In God’s name, Mr. President, tell your political and military aides to stop stringing along you and your countrymen on the issue of Afghanistan.

We seem to be in the midst of another “peace campaign” in Afghanistan. American are being told that U.S. forces and the Taliban are going to forego fighting for a week, and, if that bit of trickery works, peace talks will move on, perhaps for a two-week or month-long ceasefire. This procedure, Sir, could go on forever, but none of it is either honest or necessary.

The Talban long ago defeated U.S.-NATO forces. The Afghan military – on which the national government has spent enough money to fund a large domestic infrastructure program – will melt away when Western forces are gone and Afghan military personnel hurry back to their tribes and clans to help them to prepare for an inevitable civil war.

If anyone tells you, Sir, that Afghans are loyal to their national government, you can call him a liar to his face. Loyalty and unity in support of the Afghan state exists only when the country is attacked, invaded, and occupied, and, even then, both are fragile and often broken for periods of time.

When an occupation ends, this loyalty to the nation-state and Afghan unity end with it. Tribe and clan loyalty quickly regain complete domination over the Afghan political system. Loyalty to each is topped only by faith in Allah. Elections, women’s rights, Western-style rule of law, democracy, etc. are enemies of the Afghan system and its traditions and history, and any promises made to implement such things after foreign forces depart are not worth a tinkers’ damn (NB: Trusting such promises would be even more stupid than the British trusting the Chinese communists to keep hands off Hong Kong for 50 years.)

Mr. President, the foregoing facts have been available to U.S. presidents, politicians, generals, diplomats, businessmen, reporters, and academics since at least 2001. I know that because I publicly delivered the facts in a book called Through Our Enemies Eyes, and another called Imperial Hubris. This surely sounds boastful, and for that I apologize. But the truth is, Sir, those books contain nothing but commonsense informed by a knowledge of history, that of the Afghans and of our own.

The hard truth, Sir, is that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has been an arrogant, uninformed 20-year bungle that has caused thousands of deaths, maimings, and suicides among U.S. military personnel, and has enriched U.S. companies involved in arms-making and reconstruction activities. It also has allowed crooked Afghans and Americans to steal untold billions that were designated for military and civilian operations in Afghanistan.

The worst crime of all, of course, is that neither the younger Bush nor Obama, their cabinet members, or the Congress ever intended to win the Afghan war. Neither did any of the generals who you, without any convincing proof, praise so profusely as brilliant and invincible. The main thing you hear from these generals is “there is no military solution” to the Afghan problem. The only other thing you hear from these louts – at least the retired ones who fear their corporate gravy train will be derailed – are damning words directed at you.

Since the first day of the Afghan war, Mr. President, two presidents and their generals have worked a con on the American people and their soldier-children with benefits accruing only to themselves, their corporate pals, and the makers of prosthetic devices.

Mr. President, it is time to get out of Afghanistan; indeed, far past time. The reality is that you were handed a stinking, dead pig and there is no way resuscitate it or even to dress up the corpse. The Taliban is likely to make any deal you want, and make any promises you demand, but they never will fulfill them. If the Taliban chiefs tried to do so, they would be cut down by Afghan opponents who demand the return of the same status quo ante the Taliban intends to restore.

This leaves no easy task for you, Sir, but the nature of America’s interest in Afghanistan is clear – there is none, except to get out. You are all alone on this one, Sir, as you are on many others, so you ought to treat it as just another day in hell.

Mr. President, now is the time to follow your America First instincts. The republic’s survival, Constitution, and liberties were never at risk in Afghanistan; whatever U.S. forces were fighting for in Afghanistan, it was not any those items. A thoroughly murderous, short-term (15-18 month) punitive expedition was all the U.S. ever needed to execute; indeed, it is the only kind of military operation that has ever succeeded in Afghanistan.

So, with respect, Mr. President, get after it. Order all of our people home, and stop the enormous flow of wasted taxpayer dollars that is going daily to the myriad crooks now operating in Afghanistan and among the U.S. companies that supply our forces and civil reconstruction there. You are a great promise fulfiller, Sir, and this promise needs fulfilling by Independence Day

One more thing. When you end the Afghan bungle, you will be charged with opening Afghanistan to occupation of China and/or Russia. When these accusations fly, Sir, simply acknowledge that Beijing and/or Moscow are welcome to it. There is no better place to find our enemies than where they will be floundering, thigh-deep, in the bloody, treasury-draining, and unwinnable Afghan quagmire.

In Richmond, Virginia’s Democrat-controlled bicameral legislature is trying to pass legislation that will deny the state’s citizenry the guarantees enshrined in the 2^nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and in Virginia’s constitution as well. If the legislation is passed, no Virginian will be able to defend himself or herself against either still-armed criminals or Northam’s tyranny, which will go full tilt if weapons are confiscated.

It is easy for Virginians who insist on the maintenance of their 2^nd Amendment rights to identify Governor Northam, the Senate, and the Assembly as the entities responsible for the tyranny being built in Virginia. This conclusion is correct, but it is incomplete. The lethal enemies of the Virginia and U.S. constitutions now running the state government and legislature are the implementers not only of their own plans, but of plans that are championed by each and every Virginian who voted to put the Democrats in power.

The men and women now in control of Virginia’s government clearly plan to make their unconstitutional intentions into Virginia’s new laws. But Northam and his fellow Democratic gangsters are a merely a tyrannical nuisance, and could be eliminated with a bit of well-aimed, hard work. For that reason, the millions of Virginia who did not vote for the Democrats must face a much harder and more dangerous reality; namely, that the people who gave Northam and his party majority power are not simply voters, they are both enemies of those they view as deplorables — the phrase used by the Mother of Hate — and the true source and fuel of the Northam regime’s hatred for Virginians who oppose the regime’s lawless intentions.

These Democratic voters are well-educated, financially secure, extraordinarily arrogant, and hardcore haters; they are armed with highly violent and utterly destructive intent. They support not only extinguishing the 2^nd Amendment, but also the abolition of the 1^st Amendment and other guarantees of liberty located in the U.S. and Virginia constitutions. These people are not just opposition voters. They do not just disagree with their fellow citizens, they hate them. They are engines of hate and are empowering tyranny in Virginia. They are, indeed, the stuff from which civil wars must result if the Constitution and liberty are to be preserved in the Old Dominion.

What do Northam supporters’ think, and what more are they after? Clearly part of the answer to the question is the end of the 2^nd Amendment within the boundaries of Virginia. But that is only the starting point. The first step in understanding what Northam and his supporters hate — beyond the right of Virginians to own arms to resist tyranny and defend themselves, their kin, and their property — is to list just a few of the reasons why Northam, his tyrant-lieutenants, and those who reliably vote for them are afraid of and hate those who vote against them. Seizing weapons would temporarily negate a large part of their fear, and their resulting Dutch courage and seething hatred will take them crusading against Virginians – especially white and black working class Virginians — who:

–Work with their hands for an hourly wage – often at two jobs – to raise a family, keep a home, and uncomplainingly get by from check-to-to check. The targeted Virginians have been for decades the men and women who have had the “privilege’ of paying for the food, clothing, and housing of people who will not work; for health care for illegal aliens and the fight against the crime they bring; for the filling of Swiss bank accounts held by U.S. foreign aid given to overseas tyrants; for rebuilding foreign infrastructure while their own crumbles; and for seeing their children excluded from Virginia colleges to make room for foreign students, and the Democrats’ wide array of legally preferred, protected, increasingly deviant, and usually less intelligent students.

