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Why Islam Needs a Reformation

March 21, 2015

Why Islam Needs a Reformation, Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, March 20, 2015

(What are the chances of such a reformation over the next hundred years or so? — DM)

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A man prays during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, at Jama Masjid in New Delhi on Oct. 6, 2014. Eid al-Adha marks the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“Islam’s borders are bloody,” wrote the late political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1996, “and so are its innards.” Nearly 20 years later, Huntington looks more right than ever before. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims. In 2013, there were nearly 12,000 terrorist attacks world-wide. The lion’s share were in Muslim-majority countries, and many of the others were carried out by Muslims. By far the most numerous victims of Muslim violence—including executions and lynchings not captured in these statistics—are Muslims themselves.

Not all of this violence is explicitly motivated by religion, but a great deal of it is. I believe that it is foolish to insist, as Western leaders habitually do, that the violent acts committed in the name of Islam can somehow be divorced from the religion itself. For more than a decade, my message has been simple: Islam is not a religion of peace.

When I assert this, I do not mean that Islamic belief makes all Muslims violent. This is manifestly not the case: There are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself.

It is not just al Qaeda and Islamic State that show the violent face of Islamic faith and practice. It is Pakistan, where any statement critical of the Prophet or Islam is labeled as blasphemy and punishable by death. It is Saudi Arabia, where churches and synagogues are outlawed and where beheadings are a legitimate form of punishment. It is Iran, where stoning is an acceptable punishment and homosexuals are hanged for their “crime.”

As I see it, the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts. It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been “hijacked” by extremists. The killers of Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.

Instead of letting Islam off the hook with bland clichés about the religion of peace, we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts.

As it turns out, the West has some experience with this sort of reformist project. It is precisely what took place in Judaism and Christianity over the centuries, as both traditions gradually consigned the violent passages of their own sacred texts to the past. Many parts of the Bible and the Talmud reflect patriarchal norms, and both also contain many stories of harsh human and divine retribution. As President Barack Obama said in remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, “Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”

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Islamic State militants marching through Raqqa, Syria, a stronghold of the Sunni extremist group, in an undated file image posted on a militant website on Jan. 14, 2014. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Yet today, because their faiths went through a long, meaningful process of Reformation and Enlightenment, the vast majority of Jews and Christians have come to dismiss religious scripture that urges intolerance or violence. There are literalist fringes in both religions, but they are true fringes. Regrettably, in Islam, it is the other way around: It is those seeking religious reform who are the fringe element.

Any serious discussion of Islam must begin with its core creed, which is based on the Quran (the words said to have been revealed by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad) and the hadith (the accompanying works that detail Muhammad’s life and words). Despite some sectarian differences, this creed unites all Muslims. All, without exception, know by heart these words: “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah; and Muhammad is His messenger.” This is the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.

The Shahada might seem to be a declaration of belief no different from any other. But the reality is that the Shahada is both a religious and a political symbol.

In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door in Mecca trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah’s messenger.

After 10 years of trying this kind of persuasion, however, he and his small band of believers went to Medina, and from that moment, Muhammad’s mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.)

No symbol represents the soul of Islam more than the Shahada. But today there is a contest within Islam for the ownership of that symbol. Who owns the Shahada? Is it those Muslims who want to emphasize Muhammad’s years in Mecca or those who are inspired by his conquests after Medina? On this basis, I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims.

The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.

I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it.

It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys.” It is Medina Muslims who prescribe death for the crime of apostasy, death by stoning for adultery and hanging for homosexuality. It is Medina Muslims who put women in burqas and beat them if they leave their homes alone or if they are improperly veiled.

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Muslim children carry torches during a parade before Eid al-Fitr, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, on July 27, 2014, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims. Like devout Christians or Jews who attend religious services every day and abide by religious rules in what they eat and wear, Mecca Muslims focus on religious observance. I was born in Somalia and raised as a Mecca Muslim. So were the majority of Muslims from Casablanca to Jakarta.

Yet the Mecca Muslims have a problem: Their religious beliefs exist in an uneasy tension with modernity—the complex of economic, cultural and political innovations that not only reshaped the Western world but also dramatically transformed the developing world as the West exported it. The rational, secular and individualistic values of modernity are fundamentally corrosive of traditional societies, especially hierarchies based on gender, age and inherited status.

Trapped between two worlds of belief and experience, these Muslims are engaged in a daily struggle to adhere to Islam in the context of a society that challenges their values and beliefs at every turn. Many are able to resolve this tension only by withdrawing into self-enclosed (and increasingly self-governing) enclaves. This is called cocooning, a practice whereby Muslim immigrants attempt to wall off outside influences, permitting only an Islamic education for their children and disengaging from the wider non-Muslim community.

It is my hope to engage this second group of Muslims—those closer to Mecca than to Medina—in a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith. I recognize that these Muslims are not likely to heed a call for doctrinal reformation from someone they regard as an apostate and infidel. But they may reconsider if I can persuade them to think of me not as an apostate but as a heretic: one of a growing number of people born into Islam who have sought to think critically about the faith we were raised in. It is with this third group—only a few of whom have left Islam altogether—that I would now identify myself.

These are the Muslim dissidents. A few of us have been forced by experience to conclude that we could not continue to be believers; yet we remain deeply engaged in the debate about Islam’s future. The majority of dissidents are reforming believers—among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.

How many Muslims belong to each group? Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in the militant terms I associate with Muhammad’s time in Medina. But out of well over 1.6 billion believers, or 23% of the globe’s population, that 48 million seems to be more than enough. (I would put the number significantly higher, based on survey data on attitudes toward Shariah in Muslim countries.)

In any case, regardless of the numbers, it is the Medina Muslims who have captured the world’s attention on the airwaves, over social media, in far too many mosques and, of course, on the battlefield.

The Medina Muslims pose a threat not just to non-Muslims. They also undermine the position of those Mecca Muslims attempting to lead a quiet life in their cultural cocoons throughout the Western world. But those under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself.

For the world at large, the only viable strategy for containing the threat posed by the Medina Muslims is to side with the dissidents and reformers and to help them to do two things: first, identify and repudiate those parts of Muhammad’s legacy that summon Muslims to intolerance and war, and second, persuade the great majority of believers—the Mecca Muslims—to accept this change.

Islam is at a crossroads. Muslims need to make a conscious decision to confront, debate and ultimately reject the violent elements within their religion. To some extent—not least because of widespread revulsion at the atrocities of Islamic State, al Qaeda and the rest—this process has already begun. But it needs leadership from the dissidents, and they in turn stand no chance without support from the West.

What needs to happen for us to defeat the extremists for good? Economic, political, judicial and military tools have been proposed and some of them deployed. But I believe that these will have little effect unless Islam itself is reformed.

Such a reformation has been called for repeatedly at least since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate. But I would like to specify precisely what needs to be reformed.

I have identified five precepts central to Islam that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when the harmfulness of these ideas are recognized and they are repudiated will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved.

Here are the five areas that require amendment:

1. Muhammad’s semi-divine status, along with the literalist reading of the Quran.
Muhammad should not be seen as infallible, let alone as a source of divine writ. He should be seen as a historical figure who united the Arab tribes in a premodern context that cannot be replicated in the 21st century. And although Islam maintains that the Quran is the literal word of Allah, it is, in historical reality, a book that was shaped by human hands. Large parts of the Quran simply reflect the tribal values of the 7th-century Arabian context from which it emerged. The Quran’s eternal spiritual values must be separated from the cultural accidents of the place and time of its birth.

2. The supremacy of life after death.
The appeal of martyrdom will fade only when Muslims assign a greater value to the rewards of this life than to those promised in the hereafter.

3. Shariah, the vast body of religious legislation.
Muslims should learn to put the dynamic, evolving laws made by human beings above those aspects of Shariah that are violent, intolerant or anachronistic.

4. The right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law.
There is no room in the modern world for religious police, vigilantes and politically empowered clerics.

5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
Islam must become a true religion of peace, which means rejecting the imposition of religion by the sword.

I know that this argument will make many Muslims uncomfortable. Some are bound to be offended by my proposed amendments. Others will contend that I am not qualified to discuss these complex issues of theology and law. I am also afraid—genuinely afraid—that it will make a few Muslims even more eager to silence me.

But this is not a work of theology. It is more in the nature of a public intervention in the debate about the future of Islam. The biggest obstacle to change within the Muslim world is precisely its suppression of the sort of critical thinking I am attempting here. If my proposal for reform helps to spark a serious discussion of these issues among Muslims themselves, I will consider it a success.

Let me make two things clear. I do not seek to inspire another war on terror or extremism—violence in the name of Islam cannot be ended by military means alone. Nor am I any sort of “Islamophobe.” At various times, I myself have been all three kinds of Muslim: a fundamentalist, a cocooned believer and a dissident. My journey has gone from Mecca to Medina to Manhattan.

For me, there seemed no way to reconcile my faith with the freedoms I came to the West to embrace. I left the faith, despite the threat of the death penalty prescribed by Shariah for apostates. Future generations of Muslims deserve better, safer options. Muslims should be able to welcome modernity, not be forced to wall themselves off, or live in a state of cognitive dissonance, or lash out in violent rejection.

But it is not only Muslims who would benefit from a reformation of Islam. We in the West have an enormous stake in how the struggle over Islam plays out. We cannot remain on the sidelines, as though the outcome has nothing to do with us. For if the Medina Muslims win and the hope for a Muslim Reformation dies, the rest of the world too will pay an enormous price—not only in blood spilled but also in freedom lost.

Categories: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Hadith, History, Human rights, Islam, Islamism, Middle East, Muslims, Obama, Reform Islam, Religion, Secularism, Sharia law, Terrorism, Theocracy
Tags: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Caliphate, Christians, Foreign Policy, Hadith, History, human rights, Islam, Islamism, Mecca, Medina, Middle East, Reform Islam, Religion, Secularism, Sharia law, Terrorism, Theocracy

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A Statement on the Crisis in the U.S.—Israel Relationship

March 19, 2015

A Statement on the Crisis in the U.S.—Israel Relationship, Commentary Magazine, The Editors, March 19, 2015

(A lengthy but excellent summary, putting the relationship between the U.S. and Israel in perspective. — DM)

After six weeks of madness, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Congress and delivered a speech about the nuclear threat posed by Iran. It was a terrific speech. It was not a remarkable speech, because nothing the Israeli prime minister said came as news to anyone who has been paying attention to the issue for the past decade.

