Blog

On the foreign affairs front, I’m following two separate events today. In no particular order…

First, over the weekend, the U.S. eliminated a prominent al Qaeda terrorist known as Ayman al-Zawahiri. Actually, “minced” is a more accurate verb here – just do a search for “Hellfire R9X Ninja Missile” if you’re intrigued by those kinds of details. It’s impossible not to be impressed by our military, isn’t it?!

Our nation had been searching for al-Zawahiri ever since 9/11, and he’s been connected with numerous terrorist plots since then. So this is outstanding news, and I applaud our intelligence agencies and Armed Forces for their incredible effort.

It’s worth noting, however, that this thug essentially resumed a semi-normal life in Kabul, Afghanistan shortly after President Biden’s botched withdrawal of American forces from that country. Remember we were assured, in no uncertain terms, that even though that area would be controlled by the Taliban going forward, it would not devolve again into another hotbed of terrorists. So the fact that a high-profile al Qaeda terrorist was living openly there indicates that is obviously not true, and also that the Taliban may be somewhat tolerant of al Qaeda. Both of which are deeply troubling facts for our nation going forward.

Second, China has been rattling its sabers over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. As most of you know, from cyberattacks to rampant intellectual property theft, the communist government of China has been causing problems on multiple fronts lately.

We know that China is also salivating over Taiwan and wants to “unify” that country with mainland China, even if they have to go to war to accomplish that. For whatever reasons, the communists running the Chinese government seem threatened by Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and demanded that she not go. They even issued military threats.

We can debate whether it was wise for Pelosi to initially decide to visit Taiwan; there are legitimate reasons on both sides of that argument. But once China demanded Pelosi not go to Taiwan, then she had no choice but TO go!

As much as I disagree with Nancy Pelosi politically on just about everything, it is the right decision for her not to be deterred by this aggressive posture from China. Nobody wants conflict or problems, but the United States CANNOT be in a situation where our foreign affairs or the movements of our officials throughout the free world are somehow subject to the approval of a petulant communist regime.