Zoeken in deze blog 🔎🔎
donderdag 12 augustus 2021
Why is the Taliban on such a winning streak?
Why is the Taliban on such a winning streak,
and can the tide be turned?

FEATUREDWIB LAND August 11, 2021 Staff Writer 0
Nabih Bulos
Los Angeles Times
It’s been a punishing few days for Afghanistan’s U.S.-created and -supported army.
Since Friday, the Taliban has overrun bastions of government control, snatching more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals on its way to controlling an estimated 65% of the country. On Wednesday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani raced to the country’s north to rally a defense of besieged Mazar-i-Sharif, the country’s fourth-largest city.
With U.S. forces set to complete their pullout in less than three weeks, the Taliban’s breakneck advance has many observers asking: After two decades and billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and its partners to create effective Afghan fighting forces, what happened? And can they stop the Taliban from taking over the entire country?
Here’s a look at the situation.
‘Ghost’ fighters
On paper, the Taliban should be no match for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, known as the ANDSF. According to the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, a U.S. government watchdog, the ANDSF comprises 300,699 security personnel, including army, police and air force members. Around one-fifth of them are highly trained special forces operatives; then there are undisclosed figures for CIA-trained paramilitary groups as well as militias associated with the country’s warlords.
The Taliban, the SIGAR report estimated, has around 75,000 fighters.
But those figures should be treated with skepticism. Corruption, which infects the Afghan security forces just as much as it does the government, means there are “ghost” soldiers and police — personnel who either never show up or never existed but are on the books so that officials can pocket their salaries.
It’s difficult to estimate the scale of the problem, but in 2019, a new payroll system purged more than 10% from the rolls. A year later, another SIGAR report found a gap of some 58,478 personnel between recorded and actual strength levels.
The problem is worse among the Afghan police, especially in the country’s south. SIGAR reported in 2020 that, in the southern provinces — areas of pro-Taliban sentiment — anywhere from 50% to 70% of police positions were for personnel who didn’t exist. (That report also found that half of them use drugs.)
“For a long time, people in the U.S. and the NATO advisory mission have known that the Afghan police are notoriously corrupt ,” said Andrew Watkins, senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group. He added that although the new payroll system had gone some way toward improving the situation, commanders were now skimming off their subordinates’ salaries.
“Whatever solution there has been for corruption, corruption has found a way,” he said.
Uneven abilities
When asked last month if he trusted the Taliban, President Biden brushed off the question, saying instead that he trusted “the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better-trained, better-equipped, and … more competent in terms of conducting war.”
But only a portion of the military would meet that criteria, chief among them the special forces, which are estimated to include some 56,000 operatives. The performance of other sections of the military has been less encouraging, with many observers complaining of a lack of motivation to fight or of personnel acting as little more than placeholders.
“They’re meant to sit in checkpoints and act as a static representation of government presence,” Watkins said. “It’s understood that they don’t fight effectively — they’re certainly not advancing — and that they’re not an offensive force.”
That has led to an all-too-frequent routine on the battlefield: Special forces dislodge the Taliban from an area, only for it to be lost again a short time later when other security personnel — whether army, police or local militias — come in to secure those gains and flee before a Taliban counterattack.
Overreliance on air power
When these less-trained troops do fight, they’ve often looked to air support for cover. But much of that air power has come from the U.S. and its NATO allies, meaning that, as the U.S. draws down, local troops are having to rely more on the Afghan air force for close support, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering.
The July SIGAR report said all aircraft types in the Afghan air force are flying “at least 25% over their recommended scheduled maintenance.” Crews, it said, “remain overtaxed” by an increasingly untenable operations tempo.
Just like U.S. and NATO troops, Western contractors who are meant to service the aircraft and repair battle damage are also “going to zero,” meaning they are set to depart the country by Aug. 31, with still no concrete plans as to how the air force will be maintained. That’s especially detrimental to the UH-60 Black Hawks, helicopters that are used for everything from repulsing Taliban onslaughts to casualty evacuation to resupply.
Logistical hurdles
Perhaps the biggest problem facing the ANDSF isn’t training or equipment but logistics. The Taliban’s control of rural areas has also come with more than 80% of the country’s highways in its hands. That figure has only increased in recent days as the group has taken additional territory, such that any attempt to resupply the thousands of army and police bases and checkpoints must be done almost exclusively by air.