–Home-school children, which generally betters any form of public education and has no mandatory classroom show-and-tell visits from LBGTQ recruiters, anti-American speakers, feminists, or socialists.

–Oppose the unlimited admission of illegal aliens into the United States, the costs they impose on U.S. taxpayers, and the Democrats’ operations to plant these illiterate and often violent and/or diseased aliens in states – including Virginia – to act as enslaved-by-the-dole voters to keep the party in power forever.

–Fiercely oppose abortion and infanticide, which surely means that Northam’s barbarous regime would kill, without a second thought, those of any age who oppose them on the issue – so long as their targets are completely unarmed.

–Shop at Giant, Walmart, Dollar Store, Sam’s Club, and B.J.’s, instead of letting themselves be robbed by the extortionate prices of Whole Foods — and other such upscale stores — for the sake of appearing well-to-do and oh-so-much better human beings than the working man and woman.

–Regularly attend the services of Christian pastors, preachers, and priests who oppose abortion; believe the Bible means what it says and is eternally relevant; arrange charity activities because they know it is the proper role of citizens and their churches, not the state; and are not ready to identify all forms of sexual depravity as another form of normal that must be respected and, indeed, inculcated into the minds of children.

–Respect the republic, stand and sing the anthem when the flag is raised, and salute and assist our service personnel; oppose the governing elite’s unnecessary interventionist wars; maintain an abiding and praiseworthy distrust of government power and oppose its expansion; and share none of the Northam-ites and their national party’s passion to forcibly remake the people of Virginia, those across the republic, and those abroad in their own anti-American, anti-religion, and anti-family image.

–Act to the greatest extent possible as self-reliant adults in conducting their lives and caring for their own; seek no help from any level of government because it means increased external interference in their personal affairs: and have a healthy disdain, perhaps an unavoidable contempt, for the governing elitists who claim they should direct the personal affairs of other Americans, as in Obama Care, the Great Society, coming programs to make working men and women pay for the student loans of other parents’ children, and other national government attempts to enslave Americans of all races and creeds.

–Love and work to help improve their local communities, small towns, and the South generally, and readily defy any and all who seek to tell them how to behave and think, as well as how to remember, defend, and honor their ancestors, the history they made, and the traditions they passed onto posterity. The importance of this attitude in preserving localism has made them  – and the statues of C.S.A heroes and the General Lee’s battle flag that, in Virginia, testify to that legacy – the prime targets for the current Virginia regime’s acts of cultural and historical devastation.

–Damn and dismiss as liars the agent provocateurs of the deranged, billionaires-backed Global Warming advocates , as well as the false science and altered historical data on which it is based. They know that for 30 years these deceitful scientists and their crazed supporters and media shills (a) have been entirely wrong about every one of their major predictions that describe climate catastrophes that should have taken place 10-15 years ago, and that (b) the climate-frauds’ real goal is to destroy the American working class and their personal economies, geographic mobility, culture, ability to save, language, traditions, history and local affections and loyalties, and to reduce them to being the unarmed, indentured servants of an authoritarian world government that has the monopoly on force.

Hate-fueled attacks by Northam, his regime, and the Democrat voters on Virginians who hold the just-noted beliefs are either partially underway, in the que, or being prepared. They all hinge, however, on a successful Northam-regime campaign that forcibly disarms law-abiding Virginians so the authoritarians can pour their hate on Virginians without earning the much-merited rebuff of having their heads shot off.

The ball of civil war is in the court of the Northam regime. Its hate machine in the state’s assembly has passed a bill legalizing gun confiscation, and that bill is now under consideration in the state senate. The truth of this matter is that only Northam, his regime, and their voters can start a civil war in Virginia. Those they have chosen for enemies will not shoot first.

If the Senate passes the bill and Northam signs it, the only remaining question is when Northam will order his police to seize weapons and fire the first shots at law-abiding, 2^nd Amendment-protected Virginians. Does Northam want to create hell in Virginia over this issue? If so, he will have it in spades. As the saying goes, Molon Labe.

The President’s State of the Union Speech was not what I wanted, though the summation of his administration’s successes was compelling. He took the high-road and – being much smarter than I am — let Americans see for themselves exactly what the Democrats are made of; namely, hate for Trump and his family, unending greed, a fanatic lust for power, deep fear of having their monstrous crimes unveiled, and an even greater hatred for any American who thinks and votes in a manner that questions what the Democrats believe is their right to impoverish and slowly enslave the citizenry and have them like it.

Touching memories of the speech for me will the promotion of a 100-year-old Tuskegee pilot to Brigadier General, while his young grandson stood alongside him, and the young lady who was born far prematurely and is now a happy and healthy girl. The Democrats sat on their fat, white-robed asses and were dozing off while the new general was honored, and they would have joyfully called in Virginia’s Governor Northam to cut the throat of the prematurely born baby. The Klan-like, white robed female Democratic House members would have been arranged as a choir in back of the jolly murderer Northam as he performed infanticide. They would have been singing “Happy Days are Here Again”, as Democrats are never happier than when killing the unborn or just-born.

The icing on the cake, of course, was Speaker Pelosi. On a half dozen or more occasions, Pelosi tried and failed to control the punk-like behavior and shouts of the female Democrats in the audience. Then, as the speech ended, Pelosi tore up her official copy of the president’s speech, which amounted to her sending a vehement “FUCK YOU!”, but it was not meant for Trump. Pelosi sent her message to Americans of all political persuasions, race, and gender who support Trump; honor the nation’s Founders and those who risked their lives, at home and abroad, to protect and preserve the citizenry; appreciate full employment, lower taxes, rising blue-collar wages, and a military strong enough that no regime with half a brain would pick a fight with us; and, it must be said, a rare president, who has promised much and delivered more than he promised.

The Democrats also proved the compete insanity of Pelosi’s mind. Recall that after the 2018 mid-term elections Pelosi crowed about the record number of Democratic women that were elected. She claimed that they would massively improve the future accomplishments of the Democratic Party. The women she praised were the same women who attended the State of the Union dressed as Klan members; who never once applauded those the current administration has helped to escape poverty, get back to work, and begin to cultivate, for the first time since 1945, some bit of affection for the national government. I have long been all but bereft of this emotion, one which Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Patrick Henry, George Mason, and many other Founders considered indispensable to the republic’s survival. Trump has started a governing process that seems to be rekindling some of that affection, though its success, I think, is still a long shot.

As for Pelosi and the women in the Democrat’s House and Senate caucuses, it must be apparent to all that the republic would be getting a great bargain if all of them could be traded for a few dump trucks full of steaming, fresh-from-the stables horseshit with which to fertilize the grounds of the capital. Indeed, those women may be able to evaluate and grade that manure as they are clearly and indisputably specialists at producing their own brand of ant-American, socialist horseshit.

That said, I still want blood, and want it soon, and it may well be that blood began to flow yesterday. President Trump fired the traitorous Vindman brothers from the NSC, which must be the first step toward disciplinary action against the entire chain of officers at the Pentagon who were involved in sending them to the NSC and then kept them there long after their disloyalty was common knowledge. (NB: Are Senators Grassley and Johnson seeking the Vindman boys’ financial records to see which Democrats and foreigners were funding their openly disloyal words and behavior? Okay, first the Bidens, but do not forget to legally target the Vindmans and those officers who sponsored and protected them at the Pentagon.)

