Here’s why we shouldn’t even give it a passing thought.
It has proven to be a failed policy.
Those who are in positions of national leadership have
responsibilities to recognise the signs that characterise thuggish behaviour
and never allow it to operate unchecked.
Unfortunately, history at this level is littered with
examples of failures to protect citizens from these criminals - some are even
repeated by those in whom we have mistakenly entrusted the nation’s safety.
The disaster that is unfolding in Afghanistan is the
result of irresponsible attitudes towards the evil regimes that want to destroy
western civilisation.
There is no other way to describe it.
We are watching a train wreck of unimaginable proportions
and it could have (should have) been avoided simply by making decisions based
only on what our leaders knew (or should have known) to be true.
An average junior school student could have told us that
the Taliban leaders released from Guantanamo Bay maximum security prison by the
Obama administration only a few years ago were very bad people who couldn’t be
trusted.
Yet it was justified at the time by the current President
as a necessary gesture in order to help restore peace to that volatile part of
the world. How could they have been so naive! Surely their military and
intelligence advisors were telling them then that it was a dumb move which
would have repercussions we would live to regret.
No surprises then that these brutal murderers are back in
charge, wasting no time in reversing all the humanitarian gains made by the
coalition of the willing during their decades of occupation. It must also be
seen as an enormous betrayal of those military families (including our own) who
lost loved members in what now appears to have been a wasteful exercise.
How could it go so wrong and will that be the end of it?
Unfortunately, politicians are notorious for failing to
learn from history.
If they did, they would have learned all they needed to
know about putting innocent lives at risk simply by appeasing those who have
demonstrated their signatures on agreements are worthless.
Neville Chamberlain’s gamble in 1938 effectively
guaranteed the sacrifice of millions on the altar of appeasement before
Hitler’s regime was finally halted back where it all began. It is hard to
imagine how presumably decent, intelligent human beings could get it so wrong.
Well, don’t be surprised if that earlier blunder under
Biden’s watch turns out to be only the first course of a diet we will be fed
over coming years.
All the signs are flashing on the world stage, especially
where China is concerned and it isn’t difficult to predict where (given current
leadership) this will all end.
The Free World countries trying to get agreement on
international climate change policy have decided to exempt two of the world’s
major polluters (China and India) from obligations to limit greenhouse gas
emissions that (if implemented locally) will have disastrous consequences for
our national economies while those of the non-obligated grow at warp speed.
They have done that in the full knowledge that both of
these countries are abusing those exemptions while the rest of the world cut
our own throats.
Even if they decide to honour their promise to reduce the
growth of their polluting habits after 2030, it will become a meaningless
exercise in terms of saving the planet - it will be too late - or so we are
told by those who are appeasing these destructive giants.
It gets worse.
Given the Biden administration’s recent failure of
judgment in Afghanistan, are we likely to see a repeat when China decides to
finally make its long telegraphed move to invade Taiwan. I suspect it is only a
matter of time before we will awaken to calls for assistance against these
invaders that will go unheeded if the current US administration is still in
charge of providing a necessary show of strength.
It looks to me as if they have already signalled their
intentions of how they are likely to combat the China threat.
We need look no further than the pathetic attempts by WHO
to uncover the truth about the original leak of the Wuhan Covid virus.
It is clear that any exposure of that history would
severely embarrass the Biden administration and its chief health advisor Dr
Fauchi so we can expect little in the way of meaningful revelations on that
score.
Instead we are more likely to see another bout of
capitulation in the face of the enemy.
Any reluctance to come to the aid of traditional allies
will be dressed up as a necessary sacrifice of one small player who Is deemed
expendable in the battle between East and West.
But those who study history will know that such a sign of
weakness will only embolden regimes like China and their colleagues in their
quest for world domination.
And what about us?
Sooner or later, we will find the enemy has extended their
empires into our space. I can’t imagine what we will do then.
No amount of appeasement or turning a blind eye such as
that being offered by our own government when they failed to join their Five
Eyes colleagues in denouncing China will deter these monsters when they feel
the time is right to cripple us economically just like they are trying to do in
Australia at present.
Tragically, our sovereignty is at risk in a battle where
not a shot will be fired.
It could have been so much different if Uncle Sam had
demonstrated that at least we could trust the strategical alliances that have
saved us in the past.
I’m not so sure if they offer any security anymore and
that should worry us all.
Clive Bibby is a commentator, consultant, farmer and community leader, who lives in Tolaga Bay.
7 comments:
Most Western countries have degenerated over the past 50 years into weak, woke and indulgent democracies that resemble the final crumbling years before the fall of an empire.
They adopt principles and practices, founded on ideology which is disproven by mountains of empirical data, all the time further weakening their economies and defence capabilities.
