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Egypt Under Al-Sisi: An Interview with Raymond Stock

February 9, 2015

Egypt Under Al-Sisi: An Interview with Raymond Stock, Middle East Forum, February 8, 2015

by Jerry Gordon
The New English Review
February 2015

The introduction to this interview has been abridged.

To discuss Egypt’s prospects under the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi government, we invited back Dr. Raymond Stock whom we had interviewed in November 2012. (See: No Blinders About Egypt Under Muslim Brotherhood ). Stock is a Shillman/Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a former Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies at Drew University. He spent twenty years in Egypt and was deported by the Mubarak regime in 2010. He is writing a biography of 1988 Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) for Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is a prolific translator of his works.

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“[The Muslim Brotherhood] has deeply bonded with the highest levels of the Obama administration, which uncritically backed its creation of an elected, one-party dictatorship under Morsi.

“Unlike Morsi and the MB, who worked covertly with the terrorists in Sinai, al-Sisi wholeheartedly supports the peace with Israel.”

Egypt is now in an informal alliance with Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to confront Iran. That alliance is compromised, however, by recent moves from Egypt’s Gulf partners to mend fences with Iran as a result of their feeling exposed by Washington’s alarming pivot toward Tehran at the expense of its traditional Sunni clients.

“Obama’s leftist, rather Edward-Saidian worldview … sees indigenous anti-Western forces such as the Islamists to be the benignly natural and legitimate consequence of American and European policies during the colonial era and the Cold War.”

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Jerry Gordon: Ray Stock thank you for consenting to this interview.

Raymond Stock: Thank you for inviting me back.

Jerry Gordon: Egyptian President al-Sisi started 2015 with two dramatic moves- his New Year’s speech at al-Azhar University and Christmas greetings at a Coptic church with Pope Tawadros II present. What were the messages he conveyed to Muslim clerics, Coptic Christians and the world?

Raymond Stock: At al-Azhar, President al-Sisi was saying it is not merely an extremist interpretation of Islam that is threatening the world with global jihad, but ideas that are at the core of the mainstream, orthodox understanding of the religion–and that this would require a “religious revolution” to change.

At the Coptic Cathedral, he urged Egyptians not to define themselves by their religion, be it Christian or Muslim, but by the fact that they are Egyptians–a rejection of Islamism, which defines national identity in purely religious terms.

To the world, he was saying that Islam as it is being taught and practiced by its leading religious scholars has given birth to a globally destructive ideology which is now threatening us all.

Moreover, he wants to launch a movement within Islam to save the religion from itself, that is, before it tears itself apart completely and the rest of the world destroys it in self-defense.

And he challenged the clerics to take the lead in that effort by openly re-examining their own teachings and source materials for interpreting Islam.

Gordon: Al-Sisi has cracked down on press freedoms in Egypt and brought to trial three Al Jazeera correspondents. What in your view prompted that?

Stock: Though no libertarian, it is hard to say if al-Sisi himself has had anything to do directly with the suppression of press freedom, though it is happening on his watch. Going back to Pharaonic times, Egypt’s state institutions, the oldest in the world, and its political culture, have little tradition of respecting civil liberties. Some periods have been worse than others–the worst was actually under Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the 1950s and ’60s, when many thousands of political prisoners were sent “behind the sun” to camps in the Western Desert.

Al-Sisi is still so popular, the public so widely disgusted with the unending social and political chaos since the 2011 revolution, and so alarmed by the terrorist insurgency waged by the Islamists, that probably a majority of news editors and perhaps also of reporters have decided to support him completely and to oppose his critics automatically. At this point it is hard to find any clear connection with al-Sisi himself to this consensus, enshrined in a declaration by several hundred key media figures a few months ago. However, certainly if he didn’t like it he could well speak up against it–yet he hasn’t so far.

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Pro-Sisi demonstrators celebrate the third anniversary of Mubarak’s overthrow, January 2014.

Last summer he publicly regretted the imprisonment of the three Al Jazeera journalists, saying he wished they had been deported instead. Citing his belief in an independent judiciary, he refused to intervene in the legal process. Now that they are being retried after winning on appeal, we’ll see if he pardons and deports them should they be convicted again.

Gordon: Following, al-Sisi’s ouster of President Morsi and crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood leaders, what has happened to the movement in Egypt?

Stock: Though deservedly banned as a terrorist group, its top leaders in jail and the rest driven underground or abroad, it is far from dead and remains a threat to the Egyptian state and society. Its refusal to accept the June 30 popular revolution (far larger than the one that overthrew Mubarak), parental bonds to Hamas, financial support from Qatar and wealthy Gulf donors (and possibly Iran), partnership with the Salafis and ideological affinity and outreach to groups like al-Qa’ida and Islamic Jihad have served it well in retaining its base while gaining sympathy–especially internationally.

Though all these factors–plus its horrendous behavior in power–have greatly alienated the majority of Egyptians, they are for the most part also its greatest assets for the future, if they can only survive the current storm. As they have shown in several major periods of repression in the past–the most severe being under Abdel-Nasser–they only need to endure until there is successor to al-Sisi, who may decide to restore the MB to political legitimacy as a means of fighting al-Sisi’s remaining political allies. (Anwar al-Sadat, for example, freed the MB activists from prison to combat the surviving members of Abdel-Nasser’s coterie.) Such a situation could put them in striking distance of taking power again.

Meanwhile, the MB has global headquarters in Istanbul and London, is very influential in Europe, and has enormously increased its penetration at the federal, state and local levels all over the US. As part of this, it has deeply bonded with the highest levels of the Obama administration, which uncritically backed its creation of an elected, one-party dictatorship under Morsi. Obama evidently seeks to help the MB to return to power in Egypt—as shown, for example, by the State Department’s recent hosting of a conference of MB allies at Foggy Bottom, though it may take a while. Al-Sisi probably only has a year or two to turn the economy around before he risks another uprising.

The goal of the terrorist insurgency is to discourage foreign investment and stifle the stimulus provided by major government projects such as the new second channel to the Suez Canal to aid the recovery from the last four years of chaos. This, they hope, will pave the way for new popular upheaval which they hope to manipulate if not lead.

Gordon: Has the Islamic State supplanted the Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood movements?

Stock: In a sense, yes, but the situation is actually quite complex. Ideologically, IS—like al-Qa’ida–is an extension of the Salafist movement and the MB (itself established as a Salafi organization in the Salafi library in Ismailiya, Egypt in 1928). IS, because of its uncompromising Islamist purity, harshness, brutality and its dramatic seizure of so much territory in Iraq and Syria, coupled with its incredibly savvy use of social media, has largely eclipsed all of its predecessors in recruitment of fighters to the Middle East. It also outpaced all of them in its creation of lone wolves and sleeper cells in Europe, America and elsewhere.

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Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group last year.

That includes Egypt, where the MB-and-AQ aligned Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) organization is responsible for most of the attacks in the country over the past two years. ABM, along with its allies controls much of North Sinai and has declared its allegiance to IS. The MB, as noted, still retains a very strong base, as does the Salafi al-Nour Party which has pragmatically allied itself with Al-Sisi. The appeal of IS may frustrate their ability to draw younger members–yet it is far from clear that IS will do any better in the long run. So have many of the Islamists in Libya, the eastern half of which IS now controls, and may soon run Tripoli as well. The stunning success of IS provides further inspiration to groups like Boko Haram, which has overrun much of northeastern Nigeria and has recently spread into Cameroon, as well as al-Shabaab in Somalia. IS also now has a presence in southern Afghanistan and beyond. Unless it is destroyed militarily in the very near future–which is virtually impossible so long as Obama is President–IS threatens every state with a significant Muslim population, as well as the West, which is its ultimate target.

