The Obama administration on Wednesday paid $490 million in cash assets to Iran and will have released a total of $11.9 billion to the Islamic Republic by the time nuclear talks are scheduled to end in June, according to figures provided by the State Department.
Today’s $490 million release, the third such payment of this amount since Dec. 10, was agreed to by the Obama administration under the parameters of another extension in negotiations over Tehran’s contested nuclear program that was inked in November.
Iran will receive a total of $4.9 billion in unfrozen cash assets via 10 separate payments by the United States through June 22, when talks with Iran are scheduled to end with a final agreement aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear work, according to a State Department official.
Iran received $4.2 billion in similar payments under the 2013 interim agreement with the United States and was then given another $2.8 billion by the Obama administration last year in a bid to keep Iran committed to the talks through November, when negotiators parted ways without reaching an agreement.
Iran will have received a total of $11.9 billion in cash assets by the end of June if current releases continue on pace as scheduled.
The release of this money has drawn outrage from some Republican lawmakers who filed legislation last year to prevent the release of cash due to a lack of restrictions on how Iran can spend the money.
These cash payments by the United States have been made with no strings attached, prompting concerns that Iran could use the funds to finance its worldwide terror operations, which include the financial backing of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other rogue entities.
Senators—including Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.), and John Cornyn (R., Texas)—sought last year to put a hold on the cash infusions until the White House could certify that Iran was not using the money to support terrorism.
Kirk, who is preparing to offer legislation that would tighten sanctions on Iran, said that the ongoing payments could help Iran fuel its terror empire well into the near future.
“Between November 2014 and July 2015, the interim deal’s direct forms of sanctions relief will allow Iran access to roughly $4.9 billion in frozen money,” Kirk told the Washington Free Beacon “That’s equal to what it’d cost Iran to fund Hezbollah for as much as 50 years.”
The Pentagon estimates Iran has spent $100 to $200 million per year funding Hezbollah.
Entities likely to receive support from Iran include the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the legislation suggests.
When final negotiations between the United States and Iran failed in November, negotiators decided once more to extend the talks through June of this year. The terms of that extension granted Iran the 10 payments of $490 million, a State Department official said.
“With respect to sanctions relief, the United States will enable the repatriation of $4.9 billion of Iranian revenue held abroad during the extension,” the official said.
The first two payments were made in December, followed by Wednesday’s payment.
The next release is scheduled for Feb. 11, with two more scheduled for March. The rest of the frozen cash assets will be given back to Iran on April 15, May 6, May 27, and June 22, respectively.
Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said the ongoing release of these assets has provided Iran with a critical “financial lifeline.”
“The Obama administration provided Iran with a financial lifeline through both direct sanctions relief and the de-escalation of sanctions pressure that helped the regime stabilize its economy after a severe sanctions-induced economic crisis in 2012 and 2013,” Dubowitz said. “It is not a surprise that this has increased Iranian negotiating leverage and hardened the supreme leader’s nuclear intransigence.”
In addition to decrying the lack of restrictions in place to ensure that Iran does not use the released funds to sponsor terrorism, critics of the sanctions relief protest that Iran is benefitting while the United States receives little in return.
Iran has continued to enrich uranium under the interim deal, adding what one critic, Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) referred to as “about one bomb’s worth” to its reserves.
Iran also has continued to make advances on the plutonium track, which provides it with a second path to a nuclear bomb.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran announced last week that the country has begun constructing two new light water nuclear reactors, a move that the U.S. State Department said is permissible under the terms of the interim agreement.
(Obama continues to tell us, ad nauseam, that Islam is the religion of peace. He should lead some of the one million man small processions, hand in hand with Iranian President Rouhani and no security guards present. Then, surely, Islamic terrorists will lay down swallow their weapons and peace will reign. Right?
— DM)
Here’s another idea: Million Man Muslim Marches in every major capital city around the world to denounce Islamic terrorism, a show of solidarity to tell the jihadists that good, law abiding Muslims hate what the extremists are doing in the name of Islam.
Of course none of this will happen. Moderate Muslims may tweet, but if history is any guide that’s as brave as most of them will ever get.
