Archive for the ‘Obama’ category

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Muslim Leaders Sign Letter Against ISIS, But Endorse Sharia

October 1, 2014

Muslim Leaders Sign Letter Against ISIS, But Endorse Sharia, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, October 1, 2014

(Abdullah Bin Bayyah is among the “moderate” Islamists signing the letter. He was noted favorably in Obama’s September 24, 2014 address to the UN General Assembly. — DM)

Islamic-State-Stoning-From-Dabiq-Magazine-IP_0A picture of a the sharia punishment of stoning from the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine (Issue #2)

A published letter to the Islamic State (ISIS)  signed by 126 international Muslim leaders and scholars, including top American leaders, is getting major press for rebutting the theological arguments behind the actions of Islamic State. Unfortunately, the same letter endorsed the goal of the Islamic State of rebuilding the caliphate and sharia governance, including its brutal hudud punishments.

Point 16 of the letter states, “Hudud punishments are fixed in the Qu’ran and Hadith and are unquestionably obligatory in Islamic Law.” The criticism of the Islamic State by the scholars is that the terrorist group is not “following the correct procedures that ensure justice and mercy.”

The Muslim “moderates” who signed the letter not only endorsed the combination of mosque and state; they endorsed the most brutal features of sharia governance as seen in Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

An example of a hudud punishment is the death penalty for apostates (Muslims who leave Islam). The letter does not dispute or oppose that. It says that labeling Muslims as apostates is only permissible when an individual “openly declares disbelief.”

The signatories are not condemning the execution of apostates, only how the Islamic State is deciding who qualifies as an apostate.

Point 7 states that Islam forbids the killing of diplomats, journalists and aid workers, but it comes with a very important exception.

“Journalists—if they are honest and of course are not spies—are emissaries of truth, because their job is to expose the truth to people in general,” it reads.

This is actually an endorsement of targeting journalists that Muslims feel are unfair. Islamists, including Islamic State supporters, often claim that the journalists they kill are propagandists and/or spies, meeting the letter’s standards.

Point 22 of the letter states, “There is agreement (ittifaq) among scholars that a caliphate is an obligation upon the Ummah. TheUmmah has lacked a caliphate since 1924 CE. However, a new caliphate requires consensus from Muslims and not just from those in a small corner of the world.”

A caliphate is a pan-Islamic government based on sharia; virtually all Islamic scholars agree that this objective requires the elimination of Israel. It is also fundamentally (and by definition) expansionist.

Again, the “moderate” signatories endorse the principles of the Islamic State and other jihadists but criticize their implementation.

Point 5 states, “What is meant by ‘practical jurisprudence’ is the process of applying Shari’ah rulings and dealing with them according to the realities and circumstances that people are living under.”

It continues, “Practical jurisprudence [fiqh al-waq’i] considers the texts that are applicable to peoples realities at a particular time, and the obligations that can be postponed until they are able to be met or delayed based on their capabilities.”

This is an endorsement of the Islamist doctrine of “gradualism.” This is an incremental strategy for establishing sharia governance, supporting jihad and advancing the Islamist cause.

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), whose leader is a signatory of the letter, preaches this concept in its own publications. An ICNA teaching guide published by the Clarion Project preaches gradualism as its strategy for implementing sharia governance and resurrecting the caliphate.

ICNA’s manual directs Muslims to use deception and infiltrate the government. The gradualist strategy is part of a jihad that includes war with the ultimate goal of conquering the world.

A weakness in the letter is the vague terminology that gives room for terrorist groups like Hamas to justify their violence.

For example, point 8 states that “Jihad in Islam is defensive war. It is not permissible without the right cause, the right purpose and without the right rules of conduct.”

The letter goes into detail about these qualifications in order to condemn the tactics of the Islamic State, but the terms of a “defensive war” are not spelled out. All Islamist terrorists consider their attacks “defensive.”

Muslim-American activist Michael Ghouse pointed out the need for clarification in a conversation with me about the letter. He said:

“Define the right cause. Is fighting against India in Kashmir a jihad? Was the war between Iraq and Iran two decades ago a jihad? This group needs to continue to update these situations to let the common Muslim know what is right and what is wrong, lest he commits himself to the jihad.”

Islamists regularly redefine words like “clear disbelief,” “democracy,” “justice,” “peace” and “terrorism” on their own terms. The use of subjective language like “innocents,” “mistreat,” “defensive” and “rights” leave much room for interpretation.

This is what enabled a terrorism-supporting cleric named Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah to sign the letter. He is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, has called for attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, supports Hamas and seeks the destruction of Israel.

The Islamist leaders behind the anti-Islamic State letter are still endorsing Islamic sharia law, which is oppressive and incompatible with Western values. The implementation of sharia is what drives all Islamic extremism.

The letter also utilizes Islamist thinkers that formed the intellectual foundation for today’s extremism. For example, it cites Ibn Taymiyyah. Terrorism expert Atto Barkindo writes, “Some scholars suggest there is probably no other Islamic theologian, medieval or otherwise, who has had as much influence on radical political ideology of Islam as Ibn Taymiyya.” This includes the leaders of Al Qaeda.

Ghouse told the Clarion Project that sharia as encoded by such scholars, needs revising. “Classical texts that are referred to in the list are part of the problems,” Ghouse said. “We need to make a commitment to question and revise the exegeses of the Ulemas [scholars] like Ibn-Kathir, Ibn Taymiyyah, Maududi, Hassna al-Banna and others. We cannot equate them to Quran and Hadith.”

