Afghanistan: It’s more Bush’s fault than Biden’s                                                                       Peter Burrows 8/22/21-  elburropete@gmail.com – https://wordpress.com/view/silvercityburro.com 

Nobody should be surprised that the Taliban have retaken control of Afghanistan. It was inevitable, regardless of who was in the White House. The spectacular incompetence of the Biden administration is acutely embarrassing, but that’s just the culmination of decades of embarrassing incompetence, bipartisan incompetence. 

Our Afgan defeat began when President George W. Bush, less than a week after the 9-11 attack, made his infamous “Islam is peace” speech at, of all places, the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. I was appalled that a President could be so ignorant about a religion with 1400 years of God-driven hatred toward Western civilization.  

Since then, I’ve learned that when it comes to Islam, our ignorance is “invincible,” as the late Bill Buckley would have said. The price we have paid for this invincible ignorance is incredible, and there is no end in sight. Many more Americans are going to die because of our abject failure to follow a 2500-year-old rule of warfare: If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.  

We do not “know the enemy.” To do so would mean knowing the enemy’s motivating ideology, which is his religion, Islam.  Sun Tzu, who wrote “The Art of War” in 500 BC, also wrote that war is deceit, something the founder of our enemy’s religion, Muhammad, also famously said.  

The Muslims delight in deceiving us, and they haven’t been subtle about it. It’s perhaps more accurate to say we are deceiving ourselves as we follow the dictates of political correctness.  This is something the enemy knows about us, and they hammer us with our stupidity all the time.  If you’re reading this and you think I am a racist Islamophobe, you prove my point.  

The planner of the 9-11 attack on the Twin Towers was Osama bin laden, who openly declared war on the U.S. in a 1996 fatwa, which is a religious ruling in Islam. He followed that with another fatwa in 1998 which he begins by quoting the Koran’s best-known verse: 

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)”;  

The “Book” is the Koran, and the quote is from Verse 9:5, known as “The Verse of the Sword.”  In my little essay, “How to read the Koran (and understand Islam)” I write that my standard question to defenders of Islam is to ask them if the Verse of the Sword has been abrogated. If you don’t understand the question, you should read the essay: https://silvercityburro.com/2020/10/26/how-to-read-the-koran-and-understand-islam/

It’s only 15 minutes or less, introduction to summary, after which you will know more about Islam than Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Pope Francis combined. Sadly, that is NOT a high bar. 

Bush’s responsibility for the Afgan mess began with his ignorant, politically correct, declaration that “Islam is peace,” and culminated in U.S. approval of Afghanistan’s new constitution, ratified with our approval on 1/26/2004, when Bush was still president. Article One of that constitution begins: Afghanistan shall be an Islamic Republic.  

Game over. 

Our advisors in Kabul probably thought they were acting like MacArthur in Tokyo when they were actually Chamberlain in Munich. From that moment on, there was no reason for us to stay. We were simply an occupying force of infidels, hated by most and tolerated by one side in a never-ending civil war. 

The Afgans were only obeying the Koran, a fact we should have known, but didn’t — and still don’t. For anybody who’s interested, I’ll post on my website an addendum to this article that details the Koranic foundation for an Islamic nation’s governance.  It’s also in “How to read the Koran,” Appendix Two. 

For another, and much better analysis, of the roots of our Afgan problems, I strongly recommend the following by John Guandolo, founder of Understanding the Threat, and one of America’s foremost Islamic experts. https://www.understandingthethreat.com/the-cost-of-not-knowing-the-enemy/                           

For those readers who need more convincing, I recommend Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad by Stephen Coughlin, available at Amazon.com. It is an incredible work of scholarship and, if I was Mao for a day, it would be required reading for every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and every member of Congress.                                                                                                          

Since that’s not going to happen, the best we can hope for is that someday we get a president who knows what Islam is all about. My favorite would be Allen West, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and ex-Congressman from Florida. He is now head of the Republican Party in Texas and may run for governor. I read his book, “Guardian of the Republic,” and was very impressed. 

It may be too late. Our defeat will embolden Iran to develop and use nuclear weapons. Hopefully, Israel will stop them. However, China may see our weakness as an opportunity to take over Taiwan, and who is going to stop THEM?   Joe Biden and our “woke” Generals? God help us.   

Addendum: 

The Pakistani Islamic scholar, Sayyid Mawudi, translated the Koran into Urdu, the language of Pakistan, an undertaking that saw his first volume published in 1950 and his sixth and last in 1973. His translation included extensive explanations of many of the verses, so much so that his work is considered one of the most authoritative Koranic exegeses ever written.  Here is Verse 4:59 from his translation and his explanation of what that verse means: 

V4:59: Believers! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger, and those vested with authority among you; and then if you were to dispute among yourselves about anything refer it to Allah and the Messenger.” 

Here is Mawdudi’s lengthy footnote: 

This verse is the cornerstone of the entire religious, social and political structure of Islam and the very first clause of the constitution of an Islamic state. It lays down the following principles as permanent guidelines:  

(1) In the Islamic order of life, God alone is the focus of loyalty and obedience. A Muslim is the servant of God before anything else. 