******************
In a column about the massacre in Paris, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wanted us to understand that while there is indeed a “strain of Islamic intolerance and extremism” that has caused too much violence in the world, most Muslims are good people who detest what happened in Paris the other day as much as you and I do.
“Terror incidents lead many Westerners to perceive Islam as inherently extremist,” he wrote, “but I think that is too glib and simple-minded. Small numbers of terrorists make headlines, but they aren’t representative of a complex and diverse religion of 1.6 billion adherents. My Twitter feed Wednesday brimmed with Muslims denouncing the attack — and noting that fanatical Muslims damage the image of Muhammad far more than the most vituperative cartoonist.”
That’s the age we live in. Tweets – 140 characters or less – is how people express outrage. Remember when Michelle Obama held up her little sign that read “# Bring Back Our Girls” after a Muslim terrorist group in Nigeria kidnapped 300 schoolgirls? # or no # … the girls are still missing. Terrorists aren’t afraid of tweets and hash tags.
Here’s another idea: Million Man Muslim Marches in every major capital city around the world to denounce Islamic terrorism, a show of solidarity to tell the jihadists that good, law abiding Muslims hate what the extremists are doing in the name of Islam.
Muslims should march in Paris and London and Madrid and Rome and Washington and Cairo and Riyadh and Beirut and every other capital of every other Muslim country.
They should make speeches that condemn the violence. They should say that the jihadists are backward people who must be shunned. They should make clear that they not only condemn Islamic terrorism, they will give the terrorists no comfort by even understanding it.
Imams should look out at the crowds and say that those who kill in the name of Allah will not be greeted by virgins in Paradise. They should say they will be greeted by fire in Hell.
Of course none of this will happen. Moderate Muslims may tweet, but if history is any guide that’s as brave as most of them will ever get.
Most, but not all. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi recently told an audience of religious scholars that they must lead a “revolution” to transform Islam. “You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world—I say it again, the entire world—is waiting for your next move because this umma (a word that can refer either to the Egyptian nation or the entire Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
A sliver of sunshine in what too often is a very dark Arab world.
(Please see also Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled for explanations of what happens in the legitimate “news” media and why. — DM)
If the West is experiencing a rise in the sort of terror attacks that are endemic to the Islamic world—church attacks, sex-slavery and beheadings—it was only natural that the same mainstream media that habitually conceals such atrocities, especially against Christians and other minorities under Islam, would also conceal the reality of jihadi aspirations on Western soil.
[T]he level of the [media] grovelling after the tragic and deadly saga in Sydney Australia over the last 24 hours has been astounding.
At the time of writing, the lead story on the BBC website is of course about that very tragedy, in which an Islamist fanatic took a random group hostage in a cafe, ultimately killing two of them.
He did this in the name of Islam. But you wouldn’t get that impression if you started to read the BBC’s lead story, which astoundingly managed to avoid mentioning the words Islam, Islamic, Islamist, Muslim, or any derivations thereof for a full 16 paragraphs. The New York Times, which led by calling the terrorist, Man Haron Monis an “armed man”, waited until paragraph 11.
In the Guardian’s main story – whose lead paragraph simply referred to a “gunman” — you had to wait until paragraph 24.
If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it.
….
In the wider media, reports about Muslim fears of a “backlash” have been all but ubiquitous.
If these are the lengths that Western mainstream media go to dissemble about the Islamic-inspired slaughter of Western peoples, it should now be clear why the ubiquitous Muslim persecution of those unfashionable Christian minorities is also practically unknown by those who follow Western mainstream media.
As with the Sydney attack, media headlines say it all. The 2011 New Year’s Eve Coptic church attack that left 28 dead appeared under vague headlines: “Clashes grow as Egyptians remain angry after attack,”was the New York Times’ headline; and “Christians clash with police in Egypt after attack on churchgoers kills 21” was the Washington Post’s—as if frustrated and harried Christians lashing out against their oppressors is the “big news,” not the unprovoked atrocity itself; as if their angry reaction “evens” everything up.