The letter does make a much-needed rebuttal to the murdering of diplomats, noncombatants, labeling of Yazidis as apostates, attacks on Christians, forced conversions and torture. It states that Arab Christians are exceptions to the “rulings of jihad” because of “ancient agreements that are around 1400 years old.”

The letter also does tries to persuade Muslims to reject the Islamic State because of its tactics and procedures; however, it reinforces the Islamist basis of those actions.

Far from proving that the Muslim-American signatories are “moderate,” the letter actually exposes them as Islamist extremists because of their endorsements of sharia governance, its brutal hudud punishments and the resurrection of the caliphate.

These 18 leaders include:

Categories: Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Caliphate, Iraq, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Obama, Syria
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama’s post-American world is taking shape with the rise of Iran

October 1, 2014

Obama’s post-American world is taking shape with the rise of Iran, Washington Examiner Opinion, Arthur Herman, October 1, 2014

(Iran is a post-mature bastion of human rights and tolerance, cf. “Goodbye, Dear Mum”: Iran Executes Rayhaneh Jabbari — UPDATED. A post-moderate, post-benign country such as Iran would never attack another country and desires only post-peaceful nukes. Right? — DM)

Remarkable is one word for it; obscene might be another. Whatever word you choose, the long-term implications of embracing Iran are nearly all bad for the region and for the United States.

[W]in or lose against the Islamic State, the West’s outreach to Iran only sets the stage for more chaos in the Middle East — and more opportunities for Tehran to extend its power. The irony is that the West has a potential democratic ally in the region, one that really does have a stake in a peaceful, stable Middle East and in defeating terrorism — Israel.

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

Anyone wanting to take the moral temperature of the post-American world President Obama wants to create only had to drop by the United Nations last Thursday afternoon.

There he would have seen British prime minister David Cameron sitting down with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to ask — no, beg him to join the misbegotten coalition Obama has assembled against the Islamic State. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had already extended the invitation to Iran to join, and Iran had already refused. Now it was Cameron’s turn.

He may think this will burnish his image as a master diplomat after convincing the Scots not to demand independence. Instead, he’s only opened one more sordid chapter in the most remarkable story of how Iran, a vicious rogue nation and state sponsor of terrorism — not to mention beacon of anti-Semitism — has become the rising dominant power in the region, and is now being blatantly courted as an ally by the West.

Remarkable is one word for it; obscene might be another. Whatever word you choose, the long-term implications of embracing Iran are nearly all bad for the region and for the United States.

Even more strikingly, this change in Iran’s international status comes only two years after the regime in Tehran was reeling from sanctions that had largely cut off its access to Western banks and capital, and above all, Western customers of its oil. Iran’s oil output plummeted by nearly half; gasoline prices in the country soared into the stratosphere while the economy teetered on bankruptcy. The country’s natural gas industry (Iran’s gas reserves are among the biggest in the world) was in an extended state of collapse as Western companies and technicians packed up and left. Even China had agreed to abide by some modified sanctions against Iran, all in order to force the mullahs to halt their illegal nuclear weapons program.

Now today China is importing record amounts of oil from Iran while Western companies are rushing back to its oil and gas fields. Iran is the chief protector and patron of Syria, and also Iraq. Moreover, Iran’s bomb is more on track than ever. Indeed, its uranium enrichment program is close to 70 percent of what’s required — and no one now seriously believes they can be stopped from making a bomb, or putting it on the long-range ballistic missiles they continue to develop.

So what happened? John Kerry’s disastrous deal struck in Geneva last year lifting key sanctions against Iran in exchange for promises to cut back on the enrichment process — a promise premier Hassan Rouhani never intended to keep—is only symptomatic of a much larger delusion. This is that Iran can be persuaded to become a constructive actor in the Middle East if only the United States will offer enough carrots including lifting sanctions, and forswear the sticks, including military strikes against the regime’s nuclear sites.

Many Russian experts had a similar delusion about the Soviet Union during the Cold War; it’s also the one that convinced Neville Chamberlain to sit down with Hitler at Munich. It holds that self-interest will trump ideology; that bad regimes are bad because they’ve been badly treated (Hitler had Versailles to complain about, after all; Tehran has the CIA plot against Prime Minister Mossadegh some sixty years ago) — and that evil ultimately isn’t evil.

Now we know better about Hitler, and about the former Soviet Union. Whether we learn the same about Iran before it’s too late, is going to be the major issue in the Middle East in the next decade — far more than the Islamic State.

In fact, even as the world’s attention has been distracted by the Islamic State, Iranian-backed Shia rebels scored a major victory in Yemen, and now control 17 of the country’s 21 provinces. Soon Tehran’s proxies will be poised on the border of Saudi Arabia, its arch rival for regional dominance. If anything gives Saudi Arabia a signal that it’s time to get its own atomic bomb, it won’t just be whether Iran finishes its enrichment process; it will also be a Yemen firmly in Tehran’s camp, and ready to foment revolt in the kingdom’s Shia provinces.

In short, win or lose against the Islamic State, the West’s outreach to Iran only sets the stage for more chaos in the Middle East — and more opportunities for Tehran to extend its power. The irony is that the West has a potential democratic ally in the region, one that really does have a stake in a peaceful, stable Middle East and in defeating terrorism — Israel.

Nevertheless, this administration and its NATO allies still insist on treating the Jewish state as the pariah, even as they know it will be Iran’s principal target once it gets its nuclear bomb.

