August 23, 2021   By Clifford D. May      Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

You don’t need to be a brilliant geopolitical strategist to understand that the United States should be the best friend – and the worst enemy – any nation could have. Following the events of recent days, the U.S. will be perceived differently: “harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”

Many politicians and diplomats share blame for this outcome, as do those deep thinkers who fancy themselves proponents of “responsible statecraft,” based on the dangerous fiction that “forever wars” end once Americans stop fighting them.

But since the buck stops in the Oval Office, history will most vividly remember the terrible decisions President Biden made in the months leading up to the 20th anniversary of the most catastrophic terrorist attacks ever on American soil.

The commander in chief had options. None were good. Least bad would have been to continue to frustrate the ambitions of the Taliban and al Qaeda, which also would have ensured that Afghans in Kabul and other cities would retain a measure of freedom and security. That would have required leaving a small residual force in Afghanistan, a force that would train, advise, and assist – not engage in direct ground combat.

(more…)

The Heritage Action for America, a partner organization of the Heritage Foundation, hosted a panel discussion on critical race theory (CRT) in Georgetown, Delaware, on July 29. Six speakers stressed the dangers of CRT and how it has penetrated American society. One speaker compared the similarities of CRT and China’s Cultural Revolution.

About 500 people attended the event in person, while thousands watched it via livestream.

At the beginning of the panel discussion, Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, talked about the history of CRT and what it’s all about. He said CRT, an offshoot of Critical Theory from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, is built upon Karl Marx’s ideas and has slowly and methodically worked its way into American society, infecting the education system, workplace, military, and everything in between. He added that CRT is destructive and advocates for the exact opposite of what it claims to be—treating individuals differently based on the color of their skin.

CRT adherents believe America is systemically racist, that racial oppression exists in every institution, and an individual is either an oppressor or oppressed based on the color of their skin. They reject the idea that America has strived, for more than two centuries, to fully live up to the founding creed that all men are created equal and should be treated so under the law.

Feels Like Communist China

Keynote speaker Xi Van Fleet told the audience that America is starting to feel like communist China during the Cultural Revolution—a sociopolitical movement that occurred between 1966 to 1976 under former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

“We have been seeing that America is going the wrong direction,” she said, in reference to CRT.

(more…)