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The high price the world could pay for Obama’s Syria, Iraq policy

November 9, 2015

The high price the world could pay for Obama’s Syria, Iraq policy, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, November 9, 2015

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As I’ve discussed on Fox News.com before, President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy is not a policy. It is a non-policy to do as little as possible about the chaos in these countries so he can hand this mess to the next president.

The Obama administration has announced two major policy shifts in two years to deal with the Iraq/Syria crisis and the threat from ISIS. Neither exhibited the decisive leadership that the world expects from the United States. Both were reactive and piecemeal moves to counter multiple humiliations of America.

This has created a growing global perception of American weakness and indecisiveness that will embolden America’s enemies for the remainder of the Obama presidency and possibly beyond.

The first policy shift, announced in a speech by President Obama on September 10, 2014 in response to a series of ISIS beheadings, was supposed to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS. The president said this effort would include “a systematic campaign of airstrikes” in Iraq and Syria, training and equipping of moderate Syrian rebels, increased support to the Iraqi army and stepped up humanitarian assistance.

The failure of the September 2014 policy shift was obvious soon after it began. Pinprick airstrikes in Syria did not stop ISIS from making gains on the ground. In Iraq, ISIS took the city of Ramadi last May despite being outnumbered 10-1 by the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army and the Iraqi Kurds clamored for more arms while the Obama administration sat on its hands.

Obama’s 2014 policy shift suffered a spectacular collapse this fall when a failed $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels was cancelled and Russia intervened in Syria and began conducting airstrikes against anti-Assad rebels, many backed by the United States. Iran also stepped up its presence in Syria by sending troops who are fighting to prop up the Assad government.

This rapid collapse of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy over the last few weeks has caused serious damage to American credibility. Russian President Putin mocked and ignored President Obama as he sent Russian forces into Syria. An intelligence sharing agreement was signed between Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Iraqi lawmakers even called on Russia to conduct airstrikes against ISIS positions in their country.

The Obama administration responded to these setbacks with a new policy shift that looks even worse than the last one.

The president is sending “fewer than 50” special operations troops to help advise an alliance of Syrian Arab rebels. Given the lack of a clear policy and confusing rules of engagement, such a small deployment will be scoffed at by America’s adversaries and may be at risk of being captured. On Monday, President Obama made the preposterous claim that this deployment is consistent with his pledge of “no boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq because these troops will not be on the front lines fighting ISIS.

The New York Times reported on November 2 the Syrian Arab rebel alliance that U.S. special operations troops are supposed to be advising doesn’t yet exist and is dominated by Syrian Kurds who mostly want to carve out their own state and have little interest in fighting to take back Arab territory from ISIS. Moreover, American military support of the Syrian Kurds worries Turkey because of their close ties with the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group in Turkey.

The U.S. dropped 50 tons of weapons for the Arab alliance in late September. Although U.S. officials initially said Syrian Arabs and not Syrian Kurds were the recipients of the airdrop, according to the New York Times, Syrian Kurdish fighters had to retrieve these weapons because the Arab units for which they were intended did not have the logistical capability to move them.

The Obama administration’s latest Iraq/Syria policy shift includes a renewed call for Assad to leave office and a new round of Syrian peace talks.

New U.S. demands that Assad step down make little sense due to increased Russian and Iranian support.

The first round of U.S.-brokered Syrian peace talks were held last week in Vienna. 17 nations participated, including, for the first time, Iran. The talks produced a vague communique endorsing a future cease-fire, a transitional government, a new constitution and elections in which Syrians would select a new government. However, it seems unlikely the Assad regime – which was excluded from the talks – or its Russian and Iranian backers will ever support free and fair elections.

Russia and Iran rejected a timeline proposed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the peace talks under which Assad would step down in four to six months and national elections would be held in 18 months. This puts a cease-fire out of reach since most Syrian rebels will not agree to a peace process that leaves Assad in power.

The Syria talks were overshadowed by the unwise decision by the Obama administration to include Iran because its presence legitimized its interference in Syria and Iraq. This also made the talks tumultuous due to open feuding between Iranian and Saudi officials. More talks are scheduled but Iranian officials have said they may not participate due to their differences with the Saudis.

So far, Mr. Obama has not agreed to Pentagon recommendations to back Iraqi forces with Apache helicopters or to allow U.S. military advisers to serve on the front lines with Iraqi forces. These proposals are still reportedly under consideration. Meanwhile, Republican congressmen continue to demand the Obama administration directly arm the Iraqi Kurds who are struggling to battle ISIS with inadequate and obsolete weapons.

America’s friends and allies know President Obama is pursuing a Syria/Iraq non-policy to run out the clock. They know Mr. Obama’s initiatives are not serious policies but minor gestures that allow the president to be seen as doing something now while also enabling him to claim after he leaves office that he did not put U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria nor did he get America into another war.

Alliances in the Middle East are already shifting because of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq non-policy. Russia is filling a power vacuum in the region and is building a new alliance with Iraq, Iran and Syria. Russia has improved its relations with Egypt and Israel. Although the Saudis are working with the Obama administration to arm moderate Syrian rebel fighters, Riyadh is frustrated that the U.S. is considering compromise solutions which could leave Assad in power. Saudi Arabia also reportedly is considering providing surface-to-air missiles to the Syrian rebels, a move the U.S. opposes since these missiles could fall into the hands of ISIS.

America’s enemies are certain to try to exploit the run-out-the-clock foreign policy that President Obama apparently plans to pursue for the remainder of his term in office. This could mean a surge in global provocations, terrorism and violence from North Korea to the South China Sea to Afghanistan and to the Middle East due to the disappearance of American leadership over the next 15 months.

Remember that the weakness and incompetence of President Clinton’s foreign policy emboldened Al Qaeda to step up terrorist attacks against U.S troops and led Osama bin Laden to believe that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks would drive the United States from the Middle East. With Barack Obama dithering away America’s global credibility, a catastrophic terrorist attack like 9/11 could happen again.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Iraq war, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Iraq, Obama and Syria, Obama and US military, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Iraq war, Obama and Iraq, Obama and Syria, Obama and US military, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war

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Nothing personal about Obama’s consistent hostility toward Israel

November 9, 2015

Nothing personal about Obama’s consistent hostility toward Israel, Human Rights Voices, Anne Bayefsky, November 9, 2015

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President Obama with Prime Minister Netanyahu (file photo)

Much ink has been spilled blaming the state of U.S.–Israel relations on the poor personal rapport between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The fact is that huggable Barney the Purple Dinosaur could have been Israel’s elected leader, and the relations would have been equally hostile.

For seven decades from the moment of Israel’s birth – through five wars, one campaign, eight operations, two “uprisings,” and years of terrorism – Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to avoid living peacefully side by side with a Jewish state.

This isn’t ancient history. It’s today.

Here is Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on October 28, 2015:

The situation . . . as a result of the continued Israeli occupation and its practices is the worst and most critical since 1948. . . . How long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years for how long do you think it is possible for it to continue? . . . Seventy years of suffering, injustice, oppression, and deprivation, and the perpetuation of the longest occupation known to mankind in modern history.

The Palestinian narrative has never varied: Israel has been built on occupied Arab territory – not since 1967, but since 1948. That’s why Palestinians claim a “right of return” whose very purpose is their ideal “one-state solution” – one state where Jews are demographically outnumbered.

Standing in the way of the Palestinians’ one-state goal has been Israel’s and America’s unwavering commitment to a negotiated final resolution of the conflict. A negotiated resolution would legitimize each side and leave both parties still standing.

Hence, the Arab side has sought to eschew negotiations in two ways: first, directly, by the use of force; and, second, indirectly, by insisting on externally imposed “solutions” via multilateral entities where Israel is outnumbered – such as the United Nations.

This isn’t fantasy. It’s fact.

Here is Abbas at the U.N. General Assembly on September 30, 2015: “It is no longer useful to waste time in negotiations.”