(2) Another basic principle of the Islamic order of life is obedience to the Prophet (peace be on him). 

(3) In the Islamic order of life the Muslims are further required to obey their fellow Muslims invested with authority (ulu al-amr). These include all those entrusted with directing Muslims in matters of common concern. Hence, persons “invested with authority” include intellectual and political leaders of the community, as well as administrative officials, judges of the courts, tribal chiefs and regional leaders. 

(4) In an Islamic order the injunctions of God and the way of the Prophet (peace be on him) constitute the basic law and paramount authority in all matters.  Whenever there is any dispute among Muslims or between the rulers and the ruled the matter should be referred to the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Muhammad’s life and sayings) and all concerned should faithfully accept the judgement that is arrived at. 

The Constitution of Afghanistan, ratified 1/26/2004, is certainly in compliance with Mawdudi’s interpretation of V4:59: Article One – Afghanistan shall be an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.  

There are five other references to Islam in the Afgan constitution, leaving no doubt that they took total advantage of our ignorance: 

Article Two – The sacred religion of Islam is the religion of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Followers of other faiths shall be free within the bounds of law in the exercise and performance of their religious rituals.  

Article Three – No law shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam in Afghanistan. 

Article Sixty-Three – Before assuming office, the President shall take, in accordance with special procedures set by law, the following oath of allegiance: “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, I swear by the name of God Almighty that I shall obey and protect the Holy religion of Islam — 

Article One Hundred-Nineteen – Members of the Supreme Court shall take the following oath of office in the presence of the President: “In the of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, I swear in the name of God Almighty to attain justice and righteousness in accordance with tenets of the Holy religion of Islam, provisions of this Constitution as well as other laws of Afghanistan, and to execute the judicial duty with utmost honesty, righteousness and impartiality.” 

Article One Hundred Forty-Nine – The principles of adherence to the tenets of the Holy religion of Islam as well as Islamic Republicanism shall not be amended.  

Don’t worry if a foreign company owns Public Service of New Mexico by Peter Burrows 8/15/21 –  elburopete@gmail.com, and https:silvercityburro.com 

Avangrid, a New England electric utility which is 82 percent owned by a Spanish company, has offered to purchase Public Service of New Mexico, PNM, for $4.3 billion, or roughly $50 per share.  The offer was overwhelmingly approved by the people who own PNM, the shareholders, last February. 

Public Regulation Commission (PRC) hearings are currently underway to determine if the merger is in the public interest. PRC approval is the final hurdle for the merger to go through, and, unsurprisingly, the “usual suspects” are objecting to the merger.    

The objections fall into two main categories, the first alleging that Avangrid and its parent company, Iberdrola, have a record of “unreliability, corruption and disrespect for the law.” The other type of objection argues that the merger “would allow a foreign entity to control the development and transmission of our energy resources, thereby exploiting our citizens and small businesses for profit.” 

That last was in a press release from “Our New Mexico,” an organization formed to “bring citizen voices into the discussion and debate around Avangrid’s proposed takeover of PNM.” I was struck by their blatant assumption that New Mexicans don’t realize that any and all “control” of energy “transmission and energy resources” is firmly in the hands of the PRC and will remain so, no matter who owns PNM. Ditto any “exploitation” for — GASP! — profit, something specifically controlled by the PRC. 

People who should know better are buying into this demagoguery, even some Republicans, one of whom took umbrage when I suggested that if she and her friends at Our New Mexico were so upset by foreign “control,” why don’t they pool their resources and make a competing offer?  In a similar vein, people who think Walmart doesn’t pay enough are free to start their own company and pay what they think is a fair wage. Easier to issue government dicta. 

Also leading the anti-merger charge is New Energy Economy, NEE, a Santa Fe non-profit whose stated mission is to replace all the fossil fuel and nuclear generated electricity used in New Mexico (and the world) with renewable energy. They, too, are concerned about both Avangrid/Iberdrola “misdeeds’ as well as “questions of foreign control and governance. “  

I’m fairly certain NEE knows that “foreign control” is a strawman argument, but I’m less certain that they know much about the fundamentals of utility grid management or how the equity markets work. They seem to think that Avangrid/Iberdrola should spend $4 billion to buy PNM and then turn its management over to a board of directors composed of only New Mexico residents, with 40% of the seats reserved for “independent” members, which probably means NEE and other know-nothings.   

Why, those horrid bastards at Avangrid/Iberdrola think the board should be controlled by people “with financial interests” in the company, I.e., by the people who paid for and own PNM. How retrograde is that?  

In spite of these objections, the merger is very likely to be approved by the PRC. The governor has voiced her support, as has the attorney general, as well as numerous environmental groups. If the PRC nixes the merger based on the concerns raised, especially the ridiculous contention that the PRC itself will somehow neglect to regulate Ivangrid, then I would expect the State of New Mexico to be sued, hopefully with NEE et al as codefendants. 

Before that happens, the governor will probably call upon the legislature to override the PRC. Remember, the PRC becomes a three-member appointed body next year, instead of the current elected five-member commission. The jury is out on whether that will be an improvement, but if the governor wants the merger to go through it certainly will, this year or next.