(Kind of makes you think. With all the billions in stolen cash and oil revenue ISIS is reported to have according to our illustrious mainstream media, you have to ask yourself, ‘What next?’.-LS)
Baghdad, Sep 16 (IANS/EFE) At least 14 members of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group were killed Tuesday near Baghdad when a rocket whose warhead they were filling with chlorine gas exploded.
Iraqi security officials said seven more IS militants were injured in the incident, which occurred near the town of al-Dhuluiya, about 90 km north of Baghdad.
Al-Dhuluiya was also where four members of the Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen suffered symptoms of asphyxiation after inhaling chlorine gas released by two improvised explosive devices.
It was the first time that chlorine has been used as a weapon in Iraq, although it is not uncommon in neighbouring Syria, where the regime’s use of it has been denounced by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Meanwhile, Iraqi troops killed 18 jihadists and destroyed five of their vehicles in clashes at the Biji refinery, Iraq’s largest.
At the same time, Kurdish peshmerga troops regained control of three villages in Qara Teba, in the eastern Diyala province, which had been overrun by the IS. Three IS militants and four Kurdish soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
These clashes came a few hours after US warplanes launched their first bombing raids at IS positions near Baghdad since an international conference wrapped in Paris Monday after a number of world leaders pledged to defeat and destroy the IS.
Russia is not going to take this economic damage sitting down. I suspect the stage is being set for not only a war with Syria, but a war with Russia as well. Obama already warned Assad to butt out or else. I fear, the “or else” will occur with or without Assad.-LS)
Moscow (AFP) – Russian authorities told people not to panic on Tuesday as the battered ruble plunged to record lows, floored by tensions with the West over Ukraine, new sanctions and falling oil prices.
The national currency fell to 38.82 rubles per dollar after weakening on Monday to below 38 against the dollar for the first time.
It also broke through the symbolic level of 50 rubles per euro for the first time in several months.
The ruble has slumped as investors fret about the impact of ever more stringent Western sanctions on the economy, which is already teetering on the verge of recession.
Ordinary Russians said they were concerned that a weaker ruble would drive up inflation and make foreign trips and foreign currency-denominated purchases an increasingly unaffordable luxury.
Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev sought to put on a brave face, saying authorities were taking steps to curb inflation.
“Don’t panic,” he said.
The euro was worth 50.11 rubles at around 1450 GMT on Tuesday, almost one ruble more than its value the day before.
The Russian currency is still worth slightly more than at its lowest point in spring of 50.22 rubles to the euro after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March.
Since the start of September, the dollar has gone up 1.70 rubles in value.
By around 1450 GMT the ruble slightly recovered to 38.71 against the dollar.
“The ruble has come under renewed fire over the past few weeks,” said Capital Economics.
“The latest drop means that the ruble has now fallen by 15 percent against the dollar since the start of the year, the biggest fall of any major emerging market currency with the exception of the Argentine peso.”
The central bank has been cutting its forex intervention as it gears up to allow the national currency to float freely from 2015.
Andrei Nechaev, a professor at Moscow’s Plekhanov University of Economics, said the jump from 36.5 rubles to 38 rubles against the dollar in a matter of days reflected a mood of panic on the currency market, which would likely continue.
“I don’t think it will reach 40 rubles so far but 39 is pretty realistic,” he said.
Banking analyst Mikhail Kuzmin of Investcafe.ru said the central bank did not have the necessary firepower to stop the ruble’s slide, even if it wanted to do so.
“To prop up the ruble exchange rate, you need very significant resources,” he told AFP.
“The central bank could risk spending a lot over a month or two and then the ruble will fall anyway.”
The weak ruble stands to benefit exporters, particularly those selling oil for dollars, which will increase budget revenues, Kuzmin said.
“For the Russian economy there is also a plus — citizens will be more likely to go on holiday and spend money inside the country.”
But ordinary Russians said the weakening ruble was putting the squeeze on their finances.
“It’s a disgrace, I am very much worried,” Larisa Krasnopevtseva, a 53-year Muscovite, told AFP.
“The purchasing power of our ruble is dropping. It means I will rest less, work more and have worse medical care. I don’t know what’s behind this fall but I very much don’t like it.”
Maria Bunina, 57, said she needed US dollars to travel abroad.
“Nearly all my money now is spent on food and utilities,” she told AFP. “A trip to France is my dream but it’s very expensive.”
The United States and European Union last week hit Russia with tough new sanctions over Moscow’s “unacceptable behaviour” in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who enjoys popular support in a country where the main television channels are state-controlled, dismissed the sanctions and said they would do “more good than harm”.