In contrast, here is Netanyahu at the U.N. General Assembly on October 1, 2015: “I am prepared to immediately, immediately, resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever.”

So when President Obama announced on November 6, 2015, via Rob Malley, Middle East coordinator at the National Security Council, that there was an allegedly “new” “reality” in which “the parties are not going to be in a position to negotiate a final status agreement” during his presidency, he was adopting the Palestinian playbook.

This means the president will not spend his final year doing the only thing that would move the ball forward – namely, pressuring Abbas to choose diplomacy and negotiations over violence and third-party coercion. Rather, Obama will attempt to impose his will on Israel, the U.N. being the obvious modus operandi. After all, this president chose the Security Council over Congress on the Iran deal. He can let the Council do the dirty work on Israel, too. Indeed, over the past month, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has been laying the groundwork for just such a treacherous strategy.

Back up to October 3, 2015. A knife-wielding Palestinian attacked Adele Banita, a young Israeli mother, while she walked in Jerusalem’s Old City with her husband Aharon, two-year old son, and infant daughter. Adele lived to tell the tale, supported by video evidence. Her 21-year-old husband lay dying, her son was wounded, and she suffered multiple stab wounds. With a knife still lodged in her body, she cried out for help to nearby Arab shopkeepers, who looked on. Instead of coming to her aid, they spit on her, laughed, told her to die, and stood by. A Jewish man who came to the family’s aid was knifed to death.

But on October 22, 2015, Samantha Power made this shocking statement to the Security Council: “In Jerusalem, shoppers and merchants are on edge. . . . Said an Arab shopkeeper in the old city, ‘When I prepare the juice, I am scared to cut the oranges in case someone sees me with the knife and shoots me.'”

Rather than tell the real-life story of the actual Arab shopkeepers and their pathologically violent Jew-hatred, Ambassador Power peddled the tale of an Arab shopkeeper’s imagining himself to be a victim – in the same place as Banita’s real killers.

Power continued by calling on “both parties” to “exercise restraint.” The Palestinians heard loud and clear the message of moral relativism and impunity for Palestinian incitement.

Days later, on November 3, 2015, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., wrote a formal letter to the U.N. claiming that, in October, Palestinian “bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying Power from the Palestinian victims of its brutality.”

Add to this Power’s statement to the Security Council on October 16, 2015, in which she explained that Jews living in settlements (on what is legally disputed territory whose ownership is subject to negotiations) and Jews dying at the hands of “frustrated” terrorists were part of a “cycle of escalation.”

Not surprisingly, the Palestinians’ murderous rampage continues.

Anyone who believes that the president’s toxic foreign policy on Israel is a mere personal vendetta against a foreign leader he doesn’t like is giving Obama far too little credit. His foreign policy has never wavered: He sought “daylight” between himself and Israel. He has achieved a chasm.

The only question left is how much more blood the president can extract from Israel in his last twelve months.

Categories: Abbas, Foreign policy, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians and Jews
Tags: Abbas, Foreign Policy, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians and Jews

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“We Did What We Learned: Attacking Christians”

November 5, 2015

“We Did What We Learned: Attacking Christians,” The Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, November 5, 2015

(Please see also, ‘Islamophobia’ in America vs. murderous Christophobia in the Islamic world. — DM)

Western “mainstream media” and academia continued to exonerate Islam in deceptive op-eds, such as the Huffington Post’s “ISIS Violates The Consensus Of Mainstream Islam By Persecuting Christians,” by Qasim Rashid, a recipient of Saudi largesse, by way of Harvard University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center.
A 12-year-old girl, raped by an Islamic State fighter, was told that “what he was about to do was not a sin” because she “practiced a religion other than Islam.”
“In school I only learned about Islam. Parts of our teaching were about destroying Christianity. So we did what we learned, by attacking Christians … Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that is what we did.” — Tofik, a former Muslim cleric who converted to Christianity.

Throughout the month of August, the Obama administration and the so-called mainstream media kept insisting that Islam does not promote the persecution of Christians — all the while ignoring the direct testimonies of those who have undergone it.

According to Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda,

All the statements [by U.S. government and media] have not condemned strongly what damage it [persecution of Christians] is doing. What they are saying is just “This is not the true Islam. This is violating the picture of Islam.” The issue for them is the image of Islam, but none of these statements speak about the victims, about what has been done to the victims, they are not even mentioned. And that is one of the questions our people have. [Author’s emphasis].

Warda added that persecuted Christians are “being denied visas, while others who have participated [in the violence] or at least were silent, can go.”

Father Douglas al-Bazi, an Iraqi Catholic parish priest from Erbil, who still carries the torture scars he received nine years earlier at the hands of jihadis, denounced the Western refusal to accept reality about Islam:

I’m proud to be an Iraqi, I love my country. But my [Muslim] country is not proud that I’m part of it. What is happening to my people [Christians] is nothing other than genocide. I beg you: do not call it a conflict. It’s genocide… When Islam lives amidst you, the situation might appear acceptable. But when one lives amidst Muslims [as a minority], everything becomes impossible…. Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam.

Meanwhile, Western “mainstream media” and academia continued to exonerate Islam in deceptive op-eds, such as the Huffington Post’s “ISIS Violates The Consensus Of Mainstream Islam By Persecuting Christians,” by Qasim Rashid, a recipient of Saudi largesse, by way of Harvard University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center.

The rest of August’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts:

Islamic State: Savagery and Sex Slavery

Mokhls Youssef Batk, an Iraqi Christian, was blinded by the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) after he refused to convert to Islam.

The “caliphate” threatened that captive Christian women would become sex slaves unless they were ransomed with money. It posted images of three Assyrian Christian women who were previously abducted. The women hold pieces of paper on which their names and a date — July 27, 2015 — are written: “It is feared they will be sold to ISIS fighters if a ransom is not paid for them.”

A 12-year-old girl, raped by an Islamic State fighter, was told that “what he was about to do was not a sin” because she “practiced a religion other than Islam.” IS also made clear in a 34-page manual released by its Research and Fatwa Department that “sex with Christian and Jewish women who were captured in battle is also permissible.”

Jihad on Muslim Converts to Christianity

Uganda: After he learned that his family had converted to Christianity, a Muslim man went berserk. Issa Kasoono beat, strangled, and left his wife for dead. He also severely beat their two teenage sons for the crime of apostasy. The youngest son managed to flee and bring help from the church where, three months earlier, the Muslim mother and sons had accepted Christ. Due to injuries from the strangling, Kadondi, the mother, lost her voice, has difficulty eating, and requires extensive surgery. According to a local source: “The mother and Ibrahim [older son] Kasoono were seriously injured. Ibrahim was hit with a blunt object, had his right arm broken and has stomach pains, while the mother was strangled and sustained neck and throat injuries.” Although Uganda’s population is 85% Christian and 11% Muslim, attacks on converts to Christianity are on the rise, and include the recent murder by poisoning of a mother, and the gang rape of a teenage daughter of a Christian pastor.

Somalia: A Muslim convert to Christianity (name withheld) managed to escape from Al Shabaab — the dominant Islamic front — but only after the jihadis chopped off four fingers from his right hand while interrogating him about his conversion. Another man, 31-year-old Sharif, fled his home after his conversion to Christianity was exposed: “My association with a visiting white missionary landed me in trouble… I feel sad because I cannot see my family, because if I return back to Somaliland, then the government will arrest me.” His wife and four children — aged 8, 6, 4, and 1 — have also relocated to an undisclosed town: “I am not sure what will happen to my wife and four children. I am praying that God will provide for their basic needs. Pray for me that one day I will see them.”