A February 2012 NPR report titled “In Egypt, Christian-Muslim Tension is on the Rise,” while meant to familiarize readers with the situation of Egypt’s Christians, prompts more questions than answers them: “In Egypt, growing tensions between Muslims and Christians have led to sporadic violence [initiated by whom?]. Many Egyptians blame the interreligious strife on hooligans [who?] taking advantage of absent or weak security forces. Others believe it’s because of a deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the minority Christian community [what are the sources of this “mistrust”?].”
The photo accompanying the story is of angry Christians holding a cross aloft—not Muslims destroying crosses, which is what prompted the former to this display of Christian solidarity.
Blurring the line between victim and oppressor—recall the fear of “anti-Muslim backlashes” whenever a Muslim terrorizes “infidels” in the West—also applies to the media’s reporting on Muslim persecution of Christians.
A February 2012 BBC report on a church attack in Nigeria that left three Christians dead, including a toddler, objectively states the bare bone facts in one sentence. Then it jumps to apparently the really big news: that “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…”
The report goes on and on, with an entire section about “very angry” Christians till one confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: nonstop terror attacks on their churches and the slaughter of their women and children.
A New York Times report that appeared on December 25, 2011—the day after Boko Haram bombed several churches during Christmas Eve services, leaving some 40 dead—said that such church bombings threaten “to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims…” Such an assertion suggests that both Christians and Muslims are equally motivated by religious hostility—even as one seeks in vain for Christian terror organizations that bomb mosques in Nigeria to screams of “Christ is Great!”
Indeed, Boko Haram has torched 185 churches—to say nothing of the countless Christians beheaded—in just the last few months alone.
Continuing to grasp for straws, the same NYT report suggests that the Nigerian government’s “heavy-handed” response to Boko Haram is responsible for its terror, and even manages to invoke another mainstream media favorite: the poverty-causes-terrorism myth.
Whether Muslim mayhem is taking place in the Islamic or Western worlds, the mainstream media shows remarkable consistency in employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.
As such, Western mainstream media keep Western majorities in the dark about the Islamic threat, here and abroad. Thus the “MSM” protects and enables the Islamic agenda—irrespective of whether its distortions are a product of intent, political correctness, or sheer stupidity.
[T]here is mounting evidence that weapons and fighters are crossing from Turkey into Syria, where they are delivered to Islamic State fighters. Turkish officials are turning a blind eye, or maybe even facilitating the traffic. Stolen oil is moving in the other direction, sold to raise cash for Islamic State. Inside Turkey, as well, Schanzer and Tahiroglu write, Islamic State has “established cells for recruiting militants and other logistical operations.” Last weekend, Turkey’s main Kurdish party accused the Erdogan government of allowing Islamic State fighters to attack the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from within Turkey.
******************
Turkey should have been part of the solution. Instead it has become part of the problem. The problem, of course, is the spread of jihadism throughout the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.
Turkish policies have been aiding and abetting the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate; the Islamic State group, which has turned large swaths of Syria and Iraq into killing fields; the Islamic Republic of Iran, still ranked by the U.S. government as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and well on its way to becoming nuclear-armed; and the Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas, the group’s Palestinian branch.
Troubling, too, is the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Turkish leaders. Turkish Science, Industry and Technology Minister Fikri Isık claimed last week that it was Muslim scientists who first discovered that the earth is round. Two weeks earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that Muslim sailors reached the Americas 300 years before Columbus — only to find that well-established Muslims in Cuba had built a beautiful mosque.
Such myth-making might be dismissed as nothing more than attempts to play to Islamic pride. Less easy to excuse is Erdogan’s increasing xenophobia. “Foreigners,” he recently observed, “love oil, gold, diamonds, and the cheap labor force of the Islamic world. They like the conflicts, fights and quarrels of the Middle East.” He added that Westerners “look like friends, but they want us dead, they like seeing our children die. How long will we stand that fact?”
If Turkey were just another tin-pot dictatorship, none of this would much matter. But Turkey is a Muslim-majority (98 percent) republic with a dynamic economy (not dependent on the extraction of petroleum), a member of NATO (making it, officially, an American ally), and a candidate for membership in the European Union (though that possibility now appears remote).
Just three years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama listed Erdogan as one of five world leaders with whom he had especially close personal ties. He regarded the Turkish leader as a moderate, his interpreter of — and bridge to — the tumultuous and confusing Islamic world.
