Please do yourself a favor and check out Col Andy’s post on this dreadful day of remembrance. Please copy and past in your browser, but first gather a box of Kleenex.
https://acoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/2018/09/911-17-years-ago-today.html
Originally posted 2018-09-11 17:55:15.
Another thought-provoking message from Greg. We have so much to think about this 4th of July, but in today’s society I fear that many folks will think of nothing but hamburgers, hot dogs, pop, beer, and a day off from work, that is for those who are working and not taking government handouts. Meanwhile the “silent majority” sleeps.
By: G. Maresca
As America plans to celebrate the nation’s birth by taking inventory of the hotdogs, hamburgers, soda and beer, the most treasured and esteemed American stock lies forsaken along freedom’s continuum.
In his seminal work, “Crisis and Leviathan,” economic historian Robert Higgs argued how in the 20th century the federal government grew as a result of three crises: World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. In the 21st century, you can add 9/11 and COVID-19 to the list. During those crises, the federal government went about raising taxes, instituted more spending programs, and added to their arsenal more regulatory power.
With the heady combination of 9/11 and COVID, the government continues to fester as America devolves into Gotham City. I was reminded of this during a recent trip to the airport. I was not flying, just dropping off, and still had to remove my shoes, empty my pockets, and go through a full body scan in order to escort my daughter to her departing gate.
What Benjamin Franklin, our first self-made American, said over two centuries ago certainly resonated: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As we traversed the terminal there was a sketching of the top ten skyscrapers in the world. The U.S. has only one on the list at number six – the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan – that was supposed to fill the void left when the World Trade Center met its untimely fate on 9/11. A generation ago, America had all ten.
Besides the overwrought airport security courtesy of The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), I couldn’t help but wonder what other things have been compromised all in the name of security in a time of heightened emotions “where something must be done.”
Never underestimate governmental mission creep.
Enter the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, TSA and an emboldened National Security Agency and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts that illegally spies on more than three million Americans, and this is according to that leftist fortress, The New York Times. Not to be dismissed was America taking on the costly role of being the unwanted landlords of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Government’s resulting muscle has grown too penetrating and too concentrated. Many throughout the federal bureaucracy are overly determined to inject this power into all aspects of American life. Proposals for more legislation, regulations, and interventions is akin to treating a poisoned patient with more poison.
Solving problems caused by too much government with more government is no answer.
Evidence of this can be found in the latest Gallup poll where only 19% said they trusted the government “most of the time.” Juxtapose that to the same 1958 poll where nearly 75% said they trusted the government to do the right thing “most of the time.”
Government has devolved into a centralized religion telling houses of worship to close, while giving abortion clinics the green light to remain open during a pandemic. Government bureaucrats sell voting and vaccines as salvation while indoctrinating America’s children through public education.
The government has banned God in the classroom, the locker room, the public square, public buildings, and ignores His teachings when writing its laws. Observing constitutional limits that does not provide for a “right” to abort an unborn child is depicted as violating “women’s rights” when the left cannot or will not define what a “woman” is.
The country is on a suicidal path culturally and taking our freedom along for the ride. The Founding Father that would not be surprised: Franklin.
On September 17, 1787, as the delegates departed the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Franklin was asked what kind of government the convention had created. Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin also remarked how “freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
Freedoms ceded to government are rarely regained.
On the cusp of celebrating America’s independence, the nation is fighting a cold war with itself that has most Americans wishing for a sense of normalcy, but at what price?
Tomorrow is a day that as Churchill stated many more years ago, “A day that live in infamy.’ For those who who were alive and coherent enough to remember that day, it was the most tragic incident of my lifetime. I was a mere year old when Pearl Harbour happened; therefore, this one is significant for me. I know, as I am sure you do as well, exactly where I was and what I was doing when it happened. I was mending fences on my ranch in Montana when my wife came streaming looking for me May we never forget that day and WHO it was that caused it.
Here’s another good one from my frequent contributor and friend Greg Maresca, a noted historian who only write facts!
By Greg Maresca
It was theatrical in its design and a Shakespearean tragedy in its unfolding. As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approached, President Biden desperately desired a historical and symbolic end to the nation’s longest war.
