HMM: Jerry Falwell Jr. Asks FBI to Investigate “Attempted Coup” Against Him.

ROGER SIMON: After Bolton, Should Trump Be Talking to Despots?

But what to do about Afghanistan?  Trump wants to leave but Bolton wants to stay.  To be honest, fifteen years ago I would have agreed with Bolton – and so would have many of you, I wager.  And most of our political establishment, right and left, would have too. In fact, they did. Remember “Democracy, whiskey, sexy”?  How we would turn Iraq into Denmark…

But for quite a while now most of us have learned otherwise.  Horrid as Afghanistan may be — and a culture much of which still treats women like chattel and young boys like concubines in 2019, not to mention subsisting on the production of opium poppies, is pretty horrid indeed — there is little we can do about it.  Enough of our young people have been killed or wounded, enough of our treasure spent.  Basta!  Let’s get out, intelligently obviously (i. e. not like Vietnam).

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Apple Reveals 2019 iPhone Lineup: Which Should You Buy?

F-15 SELFIE: Tech. Sgt. Matthew Plew, a USAF photojournalist, takes a selfie while documenting two F-15E Strike Eagles and an F-15C Eagle conducting aerial maneuvers over southern England, Sept. 3, 2019.

TRADE WAR A WEAPON AGAINST CHINA’S SPY WAR:

…China’s intellectual property theft is more than tax theft. Since the spying robs U.S. institutions and corporations of products and royalties, over time it becomes a form of trade theft, a long-range, indirect attack on U.S. future productivity.

Stealing knowledge may have immediate payoffs, but the drain on future productivity eventually contributes to weakening the U.S.

Seeding key American corporations, research and educational institutes, and media organizations with people China can influence or blackmail might eventually weaken American will to counter Chinese imperial adventurism. The U.S. has the political will to contest China’s slow invasion of the South China Sea. However, after 20 years of funding research and buying influence, America might not be so willing.

The bottom line: ” To counter China’s pervasive threat, the U.S. must attack China’s money — it’s economy. The time to do that is now.”

You should read the whole thing.

JUST NBC THE MOBIUS LOOP: NBC Announces New ‘Climate Unit’ and ‘Climate in Crisis’ Series.

As opposed to the fall of 2007, when NBC’s Sunday Night Football said that the climate was so bad, we all had turn off our light bulbs. (Except for the billions of watts of klieg lights illuminating the NFL stadium in Philadelphia. And, err, the lighted Toyota sign, since they were sponsoring SNF.)

And 1990, at an environmental conference in Washington, when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell said, “clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you’d have to call it advocacy.”

But I thought in 2008 was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” And so does the man who uttered those words! Unless, as Steve quipped in late August: Obama Blows $15 Million on Mansion Doomed by Rising Tides He Failed to Slow.

THE TEENS WHO WERE JUST OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND 9/11 WERE THE ONES WHO FELT IT HARDEST. THEY BECAME:  The Side-Takers.

HMM: Democrats ‘Coaching’ Migrants During Secret Mexico Trips, Leaked Letter Alleges.

Democrats are seeking “to delegitimize the administration’s border security efforts and vilify the men and women who protect our border,” Jordan accused, noting that the trips “could continue to result in misleading information about the administration’s border security efforts.”

The letter specifically asks about Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and alleged “coaching” of migrants. According to a report from The Washington Examiner in July, Escobar was “sending staff to Mexico’s northern border town of Ciudad Juárez to find migrants returned from El Paso, Texas, under the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, then coaching them to pretend they cannot speak Spanish to exploit a loophole letting them to return to the U.S.”

“What we believe is happening is Veronica Escobar’s office is going … to basically second-guess and obstruct work already done by the Border Patrol,” one senior union official source told the Examiner.

Nah. For elected Dems, this is just constituent outreach.

BUT IT WAS ALL BUILT ON A LIE: Washington U. in St. Louis to commemorate fifth anniversary of Ferguson uprising.

Related: WaPo: “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” Did Not Happen In Ferguson.

I LIKE SEEING LONG MEDIA FACES ON ELECTION NIGHTS:

Related: Trump Rallies the American Riff Raff and All Is Well. “Talk to any serious Democratic operative (rough call, I know) and they will tell you that Barack Obama was all about Barack Obama and cared little for anyone else. President Trump didn’t really have to be in North Carolina for a rally, but the Republican party needed him there.”

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: September 10, 2001: “Make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckoning.”

Read the whole thing.

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: Chinese professor stole hard drive secrets for Huawei, US government charges.

IT’S 9/11 AND YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS MAN: His name was simply Father Fonzie and Flight 93 crashed in his backyard. He did something about it.

