{"id":723114,"date":"2021-09-06T11:05:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T15:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=723114"},"modified":"2021-09-06T11:05:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T15:05:55","slug":"former-british-p-m-tony-blair-rips-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-gives-our-opponents-a-belief-our-time-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/former-british-p-m-tony-blair-rips-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-gives-our-opponents-a-belief-our-time-is-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Former British P.M. Tony Blair Rips Biden Afghanistan Withdrawal: Gives \u2018Our Opponents A Belief Our Time Is Over\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">36<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fformer-british-p-m-tony-blair-rips-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-gives-our-opponents-a-belief-our-time-is-over%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=723114&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/GettyImages-1338658390.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Speaking to the Royal United Services Institute to mark the anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks and discuss the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair implicitly slammed President Biden, stating, \u201cIt is clear now, if it wasn\u2019t before, that America has decided for the foreseeable future it has a very limited appetite for military engagement,\u201d and adding that \u201cshort term political imperatives\u201d have given \u201cour allies anxiety and our opponents a belief our time is over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In his compelling speech, Blair began by asserting, \u201cThe Taliban are part of the global movement of radical Islam. The movement contains many different groups but they share the same basic ideology. In simple terms, this holds that there is only one true faith, only one true view of that faith, and that society, politics, and culture, should be governed only by that view. Radical Islam not only believes in Islamism, the turning of the religion into a political doctrine but in the justification of struggle if necessary, armed struggle to achieve it. Other Islamists agree with the ends but eschew violence; but the ideology itself is in inevitable conflict with open, modern culturally tolerant societies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs radical Islam a coherent ideology which represents a first-order threat to our security or are we facing, despite some common themes, a&nbsp; series of disconnected security challenges each of which require handling on its own terms based on local circumstances?\u201d he asked. \u201c Is Islamism a problem or only its manifestation in violent extremism?. Is it akin, as I say, to revolutionary communism and must be countered by a combination of security and ideological measures over the long term, or is that to overstate it, overestimate it, and thus to perversely as some would argue by the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan to elevate its appeal rather than diminish its appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my view, Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat, and unchecked, it will come to us even if centered far from us, as 9\/11 demonstrated,\u201d he posited. \u201cLike revolutionary communism, it operates in many different arenas and dimensions, and like it, its defeat will come ultimately through confronting both the violence and the ideology by a combination of hard and soft power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He turned to the lack of political will in the West to confront radical Islam militarily: \u201cWestern societies and their political leaders have become, quite understandably, deeply averse to casualties amongst our armed forces. This is not a problem for the armed forces themselves, who are brave and extraordinary people, but it is now an overwhelming political constraint to any commitment to Western boots on the ground except for special forces. Yet the problem this gives rise to is obvious: If the enemy we\u2019re fighting knows the more casualties they inflict the more our political will erodes, the incentive structure is plain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is an additional challenge for Europe and NATO: It is clear now, if it wasn\u2019t before, that America has decided for the foreseeable future it has a very limited appetite for military engagement,\u201d he continued. \u201c \u2026 For me, one of the most alarming developments of recent times has been the sense that the West has lost its capacity to formulate strategy. That its short-term political imperatives have simply squeezed the space for long-term thinking. It is this sense more than anything else, in my judgment, which gives our allies anxiety and our opponents a belief our time is over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He later confronted the term \u201cending forever wars\u201d: \u201cThe term, or the phrase, \u2018ending forever wars,\u2019 has been used by politicians of all stripes \u2026 I think it is a deeply mistaken phrase because number one, we haven\u2019t ended this war; we\u2019ve ended our participation in it, different concept; number two, it\u2019s not forever. Twenty years, for a lot of the groups we\u2019re fighting, twenty years for them is not a long time. And if you take the revolutionary communism analogy, we\u2019ve stayed with that 67 years or more. But finally, the rhythm of what we\u2019ve been doing post-2014 and say by the end of 2019 was obviously completely different from what we\u2019ve been doing &nbsp;\u2026 in the years after the big problems arose in Afghanistan. So I just think it\u2019s not a good way of making policy because in the end it\u2019s a political slogan; it\u2019s not really based on an analysis of the threat and strategy to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Watch again: Tony Blair delivers a speech on Afghanistan\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZBIJStGw4Zw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking to the Royal United Services Institute to mark the anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks and discuss the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}