Pakistan: Khurram Naveed, 33, a Christian man, and Sobia, 25, a Muslim woman, are on the run. Sobia discovered Christianity through Khurram and decided to be baptized. Since they got married and had two daughters, her parents, Muslim neighbors, and imams have repeatedly tried to convert them to Islam or face the consequences. In the words of Khurram:

“Since we got married we have had to change places many times… Wherever we go, people ask about my beloved wife’s conversion. Sometimes, imams try to force us to convert to Islam, issuing terrible threats…. My wife, I and our children have had to flee from place to place. We feel threatened as soon as people find out about my wife’s Muslim past. However, running from one place to another is not easy. There are so many problems…. Until now I have to change job six times, and finding new employment is not easy. But we need security for our life and we ask for help from the people of God.

Horn of Africa: A former Muslim cleric, who converted to Christianity and is known as Tofik, explained in an interview what Islamic preachers teach about Christians in mosques and what such converts can expect. For the previous 24 years, he had trained to become an imam at an Islamic madrasa: “In school I only learned about Islam. Parts of our teaching were about destroying Christianity. So we did what we learned, by attacking Christians once we finished our training.”

Tofik said he was taught that Christians are evil and that he and other students should steal from and kill them: “We beat them, attacked the church and burnt their Bibles. … Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that is what we did.” Due to a series of dreams, he eventually embraced Christ. News of his apostasy spread quickly, especially among his own tribe:

They reacted by coming to my home saying, ‘This brother is dead.’ In our culture, when someone dies their property is shared. So they destroyed my house, setting it on fire, and they took my cattle, and the remainder of my property. They then falsely accused me of burning another house, so I was jailed and taken to court. It was only in the court process that the witnesses proved their dishonesty by having contradicting testimonies.

After being released from jail, Tofik continued preaching Christ and even inspired more than 200 people to convert:

“As a result local villagers were upset. So again, they attacked me physically and burned my house…. The attackers assumed I was dead, so they threw me into the compound. Then they looted the small kiosk I owned and proceeded to loot and burn my children’s properties. They said they have killed the lead figure and now our area is free of his activities. They started shouting and singing.”

Jihad on Christian “Blasphemers”

Egypt: Medhat Ishak, a 35-year-old Christian, was arrested for handing out Bibles to Muslims outside El-Arab Mall in Sixth of October City. Mall security guards turned him over to national police, who accused him of evangelizing. The day after his arrest, a judge amended the charge against Ishak to “defamation of a revealed religion” and ordered him held for 15 days. After his term ended, the judge extended his detention for another 15 days. Ishak’s attorney, Rafik Rafaat, suspects the judge will keep extending the detention order, in violation of Egyptian law, until the case falls out of the public eye. Then he will hand Ishak a prison sentence of one to five years, in accordance with the defamation charge. This is because there are currently no charges against “evangelism” under Egyptian law. Handing out Bibles or even promoting Christianity does not constitute “defaming” Islam. “The word ‘blasphemy’ means that he was insulting the other religion [Islam], but he didn’t do that, and he didn’t talk about Islam or prophets or anything like that to be accused of blasphemy,” said the Christian’s lawyer. “So, now we are surprised that the attorney general accused him of blasphemy when he did not commit any act of blasphemy.”

Pakistan: Protestant Christian Pastor Aftab Gill and three other Christians from Gujrat were accused of blasphemy for having used the word rasool (“messenger” or “apostle”) during an event made public by their community, the Biblical Church of God. Local Muslims grew angry, saying that, as rasool is one of the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s attributes, Christian use of the word is blasphemous. But Christian activists say that because the word simply means apostle and appears in Urdu Bibles as such, it was used in that generic sense, and that the Christians were not trying to blaspheme. Muslims were nevertheless about to burn Christian homes and a church, but police managed to restore calm before the situation escalated. Unitan Gill, Pastor Aftab’s younger brother, said that local Muslim businessmen are jealous of the Christian family’s success in running a local grocery store, and that it was Muslim grocers who brought this matter to the attention of the police.

Islamic State Destruction of Syrian Churches

The Islamic State “caliphate” released a video showing its militants razing the ancient Mar Elian monastery to the ground. In the video, the jihadis can be seen removing the remains of Saint Elian, after whom the monastery was named, from their ancient stone sarcophagus, and then gleefully desecrating his bones. The church was built on the spot where Saint Elian was killed by his father, a Roman officer, for refusing to renounce Christ. Earlier, IS abducted an estimated 250 Christians from the monastery and its surrounding villages, many of whom were women and children.

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Islamic State jihadists in the midst of destroying the ancient Mar Elian monastery in Syria.

On Sunday, August 23, a rain of mortars fell on a Damascus neighborhood. Two shells hit the roof of the Maronite church. Nine people were killed and about fifty were wounded. A nearby Catholic parish was also damaged. According to Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar, “Part of the war in Syria is to live under indiscriminate bombing, a kind of Russian roulette which is always unpredictable.” Survivors tell the archbishop that those who die are better off, because they “will not have to see and live this cruel tragedy without end.”

Pakistani Dhimmitude

The Christian minorities of the “Land of the Pure” continued to be treated as third class, unwanted “citizens.”

Muslims attacked and severely beat a Christian family after a Muslim boy mocked a Christian boy by saying that his pregnant sister-in-law will “give birth as their cows and buffalos do.” The Christian boy reciprocated with an insult, and the Muslim boy began to beat him. Later in the evening, the Muslim boy and his brothers went to the Christians’ household and attacked the entire family. While beating the pregnant Christian women, they yelled, “You cannot be pregnant without permission of Muslim master who pays you.” After visiting the family, a human rights group stated that the “Christian Community is facing all sorts of discrimination and disgrace from their land Lords, neighbors, or where ever they live or work. Christians have no right to respect, education, free living and now they are under observation/mockery of giving birth, now our majority brothers [Muslims] will decide whether the Christian women will give birth respectfully or like animals.”

As torrential flooding spanned across various regions of Pakistan and washed away thousands of homes, Christians in Kasur received little humanitarian aid and were left to starve. Their two options — to receive help from Muslims or the government — was either to convert to Islam or willingly accept becoming modern-day slaves. According to Wilson Chowdhry, the president of the British Pakistani Christian Association, while Muslims in the region have benefited from temporary shelter, clean water and food provided by governmental agencies and Muslim charities, Christians have been left without those bare necessities and medication needed to fight illnesses. Said Chowdhry:

We are aware that this community has previously been offered aid from Muslim charities if they convert but they never accept conversion. They hold strong to their faith. They believe God will be their provider. These families have literally been struggling without food. Churches have opened up their doors but can’t provide them much aid because the churches themselves in the region are struggling. We are talking about a very rural part of Pakistan.

Chowdhry added that as desperation started to get the best of the Christian population in Kasur, many ended up signing bonded labor contracts in order to receive aid from Muslim landlords.

In a separate incident, a few days after a Christian man stopped two Muslim brothers from harassing Christian girls on their way to church, the two brothers broke into the Christian’s home, and beat and shot him. The man was later taken to a hospital, where he was reported in critical condition.

Boko Haram’s Slaughter of Christians

Jihadists from the Islamic organization Boko Haram slit the throats of sixteen Christian fishermen on the shores of Lake Chad in the Nigerian state of Borno. The increase in such incidents is supposedly in retaliation for the Chadian government’s efforts against Boko Haram around Lake Chad. According to Bishop Ramolo, “The Chadian President Idriss Deby has declared open war against the Islamists, and these acts represent an attempt at revenge.”

A Christian leader, stabbed in April by rampaging young Muslims in Kaduna state, suffered a relapse after an initial recovery. Pastor Emmanuel Danjuma of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, while visiting a Muslim-majority region of Nigeria, was attacked by Muslims reportedly angry about election results. “They called me an infidel and attacked me.” The pastor was clubbed and stabbed several times. A village elder apparently ordered the youths to stop. “I don’t know what happened then, as next I found myself in a hospital in Saminaka town. After a few days, my situation deteriorated and I was transferred to this Christian hospital.”

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians is expanding. “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some — by no means all — of the instances of persecution that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

It posits that such persecution is not random but systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities and locations.