Today, as detailed in a new report by Jonathan Schanzer and Merve Tahiroglu, my colleagues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Erdogan is refusing to allow the American-led coalition formed in August to launch strikes against Islamic State from Turkish soil.
Worse, there is mounting evidence that weapons and fighters are crossing from Turkey into Syria, where they are delivered to Islamic State fighters. Turkish officials are turning a blind eye, or maybe even facilitating the traffic. Stolen oil is moving in the other direction, sold to raise cash for Islamic State. Inside Turkey, as well, Schanzer and Tahiroglu write, Islamic State has “established cells for recruiting militants and other logistical operations.” Last weekend, Turkey’s main Kurdish party accused the Erdogan government of allowing Islamic State fighters to attack the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from within Turkey.
The FDD report cites numerous sources alleging that Turkey also has given assistance to the Nusra Front. To be fair: The Turkish government, like the Obama administration, seeks the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, satrap of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A Turkish official is quoted as saying that Nusra fighters are essential to that effort, adding: “After Assad is gone, we know how to deal with these extremist groups.”
Do they? Hamas is an extremist group and one of its top leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, has been permitted to set up his headquarters in Turkey. In August, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said it had thwarted a Hamas-led plot to topple Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — and that Arouri was behind it. Arouri also claimed responsibility — in the presence of Turkey’s deputy prime minister — for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli boys in the West Bank early last summer, an act of terrorism that led to the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
There’s more: credible allegations that Turkey has helped Iran’s rulers evade sanctions; the fact that Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country; Erdogan’s comparison of Israelis to Nazis (guess which he regards as more “barbaric”); and his pledge to “wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. They will see the Turkish republic’s strength.”
To understand what Turkey has become, it helps to know a little about what Turkey used to be. Istanbul was once Constantinople, a Christian capital of the ancient world. In 1453, it fell to the fierce armies of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic caliphate. Islam’s political and religious leaders soon established the Sublime Porte, the central government of their growing imperial realm.
Almost 500 years later, in the aftermath of World War I, the empire collapsed and the caliphate was dissolved. Modern Turkey arose from the ashes thanks to the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, a visionary general who believed that progress and prosperity could be achieved only by separating mosque and state. His goal was to make Turkey a nation, one as modern and powerful as any in Europe.
A century later, the world looks rather different. There are good reasons to believe Europe is in decline and America in retreat (these are disparate phenomena). While it may be delusional to believe that Columbus encountered Muslims in the Caribbean, it is not crazy to believe that, over the decades ahead, fierce Muslim warriors will profoundly alter the world order once more.
Viewed in this light, Erdogan looks like a neo-Ottoman, one who dreams of commanding Muslims — and those who have submitted to them — in many lands. If that’s accurate, the rift between Turkey and the West can only widen.
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns.
Although the definition references “abnormal mental or behavioral patterns” [emphasis added], the behaviors here involved have become increasingly “normal.” Multicultural linguistics are part, but only part, of the problem.
Insane responses to Iran nukes, terrorism support and human rights
As the P5+1 negotiations continue under Obama’s guidance, Iran appears increasingly likely to get or keep nukes. Iran knows Obama.
The Iranian president’s senior advisor has called President Barack Obama “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and described the U.S. leader’s tenure in office as “humiliating,” according to a translation of the highly candid comments provided to the Free Beacon. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
And with the deadline quickly approaching on talks between the U.S. and Iran over its contested nuclear program, Younesi’s denigrating views of Obama could be a sign that the regime in Tehran has no intent of conceding to America’s demands.
. . . .
“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.
. . . .
“We [the Islamic Republic] have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again,” Younesi said. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
The criticism of Obama echoes comments made recently by other world leaders and even former members of the president’s own staff, such as Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Do enough of us, and of perhaps greater importance enough of our “leaders,” know Him as well as Iran does?
The P5+1 negotiations were a scam from the beginning and the scam continues, enhanced by perceived needs to work with the (Shiite) Islamic Republic of Iran to degrade the Sunni (but “non-Islamic”) Islamic State and otherwise to “degrade” terrorism.
The Iranian government is well known for its funding of terrorism. The U. S. Government has long been well aware of it.