The sight of Western leaders kissing the hem of Rouhani’s robe may be sickening, but it’s also understandable. When you lose your moral compass, your self-respect follows. Sadly, it’ll be a long time before the United States will get either one back.

Categories: Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic State, Obama
Tags: , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

EDITORIAL: Mr. Netanyahu’s tutorial for Obama

October 1, 2014

EDITORIAL: Mr. Netanyahu’s tutorial for Obama, Washington Times, September 30, 2014

Netanyahu at UNFILE – In this Monday, Sept. 29, 2014 file photo, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters.

He tells it like it is, and the president should listen this time.

President Obama must absorb this. He came to office thinking there is little moral difference between Israel and Hamas and its Palestinian cohort. He seems to identify more with the Palestinians, observing that Israeli intransigence, not the distortion of Islam, is the infection festering in the Middle East.

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a courageous leader and a glutton for punishment. He never hesitates to stand up to those who despise him and his country, and indeed despise the West and the civilization it brought to the world. Some of his critics dream of beheading him if they could. He rebuts their lies, stares them down and corrects the record. He understands that what they seek is not peace, but an opportunity to destroy Israel and the Western civilization it represents.

He stared them down again this week at the United Nations General Assembly, and he’ll be in Washington on Wednesday to visit an American president who clearly doesn’t like him and delights in humiliating him. He gave the assembled diplomats the tutorial they needed, whether they wanted it or not, on life in the real world. We hope the president was listening.

The prime minister applauded the president for recognizing the threat of the Islamic State, or ISIS, but reminded the delegates that there’s still more to recognize. “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree,” he said. “ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.” Islamic terrorism is a cancer, he said, and “to protect the peace and security of the world we must remove this cancer before it is too late.”

President Obama must absorb this. He came to office thinking there is little moral difference between Israel and Hamas and its Palestinian cohort. He seems to identify more with the Palestinians, observing that Israeli intransigence, not the distortion of Islam, is the infection festering in the Middle East.

He said early on that he wanted a settlement with the Palestinians that would require Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders, before its Islamic neighbors ganged up to go to war and, instead of destroying the Jewish state, got a good country licking themselves. Mr. Netanyahu’s warning of the true aims of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran were ignored. On an afternoon in 2010, the president invited the Israeli prime minister to the White House, presented him with a list of 13 demands, and when Mr. Netanyahu wouldn’t agree to them, rudely told him that he was off to supper with his family and his absence would give Mr. Netanyahu time to reconsider his answer.

The prime minister spent the next hour cooling his heels in the Roosevelt Room and was then summarily dismissed, in a remarkable display of bad manners and diplomatic discourtesy, and told that he hadn’t given sufficient thought to buying the Obama solutions. The president snubbed him on several additional occasions. He once instructed Vice President Joe Biden to tell a group of U.S. senators, assembled to listen to a briefing on Iran’s nuclear program, to “ignore” anything Mr. Netanyahu might say about Iran and its pursuit of the nuclear bomb.

Subsequent meetings of the two heads of state were cool, some more correct than others, but all with lectures from the president, who imagines that he knows more about the region than Mr. Netanyahu or others who actually live and work there.

The occasion on Wednesday is less auspicious than occasions in the past. Mr. Obama has climbed into a coalition of strange allies with his strategy to blunt a fanatic Muslim surge through the region. The president is getting a late education in the reality of that region. We can only hope he’s listening this time to those who, like Mr. Netanyahu, an ally with insights, actually knows what’s going on there.

 

Categories: Hamas, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama
Tags: , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

The irony of endorsing Palestinians while bombing ISIS

October 1, 2014

The irony of endorsing Palestinians while bombing ISIS, Washington Times Editorial, Louis Rene Beres, September 30, 2014

(Irony? Perhaps it’s idiocy as well. In any event, please see also In Iraq, Syria, US lifts rules meant to protect civilians. — DM)

Hamas ISIllustration on Netanyahu’s comment that ISIS and Hamas “are branches on the same poisonous tree” by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

Even while bombing ISIS, aka the Islamic State, Mr. Obama continues to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, a plainly jihadist country that would inevitably be run by some adversarial combination of Hamas and the PA. . . . Why, it is time for . . . [Obama] to inquire, should we be fighting Islamist terrorists in one part of the Middle East, and simultaneously supporting distinctly similar others, just a short distance away?

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

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded strongly to an earlier verbal attack launched by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. To be sure, as Mr. Netanyahu pointed out, Palestinian allegations of an Israeli-inflicted genocide were not only preposterous but also deeply ironic. After all, both the PA and Hamas are unambiguously on record in favor of eradicating Israel altogether, an open expression of criminal intent.

Addressing another irony, Mr. Netanyahu pointed out that “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree,” and that there can be absolutely no justification to fighting one while supporting the other. “Hamas is ISIS, and ISIS is Hamas,” the prime minister declared correctly. On all of these points, however, it is not entirely clear that President Obama is on the same page.

Even while bombing ISIS, aka the Islamic State, Mr. Obama continues to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, a plainly jihadist country that would inevitably be run by some adversarial combination of Hamas and the PA. Somehow, Mr. Obama doesn’t want to acknowledge that any Palestinian Arab state would promptly exhibit the very same jihadist tendencies as our own current terrorist targets in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Why, it is time for him to inquire, should we be fighting Islamist terrorists in one part of the Middle East, and simultaneously supporting distinctly similar others, just a short distance away?