In other words, every bullet, every mortar shell, every gallon of fuel and often every carton of eggs has to be brought in by already overstretched air force crews. And the greater the distance from Kabul or primary bases in Kandahar and elsewhere, the more likely the outpost will fall.
That’s why, for several Afghan officials, including one former high-ranking security head who spoke on condition of anonymity, the recent losses have come as no surprise.
“The ANDSF is very scattered, and it can’t choose its own battlefield,” he said. “The Taliban chooses the battlefield. That meant the ANDSF had to shrink its presence.”
Can the government turn things around?
It depends. Earlier this month, Ghani, the president, presented a security plan that he vowed would bring the country back under government control within six months. The general outline of the plan has the army defending strategic targets while the Afghan police provide security inside major urban areas.
But another, less-discussed aspect of the plan includes empowering former strongmen, including figures with a dark record in Afghan’s conflict-filled history. Ghani’s visit to Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday was an effort to organize a defense of the city with strongman Atta Mohammad Noor and notorious militia leader Abdul Rashid Dostum. There have been reports that Ghani has promised the two leaders air support as well as assistance from the special forces corps to claw back northern territories.
Could the U.S. get involved again?
Biden has poured cold water on that idea, despite the staggering pace of losses hitting the Afghan army.
“We trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces. … I’ll insist we continue to keep the commitments we made, providing close air support, making sure that their air force functions and is operable, resupplying their forces with food and equipment and paying all their salaries,” Biden said in a White House briefing Tuesday. “They’ve got to want to fight.”
As for withdrawing U.S. troops within the space of just a few months, “I do not regret my decision,” he said.
©2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
MQ-1 Predator aircrew talk about one of the deadliest engagements during Operation Anaconda
Jewish Racism
Largest study ever of Jews of color reports widespread discrimination
Arno Rosenfeld
August 12, 2021
American Jews of color say their racial and ethnic identities shape their Jewishness in important, positive ways, but that they also face bigotry in settings where white Jews predominate, according to a study released Thursday, the largest-ever of this group.
Respondents to the study describe other Jews presuming they are converts, asking intrusive questions about their backgrounds, and mistaking them for nannies and synagogue security guards. Called “Beyond the Count,” the study captures the experiences of more than a thousand of Jews of color active in Jewish life and provides a trove of data that its sponsors hope will help Jewish leaders create more welcoming synagogues, schools and other Jewish spaces.
“Jews of color and our voices have been trying to get out,” said Ilana Kaufman, executive director of the Jews of Color Initiative, which produced the study. “But there have been a paucity of pathways and portals for the experience of Jews of color to be gathered, told, shared.”
“This is a conversation starter for a lot of Jewish communities right now,” said researcher Gage Gorsky
The study found that many Jews of color remain involved in Jewish institutions despite encounters with other Jews who minimize their Jewishness.
One Black Jewish man interviewed for the report said that he was often treated as if he was new to Judaism, as opposed to an active member of the community.
“I went to Shabbat services recently, and a woman came up to me and said, without introducing herself, ‘Shabbat Shalom. So are you here for a religion class? Did you convert?’” he said.
Researchers surveyed 1,118 self-identified Jews of color and interviewed 60 of them in more detail. The study is not meant to reflect the views of all non-white Jews, as traditional polls attempt to do, but instead functions as a massive focus group that demonstrates both the diversity and common experiences of Jews of color. Among respondents, about a fifth identified as Black, African or African-American, 11% as Hispanic or Latinx, 10 percent as Asian American, and the balance as Middle Eastern, North African or Native American.
Why this was the right Jewish month for Cuomo to resign
“Nobody has spoken to this many Jews of color about these topics,” said Gage Gorsky, who was part of the study’s research team and identifies as half Mexican, half Ashkenazi. “This is a conversation starter for a lot of Jewish communities right now.”
Most of the respondents (66%) identified as biracial, mixed or multiracial. In addition:
Most (64%) have at least one Jewish parent and 22% have two Jewish parents.
More than a third (40%) converted or were converted to Judaism.
A majority (65%) were raised Jewish or Jewish and something else.