The United States State Department describes Iran as an “active state sponsor of terrorism.”[2]US Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice elaborated stating, “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions like Lebanon through Hezbollah in the Middle East, in the Palestinian Territories, and we have deep concerns about what Iran is doing in the south of Iraq.”[1]
So is the Obama Administration.
In July 2012, the United States State Department released a report on terrorism around the world in 2011. The report states that “Iran remained an active state sponsor of terrorism in 2011 and increased its terrorist-related activity” and that “Iran also continued to provide financial, material, and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.” The report states that Iran has continued to provide “lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians,” despite pledging to support the stabilization of Iraq, and that the Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on “small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets.” The report further states that Iran has provided weapons and training to the Assad regime in Syria which has launched a brutal crackdown on Syrian rebels, as well as providing weapons, training, and funding to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, among others, and has assisted in rearming Hizballah. [Emphasis added.]
Iran is also remarkable for its failure to provide even minimal human rights. For example, it has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.
Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.
Iran’s cooperation also is seen as essential to managing the chaos in Iraq and the Islamic State. With U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni militants, on-off (now definitely off) support of Iraq’s Shiite (ex-) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the possible disintegration of Iraq, this cooperation—or at least not overt opposition—is surely of more strategic importance than the latest human rights abuse. [Emphasis added.]
Iran’s support for terrorism, abysmal violation of even the most basic human rights — and what these Iranian characteristics suggest that Iran is likely to do with its nukes — appear to be deemed of no importance by the P5+1 negotiators.
Domestic terrorism
Terrorism is often labeled “workplace violence,” a “traffic accident“ or just about anything but Islamic. This is from Jihad Watch:
A traffic incident in Jerusalem. Another traffic incident in Canada just a few days ago. Odd coincidence: both drivers were devout Muslims who killed Infidels “in the name of Allah” (as the Canadian bad driver put it). Meanwhile, also in Canada, a mentally ill man shoots up the Parliament building and murders a soldier. And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet injures several police officers. Another odd coincidence: both the Canadian mentally ill man and the New York hatchet-wielder were also devout Muslims. The father of the former waged jihad in Libya, and the latter called for armed revolt in the U.S. But you must put all of these odd coincidences out of your mind right now. We know that none of this can have anything to do with Islam, and that greasy Islamophobes are the only ones who think otherwise.
“Memo from US Consulate refers to Jerusalem terror attack as ‘traffic incident,’” by Itamar Eichner, Ynet News, October 24, 2014 (thanks to Hamish):
Hours after a Palestinian terrorist drove his car into a crowd waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem, the US consulate in the city issued a memo referring to the attack as a “traffic incident”.
A three-month-old baby was killed and seven other people were wounded when Abdel Rahman a-Shaludi drove his car across incoming traffic to strike the people waiting at the station. The baby girl, Chaya Zissel Braun, had American citizenship.
The memo was sent to employees of the American consulate, which is based in East Jerusalem. It asks staff to report “any emergency.”
AnneinPT (Israel) provides an actual Associated Press news headline about the “traffic accident.” “Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem.”
Here’s how the AP, consistently with its customary reporting on things Israeli, might treat Palestinian rockets thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system: “Palestinian rockets damaged beyond repair by Israeli counter-measures.”
“Lone wolf” Islamic terrorists are exceedingly rare.
[N]umerous examples show that terrorist actors are almost always part of a network who were involved in recruiting and tasking terrorist activity. As Max Abrahms at Northeastern University has observed:
Since the advent of international terrorism in 1970, none of the 40 most lethal terrorist attacks has been committed by a person unaffiliated with some terrorist group, according to publicly available data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and stored at the University of Maryland. In fact, lone wolves have carried out just two of the 1,900 most deadly terrorist incidents over the last four decades.
So why “lone wolf”? Simply, it was a mechanism promulgated by the CVE [countering violent extremism] industry, with willing cooperation from law enforcement and intelligence officials, to exonerate themselves when a terrorist attack happened. At its core is terror agnosticism: “There is possibly no way to predict who will turn to terrorism, so therefore we can’t be held responsible when it happens. Oh, and give us more money so we can better improve how we won’t be able to predict terror attacks.” [Insert added.]
