Archive for the ‘Islamic State’ category

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

ISIS descends on Jordan’s border, activates suicides. Jordanian command post in Daraa

April 6, 2016

ISIS descends on Jordan’s border, activates suicides. Jordanian command post in Daraa, DEBKAfile, April 6, 2016

Islamic State in Jordan

ISIS forces in southern Syria overran several Jordanian border crossings south of the Yarmouk River on Tuesday, April 5. This disastrous turn of events is illustrated by an exclusive picture obtained by DEBKAfile of an ISIS fighter unfurling the organization’s flag at one of the crossings which sports a Jordanian flag.

The picture taken the same day shocked the royal court and the Jordanian military command in Amman.

Our military sources report that an urgent conference was called at the Military Operations Command (MOC), north of Amman to devise measures for containing the Islamic State’s leap into more territory on the Syrian-Jordanian border. It was attended by Jordanian, American, Israeli, Saudi and UAE officers.

Our military sources report that an urgent conference was called at the Military Operations Command (MOC), north of Amman to devise measures for containing the Islamic State’s leap into more territory on the Syrian-Jordanian border. It was attended by Jordanian, American, Israeli, Saudi and UAE officers.

They voiced apprehension about three developments which give Daesh a substantial edge

1. A group of high ISIS officers traveled south from headquarters in Raqqa in the last few days, took command of the 3,000 fighters of the affiliated Yarmouk Brigades, and is now working to form a continuous jihadist enclave along Syria’s borders with Israel and Jordan, like the 90-kilometer ISIS strip blocking part of the Turkish border.

This enclave would directly threaten the Israeli Golan and northern Jordan.

2. When ISIS forces retreated last week from Palmyra, a group headed south, fetching up outside Jebel Druze without entering this mountain region. It is now feared that the jihadis are about to turn west toward the Israeli border and link up with the Yarmouk brigades. This would double the number of ISIS forces in southern Syria and make possible a major new assault on the Jordanian and Israeli borders.

JordanDaraa480Koteret

3. The strengthening of ISIS forces in southern Syria has attracted some of the Syrian rebel groups fighting the Syria army to the jihadist flag and the Yarmouk Brigades. The largest militia to enlist recently is the Al-Muthana movement. Although its leaders deny taking an oath of allegiance or any other ties with ISIS, Al-Muthana is currently fighting alongside ISIS. This has sent a disturbing signal to the hundreds of other anti-Assad militias in the neighborhood.

Jordan has meanwhile stepped forward to stem this flow of strength to ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Jordanian military intelligence officers specializing in guerrilla warfare have been infiltrating rebel-held areas in the South, especially Daraa, the regional hub, for the purpose of whipping rebel militias together into a front against ISIS. These officers have succeeded in setting up a joint war room with the three biggest rebel groups in the south, the Southern Front, Jaish Fatah al-Junub and Jaish al-Islam, for action under the direction of the MOC outside Amman.

On Monday, April 4, the joint force saw combat, when rebel forces under Jordanian commanders launched an attack to drive the ISIS forces back into their former corner in the narrow triangle near the meeting-point of the Syrian, Israeli and Jordanian borders. ISIS hit back with suicide bombers, who blew themselves up next to the Jordanian-led rebel assault force. It was the first time ISIS had unleashed suicide bombers so close to the Israeli border.

Categories: Islamic State, Jordan, Syria war
Tags: , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Europe’s perilous complacency

April 3, 2016

Europe’s perilous complacency, Israel Hayom, Dr. Ephraim Herrera, April 3, 2016

Despite the series of horrific attacks perpetrated by Muslim terrorists in the name of their religion, Europe is not taking the appropriate steps to suppress the phenomenon. Very few mosques in which clerics preach for war against the infidels have been closed down; public order has not been restored to the lawless suburbs in large cities; there is no real oversight of textbooks used in Muslim schools and mosques; very few radical imams have been deported; no significant countermeasures have been taken against Muslims expressing extremist views; and the burka ban has not been implemented.

These are just several of the signs pointing to Europe’s lack of comprehension that some of the Muslims living among them want the continent to fall under Muslim sovereignty, whether by way of the Islamic State approach of violent jihad or by the Muslim Brotherhood approach of population growth and Islamic preaching.

The first reason behind this European complacency is that most Islamic researchers in the West attribute the current situation to the dire economic status of many Muslims, social alienation, an inclination toward radicalization and the Israeli “occupation,” rather than attributing it to the implementation of orthodox Islam.

The second reason is Western economic interests. As early as 1969, the king of Belgium gave the Saudis an enormous building in the country’s capital, which subsequently became the “Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium” and a headquarters for the Muslim World League, which aims to propagate the strict brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The frenzied rush of European states to close business deals with Iran following the July 2015 nuclear accord is further evidence of this.