What made his speech and its occasion of particular note were the atmospherics. It has been years since an address by a politician in the United States had been so hotly anticipated, and it wasn’t even to be delivered by an American. The anticipation was due entirely to Barack Obama’s incendiary response to the speaking invitation extended to Netanyahu in January by the Republican House leader, John Boehner.

The president’s displeasure and rage continued to grow, to the point that a few days before the speech, no less a personage than National Security Adviser Susan Rice said it would be “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between the United States and Israel. On the day of the speech, the Democratic Middle East operative Martin Indyk declared on CNN that it was “the saddest and most tragic day” for the relationship in all his 35 years as a water-carrier.

In this case, we fear, the wish is father to the threat. Susan Rice and Martin Indyk see the relationship between Israel and the United States on a downward spiral because they and their boss want it so. Obama does not like the special status Israel seems to enjoy in the United States—not only because its particularistic and nationalist claim offends him ideologically, but because Israel’s popularity with the American people limits his freedom of action.

The relationship between the United States and Israel is in jeopardy because, from the moment his administration began, Barack Obama has consciously, deliberately, and with malice aforethought sought to jeopardize it. He did so in part because he is committed to the idea that Israel must retreat to its 1967 borders, dismantle its settlements, and will a Palestinian state into existence. He views Israel’s inability or unwillingness to do these things as a moral stain.

But the depth of Obama’s anger toward Israel and Netanyahu suggests that there is far more to it than that. Israel stands in the way of what the president hopes might be his crowning foreign-policy achievement: a new order in the Middle East represented by a new entente with Iran. Netanyahu’s testimony on behalf of his country and his people is this: A nuclear Iran will possess the means to visit a second Holocaust on the Jews in a single day. His testimony on behalf of everyone else is this: A nuclear Iran will set off an arms race in the Middle East that will threaten world order, the world’s financial stability, and the lives of untold millions. Simply put, Obama finds the witness Israel is bearing to the threat posed by Iran unbearable.

Elliott Abrams has called the speech kerfuffle a “manufactured crisis.” He is right, and the assembly line has been rolling without letup for six years.

Barack Obama came into office determined to put daylight between the United States and Israel. A few months after his inauguration, he met with Jewish leaders to discuss growing concerns about the bilateral relationship. One leader, Malcolm Hoenlein, told the president: “If you want Israel to take risks, then its leaders must know that the United States is right next to them.” Obama responded thus: “Look at the past eight years. During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”

Obama sought to make “daylight” almost immediately by picking fights with the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who came into office only weeks after Obama’s inauguration. The administration made no secret of its hopes that Netanyahu’s government would fall and be replaced by the supposedly more pliant opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

While the White House and the State Department have consistently portrayed Netanyahu as a man bent on obstructing Obama’s policies, the record shows otherwise. From the start, Netanyahu has sought to accommodate the Obama administration’s wishes as much as possible without jeopardizing Israel’s security.

In May 2009, Obama met with Netanyahu and told him bluntly that “settlements [on the West Bank] have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.” Israel complied; Netanyahu announced a 10-month settlement freeze, which was supposed to trigger a new round of U.S.-led peace talks. But for nine months Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused all invitations to negotiate. In the 10th month, Abbas sat through exactly two talks before abandoning negotiations once again. Yet Obama offered this assessment in a January 2010 interview with Time: “Although the Israelis, I think, after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, they still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures.”

Like all its predecessors, the Obama administration is a stern critic of Israel’s West Bank settlements and sees them as an obstacle to peace. But the administration’s particular obsession was not Jews sitting on remote hilltops or in areas many if not most Israelis saw as expendable—but rather the Jewish presence throughout unified Jerusalem. Though no American government had ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over the capital, the Obama administration was the first to consider normal growth in Jerusalem’s 40-year-old Jewish neighborhoods (in parts of the city that had been illegally occupied by Jordan, from 1949 to 1967) as a deliberate and outrageous provocation.

This came to a head in the spring of 2010 when a routine announcement of a housing project in one of those Jerusalem neighborhoods (which had specifically been exempted from the freeze) coincided with a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden. Netanyahu found himself on the receiving end of a 43-minute telephone tirade from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She accused Netanyahu of sending a “deeply negative signal” that had “harmed the bilateral relationship.” Such condemnations were repeatedly echoed in the press from multiple administration figures.

The administration clearly hoped its expressions of rage could be leveraged to force Israel to agree to end such construction—and encourage the Palestinians to realize that the United States would back them in negotiations. But rather than isolate Netanyahu, the U.S. attack on Jewish Jerusalem strengthened him, because defending the unity of the city remains one of the few issues on which there is consensus in Israeli politics.

Even as relations continued to deteriorate—Israel’s then-ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, told a group of Israeli diplomats in 2010 that U.S.–Israel relations were at their lowest point since 1975—Netanyahu moderated construction in settlements. By the first half of 2014, Israel was building at its slowest rate since the 2010 freeze. (Indeed, according to Israeli historian and archivist Yaacov Lozowick, no new settlements have been built since 2003.)

In May 2011, President Obama gave a major address responding to the Arab Spring protests, in which he chose to devote the last third to a plan for a new round of Israeli–Palestinian talks—a non sequitur if ever there has been one. The plan was to set the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations. The speech was timed to be delivered the day before Netanyahu was to arrive in the United States for talks. Obama was attempting to force a fait accompli.

Netanyahu earned applause at home and in the U.S. for pushing back against Obama’s idea, which he rightly saw as an attempt to undermine Israel’s negotiating position. Days later, Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress where both Republicans and Democrats cheered him as if he were the second coming of Winston Churchill, a spectacle that was rightly seen as a rebuke to Obama’s slap at the Israelis. (That episode is crucial to understanding the White House’s bitterness about Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress.) And like the previous arguments with Israel, this one would yield no benefits to the United States, since not even this tilting of the diplomatic playing field toward the Palestinians would be enough to nudge them to make peace.

The general antipathy toward the Israeli prime minister led Washington Postcolumnist Jackson Diehl to ask, in November 2011, “Why do Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu?” Diehl was writing on the revelation that Obama and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy had made comments, picked up on a live microphone, about their dislike of the Israeli leader. Diehl pointed out that Obama’s problem with Netanyahu was obviously personal: “Netanyahu has been an occasionally difficult but ultimately cooperative partner. He can be accused of moving too slowly and offering too little, but not of failing to heed American initiatives.”

After this incident, the administration put its campaign against Israel on hold for the duration of the 2012 presidential election campaign. It ceased sparring with Netanyahu and even moved toward Israel on the subject of Iran.

Obama had always stated his opposition to an Iranian bomb, but he had also consistently demonstrated his desire for a rapprochement with Tehran. He was both slow and reluctant to embrace sanctions against the regime. Throughout this period, the administration seemed more anxious about preventing an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities than it was about the nuclear threat itself. But in 2012, the president told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would never be willing to merely “contain” a nuclear Iran. And during his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney, he pledged that any possible deal with Iran would require it to give up its nuclear program.

Once reelected, Obama reverted. He unleashed John Kerry, his new secretary of state, to pursue yet another futile quest for peace with the Palestinians. Despite

successful American pressure on Israel to agree to a framework that accepted most of the Palestinians’ demands throughout 2013, Abbas wouldn’t take yes for an answer. He eventually blew up the talks. The Obama administration responded by placing the blame for Kerry’s failure on Israel, arguing speciously that the problem was construction in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs that would be retained by Israel in any peace deal.

This administration’s willingness to blame the Jewish state under virtually any circumstances was on display again, in the summer of 2014, after rocket barrages on Israeli cities prompted Israel to launch a counterattack on Hamas bases in Gaza. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would later cite Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in the fighting as a model for American troops, the White House and the State Department criticized Israel for the deaths of Palestinians—who were being used as human shields by Hamas. But far worse, and far more suggestive of Obama’s true feelings, was the White House’s decision to try and use arms supplies as a pressure point against Israel.

Throughout the Obama presidency, the president’s defenders (and Netanyahu, in his 2015 address to Congress) have spoken of the strengthening of the so-called strategic relationship with Israel as proof of Obama’s sincere support for the alliance. It is true that Obama continued funding for the Iron Dome missile-defense system initiated under the Bush administration and did not obstruct the fostering of close ties between the two countries’ defense and intelligence establishments. But the Gaza war revealed the president’s discomfort with that closeness. When he realized that the Pentagon, without his express permission, was resupplying Israel with ammunition needed for fighting Hamas, he called a halt to it—supposedly to send a signal he did not think Israel was being surgical enough with its surgical strikes. He denied Israel bullets in the middle of a shooting war.

Meanwhile, the administration’s secret negotiating track with Iran was making progress. And this brings us to the nub of the issue.

The true beating heart of the crisis between Israel and Obama is Iran. The Islamic Republic does not merely harbor genocidal fantasies about annihilating Israel; it boasts of them. The country was founded in 1979 on the theocratic vision of Ruhollah Khomeini, who made the destruction of Israel a defining national objective. More than three decades later, Iran’s leaders remain obsessed with the idea. It is, to their thinking, an unshakable Islamic obligation. As recently as last November, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly outlined a nine-point plan for eradicating the Jewish state.

More important than Tehran’s declarations are its actions. In 2002, an Iranian dissident revealed two secret Iranian nuclear sites, confirming—for those with eyes to see—the mullahs’ pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In 2010, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared that Iran had worked on, or is working on, the construction of a nuclear warhead and has experimented with detonation methods. IAEA inspectors have also found evidence that the Iranians have clandestinely enriched uranium to levels that exceed those needed for civilian energy and approach those required for a nuclear bomb.

Iran’s religious hatred of the Jewish state combined with its apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapon make it Israel’s chief security concern. The overused term “existential threat” is the only one that applies. As ISIS’s recent establishment of an Islamic caliphate shows, the nightmares of committed Muslim radicals can come true.

Obama came to office declaring he would not permit Iran to build a nuclear weapon and that “all options are on the table” for stopping it. Repeating this assurance, he succeeded in getting Israel to refrain from striking Iran on its own. Obama’s record, however, has discredited the suggestion that he would take military action if necessary. He has demonstrated an unyielding faith in diplomacy and seems to regard the use of force as almost necessarily reckless. What’s more, he hoped—and hopes—to use diplomacy to make the Shia theocracy “a responsible member of the international community,” in Susan Rice’s words. This fanciful goal seems to have become Obama’s priority. As his foreign-policy spokesman, Ben Rhodes, said: “This is probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy. This is health care for us, just to put it in context.”