Categories: Christianity, Christians, Foreign policy, Islamic culture, Islamic nations, Islamic perversions, Islamic slaughter, Islamic war on Christians, Obama and Christianity, Obama and Islam, Obama and morality
Tags: Christianity, Christians, Foreign Policy, Islamic culture, Islamic nations, Islamic perversions, Islamic slaughter, Islamic war on Christians, Obama and Christianity, Obama and Islam, Obama and morality

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Obama’s favorite Muslim dictatorships

November 5, 2015

Obama’s favorite Muslim dictatorships, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, November 5, 2015

(Please see also, US senior commander says US will not provide arms ‘as of now’ to YPG units. And why isn’t Iran on the list? — DM)

Obama’s favorite Muslim dictatorships are the opposite of everything that America stands for. They are places where human rights are a myth and terrorism a virtue. They are everything that we should reject. But instead their tyrants and terrorists are the good friends of their man in the White House.

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Michelle Obama is heading to Qatar, a state sponsor of just about every Islamic terrorist group you can name, on a mission of “gender parity” accompanied by late night comedian Conan O’Brien.

That makes sense since the idea of equal rights for women in Qatar is a joke.

Qatar charges rape victims with adultery, has no law against domestic violence and women need permission from their male guardian to get an education, a driver’s license, a job or to leave the country.

Women aren’t equal in Qatar. They’re property.

But Qatar is one of Obama’s favorite Muslim dictatorships. Secretary of State John Kerry recently launched an economic dialogue with Qatar. Qatar got a free pass to smuggle weapons past the NATO blockade of Libya even though the administration knew the weapons were going to terrorists.

While Qatar was buying weapons from Sudan, a country whose leader is wanted for crimes against humanity, to pass along to Islamic terrorists in Syria, the State Department was clearing Qatar to buy American weapons. Qatar was, of course, a Clinton Foundation donor.

The Reagan administration had cracked down on Qatar for illegally getting its hands on Stinger missiles. The first Bush administration had forced Qatar to destroy them. But these days we are the arms dealer for a nasty tyranny that has ties to terrorists. Or as the State Department report politely stated, “U.S officials are aware of the presence of Hamas leaders, Taliban members, and designated Al Qaeda and Islamic State financiers in Qatar.” These nice folks share a country with U.S. Central Command.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda bigwig who planned 9/11, was tipped off by a member of the Qatari royal family and the former Minister of the Interior which allowed him to escape.

That made it the perfect place to host the “moderate” Taliban for negotiations that went nowhere. It was also where Obama sent the 5 Taliban commanders after their release.

When meeting with the Emir, Obama claimed that “Qatar is a strong partner in our coalition to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.” But Qatar has allegedly funded and armed ISIS and other Al Qaeda groups. Islamic State financiers and supporters comfortably move around Qatar flying their ISIS freak flag.

Vice President Biden and Germany’s Development Aid Minister Gerd Mueller were forced to apologize for accusing Qatar of financing terrorists because some truths about our “ally” simply could not be spoken. Meanwhile an Egyptian intelligence document reportedly claimed that Qatar had provided anti-aircraft missiles to ISIS.

But Qatar is only Obama’s second favorite Muslim dictatorship and state sponsor of terror. Topping the list is Turkey, which just underwent another ugly Islamist election defined by accusations of fraud.

Obama had spoken of building a “model partnership” with Turkey between “a predominantly Christian nation and a predominantly Muslim nation”. The United States, Obama said, is not “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation”. He suggested that “modern Turkey was founded with a similar set of principles.” But the Turkish Republic has long since been ground under the wheels of Erdogan’s Islamist Turkey whose model is the Ottoman Empire and whose ruler lives in a billion dollar palace.

A little insight into Erdogan’s view of Islam can be gained from the fact that Turkey’s tyrant was once sent to prison for reciting an Islamic poem with the infamous lines, “The mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the believers our soldiers.” It’s not surprising that Erdogan’s Turkey supports most of the same Islamic terrorist groups as Qatar including Hamas.

While Turkey still has elections, it is increasingly an Islamist one-party state where the political opposition, journalists, prosecutors and even police can be locked up by the forces of the regime.

And much of that controversy stems from a criminal investigation into arms smuggling to terrorists.

Having helped create the mess in Syria, Turkey has become a waypoint for Syrian Muslims invading Europe. Once shunned by Germany, whose Turkish Muslim settlers are his strongest base of support, the refugee crisis sent Merkel and the Europeans with hat in hand to beg Erdogan to stop the invasion.

But Obama has always been Erdogan’s faithful friend. When the Islamist wanted to build mosques in this part of the world, Communist Cuba turned him down, but he got his $100 million mega mosque in Maryland. Millions calls Erdogan another Hitler, but Obama calls him “my friend.”

Another friend of Obama is the Sultan of Brunei. Obama called the Sultan, “My good friend” and rolled out a $6 billion green energy financing scheme for Brunei and Indonesia; two Muslim countries that violate human rights like it’s a spectator sport.

While Obama was palling around with the Sultan of Brunei, his “good friend” was bringing back Sharia law complete with stoning gays. The Sultan also banned Christmas and the Chinese New Year while urging “all races” to unite under Islamic law.

African Christian countries that outlawed homosexuality had faced pressure and criticism from the White House, but Obama had no lectures on human rights to offer his good Islamist friend.

Neither did Hillary Clinton whose Clinton Foundation had received millions of dollars from the regime.

But the most explosive allegations about Brunei, like those about Qatar and Turkey, involve Al Qaeda. In one of the more controversial uses of the “super-injunction” in UK law, the ex-wife of the Sultan had filed a gag order against a British businessman involving allegations that the Sultan of Brunei had met with a senior member of Al Qaeda, funded the terror group and even that “the claimant knew or suspected from conversations with her ex–husband that there would be major terrorist attacks on the UK (7/7) and Israel.” There is of course no way to verify the truth of these allegations. But the Islamization of Brunei parallels the goals of groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Obama has many “good friends” among the tyrants and terrorists of the Muslim world. But one of them is both a tyrant and a terrorist whose illegal regime is heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.

Muslim terrorists in Israel stabbed an 80-year-old woman and a 71-year-old man just this week. They did it because the PLO’s media operation, under President Abbas, told them it was their way to paradise.

Or as Abbas, the dictator whom Obama described as “someone who has consistently renounced violence”, said, “We bless every drop of blood, that has been spilled for Jerusalem…blood spilled for Allah…Every Martyr will reach Paradise.”

The blood includes the blood of elderly women and children, and the blood of families murdered together. Every murder is funded by US foreign aid because every terrorist knows that he can count on a lifetime salary from the PLO. The PLO paid out $144 million to terrorists last year alone.

Some terrorists have even confessed that they tried to kill Israelis to be able to pay off their debts.

Hillary Clinton and the State Department were sued by terror victims for funding terrorism in Israel. But nothing has changed. And when American terror victims won a lawsuit against the PLO in America, Obama’s people stepped in to protect the interests of the PLO against its victims.

The PLO is funded by hundreds of millions in American foreign aid. Over the years, $4.5 billion was spent on promoting “Palestinian democracy”. There is now less democracy than ever because Obama’s PLO pal doesn’t bother with elections. He just takes the money and runs a totalitarian terror state.

Obama’s favorite Muslim dictatorships are the opposite of everything that America stands for. They are places where human rights are a myth and terrorism a virtue. They are everything that we should reject. But instead their tyrants and terrorists are the good friends of their man in the White House.

