Wednesday, September 8, 2021

The forever war created the slumbering giant

 Clifford D. May globetrotted over the twenty years of advice he has been giving the American government regarding what he saw as the perfect opportunity to drag America into a forever war between Christianity and Islam.

 

It is a war he expected will end, if it did, with the Jews prevailing over the two exhausted combatants without even joining the fight, and then taking ownership of the entire planet as promised in the ancient Jewish mythologies.

 

Clifford May did the trotting in an article he wrote under the title: “After twenty 9/11 anniversaries, the sleeping giant nods off again,” and had it published on September 7, 2021 in The Washington Times.

 

You only get a sense of the purpose for which Clifford May wrote this article at the end of it when you encounter this sentence: “We’re back to Sept. 10, 2021, except that both our enemies and our allies are now watching the sleeping giant return to his slumbers. Expect serious repercussions to follow”.

 

These are words of lamentations by which the author acknowledges defeat, disappointment and dread of the consequences he now predicts will follow the earlier predictions that anticipated glorious victories but failed to materialize.

 

Reading the account of the evolving opinions as expressed by the people whom Clifford May came into contact with through the twenty years of obsession he’s had about this matter, will tell you why America, that went to kick Arab and Muslim asses, got its own ass kicked instead.

 

Here is what Clifford May says happened on the first anniversary (2002) of the 9/11 attack: Having been a guest on a radio program with Bianca Jagger and Terry Waite, he recorded that both failed to express sympathy for the suffering that Americans endured as a result of the attack. Worse, Ms. Jagger accused America of killing innocent Afghans without paying reparations to their families.

 

A year later (2003), John Kerry who was running to be President of the United States called the attack on the World Trade Center “our generation’s Pearl Harbor.” This is when Clifford May wondered if America’s enemies had awakened a sleeping giant and motivated him to engage in a war against the perpetrators “for the duration,” that might well prove to be forever.

 

By the third anniversary (2004), Clifford May was beginning to detect a marked shift in the mood of the media if not the public, concerning the sharing of culpabilities in a conflict that was complex and given the name “War on Terror.” What horrified and chagrined Clifford May was seeing the editors at Reuters asserting that one man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter.

 

May skipped 2005 and went on to describe the event that cheered him in (2006). It was the announcement that the administration of W. Bush had decided to kill or capture all terrorists, deny them safe haven and prevent them from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

 

In (2007) Clifford May observed that General David Petraeus was given an additional 28,000 troops to go after al Qaeda in Iraq in the hope that this will change the course of the war. Petraeus used the troops to also challenge the Iranian-backed Shia militias that were gaining power in Iraq.

 

May skipped 2008 and went on to describe what he did in (2009). He says he expressed support for President Obama’s decision to send an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan. He also recalls that many in America, both on the right and the left, were arguing for ending the “forever war” and bringing the troops home.

 

Clifford May goes on to say that in (2010) he challenged President Obama’s contention that open-ended war does not serve America’s interest. He proposed that if the President was not going to commit the resources to avoid being defeated by the enemy, he will have to commit to fighting a long and low intensity war so as to prevent the enemy from triumphing over America. And that meant commit to stay and fight in Afghanistan for the long haul.

 

Clifford May skipped 2011 and went on to (2012), a year when Ansar al-Sharia killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. He says he lamented the absence of serious discussions on television and the editorial pages of newspapers about the belief system of the Muslim enemy, what goals he sought to achieve, and what strategies he was pursuing.

 

Clifford May skipped 6 more years, and went on to describe what he said in (2019). It was that President Donald Trump was dialoging with the Taliban and had invited their leaders to Camp David.

 

In (2020) Clifford May went on to say that according to a testimony to Congress by a member of his own FDD outfit, al Qaeda branches had metastasized throughout the globe but did not attack any Western country. And so, Clifford May posited that this was due to the fact that the US and other countries took the fight to them.

 

But nowhere during those twenty years of punditry on the subject, do you see Clifford May or anyone like him for that matter, suggest that something may go contrary to plan, and that it would be wise to devise a plan B to respond effectively to the situation.

 

And nowhere during those twenty years do you see a suggestion that a new leader may rise among the Taliban or al Qaeda or any of the other groups, and lead a Che Guevara kind of movement aimed at ousting the Americans and their allies from Afghanistan.

 

But to his deep disappointment, says Clifford May, President Trump hammered a deal with the Taliban for reasons that were not divulged to the public; a deal to get out of Afghanistan that changed everything in the eyes of Clifford May.

 

Instead of telling the truth, however, which was that (1) the experts in the field saw the Taliban prepare for a Tet Offensive style assault, to come in the Spring, on the American troops, and that (2) the same experts judged that the Afghan army will join the Taliban rather than fight it — Clifford May lamented that the sleeping giant has returned to his slumbers, and repercussions will follow.

 

There was no lesson to learn during 20 years of war. And there was no lesson to learn after the defeat.

 

No wonder America is slumbering into irrelevance.