WarSclerotic

Obama, the Islamic State and Islam, the enemy which shall not be named, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 11, 2014

Islam is the greatest threat to the civilized world. Obama denies that it is any threat and maintains that it is peaceful.

Minutes into His address to the nation (full text here) on the eve of two September 11 attacks, one in 2001 and another in 2012, Obama stated:

Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way. [Emphasis added.]

In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide. In acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists – Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff. [Emphasis added.]

Obama remains faithful to His views of Islam, as expressed during His Cairo address.

So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations – to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity.

I have argued the characteristics of Islam and that the Islamic State has its roots in Islam in detail here, here and elsewhere; little purpose would be served by repetition. This summary should be sufficient for present purposes.

Here is a video of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s September 11th comments on Obama’s September 10th address. Keep in mind that Netanyahu is compelled to say nice things about Obama whenever he possibly can, even if to do so requires that he stretch a point or two or three. But listen to Netanyahu’s comments, quite divergent from Obama’s, on Islam and Islamist states — including Iran — which seek an Islamic caliphate for the entire world through fear and terror. The relevant differences among the Islamist states are principally on the nature of the desired caliphate. There was a master race, now there is a master faith. Islam’s master religion is at least as evil as Nazism master race. Clarity and courage are needed. Do we have them? Obama does not.

The Islamic State is at least as Islamic as Nazism was German

Winston Churchill spoke about Nazism early and often. Here is what he said during a 1934 radio broadcast:

Many of Churchill’s comments on Nazi Germany might be applied to Islam. As PM Netanyahu said, then there was a “master race.” Now, there is a “master religion.” What are we to do about it?

Was Nazism Germanic? Millions of Germans believed it to be. They were enthralled by the Chief Imam of Nazism, Hitler. Germany’s preparations for war with civilization went into full swing when Imam Hitler rose from the depths to control Germany. If Obama had been President in the mid 1930’s and had proclaimed His intention to battle Nazism, might He have said something like this?

Now let’s make two things clear: Nazism is not Germanic. German culture does not condone the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Nazism’s victims have been German. Nazism is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way. [Emphasis added.]

Nazi Germany’s “vision” was not merely the “slaughter of all who stand in her way.” That, along with the fear and submission its slaughter induced, was its strategy. The Nazi vision, to be achieved through its strategy, was the expansion of the “fatherland” through the “peaceful” surrender, and military conquest of Europe if necessary, for the imposition of Nazism throughout the region.

The vision of the Islamic State, its Islamic allies, cohorts and opponents, reflects their vision of Islam — the expansion of “true” Islam throughout the non-Islamic (and apostate Islamic) world and the imposition of the “true” version of Islam on non-Muslims and apostates. They differ principally in what they consider “true” Islam.

There is at least one difference between “moderate” Islamists and the Islamic State: the Islamic State does not pretend to desire peace; “moderate” Muslims do. Like “moderate” Islamists, Nazi Germany professed its peaceful nature and claimed to desire no more than to right wrongs committed against ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Its claims of good will and a peaceful soul were accepted by Neville Obama Chamberlain and many other naive leftists in Britain and Europe.

As noted in a Washington Times editorial,

Whether by the name al Qaeda, Taliban, al-Shabab, Boko Haram, Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL, the Islamist goal is one and the same — the destruction of the West and the defining values of civilization. The only appropriate response is to crush those who would threaten those values. It’s not an occasion for dialogue, appeasement or negotiation. [Emphasis added.]

Neither is it the time to arm “moderate” Islamists on the ground that they will help to eliminate the horrors of the Islamic State.

Obama claims that He will arm and support “moderate” Islamists.

Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all. [Emphasis added.]

Presumably, Obama has in mind arming the “moderate” opposition to the Syrian regime. There may be some moderates, but does the Obama administration know who they are? Does it know that they are capable of resisting, successfully, the theft of their U.S. supplied armaments by non-moderates?