Trump also fired Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Well done, Mr. President. But what about the other diplomats and officials who eagerly supported Adam Schiff’s hoax? Why not immediately can that slithering snake Yovanovitch, as well as her co-conspirators William Taylor, George Kent, Jennifer Williams, David Hale, Fiona Hill, Catherine Croft, Laura Cooper, etc. Sack them all, Sir, and press charges on them if it is legally possible. Knowingly participating in an attempt to overthrow a legitimate U.S. government must be some kind of illegal activity. There is no harm or wrong, Sir, in attacking coup perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law. The State Department, after all, has been a cesspool of cronyism, anti-Americanism, sexually deviancy, spies, and socialism for many decades. Sir, it is far past time to clean house – perhaps mucking out the stables is a better way of putting it – at State and if Secretary Pompeo will not do it, find someone who will. (NB: Nearly two decades ago Speaker Gingrich wrote an essay called “Rogue State Department”. It was an excellent and insightful peace then; it is even more so now. The Speaker’s essay can be found at Foreign Policy, No. 137 (July-August, 2003), pp. 42-48.)

Finally, Mr. President, you must move hard and soon against the CIA, against John Brennan and all who are known to have supported his treasonous plans and actions. That much-needed cleansing must also ferret out and then remove those CIA officers who are suspected of helping to arrange, manage, and execute Brennan’s coup. I am a former senior CIA officer, Sir, and it angers me deeply to have to write these words. I loved the Agency, Mr. President. I was proud to work there and, more especially, extraordinarily proud of the people I was privileged to work with for 22 years. The current CIA Director is one of the officers I worked with, and she, almost single-handedly, helped CIA’s bin Laden unit destroy an al-Qaeda organization in Eurasia. I have always admired her greatly for her brains, personal courage, and for never, in my experience, flinching from truth and duty.

But the CIA, Mr. President, has been badly and knowingly damaged by Obama, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Joe Biden, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and John Brennan, each of whom seem to have ordered the CIA to use its human and electronic assets to overthrow your campaign and, then, your administration. They also ordered the CIA to enlist foreign intelligence services from Britain, Italy, Germany, Australia, Israel, and others yet to be discovered to assist the coup. The Obama-sycophant and communist John Brennan enthusiastically followed these orders and wreaked a still on-going havoc on the republic and its citizens, Constitution, laws, traditions, and sense of decency and fair-play.

It may well be, Sir, that many heads must roll at CIA. The substantial number of the most senior FBI officers who already have been fired is a sure sign that it is nothing more than a much-repeated and tiresome lie to claim that 99.5 percent of the FBI is as pure as the driven snow. Anyone who has worked in Washington knows that high-command of the FBI – and the high-commands of all other agencies in the national security establishment – make decisions and issue orders, and it is the rank-and-file that must carry them out. Too often those officers do so even if the orders are known to be illegal and/or counter-productive for the interests of the United States and its citizens.

As much as I regret saying so, Sir, a through-going purge is needed at the CIA. Start at the top, with John Brennan, and at the very bottom, with the lying, Obama-punk whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella. Send the always courageous – even when he is wrong –Senator Paul to do the job and instruct him to lawfully squeeze Brennan and Ciaramella until the pips can be heard squeaking out the names of those CIA officers who need to be cashiered and jailed for participating in the still ongoing coup. Then do the necessary and eliminate the scum from the CIA’s rank and file. (NB: Also, task Senator Paul to squeeze Brennan on his part in the Clinton administration’s resolute refusal to take any action to stop the 9/11 attack. With respect, Sir, I would be able and honored to help out on that issue.)

I suspect, or at least hope, Mr. President, that an effective CIA purge will yield a smaller number of traitors than will the purges at FBI and the State Department. But I resigned in 2004, and so my hope may not be worth much more than a fiddler’s damn.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal

How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?

Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty people
They’re all drinking, thinking that they’ve got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts and things
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal

How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?

–Endnotes:

–1.) http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/rolling-stone/

–2.) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-feelings-nancy-pelosi-ripping-141400242.html

As the impeachment scam seems about to conclude amidst the stench of corruption by which House and Senate Democrats, and, really, all Democrats, are always accompanied, there are so many things for the national government and the loyal citizenry to say and do. (NB: Still a ways to Wednesday, though, so there is time for the Democrats to arrange the slaughter of some school children, illegally publish a few more quotes from that Neocon bastard Bolton, or to make an attempt on the President’s life.)

The Democrats have stolen nearly 3.5 years of the life of the republic and its citizens through their lying Russian investigation and then the Stalinist House impeachment process. How is such theft, and the damage it caused, to be not only repaid but avenged? Wait for the fall election? Arrest the dozens of Democrats who drove the two lawless farces? Or an older, rougher, but much-merited form of effective justice?

While waiting to hear from the President on February 4^th, I must say that, for myself, I want to hear nothing about “now is the time for bipartisanship” or “let us heal the nation” or “forgive and forget”.

No, I want, at least for now, a summation of the Trump administration’s successes and then a clear declaration of a legal, penitentiary-filing war on the Democrats and their accomplices so they are made to pay what they owe the republic for:

–(a.) The Russia investigation and the impeachment, a list of semi-human scum that must include Obama

–(b.) The depraved actions of the Democratic and Republican playmates of Jeffrey Epstein and other human-and-sex traffickers;

–(c.) The traitors who, with the Bidens, Clintons, Pelosis, Finesteins, Careys, etc, appear to be on the treasonous take from Ukraine, China, Iran, and Russia (Uranium 1).

–d.) The State Department, CIA, DOJ, and FBI employees  — and especially the CIA whistle-blower and his clique — who were hired and placed in those agencies, as well as across the whole national-security apparatus, at home and abroad, during Obama’s terms, and who eagerly perpetrated the Russia and impeachment coups.

A tall order, I suppose, but, for the republic’s survival and the cause of a just vengeance, these people must be brought to book; many of them, God willing, to the noose or by the firing squad.

Thereafter, President Trump must announce his intent to bring the legitimate powers of the national government to bear against state governments that are actively defying Washington’s legitimate orders, per the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Those, for example, who are providing sanctuary cities, counties, and states to protect illegal aliens and the crime, disease, narcotics-trafficking, sex-trafficking, child abuse, and human-trafficking that are their stock and trade. The state governments that provide driver licenses or other official documents to illegal aliens, so as to create illegal voters, also must be halted by the legitimate power and duty of the national government to maintain a republican form of government in every state. (NB: The process of eliminating child-abuse mentioned above, of course, must include stopping state, county, and local governments that now are abusing children by indoctrinating kindergarten/grammar/high school students about the “normality” and even glories of the sexual depravities championed by the LBGTQ-ites, as well as by terrorizing them with science-free fantasies about global warming.)

Next, President Trump and the national government must move to restore republican government and the Bill of Rights in all states where they are failing or are gone, starting with Virginia, New York, and California.

Virginia must be first. The few vote-rich counties of northern Virginia elected Democratic Governor Ralph “Ol’ Blackface” Northam, as well as Democratic majorities in Virginia’s senate and assembly. They have moved quickly, not to govern and improve the state, but to dismantle the protection of Virginians by the Bill of Rights, and to punish and make second-class citizens of all Virginians across the state who did not vote for the racist Northam and his regional Gauleiters.

