“I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me. … My body was overwhelmed from the trauma of the blast. My abdomen had been ripped open, every inch of my exposed body except for my face took ball bearings and shrapnel,” said Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, 25, who choked up and spent several minutes trying to compose himself as he recounted the bombing at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021. Tyler is the Marine sergeant who was nearly killed in the deadly terrorist attack during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan gave powerful, emotional testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington D.C.
President Biden’s speech to the nation was that we are leaving behind a professionally trained Afghan Army that has the capacity to sustain long-term war gave a very weak message to the international audience. The same was repeated when the Iraq Army left their posts without fighting and ISIS reached the outskirts of Baghdad until it was stopped and pushed back by the U.S. Air support. American defense professionals suggest that the Afghan withdrawal was not properly planned by the Biden administration. They think that U.S. Air support should have been given to the Afghan Army and that Bagram Airfield was to be kept by the U.S. Forces as originally planned during President Trump’s tenure.
Senate majority leader and senior United States Senator from New York on Thursday called on Israel to hold new elections, saying he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way” and is an obstacle to peace in the region amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Netanyahu’s defiance shone through an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, three days after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – the highest-ranking Jewish American in the US government – said that a new Israeli government was needed to reset war strategy and that Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace. “It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there. That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own, and we’re not a banana republic,” Netanyahu said on “State of the Union.”
The problem with Israel and Palestine’s two-state solution is that both parties have not worked together at the grassroots level. Israel’s stance is that a portion of Gaza went independent and it carried a series of rockets and terrorist attacks from there. What will happen when a large portion of the West Bank will be independent? The future situation might be out of control for Israel. The Palestinian side wants not just only Gaza and the West Bank, they have a much larger claim of the territory.
Hamas’s promotion of Palestinian Nationalism in an Islamic context has made it accepted by the people of Gaza. In tribal and religious cultures of the Middle East, often people go with their own choice of leaders. Why Sunni people of Iraq support ISIS? Because they were furious about how Sunni Saddam Hussein was mistreated by the Shia administration. The leaked video in which different Iraqi Shia prison guards are insulting a captive Saddam Hussein went viral in Iraq and millions shared it on their cell phones. Then the U.S. Ambassador publically apologized to the Iraqi Shia population. The group of exiled Iraqis who went from America to Iraq and were given key positions in the Iraqi government were all Shias and they didn’t have any local ground-level knowledge because they were out of the country for a very long time. The Sunni people of Iraq saw all this as the imposition of the Shia regime and more Iranian influence in the country. In Washington D.C. lots of scholars have mentioned in their articles that Shia population is in majority in Iraq and we need to support the majority. However, if we look at the real numbers according to the statistics Iraqi Sunnis are never less almost same in population if Kurd population (100% Sunni) is included in the census. A similar case is in Afghanistan too. Why do local people support the Taliban? Afghans don’t want outside rulers in their country. They have a long history of keeping foreign troops out of their country. Also, the Taliban carried a similar religious clerical ideology similar to the Iranian regime in Tehran. The only difference is that the Taliban regime is Sunni and the Iranian regime is Shia.
The main United Nations aid agency operating in Gaza has said that famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. According to a report on Monday that warned escalation of the war could push half of Gaza’s total population to the brink of starvation.
President Trump during his Presidency offered a peace plan for Israel and Palestine. In roughly 50 pages, the administration’s political strategy — masterminded by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner — aims to solve the intractable problems that have stymied both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades. Trump signed the Presidential Proclamation, and also ordered the relocation of the American diplomatic mission to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, constituting what is now the Embassy of the United States in Jerusalem, which was established on the grounds of the former Consulate General of the United States in Jerusalem. Twenty-five percent of Christians living in United States call themselves “Evangelical Protestants”. All are strong Trump supporters. One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return. Well the Armageddon could happen in next few seconds or it might not start in next hundred years. Trump’s peace plan was not appreciated by conservative researchers and not even close U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or the U.A.E even discussed this because it seems to be a hundred percent tilted towards Israel. The only U.S. President who was close enough to reach peace between Palestine and Israel was Bill Clinton. It is a great tragedy that 2000 Camp David Summit ended without an agreement between Israel and Palestine.
America got stakes in the Middle East. As the war in Gaza is extending, it is not a stable situation for peace in the region. More bloodshed provokes more violence. Civilian deaths in Gaza have once again increased the hate for Israel in the region. The Iranian regime needed the Palestine conflict to strengthen its religious ideology and give a message to the Muslim world that Iran is the only country capable of freeing the Palestinian people. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has warned that Israel’s war in Gaza could spread well beyond the Middle East, saying it was wrong that innocent women, children and old people in the Palestinian enclave are being punished for other people’s crimes. Russia and China on Friday vetoed a US-led draft resolution at the Security Council on a ceasefire in Gaza, with Moscow accusing Washington of a “hypocritical spectacle” that does not pressure Israel. Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, said that the United States was doing nothing to rein in Israel, mocking Washington for speaking of a ceasefire after “Gaza has been virtually wiped off the face of the Earth.” “The American product is exceedingly politicized, with the sole purpose being to play to voters and throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a ceasefire in Gaza,” he said.
The US ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called the Russian and Chinese vetoes “not just cynical” but also “petty.” “Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States,” she said. “Let’s be honest – for all the fiery rhetoric, we all know that Russia and China are not doing anything diplomatically to advance a lasting peace or to meaningfully contribute to the humanitarian response effort,” she said.
The threat to re-election is illustrated most sharply in the battleground state of Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab-Americans who are similarly appalled, with many unequivocal that they will not vote for Biden, even if that risks the return of Trump – with all that implies for the US and the world. That number is more than enough to tip the state from Democrat to Republican in November. “If the election were held tomorrow, I think Biden would lose Michigan,” veteran Republican strategist Mike Murphy told me on the Unholy podcast this week. For Biden, “this is a pain point”.
Pak Republican Council 