(Only one paragraph in this article was worth reading. I posted it below. You can follow the link if you wish to read the complete text. I call this excerpt…Yet Another Declaration of War.-LS)
He made clear the intricacy of the situation, though, as he contemplated the possibility that Mr. Assad might order his forces to fire at American planes entering Syrian airspace. If he dared to do that, Mr. Obama said he would order American forces to wipe out Syria’s air defense system, which he noted would be easier than striking ISIS because its locations are better known. He went on to say that such an action by Mr. Assad would lead to his overthrow, according to one account.
(“Combating IS is just important enough that we need to demonstrate that we’re “doing something” — but not quite important enough for us to bother to do it right.”…as quoted from article. – LS)
But if President Obama follows through on his plan to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, that’s exactly what we’re going to get.
Back when he was just a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama used to say that he didn’t oppose all wars, just “dumb wars.” I assumed that by “dumb wars,” he meant wars to address phantom or exaggerated threats (see: Iraq, 2003), or wars launched to achieve domestic political objectives (see also: Iraq, 2003), or wars begun without sufficient attention to alternatives, capabilities or strategic consequences (see yet again: Iraq, 2003).
Apparently, I was wrong: all Obama really meant was that he opposed long, expensive, politically unpopular wars involving lots of American ground forces and lots of American casualties. He’s fine with other kinds of dumb wars (though he prefers to avoid the W-word, and instead uses phrases like “military action” and “targeted strikes.”)
But call it what you will: I have a sinking feeling that what the United States is about to do in Syria may turn out to be another dumb war.
How is it dumb? Let me count the ways. First: the Islamic State (IS) is an undeniably nasty group, but even the president admits that IS poses no immediate threat to the United States. Second, other actors may be better suited than the United States to combatting the regional threat IS poses. Third, U.S. military strikes against IS in Syria risk inspiring more new violent extremists than they kill, undermining long-term U.S. security interests. Fourth, our current fixation on IS also carries opportunity costs. Fifth, Obama’s willingness to embrace and expand George W. Bush’s doctrine of unilateral preventive self-defense is one more nail in the coffin of the fragile post-World War II collective security system.
Dumb, Part I: Threat Inflation
According to the latest Washington Post poll, 59 percent of Americans think thatIS poses a “very serious threat to the vital interests of the United States.” They didn’t think this a few weeks ago, but televised beheadings have a way of capturing public attention.
Nonetheless, two tragic and gruesome beheadings do not an existential threat create. If beheadings were a sufficient causus belli, we should consider air strikes against violent Mexican drug cartels, several of which appear to specialize in decapitations.And unlike IS, the cartels — which have killed tens of thousands of people in the last few years — already have a major presence inside the United States.)
IS is plenty brutal, but most experts say it is neither as well-organized nor as sophisticated as al Qaeda was before 9/11. Most estimates suggest it has no more than 20,000 fighters, many of them inexperienced; Obama admits that there is no evidence that it has cells in the United States or has the ability to stage attacks inside the United States.
Though some Americans have reportedly joined IS fighters in Syria, the number is apparently quite small. Hypothetically, it’s always possible that a few of those Americans will eventually return to the U.S. and try to plan attacks here, but as the Boston Marathon bombing made clear, alienated young men bent on killing people in the U.S. don’t need to go off and train in foreign lands. Why bother, when they can find al Qaeda bomb-making recipes right there on the internet?
In any case, when it comes to homegrown violent extremism, jihadist sympathizers have nothing on old-fashioned right-wing crazies: according to data compiled by the New America Foundation, homegrown jihadists have killed only 21 people (13 of whom were victims of the Fort Hood massacre) in the 13 years since 9/11, while right-wing extremists accounted for 37 victims.
(Not sure what she’s referring to here. The author is a bit of a leftist and I take exception to her insinuating conservatives had anything to do with this behavior. – LS)
IS is a direct threat to the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, but since Assad’s forces have so far killed scores of thousands more people than IS, it’s hard to feel too sorry for him. IS is also a threat to rival Islamist rebel groups inside Syria, including groups directly tied to al Qaeda. Why not let them all slug it out, on the theory that the brutality of all concerned will ultimately do more to discredit jihadist violence than anything the United States could possible say or do?
Granted, letting them all slug it out is surely a threat to Syria’s beleaguered civilian population — but since the White House has been willing to watch Syria’s civilians suffer for three years now, we can probably conclude that protecting Syrian civilians has never been considered a vital U.S. interest.