Just in January, 2020, Northam’s pro-infanticide regime announced plans to cancel much of the Bill of Rights in Virginia by using police authorities and perhaps the National Guard to seize weapons from law-abiding Virginians, as well as to pass bills outlawing public criticism of his gutter regime’s officials. So much for the 1^st and 2^nd Amendments. (NB: One must ask what kind of wretched human detritus would vote for Northam and his publicly stated plans to end the Constitution-guaranteed liberties of Virginians? The only answer can be: Democrats.)  The child-hating Northam regime also announced plans to intensify the sexual abuse of children in Virginia’s schools by increasing the instruction of students on the various forms of human sexual depravity so beloved by all Democrats. [1]

The forcible removal of Herr Northam’s regime by the forces of the national government is fully justified under Article 4, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that the national government will ensure all the Union’s states a viable republican government. A failure of the national government to restore republican government in the Old Dominion will leave it up to now well-armed Virginians to eliminate Northam’s regime. It is hard to imagine that many of Virginia’s policemen or National Guardsmen would want to die to protect Northam’s racist, Constitution-killing, and authoritarian regime, one that seeks to stop Virginians from defending themselves and their property or vocally opposing their tormentors in Richmond. But who knows. If there are, so be it.

In 1788, one of the greatest Virginians, Patrick Henry, asked his fellow citizens, “Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?” Henry argued that they were not yet in such a state. He then advised Virginians that it was always their right and duty, as it was of all Americans, to

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who comes near that precious jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined.” [2]

In today’s Virginia, Northam’s thuggish, anti-white, anti-child, and anti-Constitution regime has declared and demonstrated its intention to disarm and silence Virginians – via unconstitutional laws backed by the threat of armed force – while simultaneously slaughtering just-born Virginians and abusing Virginia’s school children. As Mr. Henry of Red Hill warned, Northam, his Gauleiters, and their foot-soldiers are the enemies who are coming “near that precious jewel” of liberty and are planning to destroy it.

The response of many Virginians to Northam’s oppression, so far, has been a knowing, Henry-informed one; namely, “nothing will preserve it [liberty] but downright force.” The “downright force” needed to protect liberty and republican government should be properly wielded in Virginia by the national government. If it is not, Virginians, armed with weapons, their faith, the guidance of the republic’s Founders, and the Constitution, surely will end Northam’s reign of lawless oppression.

–Endnotes:

–1.) https://www.washingtonblade.com/2020/01/21/va-senate-passes-four-lgbtq-rights-bills/ and https://www.metroweekly.com/2020/01/virginia-house-bill-would-allow-localities-to-pass-their-own-lgbtq-nondiscrimination-laws/

–2.) The quoted words of Patrick Henry are from speeches he made at Virginia’s 1788 ratification debates over acceptance of the new Constitution. They specific quotes can be found most easily at http://www.madisonbrigade.com/p_henry.htm. Full coverage of Patrick Henry words at Virginia’s ratification debates can be found at https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/elliot-the-debates-in-the-several-state-conventions-vol-3

Readers of this blog know I long have argued that in the field of anti-terrorism the old adage that “dead men tell no tales” can be usefully revised as “dead terrorists kill no Americans.” Indeed, as I noted in the last piece I published, the willingness to act as President Trump did against Major General Soleimani is fully in line with the essence of an American First foreign policy. The attack was necessary, focused, and effective, and it was done – shocking as it is – in a unilateral manner. Trump used American skill and might to kill a killer of Americans, a man who would have kept killing Americans as long as he lived.

Since Trump’s action, the loyal citizenry has been treated to an in-depth look into the staunch anti-Americanism — perhaps treason is a better description —  of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. These people have argued that (a) Soleimani was not such a bad fellow, (b) that the president did not have the constitutional power to protect Americans against an imminent threat, and that (c) killing Soleimani may result in more Iranian attacks and so more dead Americans.

The first two of the foregoing points are simply stupid, unsupportable, constitutionally clueless, and deliberately deceitful. The third point merits only a simple response that asserts “no shit”.  The point to be made here is that Soleimani will never, ever, kill another American. Other Iranians or some of their proxies may, but old, saintly Soleimani – as a rotting chunk of dead and shredded meat – will never kill another American. He also will never commit an act that provides a future, war-mongering president the chance to lie the republic into a war with Iran.

This, I think, is the important point. An American First foreign policy means that Americans carry their own water, they act with their own strength to kill the nation’s enemies before those foes kill them, and they make hard decisions, act unilaterally, expect feckless criticism from their effeminate allies, and accept the reality that any human decision may lead to unfortunate and often predictable consequences that will be painful and have to addressed. But Americans also recognize the value of permanently erasing one lethal problem – in this case Soleimani – and moving ahead knowing that it can no longer harm them.

This line of argument regarding Soleimani, I think, is underscored sharply by Bill Clinton’s failure to kill Osama bin Laden when it would have made a substantial difference to U.S. security. As I have said in several pieces, Clinton and his political and military lieutenants had ten chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. Clinton also had the chance to kill him and wipe out al-Qaeda’s main infrastructure and many of its members in Kandahar Province after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole in Yemen in October, 2000. (NB: Incidentally, some of the 9/11 attackers were in training at camps in Kandahar at that time.)

Clinton and his fellow gutless political and military incompetents turned down every one of those chances, and blocked all CIA unilateral operations to do so. When the Special Forces killed Bin Laden in May, 2011, it was 12 years too late to make a decisive difference. Bin Laden’s aim, since the late 1980s, had been to create a self-perpetuating jihad, and at his death that aspiration was a reality. It still is.

That was, of course, only one of the disastrous and predictable repercussions flowing from Clinton’s failure to act, and almost certainly it was not the most disastrous one. The greatest disaster for Americans was the decision of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – supported by their lickspittle Colin Powell – to use the 9/11 attack and the still very much alive Osama bin Laden as justifications for a “war on terror”. That war was first headlined by the disastrous invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, then by the more catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq, and, through both wars, by the still raging attacks at home on the civil liberties of Americans.

Last I checked both wars are still on-going, and both are still producing dead and maimed Americans, as well as enormous financial waste. Both could have been avoided by Clinton killing or capturing bin Laden between 1998 and the end of 2000, and such an action also would have prevented the 9/11 attack as that operation only occurred because Bin Laden was alive, sanctioned it, and overruled his advisory council, most of whose senior members opposed the attack.

The splendid America First killing of Soleimani permits all Americans – including disloyal Democrats and lying journalists – to be sure he will not kill any more of their countrymen. They can also be sure that he and his actions can never give a future president the chance to lie his way into a war with Iran. Other Iranians may provide that opportunity to a war-mongering president – the most common variety of president until Trump – but Soleimani will not.

So, well done, Mr. Trump, and thank you. But now get off your ass and get those remaining 5,000-plus U.S. troops out of Iraq after they first utterly destroying every military installation we built there. Ditto for Afghanistan.

When President Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack and kill the Quds Force commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, near Baghdad airport, he demonstrated as graphically as possible what non-intervention means. Trump has yet to find the words to fully and easily explain the concept to the citizenry. He should read and rhetorically exploit the potent ideas located in the 1939-1941 speeches of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. (1) The components of non-intervention are presented there by Lindbergh perhaps better than by anyone else in republic’s history, save by the Founders in their era, and during the long congressional career of Virginia’s splendid non-interventionist John Randolph of Roanoke.