Three quarters (77%) said they were exclusively Jewish and 21% said they were Jewish and also identified with another religion.
The Jews of color who responded to the survey described their connection to their Jewishness in ways that mostly mirrored that of the wider American Jewish population, with large numbers describing social justice, remembering the Holocaust and celebrating Jewish holidays as “very important.” Participants in the study also described how they are bridging their Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds.
One Asian-American woman in her 20s said she recently hosted a Bollywood-themed Shabbat, and a Black woman in her 30s said she was embracing both Judaism and “earth-based Indigenous traditions and Senegalese-based practices.”
“I’m bringing together aspects of myself that were very siloed,” said the woman. Quotes from respondents who were interviewed for the study were presented anonymously, and the Jews of Color Initiative declined to make any participants available to the media.
Others discussed the importance of affinity spaces for Jews of color, with nearly half of those who participated in the survey saying that they did not feel a sense of belonging among white Jews.
“Going to synagogue fills my need for Jewish spirituality, and there is another spiritual need that I have to be in JoC-only spaces,” a Mexican- and Iranian-American woman in her 30s said.
Black Orthodox Jews carve out their own space amid a national reckoning over race
Josefin DolstenJune 3, 2021
Some Jews of color also described the way that skin tone influenced how they were treated in Jewish settings.
“I can look white to certain people, so I didn’t get the same kind of invasive questioning or security called on me the way that Black Jews experience,” one Asian-American woman told researchers. A Hispanic nonbinary person said that they were recently questioned about identifying as a Jew of color by “another white passing Lantix person in very uncomfortable ways.”
Past studies of Jews of color have largely sought to define the size of the community, rather than gathering collective and individual experiences. Estimates of the population have ranged from 6% to 15% of the Jewish community and the recent Pew Research Center report on American Jews found that 94% were white.
The Jews of Color Initiative is a project of the progressive Tides Center, and released a study in 2019 that estimated Jews of color could make up 15% of the total population. But in titling this report “Beyond the Count,” its authors signaled that they were far more interested in painting a portrait of Jews of color than taking a census.
Arielle Levites, director of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, said the term “Jews of color” has been difficult for many researchers to define — for example, many American Jews of Middle Eastern or Hispanic heritage identify as white — and she praised the study’s approach.
Some study respondents grappled with the term “Jews of color,” and one described it as “uselessly broad.”
“Precisely because we want every Jew to count, we cannot ignore the voices and self-understanding of Jews of diverse backgrounds,” Levites, who was not involved in the report, wrote in an email. “Because the study allowed respondents to self-identity as a Jew of Color I think this study succeeds as a critical first step in meeting that challenge.”
Study respondents grappled with the term “Jew of color” themselves, with one Black man in his 30s criticizing it as “uselessly broad.”
“I am an Afro-Latino convert and my experience is vastly and fundamentally different from a Mizrahi Jew, yet we’re collapsed into the same category,” he said.
The study’s authors deem the term “imperfect but a useful umbrella term,” and others argued that the “Beyond the Count” report was helpful precisely because it showcased such a broad cross section of individuals who identify as Jews of color.
“That speaks to how we can’t put everyone in a box and see Jews of color as a monolith,” said Yolanda Savage-Narva, director of Racial Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the Union for Reform Judaism. “It’s really important to know that the identities we bring to the community are diverse.”
Washington Is The Center Of Evil
August 12, 2021 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |
Print This Article
Washington Is The Center Of Evil In the Universe
Paul Craig Roberts
Those of us who are aware that the entirety of the Western media is unreliable rely on RT and Sputnik for news, but often RT and Sputnik sound like the unreliable Western media. I have noticed this for a long time. Often I thought I should write to someone, but have always been too busy.
After reading this account — https://sputniknews.com/uk/202108111083583106-uk-high-court-rules-us-appeal-can-proceed-after-lawyers-claim-assange-healthy-enough-for/ —on Sputnik on August 11, 2021, I realized that I have been negligent in my duty.
The Russian media undermines its own effectiveness and credibility by repeating lies told by the Western presstitutes.