IS is also a threat to Iraq’s increasingly nominal central government, but here again, this doesn’t necessarily make it a threat to a core U.S. interest. While the group has ample capacity to cause mayhem — and its rapid advance into Iraq revealed the hollowness of portions of the Iraqi Army — there is little reason to believe it has the ability to hold and control the territory it has seized. As American troops learned many times over the last 13 years, it’s one thing to seize territory; holding and building is another thing altogether. Iraq’s remaining armed forces greatly outnumber IS’s small band of fighters; with intelligence, planning and logistics assistance from U.S. military advisors, they stands a decent chance of turning the tide against IS without the aid of additional U.S. strikes in Syria.
At the risk of being heretical, it’s not clear that vital U.S. interests are threatened even if IS does succeed in holding the territory it has gained inside Iraq. If Iraq ends up in a state of de facto sectarian and ethnic partion — which Vice President Joe Biden once advocated as the only route to enduring stability — it’s not the worst outcome. It’s not a good outcome — but as Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s first chancellor, famously said, “politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.”
IS was able to roll through parts of Iraq in large part because Sunni tribes, alienated by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s divisive policies, were willing to form an alliance of convenience with the new fighters in town. Many analysts say those Sunni tribes won’t hesitate to dispense with IS once the group ceases to be so convenient. Arguably, a partitioned Iraq would be more stable than a non-partitioned Iraq — and past events demonstrate that Iraq’s Sunni tribes are capable of working pragmatically with the United States when it’s in their interest to do so.
Dumb, Part II: Believing This Problem Requires an American Solution
Assad, the Al Nusra Front, and the Iraqi government aren’t the only actors dismayed by IS’s advances. Our Iranian adversaries — who provide substantial backing to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, as well as to private Shiite militias, and who have also been supportingthe Assad regime in Syria — are appalled by IS’s progress. while, our frenemies the Saudis, who even more fond of beheadings than IS, nonetheless recognize IS as a profoundly destabilizing force. Ditto for the Jordanians, the Kurds, and the Turks.
Obama says the United States will “lead” a coalition against IS, but the United States should instead step back and let other regional actors assume the lead. They have a strong incentive to combat IS (an incentive we undermine when we offer to do the job for them), and the common threat of IS may even help lead to slightly less chilly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia (though I won’t hold my breath).
Other Middle East powers also have greater ability than we do to understand local dynamics, not least of which because many share a common language with IS or with other actors in the mix. The Kurds and the Jordanians may need some U.S. help to protect their own territory, and other states may need intelligence or other forms of logistical assistance. But we can provide such support to any of our allies and partners without putting ourselves front and center in the effort to combat IS.
Dumb, Part III: Believing that Stand-Off Strikes Will Eliminate the Threat
Air strikes are an excellent way to turn live people into dead people, and the United States has an impressive ability to carry them out with minimal damage to unintended targets. But air strikes are a very poor way to hold territory, and an even worse way to establish stable and legitimate governance structures. Without capable partners on the ground in Syria, it’s not clear that U.S. airstrikes against IS will achieve the objectives we want to achieve — though anything that hurts IS will surely gladden the twisted little hearts of Assad and leaders of rival extremist groups.
It would be really nice, just about now, to have some well-armed, well-led, realio-trulio moderate Syrian rebels with whom we could coordinate — but I think we missed that boat a long time ago. Today, rebels who are both moderate and good at fighting are about as common in Syria as pink fluffy unicorns.
Stand-off air strikes also have an unfortunate tendency to make people mad. Drones, in particular, have become a divisive symbol of American power — of our fearsome ability to kill without assuming any immediate risk to ourselves. Stand-off strikes may succeed in degrading IS’s near-term ability to be an effective fighting force, but there’s a real, if non-quantifiable, risk that U.S. strikes will ultimately inspire even more disaffected young men to join violent jihadist groups.
Since taking office, President Obama has relied increasingly on drone strikes to counter terrorist threats. A couple thousand dead bad guys later, the global terrorist threat has merely metamorphosed, and in many ways it appears to be as bad as ever.
Why do we think a counterterrorism approach that had achieved no strategic success so far will suddenly start working in Syria?
IS is far from invincible, but if we were truly serious about degrading or destroying IS in Syria, we’d need to cross John Kerry’s latest red-line and put some American boots on the ground. Not 100,000 boots — a fairly small number of American special operators working with the few remaining local unicorns might even do the trick — but boots nonetheless. That would be risky, of course; some of those Americans might get killed. But if IS is truly a threat to core U.S. interests, it’s a risk we should be willing to take.