Where are we now heading? At some point, if they can finally reconcile, the PA and Hamas will declare the existence of a fully sovereign Palestinian state. Any such state, however, whatever its theoretical “self-determination” rationale, and whatever its finally agreed-upon administrative form, would enlarge the risks of terrorism and war.

Already, Palestinian orientations to aggression are very easy to decipher. Official PA maps identify Israel as merely a part of Palestine. In essence, both the PA and Hamas have agreed upon a cartographic destruction of Israel proper — not a “two-state solution,” but rather a conspicuously “final solution.”

Any Palestinian state could have a directly detrimental impact on American strategic interests and, of course, on Israel’s physical survival. After Palestine, Israel, facing an even more expressly formidable correlation of enemy forces, would require greater self-reliance. Any such enhanced self-reliance would then call for a more coherent and more openly disclosed nuclear strategy, one focusing comprehensively upon deterrence, pre-emption, and war-fighting capabilities; and a corollary and interpenetrating conventional war strategy.

By definition, a Palestinian state would make Israel’s conventional war capabilities increasingly problematic. In response, Israel’s national command authority would likely make the country’s still-implicit nuclear deterrent less ambiguous. Any such retreat from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, if incremental and limited, and if undertaken in coordinated conjunction with certain calibrated efforts to control escalation, could serve Israel as a potentially potent force multiplier.

Ending long-standing policy of keeping its “bomb in the basement” might enhance Israel’s security for a time, but could also heighten overall chances of hostile nuclear weapons use. If, for example, Iran were allowed to “go nuclear,” which now seems rather certain, belligerent nuclear violence would not necessarily be limited to Israel and Palestine. Ultimately, it could take the form of a genuinely unprecedented nuclear exchange.

Significantly, a nuclear war could arrive in Israel not only as a “bolt-from-the-blue” surprise missile attack, but also as a manifestly catastrophic outcome, intended or otherwise, of escalation. If, for example, an enemy state such as Iran were to initiate “only” conventional or biological attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem might still opt to respond with certain fully nuclear reprisals. Or, if this enemy state were to commence hostilities employing solely conventional attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem’s non-nuclear reprisals might then be met, in a still palpably uncertain strategic environment, with certain enemy nuclear counterstrikes.

In all such adversarial circumstances, Israel would be compelled to successfully demonstrate escalation dominance. The challenge to Jerusalem of any such complex demonstration could be significantly enlarged by the presence of a new and probably pernicious state ofPalestine.

The establishment of a Palestinian state could immediately undermine Israel’s necessary demonstration of escalation dominance. Jerusalem would then need to raise even further the capability threshold of its relevant conventional forces. A more persuasive Israeli conventional deterrent, to the extent that it could prevent enemy-state conventional or biological attacks in the first place, would then be required to reduce Israel’s now-expanded risk of exposure to an outright nuclear war.

After Palestine, and without any reasonable doubt, the area’s correlation of forces would become markedly less favorable to Israel. Now, the only credible way for Israel to consistently deter large-scale conventional attacks would be to maintain visible and large-scale conventional force capabilities. Of course, enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel, using chemical or biological weapons, would be apt to take most seriously Israel’s nuclear deterrent. Whether or not this Israeli nuclear deterrent had remained entirely or partially undisclosed could also affect Jerusalem’s deterrent credibility.

In sum, Israel still needs a sufficiently strong conventional capability to deter or possibly to pre-empt conventional attacks, enemy aggressions that could lead, via escalation, to unconventional war. Doubtlessly, Mr. Obama’s road map would only further impair Israel’s already minimal strategic depth, and, if duly recognized by enemy states, Israel’s associated capacity to wage conventional war. These key calculations should finally be understood in Washington, as well as in Jerusalem, not only for Israel’s sake, but also because a Palestinian state would quickly become receptive to assorted jihadist preparations for expanding anti-American terrorism.

 

Categories: Hamas, Iraq, Islamic State, Netanyahu, Obama, Syria
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama Betrays the Kurds

September 30, 2014

Obama Betrays the Kurds, National Review on line, Robert Zubrin, September 30, 2014

(Please see also this video about Kurdish female fighters. — DM)

The Kurds are fighting bravely, but they need arms, and they need air support.

Kurdish fightersAhmad al-Rubaye/Getty Images)

[S]ome 400,000 Kurds in and around the town of Kobane in northern Syria, on the Turkish border, are being besieged and assaulted by massed legions of Islamic State killers armed with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery. Against these, the Kurdish defenders have only AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The Kurds have called on the U.S. to send in air strikes to take out the jihadist forces. In response, the administration sent in two fighter jets Saturday, which destroyed two Islamic State tanks and then flew away. The Kurds are begging for arms. The administration has not only refused to send arms, but is exerting pressure both on our NATO allies and on Israel not to send any either. Over 150,000 Kurds have fled their homes to try to escape to Turkey, but they are being blocked at the border by Turkish troops. Meanwhile, Turkey is allowing Islamist reinforcements to enter Syria to join the Islamic State, while Islamist elements of the Free Syrian Army, funded and armed by the United States, have joined forces with the group in the genocidal assault on the Kurdish enclave. [Emphasis added.]

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

In his speech to the United Nations last week, President Obama pledged to the world that the United States would use its might to stop the horrific depredations of the terrorist movement variously known as the Islamic State, ISIS, or, as he calls it, ISIL.

