The Lie That Latinos Are 'Living in Fear' After El Paso Shooting

The New York Times had this up yesterday:

“It’s quite a transition from being invisible to being visible in a lethal way. It’s something new to my community. We are used to the basic darkness of racism, not this.” https://t.co/Dap8EGaIWe

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) August 7, 2019

And at the Los Angeles Times from earlier as well:

For Latinos, the El Paso slaughter & its bigoted motive have marked a devastating new low in the Trump era. Stay tuned for coverage of the candidates later today. /4 https://t.co/wFv1f4IXO6

— Michael Finnegan (@finneganLAT) August 5, 2019

Yet, see this morning's piece at LAT, "Migrants say El Paso shooting won’t deter them from seeking new lives in the U.S.":

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico —  The massacre at an El Paso Walmart store on Saturday hasn’t diminished Silvia Ivania’s desire to move to the United States — even if the killer of 22 people was apparently motivated by hatred of Latino immigrants.

“That’s something that can happen anywhere,” said Ivania, 37, a citizen of Honduras, speaking at the Good Samaritan migrant shelter in this border city across the Rio Grande from El Paso. “The violence in Honduras is a lot worse than in the United States.”

She and several other migrants interviewed Tuesday at the shelter — temporary home to about 100, mostly Central Americans, but including U.S.-bound Cubans, Africans and others — agreed that the mass killing would not dissuade them.

“If anything, I want to go to the United States even more than before,” said Danieska Del Toro, 34, from Havana. “They arrested the guy, right? Maybe he was crazy. In Cuba we have violence too, even if the regime says there is none.”


Along the nearby Rio Grande, which separates the U.S. and Mexico, scattered groups of migrants could be seen Tuesday scampering across the river — which, at the moment, has been reduced to a few scattered puddles amid a narrow ribbon of green, and easy to traverse on foot. Its shallow depths seem to mock signs warning people of the danger of drowning.

At midday, amid 100-degree-plus temperatures, about 20 people — some holding their children’s hands — surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol vans waiting on the other side. As is usually the case, the migrants didn’t attempt to evade U.S. immigration authorities, but sought them out.

Mexican National Guard troops posted on the south side said they urged border crossers not to proceed, but didn’t prevent their passage.

“That’s their decision; we just tell them of the risks,” said one Mexican National Guard officer, who declined to be named because she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Tucker Carlson: White Supremacy is a 'Hoax' (VIDEO)

Well, we do have some white supremacists. But these are not conservatives and Republicans. They're Nazis, and leftists will use the few examples of genuinely evil people to destroy the Trump administration an elect a Democrat-controlled national government in 2020. That's what this is really all about. It's politics. Neither of the suspects in this week's shooting were Strormfront KKK Nazis calling for mass genocide. El Paso's shooter was an environmental leftist who hated immigrants. And the Dayton shooter was a far-left Elizabeth Warren supporter. But the media's got its meme and they're going with it.

Here's Tucker from last night:



Via the leftist Daily Beast, "Tucker Carlson: White Supremacy Is a ‘Hoax’ and ‘Not a Real Problem in America’."

Joaquin Castro Doxxing Trump-Supporting Constituents (VIDEO)

It's bad. I mean think about it: This is a Member of Congress, posting information to his personal Twitter page, calling for the open harassment of American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. Everybody gives money. It's public information so as to prevent campaign finance violations. It's not public to shame and threaten people for participating in the political process. Weaponizing information like this only serves to suppress speech and demonize political opponents. You are literally putting a target on the back of your political opponents. This is where we are in this country. Who's really dividing this country?

See David Harsanyi, at the Federalist, "Joaquin Castro’s Doxxing of Voters is Un-American."

Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump — the owner of ⁦@BillMillerBarBQ⁩, owner of the ⁦@HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc⁩.

Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’ pic.twitter.com/YT85IBF19u

— Joaquin Castro (@Castro4Congress) August 6, 2019

MSNBC's Willie Geist to Joaquin Castro after he doxxed @realDonaldTrump supporters:

"These people are undoubtedly are already being harassed ... they will be because you put their names in public."

Castro later responds: "I didn't create the graphic."