The administration’s unwillingness to put U.S. troops on the ground in Syria sends an all-too clear message both to Americans and to the rest of the world: Actually, destroying IS isn’t that important to us. Combatting IS is just important enough that we need to demonstrate that we’re “doing something” — but not quite important enough for us to bother to do it right.
Dumb, Part IV: Chasing the Soccer Ball
The U.S. security establishment loves to chase en masse after thethreat du jour. (Yes! I speak French, the language of diplomacy.) Once, the threat was al Qaeda and the Taliban; today, it’s IS.
But as we pour money and energy into combating IS, we risk overlooking other threats and opportunities. Is IS truly more dangerous to the United States than violent Mexican drug cartels, or the pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels who brought down a passenger jet with an anti-aircraft missile in July, or the long-term effects of climate change? Shouldn’t we spare a few brain cells (and a few bucks) for all that other stuff?
Dumb, Part V: Setting Bad Legal Precedents
Last but not least, the president’s decision to authorize air strikes in Syria risks cementing a dangerous legal precedent — and I’m not even talking about his decision to bypass Congress. Since World War II, the U.N. Charter’s rules on the use of force have helped substantially reduce interstate conflict, but Obama’s speech last night just tossed those international law rules out the window.
The basic idea of the U.N. Charter system is that unless they have Security Council authorization, states can’t use force inside other sovereign states without their consent. The only exception is the use of force in self-defense. Traditionally, self-defense has been understood narrowly: it permits force to be used to prevent an imminent attack, but not against actors who don’t pose any immediate threat.
(We could argue this point, but I think Israel already knows the answer to this one. – LS)
Unless we plan to ask Assad for his blessing first, it’s not clear that the United States has any basis under international law to use force against IS inside Syria’s borders Obama acknowledges that the United States has detected no “specific plotting against our homeland.” Instead, he falls back on speculative hypotheticals: “If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States,” and Westerners who join IS “could tryto return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.”
The Bush Administration invoked the idea of preventive self-defense to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.” But in his 2007 book, The Audacity of Hope, Senator Barack Obama rightly rejected this approach. The United States has “the right to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat to our security,” he wrote, but only “so long as an imminent threat is understood to be a nation, group, or individual that is actively preparing to strike U.S. targets.” This would seem to rule out military action against a group that has no specific plan to strike the United States but merely “could” pose a “growing” threat sometime in the unspecified future.
America’s words and actions are precedent setting. If we flout international law restrictions on the use of force, we’d better be prepared for the precedents we’re setting to come back and bite us.
Stop laughing, Vladimir Putin. It’s not very polite.
Dumb, Part the Last: Forgetting the most important question
Tell me how this ends?
I don’t envy President Obama. The challenges posed by the rise of IS are complex and difficult, and the politics are extraordinarily tangled. But it all reminds me of a famous line from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who served on the Supreme Court a century ago: “Hard cases make bad law.”
(Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. Please place a hedge of protection around each and everyone. I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen – LS)
Year-by-year Timeline of America’s Major Wars (1776-2011)
1776 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamagua Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War
1777 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Second Cherokee War, Pennamite-Yankee War
1778 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1779 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1780 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1781 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1782 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1783 – American Revolutionary War, Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War
1784 – Chickamauga Wars, Pennamite-Yankee War, Oconee War
1785 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1786 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1787 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1788 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1789 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1790 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1791 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1792 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1793 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1794 – Chickamauga Wars, Northwest Indian War
1795 – Northwest Indian War
1796 – No major war
1797 – No major war
1798 – Quasi-War
1799 – Quasi-War
1800 – Quasi-War
1801 – First Barbary War
1802 – First Barbary War
1803 – First Barbary War
1804 – First Barbary War
1805 – First Barbary War
1806 – Sabine Expedition
1807 – No major war
1808 – No major war
1809 – No major war
1810 – U.S. occupies Spanish-held West Florida
1811 – Tecumseh’s War
1812 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Seminole Wars, U.S. occupies Spanish-held Amelia Island and other parts of East Florida
1813 – War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War, Peoria War, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in West Florida
1814 – War of 1812, Creek War, U.S. expands its territory in Florida, Anti-piracy war
1815 – War of 1812, Second Barbary War, Anti-piracy war
1816 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1817 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1818 – First Seminole War, Anti-piracy war
1819 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1820 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1821 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)
1822 – Anti-piracy war (see note above)
1823 – Anti-piracy war, Arikara War
1824 – Anti-piracy war
1825 – Yellowstone Expedition, Anti-piracy war
1826 – No major war
1827 – Winnebago War