Categories: Abbas, Brunei, Dishonor, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Obama and Islam, Obama and morality, Palestinian heroes, Qatar, Turkey
Tags: Abbas, Brunei, Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Obama and Islam, Obama and morality, Palestinian heroes, Qatar, Turkey

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Satire | Obama can defeat violent extremism with hugs and other treats for terrorists

November 4, 2015

Obama can defeat violent extremism with hugs and other treats for terrorists, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 3, 2015

(The views expressed by the imaginary Senator Librul may be his, but are not likely held by any sane individual. They do not necessarily reflect my views, those of Warsclerotic or any of its other editors. — DM)

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by my (imaginary) friend, the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of ~~Confusion~~ Utopia. He is a founding member of CCCEB (Climate Change Causes Everything Bad), a charter member of President Obama’s Go For it Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the Meretricious Relations Subcommittee. He is also justly proud of his expertise in the care and breeding of green unicorns, for which his Save the Unicorns Foundation has received substantial Federal grants. We are honored to have a post of this caliber by a quintessential Librul such as the Senator. Without further delay, beyond noting that I added a few words which I then struck out ~~like this~~ to provide greater clarity to Senator Librul’s article, here it is.

************************

~~Islamic terrorists~~ Violent extremists are simply misguided youth who are underprivileged, mistreated and haven’t yet developed refined social skills. Therefore, they should be treated like their peers in American cities.

Obama’s task force on 21st century policing has suggested new and better ways to encourage misguided youth to become productive members of society. One suggestion is to “build relationships through nonenforcement interactions between officers, youth, and other community members.” An example of this splendid innovation is provided at page 23 of the study:

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans says, “I think we’re the only police department in the country with an ice cream truck and I can’t say enough good things about it. When the truck shows up, the kids love it and our officers love it too because it gives them a platform and an opportunity to engage and interact with our city’s young people in a positive, friendly, productive way.”

Surely, that will work equally well with poor, misguided youth abroad who, through no fault of their own, have failed to develop suitably refined social skills and therefore engage in ~~Islamic terrorism~~ violent extremism, ~~Islamic~~ white supremacy and other socially undesirable pursuits. Minor modifications will, however, be necessary. Here are a few suggestions:

Khat vs. ice cream

There has never been a scientific, multiculturally correct and therefore statistically valid survey of the quantum of pleasure violent extremists derive from ice cream or, indeed, whether they even like it.

Moreover, it has been claimed that “candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” Liquor is also quicker than ice cream. However, Islam prohibits the ingestion of alcoholic beverages and, unless that wise proscription is revoked, offering ~~Islamic terrorists~~ violent extremists and ~~Islamic~~ white supremacists liquor would be culturally insensitive. On the other hand, offering khat would be culturally sensitive and, therefore, a good thing.

Catha edulis (khat, qat) is a flowering plant native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Among communities from these areas, khat chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years.

Khat contains a monoamine alkaloid called cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria. [footnotes omitted.]

Clearly, loss of appetite would be helpful to violent extremists who suffer from dietary insufficiencies and behave violently because of it. In similar fashion, euphoria would also diminish their perceived needs to engage in violent extremism and help them to transfer their excitement to productive, rather than destructive, activities. Offering khat would, therefore, be an excellent alternative to offering alcohol.

While some may favor providing marijuana instead of khat, the former has become increasingly lawful in many parts of Obama’s domain and doing so would deprive our own disadvantaged youth of one of their very few lawful pleasures, leading to their increased consumption of cocaine. That would, in turn, deprive many in Hollywood — America’s intellectual and cultural capitol — of a major source of inspiration for their production of splendid motion pictures which illuminate the foolish insensitivity of what most “conservatives” consider “thought.”

Weapons

It is sometimes claimed that Obama wants to deprive “law abiding” citizens of the firearms to which they cling bitterly, along with their Bibles. This understanding is, of course, wrong: it should be obvious, even to those dolts, that when civilians are prohibited from having firearms, those who still have them will, ipso facto, cease to be “law abiding.”

Something has to be done with confiscated firearms, and Commander in Chief Obama has demonstrated the historic success of His efforts to eliminate violent extremism by overtly giving weapons of all sorts to violent extremists or simply — but cleverly — allowing them to fall into their hands. This strategy has been proven quite successful in defeating the Non-Islamic Islamic State (NIIS) and other non-Islamic organizations promoting violent extremism.

Education

Many misguided youth who engage in socially undesirable conduct suffer, through no fault of their own, from lack of a suitable education. Great leaps forward need to be made in educating those who engage in violent extremism due to their sad misunderstandings of Islam, the religion of peace.

President Obama has proven Himself, countless times, to have a far clearer understanding of the true nature of Islam than any other person, living or dead — including Mohamed and countless so-called Islamic imams and other scholars. I therefore hope that He will soon find a way to visit as many Islamic lands as possible to provide personal instruction on the true nature of Islam to misguided youth, as well as to their misguided elders. Spreading the true nature of Islam in Islamic lands, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran and thereby putting “Islamic” terrorism behind us forever, will be the greatest of President Obama’s many historic accomplishments. As a true Man of Peace and Understanding, President Obama will put Himself in no danger of violence by doing so: the truth and beauty of everything He says are always immediately obvious to all who hear him.

Although President Obama will be in no danger of personal harm, because Islam is the true religion of peace, precautions should be taken against the extremely remote chance that He might be murdered by someone who unreasonably rejects His godly message. To that end, Vice President Biden should be asked to resign for the good of the country and, indeed, of the entire world. President Obama should issue an executive order making Hillary Clinton His vice president. By doing so, He will ensure that, even if the worst imaginable should happen, His wonderful legacy will be carried forward without interruption.

Editor’s comments

Giving up the office of vice president will be a tremendous sacrifice for Joe Biden and for Imam Obama as well, since selecting him is the best decision Obama ever made. Perhaps Obama will be able to provide some small compensation by asking the King of Saudi Arabia to make him (Biden, not Obama) a sheik and his foreign minister – oil minister. In those capacities, Sheik Biden will reduce the flow of oil, raise oil prices and help to end the evil of clime change while simultaneously helping to bring true peace to the entire world.

Categories: Foreign policy, Hamas, Islamic culture, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Moral equivalence, Obama and Islam, Political correctness, Satire
Tags: Foreign Policy, Hamas, Islamic culture, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Moral equivalence, Obama and Islam, Political correctness, Satire

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Our World: Showdown at the OK Corral

November 3, 2015

Our World: Showdown at the OK Corral, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, November 2, 2015

ShowImage (16)

US President Barack Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, October 1, 2014. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Whatever he says before the cameras next week when he meets with Netanyahu, Obama has no intention of letting bygones be bygones.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama next week is likely to look less like a rapprochement than a showdown at the OK Corral.

The flurry of spy stories spinning around in recent weeks makes clear that US-Israel relations remain in crisis.

Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a fairly detailed account of the US’s massive spying operations against Israel between 2010 and 2012.

Their purpose was to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. The Journal report, which was based on US sources, also detailed the evasion tactics the Obama administration employed to try to hide its covert nuclear talks with Iran from Israel. According to the report, the administration was infuriated that through its spy operations against Iran, Israel discovered the talks and the government asked the White House to tell it what was going on.

Over the past several days, the Israeli media have reported the Israeli side of the US spying story.

Friday Makor Rishon’s military commentator Amir Rapaport detailed how the US assiduously wooed IDF senior brass on the one hand and harassed more junior Israeli security officials on the other hand.

Former IDF chiefs of General Staff Lt.-Gens. Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz were given the red carpet treatment in a bid to convince them to oppose Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations. More junior officials, including officers posted officially to the US were denied visas and subjected to lengthy interrogations at US embassies and airports in a bid to convince them to divulge information about potential Israeli strikes against Iran.

Sunday, Channel 2 reported that the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate’s information security department just issued guidance to all IDF soldiers and officers warning them about efforts by the CIA to recruit them as US agents.

These stories have been interpreted in various ways. Regardless of how they are interpreted, what they show is that on the one hand, the Obama administration has used US intelligence agencies to weaken Israel’s capacity to harm Iran and to actively protect Iran from Israel. And on the other hand, Israel is wary of the administration’s efforts to weaken it while strengthening its greatest foe.