Gordon: Al-Sisi has propounded a doctrine of stability for Egypt. What is it and has he succeeded since his election?

Stock: I would say that if al-Sisi truly has established such a doctrine for stability, it would consist of the following:

Anti-Islamism—i.e. a more limited role for Shariah (which is nonetheless still enshrined in the new constitution, yet no longer to be interpreted by the clerics at al-Azhar, but by the government, whose authority and much of its outlook is secular, not religious;
Electoral democracy though with somewhat limited civil liberties, to satisfy both the demand for popular sovereignty and for an end to the endless chaos–strikes and demonstrations (and skyrocketing crime) since the fall of Mubarak in 2011, and to limit the public role of the Islamists, who are at war with Egypt; and
An independent foreign policy—one that still seeks to maintain the traditional alliance with the U.S. and the West, but is not afraid to go elsewhere as needed.

Obama’s backing of the Islamists and his cutting of aid for the past two years have driven al-Sisi to radically diversity Egypt’s sources of funding and investment from abroad, including for the first time military aid. For more than three decades, Egypt’s military assistance came almost exclusively from Washington, though that is now being surpassed by multi-billion dollar arms deals from Moscow and even to an extent from Beijing, funded by al-Sisi’s backers in the Gulf. That puts the Egyptian-American alliance and its principal benefits—the more than thirty-five year peace with Israel, our priority access to the Suez Canal (now being expanded with a second channel but without US investment), and vital cooperation on security issues—seriously at risk.

Gordon: Some analysts have said that in the wake of the Arab Spring the old order of regional autocracies has re-emerged in an alliance against the Muslim Brotherhood. What is your view and especially in the case of Egypt’s North African neighborhood?

Stock: That depends on the country: in North Africa, King Mohammed VI is still in power, but the Muslim Brotherhood has won more seats than the other parties in parliament, a situation echoing that in Jordan, though it is less precarious at present. Algeria, still recovering from the savage Islamist bloodbath after the Army’s annulment of elections in January 1992, was least affected of all the states in the region by the Arab Spring. (Perhaps the only major result there was the lifting of the State of Emergency that had prevailed for nearly two decades, in February 2011.) Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began in December 2010, threw out its MB-affiliate controlled government in a popular movement backed by the army—in a situation that rather echoed the one in Egypt, and late last year elected a new secularist plurality in parliament and a new secularist president, Béji Caїd Essebsi.

In Libya, the feeble central government that we helped install by foolishly removing the vicious, eccentric but cooperative Col. Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi has predictably collapsed. Yet a new secularist-dominated government was elected last June 25 and a pro-secularist remnant of the Qaddafi era, General Khalifa Haftar, for the past year has been at war with the Islamist militias that have been the real powers since 2011. Haftar also wants to destroy the Libyan iteration of the Muslim Brotherhood, root and branch, especially after it launched an armed uprising in eastern Libya following Morsi’s ouster in Egypt in 2013. As a result of this chaos, generated by our own needless—or at least, badly botched–intervention in the Arab Spring, the U.S. now has no effective presence in Libya. The security vacuum prompted Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to cooperate in launching air strikes near Tripoli last summer in support of Haftar’s forces. IS and other Islamist organizations are now infiltrating weapons and fighters into Egypt from Libya, threatening the country’s—and the region’s—stability.

In the Eastern Arab world, Egypt’s principal allies now are Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who together immediately pledged 12 billion dollars in aid after Morsi’s removal, and have given billions more since. All of it and more is desperately needed to compensate for the depletion of Egypt’s hard currency reserves, loss of foreign investment and near-destruction of the once lucrative tourist industry that have all continued since the January 25^th Revolution against Hosni Mubarak. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis oppose the MB and Hamas, who—along with Egypt under Morsi—are clients of their Gulf rival, Qatar. America’s annual, mainly military package of $1.5 billion seems trifling in comparison (unless viewed cumulatively since it began in 1979). Still, it will be difficult to switch to mainly Russian or Chinese systems–much as the latter may be based on hacked American designs–after so many years of absorbing Yankee equipment and training.

Gordon: What is the emerging change in Egypt’s relations with Israel, both geo-political and economic?

Stock: Unlike Morsi and the MB, who worked covertly with the terrorists in Sinai, al-Sisi wholeheartedly supports the peace with Israel. He has greatly increased security cooperation with the Jewish state—which had been endangered in the 2011-12 transition and during the Morsi era—to levels exceeding those under Mubarak. Again, even more than Mubarak, who loathed them too, al-Sisi sees the MB, Hamas and their Islamist allies as threats to Egypt as well as Israel. Likewise, he sees Iran—with whom Morsi sought a rapprochement—as Egypt’s greatest strategic adversary in the region.

As a result, Egypt is now in an informal alliance with Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to confront Iran. That alliance is compromised, however, by recent moves from Egypt’s Gulf partners to mend fences with Iran as a result of their feeling exposed by Washington’s alarming pivot toward Tehran at the expense of its traditional Sunni clients.

Meanwhile, though overall Israel-Egypt trade remains minimal (as it had through the decades of cold peace under Mubarak and afterward), energy-strapped Egypt may soon be importing natural gas from Israel’s newly-developed Tamar Reservoir in the Mediterranean. Given that Israel used to import natural gas from Egypt via a pipeline shared with Jordan (repeatedly sabotaged physically as well as assailed legally in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak), that is a remarkable turnaround indeed.

Gordon: What triggered Qatar’s re-opening of relations with Egypt despite the former’s support of Hamas and the Brotherhood?

Stock: The main factor was probably al-Sisi’s logical desire to stay in step with the policy of Egypt’s current primary foreign donors and investors, the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. After freezing relations with Qatar due to its support for Hamas and the MB, and perhaps also AQ and IS (the latter only early on?), and the universal irritant of Doha-based Al Jazeera, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, decided last summer to repair the rift, apparently in face of the increasing U.S. tilt toward Iran. The U.S. tried to bypass al-Sisi by turning to Qatar and Turkey—both of whom Cairo had shunned for their support of Islamists and their criticism of Morsi’s ouster—as intermediaries with Hamas in the Gaza conflict last summer.

Ironically, that move may have done more to damage relations with Washington than with either Doha or Ankara, who probably could not be totally excluded in any case, given their closeness to Hamas. Yet those two regional rival countries’ desire to cut out Cairo, the historic mediator between the Palestinians, Israel and the West, did aggravate the Egyptians enormously, to be sure.

Qatar has taken some token steps to distance itself from the MB, like deporting several MB leaders who had taken refuge there. But Qatar apparently continues to finance them in their new home in London, and few believe the change is more than cosmetic. Thus the warming with Egypt and even within the GCC may not long endure.

Gordon: Why has the US Administration maintained an arm’s length relationship with al-Sisi subsequent to the ouster of Morsi?

Stock: It is no doubt due to Obama’s leftist, rather Edward-Saidian worldview, which sees indigenous anti-Western forces such as the Islamists to be the benignly natural and legitimate consequence of American and European policies during the colonial era and the Cold War—for which he has apologized repeatedly. He also has a positive, nostalgic view of Islam, given that he was born of a Muslim father and having apparently been raised as one by his step-father during his early childhood in Indonesia, and seems to project this image onto radical groups like the MB who cleverly pose as moderates. He is thus surrounded by numerous pro-Islamist advisers, as well as those who simply take a naïve view of groups like the MB, Hamas and Hizbollah–and even the Taliban (not a new position, but one now getting attention in the news).