1828 – No major war
1829 – No major war
1830 – No major war
1831 – Sac and Fox Indian War
1832 – Black Hawk War
1833 – Cherokee Indian War
1834 – Cherokee Indian War, Pawnee Indian Territory Campaign
1835 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War
1836 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Missouri-Iowa Border War
1837 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Second Creek War, Osage Indian War, Buckshot War
1838 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars, Buckshot War, Heatherly Indian War
1839 – Cherokee Indian War, Seminole Wars
1840 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade Fiji Islands
1841 – Seminole Wars, U.S. naval forces invade McKean Island, Gilbert Islands, and Samoa
1842 – Seminole Wars
1843 – U.S. forces clash with Chinese, U.S. troops invade African coast
1844 – Texas-Indian Wars
1845 – Texas-Indian Wars
1846 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars
1847 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars
1848 – Mexican-American War, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War
1849 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians
1850 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, California Indian Wars, Pitt River Expedition
1851 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars
1852 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, California Indian Wars
1853 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Yuma War, Utah Indian Wars, Walker War, California Indian Wars
1854 – Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians
1855 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Cayuse War, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Yakima War, Winnas Expedition, Klickitat War, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay
1856 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Puget Sound War, Rogue River Wars, Tintic War
1857 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Utah War, Conflict in Nicaragua
1858 – Seminole Wars, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Mohave War, California Indian Wars, Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-Paloos War, Utah War, U.S. forces invade Fiji Islands and Uruguay
1859 Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, California Indian Wars, Pecos Expedition, Antelope Hills Expedition, Bear River Expedition, John Brown’s raid, U.S. forces launch attack against Paraguay, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1860 – Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Paiute War, Kiowa-Comanche War
1861 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign
1862 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Dakota War of 1862,
1863 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Southwest Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Goshute War
1864 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Cheyenne Campaign, Colorado War, Snake War
1865 – American Civil War, Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Colorado War, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War
1866 – Texas-Indian Wars, Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, California Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Franklin County War, U.S. invades Mexico, Conflict with China
1867 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua and attack Taiwan
1868 – Texas-Indian Wars, Long Walk of the Navajo, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Snake War, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Red Cloud’s War, Comanche Wars, Battle of Washita River, Franklin County War
1869 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War
1870 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War
1871 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Franklin County War, Kingsley Cave Massacre, U.S. forces invade Korea
1872 – Texas-Indian Wars, Apache Wars, Utah’s Black Hawk War, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Franklin County War
1873 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Modoc War, Apache Wars, Cypress Hills Massacre, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1874 – Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Red River War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1875 – Conflict in Mexico, Texas-Indian Wars, Comanche Wars, Eastern Nevada, Mason County War, Colfax County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1876 – Texas-Indian Wars, Black Hills War, Mason County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1877 – Texas-Indian Wars, Skirmish between 1st Cavalry and Indians, Black Hills War, Nez Perce War, Mason County War, Lincoln County War, San Elizario Salt War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1878 – Paiute Indian conflict, Bannock War, Cheyenne War, Lincoln County War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
1879 – Cheyenne War, Sheepeater Indian War, White River War, U.S. forces invade Mexico
For years, a handful of national security experts, NGOs, and members of Congress have been trying to raise a red flag over what they suspected were active influence operations by the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
(The RAND Corporation defines influence operations as “the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.”)
On June 13, 2012, five members of Congress called for an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in the Obama administration. The five members– Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)– were widely criticized for doing so, even by their own Republican leadership, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH), and Mike Rogers (R-MI).
At the time, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said, “It’s not right to question the loyalty of fellow Americans without any evidence.” Well, now we have the evidence.
The New York Times published a comprehensive article on September 7th entitled, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.” The article documents multi-million dollar donations to Washington-based think tanks that include the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council, by foreign governments as a way of buying influence in Washington.
For example, the government of Qatar made a $14.8 million donation to the Brookings Institution. It is a matter of public record that Qatar is a key funder and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and, indeed, that supporting Muslim Brotherhood parties has been a cornerstone of Qatar’s foreign policy.