Give me a break Castro. pic.twitter.com/XgBw8fkevA

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 7, 2019

Trump Sets the Terms; Democrats Are Clueless

At NYT, FWIW, "Trump Sets the Terms on Racial Division. Do Democrats Know What to Do?":

Dems condemn Trump's actions as racist and refocus debate on "kitchen table" issues. But more voices now tell 2020ers that's not enough - they need to speak directly to their racial vision to combat Trump's white ID ptx. This is the kitchen table, they sayhttps://t.co/aLpfjIGuAd

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) July 21, 2019

GREENVILLE, N.C. — President Trump waited for 13 seconds, as the chants from the crowd of thousands grew louder.

“Send her home!” the North Carolina audience yelled, mimicking Mr. Trump’s recent tweet attacking a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman.

“Treason!” one man screamed.

“Traitor!” shouted another.

The moment Wednesday night, a microcosm of the angry tribalism that often emanates from Mr. Trump’s campaign rallies, immediately caused ripple effects for the president and his party. Some Republican members of Congress denounced the chant as racist and xenophobic. Mr. Trump tepidly disavowed his supporters’ words, only to praise them the following day. For Democrats, especially the candidates seeking to defeat Mr. Trump, the impact of the rally was clear: This will be a general election focused on race, identity and Mr. Trump’s brand of white grievance politics.

Until this past week, the 2020 field has generally tried to ignore the president’s incendiary language — talking about it, the thinking goes, only gives him more power. Instead, candidates have preferred to discuss policies, making the case for themselves by advocating changes in the criminal justice system or maternal health, or ways to eliminate the racial wealth gap.

Now some feel an urgency to take a different approach.

“This election will be a referendum, not on Donald Trump, but a referendum on who we are and who we must be to each other,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said. “But this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Senator Kamala Harris of California, the most viable woman of color to run for president, said that the scenes from Mr. Trump’s rally, while personally upsetting, were not surprising.

“When we’re on that stage together in the general, I know he’ll try to pull the same thing with me,” Ms. Harris said. “But I’m fully prepared for that. I’m up for it. Because he is small. He is wrong. He is a bully.”

And at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Friday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told supporters that Mr. Trump is “tearing at the social fabric of this country.”

“This is not hyperbole,” Mr. Biden said. “The fact of the matter is this president is more George Wallace than George Washington.”

But even as Democratic candidates universally denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, they did not agree on how the eventual presidential nominee should combat the racial division embedded in those words. Do you, on the campaign trail, talk directly about the president’s inflammatory language, racism and discrimination in this country? Or do you talk about jobs and the economy?

Democratic Party leaders, particularly establishment figures with ties to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, have largely followed a strategy of careful avoidance: responding to the president’s most inflammatory moments, while attempting to redirect the political debate to what is often described as “kitchen table” issues, such as health care and wages.

However, an increasingly vocal group of Democratic grass-roots organizers and pollsters believe that Mr. Trump’s words and legislative actions amount to a cohesive playbook of white identity politics, meant to court white voters of all economic tiers around the idea that their fates are linked, and are under threat by an increasingly diversifying America. They argue that racism and the public performance of it is a “kitchen table” issue for many voters — black and white — that must be dealt with head-on.

“Just as much time and resources as the nominee spends on targeting and messaging around health care and wages and climate change, they should spend an equal amount of resources around an alternative racial vision for the country,” said Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who worked with Mr. Obama. “This isn’t a goddamn distraction.”

Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director of the progressive group Center for Popular Democracy, said Democrats must embrace this moment as an opportunity.

“You have to be able to speak powerfully about our willingness to belong together,” Ms. Archila said. “Don’t just condemn the racism and the language but use it as an opportunity to argue for a vision of the country in which we can all be included.”

To some progressives, the stakes are not just winning in 2020...

Still more.

House Democrats Prepare for Civil War

Grab the popcorn.

At Instapundit, "BLUE ON BLUE: House Democrats Prepare for Civil War as Challengers Plot Primary Battles: Several entrenched New York representatives will face progressive hopefuls seeking to replicate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s success."

Also linked, "Gramscian Damage."