In 1919, U.S. Senators William E. Borah (R-Idaho) and Robert M. LaFollette (R-Wisconsin) successfully led a small bipartisan group of senators that preserved the republic by blocking U.S. ratification of and adherence to the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty. The senators thereby halted for most of the next two decades the continuation of the interventionist foreign policy born of Woodrow Wilson’s delusional crusade for democracy and world government.

But then along came the republic’s master deceiver, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, in the late 1930s and in 1940, casually reneged on his solemn and oft-given pledge to American parents: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” (2) Thereafter, FDR authored a long series of provocations that he and his advisers knew would leave Japan with no choice but war. This provocation campaign also was carried out in the Atlantic, where Roosevelt and his gang eventually wore out the Fueher’s willingness to ignore Roosevelt’s much-denied but always blatantly anti-German policy of diverting badly needed arms from the U.S. military, and ordering the neutral republic to arm the British military and protect Britain’s supply convoys. “Have you ever stopped to think,” Lindbergh intended to asked listeners to a speech set for delivery on 12 December 1941,” how ridiculous it is that this democratic nation has twice, within a generation, been carried to war by presidents who were elected because they promised peace.”(3) (NB: Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor caused Lindbergh to cancel the speech. He then began a war-long personal effort to aid the republic along the path to victory. He voluntarily served as a human guinea-pig to test and improve masks for the use of air-crews flying at high-altitudes, and, later in the war, flew 50 combat missions in the South Pacific.)

The U.S. bipartisan governing elite –under the direction of Roosevelt, his conniving, acid-tongued Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, and the foreign intervention they welcomed from Churchill and Britain’s intelligence services — slandered Lindbergh and ultimately ruined his reputation, thereby almost entirely blotting out the history of his pivotal political role in trying to preserve the American republic.

Why was Colonel Lindbergh the top target of these war-wanters, or, as he called them, the “war agitators”? Simply because he had the nerve and grit to tell the absolute truth as he and most Americans saw it; namely, that Roosevelt and most of the East Coast’s governing elite, Jewish-Americans and their media and political organizations, and the British government were pushing to involve the United States in a war that much of the U.S. citizenry wanted no part of. Lindbergh’s words were true in 1939-41, and they are more clearly true today.

Speaking of today, all three of the groups Lindbergh called out — and especially Jewish-Americans — are still “war agitators”, although the war they currently are waging is a covert and overt war that is meant to destroy the legitimately elected Trump administration, as well as the American republic and its Constitution.

Since the vicious and dastardly destruction of Lindbergh’s reputation, the U.S. governing elite, including presidents, generals, admirals, senators, congressmen, professors, clerics, mainstream journalists, major Jewish-American leaders and their organizations, and senior civil servants, has consistently hurled hatred at their fellow citizens, clothing it in such epithets as “isolationist” and/or “non-interventionist”. This hatred is aimed at any and every American citizen who (a) respects the Founders’ foreign-policy guidance; (b) accepts, as did the Founders, the truism that humans are unalterably hard-wired for war; (c) opposes the idea that the United States must participate in other peoples’ wars that have no impact on genuine U.S. interests; (d) dismisses the insane contention that America must join wars waged by other states in the name of spreading war-causing abstract ideas, such as democracy, women’s rights, the glories of sexual deviance and fluid genders, secularism, diversity, multiculturalism, etc.; and (e) believes that the republic’s security and survival is dependent on adhering as closely as possible to the concept embodied in the two words “America First”.

Trump’s marvelous, Americans-protecting attack on Suliemani is a perfect example of the role that military force always must play in a forthright non-interventionist foreign policy. Our republic can never be neutral and non-interventionist unless it is well-armed and the world knows American leaders are ready to unilaterally use it — with catastrophic impact — against anyone unwise enough to attack us.  Suliemani commanded forces that have killed or wounded many hundreds of Americans, and he was on his way from the Baghdad Airport to do more damage to Americans when he was wonderfully shredded and presumably splattered by a Hell-fire missile’s shrapnel.

Thus, President Trump ordered the unilateral application of U.S. military force in the only cause it should ever be applied; namely, when Americans or the republic’s interests are imminently threatened or attacked by foreign foes. If Iran responds militarily to Suliemani’s long overdue demise, Trump must drop any pretense of proportionality, which is a murderous, always war-prolonging-and-expanding doctrine that war-wanters, arms-makers, and prating clerics adore, and which has kept America at war with Iran since 1979, and in Afghanistan and Iraq for 18 and 16 years, respectively. The only mercies in war, after all, are a speedy conclusion and a clear and irrefutable victory.

An Iranian military attack, must prompt President Trump to unleash U.S. military power to destroy Iran’s oil-production facilities, or its navy, or its merchant fleet, or, better yet, all three. No U.S. troops on the ground, no occupation forces led by an imperial pro consul, no U.S. demands for changes in Iran’s government or its political and social systems, and no U.S.-taxpayer-funded reconstruction assistance. Simply let the Iranians lick their wounds, work out their post-catastrophe future, and reflect on the fact that, hereafter, it would be terribly unwise to again fuck with the Americans.(4)

It is important to add, that, in addition to perpetually accusing non-interventionists (American Firsters) of anti-Semitism and isolation, the internationalists, now globalists, hate non-elite Americans and routinely claim that non-interventionists are cowards, pacifists, and odorous rubes who are unable to understand that “the world has changed”. The truth, of course, is that none of this is true, but those who claim it to be fact command the political parties, the mainstream media, including FOX, the general officer corps (which always demands as many wars as possible), and innumerable Protestant and Catholic pulpits.

Thankfully, Trump’s action against Suliemani starts to expose the fact that the foregoing accusations are lies which have been, since at least 1939, ingrained in the minds of generations of Americans by the media and the schools. The truth is that there are endless numbers of non-interventionist Americans who will fight to the death to defend genuine U.S. national interests, resist tyranny in their own country, save endangered U.S. citizens, and annihilate attackers of the republic — precisely the forms of warfare that are undeniably intrinsic to the concept of America First and the Founders’ guidance.

There is never an adequate justification for the republic to enter other peoples’ wars; a region-wide Sunni-Shia war, for example, would be no skin off the republic’ nose. There also is never a justifiable role for the U.S. military in any foreign war fought for spreading democracy, for any other abstraction, or for the favorite foreign nation of any American clique of politicians, clerics, or citizens.

For now, let us pray that the Iraqi parliament responds to the killing of Suliemani by ordering the United States military to leave Iraq, thereby ending the governing elite’s worst post-1945 foreign policy decision. Now that would be one tremendous victory for the republic-protecting doctrine of non-intervention.

