Mariam Monsef, a Canadian cabinet minister, calls the Taliban her brothers. Is this an indication of softening on the Taliban? Or is this a softening of the government s stance on a group that is responsible for mass rape and genocide in Afghanistan?
00:00:54.020Now, when she says this, when she says the Taliban are our brothers, is she speaking as a Canadian?
00:01:00.940Why on earth would a Canadian woman say that the Taliban are our brothers?
00:01:07.000Or perhaps even worse, is she speaking as a member of the Trudeau government?
00:01:13.000Does the Trudeau government believe that the Taliban are our brothers?
00:01:17.000Last week, when the Taliban brutally took control of Kabul, toppled the democratically elected government in Afghanistan and replaced it with an Islamist terrorist dictatorship ruled by the Taliban,
00:01:29.580the Trudeau government stumbled to decide how they would approach it.
00:01:33.780First, Canada's foreign affairs minister, Mark Garneau, went on CBC and said that it was too soon to tell whether or not Canada would recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan.
00:01:44.980The U.S. had warned the Taliban if Afghanistan was taken by force, it would not be recognized internationally.
00:01:51.980Will Canada refuse to recognize a Taliban government?
00:01:57.140Well, thank you, Katie, for the question.
00:02:37.420Trudeau sort of doubled down on this idea when he pleaded with the Taliban and tried to appeal to their better nature, telling them to step up and allow people to leave the country.
00:02:47.860We need to see the Taliban step up and permit an evacuation of those who want to leave.
00:02:56.940Now, seeing how that played out, Trudeau quickly adjusted course, and he strongly and firmly said that he would not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan.
00:03:06.780Canada has no plans to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.
00:03:12.780When they were in government 20 years ago, Canada did not recognize them as a government.
00:03:19.160They have taken over and replaced a duly elected democratic government by force.
00:03:25.980And as you point out, they are a recognized terrorist organization under Canadian law.
00:03:32.600So he finally got to the right place and said the right thing.
00:03:51.380We will not in any way, shape or form acknowledge or support a repressive Islamist terrorist entity that just forcefully removed a government by raping and killing anyone who stood in its way.
00:04:10.380Calling these terrorists our brothers doesn't just recognize them as a legitimate government.
00:04:15.720It implies that they are our allies, that they are our friends, that they're one of us, that we're all on the same side here.
00:04:22.180This is perhaps the most appalling thing that I have ever heard come out of the mouth of a Canadian politician.
00:04:27.960Probably the most appalling thing I have ever heard come out of anyone's mouth ever.
00:04:31.540Now, fortunately, someone in the media did ask Monsef what the heck she was talking about and why a Canadian cabinet minister would call a despicable, repressive, barbaric terrorist group our brothers.
00:04:44.760And now, I'll note that this is a member of the legacy media asking this question, so you can tell how there's a sense of deference, how it's very polite, and in some ways it's helpful to Monsef.
00:04:55.240I have a follow-up. This is for Minister Monsef.
00:04:59.080In your statement, you referred to the Taliban as our brothers.
00:05:06.020Is this an indication of the government positioning softening on the Taliban?
00:05:10.280Hardly. The Taliban are a terrorist group, and yet they claim to be Muslims.
00:05:19.160We're calling on them to immediately allow for the safe passage of any individual who is in Afghanistan out of the country.
00:05:28.340We are calling on them to immediately cease the violence, the femicide, the genocide, the rapes, the lootings, and to return immediately to the peace negotiation table in an inclusive and meaningful way.
00:05:43.280If they will ever be recognized as a legitimate party, this is the starting point.
00:05:49.860The reference to brothers is a cultural reference, of course, but let me be very clear.
00:05:57.000We are horrified that the hard-won gains of the past 20 years are at stake like this and being eroded like this.
00:06:05.340We are horrified that our women and men in uniform had to move forward with a difficult operation that was only made more difficult by their actions and deeply disappointed that their threats of ongoing violence have led to the international community, particularly the Americans, saying we're going to leave on the 31st due to these threats of violence.
00:06:32.180And you can see that Monsef is in total damage control.
00:06:36.660First of all, she emphasizes how horrible the Taliban are and how they are, yes, a terrorist group, which sort of makes it so much worse that she would have referred to them as our brothers.
00:06:46.900Next, she plays Trudeau's favorite card in inventing creepy politically correct language to virtue signal about being a feminist.
00:06:54.420She calls the Taliban's crusade a femicide, which what, I guess it means a genocide against women.
00:07:01.060I honestly don't understand what these liberals are saying half the time, and I don't think they do either.
00:07:06.620Now, finally, Monsef just sort of brushes off her insanely idiotic comment, calling the Taliban our brothers by saying it is cultural.
00:07:15.080So if I read between the lines here, I suppose she is saying that in that moment, she was not speaking as a cabinet minister.
00:07:22.300She wasn't even speaking as a Canadian.
00:07:24.660She was speaking as a Muslim and perhaps as an Afghan.
00:07:28.320So is that supposed to make any of this better?
00:07:31.540That as a cabinet minister, she sometimes doesn't speak as a Canadian, but instead speaks as an Afghan?
00:07:37.860That she speaks to the Taliban as her brothers because they share some cultural and religious bonds from the country of her origin?
00:07:45.340But doesn't that just sort of undermine the entire idea of Canada, the entire experiment of a Western liberal democracy?
00:09:28.020We'll continue to protect women, Hazaras, Shias, Hindus, Sikhs.
00:09:33.080We'll continue to do everything we can to get as many people out of their grasp in Afghanistan.
00:09:39.920And we'll continue to do everything we can with our global partners to make sure that the hard-won gains of the past two decades are not lost to these individuals whose mandate is not to govern.
00:09:53.820Their mandate is to oppress and to kill, and we condemn that entirely.
00:09:58.480And again, she doubles down, refuses to walk it back, and defends, calling the terrorists in the Taliban her brothers.
00:11:01.100And she was hardly a refugee given that she used to travel back and forth between Canada, Iran, and Afghanistan when she was in her 20s after she became a Canadian citizen.
00:11:10.280She said that her refugee application to Canada did list Afghanistan as her place of birth.
00:11:16.200And she blamed the entire debacle on her mother.
00:11:33.540Well, here is the clueless Mary Monsef awkwardly trying to tell reporter Robert Fyfe, the one who broke the story about her not being from Afghanistan and actually being from Iran.
00:11:43.020Here she is telling him that she was born in Afghanistan, even though you can tell that she clearly knows otherwise.
00:11:49.920So you were born in Afghanistan, correct?
00:12:52.120My husband, just like Mary Monsef, was born in Iran.
00:12:55.740And just like Mary Monsef, my husband and his family came to Canada when he was a child.
00:13:01.020But unlike Mary Monsef, my husband's family didn't try to sneak in the back door by claiming asylum and pretending to be something that they're not.
00:13:08.720And unlike Mary Monsef, my husband would never, not in a million years, describe the despicable terrorists in the Taliban as our brothers.