It also means that he denies the common Islamist ideology of all those groups as well as AQ and IS, or even any connection of their beliefs to Islam. This, despite their being made up entirely of Muslims, that they base their ideology and tactics on the Qur’an, Hadith and other key Islamic texts, and that they have a very wide appeal in the global Islamic community. This is even more bizarre if you compare his statements and those of his aides about this question to those of al-Sisi—a Muslim leader of a majority Muslim country—at the seat of Sunni Islam’s highest authority, al-Azhar, on New Year’s Day. One of them, Obama, is willfully blind; the other, al-Sisi, with devastating clarity, identifies the problem as coming from within the very heart of Islam.

On a personal level, Obama does not take kindly to those who cross him. Just look at his relationship with Congress, and with Benjamin Netanyahu, while ignoring his own transgressions against those he thinks are transgressing against him. He regarded al-Sisi’s patriotic overthrow of Morsi–whom he had bolstered with more and more aid even as the MB leader became more and dictatorial–at the demand of more than twice as many Egyptians as those who voted for Morsi, as a personal affront as well as ideological heresy. He has since punished al-Sisi and the Egyptian people who rejected his chosen savior of their destiny accordingly. That may have softened a bit recently, due to the need to find Arab allies to fight IS, but that is not a serious effort: the default position is against al-Sisi and for the MB.

Gordon: Given your Egyptian sojourn does al-Sisi have both the domestic and international support to implement his agenda?

Stock: Domestic, yes—all but a quarter to a third of the country wants him to succeed. But internationally is another story. Al-Sisi’s greatest enemy is not the MB, or even IS, but the president of the United States. When the State Department invited key figures from the pro-MB alliance of groups to a major conference in Washington this week, he was signaling his desire (and only Obama sets our foreign policy) to overthrow al-Sisi—just as his invitation to the leaders from the banned MB to sit in the front row of his Cairo speech in 2009 signaled that he wanted to remove Mubarak. So U.S.-dependent international institutions and allies may not be too supportive of al-Sisi.

The only possible silver lining for Egypt is, ironically (given our historic alliance), really a great problem for our country, if one values its role of global leadership since World War II. That is, Obama has done so much to destroy America’s standing with the rest of the world that even our closest allies no longer fear to stray, and may yet not follow his wishes regarding al-Sisi. Tragically, on many issues, that may be better for us all until Obama leaves office. For the heading he has set leads directly to hell, a destination that many countries, thanks to in large part to his policies, have already seen (and Syria and Libya have already become)–good intentions (by his lights) notwithstanding.

Gordon: Dr. Stock many thanks for this highly informative interview.

Stock: You’re most welcome.

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Iran, Islam, Israel, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Russia, Sisi, Sunni Muslims, Terrorism
Tags: Egypt, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Iran, Islam, Israel, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Russia, Sisi, Sunni Muslims, Terrorism

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Kerry: No Extension of Extension of Iran Nuclear Talks, Maybe

February 9, 2015

Kerry: No Extension of Extension of Iran Nuclear Talks, Maybe, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, February 9, 2015

john-kerry-283x350

Absolutely not. Unless maybe the talks that are going nowhere, except to an Iranian nuclear bomb, seem really promising.

MUNICH — Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in an interview broadcast Sunday that it would be “impossible” to extend nuclear negotiations with Iran if an agreement on fundamental principles is not reached in the coming weeks.

Munich, how appropriate. Also that extension might still be possible if that agreement is reached.

Using more categorical language than he has employed previously, Kerry definitively precluded a third extension to talks with Iran about reducing its ability to make a nuclear bomb or easing sanctions.

That’s right. No third extension of talks… unless an agreement on principles is reached. Then we can extend it until Iran goes nuclear.

Except Iran isn’t in favor of that either.

Khamenei seems to oppose a procedure already agreed to by the two sides, which is to conclude an understanding of general principles by March 24 and to finalize details of a deal by the end of June. “If an agreement is reached,” he said, “it must be concluded in one go and must encompass both general principles and details.”

So much for that. The negotiations can’t agree on the principles.

In November, when no deal could be struck by a self-imposed deadline, a temporary agreement, which had been in place for a year and had been extended once before, was pushed to late June. Kerry said at the time that the major points of agreement would have to be reached by late March.

So Kerry is desperately and clumsily trying to pressure the Iranians to agree to Obama’s sellout. Unfortunately for him, the Iranians know that he can rolled like an empty barrel, so they’re pushing even harder.

It’s a game of chicken in which Iran isn’t worried while Obama needs some kind of signature on a piece of paper to shut up senators from both parties.

“But if we’re not able to make the fundamental decisions that have to be made over the course of the next weeks, literally, I think it would be impossible to extend,” Kerry said. “I don’t think we would want to extend at that point. Either you make the decisions to prove your program is a peaceful one, or if you’re unable to do that, it may tell a story that none of us want to hear.”

Smart power. Notice how many ways Kerry backtracks a simple statement. When he says, “a story that none of us want to hear”, he’s talking about his administration’s denial. Iran has no problem talking about destroying Israel.

Kerry just refuses to hear it.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran, Iran scam, Kerry, Nukes, Obama, P5+1
Tags: Foreign Policy, Iran, Iran Scam, Nukes

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Humor(?): Brian Williams for President

February 9, 2015

Brian Williams for President, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, February 9, 2015

(Not so fast. As explained here, Williams should become the Secretary of State first. That is necessary in order to gain foreign policy ~~experience~~ gravitas. — DM)

brian-williams-450x277

If Brian Williams is fired, then even NBC News will have higher standards than the Democratic Party. And then Brian Williams can become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016.

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Two years ago NBC and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell tried to invent a Romney gaffe by playing an edited tape of Romney. Mitchell wasn’t just another angry MSNBCite, but NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent and a colleague of Brian Williams who often appeared on his newscast.

NBC was criticized, but Mitchell wasn’t fired. Neither was anyone else. She didn’t even apologize.

The network had even more outrageously edited George Zimmerman’s tape to make him sound racist. A local producer and correspondent were fired. The correspondent, Lilia Luciano, had reported for, among other NBC outlets, The Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Brian Williams is in trouble for lying, but he was part of a media culture of deceit where lies were acceptable for a good progressive cause. Williams isn’t really in trouble because he lied, but because he got caught. Worse still, the lies were self-serving. They served Brian Williams; they didn’t serve the left.

Williams had failed to draw the line between the “good lie” (ObamaCare is making life better) and the “bad lie” (I swam the flooded French Quarter with puppies on my back during Katrina while Al Qaeda shot RPGs at me). But the borders between the “good lie” and the “bad lie” have been vague when it comes to the titans of the left.

The media did its best to cover up for Hillary Clinton’s rather similar claims about “landing under sniper fire” in Bosnia. There was no sniper fire. There was a little girl with flowers. Today Hillary is in the lead to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the White House in 2016.

Are there really higher ethical qualifications for reading the news from a teleprompter for NBC than there are for the President of the United States? If so, maybe we should just replace the Democratic Party with NBC. They’re hard to tell apart anyway.

Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s own official Brian Williams, claimed during the Democratic presidential debate that he had been shot at in Iraq. He boasted to a National Guard conference, “If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”

“Where is that safe haven? It is not Baghdad. It is in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan where my helicopter was recently forced down.”

At a fundraiser, he spoke of “The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down. John McCain wants to know where bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where. That’s where Al Qaida is. That’s where bin Laden is.”

In reality, the pilot had landed due to a snowstorm. Biden had been there with Kerry and Hagel.

Al Qaeda’s safe haven was in Iraq. It wasn’t in the “superhighway of terror” in the mountains where Biden waited out a storm in an area under American control. And Bin Laden wasn’t there either.

Joe Biden and Brian Williams are both compulsive liars. Over the years, Joe Biden lied about everything from his academic degrees to the car accident that killed his wife. Biden lied and claimed to have three degrees. He lied and claimed to have played college football. He lied and claimed to have heard the gunshots from a school shooting.

In his defense, Biden claimed in the eighties, “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”

Apparently Biden gets angry a lot. Still none of these scandals and lies, going back generations, ever got Biden fired. His harshest punishment came in law school when he was called before a disciplinary committee for plagiarizing a paper. Biden’s aide claimed that he was exonerated. In fact he was found guilty, but Biden “threw himself on the mercy of the board“and promised not to do it again.

He did it do it again as a politician, lifting a speech from UK Labor Leader Neil Kinnock, but there was no longer a disciplinary committee to hold him accountable.

As a senator and vice president, Biden had become too big to fail. He can no longer be held accountable. And if the Vice President of the United States can get away with telling crazy lies about his own accomplishments, why not the anchor for NBC News? They’re both just bad actors with fake hair.

Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016.

Fake heroics and stolen valor are common problems for Democratic senators. Senator Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam. He responded with an angry press conference surrounded by veterans in which he barked that he would not allow anyone to “impugn my record of service to our country.”

It was a shameless performance even by his standards. And he won. His party certainly did not ask him to step down.

Kerry’s pal, Senator Tom Harkin lied and claimed to have flown combat missions over North Vietnam. He stayed on and grew old in the Senate.

If lying about your Vietnam military service is fine for Senator Blumenthal, Senator Harkin not to mention former Senator and current Secretary of State John Kerry, how can anyone object to Brian Williams making up stories about saving puppies from fires at gunpoint in the French Quarter in Iraq?

Democratic politicians are allowed to lie about their heroism because they are the cause. At some point along the way, Brian Williams decided that he was important enough to be the cause. He wasn’t just the guy lying for Obama and Hillary. He was important enough for NBC News to lie for him.

And that’s exactly what NBC News did.

The days when the average politician and journalist had served in the military are long over. All that’s left is stolen valor and borrowed heroics.

Obama lied and claimed that his uncle had liberated Auschwitz during his Memorial Day remarks. (In real life he skipped the 70^th anniversary commemoration of the day for the Saudis.) NBC News at the time defended it as an “innocent mistake”. But then again Obama had also claimed that his parents got together because of Selma, which took place three years after he was born.

Is NBC News really supposed to have higher standards for its talking heads than the Democratic Party does for the President of the United States?

And when a news organization like NBC News tells constant lies in support of the political agendas of Obama, Clinton and Biden, should one of its big talking heads really be expected to draw the line at lying about their records to lying about his own?

Brian Williams did the same thing that Hillary Clinton had been doing throughout her career.

Hillary Clinton not only lied about coming under fire in Bosnia, but she claimed to have been instrumental in the Northern Ireland peace processand had “negotiated open borders” for refugees in Kosovo. She claimed that her daughter (and future NBC correspondent) was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11 when the hijacked plane hit.

None of that was true.

If Brian Williams is fired, then even NBC News will have higher standards than the Democratic Party. And then Brian Williams can become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016.

Categories: Biden, Brian Williams, Clintons, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Humor, Lies, Media, Obama
Tags: Biden, Brian Williams, Clintons, Democratic Party, Fairy tales, Foreign Policy, Humor, Lies, Media, NBC News

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Qatar, Egypt on a collision course

February 9, 2015

Qatar, Egypt on a collision course, Israel Hayom, Dr. Reuven Berko, February 9, 2015

This anti-Egypt agenda, which seems to be shared by Turkey, is fueled by the desire to realize the dream of installing a Sunni Islamic empire, all while undermining moderate Arab regimes and giving a nod to Iran, as a way of covering all bases — just in case.

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Qatar and Egypt are at odds, and the attempts by the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to facilitate a reconciliation between them have failed.

Qatar’s relentless efforts to overthrow Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s regime and reinstate the Muslim Brotherhood to power are evident from the programs airing on the Doha-controlled Al-Jazeera television network, and from the publication of doctored wiretaps featuring the Egyptian president and his advisers, who allegedly “stole” Egypt away from the Muslim Brotherhood and the “holy” Mohammed Morsi.

This anti-Egypt agenda, which seems to be shared by Turkey, is fueled by the desire to realize the dream of installing a Sunni Islamic empire, all while undermining moderate Arab regimes and giving a nod to Iran, as a way of covering all bases — just in case.

Egypt’s decision to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood has resulted in increased incitement by Qatar as well as in an escalation in terrorist attacks in Egypt and Sinai. Egyptian intelligence has linked the latest series of attacks to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an offshoot of the Islamic State group, as well as to Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas and the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades are very much Qatar’s “babies,” and their involvement in these terrorist attacks has prompted Egypt to outlaw both.

In response, Al-Jazeera has begun portraying Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades’ operatives, who have denounced Sissi as a traitor to Islam and Arabs everywhere, as heroes fighting for the liberation of “Palestine.” The Qatari television station has also been obsessively covering the riots and unrest instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the regime, intimidate foreign investors, and reverse the image of stability Sissi’s government is trying to convey to the world.

The airing of secret wiretaps, on which Sissi is heard mocking the wealthy Persian Gulf states, at this time seeks to pit Cairo against the Gulf states, ahead of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, which is scheduled to convene in Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt, in late February, and where Egypt will lobby for aid.

Sissi’s assertion about the current situation in the Middle East is correct: Sunni Arab states are being offered as sacrifice to Iran, which is pursuing its nuclear endeavors uninterrupted. These states understand that Egypt’s stability is a prerequisite for their own national security, and therefore aiding Cairo is a favor that could only work to their advantage.

At the end of the day, in a reality where Iran poses an existential threat to other Arab countries, pointing to the emir of Qatar as a leader drowning in gold while millions of Egyptians go hungry — as heard on the wiretaps — may prove to be a double-edged sword, which may end up striking Qatar itself.

Categories: Caliphate, Egypt, Foreign policy, Hamas, Iran, Iran scam, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Siani, Sisi, Sunni, Terrorism, Turkey
Tags: Caliphate, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Iran, Iran Scam, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Siani, Sisi, Sunni, Terrorism, Turkey

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Houthi Yemen coup moves Iran’s Middle East hegemonic ambitions forward – upheld by Washington

February 9, 2015

Houthi Yemen coup moves Iran’s Middle East hegemonic ambitions forward – upheld by Washington, DEBKAfile, February 8, 2015

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Victorious Houthi fighters in downtown Sanaa

It is hard for those governments to make up their minds where to look for the most acute menace to their national security – the US-Iranian nuclear deal taking shape, or the give-and-take between Washington and Tehran in Yemen and Iraq.

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The strings of the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels’ coup which toppled the Yemeni government in Sanaa were pulled from Tehran and Washington. US intelligence and shared US-Iranian support helped the Houthis reach their goal, which is confined for now to parts of central Yemen and all of the North.