The third reason is the fear of uprisings. Rooting out militant Islam will require taking police action in Muslim-controlled areas. We have already seen the humiliating footage of police officers fleeing under a hail of rocks and Molotov cocktails, hurled at them by crowds of incensed Muslims. Another contributing factor is the dependency of political leaders, primarily from the Left, on the Muslim vote (French President Francois Hollande owes his election victory to the Muslims).

Additionally, feelings of guilt over Europe’s original sin of colonialism — a sin that serves to validate the yearning for revenge harbored by immigrants from countries once conquered by the West — also play a role in Europe’s stupor in the face of Islam. Thus we receive the paradigm widely accepted among mainly leftist circles that the impoverished individual is always justified, regardless of his actions.

The Europeans, apart from the Russians, have no desire to fight or put themselves in harm’s way. The fact that Western states have refused to deploy ground forces to fight Islamic State, which is responsible for the majority of the terrorist attacks in Europe, is proof of this. Another reason is the conviction that the current wave of immigration is necessary, due to the extremely low birth rates in Europe, along with the belief that Europe will be able to “Westernize” the Muslims, just as previous waves of immigrants have been “Westernized.”

Finally are the feelings of guilt over the atrocities committed by these Western states during the Holocaust, which the radical right is gradually shedding. Europe is shutting its eyes. The Islamization of Europe is a real possibility, precisely as Professor Bernard Lewis, the greatest researcher of Islam, predicted.

Categories: Complacency, Europe, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamisation
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Europe Goes Back to Sleep

April 1, 2016

Europe Goes Back to Sleep, Power Line, Steven Hayward, April 1, 2016

Back in late February I reported (“Be Like France”) how the French appeared to be taking the problem of Islamic terrorism seriously, as opposed to Obama, who thinks it a risk somewhere not far above infection from hangnails.

You can call it all off. Europe is going back to sleep. From yesterday’s WSJ:

Hollande Retreats from Plan to Change French Constitution

PARIS—French President François Hollande abandoned a plan to strengthen his hand in fighting terrorism by amending France’s constitution, showing how political pressure at home is undermining his law-and-order response to the Nov. 13 attacks.

Mr. Hollande said Wednesday he would no longer seek to pass two constitutional amendments that would have enshrined the government’s power to declare a state of emergency and to strip some convicted terrorists of their French citizenship. . .

The groundswell of public support that buoyed Mr. Hollande in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks is fading. . .

Meanwhile, Belgium, whose interior minister admitted Wednesday that the government has cut security forces “too much,” is planning to respond to the terrorist threat with a new $448 million effort at . . . outreach:

After the Paris attacks, the Belgian government announced a €400 million ($448 million) investment in counterterrorism measures, which include significantly increasing counterradicalization efforts in Brussels’s most sensitive neighborhoods.

Good luck with that.

Like France, Belgium seems unable to pass its own version of the Patriot Act:

Four months ago, the Belgian government also announced other legal measures to fight terrorism more efficiently, such as creating a better database of foreign terrorist fighters and allowing house searches 24 hours a day, and not just between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. as under current law.

Belgium’s parliament is still in the process of making the necessary legal changes needed to put those measures into effect.

The interior minister also said, “We will not change the rule of law in this country to be able to interrogate terrorists in a different way.”

Paging Donald Trump.

Categories: Belgium, Europe, France, Islam and human rights, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamisation
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Terrorism, Enclaves and Sanctuary Cities

March 31, 2016

Terrorism, Enclaves and Sanctuary Cities, Front Page Magazine, Michael Cutler, March 31, 2016

(Here’s a link to an excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson titled The Weirdness of Illegal Immigration. — DM)

sanctuary-cities

In the wake of the terror attacks in Belgium, news reports once again focused on how so-called “No Go Zones” in Europe create neighborhoods where communities develop that, although are geographically located within major cities, insulate themselves from their surroundings, fostering the mindset that cooperating with law enforcement is dangerous and even traitorous.

The residents eye law enforcement officers with great suspicion if not outright animosity. The situation is exacerbated because while they fear law enforcement, they may well also fear their neighbors who may take revenge against them for cooperating with law enforcement.

These neighborhoods become “cultural islands” that eschew the cultures and values of the cities and countries in which they grow — a virtual malignancy that ultimately comes to threaten its host city and country because within this cocoon radical Islamists are shielded from law enforcement, find shelter and support and an ample supply of potential terror recruits.

These communities are inhabited by many Muslim refugees who cannot be effectively screened.

This makes assimilation by the residents of these isolated communities unlikely if not impossible and creates breeding grounds for crime and, in this era and under these circumstances- breeding grounds for terrorism.

