Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concern Wednesday that the newly-formed Taliban cabinet in Afghanistan is not diverse enough. During a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Blinken condemned the Taliban for not keeping their word to form an "inclusive" government in Afghanistan. Blinken added that he is "concerned by the affiliations and track records" of some members of the cabinet, some of whom have ties to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
You got that? Anthony Blinken - whose name should be changed to Blinkered - is upset that the Taliban's new government contains no women or homosexuals. Wait until he finds out there aren't any Jews! Taliban's in for a really nasty letter to the
NY Times. Bur fear not, gentle reader. The new government in Kabul actually has a diverse range -- of top terrorists, some of whom were once guests of ours at Club Gitmo.
Here's a t-shirt idea "My Son Came Home from Afghanistan in a Box and All I Got Was This Lousy Bowe Bergdahl!"
Four of the five Taliban members released from Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration in a prisoner trade for Bowe Bergdahl are now part of the Taliban's hardline government in Afghanistan, according to local reports.
"The four members of the so-called 'Taliban Five' who have joined the new government are Acting Director of Intelligence Abdul Haq Wasiq, Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Norullah Noori, Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Fazl, and Acting Minister of Information and Culture Khairullah Khairkhah," the New York Post noted Wednesday. "The fifth member of the Taliban Five, Mohammad Nabi Omari, was appointed governor of eastern Khost province last month. . ."
. . . [Bowe] Bergdahl, Military Times noted, "abandoned his post in June 2009 on a deployment to Paktika province, Afghanistan," and "was subsequently captured by the Taliban and held as a prisoner of war for nearly five years." The Obama administration orchestrated a prisoner exchange and selected the five Taliban leaders to swap for Bergdahl, even though an assessment recommended the four remain in Guantanamo Bay.
Now, for some good news to report from Kabul, from the estimable Robert Spencer:
In a striking depiction of the eclipse of twenty-first-century woke orthodoxy by Islamic rule, the Taliban have begun painting over a series of murals in Kabul, including one depicting George Floyd with the legend, in English, "I can't breathe."
The murals were the most visible manifestations of the kind of society U.S. authorities had hoped Afghanistan would become, honoring all manner of secular saints revered in the West. Painted on Kabul's concrete blast barriers by a group of Afghan artists calling themselves the Artlords, the murals celebrated, according to the UK's Daily Mail, "gender equality and the signing of the US-Taliban agreement towards peace," among other things.
Omaid Sharifi, co-founder of Artlords, said: "Some of these murals were the soul of Kabul. They gave beauty to the city and kindness to the people of Kabul who were suffering." They may have given beauty to the city, but murals celebrating George Floyd and gender equality were not expressions of the soul of Kabul, but of the woke, post-modern, Leftist West, the soul of the people who have spent twenty years since 9/11 stigmatizing and demonizing opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression as "Islamophobia," the soul of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and their supporters.
In place of the murals, the Taliban have painted the Islamic profession of faith and other Islamic statements, as well as a claim that they are the "true defenders" of Afghanistan. The contrast is telling, and those in the West who are more concerned about "Islamophobia" than about jihad terror should take note: no matter how much aid witless Western countries give them, the Taliban and other jihad groups intend to destroy Western Leftism along with every other manifestation of secular liberalism.
This lesson seems lost upon the faltering guardians of the woke order. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken complained about the makeup of the Taliban's new Afghan government: "We're assessing the announcement but despite professing that a new government would be inclusive, the announced list of names consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates, and no women. . . "
. . . Do [Blinken's and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas'] balloons ever land? Do they have any reason whatsoever to think that the Taliban care in the slightest degree about what the "international community" thinks? The Taliban showed exactly what they think of the "international community" and its approval when they painted over the mural of Saint George Floyd. The Taliban have their own values, priorities, and heroes, and they are not those of the Western Left. The sooner the likes of Antony Blinken and Heiko Maas grasp that, the better off they and their countries will be, but they're much more likely to ignore the lesson of the Floyd mural and shower billions upon the Taliban in the fond hope that the blizzard of money will turn the Taliban's hearts toward the "international community."
I have to say, when you look past who and what these people are, painting over the George Floyd mural as a sign of rejecting a decadent, alien culture is a hell of a lot more sane than Blinken being incredulous and upset that a dark age totalitarian death cult refuses to be "inclusive."
And on that note, we segue quite nicely into the continued insanity right here at home where we are now well into the 76th week of 2 weeks to "flatten the curve." The only thing that's been flattened in all this is our economy, our way of life, our sanity and our freedom. Despite common sense, history, real, non-Lysenko-ized science and examining the progression of the Beijing Breathing Blight here and abroad since it first landed here, the Junta in DC has only the fear of a virus marginally more lethal than common flu with which to distract, as well as dispirit and more crucially oppress the citizenry.
And not just for 2 weeks but forever.
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Who knew……..a George Floyd mural in Kabul……….if you had any doubt about the priorities of this ‘administration’, put your doubts to rest. It really is as bad as we thought, or worse. These musings from Ace of Spades this morning. Always good, imo. Pithy, entertaining, & on the money.