These stories form the backdrop of next week’s meeting between Netanyahu and Obama – the first they will have held in more than a year. They indicate that Obama remains committed to his policy of weakening Israel and downgrading America’s alliance with the Jewish state while advancing US ties with Iran. Israel, for its part, remains deeply distrustful of the American leader.

This Israeli distrust of Obama’s intentions extends far past Iran. Recent statements by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have convinced Israel that during his last 15 months in office, Obama intends to abandon US support for Israel at the UN Security Council, and to ratchet up pressure and coercive measures to force Israel to make irreversible concessions to the Palestinians.

From Netanyahu’s perspective, then, the main strategic question is how to prevent Obama from succeeding in his goal of weakening the country.

The implementation of Obama’s deal with Iran deal will form a central plank of whatever strategy the government adopts.

As far as Obama and his allies see things, the nuclear accord with Iran is a done deal. On October 21, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hosted a reception for Democratic congressmen attended by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to celebrate its official adoption.

Unfortunately for Pelosi and her colleagues, Iran is a far more formidable obstacle to implementing the deal than congressional Republicans. As Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), explained in a report published on his organization’s website last week, at no point has any Iranian governing body approved the nuclear deal. Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, and its Guardians’ Council have used their discussions of the agreement to highlight their refusal to implement it. More importantly, as Carmon explains, contrary to US media reports, in his October 21 letter to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not give his conditional approval to the deal. He rejected it.

Carmon explained that the nine conditions Khamenei placed on his acceptance of the nuclear deal render it null and void. Among other things, Khamenei insisted that all sanctions against Iran must be permanently canceled. Obama couldn’t abide by this condition even if he wanted to because he cannot cancel sanctions laws passed by Congress.

He can only suspend them.

Khamenei also placed new conditions on Iran’s agreement to disable its centrifuges and remove large quantities of enriched uranium from its stockpiles.

He rejected inspections of Iran’s military nuclear installations. He insisted that Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor must remain capable of producing heavy water in contravention of the deal. And he insisted that at the end of the 15-year lifetime of the deal Iran must have sufficient uranium enrichment capability to enable it to develop bombs at will.

As Carmon noted, the US and EU have announced that they will suspend their nuclear sanctions against Iran on December 15 provided that by that date, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Commission certifies that Iran has upheld its part of the bargain.

By that date, in conformance with their interpretation of the nuclear deal, the US and the EU expect for Iran to have reduced the number of centrifuges operating at the Natanz facility from 16,000 to 5,060 and lower enrichment levels to 3.67%; reduce the number of centrifuges at Fordow to a thousand; remove nearly all its advanced centrifuges from use; permit the IAEA to store and seal its dismantled centrifuges; reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium to 300kg.; remove the core from the Arak reactor and disable it; and submit to agreed monitoring mechanisms of its nuclear sites.

Carmon noted that Iran has taken no steps to fulfill any of these conditions.

With Khamenei’s rejection of the nuclear deal and Iran’s refusal to implement it, there are two possible ways the US and the EU can proceed.

First, as Carmon suggests, Obama and the EU may renew nuclear talks with Iran based on Khamenei’s new position. These talks can drag out past Obama’s departure from office. When they inevitably fail, Obama’s successor can be blamed.

The other possibility is that Iran will implement some component of the deal and so allow Obama and the EU to pretend that it is implementing the entire deal. Given the US media’s failure to report that Khamenei rejected the nuclear pact, it is a fair bet that Obama will be able to maintain the fiction that Iran is implementing the deal in good faith until the day he leaves office.

So what is Israel to do? And how can Netanyahu use his meeting with Obama next week to Israel’s advantage? Israel has two policy options going forward. First, it can highlight the fact that Iran is not implementing the deal, just as Israel took the lead in highlighting the dangers of the nuclear accord with Iran over the past year. This policy can potentially force Obama onto the defensive and so make it harder for him to go on the offensive against Israel at the UN and other venues in relation to the Palestinians.

But then, it is far from clear that Obama will be deterred from adopting anti-Israel positions at the UN even if Israel succeeds making an issue of Iranian noncompliance with the nuclear deal.

Moreover, if Netanyahu leads the discussion of the Iran’s bad faith, as he drove the discussion of the nuclear deal itself, he will reinforce the already prevalent false assessment in the US that a nuclear Iran threatens Israel but is not dangerous for the US.

This incorrect assessment has made a lot of Americans believe that by seeking to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel is advancing is own interests at America’s expense.

The other policy option is the one that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon indicated Israel is pursuing in his meeting last week with his counterpart Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. At the Pentagon Ya’alon declared, “The Iran deal is a given. Our disputes are over.”

The downside of this position is that it indicates that Israel accepts the legitimacy of a deal that Iran is not implementing and that would imperil Israel’s national security even if Iran were implementing it.

Its upside is that it takes Israel out of the US debate regarding the nuclear deal. To the extent that opponents of Obama’s Iran policy are willing to lead the fight against the deal themselves, Israel could do worse than to take a step back and plot its own course on Iran, independent of the US policy discussion.

It is hard to know which line of action makes more sense. But as the spy stories demonstrated, one thing is clear enough. Whatever he says before the cameras next week when he meets with Netanyahu, Obama has no intention of letting bygones be bygones.

Categories: Foreign policy, IDF, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Israel, Khamenei, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinians, Spies, U.S. media
Tags: Foreign Policy, IDF, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran Scam, Israel, Khamenei, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinians, Spies, U.S. media

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Russia warns that Syria war could become a ‘proxy war’

November 1, 2015

Russia warns that Syria war could become a ‘proxy war’ Breitbart, John J. Xenakis, November 1, 2015

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L-R: Sergei Lavrov, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, and John Kerry in Vienna on Friday (state.gov)

Russia has poured millions of dollars of heavy weapons into Syria, and is now sending in Russian troops to establish bases there. Recently, Russia launched 27 cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea to targets in Syria. Iran is pouring new troops into Syria. Iran has also given Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group a great deal of money, and Hezbollah has sent thousands of troops into Syria to support Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad.

Al-Assad’s genocidal attacks on innocent Syrian Sunnis, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing millions from their homes, has caused Sunni jihadists from all of the world to fight against al-Assad, Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran in Syria. Along the way, these jihadists formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

And now, on Friday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a pronouncement that Barack Obama was going to trigger a “proxy war” in Syria by sending in 50 special operations forces, as we reported yesterday.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Thanks to Iran, Russia, al-Assad and Hezbollah, there are now tens of thousands of foreign troops fighting each other in Syria, with al-Assad in particular supported by massive amounts of foreign weapons.

But somehow, those tens of thousands of foreign fighters don’t make it a “proxy war,” but America’s 50 special forces troops do.

You can’t trust any garbage that comes out of Lavrov’s mouth, or out of al-Assad’s mouth, or out of Vladimir Putin’s mouth, but I listen to BBC, al-Jazeera, FOX, CNN, and other media sources all the time, and I see these news anchors report this crap with a straight face all the time. I don’t know whether it is more sickening to watch those fatuous news anchors, or to watch the fawning Secretary of State John Kerry suck up to Lavrov and Putin, which has happened in issues involving Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear development, and Syria.

All this verbiage is coming out of a meeting in Vienna whose purpose is to find a “political solution” to the Syria problem. With hundreds of thousands of Syrian migrants pouring into Europe, and with hundreds of ISIS militants returning to Russia to fight Putin, there is a lot of pressure to find a “political solution.” But this week’s announcement that Iran will fully enter the war in Syria on the side of the Syrian regime makes any “political solution” farther away than ever. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries will never agree to anything like the emerging situation. Actions by Russia and Iran, intervening militarily in Syria, is an emerging disaster, likely triggering a sectarian Sunni versus Shia war throughout the region. BBC and International Business Times and Reuters

Syria’s civil war and Generational Dynamics

In the 12 years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve posted about 4,000 articles with hundreds of Generational Dynamics predictions.

In 2011, when the Syrian civil war began, I said that the war should fizzle within a year or two. Of all the hundreds of Generational Dynamics predictions, this is the one where I’ve clearly been (depending on how you look at it) either wrong or poorly described.