Friday, Feb. 6, the rebels dissolved parliament and seized power in the country of 24 million. They propose to rule by a revolutionary council. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his cabinet who were forced to resign last month are under house arrest.

DEBKAfile’s Saudi intelligence sources reveal that the dominant figure of the uprising was none other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen from 1990 until he was ousted in 2012.

A member of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam like the Houthis, he led them to power with the same enthusiasm with which he fought their insurgency during his years in power. By rallying his supporters in the army, intelligence and security services, he enabled the rebels to take over these departments of government and overpower the Hadi regime with only minimal resistance.

They were also able to commandeer $400 million worth of modern American munitions.

The Houthis secretly call themselves “Ansar Allah” and have adopted the “Death to America, Death to Israel” slogans routinely heard in government-sponsored parades and demonstrations on the streets and squares of revolutionary Tehran.

Amid the political turmoil in Sanaa, the US Sunday resumed drone strikes against AQAP.

The six Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, issued a statement Saturday, Feb. 7, calling for the UN Security Council to “put an end to this coup, an escalation that cannot be accepted under any circumstances.”

The Iranian-US gambit has resulted in different parts of Yemen falling under the sway of two anti-American radical forces – the pro-Tehran Houthis and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The new Saudi King Salman starts his reign with a double-barreled threat facing the kingdom from its southern neighbor, Yemen – posed by an Iranian pawn and a proactive branch of Al Qaeda.

Ten days ago, when US President Barack Obama visited Riyadh, the Saudi monarch voiced his concern about the alarming situation developing Yemen. However, Obama replied noncommittally with general remarks.

In Washington, administration spokesmen Saturday tried pouring oil on the troubled waters roiled by US support for the Iranian maneuver in Sanaa and the return of Abdullah Saleh to the Yemeni scene.

“We’re talking with everybody,” one US official said, explaining that the United States was ready to talk to any Yemeni factions willing to fight Al Qaeda.

His colleagues tried to downplay Tehran’s hand in the Houthi coup. “The Houthis get support from Iran, but they’re not controlled by Iran,” said another official in Washington.

Our military and intelligence sources report that Yemen is not the only Middle East platform of the joint US-Iranian military, intelligence and strategic performance. The second act is unfolding in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Jordan and Israel are therefore watching the evolving US-Iranian cooperation in fighting al Qaeda’s various affiliates in the region with deep forebodings, lest it is merely a façade for the Obama administration’s espousal of Tehran’s regional ambitions.

It is hard for those governments to make up their minds where to look for the most acute menace to their national security – the US-Iranian nuclear deal taking shape, or the give-and-take between Washington and Tehran in Yemen and Iraq.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Houthi, Iran, Iran scam, Iraq, Obama, Terrorism, Yemen
Tags: Al Qaeda, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, Houthi, Iran, Iran Scam, Terrorism, Yemen

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Obama’s conciliatory approach

February 8, 2015

Obama’s conciliatory approach, Israel Hayom, Omer Dostri, February 8, 2015

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

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On Thursday, in an almost unprecedented declaration, U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, attacked claims that the vicious terrorist acts we are witnessing today are “unique to some other place” (meaning, to the Middle East and Islamic regimes), while comparing the acts of Christians during the Crusades to the acts of the Islamic State group today.

When you first hear these remarks, the sheer amazement makes it seem like you need to listen to them again. But the more one delves into Obama’s foreign policy and the more his conduct since being elected president is analyzed, the sense of shock subsides, and the picture becomes clearer and more comprehensible. From the start, Obama has stood for progressive policy, seen in some circles as “enlightened.” In practice, this means that Obama has steadfastly refused to discuss the problem of “extremist Islam” and “world terrorism.” Likewise, in September 2014, Obama declared that “the Islamic State does not reflect Islam.” These remarks join the famous Cairo speech in which Obama tried to make a new start with the Muslim world and brand the U.S., a superpower, as on the same level while presenting an accepting, conciliatory policy without any misgivings about or criticism of the sickness in the Islamic religion.

This policy is indicative of Obama’s ideology, which includes universalism, postcolonialism, and hints of Marxism and highlights the supposedly weakened “victims of imperialism.” This ideology drops the U.S. from its position as the greatest superpower in the world to that of an equal to non-Western nations that are the result of “oppressive” cultures, all in the name of optimistic equality. This is also one of the main reasons for the absence of American leadership in the world and why anti-democracies like China and Russia and countries that provide a haven for terrorism — such as Iran and Qatar — are trying to take control of the void.

But it’s clear that Obama’s behavior reached an apex with his recent declaration, when U.S. citizens found themselves witnessing the leader of the free world, who stands at the head of a liberal-democratic superpower, standing there trying to find justifications for the barbaric, murderous terrorist acts from the House of Islam. The fact that Obama needed events that took place nearly 1,000 years ago to compare with things that are happening in our time, in the cultured, democratic world, didn’t faze him for an instant. Nor did the facts that the Crusades were launched in opposition to aggression by the same murderous Islam operating today; or that they focused on Jerusalem and not conquering the world, like Islam.

For centuries, some Christians toiled brutally and murdered a not inconsequential number of people — including many Jews, of course. But while Christianity progressed and expressed remorse and the Catholic Church (that same violent, corrupt entity that was responsible for so many wars) weakened as Protestantism grew stronger, Islam has remained in the same darkness, loyal to its utopian and intolerant approach that sees every non-Muslim as a heretic. It’s us or them — the original version.

The very fact that Obama is digging around in history and looking for moral justifications for the Islamic State’s deeds highlights the danger of his policy, which is reflected in his pursuit of a bad deal with Iran, in his ignoring that same Iran’s terrorist activity throughout the world, in his attempts to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and in his soft policy toward extremist Islam, which he sees as part of a general cultural problem and not as a specific one.

Instead of taking a determined, aggressive stance against Islamic extremism and openly condemning the religion that gives it moral, spiritual, and material support, Obama is opting for more concessions and far-reaching conciliation. And absurd as it might seem, this is seen by Islam as weakness and provides an incentive for its operatives to attempt to undermine the principles of the West: liberalism and democracy.

Categories: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Nukes, Obama
Tags: Caliphate, Christians, Foreign Policy, Iran Scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Nukes

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What Is the Islamic State Trying to Accomplish?

February 7, 2015

What Is the Islamic State Trying to Accomplish? National Review on line, Andrew C. McCarthy, February 7, 2015

(As soon as Obama defeats climate change, he may begin to focus on other less important problems. — DM)

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(Image: ISIS video)

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are our problem.

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The Islamic State’s barbaric murder of Lieutenant Mouath al-Kasaebeh, the Jordanian air-force pilot the jihadists captured late last year, has naturally given rise to questions about the group’s objectives. Charles Krauthammer argues (here and here) that the Islamic State is trying to draw Jordan into a land war in Syria. It is no doubt correct that the terrorist group would like to destabilize Jordan — indeed, it is destabilizing Jordan. Its immediate aim, however, is more modest and attainable. The Islamic State wants to break up President Obama’s much trumpeted Islamic-American coalition.

As the administration proudly announced back in September, Jordan joined the U.S. coalition, along with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. The only potential value of the coalition is symbolic: It has enabled the president to claim that Muslim countries were lining up with us against the Islamic State. Militarily, the coalition is of little use. These countries cannot defeat the Islamic State.