PC is like Jonestown on a civilizational scale. There's enormous social pressure to drink tne Kool Aid. Future archaeologists will be unable to explain what they find.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) July 20, 2019

Ilhan Omar: 'I'm Certainly Not Anti-Semitic' (CARTOON)

Seen on Twitter:

.@IlhanOmar claims she isn't #antisemitic but her statements and actions speak louder. In her short tenure as Congresswoman, she's alienated many of her Somali voters, her Democratic colleagues, and introduced a pro-BDS bill - a movement established and infiltrated by terrorists pic.twitter.com/zKIV2AR8eI

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) July 19, 2019

The Dems' 'Ultimate Nightmare Scenario'

I love this, at Instapundit, "HEH: The Democrats’ ‘Ultimate Nightmare Scenario’: Trump Loses By 5 Million Votes…. And Still Wins Re-Election."

Click through to read the whole thing.

Gayle King Interviews 'The Squad' (VIDEO)

Derek Hunter, at Town Hall, calls them "The Suicide Squad," for obvious reasons.

These four on their own will get Trump reelected in 2020.

Grab the popcorn.

At CBS This Morning:

Trump Has the Moral High Ground

From David P. Goldman, at Pajamas, "President Trump Has the Moral High Ground Against the Democrats":

ABSOLUTE MUST READ> President Trump Has the Moral High Ground Against the Democrats https://t.co/jljJa2rxkZ #Spengler via @pjmedia_com

— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) July 17, 2019

I'm tired of hearing conservative friends apologize for President Trump's "go back to where you came from" tweets about the likes of Ilhan Omar. The president has the moral high ground, and the weasel war dance of the mainstream media shouldn't distract us from this fact.

Even his worst enemies (e.g. ex-conservative David Frum) concede that Trump's attacks on the anti-American extremists in the Democratic Party are smart politics. As Tucker Carlson observed in his June 16 keynote at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, a new Axios poll gives the Jew-baiting Somali an approval rating of 9%: "Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — another member of The Squad — was recognized by 53% of the voters; 9% (not a typo) had a favorable view." Not a typo, indeed. When is the last time any American politican had a 9% approval rating? Americans really detest this wretched character, and with good reason. It has nothing to do with race, but with rhetoric that breaks the boundaries of acceptable political discourse, America-hating and Jew-baiting.

But this isn't about trolling the Democrats. It's about principle. President Trump has a gift for asking the obvious questions that the elites avoid, for example: What idiot let Omar into the United States in the first place? Come to think of it, why should we admit immigrants who hate us and hate everything we stand for? I believe that new Americans are as good as old Americans, and sometimes better, if they become Americans with a passion for our principles and love for what we represent. But we are under no obligation to open our national home to our enemies. The liberal globalist idea that we need to bow, scrape and apologize to every foreigner with a grudge against us rankles the American people. That inanity appeals to a few Americans--maybe about 9%, judging from the Axios poll. The rest of us have had it up to here.

Where were our holier-than-thou Democrats when the detestable Ilhan Omar dismissed the murder of thousands of Americans on 9/11 with a wink and a nod and the words, "Some people did something"? We know where they were then Omar claimed that Jews buy the votes of congressmen with cash ("It's the Benjamins, baby"). The Democratic-controlled House passed a limp-noodle resolution deploring anti-Semitism along with hostility to Muslims after 9-11 -- in response to overtly racist statements by Omar. That's right -- racist. Mind if I say it again? Rep. Ilhan Omar is a racist, because anti-Semitism is a species of racism. The false allegation that Jews buy pro-Israel votes with money is an old racist caricature. No-one in the Democratic leadership has the honesty to denounce Omar as a racist.

President Trump's remarks had NOTHING whatever to do about race. He attacked America haters. The color of their skin is irrelevant. By attacking him as a racist, the Democratic leadership has debased the concept of racism. Racism is a wicked and terrible thing. People should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Race hatred and race prejudice are detestable. But the racist here is NOT the president of the United States, but rather Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Omar's racism has consequences. Synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego were the victims of recent mass shootings. Physical assaults against Jews are routine in parts of New York City. Omar's racist rabble-rousing puts lives in danger. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews comprised 58% of all hate crimes in the United States during 2018, although Jews are about 1% of the U.S. population. Anti-Semitic lies of the sort that Omar propounds are an incitement to murder and mayhem. The Democrats refuse to discipline their own rogue elements. Someone had to call them out, and President Trump did...