It’s Islamic terrorism all the way down:
Yet there has been great reluctance to associate terrorist attacks with the “religion of peace.” Here are examples of media and official reactions to the recent terrorist attacks in Canada: “CBC’s Derek Stoffel tweeted: ‘Amid the speculation in the #OttawaShooting in #Canada, it’s important to remember #ISIS hasn’t shown interest in attacks abroad.’” However,
Stoffel should have known that in late September, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict.
“The hard-Left Vox reacted to the revelation that Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim by dismissing the fact as irrelevant.”
Not to be outdone in multicultural empathy,
In the wake of the shootings in Ottawa, the police chiefs of Toronto and Ottawa wrote to local Muslim leaders, assuring them of their good will and urging Muslims to contact them in case of a “backlash.” These politically correct cops appear to have learned their lesson well: after every jihad attack, Muslims are the victims, and need special reassurances.
Eventually, the Canadian terrorist attacks were labeled “terrorism.” Even the White House called them “despicable terrorist attacks,” without mentioning the words “Islam” or “Islamist.”
In 2008 we the people elected Obama as “our” President. We did it again in 2012. He was viewed by many as the one for whom they had been waiting.
He was seen as the “God of all things.”
Fortunately, some seem to be recovering from their dementia.
However, all too many are still infected with insanity and continue to be contagious. Here’s a video of James O’Keefe talking with college students about vote fraud:
Vote fraud is apparently good when done for a “good” purpose.
When Obama spoke about Democrats running for reelection appearing to desert but really supporting him, he said
“So this isn’t about my feelings being hurt. These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. And I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.'” [Emphasis added.]
He may not have intended to encourage voter fraud, but “you do what you need to win” may well have been taken seriously by Obamabots. It has, as a minimum, an unpleasant odor.
How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.
. . . .
We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. [Emphasis added.]
With early voting starting Thursday, North Carolina’s election board found 154 ineligible voters on its poll lists — and officials are examining thousands more questionable registrations.
The State Board of Elections said late Tuesday that more than 9,000 additional voters’ names are being checked for legal status. They do not expect to finish checking before early voting starts Thursday.
It’s necessary for Republicans to win outside the “margin of fraud,” and there have already been signs of voter fraud. In Arizona,
A Republican party official in the largest county in Arizona says surveillance tape shows a progressive Hispanic activist blatantly and openly engaging in vote fraud.
. . . .
Between 12:54 and 1:04, LaFaro said, he observed a man wearing a “Citizens for a Better Arizona” T-shirt loudly drop a box containing hundreds of early-voting ballots on a table.
Citizens for a Better Arizona is a progressive group.
The man then began “stuffing the ballot box,” LaFaro said. “I watched in amazement.”
In Chicago, Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan’s votes for Republican candidates, including for himself, were registered as having been cast for Democrats. He noticed the problem before pulling the ultimate lever and it was determined that the machine had been “improperly calibrated.” There is no indication in the linked article whether other machines were also “improperly calibrated” or whether any of them were examined to find out. Obviously, voters need to check for whom the machines say they have voted before pulling the lever. How many will bother to do so?
Since voter fraud may be insufficient, President Obama has diligently prevented voters from understanding what He intends to do about immigration soon after the election. Jonathan Turley, Esq., a “liberal” in the old fashioned sense rather than a leftist, wrote this about Obama’s refusal to disclose or even discuss His post-election plans for immigration “reform.”
[Y]esterday [October 23d] White House CBS reporter Major Garrett broke from the mainstream pack and pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on a report that the Administration has order material for a “surge” of immigration IDs of up to 9 million in one year. Ernest called the questions “crazy” and encouraged everyone not to speculate . . . before the election obviously. [Emphasis added.]
[T]his Administration is openly withholding any information in its plans for unilateral presidential action despite the President’s pledge to take action after the election and before the New Year — only a matter of weeks. It is a cynical decision to prevent voters from being fully informed of the plans in a major policy area. Regardless of how one feels about immigration policies, it should be condemned by people across the political spectrum. [Emphasis added.]