While there are no actual “No Go Zones” in the United States, there are neighborhoods scattered around the United States, where the concentration of ethnic immigrant minorities is so great that police find themselves unable to make the sort of inroads that they should be able to make in order to effectively police these communities. Adding to the high density of these aliens in these communities is the issue of foreign languages often being the prevalent language in such “ghettos.” This gives new meaning to the term “Language Barrier.”

Back when I was an INS agent, we had an expression- “Big cases- big problems; Little cases- little problems; No cases- no problems!” That phrase applies to all law enforcement officers.

When police or other law enforcement officers are put into a classic “no win” situation, their commonsense solution is to make their own survival and well-being their priority by minimizing their contacts with such enclaves and taking the fewest actions possible within those communities.

Not unlike the “No Go Zones” of European countries, these communities in the Unites States also tend to shield foreign nationals who may be fugitives from justice both inside the United States and in other countries. Terrorists and their supporters are able to go about their daily lives- undetected by law enforcement agencies.

Implementation of sanctuary policies in such cities greatly exacerbates the threats posed to national security and public safety- turning those cities into magnets that attract still more radicals and fugitives and terrorists who need to “fly under the radar.”

Any community that provides safe haven for illegal aliens willfully endangers the lives of it residents.

Even as concerns about increased threats of terror attacks are the topic of a succession of Congressional hearings, so-called “Sanctuary Cities” continue to flourish- with the tacit approval of the administration even though they are clearly operating in violation of federal law.

Consider these provisions of Title 8, U.S.C. 1324(a) Offenses:

Harboring — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) makes it an offense for any person who — knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.

Encouraging/Inducing — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) makes it an offense for any person who — encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.

Conspiracy/Aiding or Abetting — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(v) expressly makes it an offense to engage in a conspiracy to commit or aid or abet the commission of the foregoing offenses.

I focused on this threat to public safety and national security in my article for The Social Contract’s Winter, 2016 Edition, “Sanctuary Cities Endanger – National Security and Public Safety.”

My January 23, 2015 FrontPage Magazine article, “Sleeper Cells: The Immigration Component of the Threat” took a hard look at how failures of the immigration system enable terrorists to enter the United States and, in the parlance of the 9/11 Commission, embed themselves in communities across the country.

Incredibly, New York’s Mayor Bill De Blasio, not content to simply continue the dangerous- indeed deadly sanctuary policies, has amped up the threats to New York and New Yorkers- and indeed the United States, by issuing “Municipal Identity Documents” to illegal aliens.

Reportedly hundreds of thousands of individuals have been issued these identity documents that provide a host of benefits to those to whom the cards have been issued.

Criminals, fugitives and terrorists use multiple false identities. It is therefore beyond comprehension how any mayor would be willing to provide municipal identity documents to illegal aliens. It is especially confounding that New York City’s mayor would do this, given that New York City suffered the greatest number of fatalities on September 11, 2001.

De Blasio is certainly cognizant that NYC is a major terror target. On February 17, 2016 he joined Senator Chuck Schumer, the architect of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, in preparing a letter in response to the administration’s proposal to cut counter-terrorism funding in half. A copy of the letter was posted on the official NYC website under the title, “Transcript: Mayor de Blasio and U.S. Senator Schumer Call on White House to Fully Restore Critical Anti-Terror Funds.”

The Observer’s March 15, 2016 report, “De Blasio Makes Bipartisan Push to Reverse Obama Terror Cuts” focused on De Blasio’s appearance before a Congressional hearing in which he made an impassioned plea to have the funds reinstated.

If Mr. De Blasio is really that concerned about the threat of terrorism, perhaps he (and Senator Schumer) should read the 9/11 Commission Report and the companion report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.”

Consider this excerpt from Chapter 12 of the 9/11 Commission Report:

For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons. Terrorists must travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, and gain access to attack. To them, international travel presents great danger, because they must surface to pass through regulated channels, present themselves to border security officials, or attempt to circumvent inspection points.

In their travels, terrorists use evasive methods, such as altered and counterfeit passports and visas, specific travel methods and routes, liaisons with corrupt government officials, human smuggling networks, supportive travel agencies, and immigration and identity fraud.

Page 9 of 9/11 and Terrorist Travel reported:

“The 19 hijackers used 364 aliases, including different spellings of their names and noms de guerre.4 As they passed through various countries, their names were recorded by governments and their intelligence and border authorities.”

Providing official identity documents to illegal aliens, whose true identities are unknown and unknowable, enables them to create new false identities and a level of credibility they are easily able to exploit as an embedding tactic. Criminals and terrorists use changes in identity the way that chameleons use changes in coloration- as camouflage that enables them to hide in plain sight, often among their intended victims.

Donald Trump has recommended that the United States, at least temporarily, bar Muslims from entering the United States.