Keep reading.

The Nightmare of an America Ruled by #AOC

From Kurt Schlichter, at Town Hall, "The Nightmare of an America Ruled by AOC and Her Socialist Pals":

The future, if you let it be the future ...

You don’t have to surrender like some 🛳🛳🛳sissy...

My new @Townhallcom column is a warning, though a hilarious one...🤷🏼‍♂️🔥🇺🇸https://t.co/3qSEd9KRVt

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) July 18, 2019

It’s hard to take braying morons like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Terrorist Cheerleader Twins seriously, but maybe we should. After all, these aspiring dictatorettes are the heart, soul, and perpetually open mouth of today’s Democrat Party. We kind of assume they are jokes because, well, they are jokes, but history teaches that the socialist future they advocate is no laughing matter. They are now setting the agenda for one of America’s two great political parties. What would happen if they somehow took power?

Not so funny anymore, huh?

Keep reading.

'Send Her Back!' President Donald Trump Rallies Supporters at North Carolina Campaign Event (VIDEO)

I watched it.

It was feakin' amazing. What a speech. Trump was cussing!

Beautiful.

Folks don't like the "send her back" chant, but who cares? Trump's steamrolling the Dems, and it's glorious, gawd!

The left is in full meltdown mode, at HuffPo, for example, at Memeorandum, "A Fascist Trump Rally In Greenville."

And at USA Today, "Donald Trump blames supporters for 'send her back' taunts against black lawmaker."

And LAT, "Trump seeks to disavow ‘send her back’ chant at his rally":

WASHINGTON —  The morning after chants of “Send her back” rang across one of his campaign rallies, President Trump sought to disavow it, insisting that he “was not happy with it.”
Trump made no effort to stop the chants during his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night. Instead, he paused during the shouting and looked on for several seconds, appearing to show approval. The crowd broke into the chants of “Send her back” as Trump began cataloging grievances against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“I was not happy with it — I disagree with it,” Trump told reporters during a photo session in the Oval Office on Thursday morning.

His disavowal of the chants came after a growing number of Republican congressional leaders criticized it but sought to put distance between the president and the racist chants.

“Those chants have no place in our party or our country,”House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield told reporters.

Later, at a news conference, McCarthy avoided repeating his criticism and defended Trump, saying that “the president did not join in” the chanting. “The president moved on.”

Pressed on whether Trump should have admonished the crowd to stop, McCarthy said the question was unfair.

“You want to dislike the president so much, you want to try to hold him accountable for something in a big audience,” he said. “I think that’s an unfair position.”

The head of the Republican congressional campaign committee, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, was among Republican congressional leaders who criticized the chant.

“There’s no place for that kind of talk,” he said at a breakfast for reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

The shouts at the rally carried obvious echoes of Trump’s favorite 2016 chant, “Lock her up,” which broke its own norms by calling for the incarceration of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton. That chant became a hallmark of Trump rallies even long after he had defeated Clinton.

Omar is one of four women of color in the so-called “squad” of progressive members of Congress whom Trump attacked earlier this week, suggesting that they should “go back” to “the crime infested places from which they came.” The others are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

All four are American. Three were born in the United States; Omar was born in Somalia.

The racist tweet prompted the House to pass a resolution of condemnation on Tuesday, mostly along party lines. Four Republicans and an independent joined the chamber’s Democrats in condemning Trump’s words. The president has only reiterated his attacks, and his comments at Wednesday’s rally confirmed expectations that he plans to use the clash with the women to drive a hard racial wedge as he campaigns for reelection in 2020...

Identity Politics, Grievance, and the #Dems Who Hate America (VIDEO)

From Rich Lowry, at the New York Post, "Woke assimilation: Teaching our politicians to hate America":

Beto O’Rourke — the losing Texas candidate for the US Senate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate — had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hellhole.