Biden’s vision turned out to be nothing short of a ‘70s era U.S. military and intelligence debacle taken to an unprecedented scale paid for in American blood, fortitude and treasure.
Where are the resignations of all the generals and admirals who argued against capitulation?
Robert Gates, the respected former secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote in his memoir that Biden had been wrong on “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Some things never change.
Biden’s foreign policy rewards our enemies and punishes our allies.
It was in June as the Taliban began their march to Kabul that all U.S. embassies throughout the world celebrated sodomy via “Gay Pride Month,” as part of the Biden’s Administration’s foreign policy.
American exceptionalism was replaced with American perversion.
As Great Britain’s Neville Chamberlain is remembered for appeasement in the Nazi takeover of Sudetenland, Biden will be remembered for leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, while abandoning thousands of America’s allies and rebooting Islamist fundamentalists the world over.
Allowing the Taliban to dictate the terms of withdrawal was reprehensible and irresponsible. As such, it raised the threat of terrorism to levels it had not witnessed in years.
Biden is a shoo-in for the Nobel Appeasement Prize for his military retreat – Dumbkirk.
Biden bequeathed the Taliban a reported $85 billion in military hardware that will allow them to wage war and terror for years. Moreover, Bagram Air Base is now China’s de facto world class central Asian integrated air headquarters courtesy of the American taxpayer. Likewise, Afghanistan is rich in rare earth minerals that China will certainly exploit and profit from.
Biden’s surrender plays daily throughout our fruited plain. Portland, Oregon is lawless permitting Antifa, and the Proud Boys to wage battle without consequences. In Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco homeless bivouacs and unbridled crime have turned these cities into dystopian, democrat nightmares. In Chicago, gang warfare runs rampant with shootings far worse than what our military experienced in Afghanistan especially over the last 18 months going without casualties.
What Biden has succeeded in doing is uniting nearly two-thirds of Americans — all of whom believe his flight from Afghanistan was a colossal disaster. It is the one-third who believe Biden is actually doing a good job that is most concerning.
In a successful military and intelligence campaign in Afghanistan, we had 2,500 troops with a strategic presence in central Asia’s foremost terrorist breeding grounds. Continued funding certainly could have been found in the series of COVID relief packages passed by Congress, of which less than half went to anything remotely COVID.
For over 70 years, we have maintained thousands of troops in South Korea, and since the end of World War II we have had troops in Japan and Germany. Maintaining a contingent of troops in Afghanistan that have been successful in deterring terrorism at home you think would be a given.
The Russians, Chinese, Iranians and the North Koreans will certainly test our defenses especially in cyberspace.
Come 9/11 our enemies will be dancing in the streets as our southern border is wide open and we are lectured about how vaccinations, global warming, and systemic racism are the most pressing problems facing the nation.
Perhaps Biden should send an army of social workers and psychologists into Afghanistan who could reason with the Taliban and show them the errors of their ways. Instructing them how they were wrongfully utilizing microaggression, ignorant of Facebook’s 58 genders, and the wonders and marvels of applied critical race theory.
Such a pathetic ending in Afghanistan was most unworthy of this 20-year epic struggle.
It was not a departure but an abandonment.
Could there have been any less planning and foresight?
Whatever possessed Biden to believe that the 20th anniversary of 9/11 was the right time for such a pullout?
The ensuing chaos at Kabul’s airport with people falling to their deaths from American Air Force planes is seared into the Biden legacy.
Postscript: This will be my last post for a little over a week. My bride and I will depart on the 11th, Saturday, on a LONG overdue Honeymoon (35 years). We never had one as I was in the middle of SOC workups , then deployed for six months. She understood completely as all Marine wives do. So we are going to some faraway place and hideout for a week. No, I won’t tell you until we return. No phones, no internet, and no TV. Swim, snorkel, scuba dive, sail board, relax, refresh, drink umbrella drinks under a canopy on the beach, and have a specially prepared dinner for us on our day — 13 September — on the beach under the same personal umbrella.
I wish you all the best, stay safe, keep up the pressure on you know who and all the holders of his many puppet strings. I hope he hasn’t destroyed America so we have a place to which to return. Semper Fi; Jim and my bride of thirty-five years.