“This group has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria,” the president proclaimed. “Mothers, sisters, daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.”

“No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions,” he said. “There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death. . . . We will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities. We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground.”

These are brave words that well and truly denounce evil for what it is. Unfortunately, the president’s actions since then have been anything but consistent with his pledge to stop the terrorism.

As these lines are being written, some 400,000 Kurds in and around the town of Kobane in northern Syria, on the Turkish border, are being besieged and assaulted by massed legions of Islamic State killers armed with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery. Against these, the Kurdish defenders have only AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The Kurds have called on the U.S. to send in air strikes to take out the jihadist forces. In response, the administration sent in two fighter jets Saturday, which destroyed two Islamic State tanks and then flew away. The Kurds are begging for arms. The administration has not only refused to send arms, but is exerting pressure both on our NATO allies and on Israel not to send any either. Over 150,000 Kurds have fled their homes to try to escape to Turkey, but they are being blocked at the border by Turkish troops. Meanwhile, Turkey is allowing Islamist reinforcements to enter Syria to join the Islamic State, while Islamist elements of the Free Syrian Army, funded and armed by the United States, have joined forces with the group in the genocidal assault on the Kurdish enclave.

According to Kurdish sources, the Turks are massing troops on their own side of the border, with the apparent plan being to sit in place and allow the Kurds to be exterminated, and then move in to take over the region once they are gone. This is the same plan as Josef Stalin used when he allowed the Nazis to wipe out the Polish underground during the Warsaw rising of 1944, and only afterward sent in the Red Army to take control of what was left of the city. If anything, it is even more morally reprehensible, since it could be pointed out in Stalin’s defense that his forces were at least pummeling the enemy elsewhere while the Warsaw fight was under way. In contrast, the Turks are doing nothing of the sort. For an American administration to collude in such a mass atrocity is infamous.

If we are to win the war against the Islamic State, we need ground forces, and the Obama administration has rejected the idea of sending in any of our own. The Kurds, who have demonstrated both their bravery and their willingness to be friends with America, are right there, and already engaged in the fight. If supplied with adequate arms and backed by serious U.S. tactical air support, they could roll up ISIS as rapidly as the similarly reinforced Northern Alliance did the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Done right, this war could be won in months, instead of waged inconclusively for years.

The administration, however, has rejected this alternative, and has instead opted for a Saudi-Qatari plan to allow the Syrian Kurds to be exterminated while training a new Sunni Arab army in Saudi Arabia. Given the Saudi role in the new army’s tutelage and officer selection, the Islamist nature of this force is a foregone conclusion. At best it might provide a more disciplined replacement for the Islamic State as an Islamist Syrian opposition at some point in the distant future (current official administration estimates are at least a year) when it is considered ready for combat. Meanwhile the killing will simply go on, with the United States doing its part to further Islamist recruitment by indulging in endless strategy-free bombing of Sunni villages.

So now, to paraphrase the president, “Mothers, sisters, daughters will be subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children will be gunned down. Bodies will be dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities will be starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings will be beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.”

Surely we can do better.

 

Categories: Female Kurdish fighters, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Obama, Syria
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

The Paradox of The “Advisor”

September 30, 2014

The Paradox of The “Advisor” Blackfive, Debow, September 29, 2014

(Please watch the video. Is this what our “advisers” and “trainers” are doing now in Iraq? If so, in a fleeting moment of honesty might it be acknowledged by our “leaders?” — DM)

President Obama: Well, there’s a difference between them advising and assisting Iraqis who are fighting versus a situation in which we got our Marines and our soldiers out there taking shots and shooting back.

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

So now, we don’t have “boots on the ground” fighting in Iraq.  Instead, we have “advisors” being deployed to Iraq in order to be “embedded” with Iraqi units.

So, when Steve Kroft from CBS actually finds a hardball in the bucket of questions he is lobbing at Barack the Teleprompter Reader, it is interesting to see how he qualifies and hedges his statement regarding exactly what their mission is.

Steve Kroft: You know, you’ve said no American boots on the ground. No combat troops on the ground. We’ve got 1,600 troops there.

President Obama: We do.

Steve Kroft: Some of them are going to be out, embedded with Iraqi units.

President Obama: Well, they’re in harm’s way in the sense that any time they’re in war, it’s dangerous. So I don’t want to downplay the fact that they’re in a war environment and there are hostile forces on the other side. But…

Steve Kroft: And they participated in combat operations.

President Obama: Well, there’s a difference between them advising and assisting Iraqis who are fighting versus a situation in which we got our Marines and our soldiers out there taking shots and shooting back.

As someone who has done this job, let me clear up any misconceptions that the President, or any of his camp followers have regarding what my role as an embedded trainer was; there is just as much or more combat as there is advising.

In fact, the entire deployment I was on in 06/07 was spent in the field with an Afghan unit, “advising” (fighting).  The Taliban and the Haqqani Network were eager for battle with Afghan units, because they knew that attacking American units was a bad day.

Advisers1

This is what those “embedded trainers” are doing right now in Iraq, so with the Pak border over my right shoulder, here I am “advising” the company commander with my terp on what our next move is, which for him was to get out of his truck and do his damn job instead of hanging out like a spectator.  About an hour before this we had found a rocket launcher that was hidden in the trees and had been firing on FOB Bermel.  It turned out our next move after this little confab (sarcasm doesn’t translate well into Pashto BTW–ed) was to get in a firefight about 5 minutes after this picture was taken with an LP/OP that had been watching us.

advisers2

This is the Weapons Company (yep, that is all of them) in Zerok, where we put a COP in 2006.  It was also where we saw our heaviest fighting in our sector.  In 2009 on July 4th, this attack took place there.

