Tel-Chai Nation

Daniel Greenfield reviews a book by former military officer Jesse Petrilla, who witnessed firsthand some of the worst reasons why the war against Islam's tyranny is being lost:

“I recall one instance where we were ordered to turn over a shipping container of captured Taliban weapons to the Afghan government, and I told the Major in charge of the mission “You know these are going right back to the Taliban as soon as we leave, right?” Without hesitation he responded, “Oh yes, I know.”

This story that Jesse Petrilla tells in If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think & How to Defeat Them’ is part of the larger reason why we not only lost Afghanistan, but why we’re losing to Islamic terrorists around the world and at home.

Jesse Petrilla had been an Army Liaison Officer on the ground in Afghanistan and had taken part in the interrogation of Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. He had also witnessed the defeatist politics that foreshadowed the loss of Afghanistan and encroaches on much of civilization.

While Petrilla’s time in Afghanistan is at the heart of the narrative, he moves from Israel to Jordan, visits Egypt, travels to the Balkans and witnesses the incursion of Islam into Europe, and then back home into the United States where he served as an elected official. Along the way he sees Islam in its native environment and in our own, witnesses our growing willingness to appease it and surrender to it, and our refusal to come to terms with what it truly is. This is an experience that began when he was in Afghanistan and encountered military officers unwilling to understand what they were up against or, like that major, unwilling to rock the boat.

Afghanistan was not lost in any single battle, but in our refusal to understand what we were fighting. And if our civilization falls the way that Constantinople once did, that will ultimately be the tragic epitaph to be carved on its tombstone. In Afghanistan, Petrilla encounters Islam at its most elemental, operating with a heedless disregard for reality and human life, motivated purely by a fiery mix of theological conviction and tribalism. The Muslim terrorists he encountered boasted of their willingness to keep fighting us for generations, even, as in the book’s title, if it takes a thousand years, they were willing to kill, to die and teach their children to kill us.

As Petrilla succinctly observes, “they just want your entire society to submit or die.” [...]

“I have seen cases where Taliban have fired mortars from the roof of a building full of children, only to run away before the counter- attack in which several children were killed, at which time the Taliban will play to the media and blame the Americans for indiscriminately killing civilians, further eroding our mission,” Petrilla describes in If It Takes a Thousand Years.

Westerners don’t understand Islam. And they try to deal with Islam on American terms.

After the recent anniversary of our retreat from Afghanistan, Petrilla describes a mission rotted from within. As an Army officer, he encountered a translator who supported the Taliban. “To make things even more unsettling, the pro-Taliban translator was an American citizen who held a Top Secret security clearance. I reported him to my superiors, and when they reported it to theirs, making its way all the way up to the General Officer level, they came back to me and said nothing can be done.” It would have been too politically incorrect to get rid of him.

That story casts new light on the recent arrest of an Afghan guard and his family brought to the United States who plotted an ISIS terrorist attack. And on the worthless ‘vetting’ of Afghans.

When Taliban Jihadis were captured, what was done with them?

Petrilla describes how the Afghans were allowed to run review boards during which “59 percent were recommendations for release” while 93% of older Taliban received recommendations for release. Those who remained locked up received average sentences of 4 years. The prisons were known as “Taliban University” for training and indoctrinating the soon to be freed Jihadis.

Nation building subsumed the mission of defeating the enemy until the enemy were in charge.

Yes, and this is something "right-wingers" like George W. Bush Jr. have blame to shoulder for as much as leftists themselves. Another discovery Petrilla made in the Islamic world was what a groom would do with a bride if he thought she wasn't a virgin:

How could America’s mission in Afghanistan go so wrong? In If It Takes a Thousand Years Petrilla traces the common failures brought on by our inability to understand Islamic societies. Societies where, as he describes in an Afghan wedding, the husband can kill his new bride on their wedding night if she turns out not to be a virgin “and the bride’s family is obligated to replace her with a sister or other female relative at the same wedding.”

Petrilla urges readers to compare that to an American wedding. “Imagine yourself being at a wedding, and after the ceremony having the groom come out of a tent with the bride, murdering her in front of the guests, and then taking her sister and marrying her while the corpse of the murdered bride still lies on the ground.” That is what morality can be in an Islamic society.

This too is absolutely repulsive, and the USA officials who turned their backs on this kind of abomination should be ashamed of themselves. One of the commentors responding to the review also says:

I knew we were screwed as soon as George W sat down with terror Islamists and called Islam the “religion of peace” like a good Dhimmi. Little did we know at the time that the “War on Terror” would soon be applied to any American that believed in the Constitution, individual liberty, or prayed near an abortion clinic.

Travesties that Dubya probably is okay with. Let's not forget what he did a few years ago, comparing Americans who allegedly invaded Congress to terrorists of 9-11. And Ronald Reagan can't be excused either for his own leniencies. Nor can Bill Clinton, who was of course the one who pushed through the Oslo accords in 1993 that later led to the October 7, 2023 tragedy. Political correctness is one of the worst ways in which we got to this point, and how democracies were eroded, all via people who clearly didn't support the concepts in the first place.

Labels: Afghanistan, anti-americanism, anti-semitism, dhimmitude, Egypt, Europe, islam, Israel, jihad, jordan, military, misogyny, Moonbattery, political corruption, racism, RINOs, sexual violence, terrorism, United States