Here is the specific problem in the Sputnik link above: The article by Ilya Tsukanov states: “Assange received asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2012 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crime charges.” This statement is absolutely and totally false. It is a false statement that Western media whores have repeated endlessly, but that is no excuse for Russian media to follow the whores. Julian Assange was never charged with sex crimes. There never was any extradition request on sex crime charges. The two women did not file sex charges against Assange. Both invited him into their beds. One of the women was concerned that Assange did not use a condom or that it broke. She wanted him to take a test to see if he had Aids. He foolishly refused. The woman went to the police to see if she could compel Assange to have the test. It was the police who initiated an investigation. The Swedish prosecutor investigated and ruled there had been no offense. Assange was released and left Sweden for England.
On his arrival he found that another Swedish prosecutor, some sort of feminist, had on her own initiative reopened the dismissed case. This prosecutor requested Assange’s extradition to Sweden only in order to be interviewed. The law does not provide for extradition only to be interviewed. Charges must be filed, but the basis for the charges had already been dismissed by the Swedish prosecutorial office.
Most who have carefully followed Washington’s persecution of Assange believe that the Swedish prosecutor who reopened the closed case did so in response to a Washington bribe or threat or from the feminist hatred of men. Assange, advised by his attorneys, realized that the Swedish prosecutor was abusing her power in order to turn Assange over to Washington. He sought and was granted asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London.
London, on orders from Washington, refused to recognize the political asylum a country had granted to Assange.
Washington went to work to replace the Ecuadoran president with Washington’s man. When this object was achieved, Washington’s president of Ecuador revoked the asylum, and on Washington’s orders, the British police seized Assange in the embassy and dragged him into a British maximum security prison, where he has been held in isolation for years while a court case dragged on to decide whether or not he could be extradited to the US.
The judge finally ruled no, but Washington has ordered its British puppet to allow Washington to challenge the ruling. Washington no more respects UK law than Washington respects International law, Russian law, Chinese law, Ukrainian law, and Washington’s British puppet, after faking signs of resistance, will comply.
So what are Washington’s charges against Assange? We don’t really know. Apparently, the charges are based on some treason statute. But Assange is not a US citizen and cannot commit treason against a country of which he is not a citizen or resident. For many years Washington has had a US Attorney working with a Grand Jury to invent charges against Julian Assange. The members of the Grand Jury will, of course, be too stupid to comprehend the issue. As has been said thousands of times, a prosecutor can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich.
From Washington’s view, Assange’s offense is that he made available documents to the pubic that were made available to Wikileaks apparently by Manning. The documents showed conclusively in an official US video US troops committing war crimes. Wikileaks also published, after carefully vetting them, documents given to Wikileaks that revealed Washington’s lies and deceptions of its dumbshit European, Canadian, and Australian puppets.
To make information available that was withheld from the pubic is what Ellsberg did when he gave the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which brought about the end of the Vietnam War which was based on nothing more than profits for the US military/security complex. The corrupt US government tried to prosecute Ellsberg, and, had they succeeded, also the New York Times, but the first amendment overruled the concocted and invalid case.
Today Washington’s phony argument is that Assange and Wikileaks are not journalists, but Russian agents, that is, spies working against America. This is blatant nonsense. Moreover, it is a charge that reduces every honest Western journalist, assuming that there are any, to the status of a traitor if he tells the truth against official narratives.
Throughout the Western World there is no honest media. What the West has is a propaganda ministry for the Establishment. The Western presstitutes—a contraction of press prostitutes—deliver the stories that serve the Establishment’s interests. As I have previously said, as a former Wall Street Journal editor and columnist for Business Week and the Script Howard News Service, when I was a Wall Street Journal editor we would not have hired, on grounds of incompetence and absence of integrity, any member today of any TV, print, or NPR “media.” The US media today consists of bought and paid for liars.
In the West today real journalists, other than a few exiled ones, such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Pam Martins, don’t exist. The West lives under a propaganda ministry that suppresses all divergent facts and opinion from the official narratives. The entirety of the Western peoples are locked up in The Matrix, and there is no Neo to rescue them.
The failure of the British courts to stand up to criminal Washington and to release Julian Assange from a decade of wrongful persecution is evidence that the rule of law in the Western world is dead as a door nail. We have reached the point where it is idiocy and self-delusion for any person and any government anywhere in the world to trust anything a Western government or presstitute says.