CREEPING TOWARD LEGITIMIZING THE LEFT’S TACTIC OF VIOLENCE.

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RICK MORAN: Kamala Harris’s Criminal Justice ‘Reform’ Program a Dream Come True for Criminals.

FLASHBACK: The Falling Man.

2002 FLASHBACK:

MARK STEYN ON the triumph of American values:

Unlike those on the earlier flights, the hostages on 93 understood they were aboard a flying bomb intended to kill thousands of their fellow citizens. They knew there would be no happy ending. So they gave us the next best thing, a hopeful ending. Todd Beamer couldn’t get through to anyone except a telephone company operator, Lisa Jefferson. She told him about the planes that had smashed into the World Trade Center. Mr Beamer said they had a plan to jump the guys and asked her if she would pray with him, so they recited the 23rd Psalm: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me….’

Then he and the others rushed the hijackers. At 9.58 a.m., the plane crashed, not into the White House, but in some pasture outside Pittsburgh. As UPI’s James Robbins wrote, ‘The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty.’

Exactly. The most significant development of 11 September is that it marks the day America began to fight back: 9/11 is not just Pearl Harbor but also the Doolittle Raid, all wrapped up in 90 minutes. No one will ever again hijack an American airliner with boxcutters, or, I’ll bet, with anything else — not because of predictably idiotic new Federal regulations, but because of the example of Todd Beamer’s ad hoc platoon. Faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, American technology (cellphones) combined with the oldest American virtue (self-reliance) to stop it cold in little more than an hour.

Yep. And that still bothers a lot of people, who as Steyn points out have spent the last year trying to return to September 10.

Related: Brad Todd: 109 Minutes.

At 8:48 a.m. Mohammed Atta took a jet headlong into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later and accomplice did the same to the south tower.

When Jeremy Glick called his wife, his first question was an attempt to confirm something another passenger had heard on his spousal call: was the World Trade Center story true?

Lizzy Glick paused, thought for a minute, swallowed hard, and told him the truth. Yes, they had. Moments later, still on the line with her husband, Lizzy Glick saw that another plane had run into the Pentagon. She passed that information on as well to her husband, who relayed it to the other passengers.

Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11… just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism — the most deadly yet invented — came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn’t a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world’s most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who’d had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he’ll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.

If George W. Bush had been a better, braver, man, he would have recognized that new reality instead of creating the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security. But both the Democrats and the establishment Republicans are heavily invested in making ordinary Americans feel powerless and helpless. And their worst nightmare is that it hasn’t really worked.

A 9/11 REMINDER: Never Forget How U.S. Intelligence Failed You.

SO NOW IT’S THE 18TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11. Back then, InstaPundit was shiny and new new. Now it’s not, and some people have been warning of “blogger burnout.” But I’m still here. On prior 9/11 anniversaries, I’ve given shooting lessons to a Marine, I’ve taken the day off from blogging, and I’ve even gone to a Tea Party with Andrew Breitbart.

This year, as in most past years, it’ll be blogging as usual. And here’s a link to my original 9/11 coverage — just scroll on up. At this late date, I don’t have anything new to say on 9/11. But these predictions held up pretty well. Which is too bad.

The picture above is by my cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein, taken from his apartment that day. You might also want to read this piece by James Lileks.

And here’s a passage from Lee Harris’s Civilization And Its Enemies.

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe.
…
They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the Enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish.

They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the Enemy. And that, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the Enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn’t done enough for — yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part — something that we could correct. And this means that that our first task is that we must try to grasp what the concept of the Enemy really means.

The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason — it is his reason, and not ours.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating today.

One thing I guess I didn’t believe 17 years ago is that America would elect such a feckless President in 2008, and stand idly by while he flushed our global position, and security, down a left-wing toilet. But we did, and we’ll be paying the price for a long time. That said, for the first time I feel like our diplomacy is on a good track, and that — thanks also to fracking — the problems that led to 9/11 are being addressed.

God bless America. We need it.

OH. I GUESS THAT SETTLES IT THEN. Facebook exec: ‘We do not’ have an anti-conservative bias.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: A Hypothetical for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

BRITAIN: Brexit has its risks. But staying in the EU is now unthinkable: Why are we criticising British politicians when it’s Brussels that’s causing our agonies?

‘The British people,’ he wrote, ‘are being asked by their own political leaders to weaken, or even surrender, those very rights, decision-making powers, institutions, laws, self governing habits that alone can guarantee a degree of individual freedom enjoyed by very few other nations in the world.’

Not so much asked, as told.

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO THE DEATH WISH ERA OF NYC: NYC’s gross subway cars are actually getting worse – and causing delays.

Paul Kersey, call your office.