The former congressman told a roundtable of refugees and immigrants in Nashville last week: “This country was founded on white supremacy. And every single structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression.”

Just in case the newcomers were inclined to believe that they had escaped to the greatest country on Earth — an open, dynamic, generous society that, whatever their struggles now, will afford them opportunities unimaginable back home — Beto was there to tell them of all its sins.

He had made himself into an instrument of woke assimilation.

This is the backdrop of the controversy over Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born left-wing member of Congress whom President Trump urged, in particularly noxious tweets, to return to her native country and fix it before presuming to tell us what to do.

It’s a mistake, though, to think that Omar is anything other than on her way to total assimilation, only on the terms set out by Beto O’Rourke...

More.

And at Hot Air, "Beto O’Rourke Addresses Immigrants and Refugees — By Telling Them America Was Founded on White Supremacy."

Radical Democrats Are in Charge (VIDEO)

It's Hannity, on Fox:

Islamic Jihad is World's Greatest Threat

Spectacular piece, from David Harsanyi, at the Federalist.

Read it all at the click-through:

Islamic Terrorism Remains The World's Greatest Threat To Peace https://t.co/8FCz4pbPDM

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) April 23, 2019

Åsne Seierstad, Two Sisters

Available April 3rd, at Amazon, Åsne Seierstad, Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad.

Young Punk Cracks Egg on Head of Australia Senator Fraser Anning

This is all stupid, I'll tell you.

But, the kid deserves a beating. You don't assault someone without expecting to be taken down.

At Chicks on the Right, "VIDEO: Controversial Australian Senator Slaps Teen Across the Face After Stupid Prank Gone Wrong."

Actually, the prank didn't "go wrong." It went exactly as planned, which included the young punk using his smart for to capture the attack on video and perhaps later create a viral video.

Claire Lehman's supposed to some hip conservative intellectual of the dark web, or something. She's a pansy-assed bleeding heart, if her tweets over this incident are any clue.

Apparently this boy seen here being punched in the face by a sitting member of Parliament was then wrestled to the ground by Anning's thugs & lost consciousness. I have never felt more ashamed of being Australian. https://t.co/ZDo8mOmdgv

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

I don't care if the kid egged him on the back of the head. He's a KID. It's an EGG.

FFS.

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

Anyway defending Anning's response can fuck right off.

This is what they did to a CHILD.https://t.co/X9ky9YdvAH

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

He shouldn’t assault other humans, regardless of political differences. They’ll hit you back. And he was looking for a Facebook post, the way he was recording it with his phone. So I’ve fucked myself right off apparently, sorry! You’d file charges for assault, be honest. Come on.

— AMERICAN POWER!! (@_Pax_Americana_) March 16, 2019

New Zealand Christchurch Mosque Massacre (VIDEO)

I'm numb to this stuff by now.

This massacre of course is the perfect example of our polarized times, and especially so since the perp is a white nationalist. (And it must be said, but there'd be no focus on exterminationist ideologies had this been another mass jihad terrorist attack; see Robert Spencer's entry this morning, for example.)

In any case, I fully endorse the condemnations and sympathy that have been flooding out following the massacre. I'm especially heartened by the genuine good will shown by conservatives, especially since it's gonna be people on the American right who'll be demonized as fundamentally guilty for the acts of this lone extremist.

More on this throughout the day, but see the New Zealand Herald, "Christchurch mosque massacre: 49 confirmed dead in shootings; four arrested - three men, one woman."

And at Memeorandum, via Bellingcat, "Shitposting, Inspirational Terrorism, and the Christchurch Mosque Massacre."

Here's the obligatory leftist take blaming the alleged "right-wing media" for enabling "right-wing terrorism," which is somehow the world's "number one terrorist threat" (not). At Sydney Morning Herald, "Broken white men and the racist media that fuels their terrorism."

And at CNN:

After Five Failed Attempts to Escape Islamic State, This Yazidi Woman Tried One Last Time

At the Washington Post, "After five failed attempts to escape ISIS slavery, she tried one last time":

After five failed attempts to escape ISIS slavery, this Yazidi woman tried one last time: The details in this story are so horrific they are hard to read, but thank you @leloveluck for telling her important story. https://t.co/Y67iaE9rVq pic.twitter.com/uPspM02LRF

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 25, 2019

AMUDA, Syria — The walk to freedom lasted 53 hours, and the little boy cried all the way. It wasn’t their first escape attempt — she’d tried five times before to flee the Islamic State — but they would be shot on the spot if the militants caught them now.