In my judgement this solution is not realistic. While the President can order a ban on the admission of all foreign Muslims, it would be impossible to implement. Terrorists and others who were determined to enter the United States could simply lie about their religious beliefs. Aliens who enter the United States without inspection are not screened. We already have large numbers of Muslims living in the United States.

The First Amendment provides for freedom of religion and understandably, many Americans are repulsed at the thought of making religious distinctions where the admission of aliens is concerned.

A far better solution would be to beef up the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and focus a major component of the enforcement effort on seeking to locate and apprehend illegal aliens, irrespective of religion, from countries associated with terrorism.

My December 20, 2015 article for Californians for Population Stabilization, “Effective Interior Enforcement of Immigration Law Vital to Nat’l Security” expounded on how national security would be greatly enhanced by not only securing our borders but enforcing our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

Much has been made of the need to develop effective intelligence. What is seldom, if ever, discussed is the role of informants. In my assignment to the Unified Intelligence Division of the DEA and then when I was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force, one of my key responsibilities was to use my authority as an INS agent to cultivate informants.

Aliens who would be arrested would, under certain circumstances, be provided with the opportunity to become informants and cooperating witnesses to identify those aliens who are engaged in terror-related activities, thereby providing invaluable intelligence. Those who cooperated could be permitted to remain in the United States and even possibly, granted lawful status provided that they could be effectively vetted and that their assistance was particularly meritorious and yielded significant results.

Deporting those illegal aliens who could not- or would not cooperate would shrink the size of the haystack in which some very deadly needles are hiding.

Either way, our security would be greatly enhanced.

Categories: Europe, Illegal immigration, Islamic immigration, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, No go zones, Obama's America, Sanctuary cities
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

ISIS Commander Claims To Be In UK

March 31, 2016

ISIS Commander Claims To Be In UK, Investigative Project on Terrorism, March 31, 2016

(Please see also, ISIS’ European Matrix.– DM)

Al-Jazrawi is believed to be a Saudi who, according to Italy’s Il Tempo newspaper, is part of an effort by ISIS to transfer operations to Libya with a goal of attacking Europe.

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

An ISIS commander with a reliable presence on Twitter claimed to be in Scotland or elsewhere in the U.K. this week.

Abu Amer al-Jazrawi posted a photo March 24 under a now-deleted account “Jazrawi_Dar3a,” showing Japanese food he claimed he was eating.

1450 (1)

Three days later, al-Jazrawi posted a tweet from a different account, “Jazrawi_Joulan” claiming he was in Scotland along with a picture of a barren landscape similar to Scottish moors. “Scotland yesterday. No kuffar around,” he wrote. “Just my family and the creation of Allah.”

“Journey took 8 hours by plane,” he wrote in a separate tweet.

Wednesday, al-Jazrawi tweeted a notice of a meeting for Muslim converts in Crewe, England, which is located 36 miles south of Manchester.

Al-Jazrawi does not appear in the photos, and it is not known whether he was telling the truth about his location. But his tweets come at a time when the world is on alert against the threat from ISIS infiltration of Europe.

The task we face is not unlike that faced by Western intelligence agencies that must pore through thousands of pieces of information looking for facts.

Al-Jazrawi is believed to be a Saudi who, according to Italy’s Il Tempo newspaper, is part of an effort by ISIS to transfer operations to Libya with a goal of attacking Europe.

“Among the team of prominent jihadist elements there would be Abu Amer al-Jazrawi, a Saudi commander in the organization,” Il Tempo reported in February.

Al-Jazrawi was described by the Libyan newspaper Libya Herald described as ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s personal representative in Sirte, Libya.

Last year, ISIS announced that it created a continent-wide jihadist network to help slip jihadis undetected in and out of Europe, which the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported in December. Intelligence sources have since corroborated much of what ISIS announced in its “Black Flags” publications, evidenced by a New York Times report published this week.

The IPT has observed a pattern of bragging from al-Jazrawi, who tweeted during the Paris attacks last November, “Syrians were sent by Islamic state as special undercover sleeper cell agents.”

As it turned out, several of the members of the Paris/Brussels cell fought in Syria and infiltrated the flow of Syrian refugees into Europe.

 

Categories: Europe, Islamic State, Libya, UK
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

ISIS’ European Matrix

March 31, 2016

ISIS’ European Matrix, Front Page Magazine, Emerson Vermaat, March 31, 2016

Matrix

“ISIS have 400 trained fighters in Europe who are poised to unleash more terror attacks with orders to wait for the right time to cause maximum carnage,” the British Daily Mail reported on March 23, 2016. ISIS terror commandos already struck in Paris on November 13, 2015, and in Brussels on March 22, 2016.

Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the terror attacks in Paris who operated from Belgium, said that around 90 jihadists had traveled from Syria to France and that “they were spread out around the Paris region: Syrians, Iraqis, British, French and Germans.”