Moreover, even the symbolism is insignificant. Symbolism, after all, cuts both ways. As I pointed out when the administration breathlessly announced the coalition, our five Islamic partners have only been willing to conduct (extremely limited) aerial operations against the Islamic State. They would not attack al-Qaeda targets — i.e., the strongholds of al-Nusra (the local al-Qaeda franchise) and “Khorasan” (an al-Qaeda advisory council that operates within al-Nusra in Syria).

Obviously, if the relevance of the five Islamic countries’ willingness to fight the Islamic State is the implication that the Islamic State is not really Islamic, then their unwillingness to fight al-Qaeda equally implies their assessment that al-Qaeda is representative of Islam. The latter implication no doubt explains why the Saudis, Qatar, and the UAE have given so much funding over the years to al-Qaeda . . . the terror network from which the Islamic State originates and with which the Islamic State shares its sharia-supremacist ideology.

I’ll give the Saudis this: They don’t burn their prisoners alive in a cage. As previously recounted here, though, they routinely behead their prisoners. In fact, here’s another report from the British press just three weeks ago:

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have publicly beheaded a woman in Islam’s holy city of Mecca. . . . Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword on Monday after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers.

She was convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.

A video showed how it took three blows to complete the execution, while the woman screamed “I did not kill. I did not kill.” It has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”.

There are two ways to behead people according to Mohammed al-Saeedi, a human rights activist: “One way is to inject the prisoner with painkillers to numb the pain and the other is without the painkiller. . . . This woman was beheaded without painkillers — they wanted to make the pain more powerful for her.”

The Saudi Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that it believed the sentence was warranted due to the severity of the crime.

The beheading is part of an alarming trend, which has seen the kingdom execute seven people in the first two weeks of this year. In 2014 the number of executions rose to 87, from 78 in 2013.

Would that the president of the United States were more worried about the security of the United States than about how people in such repulsive countries perceive the United States.

In any event, the Islamic State is simply trying to blow up the coalition, which would be a useful propaganda victory. And the strategy is working. It appears at this point that only Jordan is participating in the airstrikes. While all eyes were on Jordan this week for a reaction to Lieutenant al-Kasaebeh’s immolation, the administration has quietly conceded that the UAEsuspended its participation in bombing missions when the pilot was captured in December.

The explanation for this is obvious: The Islamic countries in the coalition know they can’t stop the Islamic State unless the United States joins the fight in earnest, and they know this president is not serious. The White House says the coalition has carried out a total of about 1,000 airstrikes in the last five months. In Desert Storm, we did 1,100 a day.

Seven strikes a day is not going to accomplish anything, especially with no troops on the ground, and thus no search-and-rescue capability in the event planes go down, as Lieutenant al-Kasaebeh’s did. With no prospect of winning, and with a high potential of losing pilots and agitating the rambunctious Islamists in their own populations, why would these countries continue to participate?

The Islamic State knows there is intense opposition to King Abdullah’s decision to join in the coalition. While the Islamic State’s sadistic method of killing the pilot has the king and his supporters talking tough about retaliation, millions of Jordanians are Islamist in orientation and thousands have crossed into Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. There will continue to be pressure on Jordan to withdraw. Without a real American commitment to the fight, this pressure will get harder for Abdullah to resist.

Jordan has no intention of getting into a land war the king knows he cannot win without U.S. forces leading the way. But the Islamic State does not need to lure Jordan into a land war in order to destabilize the country — it is already doing plenty of that by intensifying the Syrian refugee crisis, sending Jordanians back home from Syria as trained jihadists, and trying to assassinate Abdullah.

I will close by repeating the larger point I’ve argued several times before. We know from experience that when jihadists have safe havens, they attack the United States. They now have more safe havens than they’ve ever had before — not just because of what the Islamic State has accomplished in what used to be Syria and Iraq (the map of the Middle East needs updating) but because of what al-Qaeda has done there and in North Africa, what the Taliban and al-Qaeda are doing in Afghanistan, and so on.

If we understand, as we by now should, what these safe havens portend, then we must grasp that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and the global jihad constitute a threat to American national security. That they also (and more immediately) threaten Arab Islamic countries is true, but it is not close to being our top concern. Ensuring our security is a concern that could not be responsibly delegated to other countries even if they had formidable armed forces — which the “coalition” countries do not.

The Islamic State and al-Qaeda are our problem.

Categories: Air strikes, Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Coalition, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Hostages, Human rights, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Jordan, Middle East, Obama, Syria, Terrorists
Tags: Air strikes, Al Qaeda, Caliphate, Coalition, Combat troops, Foreign Policy, Hostages, human rights, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Jordan, Middle East, Syria, Terrorists

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The Plight of the Yazidis

February 7, 2015

The Plight of the Yazidis, Front Page Magazine, Arnold Ahlert, February 6, 2015

(They are probably doomed unless the relevant U.N. high commissioner decrees that they are endangered by climate change rather than by the forces of “peaceful” Islam. Then Obama and Kerry, who claim that climate change is the greatest threat of all, might help. — DM)

Yazidis-450x331

Despite the current focus on ISIS, the ongoing barbarity inflicted against the Yazidis, a group of people who have inhabited Iraq’s mountainous northwestern region for centuries, remains largely below the radar. And while this estimated population of approximately 500,000 has been the target of hatred by Muslims who see them as heretical devil-worshipers, ISIS has upped the ante. While the world largely looks away, a genocidal level of extermination proceeds apace. “Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth,” warned Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil—last August.

Early August was the time the carnage ramped up in earnest. Approximately 40,00 Yazidis, including many women and children, were trapped in nine locations around Mount Sinjar, identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah’s ark. Sinjar was once home to as many as 300,000 Yazidis, but as ISIS advanced, 130,000 fled north to Dohuk, capital of the Dohuk governate of Iraqi Kurdistan, or to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region and its largest city. Since last June authorities in Irbil have been forced to deal with one of the largest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. As of now approximately 350,000 Yazidis are encamped around Dohuk.

Those remaining behind faced a terrible choice of death by dehydration, or death at the hands of ISIS, who murdered 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, in an initial killing spree. By October the death total inflicted by ISIS had reached into the thousands. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic aptly described what was occurring. “The evidence strongly indicates an attempt to commit genocide,” he said, adding that the only options being given to the Yazidis are “to convert or be killed.”

Not quite. As ISIS has boasted in its propaganda magazine Dabiq, around 300 Yazidi women and girls were abducted, subjected to sexual assault and subsequently sold as slaves to its fighters in Syria. The Islamist terror group considers the women and girls to be “al Sabaya,” defined by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) as “women captured in war.”

The main reason the Yazidis have slipped below the media radar is because they apparently believe President Obama sufficiently addressed the problem last August, when he announced airstrikes aimed at a twofold purpose: protecting U.S. personnel stationed in Erbil, and saving those Yazidis trapped in around Sinjar without food or water. “People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide,” Obama said at the time. “And when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain.”

The strikes and humanitarian aid were initially successful in alleviating some of the suffering, and also opened up an escape route allowing many of those trapped to flee. Yet by October, with U.S. attention diverted elsewhere and airstrikes dwindling, ISIS surrounded Mount Sinjar again. More than 10,000 Yazidis were once again trapped, and ISIS reprised its bloody rampage, capturing one mountain village after another, killing the men and selling the women and children into slavery.