During his first term, Obama reached out to Tehran repeatedly. He went through several third parties to offer Iran access to civilian-grade nuclear energy. The mullahs rejected every overture. Despite Iran’s obstinacy, Obama began his second term covertly imploring the Iranians to sit down for direct talks with the United States. In 2013, Iran elected President Hassan Rouhani, a regime hardliner who had enjoyed a public-relations makeover as a “moderate.” The administration soon announced direct talks between Washington and Tehran, talks that had been planned behind Israel’s back. Netanyahu has been left to look on while the Obama administration chases a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran.¹

As Washington crafted its deal, Obama administration officials took the opportunity to taunt Netanyahu for having complied with the president’s request not to strike Iran. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” an administration official told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

Israel’s prospects for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program have grown dim indeed. First, it’s a technically formidable undertaking. During these past few years, Iran’s nuclear sites have become more diffuse and entrenched. It may well be that the United States alone has the sufficient resources and weaponry to disable Iran’s air defenses and do meaningful damage to its various fortified facilities.

If Israel launches a strike that falls short of disabling the Iranian nuclear program, Israelis would face the same Iranian threat along with grave new problems. In addition to launching direct retaliatory strikes on Israel, Iran might respond by blocking the straits of Hormuz and driving up oil prices. Without the help of the United States, Israel would bear the global outrage (and perhaps punishment) for the resulting destabilization. And although Arab leaders would privately celebrate any blow dealt their Iranian enemy, they too would publicly admonish the Jewish state. This would inevitably further inflame the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel violence that now consumes the Muslim world.

And if the United States has explicitly recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium, Israel would ostensibly be attacking a “legitimate” nuclear-power state against America’s wishes. With the American–Israeli alliance already at such a precarious point, this final act of Israeli disobedience could tear open an almost unthinkable breach in the bilateral relationship.

The fraying of the relationship has only served Obama’s larger purpose vis-à-vis Iran. As his effort to get Democratic members of the House and Senate to boycott Netanyahu’s speech demonstrates, Obama has spent six years implicitly setting up a loyalty test: Democrats will be showing their disloyalty to him if they show support for Israel as it does whatever it can to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

The breach with the Obama administration illustrates a basic problem within the pro-Israel coalition inside the United States. During the 2012 campaign, Jewish Democrats were able to say that he had strengthened security cooperation between the two countries. Their argument was shaken during the Gaza war in 2014, when Obama cancelled the ammunition resupply.

Even so, the administration succeeded in the first months of 2015 in distracting many Jewish supporters of Israel from the looming bad deal with Iran by focusing their attention on the supposed breach of protocol represented by Netanyahu’s acceptance of Boehner’s invitation. Since most liberal Jews view Boehner and the GOP Congressional majorities with almost as much disdain as they do Israel’s enemies, and since many are not especially supportive of Netanyahu, they were disinclined to back him against the president.

Netanyahu was accused by the administration of injecting partisanship into the U.S.–Israel relationship, but the true culprit here was Obama. He was playing off the fact that his party’s members are far less supportive of Israel than Republicans are.

According to Gallup, support for Israel among Democrats is currently at almost exactly the same level it was in 1988. Now, as was true a quarter century ago, 47 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel. That was before Israel signed the Oslo Accords, was subjected to an ongoing terror campaign, withdrew from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank unilaterally, publicly declared support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and made three separate final-status offers that would have given the Palestinians a state with its capital in Jerusalem. And before Iran began developing the bomb.

Republicans noticed. In 1988, their sympathy for Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians was at about the same level as the Democrats’; today it’s at 83 percent. Independents noticed as well. In 1988, 42 percent of independents sympathized with Israel; today that number has jumped 17 points to 59.

Israel’s good-faith negotiations and sacrifices for peace in the face of unrelenting terror and incitement won over Republicans and independents. Democrats remain unmoved. That consistency, and the partisan gap it is creating in support for Israel, is far from reassuring.

During the war with Hamas last summer, the Israel Defense Forces uncovered some 30-plus tunnels running from Gaza into population centers in Israel to be used for mass terror attacks against Israeli civilians. The war itself was touched off by steady rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Israel’s goal was to stop the rocket fire and neutralize the tunnels, not to overthrow Hamas or retake the Gaza Strip. When those objectives were reached, Israel withdrew.

Yet a CNN poll found that only 45 percent of Democrats considered Israel’s counteroffensive justified, compared with 56 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans. According to Gallup, only 31 percent of Democrats considered Israel’s
actions justified. Astoundingly, a Pew poll recorded that Democrats were evenly divided on whether Israel or Hamas was to blame for the war.

Pro-Israel Democrats don’t simply have an ‘Obama problem.’ The president did not create Israel’s status as a wedge issue for his party. He has only exploited it.

Certainly, the supportive voting record of Democratic members of Congress acts as an important check on the rougher treatment Israel would receive from an unfiltered expression of the party’s activist base. But it also masks the anti-Zionist populism so prevalent on college campuses and among leftist political pressure groups, and the anti-Israel sentiments expressed by many black and Latino activists as well.

That filter can’t catch everything, even in this age of scripted politics. During the 2012 Democratic National Convention, it was revealed that references to God and to Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel had been removed from the Democratic Party’s platform. Party officials moved to add the language back in, which required a voice vote from the Democratic Party delegates in the hall. The motion to restore the references was soundly defeated.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was emceeing the proceedings, was visibly shocked. He asked for a re-vote. The motion lost again, with the crowd growing more agitated. Villaraigosa looked off stage for direction. He turned back to the audience, held one more vote, and, amid a hail of boos, declared the motion passed—despite its obvious and raucous defeat for the third time in a row.

The incident was important not only because it showed that the party’s delegates were opposed to traditional pro-Israel language in the party’s platform, but also because that language had been removed in the first place either at the behest or approval of the Obama campaign. Obama’s two presidential campaigns have been notable for their ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the party’s core supporters.

“Obviously, this is much bigger than two men,” CNN’s Dana Bash said on March 1, two days before Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Indeed it is. And it puts American Jews in a bind. American Jews still care deeply about Israel—and still vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Recent polls show a subtle rightward shift, but it is far too early to tell if that shift will stay in place in 2016 and beyond. (Jimmy Carter hemorrhaged Jewish votes in 1980; in 1984, Walter Mondale won most of them back.) Nonetheless, the Democrats are expected to nominate Hillary Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state and has had her own share of dustups with Netanyahu. And veterans of the Obama administration will no doubt staff future Democratic White Houses. Is this, then, the shape of things to come? If the answer is to be no, Jewish Democrats are going to have to do more than find presidential nominees who paper over this internal divide with platitudes.

They will have to address the growing conflict between American Zionism and American liberalism. They will need not happy talk but confrontation of hard truths. That will require recognizing that the momentum is with the Occupy Wall Street protesters’ adopting the Palestinian cause as their own, with the American professoriate shaping higher-education curricula along with the minds and worldviews of their students, and with the progressive activists who fill the arena at presidential nominating conventions and seek to remake the Democratic Party platform in their image.

It means American Jewish organizations are going to have to recognize that it will become more and more difficult to square the circle. AIPAC tried just that in 2014, when it acquiesced to Democratic pressure and did not send out its 10,000-strong team of citizen activists to lobby members of Congress to support new sanctions.

AIPAC was caught between a rock and a hard place, but its leaders surely know they made a terrible error in 2014—and have changed their tune this year. Seen from one perspective, the failure to push sanctions decreased the administration’s leverage at the negotiating table; from the other, it gave Obama the freedom to acquiesce to Iran’s own demands.

On Capitol Hill, opposition to a nuclear Iran has always been as bipartisan as support for Israel. Obama is making every effort to turn it into a partisan issue so that he can peel off enough Democrats to sustain a veto of legislation that would block a bad deal. Netanyahu’s triumph before Congress made his job harder. Israel’s prime minister did what he set out to do—to lay before Congress and the American people the nature of the threat and the danger of such a deal.

Americans who care about Israel, and American Jews who care not only about the Jewish state but also the condition of the Jewish soul in the United States, must now follow his example. We cannot relent in our efforts to fight against those who seek to drive a wedge between Israel and America—on campuses, in the media, within elite institutions, and within both the Democratic and Republican parties. The impending end of Obama’s political career should make it easier for Israel’s government to make its case against appeasement in both 2015 and 2016 as well as shore up wavering American Jewish support. The manufactured crisis Barack Obama began in 2009 is not yet a full-bore crisis either within the Democratic Party or within the American body politic. But it will become one—if this existential threat, this spiritual existential threat to American Jewry, is not dismantled.

Footnotes

1 The salient facts are these: First, the Obama administration agreed to Tehran’s demand that the United States ease sanctions on Iran in advance of any confirmed nuclear agreement. Second, the administration recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium to 5 percent despite the fact that all Iranian enrichment is prohibited by the United Nations Security Council. Third, Iran has ignored negotiation deadlines to win reported concessions that would render the deal pointless. These include the right to 5,000–6,000 working centrifuges, enough to fuel a nuclear bomb within a year. The administration has also reportedly included a “sunset clause,” which could free the Iranians from the strictures of a deal within 10 years.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, History, Iran, Iran scam, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Palestinians, Peace process, Rouhani, Sanctions, Settlements, State Department, Two state solution, U.S. Congress, United Nations
Tags: Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Iran Scam, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama Administration, Palestinians, Peace Process, Rouhani, Sanctions, Settlements, State Department, Two state solution, U.S. Congress, United Nations, United States

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It’s Not Just Islam, It’s the Tribal Mentality

March 12, 2015

It’s Not Just Islam, It’s the Tribal Mentality, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, March 12, 2015

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Islam in part is the “theologizing” of the tribal mentality. Islam’s important innovation was to redefine the “tribe” as the whole umma of believers, creating in effect a “super tribe” that transcends mere blood as the bonding agent. But the tribal warrior ethos persists–– in the doctrine of jihad, tribal atrocities in contemporary terror and its gruesome videos, the privileging of men in polygamy, honor killings, and social restrictions on women, the disdain for the infidel “other” in the Koranic belief that Muslims are the “best of nations,” the betrayal of alliances in the religious sanction of lying to infidels (taqiyya), and the obsession with “honor” that today we find in violent Muslim reactions to “blasphemy” against Mohammed or the Koran.

Ignoring the tribal mentality is as dangerous for our foreign policy as downplaying Islamic doctrine.