According to Middle East Monitor, The Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Tamim bin-Hamad, said that support for the Muslim Brotherhood is a “duty” for which no thanks are necessary. Qatar is home to the pro-Brotherhood channel Al Jazeera, to Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar has directly funded a number of Muslim Brotherhood entities, including Hamas and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar has also provided refuge to many exiled Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
While The New York Times does not make explicit the link between Qatar’s position on the Muslim Brotherhood and its support for the Brookings Institution, the Times does report that the former prime minister of Qatar sits on the Brookings board and that Brookings staff meet regularly with Qatari government officials about the center’s activities. The report says that Qatar’s large donations to Brookings buy something of a guarantee that Brookings will burnish the image of Qatar. It does not go into specific policies or positions that Brookings has advanced as a result of this alliance. But a close look at Brookings’ publications makes clear that promoting the Muslim Brotherhood has been a key part of that agenda.
In particular, Shadi Hamid, Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center, has consistently argued that the United States must learn to live with political Islam and that supporting the “non-violent” Muslim Brotherhood is the West’s only way of forestalling further radicalization and future threats from the “violent” Islamists such as Al Qaeda. For example, in one article, Shahid argued that the U.S. should exert its influence in Egypt and Jordan to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the upcoming elections: “With much-anticipated elections in both countries scheduled for 2010 and 2011, the Obama administration as well as the U.S. Congress have the opportunity to weigh in and address the question of Islamist participation, something they have so far avoided doing.”
The fact that the New York Times has provided proof of foreign-government influence operations in America’s national security community should now raise serious concerns about some major policy decisions in recent years, where foreign interference was suspected but never proven.
In 2012, Newt Gingrich wrote an article about the Congressional probe of MB infiltration where he noted that the Defense Department’s official report on the Fort Hood shooter illogically described Nidal Hassan’s attack as “workplace violence.” Gingrich also charted the White House’s efforts to expunge mention of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel not merely from its own statements but also from the historical record, and he noted the explicit exclusion of Israel from the Global Counterterrorism Forum, in September 2011, by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Claiming Jerusalem as the capitol of the caliphate has been a major goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. When the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood announced at a rally on May 1, 2012 that their candidate for president would be Mohammed Morsi, Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi declared the following in a speech to thousands:
The capital of the Caliphate—the capital of the united states of the Arabs—will be Jerusalem, Allah willing. Morsi will liberate Gaza tomorrow….Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem, Allah willing.
Given the alignment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s goals with U.S. policies and now proof that very large amounts of money have been expended to influence policy, one has to ask what was behind these policies. Were they made with the interests of the United States in mind, or were they driven by other factors? Given the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza, this is a question of major significance.
An issue of even greater import for the security of the United States and for American citizens is the potential influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the massive purge of counter-terrorism trainers and training materials that took place in the autumn of 2011.
At that time, the Department of Justice initiated a sweeping review of all counter-terrorism trainers and materials used throughout federal law enforcement and every branch of the military. Hundreds of training slides were reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers. Many trainers were forbidden from future training and material that used terms like “jihad”, “Islamic terrorism”, or “Islamist violence” were expunged.
It was noted at the time that there were members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and in other positions of influence, who were known Islamists or Muslim Brotherhood members, or who had gone on record defending terrorist groups and acts of terrorism: individuals such as Louay Safi, Mohamed Elibiary, Omar Alomari, Imam Mohamed Magid, and Sahar Aziz. But while the questioning of allegiances and agendas of these individuals never moved beyond a small circle of conservative websites and analysts, American experts who had spent their lives in law enforcement or the military either lost their jobs or were constrained from further sharing of their expertise.
Aside from the injustice of what happened in 2011, the burning question for today, as we approach the 13th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, is whether U.S. law enforcement or the military can be prepared properly for the rising threat from The Islamic State (ISIS) if there are constraints on what they are being taught about Islamist terrorism and what words they are allowed to use to describe the threat.
The New York Times has provided a very important glimpse into a new era of foreign-government influence operations in the United States. Those who raised concerns about it in the past should now feel vindicated. But if members of Congress or the Department of Justice decide to dig deeper into this issue, their investigation cannot stop at influence-buying of US think tanks but must look into every aspect of America’s national security apparatus.
President Coward
9.5.2014 Videos Bill Whittle Via The Truth Revolt
(Henceforth, when referring to the President of the United States, it’s best to refer to him as President Coward.-LS)
He delayed the mission to rescue James Foley and other ISIS hostages because he didn’t want to be “Carterized.” He sent the men in the rescue helicopters back to their bunks as he watched our people die in real time at Benghazi. And he delayed the Osama bin Laden raid for MONTHS out of fear of what a failed attempt would do to his re-election chances. In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle shows how President Coward always puts his personal image ahead of the lives of American citizens.