Furthermore, the humanitarian airdrops were also halted. Iraqi helicopters were employed to pick up the slack, but they are old and fly only once or twice a week, according to Sameer Karto Babasheikh, the son of the Yazidi Supreme Religious Council leader, who met with a contingent of senior White House and State Department officials that same month to discuss the problem. “Our hostages, children, women, and girls, between 4,000 and 5,000 of them, have been captured by ISIS and sent to other areas. We need help to rescue these hostages,” he explained. “In Mosul, they opened a market to sell Yazidi girls. Some of them ended up in Fallujah, some of them were taken to Saudi Arabia and Raqqa in Syria.”

Kamal Elias, a Yazidi activist who was part of the delegation that came to Washington, put the crisis in far blunter terms. “President Obama promised that they are not going to let ISIS get any more land, that they are not going to let them get another genocide on the Yazidis,” he said. “But this is going to be worse than in August. If ISIS gets to the mountain, all of these people are going to be slaughtered, and then it’s going to take years for the U.S. or anyone else to get them out of the mountain.”

Elias also illuminated another facet of the problem. “Most of the ISIS members are from the towns around ISIS,” he said. “They were our neighbors. We lived with them for hundreds of years. Now all of a sudden they are ISIS. They joined ISIS.”

The animus directed towards the Yazidis spans centuries. “To this day, many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers,” says Thomas Schmidinger, an expert on Kurdish politics the University of Vienna. “So in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions,” he adds.

In fact Yazidis whose total population is around 700,000, the vast majority of whom have been concentrated in northern Iraq around Sinjar, are predominantly Kurdish. But they remain religiously distinct from Iraq’s Sunni Kurdish population. Some scholars contend the religion was founded during the 11th century by an Ummayyad sheikh. Others attribute its origins to Sufi leader Adi ibn Musafir, who settled in Kurdistan in the 12th century and founded a community mixing elements of Islam with local beliefs that predated it. The faith combines elements of Zoroastrianism, a 3500 year old monotheistic religion founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran, with elements of Christianity and Islam. Thus Yazidis embrace Christianity’s sacrament of Baptism, Islam’s tenets on circumcision, and Zoroastrianism’s belief that fire must be revered as a manifestation from God.

The devil-worshipping accusations derive from their worship of a fallen angel, Melek Tawwus, or Peacock Angel. Unlike the permanent fall from grace of Satan in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Melek Tawwus is forgiven by God and returned to heaven, becoming a force for good in Yazidism.

Nonetheless, beginning around the late 16th and early 17th centuries, accusations of devil-worship arose because Muslims believe the story of Tawwus Melek resembles the Qur’an’s Shaytan, a rebellious “djinn” (Muslim spirit) who leads men away from goodness.

Unfortunately, goodness is currently in short supply in among the members of the international community. There is no doubt they are aware of the Yazidi’s continuing plight, but they continue to fail those who are facing imminent extermination.

Murad Ismael, a Yazidi activist in the Sinjar Crisis Group, reported on his December journey during which he reached Sinjar accompanied by Peshmerga forces who have seen 999 fighters killed, and 4596 wounded since they began standing against ISIS last June. It was the first time Yazidis had reached Sinjar since the mass exodus last August.

“We did not see any civilians in Sinjar, except for a few Yazidis who had returned there to retrieve some of their personal belongings,” Ismael revealed to Aljazeera America. “For the 150 kilometers to the Mount Sinjar area, all has been abandoned. No sign of life, except for the forces defending the roads.” Ismael also downplayed reports stating Kurdish fighters had re-captured most of Mount Sinjar in December. “The peshmerga and the Yazidi volunteers did get inside the city of Sinjar.,” he explained. “About three-quarters of the city has been recaptured. However, there are still ISIL (ISIS) snipers. ISIL have been cleared from the northern side of the mountain, but they left behind IEDs. The southern side of the mountain is not safe.”

Ismael also revealed what ISIS left behind. “At least three mass graves have been found,” he said. “Seventy-five bodies have been found. Another mass grave of about 25 or 26 people. I did not get to that location. We saw evidence of destruction. People’s clothes alongside the road. My town, Khanasour, to see how it is now — it’s emotionally overwhelming. Everything’s been burned. All Islamic State banners or writing on the walls. Lots of mass graves, lots of people dead inside the houses. We didn’t look inside.”

Mass grave sightings were confirmed by the Peshmerga four days ago.

The plight of those in the aforementioned refugee camps has been largely ignored as well. Bill Devlin, a co-pastor of the Infinity Bible Church in the Bronx, New York who travelled with Ismael, was appalled. “We visited three camps today, with approximately 5,000 people each,” he said “They’re living in unfinished buildings, living in the street, living with literally nothing. We’ve been going from house to house of unfinished buildings. No food, no kerosene heaters—it’s beyond belief. Some one million Yazidis are dispersed outside the official camps. The need is critical. The issue is dire.”

Co-traveler Lee Mason, a producer for Cumulus Media, illuminated the details, noting there are three types of camps. The first type consists of tent cities organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Yet that organization is belied by dirt streets, no hot water and latrines as much as a half mile away. The second type consists of unofficial camps where people put up tarps or plastic sheeting to protect from the freezing rain. There are dangerous makeshift electricity systems and self-created toilet systems consists of sheds covered with blankets, but no running water. The last group of camps consists of unheated, abandoned buildings with similar makeshift electrical systems.

Last December, Yazidi women who escaped from ISIS detailed their abuse to the BBC. “They said: ‘Yazidis are infidels,” a woman using the pseudonym “Hannan” reported. “Now you will live as Muslims.’ They took many girls for sex. They told us: ‘Forget the life you knew.’” She further reveals that ISIS took the younger girls first and sent many of them to the Syrian city of Raqqa ISIS considers its capitol. Many of women grew so desperate from the abuse they considered suicide a viable alternative. One actually carried it out. “She slashed her wrists,” Hannan revealed “(ISIS) didn’t let us help her. They put us in a room and shut the door. She died. They said: ‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll just dump the body somewhere.’”

Upping the ante on depravity, ISIS has published guidelines on the “proper” use of women as slaves, including a Q&A pamphlet, a video of men awaiting their turn at the slave market, and a statement in Daqib describing the events:

“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to Sharia [Islamic law] amongst the fighters of Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations…Before Satan sows doubt among the weak-minded and weak-hearted, remember that enslaving the kuffa [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly-established aspect of Sharia.”

The Yazidis blame several entities for their current predicamen,t including an Iraqi government that has never sufficiently protected them, Kurdish forces who abandoned the fight for Sinjar last August—and an Obama administration whose lack of continuity has given ISIS the impression they can exterminate Yazidis with impunity.

Last month Ismael traveled to Baghdad to plead for help. He met a list of VIPs that included U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart E. Jones, French Ambassador to Iraq François Bartley, Iraqi President Fuad Masum and Minister of Women’s Affairs Bayan Nouri. Al Jazeera America columnist John Batchelor confirms from a separate source that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is also aware of the Yazidis’ precarious circumstances. Yet he further notes that she and her staff have “several explanations for why so little has been done for the Yazidis, including the lack of security without U.S. forces in the region.”

No doubt. In the meantime, hundreds of Yazidi women abducted by ISIS remain unaccounted for, children in refugee camps freeze to death, and the Peshmerga remain without the necessary firepower to limit ISIS’s gain, much less defeat them.

Yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama once again reminded the world how far he was willing to push the boundaries of moral equivalency in order to spare bloodthirsty Islamists from being singled out. “Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Those would be the very same Christians, much like the Yazidis, currently being eliminated in the Middle East—even as the same can be said for leadership and morality in the White House.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Freedom, Heresy, Human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Heresy, human rights, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Koran, Mount Sinjar, Sharia law, Terrorism, Terrorists, Torture, Yazidis

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Obama: Christianity No Different From the Islamic State

February 7, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Humor: Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry

February 7, 2015

Brian Williams should replace Secretary Kerry, Dan Miller’s Blog, February 6, 2015

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

Although it would be hypocritical for NBC to fire Mr. Williams for ~~mis- speaking~~ lying, it would enhance his chances of becoming our next Secretary of State. Like Hillary Clinton, Williams sorta told some truth when he admitted to lying for a dozen years. Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Williams, also a very good liar, deserves no less this year. After that? Perhaps “our” next President.

Here is a timeline of the progression of Williams’ tall tales, based on a Stars and Stripes article:

In late March 2003, the New York Daily News reported that “the one (helicopter) carrying Williams and (Retired General and current NBC consultant Wayne) Downing landed” after another chopper ahead of them had been hit by “a rocket-fired grenade.” Even this early report appears to have been exaggerated. Larry O’Connor at Truth Revolt, reacting to Williams’ on-air statement Wednesday night, noted that Williams was really “in an aircraft that followed the one hit by RPG fire by an entire hour.”

Several days later, USA Today reported that Williams “was stranded in the Iraqi desert for three days.” That hardly appears to be the case. In a comment at an NBC Facebook page, a clearly frustrated Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the helicopter that was hit, wrote: “I remember you guys taking back off in a different flight of Chinooks from another unit and heading to Kuwait to report your ‘war story’ to the Nightly News.”

By 2007, the helicopter that was hit was, according to a Williams blog entry, “the chopper flying in front of ours.” A University of Notre Dame press release in 2010, the year he gave the commencement address there, referred to how “the lead helicopter was shot down.”

In March 2013, Williams told Alec Baldwin of “being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe,” and, after prompting, said that he “briefly” thought he would die.

Later that month, Williams crossed the fairy-tale Rubicon, telling David Letterman that “two of the four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in,” and that after that, the problem was how “we figure out how to land.” We?

Finally, on January 30, Williams, applying even more mustard, told the nation on Nightly News that “the helicopter we were travelling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG.”

The indispensable Kristinn Taylor at Gateway Pundit has found that “speech promotional bios touted Williams’ bravery in returning to Iraq after he claimed being under fire.”

Here’s a video of Williams’ 2013 love feast with David Letterman. His Iraq narrative begins at 2:50.

According to Sharyl Attkisson, Presidential Candidate Clinton [like Brian Williams],

never fully explained how she could have made such a mistake as saying she had ducked sniper fire when there hadn’t been a sniper in sight. Initially, she stated “I was sleep deprived and I misspoke.”

But as my report below (“Clinton Doubles Down”) shows, Clinton told varieties of the embellishment over a long period of time, not just when she was sleep deprived.

Had Clinton somehow convinced herself that it had all really happened? Or did she knowingly advance a false story?

“So I made a mistake,” Clinton also stated at one point. “It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”

Whoops.

In the next video, Mr. Williams and a guest from NBC discuss Clinton’s Bosnia adventures, Senator Obama’s candidacy and their anticipated consequences for her 2008 Democrat presidential nomination. Note the apparent puzzlement about why Clinton confessed to having “misspoken.”

Clinton didn’t get the Democrat presidential nomination in 2008 but was confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of State in 2009. Doesn’t Williams deserve a promotion comparable to what Clinton got (from failed Presidential Candidate to SecState)? Shouldn’t he be held to the same standard?

Williams had seen what happened to Clinton just weeks earlier, yet kept telling his own fish tale. To paraphrase one of his own NBC colleagues, this isn’t Little League, it’s a nightly news anchor with an audience of millions. Will he be held to the same standards to which NBC and the rest of the media held Clinton?

What standards were those then and, of more importance, what have they been since? She still “deserves” to become “our” next President.

Tom Brokaw, also of NBC, contends that Williams should go. Perhaps, however, NBC will forgive and forget.

The Los Angeles Times, quoting anonymous NBC News execs, reported that Williams’s on-air apology has been accepted internally and that he’s expected to face no disciplinary action for his serious journalistic lapse, which included showing video of a combat-damaged helicopter and representing it wrongly as the Chinook on which Williams had been a passenger.

As noted by Howard Kurtz at Fox News,

When it comes to the NBC franchise, Brian Williams is too big to fail. He’s the face of the network, he hosts the top-rated network newscast, he guest-hosts “Saturday Night Live.” He’s a bankable asset. And in fairness, Williams has a pretty unblemished track record.

Oh well.

Reality is often unpleasant and hard to deal with, so we need a creative Secretary of State who will continue to reject reality, base policy on fantasy and do so with impunity for a decade or more.

Clinton, a likely Presidential Candidate for 2016, did her “best.”

Obama does what Obama does and gets away with it. According to an article at Breitbart, the seven Muslims at a recent White House meeting on domestic and foreign policy issues have been named.

According to a White House statement on the President’s meeting, the domestic issues discussed were the “Affordable Care Act, anti-Muslim violence and discrimination, the 21st Century Policing Task Force, and the upcoming White House Summit on Countering Violence Extremism.” On the foreign policy front, “the President discussed the need to continue countering ISIL and other groups that commit horrific acts of violence, purportedly in the name of Islam,” while also congratulating Muslims on their “remarkable contributions” to America. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Comedian and left-wing pundit Dean Obeidallah revealed that he was one of the fifteen Muslim-American “leaders” brought to the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

“The No.1 issue raised: The alarming rise in anti-Muslim bigotry in America,” Obeidallah said of the meeting with the President. Their chief collective concern was not the rise of the Sunni Islamic State, nor the expansion of the Caliphatist Shiite Iranian regime and its messianic drive towards nuclear weapons, but instead, “anti-Muslim bigotry in America.” [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

The Detroit Free Press also revealed that senior Obama advisers Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes were present in the Muslim leaders’ meeting. [Emphasis added.]

Dean Obeidallah also revealed that Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, was behind the effort to get Muslim leaders to the White House.

Muslim Advocates reveals on its website that its three main objectives are to “end profiling,” “strengthen [Muslim] charities,” and “counter hate.” Its Press Center section is filled with posts demanding intelligence organizations, such as the New York Police Department and federal agencies, end their “Muslim Suspicionless Spying Program,” while also dictating to the media that it should “Report Accurately on Muslims.” Another post reads, “What You Need to Know About the New Federal Racial Profiling Policy.” Review of Muslim Advocates’ press releases reveals that the only foreign policy issue with which the group has concerned itself over the past year was urging Sec. of State John Kerry to ensureMuslim “Americans are able to safely perform the annual religious Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.” [Emphasis added.]

Keep up the good work, Big Guy, Insha’Allah.

Kerry has bravely continued the march.

Williams, who should be rehabilitated as quickly as was Senator Clinton, could not be worse and might even be better than Kerry. Then, his path to the presidency should be clear even if he (unlike Obama) is candid in public on rare occasions.

Hey, Grandpa! I need some of that stuff.

Categories: Appeasement, Benghazi, Foreign policy, Humor, Iran, Iran scam, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Media, Nukes, Obama
Tags: Appeasement, Benghazi, Brian Williams, Foreign Policy, Humor, Iran, Iran Scam, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Media, Nukes, Secretary of State

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