The Obama administration’s serial appeasement of Iran––currently the “strongest tribe” spreading its influence throughout the region–– has damaged our prestige among allies like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, who are already shopping around for a more reliable and forceful partner. If we want to destroy the jihadists, check Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and protect our interests, we must again become the “strongest tribe.”

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The “nothing to do with Islam” mantra took a hit recently in one of the premier organs of liberal received wisdom, The Atlantic. Many have greeted as a revelation Graeme Wood’s article on the Islamic doctrines behind ISIS’s atrocities. Regular readers of FrontPage and Jihad Watch will not be as impressed. For years they have understood the link between jihadism and Islam. In 1994 Andy McCarthy made this connection when he prosecuted the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing the previous year, a connection that the FBI ignored or discounted at the time––a failure, by the way, that has become a pernicious tradition for those charged with protecting our nation’s security and interests. For everyone else who has been paying attention to the rise of modern jihadism, Wood’s article is a dog bites man story.

One can hope that perhaps now, with the truth revealed by one of the Acela corridor’s oracles, the jihad deniers will wise up, though I wouldn’t bet on it. Unexamined opinions comprise the bulk of the progressive mind, and are notoriously resistant to empirical evidence and sound argument. But the current mess in the Middle East results from more than just Islam and its traditional belligerence, supremacist pretensions, and illiberal religious laws and doctrines. These characteristics reflect variations on the mentality of the tribe, one antithetical to modernity and the principles of liberal democracy, and still powerful in the Middle East, the region once described as “tribes with flags.”

For all the differences among tribal peoples, the components of this mentality are consistent, from the ancient Gauls and Germans Caesar conquered and the Vikings terrorizing much of Europe, to the American Indians the U.S. Cavalry fought and the jihadist gangs rampaging in the Middle East.

First, there is little notion of a common humanity that transcends ethnicity or culture. Universal principles are scarce, and personal identity is found solely in the collective customs and traditions of the tribe. Outsiders are to be distrusted, plundered, or conquered when possible. Loyalty is not to principle, but to blood. Most tribal peoples consider their tribe the acme of humanity, the only genuine humans. Hence their word for “human” is usually identical to the name of their tribe. They are literally ethnocentric.

Second, violence, particularly against outsiders, is an acceptable instrument for resolving conflict and asserting tribal superiority. Not just the violence of war, but also the cruel torture and slaughter of outsiders, including women and children, are legitimate for serving the interests of the tribe. Indeed, what we call terrorism was a tactic of tribal warfare to prevent a full-scale war by so terrorizing enemies that they would give up without a fight, a phenomenon common in the various Indian wars of American history. Hence the scary face-paint, tattoos, war cries, bizarre hairstyles, tortures like scalping, mutilation of enemies, or slaughter of their women and children, all of which are meant to frighten and demoralize the enemy. The same intent explains the blustering threats, braggadocio, and insults typical of tribal warfare and diplomacy. These practices can be documented in tribal societies from the Iroquois to the ancient Gauls.

Next, loyalty in tribal societies counts only for those within the tribe. Alliances with other tribes or peoples are ad hoc and contingent on the immediate interests of the tribe. They can be abandoned or betrayed if circumstances or perceptions change. Moreover, respect for others beyond the tribe is based solely on their capacity to inflict violence on their enemies. The “strongest tribe,” a status based on its effectiveness and success in conflict, will attract allies, who will abandon the hegemon once it loses that perception of its strength. Thus during Caesar’s wars in Gaul various Gallic and Germanic tribes would ally with the Romans when they appeared dominant, and betray them in an instant if they thought them weak. Likewise during the U.S. Cavalry’s wars against the Plains Indians, many tribes victimized by the Sioux or Apache or Cheyenne would ally with the Americans if they seemed to be winning, then switch sides the moment they seemed weak.

Finally, tribal societies are centered on the male warrior and his honor. Forget the Women’s Studies fantasies of matriarchal tribal societies. Tribal cultures privilege males, for men fight, and the survival and honor of the tribe depends on martial valor. Women bear children and work, as the skeletons of pre-contact American Indian remains demonstrate. Female bones show much more damage from hard physical labor than do male. This doesn’t mean that women had no status within the tribe, or did not enjoy somewhat more equality than women in more sophisticated civilizations. But warrior males still dominated, and culture in the main centered on men and their prowess in war, which earned honor, what we call prestige, for the whole tribe.

Sound familiar? It should, for Islam in part is the “theologizing” of the tribal mentality. Islam’s important innovation was to redefine the “tribe” as the whole umma of believers, creating in effect a “super tribe” that transcends mere blood as the bonding agent. But the tribal warrior ethos persists–– in the doctrine of jihad, tribal atrocities in contemporary terror and its gruesome videos, the privileging of men in polygamy, honor killings, and social restrictions on women, the disdain for the infidel “other” in the Koranic belief that Muslims are the “best of nations,” the betrayal of alliances in the religious sanction of lying to infidels (taqiyya), and the obsession with “honor” that today we find in violent Muslim reactions to “blasphemy” against Mohammed or the Koran.

Ignoring the tribal mentality is as dangerous for our foreign policy as downplaying Islamic doctrine. The chronic disorder in northern Iraq today is not just about the Sunni-Shi’a divide, or ISIS’s dream of a caliphate. It also reflects the bewildering number of tribes and clans in the region, whose complex alliances and enmities continually shift depending on circumstances and the perceptions of which tribe is the stronger. Our ally today can instantly become our enemy tomorrow. Factions that appear “moderate” today can become jihadist terrorists tomorrow. Our “friends” will tell us what we want to hear today, and then betray their words tomorrow. Most important, anything we do that creates the perception of weakness––especially concessions, or failure to inflict revenge, or acts of mercy––will also damage our prestige as the “strongest tribe” and invite tribes to abandon us.

These tribal practices defined most peoples, including Europeans, before the advent of modernity. They have survived among Middle Eastern Muslims because they were encoded in religious doctrines that promise global power for the tribe of the faithful in this life, and paradise in the next, especially for jihadist warriors. This amalgamation in part explains the spectacular success of Muslim warriors for a 1000 years, a record of martial achievement the memory of which today fuels the resentment and anger of those Muslims who wish to restore that lost honor. It also contributes to the difficulty of many Muslim societies to reconcile with modernity, particularly liberal democracy and its cargo of human rights, confessional tolerance, and equality for women and those of other faiths.

Of course, worldwide millions of Muslims have managed to transcend tribalism and adjust their faith to modernity. But millions more haven’t, and it is they who are fomenting most of the mayhem and murder on every continent except Antarctica. Our tactics and strategies in confronting this threat must indeed be based on a correct understanding of the spiritual imperatives that motivate the jihadists. But they also must take into account the tribal mentalities that respect force and honor the strong.

The Obama administration’s serial appeasement of Iran––currently the “strongest tribe” spreading its influence throughout the region–– has damaged our prestige among allies like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, who are already shopping around for a more reliable and forceful partner. If we want to destroy the jihadists, check Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and protect our interests, we must again become the “strongest tribe.”

Categories: Caliphate, Diplomacy, Egypt, Foreign policy, History, International Community, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Moderate rebels, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Saudi Arabia, Theocracy, Tribal mentality
Tags: Caliphate, Egypt, Foreign Policy, History, International Community, Iran, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Islamism, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Moderate rebels, Nukes, Saudi Arabia, Theocracy, Tribal mentality

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Obama’s Surrender to Iran

March 12, 2015

Obama’s Surrender to Iran, Front Page Magazine, Dr. Mark Christian, March 12, 2015

obama-iran

Iran, therefore, needs nuclear weapons to protect itself should it fail to derail Obama’s ambitious plans. Should the Pan Arabic (Sunni) Islamic Union become a reality, the Iranian rulers believe that having the capability of ushering in Armageddon will keep the Sunni’s at bay.

At the very least, the Mullahs in Iran rest better knowing, should they fall, that they can take everyone else down with them. Think “mutually-assured destruction.” A sort of “MAD” amongst madmen.

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It is becoming increasingly clear that Obama’s agenda in the Middle East is to help the Islamists regain the land they once controlled but lost in 1924 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The Arab Spring was not a movement to replace ruthless dictators with democratic governments. It was an Islamic movement to replace secular governments with Islamic ones.

Step by step, this administration is helping to establish the Islamists’ dream of a revived caliphate, or “Pan Arabic Islamic Union” as it has been called by Islamist leaders recently.

There is a mistaken school of thought that believes such an Islamic Union would function like an Arabic European Union, growing their economies and enabling them to take their place among the other nations of the world as equals.

This school neglects to answer the most salient question: How do you contain a movement that recognizes no borders but its own and is compelled by dint of faith to dominate the rest of the world or die in the effort?

Unfortunately, the primary opposition to this plan isn’t coming from the American people. Sadly, much of America is suffering from confusion, ignorance, self-loathing and a dedication to bending over backwards in an attempt to avoid the confrontation that looms ahead.

Rather than marshaling a strong core of support for the hard choices that must be made, our administration is creating a huge chasm between citizens over trivialities and over-amplified slights. We are far weaker for it.

One might ask then, who is opposing the mighty President of the United States? Who dares stand in the way of the Nobel Peace prize winner “Barack Obama?”

The answer will be something of a shock to many.

In no particular order, listed below are those who are arrayed against the designs of our “Dear Leader.”

Putin

Standing most prominently, is Vladimir Putin, the Russian bear. Putin has designs on the former Soviet satellite nations and he needs a strong economy and the leverage that an oil monopoly over the European market provides to fuel his aspirations.

His Ukraine adventure is proving more troublesome than originally thought, and Obama’s push to topple Assad in Syria threatens Putin’s access to a warm water port for Russia’s oil exports to Europe.

The Russian oligarchs are growing restive under the thumb of Putin, seeing his dreams of Sovietus revivivus as bad for business and potentially catastrophic. Putin’s leash is shortening, and his tenure is by no means a sure thing.

While Putin remains in power, he will oppose Obama’s Ottoman revival. He has no choice.

Old Guard and Monarchies of the Middle East

Next are the old guard and monarchies of the Middle East. We like to call them “dictators” even though in reality, while they are all Sunni Muslims, they are more concerned with maintaining their own wealth and power than in recreating an Islamic caliphate.

Among these were Gaddafi, Mubarak and the others deposed in the Arab Spring, but also numbered in this groups is the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan and both Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

All are in danger of being ejected from this game. But just like Putin, they will not go bloodlessly.

Islamic Republic

The final player is also the strongest: Iran.