ISIS jihadists receive their training in special training camps in Syria and Iraq. The focus of their training is on how to plot and carry out terror attacks in Europe. Last January, the European police organization Europol claimed in an alarming report that such training camps not only are in existence in Syria and Iraq, but also in the European Union and the Balkan countries. Terror attacks on soft targets are also being planned in Europe itself, the report warns. This finding proved to be right: Both terror attacks in Paris and Brussels were partially planned and prepared from Brussels.

On Saturday March 26, 2016, the Italian anti-terror police arrested Jamal Eddine Ouali, a 40-year-old Algerian who forged lots of identity papers for illegal immigrants and terrorists linked to the ISIS attacks in Paris and Brussels. Ouali was arrested near the southern city of Salerno. He had provided forged identity papers to Mohammed Belkaid, Salah Abdeslam and Najim Lachraaoui, all of whom were members of the ISIS terror commandos that struck in Paris and Brussels.

At least two of the ISIS terrorists who were involved in the terror attacks in Paris entered Europe as asylum-seekers. Ahmad Al-Mohammad and Mohammed Al-Mamoud arrived in Greece early October 2015 and then traveled to France via the so-called Balkan route. They carried forged Syrian passports and blew themselves up near the Stade de France on November 13, 2015.

ISIS operative Salah Abdeslam is a Belgian-Moroccan from the problematic Brussels immigrant neighborhood of Molenbeek. Back in September 2015, he drove from Brussels, possibly via Italy to collect forged identity papers, to the Central Railway station of the Hungarian capital of Budapest. It was there that he picked up two other important ISIS operatives, Mohammed Belkaid and Najim Lachraaoui. These two operatives had arrived in Budapest by mingling inconspicuously among the flow of asylum seekers. Abdeslam provided them with forged identity papers. Lachraaoui’s new identity was Soufiane Kayal and Belkaid’s new identity was Samir Bouzid. Lachraaoui, just 24 years old and also a Belgian Moroccan, was the bomb maker for the Paris and Brussels attacks. Nail bombs were used in the terror attacks in Brussels. Lachraaoui is originally from Schaarbeek, another troubled neighborhood of Brussels. He had left for Syria in 2013 where he joined ISIS. But on March 22, 2016, just three days after Salah Abdeslam had been arrested by the Belgian anti-terror police, he blew himself up in the entrance hall of Zaventem airport, near Brussels. Another ISIS operative who blew himself up at the airport was a 29-year-old Belgian Moroccan man named Ibrahim el Bakraoui. His 27-year-old brother Khalid el Bakraoui blew himself up in the Brussels metro station of Maalbeek. The total number of those who died is now 35, more than 200 people have been injured.

Crime is rampant among North African immigrants in Europe, and Ibrahim el Bakraoui’s career path from petty crime to jihadist terrorism is not exceptional at all. He was involved in armed robbery back in January 2010. He shot at police with a kalashnikov. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but in October 2014 a judge lamely ruled that Ibrahim Bakraoui should be released. Less then one year later, in June 2015, he traveled to Turkey. He was subsequently apprehended by the Turks in the city of Gaziantep, near the Turkish-Syrian border. They rightly assumed he was on his way to Syria to join the jihadists.  On July 14, 2016, the Turks expelled Bakraoui to the Netherlands, not to Belgium, warning that he is a dangerous jihadist. Due to a series of fateful miscommunications there was nobody to arrest Bakraoui upon his arrival at Amsterdam’s airport of Schiphol, even though he had violated the conditions of his release. Then in March 2016 he would be one of the suicide bombers in Brussels, an ISIS operation.

On behalf of ISIS, a Belgian-Moroccan named Hicham Chaib claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels. Hicham Chaib is now living in Raqqa, the so-called ISIS capital in Syria. In an atrocious ISIS video message, Chaib claimed that there would be more attacks. The British Daily Mail reported: “Brussels slaughter ‘just a taste’ of what is coming, warns ISIS chief executioner in chilling new video threatening further attacks on the West.” War criminal Chaib is “responsible for countless beheadings, crucifixions and amputations in Syria,” the Daily Mail writes. “At the end of the nine-minute video, the 34-year-old executes a kneeling ISIS prisoner, shooting him in the head.”

Belgian authorities just cannot cope with the most serious security threat since the Second World War. Belgium’s various police forces are understaffed and there is lack of communication between them. There are no-go areas in Brussels where well-armed Moroccan criminals dominate the neighborhood. Radical Muslims and terrorists can also count on the solidarity of fellow Muslims in the neighborhood. This is why it took five months before Salah Abdeslam, a very dangerous ISIS operative, could be arrested in Molenbeek.

It has become all too clear that the official policy of “multiculturalism” is not conducive to society’s health. Neither is mass immigration from the culturally-backward Muslim world.