Once Julian Assange is eliminated, Washington will reel in Russian journalists who are exposed by being located in the US, and they too will be destroyed along with independent journalists on the Internet.
Perhaps fearing that fate, Sputnik and RT pull their punches and repeat Washington’s lies in order to lower their profiles. We get some truth from them, but not all of it.
Americans, and I think Russians and Chinese, will never comprehend that Washington is the center of evil in the Universe. Washington has been practicing evil for decades, and the evil is now reaching heights never before experienced.
woensdag 11 augustus 2021
US Flight from Afghanistan
11.08.2021 Author: Vladimir Danilov
US Flight from Afghanistan Triggers Another Humanitarian Crisis
The US flight from Afghanistan could trigger another humanitarian crisis, Swedish Svenska Dagbladetwrites.
A Spokesperson for the US Department of State Ned Price said the other day about the growing threat of civil war and crisis in Afghanistan.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated the complete failure of the US mission in Afghanistan and pointed to the rapid degradation of the situation in this country. Lavrov said that the US military is fleeing Afghanistan, having abandoned a considerable amount of equipment. Moscow has been forced to call on the CSTO countries and Uzbekistan to consider their capabilities due to the deteriorating situation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Especially in the North of the country, where, among others, militants of the DAESH militant group banned in Russia, are becoming more active.
In Afghanistan, there is now a “bankruptcy” not only of American but also of European security policy, claims Klaus Geiger, head of the foreign policy department for Die Welt.
Twenty years later, NATO countries are withdrawing their troops while the Taliban (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) develops its offensive. All this leads to a growing wave of Afghan illegal immigrants to Europe.
So far, those fleeing the Taliban have accumulated on the borders of Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, but their ultimate goal is Turkey, and from there, Europe. Ankara has not yet had time to “digest” the Syrians, who are a heavy burden on the Turkish budget and social and health care systems, when a new attack from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: 6.5 million Afghans are now in danger of immigrating to Turkey. The wave of immigrants from Afghanistan could turn into a tsunami even greater than immigration from Syria. Fearing this disaster for itself, Turkey is building a wall about 300 km long on the border with Iran to escape refugees from Afghanistan: 1.5 thousand people have been detained in the last week alone. The Turks have already erected a similar fence on the border with Syria.
Public opinion polls show growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Turkey and discomfort with the “open borders” policy, creating new risks for the ruling party of the Government of National Accord in the upcoming elections. All of this is exacerbated by a surge in crime, overburdened welfare and health care system, and the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, anti-Western sentiments are growing: “They made this mess – let them clean it up. Ankara is not going to pull chestnuts out of the fire with its bare hands for the sake of other people’s interests“.
The echoes of the Afghan war look very different in this century than they did in the past. Now it’s not so much the territories needing complete reconstruction and endless areas dotted with mines. These are primarily refugees. Hundreds of thousands, millions.
In a new report released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the U.N. recorded a record number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021, including a sharp increase in killings and injuries since May, when international armed forces began withdrawing. About 2.5 thousand civilians were killed between May and June, almost as many civilians as in the previous four months. It is of particular concern that women and children accounted for nearly half of all civilian casualties in the first half of 2021 – 32% of the total were children, 14% were women. In this regard, UNAMA warns that without significant de-escalation of violence, Afghanistan will have the highest number of documented civilian casualties in 2021.
According to the Afghan State Ministry for Peace Affairs, the Taliban (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) actively recruits civilians and sends them to fight as cannon fodder. The Taliban are fighting very cautiously. According to media reports, in the last 20 days, at least 22,000 families in Kandahar alone were displaced due to clashes between the Taliban and Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), and now they need urgent humanitarian assistance.
The lives of US aid workers and their families in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan were particularly endangered. About 100,000 US Army aides from Afghanistan could be abandoned along with their families to their fate as US troops withdraw, Forbes reports. Meanwhile, only 19 Afghan interpreters and 364 employees of US agencies received visas in 2020. According to the International Refugee Assistance Project, more than 1,000 Loyalists and their families were killed while waiting for a visa. Afghans who are denied visas rightly believe that America has abandoned them.