Iran, a Shiite nation, is a natural enemy to any Sunni Islamic caliphate system. The Iranian rulers know from Islamic history (the same history we completely ignore here in the West) that any Sunni caliphate will soon swallow and erase the Shi’a, destroying all opponents to their well-established ideals of Islamic religious and political structure.

Iran, therefore, needs nuclear weapons to protect itself should it fail to derail Obama’s ambitious plans. Should the Pan Arabic (Sunni) Islamic Union become a reality, the Iranian rulers believe that having the capability of ushering in Armageddon will keep the Sunni’s at bay.

At the very least, the Mullahs in Iran rest better knowing, should they fall, that they can take everyone else down with them. Think “mutually-assured destruction.” A sort of “MAD” amongst madmen.

Don’t let this apocalyptic scenario, however, lead you to think that Iran is going quietly into oblivion. On the contrary, it has tirelessly worked to thwart Obama’s plans.

Iran’s use of terror and terror proxies is on the upswing. It will distract and misdirect, strike and cajole, but it will not permit a Sunni caliphate to appear on its border without a nuclear capability of its own to deter Sunni adventurism.

Obama’s setbacks in Syria and Benghazi have forced him to negotiate with the Iranians. He wants to assure them that they have nothing to fear from a caliphate, while simultaneously keeping the American people from recognizing the monumentally stupid policy objective he is pursuing.

To this end, he tells us he has gotten Iran to agree to postpone its nuclear work for ten years, under the ridiculously naive idea that the dynamics of the Middle East will have changed. Many believe Obama is in fact a Muslim. In reality, that really doesn’t matter.

His administration believes that all conflict can be framed in Marxist terms. Empower those who have little and they will join the community with smiles and slaps on the back. The administration fundamentally misunderstands the problem and is applying a solution akin to gasoline on a grease fire.

Economics are unimportant to the Islamists. Power is their currency and they spend all they have to purchase the world for Allah. The establishment of an Islamic caliphate will not calm the Arab street, it will invigorate it to greater conquests, as Islam demands.

Of course, in the eyes of the neo-progressives in the White House, to speak truthfully about this “Islamophobia.”

To Obama, a nuclear Iran is an acceptable trade-off for a revived caliphate, To Israel, however, both Iran and a caliphate are threats to their very existence.

Iran with a nuclear weapon has no reason not to make good on its long-standing promise to “wipe Israel from the face of the earth.” A reconstituted caliphate modeled after the former Ottoman Empire has no room for Israel, indeed, on Iran’s maps, Israel doesn’t exist at all.

America is negotiating nuclear policy with a terrorist state, and geopolitical hegemony with an ideology/religion that knows no borders but its own.

In 2013, President Obama told us we can all take a deep breath, he was able to wring an invaluable concession out of the Iranians. He breathlessly announced that Iran had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

It appeared that we had been brought back from the brink by the president’s keen ability to negotiate. Notwithstanding the obvious (and wholly inappropriate) grandstanding by the POTUS, there are a few other issues that need to be addressed in relation to this irrelevant fatwa.

Most Americans aren’t aware that the foundation of Iran’s nuclear program was laid on March 5^th, 1957 by the United States, under an Eisenhower program called “Atoms for Peace.” Iran established the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) in 1967, which was a 5 megawatt nuclear research reactor, fueled by enriched uranium.

In 1968, Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ratifying it in 1970, making Iran’s nuclear program subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verification and accountability.

Following the 1979 Revolution, nearly all international nuclear cooperation with Iran was cut off. With little hope of regaining international cooperation, Iran elected to continue the program on their own, although they thought it best to save face and attempt to “shame” America (and by extension its advanced nuclear technology) by condemning all things nuclear.

It was for this reason and this reason alone, that the fatwa was issued. It had nothing to do with any humanitarian interests held deeply in the hearts of Iranian leaders; they are certainly more than amenable to any method that allows them to more efficiently eliminate their enemies, most especially Israel.

The anti-nuclear fatwa, is fully revealed to be a sham five years later, when we see the destruction of a reputedly “non-existent” Iranian nuclear program by Iraqi forces.

All of this is still occurring under the reign of the same Ayatollah that issued the nuclear fatwa a brief five years previous. Clearly, the Iranians had continued their nuclear program, despite the fatwa.

The next time we saw any reference to the 1979 “nuclear fatwa” was in 2003. The IAEA issued a report, condemning the Iranian nuclear program, accusing it of once again, trying to weaponize the technology.

Still, Iran didn’t budge. It wasn’t until the U.S. threatened to get involved militarily (the full might and power of the U.S. military was on display right next door in Iraq under the leadership of President Bush) that the Iranians finally caved.

What did this concession look like? Well, as you might have guessed, Iran simply reaffirmed the old stand-by fatwa from 1979, condemning nuclear weapons and promising to play nice.

So, for the record, we have clear evidence that the Iranians consider their anti-nuclear fatwa to be toilet paper, so Obama’s “concession” is more enabling than disarming. Iran had cast the ‘79 fatwa out again in 2013, hoping we’ll bite on it one more time. Obama readily obliged.

President Obama appears willing to do whatever it takes to build his legacy on reestablishing the Islamic state after an 80 year absence. He also appears willing to endanger both the United States and Israel to get it done.

European colonization didn’t create terrorists; Islam and Mohammed birthed terrorism in order to spread a brutal and unforgiving ideology.

Absent European intervention, Muslims might yet be centuries further behind than they already are. Islam is a crippling force. Science has never been particularly important to the Islamists.

European contact brought Muslim countries out of the Stone Age; the same stone age to which the Islamic jihad intends to return us all.

Categories: Arab nations, Caliphate, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, History, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian navy, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Khamenei, Mad Mullahs, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Rouhani, Shia, Sunni, Theocracy
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Advisor To Iranian President Rohani: Iran Is An Empire, Iraq Is Our Capital . . .

March 10, 2015

Advisor To Iranian President Rohani: Iran Is An Empire, Iraq Is Our Capital ; We Will Defend All The Peoples Of The Region; Iranian Islam Is Pure Islam – Devoid Of Arabism, Racism, Nationalism, MERI, March 9, 2015

On March 8, 2015, Ali Younesi, advisor to Iranian President Hassan Rohani and previously intelligence minister (2000-2005) in the government of president Khatami, spoke at the “Iran, Nationalism, History, and Culture” conference in Iran; his statements were published by the Iranian ISNA news agency the same day.

According to Younesi, Iran is once again an empire, as it was in the past, and its capital, Iraq, is “the center of Iranian heritage, culture, and identity.” Delineating the borders of the Persian Empire, or, in his words, “greater Iran,” he included countries from China, the Indian subcontinent, the north and south Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf. He added that since the very dawn of its history, Iran had been an empire and a melting pot of different cultures, languages, and peoples.

Younesi stressed that despite the current obstacles to the unification of the countries in the region under Iranian leadership, Iran cannot disregard its regional influence if it wishes to preserve its national interests. Iran, he said, has been operating in this region, particularly in Iraq, with the aim of ensuring the security of the peoples there, whose connection to Iran is obvious because of history and culture. Saudi Arabia has nothing to fear from Iran’s actions, he added, because the Saudis themselves are incapable of defending the peoples of the region. He also assured the peoples of the region that Iran is operating there against Islamic extremism as embodied by ISIS, as well as against the Saudi Wahhabis, Turkey, secularists, Western rule, and Zionism.

Further emphasizing that anything that enters Iran is improved by becoming Iranian, especially Islam itself, he added that Islam in its Iranian-Shi’ite form is the pure Islam, since it has shed all traces of Arabism, racism, and any other element that divides the various Islamic groups.

Following are excerpts from Younesi’s statements:

“Every Cultural Or Ethnic Group That Arrived From Other Places To The Iranian Plateau Has In Time Become Iranian”

“The central, western, and eastern parts of the Iranian Plateau have always protected and nurtured Iranian ethnic groups, and all the people living in this expanse are ethnic Iranians. Every cultural or ethnic group that arrived from other places to the Iranian Plateau has in time become Iranian, as have their language and culture – even a language originating from somewhere else takes on a distinct Iranian flavor once it reaches the Iranian Plateau.

“The Azeris are one of the oldest tribes of the Iranian empire, and some of them spoke a Turkic language. But when this language reached the Iranian Plateau, it became Iranian and totally different from Turkic languages in other countries. The Azeris in Iran have always defended [Iran’s] national literature, language, and culture.

“A large section of the Iranian Plateau stretches in the east to the peaks of the Pamir [mountains in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan] and to the great River Sindh; in the north to the River Amu [Darya]; in the west to the peaks of the Caucasus; and in the central part to the peaks of Alborz and Zagros, overlooking the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and Oman…

“Today Iran is restricted to [only] the central plateau. Several countries have emerged from the eastern and western plateaus. The name and culture of greater Iran have always had a good reputation in the region… We cannot preserve our interests, national security, and historic identity without attention to Iran’s regional influence and borders…”

“If We Disregard The Region That Lies Within Our Sphere Of Influence, We Will Be Unable To Protect Our Interests And Security… Since Its Inception, Iran Has [Always] Had A Global [Dimension]; It Was Born An Empire”

“In essence, the greater Iran and Iranian culture, civilization, religion, and spirit are present in this expanse, and constitute a natural union in this region. While differences prevent such a union, in truth the Iranian Plateau includes countries from the borders of China and the Indian subcontinent to the north and south Caucasus and the Persian Gulf – all of which are part of this union…

“There is no dismantling our borders. Our borders have been recognized throughout history, like our territory and our culture. This region is impacted greatly by cultural and historical partnerships. If we disregard the region that lies within our sphere of influence, we will be unable to protect our interests and security.

“Since its inception, Iran has [always] had a global [dimension]; it was born an empire. Iran’s leaders, officials, and administrators have always thought in the global [dimension]…

“Of course, I do not mean that we want to take over the world again, but we need to know what our status is and must arrive at historic self-awareness – that is, thinking globally but acting as Iranians. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu acknowledged with certainty Iran’s might and influence; he said that Iran has taken over four countries in the region. But Iran was only trying to help these [countries].”

“Iraq Is Not Merely A Sphere Of Cultural Influence For Us; It Is Also… Our Capital”

“In the current situation, Iraq is not merely a sphere of cultural influence for us; it is also our identity, our culture, our center, and our capital. This issue [of Iraq as our capital] exists today as it did in the past, because just as there is no way to divide the territory of Iran and Iraq, there is no way to divide our culture either. We must either fight each other or unite. The purpose of such a union would not be the elimination of borders; rather, that all the countries in the Iranian expanse would become closer, since their interests and security are interconnected.”