Patrick Kanner, France’s minister for Cities, Youth and Sports, told French radio on Easter Sunday: “We know that there are today around a hundred neighborhoods in France which have potential similarities to what has happened in Molenbeek.”

It’s a dire warning.

Categories: Brussels terror attack, Europe, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamic training camps, Islamisation
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Trump’s Dramatic Reading of Song About Woman And Snake: “Think About ISIS … Illegal Immigration”

March 31, 2016

Trump’s Dramatic Reading of Song About Woman And Snake: “Think About ISIS … Illegal Immigration” Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, March 30, 2016

(This appears to have been at a Trump rally. — DM)

Categories: Donald Trump, Islamic immigration, Islamic State, Viscious snake
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama: Islam Inherently Violent? Absurd!

March 31, 2016

Obama: Islam Inherently Violent? Absurd! Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, March 31, 2016

islamicjihad1

Barack Obama is amused.

“I’m amused,” he said in remarks published Tuesday, “when I watch Republicans claim that Trump’s language is unacceptable, and ask, ‘How did we get here?’ We got here in part because the Republican base had been fed this notion that Islam is inherently violent, that this is who these folks are. And if you’ve been hearing that a lot, and then somebody shows up on the scene and says, well, the logical conclusion to civilizational conflict is we try to make sure that we’re not destroyed internally by this foreign civilization, that’s what you get.”

Where would anyone get the crazy idea that Islam was inherently violent? Well, the day’s headlines might give us that very strong impression, but Obama would tell us (and has told us) that those Muslims who are screaming “Allahu akbar” as they murder non-Muslims are, despite appearances, not really Muslims at all, but just people who have twisted, hijacked, misunderstood the Religion of Peace.

It is, true, however, that there are plenty of Muslims who tell us that Islam is inherently violent. Here are a few of them:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfill God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari.

Obama would dismiss all these as “extremists” who are not really Muslim at all and have nothing to do with Islam. Yet one also might get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

Of course, there is no caliph today, unless one believes the claims of the Islamic State, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes “obligatory for everyone” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: ‘Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until “the final descent of Jesus.” After that, “nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent” (o9.8).

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”

However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”

This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world….The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

All this makes it clear that there is abundant reason to believe that Islam is indeed inherently violent. It would be illuminating if Obama or someone around him produced some quotations from Muslim authorities he considers “authentic,” and explained why the authorities I’ve quoted above and others like them are inauthentic. While in reality there is no single Muslim authority who can proclaim what is “authentic” Islam, and thus it would be prudent not to make sweeping statements about what “authentic Islam” actually is, clearly there are many Muslim who believe that authentic Islam is inherently violent.

One might also get the impression that Islam is inherently violent from these Qur’an verses:

2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”

4:34: “Men are the managers of the affairs of women, for Allah has made one superior to the another, and because they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for Allah’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; Allah is All-high, All-great.”

4:89: “They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

5:33: “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

5:38: “And the thief, male and female: cut off the hands of both, as a recompense for what they have earned, and a punishment exemplary from Allah; Allah is All-mighty, All-wise.”

8:12: “When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!”

8:39: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely; then if they give over, surely Allah sees the things they do.”

8:60: “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to strike terror thereby into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5: “Then, when the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book — until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123: “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing.”

47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray.”

There are some tolerant verses in the Qur’an as well — see, for example, sura 109. But then in Islamic tradition there are authorities who say that violent passages take precedence over these verses. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history.

According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

Here again, obviously there is a widespread understanding of the Qur’an within Islamic tradition that sees it, and Islam, as inherently violent. And we see Muslims who clearly understand their religion as being inherently violent acting upon that understanding around the world today, in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Nigeria and elsewhere. We can hope that those who embody the true, peaceful Islam that Obama assumes to exist come forward and work against the Muslims who believe in violence, instead of just issuing pro-forma condemnations. So far we have not seen that. On the contrary, we see reformers threatened and cowed into silence. The Moroccan activist Ahmed Assid condemned violence in Islam’s name and was immediately declared an apostate and threatened with death by Muslim clerics. If the Ahmed Assids of the world represent the true Islam that is not inherently violent, the message has not gotten through to all too many of their coreligionists.

We may hope it does someday. In the meantime, it is imperative to continue to speak about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, so as to alert all people of good will to the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and its motives and goals. This is not indulging in hateful generalizations; it is simply to speak honestly and realistically about a threat all free people face. If we cannot speak about it, it will nonetheless keep coming, and catch us unawares.