More importantly, the media has to show some independence from the White House in this and other stories. Garrett is one of the few such reporters to press the point. His extraordinary exchange however was not covered by the mainstream press and, once again, the stonewalling on the issue was again dropped. I expect given the record of the White House corp, such questioning from Garrett does seem “crazy.” After all, disclosure of such plans might harm the White House in the upcoming election and only a “crazy” reporter would pursue such a story. [Emphasis added.]
Get your excuses for not voting prepared if you like the status quo:
If you don’t like the status quo, vote and remind your friends to do so as well.
Conclusions
From the P5+1 negotiations with Iran and the failure of our “leaders” even to pause on their path to Iranian nukes due to Iran’s abysmal human rights record, its support for terrorism and the dangers Iran already poses for what’s left of the free and democratic world — and will pose in even greater measure with nukes — to rampant antisemitism to Islamic attacks on and persecution of Christians qua Christians, to domestic Islamic terrorism to voting fraud, far too many are either insane or extraordinarily devious. Those who appear to be insane either do not recognize the nature of our enemies or do not care. Some are perhaps complicit.
As this insidious form of insanity spreads we seem to have no antidote more powerful than reason and common sense, both increasingly rare. Will our enemies have to provide a more effective antidote in the form of an attack on the United States so severe, clear and obvious that insanity can no longer be ignored even by our lunatics?
(Rather than chopping the tree down, we are watering and fertilizing it. — DM)
Arab protesters wave Islamic flags in front of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel / AP
Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.
We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.
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Last month, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu made a connection between the Islamic State and Hamas. These terrorist entities, Netanyahu said, have a lot in common. Separated by geography, they nonetheless share ideology and tactics and goals: Islamism, terrorism, the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a global caliphate.
And yet, Netanyahu observed, the very nations now campaigning against the Islamic State treated Hamas like a legitimate combatant during last summer’s Israel-Gaza war. “They evidently don’t understand,” he said, “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”
The State Department dismissed Netanyahu’s metaphor. “Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations,” said spokesman Jen Psaki. “But ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States.”
Psaki was wrong, of course. She’s always wrong. And, after the events of the last 48 hours, there ought not to be any doubt as to just how wrong she was. As news broke that a convert to Islam had murdered a soldier and stormed the Canadian parliament, one read of another attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian terrorist ran his car over passengers disembarking from light rail, injuring seven, and killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, who held a U.S. passport.
Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas—these awful people are literally baby killers. And yet they produce a remarkable amount of dissension, confusion, willful ignorance, and moral equivalence on the part of the men and women who conduct U.S. foreign policy. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” President Obama said of the terrorist army imposing sharia law across Syria and Iraq. “Obviously, we’re shaken by it,” President Obama said of the attack in Canada. “We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident,” the State Department said of the murder of a Jewish child.
“Not Islamic,” despite the fact that the Caliphate grounds its barbarous activities in Islamic law. “Shaken,” not stirred to action. “All sides,” not the side that targets civilians again and again and again. The evasions continue. They create space for the poison tree to grow.
The persistent denial of the ideological unity of Islamic terrorism—the studied avoidance of politically incorrect facts that has characterized our response to the Ft. Hood shooting, the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, the march of the caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and the crimes of Hamas—is not random. Behind it is a set of ideas with a long history, and with great purchase among the holders of graduate degrees who staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, Foggy Bottom, and the diplomatic corps. These ideas are why, in the words of John McCain, the terrorists “are winning, and we’re not.”
A report by Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security, “The Bad Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” analyzes the soil from which the poison tree draws strength. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Gorka writes, U.S. policymakers have faced a dilemma: “how to talk about Islam in a way that is instructive in dealing with Muslims who are enemies but not destructive to those who are friends.” For decades, the preferred solution has been to declare America’s friendship with Islam, and to distinguish between jihadists and everyday Muslims.
One of Gorka’s earliest examples of this policy comes from former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian, who said in 1992, “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace.” Similar assurances were uttered by officials in the Clinton administration, by Clinton himself, and by President George W. Bush. The policy was meant to delegitimize terrorism by denying the terrorists’ claim that they are acting according to religious precepts. “Policymakers believed that by tempering their language with regard to Islam, they might forestall further radicalization of moderate Muslims and indeed even potentially win moderates into the American circle of friendship.”