They passed corpses in the darkness, and when exhaustion overwhelmed them, they huddled together and slept on the dusty path. Faryal whispered reassurances to her 5-year-old son, telling him that his grandparents were waiting and that, after four years as prisoners of the Islamic State, they were finally going home. He wouldn’t believe her.

“He was terrified,” she said, recounting their escape this month. “I held his hand and we just kept walking.”

As members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, a largely Kurdish-speaking religious group, the pair had escaped what the United Nations has called a genocide. Islamic State militants kidnapped thousands of Yazidis on a single day in August 2014, massacring the men and dumping them in mass graves, and forcing the women into sexual slavery.

During her captivity, Faryal said she had six different owners, at times being passed on when a fighter wanted a new sexual partner or simply to settle a debt. “Monsters who treated us like animals,” is how she described them.

The atrocities committed against the Yazidis had initially prompted the United States to launch airstrikes against the militants and begin a military campaign to roll back the Islamic State’s caliphate that now, four years later, could end within days. U.S.-backed forces have the last Islamic State holdouts surrounded in the eastern Syrian hamlet of Baghouz.

In photographs, taken by aid workers on the night of her escape, a male companion hides his face but Faryal looks straight out at the camera. Her hazel eyes are fixed in a quiet stare. Her son’s face is wet with tears, and he’s sobbing. “I can’t put into words how I was feeling at that moment,” she said. “All I could think was: ‘Please, take me away from here.’ ”

Faryal, 20, told her story last week in the northern Syrian town of Amuda after being transferred there by the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces that rescued them. Throughout the interview, she kept a watchful eye on Hoshyar, her son, pulling him close as he cried and then trying, without success, to make him laugh. Details of her account were corroborated by members of her family in northern Iraq and through a team of Yazidi activists that had communicated with her secretly for months before the escape in attempts to smuggle her to safety.

Young child brutalized

The day before Faryal’s life changed forever in 2014 had dawned like any other in the Iraqi village of Tel Banat. She puttered around the house looking after her infant son Hoshyar, she recalled. By midday, the sun was roasting, and although rumors had swirled for weeks that Islamic State forces were drawing closer, few in Tel Banat were aware of the coming storm.

The Islamist militants arrived at dusk.

“We couldn’t run fast enough,” Faryal remembered, describing how she and 10 members of her extended family had piled into a car and joined an epic exodus. Yazidi towns and villages around Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq emptied within hours as more than 100,000 people fled to higher ground. Faryal and her husband, Hashem, made it only a few miles before militants blocked their path.

Yazidis have long faced persecution from more powerful religious groups for their beliefs, in part because of a false but commonly-held impression that they worship the sun, or the devil. There are fewer than 1 million Yazidis worldwide, and according to the United Nations, the Islamic State had intended to entirely wipe out those within their reach.

Yazidi men and boys who had reached puberty were separated from the women and other children and often shot dead at roadsides. Women were bused to temporary holding sites and then sold to Islamic State fighters at slave markets.

Islamic State clerics had decided that having slaves was religiously sanctioned, institutionalizing sexual violence across their caliphate. Women have reported being tied to beds during daily assaults. They were sold from man to man. Gang rape was common.

Many women and girls committed suicide in the opening months of captivity, according to Yazidi rights groups. Others harmed themselves to appear less appealing to fighters who might consider buying them.

Faryal recalled that an Islamic State fighter who was Iraqi and called himself Abu Kattab was her worst abuser. Hoshyar was abused, too, Faryal said. Abu Kattab beat him so badly there were hand prints on his face. Another had forced the boy’s arm onto a hot plate.

“He was so small, but for some reason the fighters hated him,” Faryal said. “I could never explain to him why.”

As the boy sat beside his mother last week, his eyes moved slowly from side to side as if scanning the room for threats. His blond hair was cut in jagged chunks. He did not speak and he did not smile...