Categories: Islamic history, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Islam
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

An Up-close Look at the Liberal-Muslim Alliance

March 31, 2016

An Up-close Look at the Liberal-Muslim Alliance, American Thinker, Jack Cashill, March 31, 2016

(In Shiite Iran,  “Homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment,[2] corporal punishment, or by execution.” In Sunni Saudi Arabia, “Homosexuality and transgenderism are widely seen as immoral and indecent activities, and the law punishes acts of homosexuality or cross-dressing with death, imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, or whipping/flogging.” — DM)

I have read about the paradoxical alliance between Islam and the left for years. I have even written about it — at some length, in fact, in my newest book Scarlet Letters. But it was only a few weeks go that I got to see up close the mechanisms that allow people who celebrate homosexuals to find common cause with those who, when the law allows, happily sever their heads.

As a result of my book, I was invited to sit on a panel titled “Muslim in the Metro,” an event sponsored by an enterprise called American Public Square and televised in edited form — fairly, I must say — on the regional PBS channel here in Kansas City, KCPT.

There were five panelists — myself, a Republican state rep from Kansas, a fiftyish Muslim woman in the diversity business, a U.S. attorney appointed by Obama, and a female Muslim college student who used the word “microagression” as something other than a punch line to a joke. The moderator was also a former Obama appointee.

I would use names, but I am confident if American Public Square ran a comparable event in other cities, the four Muslim advocates — the moderator included — would espouse almost identical views. They represent a type. So too did the overwhelmingly liberal audience. I could have written their questions for them.

These American Public Square debates feature an active online fact checker and a civility bell. I was a little queasy about the civility bell, but I welcomed the fact checker. He proved to be my greatest ally.

The state rep did a fine job. As an elected official he had to be a little cautious, but he made his case about terror and immigration well.

My strategy was a little different. Knowing that I was not about to convert anyone, I thought I could at least confuse the audience members with the truth, and the truth is that their affection for Islam makes no apparent sense. This proved to be a difficult assignment, and here is why.

The left has a unique ability to deny the obvious.

In attempting to establish my premise, I said to the panel, “Muslims are culturally very conservative around the world,” adding rhetorically, “Is that fair to say?”

This premise struck me as inarguable. My fellow panelists felt otherwise. The two women, both wearing Hijabs, and the moderator all shouted out “No” or some variant. Said I, “When it comes to issues like family, women, abortion, gay rights, you’re telling me they’re not conservative?”

The moderator admonished me. “Jack,” he said, “you’re asking a question, and they didn’t give you the answer you want.” He then challenged me to make my case or move on.

Knowing there was a fact checker, I pulled out my one file card and read through the numbers from Pew Research Foundation, a liberal but generally reliable source. When asked about gay rights, 87 percent of Germans approved but no more than 9 percent of Muslims in any country surveyed and as little as 2 percent in some.

On the question of whether a women should always obey her husband, 87 percent of Muslims approved. On the question of whether apostates should be executed, 56 percent of Muslims who approved of Sharia law said yes. Asked whether they held “highly unfavorable” views of Jews, 99 percent of Jordanians and 100 percent of Lebanese sad yes. The fact checker could not deny what I was saying.

My fellow panelists could and did. They protested that these attitudes did not reflect American Muslims, but I had to repeat that I began my discussion by saying these surveys were done in the countries that comprise our immigration pool, and that the threat of immigration motivated the anti-Muslim sentiment about which they complained.

The left instinctively denies the worth of America.

I did concede that American Muslims were likely more moderate in their views. This relative moderation, I argued, reflected the “palliative effect of American culture on Islam.” This comment drew boos from the audience. From the left’s perspective, nothing America does is palliative.

The left controls the debate.

When I added, “If you go to Cologne, Germany you’re going to meet people who haven’t had that [palliative] experience,” the moderator insisted that I stick to local issues. Europe seemed particularly off limits. Although this was billed as a nonpartisan event, it proved to be no more nonpartisan than PBS in general or CNN or NBC or the New York Times. The moderator unabashedly took sides.

The left inevitably falls back on false moral equivalence.

Indeed, from the Muslim women and especially from the U.S. Attorney, there was so much talk of Timothy McVeigh, Clive Bundy, the KKK, the Sovereignty movement, and even the mid 19th-century Know-Nothing Party, a latecomer might have thought the event about Christian terrorism. Of course, in none of these conversations did the moderator insist the speaker restrict himself to local issues.

The left is plagued with cognitive dissonance.

I kept returning to the transparently separate standards liberals held for traditional Christians and traditional Muslims. I pointed out, for instance, that the Kansas City Star designated a prominent liberal pastor a “drum major for justice” for his denunciation of the Christian right as “a threat far greater than the old threat of Communism.”

The fact checker confirmed that to be an exact quote. And the threat the pastor alluded had nothing to do with violence. No, what troubled him was that Christian conservatives were running for office. They were “anti-pornography,” he warned, and opposed — he noted daintily — a woman’s “having a say about what goes on in her own body.”

