engage a diversity officer to record their gender preference, sexual orientation, and attitude to wind farms, by bike or carbon-neutral canoe. Our defence force is there to fight for freedom, but our army has been caught in the distraction, losing focus on Kabul to patrol the streets of western Sydney and the Tweed River. Brigadier Mick Garraway told Sunrise soldiers are delivering groceries and supporting police. Forget kill and capture; it’s about keeping a five-star rating as they morph into UberEats and Covid Cops. Unemployed drivers in western Sydney who can’t leave their LGA would be thrilled to be paid by the government to deliver bread and milk. The sobering issue is not terrorism or even the Taliban; our chief ally is sailing away from us. How are we going to defend ourselves in the new world? Apparently, climate policy. How do you feel about climate change? Terrible, they say as they get into their Range Rover. I can’t sleep at night, they say, as they plan their home renovations. What is the prize in winning the climate debate when the Chinese Communist Party, happy to accept delegations from the Taliban, glad to make the Taliban part of their Belt and Road Initiative, and seemingly having no problem with the change, has kept its Kabul embassy open? Most of our primary communication channels go under the South China Sea, which China believes it now owns. They have weapons to turn off our satellites. China has 50 attack submarines and four ballistic missile submarines with many more planned. We have eight submarines, and not all of them work. China has around 2100 fighter planes, attack jets and bombers. We have 110 combat aircraft. Our defence force – not offence force like China has – is not even a big day at the cricket; all our serving personnel couldn’t fill the MCG, while China’s military is bigger than the city of Adelaide. Did Senator Matt Canavan believe he was belittling the efforts of troops when he said on social media, “Does anyone know if the Taliban will sign up to Net Zero?” He issued a wake up in 44 letters only to be cancelled before he could explain the world is changing, and it’s time to understand the real threat. Senator Canavan, who went against the grain when he called for repatriation planes to rescue Aussies stuck in India, who believes Afghani’s hunted for helping Australians should get refuge, has nothing but contempt for the Taliban. However, more righteous is the ever-eloquent Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, who told a Senate committee, “you can’t con this little black gin” , appearing on top of the cancel culture pile-on, tweeting: “What a fucking joke!!! You are disgrace!!!” Apparently, his tweet is the problem – not people dying in Kabul while our soldiers patrol the border of one Covid-free community to another. The Greens called for 20,000 visas, but Senator Thorpe took it a step further: “We need to protect and give all people seeking asylum the protection they need.” Music to the ears of a range of brutal terrorists set to embed operatives on a Boeing to Blacktown. Other MPs who have fought to bring Afghan interpreters to Australia are warned off from advocacy after intelligence investigations bring up violent terrorist links – in one case, gauging out the eyes of a six-year-old girl. According to the Greens, we need to give them a house next door to you, preferably carbon neutral. Is it climate, or a totalitarian rein that has spy ships off your coast, hacks your Parliamentary computer system and openly states it seeks to invade Taiwan, with a military bigger in number and soon to be more powerful than the United States? Seven years ago, the Arctic was supposed to be ice-free, and by 2005, children weren’t supposed to know what snow was anymore. Now the IPCC tells us global warming of 2°C will happen during the 21st century, and it’s all Canberra can think about. If the CCP launch hypersonic missiles over the horizon, you can shout, “I drive a Tesla”, “my house is carbon neutral”, “my dog is vegan”, “you will not define my gender”, “English is the language of the oppressor”. This war won’t be won with solar panels or the non-binary box in the Census. Our kids inherit our priority confusion. Afghanistan has shown us another mum is not going to offer her son to fight your war.