“We Are Protecting The Interests Of [All] The People In The Region –Because They Are All Iran’s People”

“Now, when Iran is defending Iraq from the extremists, our historic rivals are displeased, and in order to annoy us they are helping their own enemies – thus destabilizing the region. Today, the [Saudi] Wahhabis are angry that Iran is supporting Iraq, but their fear is misplaced, since they themselves are incapable of fighting the fossilized Islamic thought in the region [i.e. ISIS]. We [on the other hand] are protecting the interests of [all] the people in the region, because they are all Iran’s people. We will support all the people living in Iranian Plateau, and we will defend them from fossilized Islamic thought, takfirism, and atheism, from the new Ottoman regime [Turkey], from the Wahhabi regime [Saudi Arabia], from the Western regime, and from Zionism.”

“When Islam Reached Iran, It Shed Arabism, Racism, And Nationalism”

“Everything that comes into Iran is improved. When Islam reached Iran, it shed Arabism, racism, and nationalism, and Iran eventually received pure Islam. Even during the time when the Iranians were Sunnis, their Islam was mystical, as opposed to Wahhabi; now, when [Iranian] Islam is Shi’ite, it belongs to Ahl Al-Beit – the Islam of unity and friendship.

“We must try to once again spread the banner of Islamic-Iranian unity and peace in the region. Iran must bear this responsibility, as it did in the past.”

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, History, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Obama, Rouhani, Sharia law
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Rouhani, Sharia law

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The Danger of Negotiating with Iran

March 9, 2015

The Danger of Negotiating with Iran, Washington Free Beacon, Michael Rubin, March 9, 2015

Obama-Rouhani-Selfie

Incentivizing defiance also undercuts diplomacy. In the year before Obama blessed talks with Iran, the Iranian economy had shrunk 5.4 percent. After talks, its economy grows. In order to bring Iran to the table, Obama has released more than $11 billion to Iran. To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to the last two years’ budget of the IRGC, a group responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. What Obama has done is the equivalent of giving a toddler dessert first, and then asking him to come back to eat his broccoli.

How can these past successes be replicated? Sunset clauses, multinational contracts, and sanctions relief won’t do it. Only one thing will: Forcing the regime to choose between its nuclear ambitions and its survival.

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As a candidate for president, Barack Obama made diplomacy with rogue regimes a signature issue. “The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them…is ridiculous,” he declared in 2007. In both his inaugural addressand his first television interview as president, he reached out to the Islamic Republic of Iran. “If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” he told Al-Arabiya. In the six years since, whether firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or reformer-by-comparison Hassan Rouhani held the Iranian presidency, Obama has been so committed to a deal on Iran’s illicit nuclear program that he hasn’t let anything stand in his way—Congress, allies, or evenfacts.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the history of high-profile diplomacy with rogue regimes, Obama’s behavior is more the rule than the exception. If every senator looks in a mirror and sees a future president, then every president looks in a mirror and sees a brilliant statesman, a man who will be Nixon in China or Reagan in Reykjavik. In reality, what most should see is a reflection of Frank B. Kellogg, Aristide Briand, or Neville Chamberlain. With very little understanding of history, Obama, alas, sees only himself.

Albert Einstein is often credited (wrongly) with the adage that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. By that definition, Foggy Bottom is Bedlam. The U.S. military, in contrast, constantly forces soldiers to confront their mistakes—that is, after all, why sergeants-major chew out soldiers. Soldiers spend more time in the classroom dissecting exercises than they do in the field. Even when deployed, they never neglect after-action reports to determine what they might have done better.

In the last half century, however, the State Department has never conducted a “lessons learned” exercise to identify what went wrong with high stakes diplomacy. Nor does the State Department have any clear metrics to measure success and failure. State Department spokesmen often make declarations of progress that declassified records of talks—with Iran, North Korea, the Palestinians, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, Pakistan or, increasingly, Turkey and Russia—belie.

Too many American diplomats dismiss the need to consider mistakes. Instead, many are committed to the belief that talking is a cost-free, risk-free strategy. Testifying before the Senate in support of Obama’s outreach to Iran, Nicholas Burns, the second undersecretary of state for foreign affairs under George W. Bush, promised, “We will be no worse off if we try diplomacy and fail.” Richard Armitage, another veterans of Bush’s State Department, has promoted a similar argument: “We ought to have enough confidence in our ability as diplomats to go eye to eye with people—even though we disagree in the strongest possible way—and come away without losing anything.”

But Armitage was wrong to project American values onto others. Americans may not see willingness to talk as weakness, but other cultures do. On the same day in 2008 that William J. Burns, Bush’s third undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, met an Iranian delegation in Geneva—the first public high-level meeting between American and Iranian diplomats in decades—Mohammad-JafarAssadi, the ground force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that, “America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated.”

But Armitage was wrong to project American values onto others. Americans may not see willingness to talk as weakness, but other cultures do. On the same day in 2008 that William J. Burns, Bush’s third undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, met an Iranian delegation in Geneva—the first public high-level meeting between American and Iranian diplomats in decades—Mohammad-JafarAssadi, the ground force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that, “America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated.”

American diplomats genuinely want peace, but cultural equivalence can kill. So too can ignorance of an adversary’s true goals. This is why Obama’s headlong rush into a deal with Iran will be disastrous.

Obama has had no shortage of cheerleaders. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsed his embrace of diplomacy with rogue regimes. “You don’t make peace with your friends,” she said, adding, “You have to be willing to engage with your enemies.” That may be true, but how you engage with rogues is important. And this is where Obama—and so many would-be statesmen before him—have gone wrong.

It is possible both to take diplomacy seriously and to remember that rogue regimes are a particular problem. There is, of course, no standard definition of “rogue,” but there is no universal definition of “terrorism” either. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In effect, rogueness is the diplomatic equivalent of pornography; attempting to define it calls to mind Justice Potter Stewart’s quip about pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

For the purposes of American policy, it wasn’t the “neocons” of the Bush administration who coined the concept, but rather the progressives within the Clinton administration. In 1993, Les Aspin, then the secretary of defense, warned that “the new nuclear danger we face is perhaps a handful of nuclear devices in the hands of rogue states or even terrorist groups.” The following year, Bill Clinton himself described Iran and Libya as “rogue states” in a speech before European officials. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, hardly a hawk, repeatedly referred to Iran as a rogue regime, and, in 1997, Madeleine Albright argued that “dealing with the rogue states is one of the great challenges of our time…because they are there with the sole purpose of destroying the system.”

Indeed, Iran checks every box for a rogue regime: It has sacked embassies at home and blown them up abroad. When, between 2000 and 2005, the European Union more than doubled its trade with Iran in the name of supporting “Dialogue of Civilizations,” Mohammad Khatami’s reformist administration poured the bulk of its hard currency windfall into nuclear and ballistic missile programs, constructing, for example, the undeclared and covert enrichment facility at Natanz. Iranian leaders have also been unapologetic about ratcheting up terrorism and support for insurgencies in proportion to their sense of the West’s diplomatic desperation. In their wildest dreams, the Iranians never imagined seeing Western acquiescence to their domination not only of Syria and Lebanon, but also of Iraq, Yemen, and perhaps the Gaza Strip. The Iranians have only grown more truculent under Obama, sending naval warships through the Suez Canaland undertaking their first naval deployment to the Pacific Ocean since the 10th century.

Of course, the Iranian people themselves bear the brunt of the Islamic regime’s tyranny. Every time Iranian leaders speak of reform to the Western audience, public executions and crackdowns on religious minorities increase: Iranians understand the message: talk of reform is for external consumption only.

That hasn’t stopped every U.S. administration from seeking to bring Iran in from the cold. Obama may have reached his hand out to Iran, but he wasn’t the first: both Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, and Jimmy Carter each tried something similar. Revolutionary leaders only had American hostages to seize because Carter was determined to keep hopes for rapprochement alive, and to keep the embassy in Tehran open whatever the risks—Khomeini’s rhetoric notwithstanding. Then, as now, the president had the media in his corner. The day before Khomeini’s revolutionary thugs seized the U.S. embassy, Steven Erlanger, the New York Times’ future chief diplomatic correspondent, published an analysis arguing that “the religious phase [of Iran’s Revolution] is drawing to a close even as it is becoming formalized.” In other words, Carter was right. The naysayers who listened to what the Iranian leaders actually promised were not sophisticated enough to understand the nuanced position of the new regime.

But Carter did not stand alone in his hope of restoring the partnership between Tehran and Washington, nor are Democrats the only party who have expected dialogue to reform rogues. The Reagan-era “Arms for Hostages” scheme began as an effort to engage Iran and cultivate a new generation who might succeed Khomeini. And it was George H.W. Bush, not Obama, who used his inauguration topromise the Iranian leadership that, “Goodwill begets goodwill. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.” President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani publicly suggested that he was willing to play ball, and Bush was hooked. Only when Bush had the secretary general of the United Nations send an intermediary to Tehran did he learn that Rafsanjani’s interest in peace was a ruse. Rafsanjani, whom aides to Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush all called a pragmatist at various times, subsequently suggested that Iran could annihilate Israel with a single nuclear bomb while Iran’s size would enable it to withstand any retaliation.

Bill Clinton turned the other cheek to Iran’s culpability in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in order to give diplomacy a chance. After Khatami’s term ended, his own advisors began to brag about how they had played the United States. On June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami’s press secretary, hinted about the real motivation behind Iran’s reformist rhetoric. “We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity,” he said. “Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.” Ramezanzadeh had this to say about the purpose of dialogue: “We had an overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities.”

When Obama declared on April 5, 2009, that “All countries can access peaceful nuclear energy,” the hardline daily Resalat responded with a front-page headline, “The United States capitulates to the nuclear goals of Iran.”

If Obama were serious about ending Iran’s nuclear threat, he would consider the lessons from past diplomacy with Iran. First, taking force off the table undercuts rather than eases diplomacy. Consider the hostage crisis. According to interviews with veterans of Carter’s Iran crisis team, Gary Sick, the 39th president’s point man on Iran, leaked word that the White House had agreed to table any military response. Hostage takers have since acknowledged that, once they learned that they could expect no military consequences, they transformed their 48-hour embassy sit-in into a 444-day crisis.