There are approximately 100,000 Syrian rebels,

including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and the powerful Islamic Front rebel umbrella group, currently fighting the Islamic State group in Syria

Has the “vetted, moderate” Free Syrian Army been vetted and is it “moderate?”

As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and as bipartisan leadership in Congress push to approve as much as $4 billion to arm the Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate — both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations — near the Syrian/Lebanon border.

“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade.

“We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice,” confirmed Abu Khaled, another FSA commander who lives in Arsal.

“Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now in Qalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values,” he added. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[T]his time last year the bipartisan conventional wisdom amongst the foreign policy establishment was that the bulk of the Syrian rebel forces were moderates, a fiction refuted by a Rand Corporation study published last September that found nearly half of the Syrian “rebels” were jihadists or hard-core Islamists. [Emphasis added.}

. . . [M]ultiple arms shipments from the U.S. to the “vetted moderate” FSA were suspiciously raided and confiscated by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, prompting the Obama administration and the UK to suspend weapons shipments to the FSA last December.

In April, the Obama administration again turned on the CIA weapons spigot to the FSA, and Obama began calling for an additional $500 million for the “vetted moderate” rebels, but by July the weapons provided to the FSA were yet again being raided and captured by ISIS and other terrorist groups. Remarkably, one Syrian dissident leader reportedly told Al-Quds al-Arabi that the FSA had lost $500 million worth of arms to rival “rebel” groups, much of which ended up being sold to unknown parties in Turkey and Iraq. [Emphasis added.]

At the same time U.S.-provided FSA weapons caches were being mysteriously raided by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the senior FSA commanders in Eastern Syria, Saddam al-Jamal, defected to ISIS. In March, Jabhat al-Nusra joined forces with the FSA Liwa al-Ummah brigade to capture a Syrian army outpost in Idlib. Then in early July I reported on FSA brigades that had pledged allegiance to ISIS and surrendered their weapons after their announcement of the reestablishment of the caliphate. More recently, the FSA and Jabhat al-Nusra teamed up last month to capture the UN Golan Heights border crossing in Quneitra on the Syria/Israel border, taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Obama’s coalition 

As argued at The Clarion Project,

The U.S. must also be prepared for the pro-Islamist members of its coalition against the Islamic State to predictably support Islamism. [Emphasis added.]

A cataclysmic revelation? Hardly. But does Obama consider it a problem? Most likely He does not. Might He see it as an opportunity?

Secular Syrian opposition figures complain that Qatar and Turkey are sidelining them by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. When the U.S. worked with Qatar in removing the Qaddafi regime in Libya, Qatar exercised its influence to benefit the Islamist forces. Libya is experiencing bloody fighting between Islamist and secular forces today.

Qatar continues to support the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Islamic Front, specifically Ahrar al-Sham. An Ahrar al-Sham leader named Abu Khaled al-Souri had high-level Al-Qaeda ties and was killed by the Islamic State. Jabhat al-Nusra and other Al-Qaeda-linked figures see Qatar as friendly territory.

Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to help support rebels fighting the Islamic State, has already been supporting the Islamic Front, specifically Zahran Alloush’s Army of Islam (or Jaysh al-Islam). His ideology is similar to that of Al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusra.

The Saudis also back a coalition named the Syrian Revolutionary Council. It condemned the United Kingdom for sentencing Islamist cleric Raed Salah for inciting terrorism. He was previously imprisoned in Israel for financing Hamas and working with an Iranian intelligence operative.

Which if any national members of Obama’s coalition support non-Islamic concepts such as freedom of religion, of the media and of speech? It is my understanding that they oppose them, even on rare occasions when they claim to accept them in modest ways.

What else is wrong with the Obama Strategy?

Here’s a taste, even from MSNBC:

Many problems with Obama’s approach to Islamic terrorism are already obvious and more will become apparent with time. As we wait, shall we prepare for Christmas?

This entry was posted on September 12, 2014 at 3:10 PM and is filed under Iraq war, Syria war. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Iraq, Islam, Syria