(Fly the friendly skies…coming to an airport near you.-LS)
Photos have surfaced on Twitter of smiling men celebrating in front of airplanes, alleged to be images of the capture of Tripoli’s airport by jihadist forces. The seizure of the Libyan capital’s airport–and eleven of its commercial jetliners–has caused concern that the Islamists will use the planes for an attack on September 11.
The Daily Mail highlights a series of photos from virulently pro-Muammar Qaddafi tweeter @Volksbüro which appears to show celebrations at Tripoli airport after the defeat of the Libyan army. Showcasing images of the men at the airport, the Twitter user tweets:
(Follow the link for this post to view twitter images.-LS)
The jihadist group’s behavior echoes that of another group of militia fighters who captured a U.S. embassy annex in the Libyan capital, then posted photos of themselves online enjoying a dip in the building’s swimming pool.
News of the missing jetliners from Tripoli airport first surfaced in the North African online newspaper Magharebia, where a reporter wrote in Arabic, “Libya is now a source of danger not only for neighbouring Maghreb countries, but for all countries of the world.” As the anniversary of both the September 11, 2001, attacks on America and the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya approaches, concerns have escalated as to what the jihadists militias are capable of, given the destructive properties of commercial jetliners in the hands of terrorists.
It is not yet clear which jihadist groups are in control of the planes. There is also no information about where the planes are being kept or who is in control of them. The fighters pictured in the photos disseminated on Twitter, the Daily Mail notes, are believed to be members of the group Libyan Dawn. They are not the only terrorist group operating in Tripoli. According to Moroccan military expert Abderrahmane Mekkaoui, who spoke to Al Jazeera television, the planes are in the custody of a group called the Masked Men Brigade, though this report remains unconfirmed.
Ansar al-Sharia, the group believed to have been involved in the attack on the Benghazi consulate, is also operating in the capital. While they have known ties to the Islamic State, the Middle Eastern terrorist group, Libyan Dawn is believed to work exclusively with al-Qaeda, from which the Islamic State split.
William Schabas (screen capture: YouTube)
‘Unfair and unbalanced.’
(I remember visiting the UN as a young man on a business trip. It was my first time in NYC. Nearby were the World Trade Center towers, one complete and the other still under construction. What a sight for a small town guy like myself. Walking around the UN was easy in those days. So much so, I wondered into a secure area and got run off by the guards. I guess I was ‘thrown out’ in a sense. This was my first and only experience with the UN. – LS)
A watchdog group on Thursday filed a legal request demanding William Schabas step down as the head of a United Nations-established fact-finding mission into Israel’s recent violent conflict with Gaza terrorists, citing statements he made in the past that were critical of Israeli leaders and policies and supportive of Hamas, which the legal scholar two years ago termed a “a political party” representing the Palestinian people’s aspiration for statehood.
Schabas in 2012, for instance, expressed the wish to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried at the International Criminal Court, which clearly indicates that he is biased and thus unqualified to lead the investigation, UN Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer said. “That statement alone is sufficient to disqualify Prof. Schabas on the question of whether he can impartially sit on this panel.”
Schabas voiced his opinions about Israeli policies vis-à-vis Gaza as recently as this summer, Neuer said. In one interview Schabas gave during the early days of Operation Protective Edge, he suggested Israel’s military response to fire emanating from Gaza was disproportionate and therefore could not be considered legitimate self-defense.
“We are filing the first formal legal request to Professor Schabas at the Human Rights Council, calling on him to recuse himself,” Neuer told Israeli journalists during a press conference in Jerusalem. In any situation where a judge or the head of a fact-finding mission has been proven to be biased, or even if there is merely “the appearance of bias, the individual is obliged to step down,” he said.
Schabas remaining in place and leading the fact-finding mission “would have a potentially deleterious impact on the international rule of law,” Neuer writes in the request.
UN Watch’s legal request for Schabas to step down has been submitted as an official written statement to the upcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council and is set to be placed on its agenda for the September 22 debate on Israel. It will be distributed to the session’s delegates as an official document.
During the press conference, Neuer quoted several statements that Schabas, a Canadian international law professor, has made in the past that appear to portray him as a fierce critic of Israel sympathetic to Hamas.