Syria’s last generational crisis war was civil war that climaxed in 1982 with the massacre at Hama. There was a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama against Syria’s president Hafez Assad, the current president’s father. In February, 1982, Assad turned the town to rubble, 40,000 deaths and 100,000 expelled. Hama stands as a defining moment in the Middle East. It is regarded as perhaps the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East, a shadow that haunts the Assad regime to this day.

(As a related matter, the civil war in Lebanon also climaxed that year, with the bloody massacre at Sabra and Shatila occurring in September 1982. And it occurred as the Iran/Iraq war was ongoing, three years after Iran’s bloody Great Islamic Revolution in 1979. At that time, much of the Mideast was re-fighting World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 60 years earlier.)

So, in 2011, I said that the civil war in Syria would fizzle, and could not turn into a crisis civil war. And that’s both wrong and true. There are too many survivors who remember the 1982 slaughter, and do not want to see it repeated. And so there’s been no massive anti-government uprising, as there was in 1982, and Bashar al-Assad’s Shia/Alawite troops have been fighting half-heartedly, with many soldiers defecting or deserting.

But the war did not fizzle.

It should have fizzled in 2011 or 2012, but Hezbollah and Iran starting pouring troops in to support al-Assad. And foreign fighters from around the world arrived to fight al-Assad and to form ISIS. That’s not something that Generational Dynamics could have predicted.

Earlier this year, it looked like al-Assad’s army was near collapse. In July, a desperate al-Assad gave a national speech in which he admitted he was losing. The war should have fizzled this year. But now, Russia and Iran are pouring tens of thousands more troops into Iran to bolster al-Assad. And that also is not something that Generational Dynamics could have predicted.

So the problem for me is: How should I have characterized the situation in 2011? The prediction that it wouldn’t turn into a crisis civil war was correct, but the war did not fizzle, because it turned into a proxy war.

Well, I don’t think there’ll be a next time, but if there is, I’ll try to characterize the situation differently, without simply using the word “fizzle.” NPR (1-Feb-2012)

Generational Dynamics and crisis civil wars

I write about a number of civil wars going on in the world today, so this is a good time to discuss civil wars from the point of view of Generational Dynamics.

Among generational crisis wars, an external war is fundamentally different than a civil war between two ethnic groups. If two ethnic groups have lived together in peace for decades, have intermarried and worked together, and then there is a civil war where one of these ethnic groups tortures, massacres and slaughters their next-door neighbors in the other ethnic group, then the outcome will be fundamentally different than if the same torture and slaughter is rendered by an external group. In either case, the country will spend the Recovery Era setting up rules and institutions designed to prevent any such war from occurring again. But in one case, the country will enter the Awakening era unified, except for generational political differences, and in the other case, the country will be increasingly torn along the same ethnic fault line.

The period following the climax of a crisis war is called the “Recovery Era.” One path that the Recovery Era can take is that the leader of one ethnic group decides that the only way to prevent a new civil war is for him to stay in power, and to respond to peaceful anti-government demonstrations by conducting massive bloody genocide, torture and slaughter of the other ethnic group, in order to maintain the peace. (Dear Reader, I assume you’ve grasped the irony of the last sentence.)

For example, in a July article about Burundi, I described how Burundi’s Hutu president Pierre Nkurunziza was using such violence to quell Tutsi protests, supposedly to avoid a repeat of the 1994 Rwandi-Burundi genocidal war between Hutus and Tutsis.

As another example, in a June article about Zimbabwe, I described how Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe was even worse. His 1984 pacification campaign was known as “Operation Gukurahundi” (The rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rain). During that campaign, accomplished with the help of Mugabe’s 5th Brigade, trained by North Korea, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Ndebele tribe, were tortured and slaughtered. Later, Mugabe single-handedly destroyed the country’s economy by driving all the white farmers off the farms, resulting in one of the biggest hyperinflation episodes in world history.

That is what Bashar al-Assad is doing in Syria. Fearing a Sunni uprising, like the one in 1982, al-Assad is conducting a massive “peace campaign” by slaughtering and displacing millions of innocent Sunnis. As I wrote above, this should have fizzled in 2011 or 2012, but it’s turned into a proxy war, and it’s a disaster for the Mideast and the world.

But none of the above three examples is a crisis civil war. A crisis war has to come from the people, not from the politicians. So, for example, there’s a massive crisis civil war going on today in Central African Republic (CAR), between the Muslim ex-Seleka militias fighting Christian anti-Balaka militias.

Unlike the previous examples, CAR is in a generational Crisis era. CAR’s last generational crisis war was the 1928-1931 Kongo-Wara Rebellion (“War of the Hoe Handle”), which was a very long time ago, putting CAR today deep into a generational Crisis era, where a new crisis war is increasingly likely. That’s why the CAR is a genuine crisis civil war, and won’t fizzle out. In fact, it won’t end until it has reached some kind of explosive conclusion — of the kind we described in Hama or Sabra and Shatila. ( “2-Oct-15 World View — Violence resurges in Central African Republic crisis war”)

Generational Dynamics and war between Palestinians and Israelis

I’ll discuss one more example — not a civil war, but very similar to a civil war, with the same kinds of issues.

In the last few years, there have been three non-crisis wars between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza. In each case, the Israelis destroyed Hamas’s infrastructure, ending the war. The war began again each time when Hamas’s infrastructure was rebuilt.

But the point I want to make is that these three non-crisis wars were all directed by politicians. Palestinians attacked when the leadership told them to, and stopped attacking when the leadership told them to stop.

What I have been describing in numerous articles recently is that there is emerging a major, fundamental, historic change.

In the emerging situation, young people today are no longer willing to listen to these leaders. According to the CIA World Fact Book, 20% of Gaza’s population are in the 15-24 age range, and so are 21% of the West Bank — about 200,000 males in each territory, or 400,000 young males total.

On the Israeli side, there are over 600,000 young males in the same age range. There have been unconfirmed reports of young Israelis also disgusted with the leadership. It is possible that, like the young Palestinians, they are willing to take matters into their own hands.

So in this environment, what could happen next? The last three Gaza wars were non-crisis wars, but the next one could be a crisis war between Israelis and Palestinians.

How can a crisis war begin? How about if those 200,000 young male Gazans blow holes in the walls, pour across into Israel and start killing Israeli citizens en masse in their homes and villages? And how about if they are joined by those 200,000 young male Palestinians on the West Bank, who start with the Jewish settlers and continue with the Jews in Jerusalem. And how about if the young Israeli males strike back and start killing Palestinians in their homes and villages?

Israel’s tanks and bombers would not be of much use. You can’t bomb Jerusalem, and you can’t bomb Israeli villages and settlements to kill Palestinians.

That is the difference. That is what a generational crisis war is like. It is not two tanks shooting at each other. It is hand to hand combat in homes, neighborhoods and streets by people armed with sticks and knives. It is what happened in Central African Republic last year, it is what happened in Rwanda in 1994, in Bosnia in 1994, and in Palestine in 1947.

And by the way, that assumes that the bloody mess stays confined to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians are likely to be joined by tens or hundreds of thousands from Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

The recent widely reported changes in the attitudes and behaviors of young Palestinians is a sign that this kind generational crisis war is coming.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. Military
Tags: Foreign Policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. military

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Putin has no long term strategy, says administration w/no long term strategy

October 31, 2015

Putin has no long term strategy, says administration w/no long term strategy, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 31, 2015

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This is an administration that believes you win wars with word games

Obama claimed that Putin is acting in Syria out of weakness and is being all reactive. Then he reacted by shipping weapons to Sunni rebels, a move he had originally rejected, and sending American soldiers into combat as boots on the ground.

Now DNI James Clapper is claiming that Putin is being impulsive and has no long term strategy. This comes from an administration that changed its mind several times about intervening in the Syrian Civil War and keeps saying it still doesn’t have a plan for defeating ISIS.