Endnotes:

–1.) Colonel Lindbergh’s America First speeches can be found at the fine website, http://www.charleslindbergh.com/

–2.) Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Speech at Boston, 30 October 1940.” See, Public Papers of Franklin Roosevelt, Vol. 9, p. 261

–3.) Charles A. Lindbergh, “What Do We Mean by Democracy and Freedom?,” (Undelivered Speech intended for an America First rally at Boston on 12 December 1941). See, http://www.charleslindbergh.com/pdf/dec121941.pdf

–4.) This idea was broached this weekend by the polymath Michael Lebron (AKA: Lionel) on his YouTube channel. His idea is to make a hashtag go viral that consists of the letters DWFU, meaning “Don’t Fuck With Us”. See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35pKwDCQenA

I am not an admirer of the democratic system as it has has evolved in the United States since the Founding. I am especially opposed to the kind of democratic system that has grown since the start of Lyndon Johnson’s bankrupting and citizenry-enslaving Great Society. As the Founders would have thought, I believe that the current nature of democracy in America is the generator of anarchy, which, in turn, inevitably solidifies the rule of the aspiring tyrants – in this case, the Democratic leaders, the legacy media, and the Media Titans — who are using democracy to produce anarchy and turn the anarchy into a durable and brutal tyranny

The Founders’ likely, and my own absolute opposition to today’s kind of democracy has been verified, for all who care to see and understand, in the denial of civil liberties, due process, and equality before the law to the president of the United States. The importance of the tyrants’ deliberate and destructive rape of the Constitution and the rule of law is a minor annoyance to President Trump, but it is an explicit augury of what the Democratic Party intends to do to any American citizen who objects – or resists – the tyranny they are seeking impose if they achieve national power.

As we slide along into 2020 on the oozing scum relentlessly being spread by the mere existence of the Democrat Party, the Trump Administration is faced with monumental tasks that may well require a declaration of martial law. These include the nation-wide restoration of responsible republican government; the destruction of all state governments that have acted, or threatened to act, unconstitutionally in such areas of immigration; election manipulation; non-citizen voting; blackmailing the federal judiciary and members of Congress; supporting pedophilia and those who practice it; and slowly strangling the  2^nd Amendments.

Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution may be the most comprehensively powerful –and strangely neglected – statement of legitimate national government authority. Section 4 simply and clearly states:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

This comprehensive power was placed in the hands of the national government by the Founders and the Constitution, I believe, as a power of absolute last resort, as the nation’s making of war must always be. Section 4 should have been triggered a decade or more ago as the requirements of both of its clauses have been fulfilled. There is no genuine republican government in a number of states – the governments there, in fact, are actively eradicating republicanism and conducting an insurrection – and so each can accurately be described as having been invaded by lethal enemies of republicanism, and so neither the executive or legislature in those states will request the aid of the national government to restore republicanism. The Constitution’s guarantee of republicanism in every state, therefore, can only be secured by destroying those state governments and their insurrection via the unilateral intervention of the national government. Five steps by the national government suggest themselves.

–1.) The republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution must be forcibly restored in – at least – California, New York, Virginia, and Minnesota. The governors and their cabinets in those states must be arrested not only for failing to maintain republican government, but for trying to destroy it in their states. The mayors, and department heads of such cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Oakland, Minneapolis, Richmond, Portland, and San Francisco also must be arrested for the same reason. They should be replaced by trustworthy military officers and troops with the experience in police-like duties and the task of restoring safe and reliable public order and infrastructure operation, talents they gathered in overseas operations. In America, they will have the support and cooperation of most of the well-armed citizenry, unlike in their operations overseas.

–2.) The illegal aliens living in these states and cities must be identified and deported with dispatch – along with their criminality, violence, disease, and illiteracy — by whatever means of transportation come to hand. These people, and all with them, are self-made criminals simply because they crossed America’s northern and southern borders without being authorized to do so by the national government. These self-made criminals are of no legal or humanitarian concern to the United States once they are identified for deportation and, in one way or another, must be pushed across the northern and southern borders into Canada or Mexico.

–3.) Every local police chief and every chief of state police forces in the country must be assessed. If any of them are found to have a record of helping the Democrats to plan and execute mass shootings or refusing to protect the citizenry from the Democratic Party’s terrorist groups – ANTIFA, BLM, MS-13, and BAM – he or she, and the top lieutenants of each, must be arrested for promoting terrorism and immediately incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. In addition, all members of the named terrorist organizations must be arrested on terrorism charges and incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. The National Guard’s commanders and his/her staff in each state must be likewise assessed. If they have supported – physically or vocally—unconstitutional activity, they should join those police officials and American-citizen terrorists bound for long stays in sunny Cuba.

–4.) All public and private colleges and universities in the United States must be defunded by the national government for a period of at least five years or until a federal court in each college or university’s vicinity evaluates and confirms that all aspects of the Constitution’s 1^st Amendment have been fully restored, protected, and promoted on each campus. Thereafter, and for at least ten consecutive years, each college and university must be annually certified by the court as having fully maintained, protected, and promoted all liberties cited and guaranteed in the 1^st Amendment.

–5.) All members of the governing elite — including elected officials and federal civil servants — who have sought and received monetary, propaganda, media, or political support from the regimes or citizens of China, Ukraine, Russia, Britain, Italy, Germany, Israel, or other foreign nations to defeat presidential-Trump candidate or the legitimately elected Trump Administration must be arrested, transported to Guantanamo Bay, turned over to military tribunals for trial, and immediately executed if found guilty.

The recommendations above may, and perhaps should, strike readers as extreme. They strike me that way. Still, is there anything more extreme than 38 consecutive months of the Democratic Party, the Media Titans, and the assorted crazed and criminal members of the Democratic congressional contingent deliberately robbing the republic of more than three years of its life. These miscreants have worked to destroy social cohesion and censor free speech; prevented the greater growth of the economy; blocked the complete elimination of the inflow of illegal aliens; stopped additional reductions in the unemployment and poverty rates; obstructed the termination of the Democrats’ and establishment-Republicans’ unnecessary and unconstitutional wars and their sending of many tens of billions of dollars in aid for foreigners, while Americans at home are malnourished and their infrastructure is left unbuilt; and prevented additional tax cuts for all Americans. Worse, they and their foreign allies have, since 2016, worked with great determination to overthrow the entire republican system of government in the United States. Is there a punishment too severe for this anti-American behavior? I think there is not, no matter how bloody.

Several hundred years ago, a distinguished Jesuit priest named Balthasar Grecian – a strong, honest, and learned man, unlike today’s effeminate, pro-depravity, anti-America Jesuits and their Clown-Socialist-Pope – wrote a book of maxims about how life should be lived, one of which is particularly pertinent to the situation that the pro-Constitution American citizenry faces today. “A happy finish makes everything shine,” Fr. Grecian advised, “no matter how unfitting the means may have been. Which explains why at times it should be a rule to offend the rules when it is not possible by other means to attain a happy ending.” (2)

Enough is enough. The U.S. Constitution clearly prescribes the proper rules for ending America’s current insurrection. Given that fact, the Trump administration is obligated by the Constitution to use effective force to end the insurrection and restore republican government nationwide. If the loyal parts of the U.S. military need help in accomplishing these ends, there is an enormous the pool of former and combat-experienced soldiers and Marines to draw from, and an even larger body of private and well-armed male and female citizens who are willing to join militia units.

–Endnotes:

–1.) Artilce Section 4, Section 4, https://constitutionus.com/

–2.) Balthasar Grecian. The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Maxim No. 66

The tyrants above; all elected Democrats at every level of government; all members of the Democrat Party; and all of the supporters of the foregoing are precisely why the Founders left Americans the 2nd Amendment, and decreed that it was never to be abridged.

Thus, the recent performance of these tyrants — seeking to negate the votes of  63 million citizens — underlines the vital importance of the 2nd Amendment and the right and duty of the citizenry to eliminate tyrants by force if no other resolution can be attained. The determination of when only that final option remains, belongs exclusively to the citizenry.