Some of Schabas’s past quotes about Israel and Israeli leaders have been reported widely in the Israeli and Jewish media – such as the desire to see Netanyahu indicted, or calling him “the single individual most likely to threaten the survival of Israel.” UN Watch’s 20-page text documents many other instances in which he either criticized Israel or called for Israeli leaders to be investigated for war crimes. In October 2012, for instance, he accused Jerusalem of “crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.”
Neuer also discovered an interview Schabas gave to the BBC on July 17, about a week after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in response to incessant rocket fire from Gaza terrorist groups. Asked by the interviewer whether Israel’s actions could be seen as self-defense, given that Hamas rockets were fired at residential areas, Schabas replied that self-defense can only be used as a justification if it is “proportionate to the threat that’s being posed.” Since there are “huge numbers” of Palestinian civilian casualties but virtually none on the Israeli side, “prima facie, there is evidence of disproportionality in the response that Israel is undertaking in order to protect itself.”
With this interview, UN Watch argues in the legal brief, “Schabas effectively pronounced Israel presumptively guilty on the very question his commission in now called to investigate.”
During a legal symposium in 2012, the UN Watch document states, Schabas said Israel’s actions during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead were to be seen as “punitive actions” aimed at Gaza’s civilian population rather than self-defense. “If we look at the poor people of Gaza… all they want is a state — and they get punished for insisting upon this, and for supporting a political party in their own determination and their own assessment that seems to be representing that aspiration.”
In August, Schabas refused to say during an interview with Channel 2 whether he considers Hamas a terrorist organization, arguing that such an evaluation would prejudge the work of his fact-finding commission. But Schabas is no agnostic or neutral on the nature of Hamas, Neuer said. “Hamas, in Prof. Schabas’s view, very clearly is a legitimate political party that represents the aspirations of the Palestinian people for statehood. He does not talk about the war crimes committed by Hamas or the daily genocidal anti-Semitism.”
Israeli activist lawyer Nitzana Darshan-Leitner: The US should make Iran pay off its debts to American relatives of terror victims before easing sanctions.
(Just getting on the docket is half the battle.-LS)
An Israeli civil rights group, Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, has filed a complaint in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague against Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal over the July-August murders of 38 Gazan civilians.
The motion by the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center to bring Mashaal to the ICC was made possible by the fact that he is a citizen of Jordan, one of the ICC member states, and represents the first time that a Palestinian terrorist would be brought to the court on the basis of his Jordanian citizenship.
The complaint alleges that Hamas executed 20 Gazan civilians on July 28 for engaging in anti-Hamas protests, and publicly executed at least 18 civilians on August 22 for “collaboration” with Israel. The complaint further states that Mashaal “had knowledge of the executions, oversees Hamas’s governance of Gaza, and actively encourages and supports the executions.”
As a Jordanian citizen, the Hamas leader is subject to prosecution by the ICC because court is “empowered to exercise its jurisdiction over all acts committed by the citizen of a member, wherever those acts are committed,” explained attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the chairperson of Shurat Hadin.
In video footage broadcast around the world, Hamas spokesmen testified to the killings of at least 38 civilians in Gaza since the outbreak of this summer’s war with Israel. One of the videos shows Hamas executioners publicly announcing the verdict against some of the condemned civilians, who appear kneeling with cloth bags over their heads in a Gaza mosque. The executions brought widespread condemnation of Hamas from a number of human rights groups.
The Israeli legal group filed the complaint partly as a response to statements made last week by ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who said that the court has not “avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza due to political pressure” and has only failed to do so due to a lack of jurisdiction. According to ICC protocols, either the claimant or defendant in a case must belong to an ICC member state, a status that neither Israel nor Gaza holds. By trying Mashaal as a Jordanian, the Israeli group hopes to force the court to convene on the case, as Bensouda indicated it would be willing to do.
Darshan-Leitner told Tazpit News Agency that if the case against Mashaal succeeds in going to court, the results would be significant for Israel. The Hamas leader would be arrested and put on trial, and as the attorney pointed out, “the punishment for war crimes is imprisonment for life. It’s a life sentence without parole.” She also noted that a successful trial would undermine the legitimacy of Hamas, who would be “recognized as committing war crimes against its own people.”
Asked about the prospects of the case going to trial, Darshan-Leitner said that she intends to “put public pressure on the court to deal with this issue.” She noted that the court has an incentive to take the case in order to avoid appearing hypocritical, since the chief ICC prosecutor herself wrote that the court is willing to deal with allegations against Hamas.
“Quite frankly,” she said, “I don’t see a way out for the court from dealing with this case. For the first time they have the jurisdiction to deal with Hamas war crimes in Gaza.”
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