They can't see that they are gifting economic and global dominance to the very countries they look down on.
The Taliban were always going to win in Afghanistan in today's political climate. While Western democracies talked inclusivity and all things minority, they abandoned the majority, denigrated their own history and adopted neo-marxist policies which has left populations confused, divided, intimidated and cast adrift.
The Taliban, on the other hand, stayed true to their beliefs. They never wavered and could see the weakness in the West. It was only a matter of time.
All empires end and it's looking like we're in the dying years of the Western Empire. A brief period of democratic rule and freedom which has been the exception in human history.
Dee is quite right. Most Afghans don't want the social engineering programme imposed by Western cultural imperialists. No, they're not the westernised/americanised ones who get interviewed by CNN - those are the fifth-columnists collaborating with the cultural imperialists. They're the silent majority who want a system of governance based on Islamic values. If that is the wish of the majority, we need to engage with the new regime as an expression of the Afghan people's right of self-determination.
Barend
Just to clarify my comment. I'm not suggesting that most Afghans welcome Taliban rule. I don't know whether they do or not.
I also don't agree with Taliban principles. Like all zealots and fanatics they will consider only their narrow view and tend to treat dissenters with violence and aggression. They rule by fear and intimidation.
This is not what most Westerners would consider a good outcome.
However, if the majority wish to be ruled under that kind of regime then they should have the right to be. I do feel sorry for the minority though.
In this column Clive Bibby revives his theme that world affairs are racked with appeasement. Here he has based his argument on the lamentable situation in the God-forsaken country of Afghanistan. There’s no appeasement by President Biden in his decision to continue the path set by Trump to quit Afghanistan. This war was lost years ago. But the exit fiasco is on Biden who has grievous misreading of the ability, indeed, the will, of the Afghan army to maintain some kind of order.
The decision to occupy in the first place 20 years ago was that of George Bush, and to him goes the blame for this lamentable misadventure. But there’s a fair dose of retrospective wisdom here. Unlike his war on Iraq, that of Afghanistan was overwhelmingly approved at the time. While it was initiated by the instinct of revenge for 9/11, it at least had the nobleness of allowing the women and girls of that country something like the dignity and opportunity seen as fundamental in most of the rest of the developed world.
It's a giant leap indeed from this disastrous 20-year war to presupposing the response of the free world to the defense of Taiwan when China invades it, which Mr Bibby believes is only a matter of time. What will the attitude of America be in such an event, which will demand a “necessary show of strength”? That is, declare war on China – a war between the world’s two superpowers, and their allies, presumably. That would include us. Is this what he wants? Assumably so, given his condemnation of Chamberlain when in a parallel situation.
China has claimed the right to Taiwan since the revolution, 71 years ago, and hasn’t moved yet, thanks no doubt to the threat of war with America. Since then, China has become a great economic and military power, but over that time she has also emerged as the world’s greatest trading nation. Such trade would be disrupted in the event of war. (For America, too of course. It is also highly depended on trade for its prosperity, which was not the case in the 1940s.)
So perhaps Mr Bibby could nail his colours to the mast. In the event of his expected Chinese invasion of Taiwan, should the president declare war? Presumably yes, as anything else would be appeasement, surely. WWII was bad enough, but with the global population now three times what it was then, the suffering and destruction of a global war would be beyond words; mine anyway.
Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor asks (If China invades Taiwan) “should the (US) president declare was?”. I suggest that he should not: it would be too late. The whole point of military preparedness is to convince one’s potential foes that their effort is not worth the inevitable cost. Much like the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) policy of Cold War days. Maintenance of such a stance, to be credible, requires the preservation of Defence capability that is demonstrably up to the task. This has a high capital cost which is always vulnerable to predation from competing social demands. If a nation’s Defences are run down to the extent that they are impotent, such as New Zealand’s, a declaration of war against an invader is meaningless blather. The US strategy concerning Taiwan, to be effective, must revolve around convincing China that invasion is not worth the cost.
The west should never have gone into Afghanistan in the first place, a waste of western lives and a waste of money, the question now is are we obligated or morally bound to take refuges, the greens reckon we should take thousands, where do we house them we can't even house our own people,the west created this outcome by invading another mans country and this is the result.
Just remember Taiwan was taken over by Chiang Kai Sheks Nationalist army in 1949 after fleeing mainland china, in 1947 the nationalist army massacred between 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese,what white western boy would want to die for that country, if China invades let them have it, Taiwan is made up of mainland Chines anyway except for the truly indigenous Taiwanese who have just about disappeared along with there culture, we get sucked into these so called righteous invasions and wars to easily with no good outcome.
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