More.

Syria Withdrawal and Push for Border Wall Demonstrate Trump's 'America First' Worldview

Leftist media outlets have been slobbering all over themselves the last 24 hours, with a concatenation of news events they hope will damage the White House.

Actually, a lot of this is good news. The Mattis resignation isn't out of the ordinary at all. The economy's actually strong and markets are betting on the future, especially Federal Reserve moves that could dampen growth. Fact is, final 3rd quarter numbers show the economy humming along at 3.5 percent growth. Travel numbers for the season are at record numbers and it should be a booming Christmas shopping season.

For the leftist establishment take on Mattis see NYT, via Memeorandum, "Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Resigns, Rebuking Trump's Worldview."

And for the America First viewpoint, make sure you're following Diana West on Twitter:

There is nothing to win in the Islamic world and everything to lose at home. https://t.co/398cEasuM7

— Diana West (@diana_west_) December 21, 2018

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria and build a border wall instead marks a key moment for his 'America first' view":

Trump's decision to withdraw from #Syria and build a border wall instead marks a key moment for his '#AmericaFirst' view: #ThankYouTrump #SyriaWithdrawal https://t.co/15SlZSdHwM @diana_west_

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 21, 2018

President Trump, in a pair of tweets Wednesday summarizing his worldview, justified his decision to order American troops withdrawn from Syria while promising that the military would instead put resources into building the wall he’s long espoused along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump tweeted, shortly before his press secretary announced that “we have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign.”

That declaration from Trump came shortly after another Twitter missive in which he declared that “because of the tremendous dangers at the Border, including large scale criminal and drug inflow, the United States Military will build the Wall!”

The joint tweets offered perhaps the clearest distillation to date of Trump’s “America first” policy: a simple and abrupt vow to disengage from one of the world’s most nettlesome conflicts, with a potentially premature declaration of victory over the militants of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, coupled with an unlikely promise that the world’s most sophisticated fighting force would be deployed to build a literal fortification around the homeland.

The order to withdraw the roughly 2,000 troops currently in Syria provided the latest example of how Trump’s instinct to turn inward, whatever the risk and costs to the United States’ influence and reputation abroad, may clash with the views of the generals and foreign policy experts who serve inside and outside his administration.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, for example, a retired four-star general who once commanded American forces in the Middle East, was pushed aside by President Obama for advocating more forceful engagement in the region. Pentagon officials over the last two years have repeatedly clashed with Trump’s desires to limit the kind of muscular U.S. role in the Mideast that Mattis has advocated in the past.

Trump’s announcement raised fears among national security professionals that he might follow the Syria decision with a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, something he has long wanted to do.

Either exit involves a strategic gamble by Trump and could also cost the president politically if Islamic State violence resurges or the region destabilizes during the 2020 election campaign.

“It is a major blunder,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “If it isn’t reversed, it will haunt this administration and America for years to come.”

As is often the case, many officials worked Wednesday to mitigate the immediate impacts of Trump’s declaration, by slowing the withdrawal timeline and following his instructions only approximately. Others who have grown accustomed to Trump’s splashy promises and the fluidity of his decision-making cautioned that Wednesday’s announcement may not come immediately to fruition or could be tempered by the time the military implements it.

Trump’s about-face came only weeks after some of his own advisors said U.S. troops would remain in Syria until Iran, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, agreed to remove its own troops from the country. That expanded mission appeared to reflect the wishes of anti-Iran hard-liners, including national security advisor John Bolton, rather than Trump’s views.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity put the matter bluntly. Asked about the cascade of recent statements by Bolton and others vowing to stay in Syria as long as Iran remained engaged, the official said that Trump is doing what Trump wants to do.

“The issue here is that the president has made a decision,” the official said. “He gets to do that. It’s his prerogative.”

The official conceded that the Islamic State threat has not been eliminated from the region beyond Syria’s borders, even if the militants have been significantly hobbled inside.

Some of Trump’s closest allies in the Republican Party oppose his plan...

Still more.

The Case for Spending More to Help Israel (VIDEO)

This is excellent.

It's U.S. Gen Chuck Wald, for Prager University.