Had he said something half as outrageous about Muslims, he would have lost his pulpit, if not his head. Focusing his spite on Christians, however, got his speech excerpted in the New York Times and won him the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award.

The alliance validates the left’s moral superiority.

At one point, the older Muslim woman claimed to have been so appalled by the “anti-Muslim” tenor of the Republican debates that she would not let her children watch them. Echoed the U.S. Attorney, “Their children see grown men espousing hate.”

Bingo! There was the money quote. Indeed, if there is one shared feel good experience among leftists of all stripes it is the imputation of “hate” to others. Author Shelby Steele coined the phrase “zone of decency” to describe the sacred preserve in which progressives imagine themselves clustering. By aligning themselves with Muslims, liberals assure themselves a place in the zone and “decertify” those not quite so keen on self-destruction.

Did I mention that the left denies the obvious?

My opponents on the panel repeatedly insisted that terrorists did not represent Islam. “You have places called the Islamic State,” I countered. “These guys think they’re the real deal.”

“What one chooses to call oneself is not necessarily the only test we have to apply,” said the moderator who had long since abandoned anything resembling neutrality.

“There is an element of disingenuousness about this conversation tonight,” I replied. I pointed out that there are millions of Muslims who subscribed to ISIS or who supported ISIS “To make believe that there is not a religious thread to this,” I concluded, “is to deceive ourselves.”

“What’s disingenuous is to blithely say there are millions,” the moderator snapped back. He then made the fatal mistake of asking for a fact check on my numbers. Said the fact checker, “Pew says 63 million Muslims support the Islamic State in the eleven Muslim countries polled.”

“That,” I said with my final words, “is a lot of Muslims.”

Categories: Islam and homosexuality, Islam and human rights, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic State, Leftist perspectives, Multiculturalism
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs

March 31, 2016

Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs, Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, March 30, 2016

obama_lea_c0-80-4500-2703_s885x516President Obama (center) and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (left) greet Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, on the apron at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin relinquished command in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday of the U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State –– as a bit of a sour note hung in the air back in Washington.

President Obama has been consistently criticized for a 2014 comment to the New Yorker magazine that the Islamic State, as it invaded Iraq from Syria, was merely the “jayvee.” In other words, it was not to be taken seriously. Months later, the terror army controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria, forcing Mr. Obama to ordered a new war.

Then, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Mr. Obama and came out with a long favorable story this month on the commander in chief’s foreign policy views. In the story is this:

“Early in 2014, Obama’s intelligence advisers told him that ISIS was of marginal importance. According to administration officials, General Lloyd Austin, then the commander of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the White House that the Islamic State was ‘a flash in the pan.’ This analysis led Obama, in an interview with The New Yorker, to describe the constellation of jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria as terrorism’s ‘jayvee team.’”

The quote clearly showed the White House was shifting blame from Mr. Obama to Gen. Austin, a 40-year Army combatant, leader and commander, as he went out the door.

Gen. Austin, through his public affairs office at U.S. Central Command, has denied ever making such a remark.

His supporters point out that, as the last four-star general to leave Iraq in December 2011, he had recommended to the White House that more than 20,000 American troops remain in the country because the gains there were reversible.

At the time Mr. Obama downplayed the Islamic State, then known by a different name, it had built a large army in Syria and had begun its expansion into Iraq.

Mr. Obama has a track record of shifting blame. For example, when the White House plan to train a Syrian army to fight the Islamic State failed, he told an interviewer that he always knew it would not work.

Gen. Austin turned over command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., to Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who had been chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

At the ceremony, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter heaped praise on Gen. Austin, a West Point graduate and recipient of the Silver Star for gallantry in battle.

As CentCom leader for three years, he has directed operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and kept watch on an expansionist Iran in the Persian Gulf.

“The people of CentCom have met these challenges under the extraordinary leadership of a towering figure in the life of our military, General Lloyd Austin,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s one of the highest compliments in the Army to be called ‘a soldier’s soldier.’ For more than four decades, Lloyd Austinhas not only demonstrated what it means to be a soldier’s soldier. He has come to define it.”

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Peter Cook, Mr. Carter’s spokesman, was asked if the secretary would clear the four-star general of the “flash in the pan” quote at the change of command.

“I don’t think Secretary Carter needs to clear General Austin of that,” Mr. Cook said. “I think General Austin himself has indicated that that statement is factually incorrect, and I believe there are others who have said the same.  So I’m not aware that General Austin ever made that comment, and I think I would refer you to the White House as well if you want to check with them.

“But General Austin does not need to have his name cleared for any reason.  He has led admirably and with distinction for, as I said earlier, close to 40 years, and I think his record of accomplishment speaks for itself.”

Categories: Gen. Lloyd Austin, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Shifting blame
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »