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Is the Islamic State a Good Thing? | FrontPage Magazine

October 2, 2014

Is the Islamic State a Good Thing?October 2, 2014

by Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a CBN News contributor.

He is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians 2013 and The Al Qaeda Reader 2007.

 

via Is the Islamic State a Good Thing? | FrontPage Magazine.

 


he following is an envisioning of what might eventually unfold if the Islamic State is left to flourish.  Although it is only one of several scenarios, due to its ostensibly implausible nature, it deserves some delineation.

 

The Islamic State (IS) continues expanding its territory and influence through jihad.   Religious minorities that fall under its sway—at least the fortunate ones—continue to flee in droves, helping make the Islamic State what it strives to be: purely Islamic.

Left unfettered, with only cosmetic airstrikes by an indecisive Obama administration to deal with, IS continues growing in strength and confidence, as Western powers again stand idly by.

More and more Muslims around the world, impressed and inspired by what they see, become convinced that the Islamic State is in fact the new caliphate deserving of their allegiance.  Such Muslims—the most “radical” kind, who delight in the slaughter and subjugation of “infidels”—continue leaving Western nations and migrating to the Islamic State to wage jihad and live under Sharia.

In other words, a sizable chunk of the world’s most radicalized/pious Muslims all become localized in one region.  There they openly and proudly display their anti-infidel supremacism.

Throughout, Western media have no choice but to report objectively—so thoroughly exposed for its barbarity has IS become that it is an insurmountable task to whitewash its atrocities.  The world has seen enough about IS to know that this is a savage, hostile, and supremacist state without excuse.   Even Obama, after originally citing “grievances” as propelling the Islamic State’s successes, recently made an about face, saying “No grievance justifies these actions.”

Put differently, the “Palestinian card” will not work here.  Western media, apologists, and talking heads cannot portray IS terror—including crucifying, beheading, and raping humans simply because they are “infidels”—as a product of “grievances” or “land disputes.”

Indeed, the Islamic State itself, which is largely composed of foreigners, is the one invading other territories (Iraq, Syria), massacring and driving out their most indigenous inhabitants, from Christians to Yazidis.

In time, the Islamic State’s borders are fully consolidated and the “caliphate” is a fact of reality.  Its war on fellow Muslim “apostates”—its current excuse for not engaging the greatest of all “infidels” in the region, Israel—eventually comes to a close or stalemate.

Then the inevitable happens: another conflict erupts between Israel and Hamas; Muslims around the word, including those under IS authority, drunk with power and feelings of superiority, demand that the time to wipe out the Jewish infidel has finally come; that the second phase of the caliphate is now or never—conquest of “original infidels.”

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently declared during his U.N. speech, “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.”

Thus the Islamic State will eventually be compelled to start saber rattling and worse against Israel.  After all, its entire legitimacy is founded on its namesake—that it is the “Islamic state,” the state that magnifies and protects Islam and Muslims.   It must eventually confront Israel or else be proven the greatest of all hypocrites or munafiqun—a term of great rebuke in the Koran, which some Muslim authorities are already applying to IS for not confronting Israel now.

Conflicts inevitably ensue between Israel and its neighboring Islamic State.   But unlike the Jewish state’s war on Hamas—which the mainstream media can manipulate and portray as a war on innocent Palestinian women and children—world governments and media will find it exceedingly difficult to criticize Israel should any conflict between it and IS arise.

Unlike sympathy for the Palestinians, non-Muslims around the world vacillate between hate for and fear of the Islamic State; even Karen Armstrong, John Esposito and their ilk cannot apologize for this particular group of Islamic savages—other than to insist that theirs is not true Islam (an irrelevant point for the purposes of this scenario).

Moreover, the argument habitually used against Israel—that its war on Hamas creates innocent Palestinian casualties—loses all legitimacy in any war on the Islamic State.

After all, IS, the state itself—not some terrorist organization ensconced within the state—is beheading, massacring, and enslaving humans solely on the basis of their religious identity.  Its citizens—who went there of their own accord, unlike “displaced” and “trapped” Palestinians—are fanatical, extremist Muslims, whose greatest aspiration is to decapitate an infidel.

No one can apologize for this.   The best that can be said is that this is not “true” Islam.

This is why, even now, the pro-Islamic Obama administration is forced to condemn IS and even (if perfunctorily) militarily engage it.

In short, conventional war becomes very justifiable against IS—especially because there is no longer any worry of accidentally killing this or that moderate or non-Muslim, as they have all been driven away, replaced by Islamic terrorists from around the world.

And conventional war has traditionally been the bane of Islamists, who prefer terrorism, hiding among civilians, using them as shields, and playing the victim.

Safe from international censure and pushed to the edge, Israel eventually obliterates the Islamic State, while even Islam’s greatest apologists in the West must hold their tongue or else be seen as defenders of the state responsible for the greatest atrocities—crucifixions, beheadings, rapes, slavery, and wholesale massacres—so far committed in the 21st century.

Three positive consequences emerge from all this:

1. Not only is the Islamic State destroyed, but with it, some of the world’s most supremacist and hate-filled Muslims—those who quit their home countries, including from the West, to persecute and kill the “infidels.”

2. The rest of the world’s Muslims get a major and much needed wakeup call.  Some may start to rethink the notion of “jihad” and eternal enmity for the rest of the world.  Some may start to rethink Islam altogether.

3. The non-Muslim world also gets a much needed wakeup call, another lesson to add to the major wars and conflicts of the 20th century, this time about Islamic fascism, which, finally, becomes catalogued as the danger it is.

Note: I am not advocating for this scenario—admittedly, one of many different kinds of scenarios that can develop if the Islamic State is left to flourish—and would prefer to see IS made extinct now. For even if this scenario comes to pass, matters must first get significantly worse before they can begin to get better.

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Muslim Leaders Sign Letter Against ISIS, But Endorse Sharia

October 1, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These 18 leaders include:

Categories: Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Caliphate, Iraq, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Obama, Syria
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Obama’s post-American world is taking shape with the rise of Iran

October 1, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Iran, Iranian nukes, Islamic State, Obama
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EDITORIAL: Mr. Netanyahu’s tutorial for Obama

October 1, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Categories: Hamas, Islamic State, Israel, Palestinians, Netanyahu, Obama
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The irony of endorsing Palestinians while bombing ISIS

October 1, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Categories: Hamas, Iraq, Islamic State, Netanyahu, Obama, Syria
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Reports: ISIS Within a Mile of Baghdad

October 1, 2014

Reports: ISIS Within a Mile of Baghdad

Tuesday, 30 Sep 2014 09:34 PM

By Todd Beamon

via Reports: ISIS Within a Mile of Baghdad.

 

(Getty Images)
 

Islamic State militants are reportedly within a mile of Baghdad despite battling Iraqi forces and U.S.-led airstrikes, and there is “immense fear among everybody,” the vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq said Tuesday.

“We are at a crisis point,” Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad, told Sky News. “People know ISIS are coming nearer.”

The Islamic State is also known as ISIS.

White’s work is supported by the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, which said late Monday in a Facebook posting: “The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad.”

“They said it could never happen, and now it almost has. Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi army could do,” the posting said, referring to President Barack Obama.
“Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very very little,” the posting said.

He told Sky News that the U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS are doing little more than killing civilians.

“People are being killed by the attacks of the coalition,” he said.

“This is horrendous,” he said about the Islamic State’s advance into Iraq’s capital city. “We have civilians being killed, yet [the Islamic State] are moving toward Baghdad.”

Renewed fighting has also occurred in such central Iraqi cities as Baquba and Ramadi, Sky News reports, as ISIS fighters appear to have advanced within 3 miles of Kobani, a critical border town in Syria, despite the airstrikes.

The reports come as the White House remains in damage-control mode after Obama told CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials had underestimated the ISIS threat.

The suggestion angered congressional Republicans, leading Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to charge that “this was not an intelligence community failure, but a failure by policymakers to confront the threat.”

Obama had said:

“Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” He was referring to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest sought to clarify Obama’s remarks, noting that he was not blaming anyone as the U.S. sought global cooperation in the airstrikes that seek to weaken ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

“That is not what the president’s intent was,” Earnest said Tuesday. “What the president was trying to make clear” was “how difficult it is to predict the will of security forces that are based in another country to fight.”

In his Sky News interview, White said of Baghdad: “I’ve never known the city like it is at the moment.”

“Streets which are usually choc-a-bloc with traffic, cars and people are almost empty. People are too fearful to even leave their homes.”

He said that his church most likely would be “very high up” on the Islamic State’s target list and that “I must be at the top of the list.”

White told Sky News that one Iraqi soldier told him that if he was confronted by ISIS he would “take off his uniform and run,” and that he was in the army “because he needs the money.”

“This, sadly, is the kind of attitude of so many of these forces who should be coming to our aid and help,” he said.

According to The Daily Mail, airstrikes over the weekend appeared to have halted ISIS militants’ advance at Ameriyat al-Falluja, a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad.

But most of the fighters were undaunted — and many are making their way to the suburbs of Baghdad, the Daily Mail reports.

In a Facebook posting earlier Monday, White said: “Over 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed by ISIS yesterday, things are so bad.”

“All the military airstrikes are doing nothing,” he added. “If ever we needed your prayers, it is now.”

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ISIS to open its first consulate in Istanbul

October 1, 2014

ISIS to open its first consulate in Istanbul

Published on Monday, 29 September 2014 09:36

via AWDNews – ISIS to open its first consulate in Istanbul.

 

The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) intends to inaugurate its first diplomatic mission in Istanbul in order to provide consular services for all who wish to join the extremist group in Iraq, reported Turkish daily Aydinlik as saying.

Abu-Omar Al-Tunisi, the ISIS de facto head of foreign relations issued a statement, saying that the Islamic Caliphate is determined to launch its first diplomatic mission in a friendly and Muslim country. He further noted that the ISIS hopes that the bilateral relations with Ankara will witness more developments under the aegis of newly-elected president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

ISIS also claims that its consulate in Istanbul will pay the hospital bills of all wounded Islamist militants who traveled to turkey to receive medical treatment.

CHP (Republican People’s Party) , a leading Turkish opposing party issued a communique condemning Turkish government decision to allow ISIS to open a legal diplomatic office  in Çankaya – the central and elegant metropolitan district of the city of Istanbul.

Earlier, the Turkish Prime Minster Ahmet Davutoglu acknowledged that Turkish diplomats, kidnapped by ISIS militants when Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city was seized in early-June, were released in a prisoner exchange deal with ISIS.

The Turkish government spokesperson said on Sunday in a press conference that nearly 50 Islamist merciless detainees including a family of a prominent warlord were set free in a swap deal and in return, all Turkish hostages were released and reunited with their families. The government spokesman reiterated that he is not authorized to neither confirm nor reject reports about the probable opening of ISIS consulate in Istanbul.

The Turkish omnipotent president in an interview with government-run TRT news channel dismissed many reports alleging that his government is keen to establish a formal relation with ISIS, the hardline organization which controls vast swaths of northern and western Iraq and also neighboring Syrian provinces but in a same time, he blatantly advocated the prison exchange deal with the infamous ultra-Islamist militants.

“ we shouldn’t be remiss in  understanding the great and risky mission  our intelligence service accomplished in a meticulous prison exchange deal , thus we are sorry for those corrupt politicians criticizing us for negotiating with militants for the sake of securing the release of our brave diplomats” said the populist Turkish leader  during Sunday night interview with TRT.

 

Source:

http://www.el-balad.com/1164680

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With a strategy like this, does it even matter who the Free Syrian Army is?

October 1, 2014

With a strategy like this, does it even matter who the Free Syrian Army is? Breitbart, , September 29, 2014

Syrian-militant-reuters

The US strategy as announced by President Obama in his speech to the nation on September 10, 2014, calls for the US to establish staging areas inside Saudi Arabia where 5,000 FSA fighters can spend 18 months training to become a more effective and well armed fighting force to better combat both the Syrian regime, again numbered at up to 175,000 men and forces of the ISIS terrorist army.

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Assume for a moment that the Free Syrian Army, the mysterious rebel alliance to which the United States is now allied in its broader campaign to degrade and destroy ISIS, is not the ill defined and ever-changing conglomeration of tribal factions; each committed to a Jihadist agenda in some degree and each with their own mysterious allegiances actively seeking the military overthrow of the Iranian backed regime of Bashir al-Assad.

Instead, assume that the FSA consists in fact of unimpeachably “vetted” limited government, Jeffersonian style democrats each of whom are are fully committed to the establishment of a US – styled constitutional republic in Syria, and thus utterly worthy of complete and total American support. Now that an air tight hypothetical premise has been built to justify bipartisan support for the FSA, try to imagine the Obama Administration authoring the policy most likely to condemn the FSA to certain defeat and US regional standing to rock bottom.

One need not imagine however, that the latter part of the fanciful scenario spelled out above is in any way fictional. As it currently has been articulated, this pretty much sums up US policy vis-a-vis the Free Syrian. As of this writing, Syria’s civil has been raging for 1294 days. During that span, more than 200,000 Syrians have been killed, many times that wounded and more than one third of the country’s 30 million people have been made homeless. The country’s map now resembles a pockmarked incomprehensible hodgepodge of regime and rebel redoubts and strongholds massed against each other.

The two main sides in Syria’s civil war–the regime and its prime opponents who collectively chooses to call itself the Syrian Coalition–have fought each other to a standoff in the past several months. The ISIS forces that occupy much of Syria’s east and north have largely avoided much military contact with regime forces, concentrating instead on consolidating its hold over the territory it controls, although ISIS forces did attack and overrun four Syrian military outposts in August, gleefully displaying the heads of Syrian soldiers its fighters had proudly cut off.

Using US supplied war material it stole from fleeing Iraqi forces it overran in June and July, ISIS has fortified its positions in Syria and is rapidly moving toward Aleppo, Syria’s largest city currently in rebel or FSA, hands. The so-called “Free Syrian rebels” now find themselves confronted with an overwhelming multi forced front. In Aleppo, they are surrounded. Its continued control of that city depends upon it being able to hold communications lines that grow more precarious by the day.

The Obama Administration and most western analysts estimate the size of the Free Syrian Army now caught in this deadly pincer at roughly 5,000 men. To the north and east, the 5,000 FSA fighters, if they can even be called a single force with unitary command, (There are at least three people at present who claim to lead the FSA).

They face a rapidly expanding and ever emboldened ISIS army of between 10,000 and 31,500. Surrounding the 5,000 FSA fighter to their south and west are the regular forces of the Syrian Army that number between 130,000 to 165,000 men.

The US strategy as announced by President Obama in his speech to the nation on September 10, 2014, calls for the US to establish staging areas inside Saudi Arabia where 5,000 FSA fighters can spend 18 months training to become a more effective and well armed fighting force to better combat both the Syrian regime, again numbered at up to 175,000 men and forces of the ISIS terrorist army.

How will these 5,000 fighters leave their current positions and get to Saudi Arabia? Who will assume control of the positions they currently hold once they abandon them for the Elysian fields of Saudi Arabia? Once “trained” and “equipped”, how, a year and a half from now, will these 5000 FSA fighters, currently outnumbered 50 to 1, be able to “reassume” their long  abandoned positions? Does the Administration and other supporters of its FSA assistance strategy expect ISIS and Assad forces to politely agree to hold their enemies coats while they excuse themselves for training in Saudi Arabia?

Has there ever in American military history been a more hair-brained, ill-conceived military mission more certain to fail? Again, putting aside entirely the many valid questions about precisely who we are the people we are planning to train and what their real objectives are, with a strategy like this, does it really even matter?

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Obama Betrays the Kurds

September 30, 2014

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

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

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

Kurdish fightersAhmad al-Rubaye/Getty Images)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surely we can do better.

 

Categories: Female Kurdish fighters, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Obama, Syria
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Kurdish Female Fighters against ISIS – FEMALE STATE (extended un-aired footage)

September 30, 2014

Kurdish Female Fighters against ISIS – FEMALE STATE (extended un-aired footage), September 29, 2014

(Why are “we” not providing more support to the Kurdish fighters? Might it offend some members of our “coalition of the willing” that the Kurdish fighters — women among them — probably would not require remedial training of the type “we” apparently need to provide to Iraqi troops and others? WTF — “Win the Future,” or something. Who is leading this clusterdunk and from where? Please see also Obama betrays the Kurds.— DM)

Categories: Female Kurdish fighters, Iraq, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Jihad, Kurdish fighters, Syria
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