Back on July 8, US President Joe Biden promised to evacuate Afghan interpreters and their families working with the US military in Afghanistan before the Taliban killed them. But that pledge still stands because the evacuation plan has not yet been agreed, and most of the American troops have already left the country, the American publication Task & Purpose stresses. For the last 20 years, US troops have faced bureaucratic nightmares trying to get Iraqi and Afghan interpreters to safety. Those who made it to the United States were the exception rather than the rule.
CNN reports on the plight of Afghans working with the US military, recalling that some 18,000 of them have already applied for the Special Immigrant Visa Program, which allows them to move to the United States. But that doesn’t mean they can move there or escape the Taliban’s death threats at all. There are hundreds of Afghan interpreters whose contracts they feel have been unfairly revoked, but US authorities say they will not review the cases. In contrast, the interpreters themselves fear that if they remain in Afghanistan, they will die.
On July 24, US President Joe Biden authorized up to $100 million to evacuate US citizens from Afghanistan who provided various forms of assistance to US troops. This was stated in a notice sent by the American leader to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on July 23. As stated by the US State Department, currently, only about 2,500 Afghans can qualify for special US immigration visas.
However, according to the Western media, not 2.5 thousand, but about 18 thousand Afghans who helped American troops, including as interpreters, and about 53 thousand members of their families hope to get such visas. What will be their fate? Or will Washington once again abandon its aides to the mercy of fate? – The sad prognosis was confirmed by the statement made by the US State Department’s representative in a special telephone briefing on August 2, that “Afghans who fear reprisals by the Taliban (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) should come to the United States on their own.”
Today there is much talk about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as a failure, but there is another side, as the Turkish Cumhuriyet notes: The US has deliberately ensured that there is no strong central government in this country that would require the withdrawal of foreign forces and is now looking for a “manager” to maintain this situation after they leave.
There are other assessments of Anglo-Saxon intentions and plans for Afghanistan. For example, the British publication Rai Al Youm believes that the US has failed the Kabul government by not bargaining with the Islamist opposition for guarantees of its security before the US withdrawal. And the Americans plan to lure their enemies from all over the region to Afghanistan. After all, if they start implementing different projects in Afghanistan, they will face tremendous difficulties that could burn even the most powerful resources to the ground. So the US is getting ready to obstruct projects in Afghanistan that China, Russia, and Iran can start.
Afghanistan is a hotbed of conflict, the consequences and outcome of which are unknown. Anything can happen because of the conflict of international and regional interests and various players in the Afghan arena. But what is already clearly visible to everyone today is the growth of another humanitarian crisis caused by the adventures of Washington and its allies. And for this, the US must answer to the international public.
Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
https://journal-neo.org/2021/08/11/us-flight-from-afghanistan-triggers-another-humanitarian-crisis/Capitol Hill Riot Inquiry Reveals Growing Rift In US Society

Trump supporters crowding the steps of the Capitol in Washington DC after displacing police shield wall preventing access. Photo Credit:
Capitol Hill Riot Inquiry Reveals Growing Rift In US Society – OpEd
By Arab News
By Yossi Mekelberg*
When a US House of Representatives select committee late last month began its first hearing on the attempted Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, six months had already passed since that act of homegrown terrorism, yet it was obvious that emotions were still raw.
The harrowing testimonies of officers who heroically defended US democracy, sometimes with their bare hands, revealed a story of a divided nation undergoing one of its worst domestic crises in a long time. The extreme trauma that these officers were subjected to on that day was underlined by their body language, tears of frustration and occasional raised voices, as they told of the horrors of a violent mob trying to take over the Capitol.
Many of the officers were physically, mentally and racially abused by the rioters, and may never return to the force as a result. Tragically, four officers who responded to the assault on that fateful day have since taken their own lives.
The American public badly needs to know the truth about what happened in Washington and deal with the reality of that day, even if it is, for many, an inconvenient truth: Who was behind it? What were their motivations? And what role did President Donald Trump play in instigating the violence by spreading lies about the presidential election being rigged, and by telling those gathered around Capitol Hill that “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”?
No surprise, then, that most Americans appear to support a congressional commission to investigate these events, although Democrat voters outnumber Republicans on that question. Amid the current divisive societal discourse, the nation is polarized along political lines in its desire to know the truth about a defining moment in the country’s history when anti-democratic forces were ready to execute the unthinkable.