Desperation for a deal also backfires. After Iran seized the hostages, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance sought to talk to any Iranian who would listen. He sought a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Abulhassan Bani Sadr. Bani Sadr made demands, but lost his post just two and a half weeks after the meeting was held. So Vance then sought to work with Bani Sadr’s successor, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, a former trainer for Palestinian terrorists, who proved his revolutionary credentials by augmenting earlier demands. Steering into the Iranian political maelstrom has never worked.

Western diplomats, like community organizers, pride themselves on sensitivity. Multiculturalism is their religion and moral equivalence is their mantra. They seldom understand how adversaries feign grievance to put Americans on the defensive. Take, for example, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a vocal proponent of engagement with Iran, who warned that Iranians “bristle at the use of the phrase ‘carrots and sticks,’” because it both depicted them as donkeys and implied noncompliance would lead to a beating. What Pickering and crew never realized, however, is that Iranians often use the phrase “carrots and sticks” themselves.

Likewise, Iranians often demand apologies for grievances real and imagined. When Albright apologized for the American role in the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, Tehran demanded compensation. Alas, Albright was apologizing to America’s co-conspirators: Due to right-wing Iranian fears of communism during the Cold War, the clergy had sided with the United States and the Shah over the left-leaning populist.

Incentivizing defiance also undercuts diplomacy. In the year before Obama blessed talks with Iran, the Iranian economy had shrunk 5.4 percent. After talks, its economy grows. In order to bring Iran to the table, Obama has released more than $11 billion to Iran. To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to the last two years’ budget of the IRGC, a group responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. What Obama has done is the equivalent of giving a toddler dessert first, and then asking him to come back to eat his broccoli.

Obama recently dismissed a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for being devoid of any “viable alternatives.” But Netanyahu was right: leverage matters. Reagan talked to the Soviet Union, but only after a massive military build-up that allowed him to negotiate from a position of strength. He never abandoned moral clarity. Only twice in history has the Islamic Republic reversed course after swearing to a course of no compromises. The first time was about what it would take to release the American hostages, and the second about what it would take to end the Iran-Iraq War. After the hostages were released on the first day of the Reagan presidency, Carter’s associates credited the persistence of diplomacy. This is nonsense: As Peter Rodman has pointed out, Iraq’s invasion of Iran had rendered Tehran’s isolation untenable. Khomeini needed to release the hostages or his country would have crumbled. Likewise, Khomeini considered ending the Iran-Iraq War in 1982, but the IRGC pushed him to continue it until “the liberation of Jerusalem.” After six years of stalemate and another half million deaths, Khomeini reconsidered. In his radio address, he likened accepting the ceasefire to drinking from a chalice of poison, but suggested that he had no choice if Iran was to survive.

How can these past successes be replicated? Sunset clauses, multinational contracts, and sanctions relief won’t do it. Only one thing will: Forcing the regime to choose between its nuclear ambitions and its survival.

Categories: Diplomacy, History, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Obama, P5+1, Rogue nations, Sanctions
Tags: History, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Rogue nations, Sanctions

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Dealing With the Iranian Death Cult

March 6, 2015

Dealing With the Iranian Death Cult, American Thinker, Warren Adler, March 2, 2015

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the resultant bloodbath should stand as an example of how a rigidly brainwashed death cult like Iran will choose the apparent path of negotiation while hiding its lethal ambition under a camouflage of lies.

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

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel laid out a strong case for mistrusting Iranian intentions, he did not define the bedrock reason why Iran cannot be trusted. To do that, one must understand the captive mentality of the cult phenomena and how it distorts reason, brainwashes its adherents, and creates unquestioning followers.

For those of us with strong cognizant memories of the events before, during and after the stunning Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, the current negotiations with Iran to prevent this terror-sponsoring cultist state from developing a nuclear weapon seems chillingly similar.

Prior to that “day of infamy” as then President Franklin Roosevelt so aptly characterized it, the United States was locked in tense and complicated negotiations with Japan to settle conflicts that divided our two countries. They were many, involving a clash of perceived power divisions in the Pacific with underlying territorial and psychological issues leaving both countries at loggerheads.

The United States, satisfied that it had broken the Japanese military codes, felt secure enough that it could divine the Japanese positions on its statecraft and military plans. The Japanese, who had entered into a tripartite agreement with Hitler and Mussolini, felt secure in their military might and those of their Axis allies in the face of a largely militarily unprepared America to extract whatever concessions they were seeking from the United States.

It is true that America is not negotiating alone with Iran, but its position in the discussion and eventual outcome, by virtue of its historical leadership role, makes the comparison worth noting.

America in 1941 was facing comparative angst. President Roosevelt, who had promised to stay out of the war, was dealing with a reluctant public that had little appetite to enter the fray, although he had been persuaded by Winston Churchill to assist the Allies by providing armaments through the Lend-lease program. Even as negotiations with the Japanese proceeded, the Japanese had no intention of rapprochement and had actually been planning the assault on Pearl Harbor for many months before.

Worse, the American intelligence community was divided in their assessment of Japanese intentions and had not a clue about its cultist discipline. They were monstrously naive about the power of cult psychology and, unfortunately, they still are. Iran is run by death cult adherents operating under the guise of religion with all power, despite all the outward signs of alleged diversity, vested in one man.

Japan at that time was also being manipulated by cultists enmeshed in the doctrines of State Shinto, based on a degraded interpretation of the samurai Bushido code. They later initiated the suicide bomber pilot program, finding recruits eager to kill themselves for the emperor by smashing their planes into American ships. If that isn’t death cult conduct, then I’d like to know what is.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler, a charismatic and ruthless megalomaniac, had turned the Nazi Party into a brutal master race entitlement cult determined to make “Deutschland Uber Alles” a reality. Indeed, by then the Nazis had brainwashed the German people into the fanatic belief that they were going to fulfill that destiny in a thousand-year Reich, and Hitler had demonstrated his military prowess designed to reach that goal. He held total sway over the Germans, not unlike Ayatollah Khamenei and his cult followers in their control over Iran.

Nothing happens in Iran without the ayatollah’s approval. Indeed, the Islamic terrorist tentacles of the Iranian regime is considerable and unlikely to be deterred by mere negotiations. “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are not just empty slogans. They are chosen statements of intent officially approved by the regime leader.

The State Shinto cult of emperor worship was manipulated by Japan’s power-hungry military to have the Japanese people believe in the inevitability of their own destiny to carve out their own empire in the Pacific. Indeed, they managed to persuade the revered Emperor Hirohito himself to agree to their machinations. His naive approval was all that was needed to bring the Japanese people on board, a typical cult scenario.

The weakest partner in this ménage a trois, Benito Mussolini, had earned himself some cred by an African adventure in Eritrea and North Africa.

Using the cult comparison, there seems to be little difference between Khomeini and Hitler, at least in terms of power. Hitler, like Khamenei today, calls the shots. Khamenei, his minions, and their vast network of Iranian-armed and financially-supported death cult Islamic terror cells is, by any rational measure, an existential danger to America, and certainly to Israel.

Indeed, nuclear bombs and long-range missiles in the hands of this cult could easily transform a mere perceived danger into a planetary disaster and fulfill their “death to” sloganeering. Such power in the hand of the Iranian death cult will create a destructive capacity that by comparison makes Hitler’s armies seem like toy soldiers.

What history has taught us is that cults that have gained total power over their adherents will always use any means to gain their ends. They will employ any tactic that hastens their victory. They will lie, cheat, charm, brutalize, and kill anyone who stands in their way. They will demolish any obstacle that confronts them and inhibits their goals. They will dissimulate and deceive.

The idea that sanity will prevail when it comes to cult leaders is a false notion. Hitler, by the evidence of his suicide, appeared to have understood that death was a finality. Islamic terrorist’s have been brainwashed to believe that death, by sacrificing oneself to what they believe is their Prophet’s desire, is a continuation of physicality, offering perpetual pleasure through eternity in some imagined paradise.

The comparison with Pearl Harbor may seem farfetched and hysterical to some, but as 9/11 has illustrated, a cult in which adherents have no fear of death is a weapon of enormous power. Those who believe that leadership sanity and logic will prevail if Iran gets its bomb and actually uses it against their “Death to” objectives should understand that retaliation, which will surely come, could be welcomed by the Iranian perpetrators of the Jihad cult as a glorious suicide mission guaranteeing an entry ticket to their imagined paradise.

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the resultant bloodbath should stand as an example of how a rigidly brainwashed death cult like Iran will choose the apparent path of negotiation while hiding its lethal ambition under a camouflage of lies.

Categories: Caliphate, Churchill, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, History, Human rights, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Israel, Japan, Khamenei, Mad Mullahs, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Terrorism
Tags: Caliphate, Churchill, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, History, human rights, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian military, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Israel, Japan, Khamenei, Mad Mullas, Netanyahu, Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt, Terrorism

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On moral blindness

February 27, 2015

On moral blindness, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, February 27, 2015

1. Scholars who study our civilization a hundred years in the future will be able to point out the key geopolitical shifts in the Middle East, the collapse of the geographical nations and the return to the ancient social borders, and the rise of radical Islam. They will describe how the Islamic Republic of Iran took over countries like Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, its tentacles of terrorism reaching every corner, including Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

They will study the Iranian nuclear issue and be able to quote hundreds of instances in which Iranian leaders vowed to destroy the Jewish state. But when they begin studying the Israeli society of our time, they will encounter a failure of logic. Amid a virtual consensus on preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb, they will not be able to understand the Israeli focus on bottles recycled by the prime minister’s wife, the electrician the prime minister hired and the frivolous reports that grabbed massive headlines while world powers were busy leaving Iran with the ability to manufacture a bomb. They will have trouble understanding what the Jews were arguing about while facing such an obvious threat.

In an effort to solve this mystery, the scholars will turn to historians who studied the 1930s in Europe: Western leaders’ willful blindness to Hitler’s explicit threats; Europe’s desperate longing for reconciliation with the fuhrer. They will review the history of France, which was warned in those years but failed to prepare an army. They will review Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of “peace for our time” while waving a worthless piece of paper. They will examine the history of European Jewry, which failed to accurately read the political map. Among other things, they will look at U.S. Jewry in the 1940s. They may read the memoirs of Rebecca Kook, the daughter of Hillel Kook, a prominent member of the Irgun.