“The only real security of liberty in any country, is the jealousy [suspicion of rulers] and circumspection of the people themselves. Let them be watchful over their rulers. Should they find a combination against their liberties, and all other methods appear insufficient to preserve them, they have, thank God, an ultimate remedy. The power which created the government, can destroy it.”

–James Iredell, “Speech to the North Carolina Ratifying Convention,” 28 July 1788 (2)

–Endnotes:

–1.)  Photo from: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/19/democrats-decline-to-view-less-redacted-mueller-report/#

–2.) Bernard Bailyn (ed.). The Debate on the Constitution, Part 2, New York: The Library of America, 1993, p. 887

I highly recommend to readers of this site the following article: Barbara Bolland’s excellent, “5 Infuriating Takeaways from the ‘Afghanistan Papers’,” American Conservative, 10 December 2019. (1) Ms. Bolland’s incisive article recounts the deliberate waste of U.S. human and financial assets in Afghanistan, as well as the wholesale lies that were, for 18-plus years, used to mislead Americans by presidents, media pundits, senators and congressmen, and, most especially, consistently, and vigorously by multiple Chairmen of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and many other U.S. general officers. (NB: I suspect that Iraq has been as bad, but that shoe has yet to drop.)

While I have often discussed America’s Afghan War on this blog, I cannot add much to Ms. Boland’s article, which clearly presents evidence from just-released documents and focuses on the years after the war began on 7 October 2001. I can, however, add a bit about what happened in the short span of weeks between 9/11 and the war’s October start. (NB: I worked on Afghanistan at CIA — from several different directions — from December, 1985, to November, 2004.)

The following points underscore, I think, how lightly the most senior levels of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took the Agency’s responsibility to provide the best possible support to the U.S. government’s Afghan war effort. I tend to believe that this fact was, in major part, the result of senior CIA officials knowing that the Bush Administration’s main goal in the Afghan War was to use it to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as to use it as the driver for a vast expansion of the police/surveillance state in the United States, which is still growing. (NB: On Iraq, for example, I recall that Agency leaders began shifting Arabic-speakers from the Bin Laden unit and other CTC components by late-2001/early-2002, and sending them to aid preparatory efforts underway for the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq.) Following is the story of these five weeks as I remember it. I was recalled to the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center in the early evening of 11 September 2001.

–1.) On 9/11, the CIA was flush with officers who had prolonged experience working on Afghanistan and the varities of war as they are conducted therein. A substantial number of these individuals – from lower GS grades to the most experienced Senior Intelligence Officers — had worked on Afghanistan for the entire length of the Afghan-Soviet War, 1979-1989, stayed on from 1989-to-1992 to assist in the final destruction of the still Soviet-armed and supported Afghan Communist regime, and then continued working on the country’s involvement in terrorism, insurgency, and heroin-trafficking to the day of the 9/11 attacks.

Now, 14-years of experience working on one facet of a private-sector institution’s business might not seem unusual – men and women spend thirty-or-more years making steel or automobiles, others preside over logistics or financial operations for the same period – but at CIA, and in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) generally, such expertise is thought unnecessary and as a sure sign of an officer’s lack of career ambition. Some intelligence officers are permitted to specialize on particular issues for prolonged periods, but only at the personal cost of few and widely separated promotions. An officer’s decision to specialize is always made with knowledge that it will limit his-or-her chances for promotion.

–2.) Before the fires of 9/11 were damped and bureaucratic priorities took control of CIA decision-making, a team of several of the smartest, bravest, and most experienced CIA Afghan hands were deployed to Afghanistan. There they prepared the ground for U.S. relations with the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, secured airfields and other areas for the use of U.S. Special Forces, gathered intelligence about al-Qaeda and Taleban activities, and made sure the coffee was hot when Afghanistan-ignorant U.S. general officers swaggered into the country.

These CIA officers did a magnificent and courageous job, one whose success shone even brighter after it was learned that Pentagon had no off-the-shelf plan for war in Afghanistan – not much of a surprise, as it already had refused to assist in killing/capturing bin Laden – and had no interest in exploiting the detailed plans formulated by the CIA and other IC components for destroying Afghanistan’s poppy fields and the organizations that facilitated the export of heroin to Europe, Turkey, Russia, the United States, and elsewhere.

–3.) By a week or so after 9/11, CIA’s senior bureaucrats substantially reduced the quality of Agency support not only for the U.S. military, but also for the Agency officers on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere in South Asia. (NB: The exceptions to this statement are the superb support for Afghan operations from the Counterterrorism Center’s Bin Laden unit — which of course gave President Clinton 10 chances to kill or capture bin Laden in 1997-1999, and thereby 10 chances to prevent 9/11 — and CIA’s always excellent and daring paramilitary operators.)

Four senior CIA officers are primarily and directly responsible for the self-inflicted wound of refusing to exploit CIA’s substantial stock of Afghan operational experience to support the Afghan war effort: Cofer Black, Henry Crumpton, James Pavitt, and George Tenet.

–4.) The gist of this travesty is that the four men responsible for providing CIA’s best effort, instead used the just-started war to test out their belief that it took no special talent or experience to understand Afghanistan and defeat Islamist terrorists and insurgents. They championed the delusion that any Afghanistan-ignorant Directorate of Operations (DO) officer could be plugged into waging the new Afghan war and do as well or better than those CIA officers who were already armed with a decade or more first-hand Afghan experience in assisting the mujahidin to defeat the Soviet superpower and/or searching for bin Laden.

James Pavitt, in particular, is at fault on this issue. He appeared to strongly dislike the Counterterrorism Center; had no significant experience in the Islamic world or its wars; and abhorred approving covert operations meant to protect Americans if there was chance they might fail and thereby further undermine his very thin credentials for serving in a senior-most CIA leadership position. Pavitt did, however, have what counted most; namely, DCI George Tenet’s willingness to coddle him and ignore examples of his human frailties.

–5.) Two of the other men mentioned above — Cofer Black (Chief/CTC) and Henry Crumpton — had spent almost all of their pre-CTC careers working issues that had nothing to do with Afghanistan or South Asia. Working on intelligence issues in other areas of the world, of course, is nowhere close to an easy thing. It is a very dangerous world, and both men were reputed to have done excellently in the region in which they were stationed. But each – whether for self-aggrandizement or their sharing of Pavitt’s view that the Afghan war, Islamist insurgency, or Islamist terrorist experience was nothing special and any DO officer without it could do the job – proceeded to form an Afghan Task Force (ATF) led by Crumpton. With Black’s okay, Crumpton filled it with officers who had spent much of their careers working on Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Again, I must add that each of these regions present a wealth of intricate and dangerous problems for the Agency officers working there, and each problem requires experience, talent, and bravery to solve successfully.

That said, in supporting an unanticipated and emergency U.S. military invasion/occupation of a country where U.S. military forces had never operated, it beggars commonsense not to have exploited the abundance of Afghan-experienced CIA officers. If your goal was – as it should have been – to have CIA do its utmost to support U.S. forces, and the victory that U.S. generals should have but never did seek, then it was absolutely necessary to bring to bear CIA’s best brainpower and country-savvy. This was never done by the CIA while it was headed by George Tenet. This struck me as odd. Tenet had been the staff director of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Agency (SSCI) during much of the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. Throughout those years, Tenet was regularly briefed in detail on precisely how the mujahedin were gradually defeating the Soviet superpower. Ironically, Tenet, after 9/11, presided over an effort that allowed the mujahidin to defeat a second superpower in exactly the same way in which Tenet knew they had defeated the first.  (NB: How do I know this? I delivered or participated in several dozen of these briefings.)