However, this situation is just the tip of the iceberg for a society which is deeply divided on almost every meaningful issue, and lacks mechanisms for constructive dialogue to bridge these divisions. The situation is made worse by a political system that in the past could put aside partisanship, at least behind closed doors, for the sake of governing the country. More recently it has been doing exactly the opposite and inflaming already existing frictions and discord.
Setting up a committee to investigate the events that led to the attack on the Capitol should have been a no-brainer. Every single legislator representing American democracy, and most definitely those who were in the building at the time of the riot, should have demanded an inquiry to find how the unthinkable could have happened to one of the major elements of the American democratic system, to ensure that whoever was involved or was pulling the strings behind it faces the full force of the law, and make certain that such an outrage never happens again.
Yet, despite the initial sense of shock among Republican lawmakers at Trump and his supporters’ violent attempt to reverse the result of a free and fair election, only a few months later almost 200 congressional Republicans voted against his impeachment, while most opposed the investigation and put forward all sorts of groundless and easily debunked conspiracy theories.
It is too easy to mock Trump and portray him as a historical accident and an anomaly, but if Jan. 6 was an accident, it was one waiting to happen.
Those legislators who know the truth about Trump and still support him do so because they believe it serves their political careers. Many, cynically, prefer not to oppose Trumpism because they see it not as a passing oddity but as a magnet for many millions of Americans who hold values and beliefs about the supposed danger posed by liberal-inclusive America, and are sympathetic to a populism that is based on nationalistic-religious sentiments and beliefs and rejects evidence based on science.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center makes uncomfortable reading, and confirms the fact that on most fundamental issues, including the economy, racial justice, climate change, law enforcement and international engagement, there is a colossal chasm in American society.
In the lead-up to the November 2020 presidential election, voters not only expressed their legitimate preference for one candidate or another, but 90 percent on both sides believed that the prospect of victory for the opposing candidate was a cause for grave concern regarding the country’s direction, and that such a victory would inflict lasting harm on the US.
This level of distrust invariably means that the winning candidate fails to receive even the benefit of the doubt, let alone genuine support, from those who did not vote for him. Considering that 46.9 percent of US voters, more than 74 million people, did not vote for Biden, mobilizing the entire country, or at least a critical mass of its citizens, behind his administration’s domestic and international agendas becomes a mammoth task. This divide is highlighted by the public response to attempts to contain and eradicate the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) virus, which is divided on whether to follow science, along the same lines as their voting preference.
America’s divisions as expressed in surveys reflect diametrically opposed core views, and this partisanship not only affects the ability of an administration to govern at home but also its ability to conduct foreign policy from a position of strength. Increasingly, debates have degenerated into personal attacks and character assassinations that question opponents’ morality and sincerity. In a society with one of the best education systems in the world, where scientific and critical thinking is sanctified, polls show that a worrying number of Americans hold doubts as to whether scientists make decisions solely based on facts.
So we shouldn’t be that surprised that instead of fact-based and constructive debate, we are witnessing disputes based on preconceived ideas, prejudices and biases along the lines that enabled populists in the Trump mold to reach positions of power and influence, and poison the public discourse countrywide, employing the extra, deadly venom that we saw in Washington on Jan. 6.
The heart-rending testimonies of those police officers who prevented the Capitol from being overrun should be flashing out warning signs stretching “from sea to shining sea,” from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, alerting all to the fragility of American society, and its urgent need to embark on rebuilding and renewal.
- Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg
An Argentine Hooker, a Jabhat al-Nusra Terrorist, and A Homosexual Prime Minister.
Herman Meeuwissen @HermanMeeuwiss1 Petra Wetering is in de Heer, daarom zal ze zoiets als onderstaand nooit zeggen over Bibi Netanyahu - B...
-
SKIP TO CONTENT Site Navigation Popular Latest Sign In Subscribe GLOBAL THE WAR PHOTO NO ONE WOULD PUBLISH When Kenneth Jarecke photograph...
-
Paul2 heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "De Israelische Terreur 938" achtergelaten: Nou Stan ,dat wordt gevangenisstraf voor ...
-
Going Underground heeft deze post opnieuw geplaatst Afshin Rattansi @afshinrattansi · 5 u Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: ‘I WATCHED MOSSAD TAKE...