2. In 1940, the members of the Irgun arrived in the U.S. at the behest of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, to recruit a Hebrew army to fight the Nazis alongside the allied forces. In 1942, when the extermination of Europe’s Jewry began to emerge, the delegation changed course and devoted themselves to saving Jewish lives. They had the nerve to challenge the official stance adopted by the Roosevelt administration — accepted with little opposition by the Jewish leaders of the United States — that the only way to save the Jews was to win the war.

The Irgun members pressured the leaders of the free world to make saving Jewish lives a goal of equal importance to winning the war, and to dedicate special resources to making it happen. They focused their efforts on campaigning in the media, among intellectuals, in the U.S. Congress and to the administration. They convinced then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board — an executive agency created to save Jews. It is estimated that the board was responsible for saving 200,000 Jewish lives.

The future scholars will delve deep into the battle waged by the Jewish leadership in America against the Irgun’s delegation. The mudslinging campaign against them was not led by the administration. It was spearheaded by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Sol Bloom — a New York Jew, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise and Nahum Goldmann of the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish leaders.

Every effort made by the Irgun delegation was met with criticism and active sabotage efforts. They claimed that their activity was too political, too vocal, too aggressive, and that in fact they did not represent anyone. Hundreds of letters were sent to senators and representatives and Jewish leaders. The letters said that the Irgun members were part of a fascist terrorist outfit from Palestine. Jewish activists handed out pamphlets warning that the delegation would bring catastrophe and destruction on the Jewish people.

Several explanations were provided for this hostile behavior. The main explanation was that Jewish leadership’s fear of tarnishing the image of the Jewish community. In a secret British Foreign Office document, Nahum Goldmann was quoted as saying that just as Hitler brought anti-Semitism to Europe, Hillel Kook would bring anti-Semitism to the U.S.

At the end of the 19th century, Germany’s Jews were also fearful of Zionism. It made them susceptible to accusations of dual loyalty, and labeled them as belonging in Palestine. That is why they resisted the Zionist movement and made extra efforts to be even more German than the rest of the Germans.

3. For the last 20 years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning anyone who would listen of Iran’s perilous ambitions. Much like Nazi Germany, Iran and radical Islam do not threaten only Israel but the entire free world. But the left-wing liberal mindset, inspired by U.S. President Barack Obama, complacently dismisses these warnings, often with a side of disrespect.

Over the last month, the White House and a long line of cultural figures and politicians have been confronting a far greater threat: Netanyahu’s upcoming speech at the U.S. Congress. The future historians will note the American Jews who disrespected the Israeli prime minister for fighting for the safety of his people. They will add to that list a number of Israelis who took pains to undermine Netanyahu’s legitimacy and sabotage his address.

One of these critics, Peter Beinart, recently slammed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel for urging Obama to join him at Netanyahu’s address.

“Wiesel is acutely, and understandably, sensitive to the harm Jews suffer. Yet he is largely blind to the harm Jews cause,” Beinart wrote. Cause to whom? To the Palestinians, of course. The American Left is stuck in its 1980s elitist morality that refused to see that the reality has changed.

There is no occupation anymore, Mr. Beinart. Certainly not in the way that you and your friends make it out. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria enjoy expanded autonomy — a de facto state with a national anthem, a flag, a government and enormous budgets. It is true that the IDF is present on the outskirts, because we do not trust our neighbors. But incidentally, they, too, do not trust themselves to ward off Hamas and the radical Islamists. Israel in fact protects the lives of the Palestinian leadership and population from the perils of the Islamic caliphate, which has the ability to turn the lives of these Arabs into a hell devoid of human rights, and heads.

4. This blindness is not just geopolitical, but it is also moral. We are students of the great teacher Rabbi Akiva, who in the second century classified the commandment to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) as a great principle of the Torah (Genesis Rabbah 24:7). In this he built on the work of Hillel the Elder who in the first century B.C.E. placed the entire Torah upon the foundation of this dictum (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Shabbat 31a).

But the same Rabbi Akiva taught us that in the event of a conflict between your life and your neighbor’s life, “your brother shall live with you.” Namely, your own life comes first (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Mezi’a, 62a). That is the proper way to approach altruistic love. If you do not love your own life, or the lives of your own people, more than the lives of others, especially those who are hostile toward you, then you do not truly possess a moral understanding, but rather a nihilistic intellectualism that plays pretend in living rooms across the east and west coasts of the U.S.

Next Tuesday, truth seekers will be called upon to support Netanyahu when he addresses a joint session of Congress. The State of Israel needs your courageous support.

Categories: Caliphate, Elections in Israel, Foreign policy, Free world, Germany, History, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Media, Middle East, Nazis, Netanyahu, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Terrorism, U.S. Congress
Tags: Caliphate, Elections in Israel, Foreign Policy, Free world, Germany, History, Ideology, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Media, Middle East, moral blindness, Nazis, Netanyahu, Terrorism, U.S. Congress

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Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State

February 7, 2015

Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, February 6, 2015

(Some Christians did awful things during the crusades and inquisition, particularly during the Spanish inquisition. Assume arguendo that they did evil things comparable to those of the Islamic State, its cohorts and other Islamists, as commanded by the Koran. In recent centuries, Christians in general managed to get over it. Islam, however, remains stuck in a former millennium of barbarism and seems to be regressing. So what’s Obama’s point, assuming that he has one? — DM)

Obama-at-2015-National-Prayer-Breakfast-450x315

As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—in this case, the recent immolation of a captive—U.S. President Obama’s response has been one of nonjudgmental relativism.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:

Unless we get on our high horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

There is so much to be said here. First, the obvious: the wide gulf between violence and hate “justified in the name of Christ” and violence and hate “justified in the name of Muhammad” is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.

This is not just a theoretic point; it is the very reason that Muslims are still committing savage atrocities. Every evil act IS commits—whether beheading, crucifying, raping, enslaving, or immolating humans—has precedents in the deeds of Muhammad, that most “perfect” and “moral” man, per Koran 33:21 and 68:4 (see “The Islamic State and Islam” for parallels).

Does Obama know something about Christ—who eschewed violence and told people to love and forgive their enemies—that we don’t? Perhaps he’s clinging to that solitary verse that academics like Philip Jenkins habitually highlight, that Christ—who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not” once said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34, 13:34).

Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting that Christians will be persecuted, including by family members (as, for example, when a Muslim family slaughters their child for “apostatizing” to Christianity as happens frequently).

Conversely, in its fatwa justifying the burning of the Jordanian captive, the Islamic State cites Muhammad putting out the eyes of some with “heated irons” (he also cut their hands and feet off). The fatwa also cites Khalid bin al-Walid—the heroic “Sword of Allah”—who burned apostates to death, including one man whose head he set on fire to cook his dinner on.

Nor is the Islamic State alone in burning people. Recently a “mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily.”

As for the Islamic “authorities,” Al Azhar—the Islamic world’s oldest and most prestigious university which cohosted Obama’s 2009 “New Beginning” speech—still assigns books that justify every barbarity IS commits, includingburning people alive. Moreover, Al Azhar—a religious institution concerned with what is and is not Islamic—has called for the cutting off of the hands and feet of IS members, thereby legitimizing such acts according to Islamic law.

On the other hand, does Obama know of some secret document in the halls of the Vatican that calls for amputating, beheading or immolating enemies of Christ to support his religious relativism?

As for the much maligned Crusades, Obama naturally follows the mainstream academic narrative that anachronistically portrays the crusaders as greedy, white, Christian imperialists who decided to conquer peace-loving Muslims in the Middle East.

Again, familiarity with the true sources and causes behind the Crusades shows that they were a response to the very same atrocities being committed by the Islamic State today. Consider the words of Pope Urban II, spoken almost a millennium ago, and note how well they perfectly mirror IS behavior:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country [as slaves], and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion …. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent…. On whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength…

If the crusaders left their own lands and families to come to the aid of persecuted Christians and to liberate Jerusalem, here is Obama portraying them as no better than the Islamic State—which isn’t surprising considering that, far from helping persecuted Christians, Obama’s policies have significantly worsened their plight.

According to primary historical texts—not the modern day fantasies peddled by the likes of Karen Armstrong, an ex-nun with an axe to grind—Muslim persecution of Christians was indeed a primary impetus for the Crusades.

As for the Inquisition, this too took place in the context of Christendom’s struggle with Islam. (Isn’t it curious that the European nation most associated with the Inquisition, Spain, was also the only nation to be conquered and occupied by Islam for centuries?) After the Christian reconquest of Spain, Muslims, seen as untrustworthy, were ordered either to convert to Christianity or go back to Africa whence they came. Countless Muslims feigned conversion by practicing taqiyya and living as moles, always trying to subvert Spain back to Islam. Hence the extreme measures of the Inquisition—which, either way, find no support in the teachings of Christ.

Conversely, after one of his jihads, Muhammad had a man tortured to death in order to reveal his tribe’s hidden treasure and “married” the same man’s wife hours later. Unsurprisingly, the woman, Safiya, later confessed that “Of all men, I hated the prophet the most—for he killed my husband, my brother, and my father,” before “marrying” her.

In short, Obama’s claim that there will always be people willing to “hijack religion for their own murderous ends” is patently false when applied to the Islamic State and like organizations and individuals.

Muhammad himself called for the murder of his enemies; he permitted Muslims to feign friendship to his enemies in order to assassinate them; he incited his followers to conquer and plunder non-believers, promising them a sexual paradise if they were martyred; he kept sex slaves and practiced pedophilia with his “child-bride,” Aisha.

He, the prophet of Islam, did everything the Islamic State is doing.

If Muslims are supposed to follow the sunna, or example, of Muhammad, and if Muhammad engaged in and justified every barbarity being committed by the Islamic State and other Muslims—how, exactly, are they “hijacking” Islam?

Such is the simple logic Obama fails to grasp. Or else he does grasp it—but hopes most Americans don’t.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Obama, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign Policy, Freedom, History, Hostages, human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Moral equivalence, Terrorism, Torture

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The New Antisemitism: Chesler

January 25, 2015

The New Antisemitism: Chesler, You Tube, January 23, 2015

(Phyllis Chester is — gasp — a Zionist! She even fails to understand that Islam is the religion of peace and claims that it is a danger to Western civilization which — as all ~~right~~ left-thinking people know — is the cause of all evil in the world. I’m with her.– DM)

Categories: Antisemitism, Education, History, Islam, Israel, Jews, Jihad, Media, Multiculturalism, Obama, Political correctness, United Nations
Tags: Antisemitism, Education, History, Islam, Israel, Jews, Jihad, Media, Multiculturalism, Phyllis Chester, Political correctness, United Nations, Zionist

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