Clapper said Putin was “very impulsive and opportunistic” as he increased Russian support for close ally President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s roiling civil war.

“I personally question whether he has some long-term strategy or whether he is being very opportunistic on a day-to-day basis,” Clapper told CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “And I think his intervention into Syria is another manifestation of that.”

Being “opportunistic” is actually how real life battles are fought. You have a strategy, but you seize advantages based on the evolving situation on the ground.

So far Putin’s long term strategy has been to expand Russian influence in the region. It’s working really well. Russia is back to being the regional alternative to the US. It’s securing strategic territories and its allies are expanding their sphere of influence.

On top of that, Putin managed to avert US air strikes on Assad with his fake WMD deal. Then he helped Iran secure its nuclear weapons program with the Iran deal. (I’ll grant that he had a lot of help from Obama and Kerry there.) Now he’s angling to get Obama on board a peace deal that keeps Assad in power and ends US support for the rebellion. Considering this administration’s foreign policy track record, he’ll probably get his way. While the administration clown car taunts him as weak and opportunistic and reactive and impulsive.

In the Cold War, the Soviets trash talked while the US got things done. Under Obama, the US talks trash and Russia gets things done. But this is an administration that believes you win wars with word games.

How is that working out for them?

Categories: Assad, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama's legacy, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. Military
Tags: Assad, Combat troops, Foreign Policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama's legacy, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. military

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ISIS Threatens Obama With ‘New Lesson’ in Beheading Video

October 31, 2015

ISIS Threatens Obama With ‘New Lesson’ in Beheading Video, Newsmax, Sandy Fitzgerald, October 31, 2015

(Video at the link. Has Obama recently decided that the Islamic State is a greater threat than climate change?– DM)

A horrifying new 15-minute video appears to show Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists beheading four captured Kurdish Peshmerga fighters — and delivering a bold warning to President Barack Obama.

The video claims to be the ISIS response to a Delta Force-Kurdish raid in northern Iraq last week that cost American Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler his life.

“Obama, you have learned a new lesson,” a masked terrorist warns Obama in what sounds like an American accent. “Six of the soldiers of the caliphate faced 400 of your children; they killed and injured them by Allah’s grace.”

The warning was delivered before the man executes one of the prisoners, reports CNN, and the other three prisoners are also beheaded by the video’s end. Arabic text also appears onscreen, translating as “Peshmerga soldiers that Americans came to rescue.”

The video was released online Friday, and earlier in the clip, ISIS claims to show the aftermath of the raid, in which Kurdish, U.S., and Iraqi forces rescue 70 hostages from an ISIS prison in Hawija, located in Kirkuk, a province located in northern Iraq.

CNN reports that those who were set free included 20 of the Iraqi Security Forces, local residents and several ISIS fighters accused of spying. None of the hostages were Kurds.

As of Saturday morning, there had not been an official response issued from the White House on the video or the threat. But in Kurdistan, regional government spokesman Dindar Zebari told CNN that “ISIS respects no form of human rights. Our message to them is that we will finish them.”

But Kurdistan will not kill ISIS prisoners in response, Zebari said.

“We hold 215 ISIS prisoners and we treat them according to international human rights laws,” he said. “We have also freed 85 prisoners who had been suspected of association with ISIS. We do not kill our prisoners.”

The Kurdistan regional government said that more than 20 ISIS fighters were killed in last week’s raid, and six more were captured.

The Kurdish Peshmerga, which protects an autonomous region in northern Iraq, has been fighting against ISIS and its push to take Iraq and Syria and create a caliphate.

ISIS earlier this week said the Delta Force-Kurdish raid, called for by the Kurds to rescue Peshmerga fighters, was a failure.

The man who issued the threat does not appear to be the infamous “Jihadi John,” the English-speaking jihadist who has appeared in several other ISIS beheading videos.

The terrorist, whose real name is believed to be Mohammed Emwazi, is considered to be a priority target after killing American, Western, and Japanese hostages.

Meanwhile, two Syrian activists have also been killed in recent days in the Turkish town of Urfa, and their deaths are being blamed on ISIS.

According to the groups Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and Eye on Homeland, activists Ibrahim Abdul Qadir and Faris Humadi the men who were shot and beheaded. ISIS has not yet claimed responsibility for their deaths.

Qadir and Humadi worked for Eye on Homeland, a Syrian media group that reports on the civil war, and Qadar also was a founding member of the Raqqa group, which posts photos, video, and other information online from the Raqqa province in Syria.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iraq war, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Kurdistan, Kurds, Obama and Iraq, Obama's foreign failures, U.S. Military
Tags: Foreign Policy, Iraq war, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Kurdistan, Kurds, Obama and Iraq, Obama's foreign failures, U.S. military

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World powers agree to more talks on Syria crisis

October 31, 2015

World powers agree to more talks on Syria crisis, Al Jazeera, October 31, 2015

(But please see, Iran-US Talks Limited to Nuclear Issue: MPs — DM)

Friday’s talks included an Iranian delegation for the first time.

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Major powers meeting in Vienna for talks on Syria have found enough “common ground” to meet for a new round of talks in two weeks, even as the conflict enters a new phase with the deployment of US special forces in the country.

President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of fewer than 50 commandos to help coalition forces coordinate with local troops, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, said on Friday.

The troop announcement came as diplomats in the Austrian capital representing 17 countries and the EU agreed to launch a broad new peace attempt to gradually end Syria’s long civil war – a declaration that avoided any decision on when President Bashar al-Assad might leave.

A Syrian member of parliament said the decision is an aggression because it does not involve the government’s agreement.

Sharif Shehadeh told AP news agency on Saturday that the troops will have no effect on the ground, but Washington wants to say that it is present in Syria.

It is not clear how many rebel groups would agree to a plan that does not result in Assad’s immediate departure.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on Friday a US decision to deploy special forces in Syria would make cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries more important.

“I am sure that neither the United States nor Russia want [the conflict] to become a so-called proxy war,” Lavrov said after the talks in Vienna.

“But it is obvious for me that the situation makes the task of cooperation between the militaries more relevant.”

Friday’s talks included an Iranian delegation for the first time.

Representatives from Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, the EU and other Arab states also attended.

The participation by Russia and Iran in the attempt could mark a new and promising phase in the diplomacy since those countries have staunchly backed Assad.

‘Tough conversations’

Any ceasefire agreement that may come as a result of the peace effort would not include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, which controls large parts of northern Syria and has its capital there.

“There were tough conversations today,” John Kerry, US secretary of state, said on Friday. “This is the beginning of a new diplomatic process.”

Kerry acknowledged that those present have major differences regarding the Assad government.

“But we cannot allow the differences to get in the way of diplomacy to end the killing.”

Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, said there is “hope” for a political process to advance, saying that those involved in the talks “found common ground” for further discussion.

“It was a very long and very substantial meeting. This was not an easy one, but for sure a historical one,” she said while praising “those who took difficult decisions” in joining the talks.

Lavrov said those present in the meeting spent a “long time” pushing for an inclusive Syrian-led peace process.

Among the points agreed upon during the talks was that ISIL cannot be allowed to reign in Syria, he said.

In a rare hint of diplomatic progress, Iran indicated it would back a six-month political transition period in Syria followed by elections to decide Assad’s fate, although his opponents rejected the proposal as a trick to keep him in power.

In addition to Assad’s fate, on which delegates said no breakthrough had been expected, sticking points have long included the question of which rebel groups should be considered “terrorists” and who should be involved in the political process.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Vienna on Friday, said that there was a “mood of optimism” following the talks.

“There is a sense of hopefulness, which has been absent in these talks for quite a long time now,” he said.

The talks came as Syrian government air strikes continued in rebel-held territories, killing at least 61 people and wounding over 100 others in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Friday.

A further 80 people were killed in government and Russian air strikes in Aleppo province.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. Military
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. military

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