–6.) The new, post-9/11 Afghan Task Force (ATF) – not be confused with the first ATF, which successfully helped the Afghans defeat the Soviets — also operated in a way that made it apparent that its main task was to prove Pavitt’s belief that “anyone can do this Afghan/terrorist stuff”, and not to bring pertinent Agency experience to bear and thereby optimize the Agency’s contribution to the war effort. Set up in a secure-access vault, the ATF’s chief — Crumpton — decreed that each officer working in the vault had to have an extra marking on his/her badge before being permitted to enter. In essence, this chucklehead ensured that his able but Afghan-ignorant officers were all but sealed-off from the wealth of pertinent and recent experience that stood just outside the door of their now-sacred vault.  More than a few times, the Army and Marine field-grade officers who visited the ATF for pre-deployment briefings left the vault and immediately sought out Afghan-experienced CIA officers they knew – at the time, many were working on al-Qaeda and other Sunni fighters in CTC, and had been for 5 to 10 years – to get the real skinny on what they would face in the unique world inside Afghanistan.

In the next few years — my first-hand experience ends in mid-November, 20o4 — many CIA officers were amazed to find that virtually no field- grade officers had been prepared by their superiors for the new Afghan war by being directed to read and study the Red Army’s Afghan after-action report — written by that army’s General Staff — about the causes of the USSR’s disastrous defeat in the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-1992. (2)

Almost none of military officers being briefed – and I suspect more than a few ATF members – seemed to be aware of this surprisingly frank study that detailed Soviet military, political, and intelligence failures during Moscow’s Afghan war. One of these failures was not having studied how illiterate, technology-poor, and ill-armed Afghans had been able, almost without exception, to defeat the far better armed and much more technically advanced armies that had invaded Afghanistan on multiple occasions since the time of Alexander the Great.

The Soviet generals also noted that they failed to understand the importance of the Islamic faith to the Afghans’ conduct of war. This failure was especially prominent in the areas of the mujahidin coping well with high casualties, especially family members; attaching minimal importance to defeat in individual engagements with the Soviets because defeat meant only that they had not yet earned the victory only Allah could deliver; demonstrating extreme patience, born of faith, that Allah eventually would award victory to His faithful; and the minimal war-weariness and morale-decline among the mujahidin due to the foregoing realities of their faith.

CIA’s Afghan hands not only read the Soviet generals’ book, but had first-hand experience in working with and supporting the Afghans whom the Red Army generals described as their conquerors. U.S. general officers had no idea of how to defeat the mujahedin, but CIA officers could easily have instructed the clueless American and NATO generals on how those haphazardly armed Islamist insurgents defeated a Soviet army loaded with superior technology and weaponry, and how they surely would be defeated by them. None of this was allowed to be shared with U.S. soldiers and Marines — unless they searched out the veteran Afghan CIA officers — going off to fight the Afghan enemy in a war that is now more than 18-years old.

In the end, there are three iron-clad lessons that CIA’s Afghan hands would have shared with the U.S. military had they had the opportunity.

–First, take to heart the lessons of a superpower’s defeat by Afghans that were graciously detailed by Red Army generals, and do not repeat them.

–Second, there will never be Western-style democracy, secularism, civil liberties, women’s rights, meaningful elections, or rule of law in Afghanistan; in other words, Westernization and secularism can never be imposed on Afghanistan. There was no sign in 2001 that more than a distinct minority of Afghans — many of them expatriates — would accept such an imposition. Even fewer would accept it in 2019, because the power of Islamism is now far stronger in Afghanistan and because the Afghan insurgents believe they have won.

–Three, because remaking Afghans into secular, libertine, and democracy-addled Westerners cannot be done by a war of any length, there is no use hanging around for more than the 18-24 months needed to conduct a savage, country-wide, and punitive campaign of human and material desolation, and then get out of the country. That course of action would have made the Afghans think twice about again messing with the U.S. military, a thought process that would have been accelerated, deepened, and lengthened once there were no more U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

Just before the October, 2001, opening of the Afghan war, the renowned, at times brilliant, British military historian John Keegan offered U.S. leaders the same first-rate advice (3) that would have been offered by CIA’s Afghan hands had they been allowed to participate in supporting the war. Keegan explained that,

The pattern to Afghanistan’s foreign and domestic wars seems to go as follows. Foreign interventions aimed at dominance founder on the belligerence of the population, who abandon internecine conflict to combine against invaders, and [up]on the country’s severe terrain. In the absence of foreign interference, however, Afghans fall easily into fighting each other, often seeking outside help, which provokes intervention, thus restarting the cycle. Limited campaigns of penetration, aimed simply at inflicting punishment, can succeed, as long as the punitive forces remain mobile, keep control of the high ground and are skillful at tactical disengagement. … Is this analysis any help to the Americans? It certainly warns against any plan to station large ground forces inside the country….

Then Keegan got down to nuts and bolts. “As America may, and should, plan to mount only punitive attacks,” Keegan wrote, “they should do so from outside Afghanistan, adding that central Asia promises to be the best basing area available.” Keegan closed his on-point advice for the Bush Administration by confiding that the most important lesson the British military had learned from more than a century of mostly failed invasions of Afghanistan from India was to have no ambition of conducting a long occupation or of reforming the people and their governing practices. “What the product of punitive attacks might be defies prediction,” Keegan wrote,

As one of President Bush’s closest advisers is reported to have asked recently: “What can we do to Afghanistan that Afghanistan hasn’t already done to itself?” Always poor and backward, it has been reduced by civil and foreign war to a wasteland. The best that can be hoped of military action is to regenerate division between its many tribes and factions, which may yield terrorist hostages to American wrath, and to frighten the Taliban leaders. … Afghans, though doughty warriors, are also pragmatists. They like fighting but are prepared to live to fight another day if the odds are stacked against them. The trick America must achieve is to stack the odds in its favour.

Obviously, neither Bush, his advisers, or his generals, nor – astoundingly, the British cabinet and generals – gave a hoot for Keegan’s defeat-avoiding advice and so will end with a much more humiliating and total defeat than did the Red Army. That reality is bad enough, but the fact that CIA officers – and, ironically, Red Army generals — could have provided as good advice as Keegan, but based on much more recent and detailed evidence and first-hand experience, speaks to the unrelenting danger that cowardly, self-aggrandizing, and grossly ignorant senior bureaucrats consistently pose to U.S. national security.

Endnotes:

–1.) Barbara Boland, “5 Infuriating Takeaways from the ‘Afghanistan Papers’,” American Conservative, 10 December 2019,  at https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/5-infuriating-findings-in-the-afghanistan-papers/

–2.) Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress, (Eds.). The Soviet-Afghan War How a Superpower Fought and Lost. Manhattan, KS: Kansas University Press, [21 January] 2002

–3.) John Keegan, “If America decides to take on the Afghans, this is how to do it,” 20 September 2001, at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4265748/If-America-decides-to-take-on-the-Afghans-this-is-how-to-do-it.html