
We have all seen it many times. It happens way too often. We may have even succumbed to it ourselves. A young child standing in an aisle in Target, or Walmart, or Toys-R-Us, red faced, screaming at the top of his lungs, stomping his feet, demanding the new Paw Patrol toy, or a bag of Skittles, and the parents give him what he wants to quiet him down, choosing to give into his fit of anger to avoid an embarrassing public scene. They chose the easy way out, the short-term solution.
But what happens when you reward bad behavior? You get more of it, not less. Every time that child wants something, he will throw a fit because he knows that is the best way to get his parents to give him what he wants. The parents didn’t demand that the child behaves properly and respectfully to get the toy; they didn’t require that the child performs chores to get the candy, the parents used the toy to stop him from acting out, and they will wake up one day with a child who throws fit after fit after fit. It’s not the child’s fault, it’s the parents fault. They trained him that way. When we chose quiet over peace, we become slaves to the empty drums.
11 days after the United States military left Afghanistan, Kabul fell to the Taliban which begs the question, why is the Taliban still in existence? We were in Afghanistan for 20 years, and the Taliban is still standing? How did that happen? Why were they not obliterated 19 years ago? The Taliban is an empirically evil group, so there is no gray area on what needed to be done to them. Did we not want the optics that comes with destroying them? But their continued existence is the colossal failure of our time in Afghanistan. And what is the result of our failure? Afghan women have lost all rights and privileges, 12-year-old girls are being raped on a regular basis by the Taliban, gays will be dropped off the highest buildings. Our fingerprints are all over every single one of those rapes and murders because we had 20 years to obliterate the Taliban, and we did not do it.
One of the main reason the Taliban still exists is that Pakistan has supported and protected them for years. So, we give Pakistan over one billion dollars every year, and they take our money and use it to fund our enemies, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Again, why do we give Pakistan any money? What have they done to deserve our generosity? They have nuclear weapons, and we are scared that they may use them. So, all they have to do is saber-rattle, and we immediately pay their demands in money to “keep the peace”, no different than the parent at Toys-R-Us. We purchase the short-term peace, even though we know that money will be used to fund warring machines that will continue to destroy any chance at long-term peace.
This what happens when we chose quiet over peace, when we chose to placate the problem instead of confronting the problem. In 2015, to get Iran to agree to the politically expedient nuclear deal, the Obama administration handed the mullahs in Iran hundreds of millions of dollars. Our army actually flew palates stacked 10-feet high with US dollar bills to Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, with the promise that the mullahs would agree not to develop a nuclear weapon. What happened? Iran continued with their nuclear program, developing centrifuges and testing long range missile capabilities, knowing full well, the closer they get to becoming nuclear, the more money we will send them not to launch their missiles, and that money will be used to fund terrorism. America has become the ultimate bad parent in the world, continually rewarding bad behavior for temporary peace.
America and Americans fall for these tactics all the time, though. Black Lives Matter riots in our cities, burning, bombing, killing and maiming, and instead of arresting the rioters we hand their organization hundreds of millions of dollars to placate them, hoping they will stop rioting. Their leaders simply buy million-dollar mansions, and they encourage more rioting. This has become a regular cottage industry for them. We reward the bad behavior, and now have become slaves to the bad behavior.
We shouldn’t be surprised that BLM and Antifa have been emboldened. We have been treating left wing domestic terrorists with kid gloves for the last 50 years. On Monday, on his way out the door, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo decided to grant clemency to domestic terrorist David Gilbert, of the Weather Underground, who was convicted of murdering two police officers and a security guard while attempting the infamous Brinks Heist in 1981.
After the bombing, Gilbert went into hiding, living with two other domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers who bombed the Pentagon, the US Capital Building and the New York City Police department. Both of these terrorists are close friends with former President Barack Obama, and were Professors at Northwestern and University of Illinois at Chicago. So, if you are conservative, and you simply trespass at the Capital Building, you are placed in solitary confinement for 7 months, but if you liberal, and you bomb the Capital Building, you get a cushy professorship at an elite University, and become close friends with a former Democrat President?
These are the same tactics that the “woke” are using to destroy our culture and society today. The “woke” are social and cultural terrorist. If someone says or does something they do not like, they throw a fit, threaten businesses, demand they are fired, and we comply with their irrational demands because we will always choose quiet over peace. We lack the courage to stand up for what is right over what is expedient.
Our lack of courage to stand against the bad actors, and stand up for what is right has brought us to this point in time. So, what if Pakistan has nuclear weapons, they still should have to behave properly without us paying them off. We have thousands of nuclear weapons ourselves. We should never give Pakistan another dime, point a hundred nuclear weapons at them, and tell them to shut up and behave. You are risking a nuclear war, some will argue. What are we risking by paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan who funds the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or to Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world, or to Black Lives Matter, the leading domestic terrorist organization in our country? If you haven’t noticed the world is falling apart or being torn apart. Our country is disintegrating before our eyes. Why? Because America in its wealth and arrogance has decided to pay people and groups handsomely for their bad behavior, thinking it will stop their bad behavior. And like the child at Target, it shuts them up temporarily until they want something else, and then they behave badly again, until we reward them again, and the vicious cycle continues until civil society is destroyed.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.
Wow, such truth. And with the current administration doling out money hand over fist this will only continue with the corrupt countries in the world and the entitled citizens in our own country. One of the first words out of a parents mouth is NO. It is about time the US learned that word and learned how to use it.
Thank you JG for your wisdom and for continuing to share the truth.