 

There are quite a few of us who know exactly what the job of “advisor” entails and when the PINO says “Well, there’s a difference between them advising and assisting Iraqis who are fighting versus a situation in which we got our Marines and our soldiers out there taking shots and shooting back.” I promise you, there isn’t a difference from where they are standing, because if they are doing their job, they are standing next to those Iraqis helping to advise them on how to get the job done.

These are the types of words games that we play with our moms and wives and girlfriends in order to convince them that it isn’t what it looks like on the news and despite all that, they lay awake at night wondering and contemplating the “ifs” that no one wants to contemplate.  These aren’t the words of a leader by any measure.

So when the PINO tries to hedge and minimize and play words games about what the US Military Units forward deployed are doing in Iraq, he is only doing so in order to somehow make Code Pink and Media Matters happy with his statements of his non-Bush war stance during his “extended counter-terrorism operation” that may last “years.”

For those of us who have lived it, it is exactly what it is…

Categories: Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama, U.S. Military
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

ISIS Baghdad March: Islamic State 1 Mile Away From Iraqi Capital

September 29, 2014

ISIS Baghdad March: Islamic State 1 Mile Away From Iraqi Capital, International Business Times, , September 29, 2014

(If the Islamic State takes Baghdad, use of airstrikes by the “coalition of the willing” without “boots on the ground” will bring multiple civilian casualties and be problematical, at best. Iraqi boots? They might help, but only after a year or more of training. — DM)

image-456313666Peshmerga fighters hold a position behind sandbags at a post in the strategic Jalawla area, in Diyala province, which is a gateway to Baghdad, as battles with Islamic State (IS) jihadists continue on September 27, 2014. The United States, which leads the coalition, initially launched strikes in Iraq on August 8 and widened its campaign on September 23, 2014 to include Syria, where IS has its headquarters. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

The Islamic State group is allegedly closing in on Baghdad, according to a report from a vicar at Iraq’s only Anglican church that claims the jihadists formerly known as ISIS are roughly one mile away from the Iraqi capital. Airstrikes against ISIS targets were supposed to stop the group from taking Baghdad.

“The Islamic State are now less than 2km (1.2 miles) away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen and now it almost has,” Canon Andrew White of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, a British-based charity that supports Iraq’s only Anglican church in Baghdad, said on his Facebook page early Monday morning. “Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very, very little.”

The Christian aid group was referring to the U.S. president’s interview Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” the CBS news magazine show, where Obama conceded that his administration underestimated the ascendancy of ISIS. More than 1,000 Iraqi troops were reportedly killed Sunday in clashes with ISIS about 10 miles outside of Baghdad.

The advance by ISIS toward Baghdad shows that the group isn’t weakening despite U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq. ISIS executed 300 Iraqi soldiers last week during their march toward the Iraqi capital and attempted to break into a prison in northern Baghdad.

“This attack is very significant. It is the first infantry-like, complex, and penetrating attack in Baghdad city by ISIS since the fall of Mosul in June of this year,” the Washington-based nonprofit Institute for the Study of War wrote on its website, referring to Iraq’s second-largest city, which is in the Islamic State’s hands. “ISIS likely carried out the attack to release some of the pressure it is facing as a result of the recent U.S. air campaign targeting its positions. The attack also signifies that, despite the heightened defenses of Baghdad in the aftermath of the fall of Mosul, ISIS is still able to carry out attacks in an area where it is unlikely to have active sleeper cells.”

U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria have come under criticism over their effectiveness. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the military action last week in a CNN interview. Kerry claimed“Baghdad could have fallen” if it weren’t for the airstrikes, which have predominantly been launched in the northern part of Iraq.

Categories: Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama
Tags: ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Why Obama Can’t Say His Spies Underestimated ISIS

September 29, 2014

Why Obama Can’t Say His Spies Underestimated ISIS, Daily Beast, Eli Lake, September 28, 2014

On 60 Minutes, the president faulted his spies for failing to predict the rise of ISIS. There’s one problem with that statement: The intelligence analysts did warn about the group.

Nearly eight months ago, some of President Obama’s senior intelligence officials were already warning that ISIS was on the move. In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq.<

But in an interview that aired Sunday evening, the president told 60 Minutes that the rise of the group now proclaiming itself a caliphate in territory between Syria and Iraq caught the U.S. intelligence community off guard. Obama specifically blamed James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence: “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.

Reached by The Daily Beast after Obama’s interview aired, one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq was flabbergasted. “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting,” the former official said.

Clapper did tell The Washington Post’s David Ignatius this month that he underestimated the will of the ISIS fighters in Iraq and overestimated the ability of Iraq’s security forces in northern Iraq to counter ISIS. (He also said his analysts warned about the “prowess and capability” of the group.)

Still, other senior intelligence officials have been warning about ISIS for months. In prepared testimony before the annual House and Senate intelligence committees’ threat hearings in January and February, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the recently departed director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the group would likely make a grab for land before the end of the year. ISIS “probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014.” Of course, the prediction wasn’t exactly hard to make. By then, Flynn noted, ISIS had taken the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, and the demonstrated an “ability to concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria.”

The ability of ISIS to hold that territory will depend on its “resources, local support, as well as the responses of [Iraqi security forces] and other opposition groups in Syria,” Flynn added. He noted that while many Sunnis likely opposed ISIS, “some Sunni tribes and insurgent groups appear willing to work tactically with [ISIS] as they share common anti-government goals.”

Flynn was not alone. Clapper himself in that hearing warned that the three most effective jihadist groups in Syria—one of which he said was ISIS—presented a threat as a magnet for attracting foreign fighters. John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, said he thought both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s formal franchise in Syria, presented a threat to launch external operations against the West.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said February 4 that because of areas of Syria that are “beyond the regime’s control or that of the moderate opposition,” a “major concern” was “the establishment of a safe haven, and the real prospect that Syria could become a launching point or way station for terrorists seeking to attack the United States or other nations.”

Categories: Islamic State, Obama
Tags: , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Satire: Become an Islamist and save the Earth. Or else.

September 26, 2014

Become an Islamist and save the Earth. Or else, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 25, 2014

This is a guest post by Imam Mohamed al-Jihadi, a friend of (my also imaginary) friend Senator Ima Librul (L., Utopia, the Unicorn State). Imam Al-Jihadi is a renowned Islamic scholar and author of “The Real Dreams of My Real Father,” soon to be published by the Religion of Peace Publishing Company. After explaining the truth about Islam, Imam al-Jihadi tells us how to please Allah by combating climate change.

Imam Mohamed Al-Jihadi

Imam Mohamed Al-Jihadi

A message of true peace through submission to the Most Holy will of Allah the all merciful:

In the name of Allah the all merciful, may the peace of submission be upon you whether you believe that you desire it or not, إن شاء الله‎. As even Imperialist Obama has told you repeatedly, Islam is the religion of peace and abhors all violence. True, we engage in some peaceful efforts on behalf of Holy Islam — wrongly called “violence” by unbelievers and apostates — but only to seek the submission of unbelievers and apostates to the One True God, Allah, may His Holy Name be praised and may His blessings be upon all who submit willingly to His righteous commands. Any who refuse to do so shall be dealt with as Allah directs, إن شاء الله‎.

If you hope to be saved, first become politically correct. That will propel you along the righteous path of adherence to Allah’s Holy Word with proper devotion, submission and humility. Cease, therefore, your evil disparagement of the Religion of Peace Through Submission and also your futile efforts to fight hopeless battles against us. Rise up as one to battle the worst crisis ever, the climate change demon.

Climate change demon

Climate change demon

Even the American Imperialist in Chief, Obama, has often commanded you to defeat the greatest demon of all, as he did again on September 24th during his remarks at the United Nations. The horrors of climate change are the product of the Obama Nation’s rejection of Allah the all-mighty and all-merciful, the one and only green God. The Obama Nation must change, radically, its wicked ways and join wholeheartedly with the righteous defenders of Allah’s Earth. Many photos of useful idiots those in California who are trying to do so are at the link. Here’s a video of remarks by one of them:

Do not, however, be misled by her fantasies about Communism, an evil religion because it spurns the Holy teachings of The Prophet Mohamed. Although she did speak semi-truthfully about Capitalism, it is no less evil than Communism because it also is un-Islamic and engages in numerous violations of Allah’s Holy Sharia law. It must and shall be abolished, إن شاء الله‎.

As to oil, there is ample environmentally friendly oil in Islamist countries and it must be used — exclusively — to support Holy Islam. Those who use oil from elsewhere, and of course coal, scornfully defy the will of Allah and must be dealt with as are other unbelievers and apostates who stubbornly reject His commands. Allah orders it.

As you, our inferiors, begin to accept Allah’s commands others will learn from and come to follow even you — not to a world based on false Capitalist or Communist doctrine but to an Islamist world where truth, mercy and justice reign supreme. It is written. All un-believers and apostates who reject this wise counsel must, and therefore shall, be punished severely now and in the hereafter, إن شاء الله‎. As we have preyed prayed, the Mahdi will soon come. Beware.

.

.

When you instead submit totally to Allah, virgins anxious to please you in every way will greet you as you go to meet Him. Here is a picture of only one of the many anxiously awaiting you.

I await you. Please come soon!

I await you. Please come soon!

Editor’s comments

I  was privileged to select the graphics to be associated with Imam al-Jihadi’s presentation and hope that he will find them pleasing unto Allah.

There is no truth to any rumor that Imam al-Jihadi has been placed in charge of the Obama Nation’s Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice or all of them. It would make little difference. However, if and when he is appointed, and if and when the Mahdi arrives, updates may be posted.

UPDATE:

Oh well.

UPDATE:

An article by Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler is titled Is the US Waging ‘Green War’ In Syria?

If we are avoiding destroying ISIS’ oil-basket, it would represent a decisive break from US strategy in previous wars. In both world wars, Vietnam and to a lesser extent in the two wars in Iraq, US forces targeted infrastructure in order to cripple the enemy’s economy. We bombed everything from highways to railways to power grids and fuel refineries and depots, to break the enemy’s ability to wage war. The more we focused on disrupting the enemy’s economy, the more damage we did to the enemy’s ability to wage war against us.

If we are going green in Syria, Imam Mohamed al-Jihadi will doubtless approve.

Categories: Islam, Obama
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

We Don’t Need to Ally with Terrorists to Defeat ISIS

September 26, 2014

We Don’t Need to Ally with Terrorists to Defeat ISIS, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, September 26, 2014

(OK, but assuming that the defeat of the Islamic State is our goal, how is that to happen? Clearly, we will not go to war with Islam. Yet. — DM)

isis-431x350

Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.

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

The big foreign policy debate now is whether we should ally with Sunni or Shiite Jihadists to defeat ISIS.

The pro-Iranian camp wants us to coordinate with Iran and Assad. The pro-Saudi camp wants us to arm the Free Syrian Army and its assorted Jihadists to overthrow Assad.

Both sides are not only wrong, they are traitors.

Iran and the Sunni Gulfies are leading sponsors of international terrorism that has killed Americans. Picking either side means siding with the terrorists.

It makes no sense to join with Islamic terrorists to defeat Islamic terrorists. Both Sunni and Shiite Jihadists are our enemies. And this is not even a “the enemy of my enemy” scenario because despite their mutual hatred for each other, they hate us even more.

The 1998 indictment of bin Laden accused him of allying with Iran. (Not to mention Iraq, long before such claims could be blamed on Dick Cheney.) The 9/11 Commission documented that Al Qaeda terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, freely moved through Iran. Testimony by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants showed that he had met with a top Hezbollah terrorist. Court findings concluded that Iran was liable for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies. Al Qaeda terrorists were trained by Hezbollah.

While Shiite and Sunni Jihadists may be deadly enemies to each other, they have more in common with each other than they do with us. Our relationship to them is not that of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s their relationship to each other when it comes to us. In these scenarios we are the enemy.

The pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions in our foreign policy complex agree that we have to help one side win in Syria. They’re wrong. We have no interest in helping either side win because whether the Sunnis or Shiites win, Syria will remain a state sponsor of terror.

It’s only a question of whether it will be Shiite or Sunni terror.

Our interest is in not allowing Al Qaeda, or any of its subgroups, to control Syria or Iraq because it has a history of carrying out devastating attacks against the United States. We don’t, however, need to ally with either side to accomplish that. We can back the Kurds and the Iraqi government (despite its own problematic ties) in their push against ISIS in Iraq and use strategic strikes to hit ISIS concentrations in Syria. We should not, however, ally, arm or coordinate strikes with either side in the Syrian Civil War.

Both the pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian sides insist that ISIS can’t be defeated without stabilizing Syria. But it doesn’t appear that Syria can be stabilized without either genocide or partition. Its conflict is not based on resistance to a dictator as the Arab Springers have falsely claimed, but on religious differences.

Helping one side commit genocide against the other is an ugly project, but that would be the outcome of allying with either side.

Stabilizing Syria is a myth. The advocates of the FSA claimed that helping the Libyan Jihadists win would stabilize Libya. Instead the country is on fire as Jihadists continue to fight it out in its major cities.

Even if the FSA existed as an actual fighting force, which it doesn’t, even if it could win, which it can’t, there is every reason to believe that Syria would be worse than Libya and an even bigger playground for ISIS. The FSA enthusiasts were wrong in Egypt and Libya and everywhere else. They have no credibility.

The pro-Iranians claim that helping the Syrian government will subdue ISIS, but Assad hasn’t been able to defeat the Sunni Jihadists even with Russian help. The Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies are still struggling despite having an air force, heavy artillery and WMDs. Not only shouldn’t we be allying with Shiite terrorists who have killed plenty of Americans over the years, but it would be extremely stupid to ally with incompetent terrorists. Allying with the FSA or Assad makes as much sense as allying with ISIS.

The difference is that ISIS at least seems to be able to win battles.

Some pro-Iranian wonks claim that if we don’t get Assad’s approval for air strikes, he will shoot down Americans planes. That’s about as likely as Saddam Hussein returning from the dead to audition for American Idol. Assad didn’t even dare shoot down Israeli planes who were buzzing his palace. The odds of him picking a fight with the United States Air Force are somewhere between zero, nil and zilch.

We don’t need Assad’s permission to hit ISIS targets in Syria and, in one of the few things that this administration is doing right, we aren’t asking for it. Unless Assad experiences a bout of severe mental illness, he isn’t going to fight us for the privilege of losing to ISIS. Not even Saddam was that crazy.

The big potential problem in this war is mission creep. That’s why we should avoid committing to any overarching objectives such as stabilizing Syria. Unfortunately that is exactly what Obama has done.

It’s not our job to stabilize Syria and short of dividing it into a couple of majority states in which the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurds, the Christians and maybe even the Turkmen get their own countries, it’s not a feasible project. We have the equipment and power to pound ISIS into the dirt when its forces concentrate in any area. We can send drones to target their leaders. If Assad or the FSA want to provide us with intel, we can use it as long as we don’t begin working to help them fulfill their own objectives.

We need to remember that we are not there for the Syrians or Iraqis; we’re there for ourselves.

After September 11 we learned the hard way the costs of letting enemy terrorists set up enclaves and bases. But we also learned the hard way the costs of trying to stabilize unstable Muslim countries.

Al Qaeda, in its various forms, will always find sanctuaries and conflicts because the Muslim world is unstable and widely supportive of terrorism. For now this is a low intensity conflict that denies the next bin Laden the territory, time and manpower to stage the next September 11. We can do this cheaply and with few casualties if we keep this goal in mind.

This isn’t nation building. It’s not the fight for democracy. All we’re doing is terrorizing the terrorists by using our superior reach and firepower to smash their sandcastle emirates anywhere they pop up.

Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.

Categories: Iraq war, Islam, Islamic State, Obama, Syria, Syria war
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »