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Goodnight Vienna (6)

July 8, 2015

Goodnight Vienna (6), Power Line, Scott Johnson, July 7, 2015

There are no surprises in Omri Ceren’s latest email update from Vienna, but if you have been following his reports, you will find this of interest (footnoted URLs at the bottom). Omri writes:

The parties missed another deadline this morning, and talks are now expected to go through the end of the week. Mogherini told reporters this morning: “I am not talking about extension. I am talking about taking the hours we need to try to complete our work”(?). The overwhelming consensus from press and analysts here in Vienna nonetheless hasn’t changed: the parties will indeed announce some kind of agreement before they leave, though it will almost certainly have details that will need to be sorted out in future negotiations. How that aligns with the administration’s legal obligation to provide Congress with all final details the deal is anyone’s guess at this point.

Meanwhile the Obama administration and its allies are laying the groundwork for another U.S. collapse, this time on inspections. Couple of indicators:

(1) They’re giving up on promising the most robust inspection/verification regime in history– Here’s President Obama during his April 2 speech about the Lausanne announcement: “Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history” [a]. Here’s White House spokesman Josh Earnest at the beginning of May echoing the boast: “what President Obama has indicated must be part of any nuclear agreement… is the most intrusive set of inspections that have ever been imposed on a country’s nuclear program” [b].

But now here’s White House validator Daryl Kimball talking to Politico a couple days ago: “this particular agreement will establish the most extensive, multilayered system of nuclear monitoring and verification for any country not defeated in a war” [c]. Catch the caveat about wartime defeat? The talking point had already been floated at the beginning of the Vienna talks by RAND’s Alireza Nader talking the JTA: “If the goal is ‘anytime, anywhere’ access and unlimited inspections, it’s not realistic asking a sovereign country not defeated in war.” [d]. Yesterday Jofi Joseph, a former nonproliferation official in the Obama White House, told the LAT that the Iranians can’t be expected to submit to anytime/anywhere inspections for the same reason: “What is forgotten is that Iraq was militarily defeated in a humiliating rout and had little choice but to accept [anytime/anywhere inspections]” [e].

For 20 months the administration promised Congress that Iran had been sufficiently coerced by sanctions that Tehran would accept anytime/anywhere inspections. Many in Congress disagreed and urged the administration to boost American leverage by working with the Hill to pass time-triggered sanctions. The administration responded with two different media wars that included accusations – including some by the President – describing lawmakers as warmongers beholden to “donor” money. Congress was right and the administration was wrong. Why would lawmakers now accept a weaker inspection regime than what the administration said it could secure, and what administration officials smeared lawmakers for doubting?

(2) A new talking point is that the IAEA’s technology makes up for the P5+1 collapsing on inspections – This appeared in two articles yesterday (the NYT [f] and the Daily Beast [g]). The two stories are fantastically geeky reads about the IAEA’s toys, but that’s not what the administration officials and validators wanted to focus on. Instead you had Energy Secretary Moniz telling the NYT that the technology “lowers the requirement for human inspectors going in” and Kimball telling the Daily Beast that the technology meant that the IAEA would be able to “detect [nuclear activities] without going directly into certain areas.”

This argument is terrible and scientists should be embarrassed they’re making it. In its story the NYT quoted Olli Heinonen – a 27-year veteran of the IAEA who sat atop the agency’s verification shop – all but rolling his eyes:

Mr. Heinonen, the onetime inspection chief, sounded a note of caution, saying it would be naïve to expect that the wave of technology could ensure Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal. In the past, he said, Tehran has often promised much but delivered little. “Iran is not going to accept it easily,” he said, referring to the advanced surveillance. “We tried it for 10 years.” Even if Tehran agrees to high-tech sleuthing, Mr. Heinonen added, that step will be “important but minor” compared with the intense monitoring that Western intelligence agencies must mount to see if Iran is racing ahead in covert facilities to build an atomic bomb.

The most fundamental problem is that IAEA procedures require physical environmental samples to confirm violations. They can use futuristic lasers and satellites to *detect* that Iran is cheating. But to *confirm* the cheating they need environmental samples, and usually multiple rounds of samples. Without that level of proof – which requires access – the agency simply wouldn’t tell the international community that it was certain Iran is violation. If you need a paragraph on the procedure click on this link and ctrl-f to “Yet if Iran tries to conceal what it is doing…” [h]. If inspectors can’t get into a facility, it’s highly unlikely they’d ever be comfortable declaring that Iran was violating its obligations.

That’s before even beginning the discussion about why technology can’t make up for access to people, facilities, and documents – without which the IAEA won’t even know where to point its lasers and satellites.

But is what the administration has left: the Iranians can’t be expected to grant anytime/anywhere access but that’s OK because the IAEA has cool toys.

________________

[a] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/02/statement-president-framework-prevent-iran-obtaining-nuclear-weapon
[b] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/02/press-briefing-press-secretary-josh-earnest-512015
[c] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/the-iran-watchers-119665.html
[d] http://www.jta.org/2015/06/29/news-opinion/politics/as-iran-deadline-approaches-skeptics-draw-dueling-red-lines
[e] http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-iran-bargain-20150706-story.html
[f] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/world/middleeast/nuclear-inspectors-await-chance-to-use-modern-tools-in-iran.html
[g] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/the-spy-tech-that-will-keep-iran-in-line.html
[h] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/irans-nuclear-breakout-time-a-fact-sheet

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1
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12 Times the Obama Administration Caved to Iran on Nuclear Deal | SUPERcuts! #211

July 7, 2015

12 Times the Obama Administration Caved to Iran on Nuclear Deal | SUPERcuts! Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, July 6, 2015

With their own words, Barack Obama, John Kerry and their team trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran have caved time and time again.

 

Categories: Baghdad Barry, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran centrifuges, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
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Here’s the most critical part of Iran’s nuclear program that nobody is talking about

July 7, 2015

Here’s the most critical part of Iran’s nuclear program that nobody is talking about, Business Insider, Michael Eisenstadt, The Washington Institute For Near East Policy, July 7, 2015

(Please see also, Iran’s Rafsanjani Reiterates ‘Israel Will Be Wiped Off The Map.’  — DM)

iran-missiles-exhibition-commemorationAtta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images. Missiles are displayed during ‘Sacred Defense Week,’ to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Photo taken on Sept. 28, 2014 at a park in northern Tehran.

Early in the P5+1 negotiations, US officials stated that “every issue,” including the missile program, would be on the table. In February 2014, however, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman stated, “If we are successful in assuring ourselves and the world community that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” then that “makes delivery systems … almost irrelevant.”

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According to the latest reports stemming from the P5+1 talks, Iran is now insisting that UN sanctions on its ballistic missile program be lifted as part of a long-term nuclear accord.

In addition to further complicating already fraught negotiations, this development highlights the importance Tehran attaches to its missile arsenal, as well as the need to answer unresolved questions about possible links between its missile and nuclear programs.

Iran is believed to have the largest strategic missile force in the Middle East, producing short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, a long-range cruise missile, and long-range rockets. Although all of its missiles are conventionally armed at present, its medium-range ballistic missiles could deliver a nuclear weapon if Iran were to build such a device.

Early in the P5+1 negotiations, US officials stated that “every issue,” including the missile program, would be on the table. In February 2014, however, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman stated, “If we are successful in assuring ourselves and the world community that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” then that “makes delivery systems … almost irrelevant.”

Yet many observers remain concerned that personnel and facilities tied to Iran’s missile program were, and may still be, engaged in work related to possible military dimensions (PMD) of the nuclear program. These concerns underscore the need to effectively address the missile issue as part of the UN Security Council resolution that will backstop the long-term nuclear accord now being negotiated, if it will not be dealt with in the accord itself.

screen shot 2015-06-11 at 8.47.42 am copyEstimated Range of Iranian Long-Range Missile Forces

Deterrence, warfighting, and propaganda

The Iran-Iraq War convinced Tehran that a strong missile force is critical to the country’s security, and it has given the highest priority to procuring and developing various types of missiles and rockets. Missiles played an important role throughout that war and a decisive role in its denouement.

During the February-April 1988 “War of the Cities,” Iraq was able to hit Tehran with extended-range missiles for the first time. Iranian morale was devastated: more than a quarter of Tehran’s population fled the city, contributing to the leadership’s decision to end the war.

Since then, missiles have been central to Iran’s “way of war,” which emphasizes the need to avoid or deter conventional conflict while advancing its anti-status quo agenda via proxy operations and propaganda activities.

Iran’s deterrence triad rests on its ability to (1) threaten navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, (2) undertake terrorist attacks on multiple continents, and (3) conduct long-range strikes, primarily by missiles (or with rockets owned by proxies such as Hezbollah).

rtr2vqx9REUTERS/Fars News/Hamed Jafarnejad. Iranian military personnel participate in the Velayat-90 war game in unknown location near the Strait of Hormuz in southern Iran December 30, 2011.

Yet the first two options carry limitations.

Closing the strait would be a last resort because nearly all of Iran’s oil exports go through it and Tehran’s ability to wage terror has atrophied in recent years (as demonstrated by a series of bungled attacks on Israeli targets in February 2012). Therefore, Iran’s missile force is the backbone of its strategic deterrent.

Missiles enable Iran to mass fires against civilian population centers and undermine enemy morale. If their accuracy increases in the future, they could further stress enemy defenses (as every incoming missile would have to be intercepted) and enable Iran to target military facilities and critical infrastructure.

Although terrorist attacks afford a degree of standoff and deniability, missiles permit a quicker, more flexible response in a rapidly moving crisis — for example, after an initial series of preplanned terrorist attacks, Tehran or its proxies might need weeks to organize follow-on operations. Missile salvos can also generate greater cumulative effects in a shorter period than terrorist attacks.

Indeed, missiles are ideally suited to Iran’s “resistance doctrine,” which states that achieving victory entails demoralizing one’s enemies by bleeding their civilian population and denying them success on the battlefield. In this context, rockets are as important as missiles, since they yield the same psychological effect on the targeted population.

The manner in which Hezbollah and Hamas used rockets in their recent wars with Israel provides a useful template for understanding the role of conventionally armed missiles in Iran’s warfighting doctrine.

flickr_-_israel_defense_forces_-_damage_caused_by_rockets_fired_from_gaza_(10)Israel Defense Forces via Wikimedia Commons. An apartment building in the town of Kiryat Malachi, damaged as a result of rockets fired from Hamas.

Missiles are also Iran’s most potent psychological weapon. They are a central fixture of just about every regime military parade, frequently dressed with banners calling for “death to America” and declaring that “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

They are used as symbols of Iran’s growing military power and reach. And as the delivery system of choice for nuclear weapons states, they are a key element of Iran’s nascent doctrine of nuclear ambiguity and its attempts at “nuclear intimidation without the bomb.”

Finally, while most nuclear weapons states created their missile forces years after joining the “nuclear club” (due to the significant R&D challenges involved), Iran will already have a sophisticated missile force and infrastructure in place if or when it opts to go that route.

This ensures that a nuclear breakout would produce a dramatic and rapid transformation in Iran’s military stature and capabilities.

Iran’s missle force

Iran has a large, capable missile force, with a likely inventory of more than 800 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

These include single-stage liquid-fuel missiles such as the Shahab-1 (300 km range), Shahab-2 (500 km), Qiam (500-750 km), Shahab-3 (1,000-1,300 km), and Qadr (1,500-2,000 km).

Nearly all of them can reach US military targets in the Persian Gulf, and the latter two can reach Israel. These missiles, which include several subvariants, are believed to be conventionally armed with unitary high-explosive or submunition (cluster) warheads.

persian-gulf-missileKhalij Fars missile on a transporter.

Additionally, Iran has tested a two-stage solid-fuel missile, the Sejjil-2, whose range of over 2,000 km would allow it to target southeastern Europe — though it is apparently still not operational. In a June 28, 2011, press statement, Tehran claimed that it was capping the range of its missiles at 2,000 km (sufficient to reach Israel but not Western Europe), implicitly eschewing the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in a presumed bid to deflect US and European concerns.

Yet its Safir launch vehicle, which has put four satellites into orbit since 2009, could provide the experience and knowhow needed to build an ICBM. (According to a May 2010 report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Safir struggled to put a very small satellite into low-earth orbit and has probably reached the outer limits of its performance envelope, so it could not serve as an ICBM itself.) In 2010, Iran displayed a mockup of a larger two-stage satellite launch vehicle, the Simorgh, which it has not yet flown.

Tehran has also claimed an antiship ballistic missile capability that it probably intends for potential use against U.S. aircraft carriers: the Khalij-e Fars and its derivatives, the Hormuz-1/2, each with a claimed range of 300 km. Yet it is not clear that these systems are sufficiently accurate or effective to pose a credible threat to U.S. surface elements in the Gulf.

In addition, Iran recently unveiled the Soumar land-attack cruise missile, which is reportedly a reverse-engineered version of the Russian Raduga Kh-55. It has a claimed range of 2,500-3,000 km, though it may not be operational yet.

The Kh-55 was the Soviet air force’s primary nuclear delivery system.

Iran also fields a very large number of rockets, including the Noor 122 mm (with a range of 20 km), the Fajr-3 and -5 (45 and 75 km), and the Zelzal-1, -2, and -3 (with claimed ranges of 125 to 400 km). During the Iran-Iraq War, rockets played a major role in bombarding Iraqi cities along the border, and they are central to the “way of war” of Iranian proxies and allies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Tehran has built this massive inventory so that it can saturate and thereby overwhelm enemy missile defenses in any conflict. It would likely use such tactics whether its missile force remains conventional or becomes nuclear-armed, since conventional missiles could serve as decoys that enable nuclear missiles to penetrate defenses. Numbers would also enable Iran to achieve cumulative strategic effects on enemy morale and staying power by conventional means.

missilesiranAP Photo/Iranian Defense Ministry. To outwork missile defense systems, Iran would use a high volume of missiles.

Finally, many of Iran’s missiles are mounted on mobile launchers, and a growing number are based in silo fields located mainly in the northwest and toward the frontier with Iraq.

This mix of launch options is likely intended to impede preemptive enemy targeting of its missile force. The resources invested in this effort are unprecedented for a conventionally armed force, which indicates that at least some of these missiles would likely be nuclear armed if Iran eventually goes that route.

Nuclear connections

In the annex of a November 8, 2011, report regarding the nuclear program’s possible military dimensions, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it possessed credible information and documents connecting Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. These indicated that, prior to the end of 2003, Iran had:

  • conducted engineering studies on integrating a spherical payload (possibly a nuclear implosion device) into a Shahab-3 reentry vehicle (RV);
  • tested a multipoint initiation system to set off a hemisphere-shaped high-explosive charge whose dimensions were consistent with the Shahab-3’s payload chamber; and
  • worked on a prototype firing system that would enable detonation upon impact or in an airburst 600 meters above a target (a suitable height for a nuclear device).

Moreover, in 2004, Iran began deploying triconic (or “stepped”) RVs — a design almost exclusively associated with nuclear missiles — on its Shahab variants.

Some experts (including Uzi Rubin and Michael Elleman) believe that Iran may have deployed the triconic RV to enhance the stability and thus the accuracy of its conventional warheads, and perhaps to achieve higher terminal velocities that could reduce reaction time for missile defenses.

But if Iran were able to build a miniaturized nuclear device, its experience in designing, testing, and operating missiles with triconic RVs could expedite deployment of this weapon. Indeed, David Albright claimed in his 2010 book Peddling Peril that members of the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network possessed plans for smaller, more advanced nuclear weapon designs that might have found their way to Iran, though most experts doubt the regime’s ability to build such a compact device at this time.

russianukeDesmond Boylan/Reuter

Could Iran have smuggled in a nuclear bomb?

These reports underscore why Washington and its partners must insist that Tehran respond to the IAEA’s questions about past engineering studies, design work, tests, and other elements of the PMD file prior to the lifting of sanctions.

They also highlight the need for a UN Security Council resolution (as called for in the Lausanne parameters) that would impose limitations on Iran’s missile R&D work and threaten real consequences for those who assist Iran’s missile program.

Failure to do so would signal tacit acceptance of activities that could enable Iran to deploy its first nuclear weapon atop a medium-range missile — an achievement that took most nuclear weapons states, including the United States and Soviet Union, about a decade to accomplish.

This development would in turn magnify the destabilizing impact of an Iranian breakout, while incentivizing other regional states to either take preventive action or move toward nuclear capabilities of their own before Iran crosses that threshold.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, Wendy Sherman
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Obama to Pentagon: We can’t defeat ISIS w/guns

July 7, 2015

Obama to Pentagon: We can’t defeat ISIS w/guns, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 6, 2015

jihadi-john_3051871b

How can we possibly stop this man with a mere gun?

The Failure-in-Chief would like to remind all the people at the Pentagon that what they’re doing is hopeless because guns don’t work. Guns are bad. We all know the idea that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun is crazy NRA propaganda.

We can’t win wars with guns either. Remember how we tried and failed to defeat the Nazis with guns, and the war didn’t stop until we appeased them? No war in history has ever been won with guns. Why should this one be any different.

On Monday afternoon, President Obama spoke at the Pentagon about the Islamic State, or ISIS, a terrorist organization in Syria and Iraq.

Obama stressed all elements of American power were going toward fighting the organization. “Altogether, ISIL has lost over a quarter of the populated areas it had seized in Iraq,” the President said, using an alternative name for the terrorist group. “ISIL’s strategic weaknesses are real.”

Obama said the terrorist organization is doing their best to recruit from “Muslim communities around the world.”

“In order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda, we must discredit their ideology. This broader challenge of countering violent extremism,” Obama said. “Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas. We will never be at war with Islam,” Obama added, stressing that ISIS distorts Islam.

To summarize, we’re defeating ISIS, it has strategic weaknesses, but we can’t possibly defeat it with icky guns. Instead we must make more hashtags. Foreign Policy really suggested that gay marriage can defeat ISIS. That’s a plan alright.

How much territory has ISIS lost due to hashtags? Not so much as an inch. ISIS is winning the war of ideas among Muslims. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be defeated militarily.

When the USSR cut a deal with Hitler, their useful idiots in America began claiming that Nazism was an “ism” and couldn’t be defeated by force. Then when their German boyfriend stabbed Uncle Joe in the back, they began shrilly demanding the use of force. And once America won the war, they spent the rest of the time claiming that Uncle Joe Stalin really won the war.

Nazism couldn’t be defeated with guns back when the Germans were massacring Jews and helping the USSR carve up its own piece of Eastern Europe. But when the Huns showed up in the homeland of Socialism, suddenly they discovered that guns worked really well on Nazis.

Somehow, I suspect that if ISIS were pounding targets that Obama really cared about and beheading people he cared about, suddenly all those bombing raids would involve actually striking ISIS no matter where they are and without worrying about the collateral damage.

All those many branches of the Federal government have their own SWAT teams because clearly liberals believe that enemies of the EPA or the FDA can be defeated with guns. They just don’t believe that ideologies like ISIS, which after all don’t really want a Caliphate, but are upset about our foreign policy, can be defeated with guns.

And that says it all.

Categories: Appeasement, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Ideology, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Strategy
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Cartoon of the day

July 6, 2015

H/t The Jewish Press

Terms-of-Surrender

Categories: Foreign policy, Humor, Iran scam, Kerry, Obama, Obama's America
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Contentions — Cementing the Bad Deal

July 6, 2015

Contentions — Cementing the Bad Deal, Commentary Magazine, , July 6, 2015

The following is a dispatch from The Israel Project’s Omri Ceren regarding the state of nuclear negotiations with Iran:

Happy Monday from Vienna. The EU’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini arrived yesterday and told reporters: “As you know I have decided to reconvene the ministers. They will be arriving tonight and tomorrow. It is the third time in exactly one week. That’s the end, the last part of this long marathon.” Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif already held an impromptu meeting this morning. The overarching consensus – which is almost certainly correct – is that whatever gets announced will be announced no later than tomorrow afternoon. It might very well happen tonight.

As to what that announcement might be, there are a few options. In order of increasing probability:

0% chance: Kerry might make good on the comments that he made yesterday to reporters, and walks away from a bad deal.

Very low probability: the parties might come to a full-blown agreement ready to be implemented immediately. This scenario was never likely by June 30, and became functionally impossible after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set out a range of new red lines a few weeks ago. Also, the Iranians gave a background briefing earlier today in Vienna where they provided their interpretation of an emerging final deal. Among other things they have some interesting views on what military-related restrictions will be lifted, which are in tension with how the Americans have been describing the deal. Those differences will have to be overcome, and they won’t be in the next few days.

Low-probability: the gaps might still be too significant to even colorfully announce a deal, and the parties would extend the interim agreement all the way through the summer. The option would be more attractive to the Obama administration than taking another 2 or 3 weeks. If the administration sends Congress a deal after July 9 then the Corker clock – how long a deal sits in front of Congress – goes from 30 days to 60 days. But if they get all the way through the summer, it goes back down to 30 days. The administration has obvious reasons to prefer that.

Most likely: there will be a non-agreement agreement. The parties will announce they’ve resolved all outstanding issues but they still have to fill in some details. Then the P5+1 and Iran would move in parallel to implement various commitments, and the Iranians would in particular have to work with the IAEA on its unresolved concerns regarding Iran’s weapons program (PMDs). In the winter the IAEA would provide a face-saving way for the parties to declare Iran is cooperating – IAEA head Amano said earlier this week that the agency could wrap up by the end of the year if Iran cooperates – and then a deal would officially begin. The option is attractive to the administration because it puts off granting Iran all of its anticipated sanctions relief until the IAEA makes some noises about the Iranians cooperating. The alternative would be poison on the Hill. This way the administration can tell Congress that of course PMDs will be resolved before any sanctions relief is granted; and after Congress votes, if the Iranians jam up the IAEA but demand relief anyway, lawmakers will have no leverage to stop the administration from caving.

The focus will then shift to Congress, where the debate on approving or disapproving of the deal will take place over the next month. Some of the questions will get technical and tangled – the breakout time debate is going to be mind-numbing – but lawmakers will also use a very simple metric: Is the deal the same one the President promised he’d bring home twenty months ago? Back then the administration was very clear about what constituted a good deal and emphatic that U.S. negotiators had sufficient leverage to secure those terms. The U.S. subsequently collapsed on almost all of those conditions, and lawmakers will want to know how the deal can still count as a good one.

In line with those questions, here is a roundup from the Foreign Policy Initiative on where the administration started and how dramatically it has moved backwards. From the overview of the analysis:

Over the past three years, the Obama administration has delineated the criteria that any final nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran must meet. In speeches, congressional testimony, press conferences, and media interviews, administration officials have also articulated their expectations from Tehran with repeated declarations: “No deal is better than a bad deal.” This FPI Analysis… compiles many of the administration’s own statements on nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past three years, and compares them with current U.S. positions. It also examines U.S. statements on a range of other issues related to U.S. policy toward Tehran, and assesses whether subsequent events have validated them.

The web version has embedded links for each of the statements, so if you need them just click through on the url at the top. You might just want to do that anyway, because the web version is more readable.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
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The U.S. Must Help Egyptian President Sisi

July 6, 2015

The U.S. Must Help Egyptian President Sisi, American Thinker, Michael Curtis, July 6, 2015

(Not much chance of that. General al-Sisi supported the large masses of Egyptians who wanted then President Morsi deposed. He was later elected President of Egypt. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood — which uses terrorism to gain and keep power — is an Obama favorite. Besides, al-Sisi’s efforts to reform Islam run counter to Obama’s delusion that Islam, as it is and has long been, is a wonderful religion of peace. — DM)

The silence was truly deafening. Not a sound from Archbishop Desmond Tutu or Alice Walker or the eager boycotters of Israel or the United Nations Human Rights Council about the brutal massacre of more than 70, perhaps 100, Egyptian soldiers and civilians by Islamist terrorists in the northern Sinai peninsula.

Since Israel, after the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, withdrew all its forces and all settlements — including Yamit — by 1982, the Sinai peninsula has been plagued by terrorist attacks, especially against tourists, by kidnappings, and by violence. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and consequent uprisings, a major terrorist group emerged and became even more belligerent after the coup that deposed President Mohammed Morsi on July 3, 2013. This was Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against both Israeli interests and Egyptian personnel.

These assaults included an attack in July 2012 against a Sinai pipeline, a rocket strike in August 2012 on Eilat in south Israel, suicide bombings in el Tor in southern Sinai in May 2014, downing an Egyptian military helicopter in a missile attack, car bombings and hand grenades in Cairo, assassinations and attempted assassinations of Egyptian officials, beheading of four individuals in October 2014, an attack on a security checkpoint, and the June 29, 2015 murder in Cairo of Hisham Barakat, the Egyptian Prosecutor General, who in only two years in office had detained hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was the most senior Egyptian government official murdered.

In November 2014, ABM declared its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) and accepted the new self-appointed Caliph. It appears to have several hundred trained operatives and collaborators. There are different opinions about the actions of the Sinai Bedouin population, especially that of the largest of the 10 major tribes, the Tarabin tribe in northern Sinai, a tribe that is notorious for drug dealing, weapons smuggling, and human trafficking in prostitutes and African labor workers. Tarabin is said to have called for unification of all the tribes against the terrorists, but rumors of clashes appear to be untrue, and some even allege collaboration with the terrorists. What is true is that local Bedouin tribesmen, alleging discrimination by the state against them, have launched attacks against government forces in Sinai.

Over the last two years ABM, now regarding itself as a dedicated affiliate of IS, has tried to undermine the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. It has attacked Egyptian army posts, and security centers, and also the UN Multilateral Force in northern Sinai, that oversees the terms of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and tried as well to infiltrate Israeli territory.

There had already been terrorist attacks on October 2014 and January 2015 when more than 30 were killed on each occasion in northeast Sinai. The most dramatic deed of ABM, which now seems to have changed its name to Province of Sinai, (POS) was the series of simultaneous coordinated attacks on July 1, 2015 on fifteen army centers of security forces and checkpoints in northern Sinai. The attacks, including three suicide bombers, killed at least 70 soldiers and civilians.

Evidently POS, imitating its mentor IS that has taken and now rules cities in Iraq and Syria, wanted to take over the city of Sheikh Zuweid, close to Israel, and cut off Rafah from al-Arish.

The danger to all of the democratic countries is immediate for a number of reasons. The first is that the success of the terrorists in their daring ambushes, control of the roads, taking police officers hostage, and planting mines in the streets, indicates not only their disciplined activity but also the influence of IS operatives directly and indirectly through training. IS in Iraq and Syria has operated in just this aggressive and disciplined fashion. All authorities responsible for security in the United States should be conscious of and take account of this highly organized success and of the threat of future similar attacks in the U.S. itself.

The second reason is that Hamas in Gaza is providing support to POS with weapons and logistical support, and even with Hamas terrorists taking part in operations. These have come from Hamas commanders in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades that have been prominent for anti-Israeli attacks, including suicide bombings against civilians inside Israel. One particular active commander is Wael Faraj, who has smuggled wounded fighters from Sinai into Gaza.

A third problem is the obvious attempt to undermine and aim at the overthrow of President Sisi, a voice of sanity in the Muslim world. He has courageously criticized the extremists of his religion. In his remarkable speech at al-Azhar University in Cairo on January 22, 2015, he said that fellow Muslims needed to change the religious discourse and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. The Muslim religion, he said to imams, is in need of religious reform.

Since he assumed power on June 8, 2014, Sisi has attempted to stem the tide of terrorism by reinforcing the Sinai, restricting traffic, imposing curfews in the area, and demolishing homes of suspected terrorists in Rafah. He sought to create a buffer zone along the border with Gaza, and to destroy the tunnels built by Hamas. But clearly Sisi needs help to survive. It is imperative for the U.S. together with Israel to provide that help to the overwhelmed Egyptian army and intelligence services.

Israel is acutely aware of the danger. POS captured armored vehicles on July 1, 2015 that it can now use to penetrate the border fence between Sinai and Israel. That fence is unlikely to deter a trained terrorist group that now has combat experience. Israel responded by closing roads and two border crossings as a precautionary measure. But all the democratic countries, especially the United States, and also the United Nations because of its Multilateral Force, are now aware that the Islamist terror is at their doors as well as at the outskirts of Israel, and should act accordingly.

 

Categories: Caliphate, Cognitive dissonance, Egypt, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Hamas, Ideology, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Judiasm, Middle East, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Reform Islam, Sisi
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Obama: Muslim, Napoleon Bonaparte redux or worse

July 5, 2015

Obama: Muslim, Napoleon Bonaparte redux or worse, Dan Miller’s Blog, July 5, 2015

(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense. 

Obams as Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.

While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a  “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”

It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,

O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]

It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]

Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.

Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’

Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].

Obama

Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?

Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.

In Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo address, He stated that Islam and (His) America,

overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . .  People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul.  This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]

“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.

Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.

And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.

That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.

Shortly after the attack on the U.S. consular annex in Benghazi, Libya — where four Americans were murdered by Islamists — Obama told the United Nations General Assembly,

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.  But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

He sought power and glory by opposing those who offend “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.

I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith.  We are home to Muslims who worship across our country.  We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video.  And the answer is enshrined in our laws:  Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

The Obama Administration promptly had the video removed from You Tube and jailed its maker on unrelated charges (see excerpts from Daniel Greenfield’s Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism below.)

Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and  Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.

Obama’s romance with Islam

Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,

When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.

Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.

Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”

The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]

The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.

At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.

. . . .

At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20] [21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]

Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,

In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]

A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61][62]

Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.

Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.

What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.

The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.

By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]

Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]

That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.

The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”

Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66] was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69] [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.

Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.

Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.

The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]

With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.

Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.

Is Osama Obama worse than Napoleon?

Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.

In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.

Oh well. Please see also, Pulling down the slaver flags of Islam and Africa.

Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of workplace violence random violence Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.

Categories: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Benghazi, Christianity, Christians, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Egypt, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Iran, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Judiasm, Koran, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Political correctness, Sharia law, Sisi, Theocracy, Two state solution
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Cartoon of the day

July 4, 2015

H/t Freedom is just another word

(Some also fear that referring to the Islamic State is offensive. Please see UK: Politicians Urge Ban on the Term “Islamic State” and Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth.

liberal-logic-101-2011-500x416

Categories: Humor, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Obama's America
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Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth

July 4, 2015

Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth, American Thinker, Sonia Bailley, July 4, 2015

No need to worry, the recent Ramadan triple slaughter fest in Tunisia, France and Kuwait has nothing to do with Islam.  There is no linkage between Islam and terrorism, and the word Islamic need not be used to describe the terrorists because their murderous and barbaric ideology has nothing to do with Islam.  Islam is, after all, a religion of peace that is being hijacked, perverted and distorted by only a small percentage of savage extremists.  

Welcome to the false narrative that Western leaders, mainstream media outlets, and academic elites are enforcing on civil society to help shape the public’s perception of Islam so that it is always presented in a positive light.  Any form of expression that reflects badly on Islam is in violation of Islamic law, which forbids any criticism of Islam, even what that criticism expresses the truth.  Stories that are reported according to this narrative need not have anything to do with factual accuracy or truth.  Both the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in Texas and the beheading in Vaughan Foods in Oklahoma last September were reported as workplace violence and not Islamic terrorism.

With the aid of leftist and Islamic policymakers shaping the course of international relations and security policies, that false narrative is finding its way into international policy to destroy the West’s hard-won, cherished core values.  Realities and facts that might tarnish Islam’s name are deemed hate speech and becoming lost through censorship. The 57-state Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization that happens to be rooted in communism, and the 57-state Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is the most influential and largest Muslim organization in the world pushing to criminalize any criticism of Islam, are two such policymakers who are influencing world leaders and the news media.

Most Western world leaders are bleating the same empty platitudes about the recent Ramadan terrorist attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait, carefully avoiding the word “Islam.”  UK Prime Minister David Cameron explained to the media that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the terrorists who “do these things…do it in the name of a twisted and perverted ideology.” When asked if it’s right to say that the recent Ramadan attacks have nothing to do with Islam, UK Home Secretary Theresa May responded to BBC’s Andrew Marr in the positive, “that it has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a peaceful religion,” and that the terror attacks are “about a perversion of Islam.”

Instead of issuing travel warnings not to vacation in Islamic countries especially during Ramadan, the Islamic “sacred” month of feasting — a month rife with bloodshed and battle since Islam’s inception, when armed raids on Meccan trade caravans and bloody battles were waged by Mohammed and his followers (including the 1973 Yom Kippur War on the 10th of Ramadan), not to mention the ISIS Ramadan message that jihad is 10 times more obligatory during Ramadan, and that those who die will be rewarded by Allah ten times more than during the rest of the year — Western leaders like Cameron continue to nourish the official politically correct narrative of Islam being a religion of peace not linked to terrorism.

The twisted and perverted ideology to which both Cameron and May refer, pervades pages and pages of the Koran and other Islamic doctrine, inspiring jihadists and religious Muslims to “do these things,” including operating child sex slave grooming gangs throughout Europe, especially in the UK, to rape, pimp, torture and sometimes kill non-Muslim underage schoolgirls.  The Koran itself contains over 100 verses  promoting violence against non-Muslims who, to this very day, remain victims of the verse.

What lies at the heart of Islam is an antipathy towards non-Muslims, as well as a deeply-entrenched duty and commandment from Allah to wage Jihad and eventually subjugate non-Muslims worldwide to Islamic rule in the name of Allah.  Massive street prayer is one form of subjugation conducted only to intimidate and Islamize Western society, to remind non-Muslims who’s really in control. Similarly, forcing non-Muslims in their own countries, in the UK for example, to eat halal slaughtered meat — an utterly inhumane and barbaric Islamic practice, not to mention a multi-billion dollar industry controlled by Muslim Brotherhood organizations that fund jihad worldwide — when only a mere 5% of the UK population is Muslim, and when the Koran specifically exempts its followers from eating halal if it’s not available, is another way to subjugate non-Muslims.

People are becoming sitting duck targets for Islamic terrorists in Western countries and abroad because of the little-known but powerful world policymakers like the OSCE and OIC who influence world leaders to kowtow to Islamic interests.  Western leaders fail to convey an accurate picture and understanding of what is really going on in the world because it might reflect badly on Islam, and they don’t want to appear “Islamophobic” for fear of more terrorist attacks.  By failing to report the truth, they are denying citizens the opportunity to take appropriate action that could save their lives when faced with something that could be considered a threat, such as a beach vacation in an Islamic country over Ramadan.

The dead European tourists in Tunisia might still be here today had there been an undistorted flow of information to warn them that warfare and killing in the name of Islam are encouraged during the month of Ramadan.  Furthermore, people might choose to avoid Islamic countries at all times if they were aware that these countries rely upon the most non-liberal draconian and barbaric Islamic or sharia-based corporal punishments imaginable.

The anti-blasphemy narrative pushed by the highly influential but little-known OIC, ehich speaks on behalf of over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, not only silences any expression considered to be offensive and insulting to Islam, but punishes the offenders, as Mohammed did to his dissenters and insulters.  They were either condemned to hell or killed.  Because Muslims consider Mohammed as the ideal model for mankind to follow, many Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have also made blasphemy subject to the death penalty with their anti-blasphemy laws.

It is this anti-blasphemy law that the OIC is striving to legally enforce on the world in order to curtail speech and expression when it comes to Islam — not so much for religious compliance as for the global subjugation of non-Muslims to Islam.  Since 2005, the OIC has been pushing relentlessly for a UN blasphemy resolution (Resolution 16/18 passed in 2011) to silence so-called Islamophobia — a term deliberately coined and marketed in the 1990s by the International Institute of Islamic Thought, one of the thousands of Muslim Brotherhood front groups worldwide, to drive public discourse and policy.  However, the OIC’s top priority is to globally criminalize any criticism of Islam, and is working with the Muslim Brotherhood to accomplish this. Ten years later, in 2015, telling the truth about Islam has become a crime in some European countries.

The highly influential yet little-known OSCE that is rooted in communism, is supposed to protect and promote civil liberties.  Instead, it is negotiating them away by capitulating to the OIC narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal from the 1990s is to destroy Western civilization from within.  Its goal of global domination is to be accomplished not through violence, at least not yet, but rather through the slow infiltration of Western government, military, judicial and academic institutions.

So far, there has been practically no opposition from  any Western administration in power, only cooperation from world leaders, government officials, and leftist policymakers.  In fact, the cooperation from Western leaders with OSCE and OIC policymakers has been so great, that the U.S. co-sponsored Resolution 16/18 with Pakistan, and helped usher it through in 2011, despite this resolution being a direct assault on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

At an OSCE May session in Vienna (on how the media can help prevent violent radicalization that leads to terrorism), OSCE panelist Leila Ghandi, producer and TV show host on the most popular Moroccan TV channel (2MTV) that is over 60% government-owned, maintained that the truth or facts about “a community” can sometimes constitute hate speech when those facts are offensive and therefore should not be said.  The panelist’s words echo those of the new OIC Secretary General, Iyad Amin Madani, who tweeted earlier this year following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris, that “freedom of speech must not become a hate speech and must not offend others.”  In other words, truth about Islam is designated as hate speech.

Furthermore, OSCE panelist Victor Khroul, correspondent for Rossiya Segodnya, a Russian state-owned international news agency, questions why the mainstream media throughout the world still refer to the “self-proclaimed self-established state in the Middle East” as the Islamic State. His words echo those of Madani, who proclaimed last year that the Islamic State has no connection with Islam.  Khroul claims it’s a mistake for these people to be called Muslim and their state Islamic, which only “confuses the audience with this correlation with Islam.”  He maintains that it’s still possible “to find other words to describe this so-called state and its activity,” discounting the facts that Islamic State is what ISIS named itself and its state, and that ISIS clearly credits its motivation to Islam and its acts to Allah. The name Islamic State does not have to be rectified because it accurately reflects reality, defines the organization in question, and is therefore a correct term that would sit well in the world of Confucius and his doctrine on rectifying names.

Major Stephen Coughlin, an attorney, former U.S. Army intelligence officer, and the Pentagon’s leading expert on Islamic law and jihad (until he was dismissed in 2008 for linking Islam with terrorism with his Red Pill Briefings), stresses the urgency of defining the enemy as he defines himself:  “you cannot target what you will not define…if I can’t use the concepts of Jihad that Al-Qaeda say they rely on, then I can’t understand what they are going to do.”

Author of Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, Coughlin attended the OSCE May session and responded to the OSCE jargon as follows:

“Once you decide that facts on the ground as they present themselves, can be considered hate speech, this is no longer about truth…you are subordinating facts that the public has a right to know when they formulate their decisions, and replacing them with narratives to keep them from coming to the understanding of events that can be articulated and verified.  That can never be considered hate speech. We’re not talking about speech at all. We’re talking about brazen disinformation.”

Rather than disseminate vital information to the public that can save lives, Western world leaders are betraying their citizens by submitting to the OSCE and OIC narrative of outlawing any criticism of Islam and rendering truth illegal.  Reassuring citizens that Islam is a religion of peace merely renders them incapacitated from exercising sound judgment, crippling their ability to make the right decision in the face of potential harm.

While global institutions and national security policies are being shaped, and compromised, by highly influential but ill-known world organizations such as the OSCE and OIC, it’s critical that citizens get to know who those policymakers really are, and become more engaged in public affairs and the political process in order to arrest the Islamization process of the West…before it’s too late to reverse.

 

Categories: Education, Europe, Foreign policy, Human rights, Ideology, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Koran, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama's America, Political correctness, Ramadan, Sharia law, UK
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