What happens when you learn nothing from history.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center specializing in investigative reporting on the Left and Islamic terrorism.
In 2001, the Taliban blew up the giant Buddha statues. Now they’re charging tourists five bucks each to go see the statues that aren’t there. Considering the Islamic knack for destroying statues, tombs, historic buildings, and anything that isn’t a mosque, tourism can be tough.
Fortunately the Taliban have the opium business to fall back on.
While officially the Taliban deplore drugs, their takeover was partly backed by the country’s drug lords who were eager for an end to America’s war on drugs. Planting season has arrived and everyone is expecting a lot of drug money to start flowing into the Taliban’s terrorist coffers.
The Taliban response to international complaints has been the familiar drug shakedown.
“If the international community recognizes our government and we receive aid and development assistance, then poppies will definitely disappear,” a Taliban governor told the media.
Former U.S. administrations had offered aid in exchange for suspending the drug business. And while Afghanistan’s only real cash crop didn’t go away, the Jihadist bosses of the opium OPEC were willing to occasionally reduce production in exchange for cash from Uncle Sam.
The Biden administration is directing over a hundred million in aid to Afghanistan, but what the Taliban really want is the $9 billion in money from the former government they had overthrown.
That includes the $1.3 billion in gold sitting in Manhattan vaults near Ground Zero.
The Taliban would like that gold, but so would the families of the victims killed by the Taliban’s Al Qaeda allies on September 11.
The 9/11 families had sued the Taliban and won $7 billion in damages. But back then the Taliban didn’t have money just sitting around in downtown Manhattan.
That’s no longer the case.
Biden’s problem is the familiar one facing the Obama administration over judgements won by terror victims against Iran and the PLO. How do you funnel money to the terrorists without letting their victims get hold of it? The answer is that you pay secret ransoms or send “humanitarian aid”. Withholding money from terror victims to pay terror bosses looks tacky, so just turn the money into ransom for American hostages or medicine for crying local children.
And so despite the fact that the Taliban negotiate with all faiths other than their own in bad faith, the Biden administration is still negotiating with the terrorists who broke every previous deal.
A week after Thanksgiving, some of Biden’s boys from the State Department, USAID, the Treasury Department, and assorted spooks, flew off to talk turkey with the Taliban in Qatar.
The assortment of departments and agencies in the delegation to the terrorists was an interesting one. The State Department’s diplomats love to appease terrorists, USAID is there to dole out “humanitarian aid”, the spooks are there to ask the terrorists for info on the other terrorists, and the Treasury Department is there to discuss economic sanctions.
And how to bypass them.
All it takes is certifying that the Taliban are nice folks now and it’s time to work with them on feeding and clothing the Afghan people, not to mention educating the girls of Afghanistan.
A week after the Taliban banned women from television, Biden’s State Department spokesman Ned Price released a statement praising the Taliban’s “openness to engaging with the international community on full access to education”.
Price further claimed that the Islamic terrorist group which closed most schools to girls had actually “welcomed efforts to verify and monitor progress to enroll women and girls in school at all levels.”
The Taliban, apparently, also “asked for support in the education sector.”
Preferably in the form of cash, heroin, or Black Hawk helicopter parts.
According to the Taliban, 75% of girls are back in school. And if you believe that, you probably work for the State Department.
The Taliban’s newfound feminism is as suspect as that of Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Joe Biden, but they want money and Joe Biden wants to give it to them.
The levers for extracting that cash are a combination of blackmail and victimhood.
The Taliban will cash in on opium while the people starve. And then ask for money in exchange for shutting down the drug trade and then getting the people something to eat. The remaining Americans and Afghan visa recipients are also hostages who can be traded for more dollars.
That’s another reason why so very few of the visa recipients ever made it to the airport. And why the majority of those who did had no visas and no vetting, but probably did pay off the Taliban.
The Taliban can only make so much money from charging tourists to see the missing Buddhas.
The last year should have been a comprehensive education in why the Taliban can’t be trusted. After agreeing not to conquer Afghanistan, they went ahead and did it anyway. While they were doing that, the Biden administration, which is almost as trustworthy as the Taliban, assured the media, which is almost as trustworthy as the Biden administration, that everything was fine.
Now everything is fine again.
When the Taliban aren’t beheading members of female sports teams, they’re showing a great deal of “openness” to “engaging with the international community” on their feminism.
They’ll even field a fully progressive approved all-female sports team of men in burkas.
The Biden administration promised to leave Afghanistan, but the United States never leaves anywhere. Aside from taking in tens of thousands of Afghans into our country, we’re still on the hook for feeding, clothing, and educating the Afghans in Talibanland, not to mention Pakistan.
Even once the Taliban get their billions and their UN seat, we’ll still be sending them aid.
In December 2000, the State Department boasted that it had sent $113 million in “humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people”. It further bragged that the “United States is the largest single donor of assistance to Afghans, and has a long record of providing such assistance.”
All the while it acknowledged that the Taliban were mischievously harboring Osama bin Laden.
That money stolen from American taxpayers covered “food, housing, health and education programs” for the Afghans. And the State Department shamefully bragged that “of every ten dollars” in aid, “nine dollars is a United States contribution.”
Next year the Taliban contributed four airplanes directed at killing thousands of Americans.
Having learned nothing in twenty years, the Biden administration and its career diplomats expect Americans to continue funding a Taliban welfare state.
This time the Taliban really believe in feminism, they insist. This time they’re really committed to fighting terrorism. And this time they surely won’t host another terrorist attack on America.
As long as we pay them enough.
mortimer says
It’s easy to praise something you don’t understand … and very stupid.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, I don’t think that even the Biden administration is so dense that they fail to understand that banning women from university and forcing girls to marry does not indicate a committment to women’s rights.
They either hope the Tabliban will get better if they pretend, or they are just lying outright.
raja says
Gravenimage,
Yes, hoping that the Taliban will be “encouraged” to get better seems to be the strategy. This will fail anyhow, as terrorists and bullies can never be appeased. The more you give in the more is the clamor, which we are all too familiar.
Biden admin is doing a very lousy work by these kinds of “praises”. But what to do, can you expect anything better from this kind of career politician?
PRCS says
Remember: Joe attempted to correct Ayan Hirsi on “one or two things about Islam”.
He’s dense, and his ignorance of Islam is, I suspect, not being challenged by staff members who are likely as ignorant about Islamic law as he is.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3236200/posts
John says
Lying in Islam is an old tradition. There are even special terms, one of which is TAQIYYA. It is perfectlt acceptable for a Muslim to lie to a kaffar (non Muslim)! If you do not understand see http://www.politicalislam.com
gravenimage says
Good replies, Raja, PRCS, and John.
The Taliban is cynically mouthing things like a committment to women’s rights (where it does not contradict Islam, of course, wink, wink) and saying things like women are only being banned from university until “security is improved” and similar claptrap–and too many like Biden seem to be lapping it up. Fools–or worse–they may be as cynical as the Taliban, and when none of these reforms come to pass hope that most Americans and other Westerners will have forgotten all about it.
DavidR says
75% if girls are back in school, home school that is, where a typical daily lesson plan could include:
Obeying Men
Covering Up
Shutting Up
Breast Feeding the Baby
Breast Feeding the Big Baby
Cooking For and Picking Up After 1 Man and 11 Children
Waiting In Lines With An Impatient Male Relative Who Really Doesn’t Want To Be There
Receiving “Correction” With An Opened Mind
Why Allah Doesn’t Like You
Typing
How and Why To Drop Everything Because Your Husband Came Home Unexpectedly and He Can’t Wait 2 Minutes
Why You May End Up With No Inheritance Even Though You Deserve All Of It
How To Calculate Your Depreciation
The First Wife
The Third Wife
PRCS says
That pretty well covers most of it.
gravenimage says
Pretty spot on, David–except for typing.
We might consider typing for girls–if accompanied by nothing else, like learning coding–to be pretty retrograde, but not in Muslim countries. Why, this might lead to a job outside the home or the use of the internet–can’t have that!
eduardo odraude says
Another interesting vid from David Wood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptYkOBNj-M
gravenimage says
Excellent stuff from David Wood, Eduardo. Thanks for the link.
gravenimage says
Biden Administration Praises Taliban’s ‘Openness’ to Women’s Rights
What happens when you learn nothing from history.
…………………….
History, hell–all Biden has to do is remember back a few months ago. Not ony have they banned women form television, but they have also barrred women from studying with men, prevented them from working, prevented them from going out without a male relative, gone door-to-door seizing girls as young as twelve to marry them off to Jihadists and burned a woman to death for “bad cooking”.
Nothing could be more grotesque than pretending that the Taliban are for women’s rights. But the Biden administration is down with that…
Infidel says
It’s one thing for Biden to be the stupidest senator, as President Trump described him to be, but does that stupidity pervade every member of his government? Including being stupid enough to believe that even the general population will believe their lies (such as the Taliban being committed to women’s rights?)
gravenimage says
A lot of willful ignorance–but likely even more lying.
David M says
How about we export Cackling Kamala Harris to Afghanistan for 12 months, she could do a report on how she wasn’t allowed to work or leave her home without a male guardian. The one good thing would be if she was in a burqa & we couldn’t see her except for her eyes.
Kepha says
If there is anyone in the USA who thinks that the Biden [mal-]administration’s statement is anything but putting a brave face on a debacle with a bit of quasi-diplomatic boilerplate, the USA truly is the proverbial nation of sheep.
gravenimage says
Yep.
PRCS says
Yes, [mal-]administration is an apt description.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden actually praising the Taliban for their “openness ” regarding them respecting the human rights of woman shows that Biden is a blatant lying B… S.,,,, or he’s now going down faster in his cognitive decline then most people believe that he is already is when he took the oath Office on January 20th 2021.
In either case Biden this further reveals n unfit to hold the Office of the US Presidency.
Nevertheless , the one and only good reason for Biden not being removed from the position of Chief Executive of the USA is that he would then be replaced with that rude, abrasive obnoxious bully and lying Communist Kamala Harris.
To put it this way, with Biden in Office of the Presidency things in America are definitely very bad. If Harris would actually take his place in the White House Oval Office then things in this nation would not go from “Bad to worse” but instead with Harris as President, things in this country would skip the word “worse” and go straight from “Bad to the worst possible.”
That would be the end complete and final end of America being “a great world power, ” forever.
Walter Sieruk says
For Joe Biden to praise the Taliban for their so-called “progress” regarding respecting the human rights of female,s both girls and women. actually means that he’s a gullible fool or a unethical disingenuous liar.
James Lincoln says
Walter Sieruk says,
Biden is both a gullible fool as well as an unethical disingenuous liar.
Both layered on top of his dementia.
PRCS says
He is also arrogant.
He once “attempted to correct Ayan Hirsi on “one or two things about Islam”.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3236200/posts
And, of course, he vowed “Muslims will serve ‘at every level’ of his administration.”
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/10/18/more-ilhan-omars-biden-vows-muslims-will-serve-at-every-level-of-his-administration-986161/
James Lincoln says
PRCS,
Rightly so.
Wellington says
Again I assert that America was founded by geniuses and is now run by idiots.
gravenimage says
You sadly are not wrong, Wellington.
PRCS says
Increasingly convinced the head idiot isn’t actually running anything.
James Lincoln says
Correct, PRCS,
He also signs a lot of stuff that he does not understand – or perhaps has not even read.
PRCS says
Like so many politicians.
OLD GUY says
Sadly some think that if you pretend or say something often enough it will happen or become true. And then there are those who will teach this nonsense to our young who will believe it as truth and accurate history, thats called propaganda. Teaching this crap to the young is a lot easier then changing this OLD GUY’S view of history and of what is right and wrong. Sorry the only rights women under Islam have is what a man allows them to do or say.
John says
Lying in Islam is an old tradition. There are even special terms, one of which is TAQIYYA. It is perfectlt acceptable for a Muslim to lie to a kaffar (non Muslim)! If you do not understand see http://www.politicalislam.com
Walter Sieruk says
For Joe Biden to praise the Taliban for their so-called “progress” regarding respecting the human rights of females, both girls and women, actually means that he’s a gullible fool or an unethical despicable disingenuous liar.
It’s totally absurd and unrealistic of Joe Biden to feel that a genuine the Taliban will now respect the human rights of woman is very stupid of him.
When a Taliban spokesman in referring to the question of the basic human rights of females, both girls and women, he declared” We guarantee all their rights within the limits of Islam.”
All aware people who understand Islam know that the last four words of that statement has an obvious meaning.
Which is that with Islam the rights of females are very limited. As in within the Islamic view, they have little to no rights at all.
.
As this has been so well explained by Brigitte Gabriel in her book, entitled THEY MUST BE STOPPED in Chapter 9 of the title “Islam’s Contempt for Women” which informs its reader on page 171 “Control of behavior and disregard for human life are key elements in Islamic ideology.”
In addition, on the next page it further reads” Women in Islam are considered unclean, deemed inferior even to dirt.”
The tragic and sad reality is that Islam is a religion of brutal, cruel, harsh and even, at times, murderous misogyny.