George W. Bush, Gorka notes, combined his rhetorical appeals to moderate Muslims with denunciations of the immorality of terrorism and illiberalism. And yet, for the government at large, downplaying the religious and ideological component to terrorist activities became an end in itself.
The Global War on Terror was renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism.” In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security published a lexicon of terrorism that said, “Our terminology must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.” State Department guidelines issued in 2008 said, “Never use the terms jihadist or mujahedeen to describe a terrorist.”
Then came Obama. As a candidate, he stressed his experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan. He told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that the call of the muezzin is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” In one of his first major addresses as president, he traveled to Cairo to inaugurate a new beginning with the Muslim world. His counterterrorism adviser, now director of the CIA, called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and referred to Jerusalem as “Al Quds.”
The change in the manner in which the government treated Islamism was profound. “Whereas the 9/11 Commission report, published under the presidency of George W. Bush in July 2004 as a bipartisan product, had used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145 times, jihad 126 times, and jihadist 32 times,” Gorka writes, “the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, issued by the Obama administration in August 2009, used the term Islam 0 times, Muslim 0 times, jihad 0 times.” The omission is stunning.
For Bush, terrorism consisted of immoral deeds committed by evil men animated by anti-Western ideology. Obama downplayed such judgmental language. He preferred an interpretation of terrorism as discrete acts of wrongdoing by extremists, driven by resentments and grievances such as the American failure to establish a Palestinian state, American support for secular Arab dictatorships, American forces in the Middle East, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, and, infamously, an anti-Islamic YouTube video. “The logic that follows,” Gorka writes, “is that once those grievances are addressed, the extremism will subside.”
Some logic. Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.
The result? The Islamic State rules Mosul, threatens Baghdad, and has conquered half of Syria as Bashar Assad gasses the other half. Libya has collapsed into tribal warfare. Egypt has gone from military dictatorship to Islamic authoritarianism and back again. An Islamic strongman rules Turkey, Hamas murders with impunity, Al Jazeera broadcasts anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, and the Taliban are biding time in Afghanistan. Not only is al Qaeda not on the run, it governs more territory than at any point since 2001. It is once again the “strong horse,” attracting jihadists to its crusade who inevitably turn their attention to the West.
“Without an ideological catalyst,” Gorka writes, “grievances remain merely grievances. They are dull and banal. They only transform into acts of transcendental violence when ignited by Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It is the narrative of Holy War that gives value to local grievances, not the other way around.” Before we can hope to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State or the al Qaeda movement, we must recognize the poison tree of jihad for what it is. We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.
Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel.
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In a recent speech, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor mentioned the central role of Qatar in supporting international terrorist organizations. Money flowing from Qatar to Hamas, for example, paid for the terrorist attack tunnels dug from the Gaza Strip under the security fence into Israeli territory, and for the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilian targets in both the distant and recent past. In response, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf rushed to Qatar’s defense, claiming it had an important, positive role in finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Qatar’s funding for Islamist terrorist organizations all over the world is an open secret known to every global intelligence agency, including the CIA. It was exposed by Wikileaks, which clearly showed that funds from Qatar were transferred to al-Qaida. Qatar also funds the terrorist movements opposing the Assad regime in Syria, such as the Al-Nusra Front, encourages anti-Egyptian terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula and within Egypt itself, and is involved in Islamic terrorism in Africa and other locations. It accompanies its involvement in terrorism targeting Israel and Egypt (through the Muslim Brotherhood) with vicious and inflammatory propaganda on its Al-Jazeera TV channel.
Qatar also spends millions of dollars supporting the Islamic Movement in Israel, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. The Islamic Movement is responsible for ongoing acts of provocation on the Temple Mount and in Judea and Samaria, and incites the entire Islamic world against Israel, claiming that the Jews are trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with the Jewish Temple. The incitement continued even as the Islamic Movement’s sister movement, Hamas, fired rockets at Jerusalem and endangered both the mosques on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
As Qatar’s representative, the Islamic Movement, which has not yet been outlawed in Israel, contributed to Hamas what it could during Operation Protective Edge by instigating riots, blocking roads and seeking to foment a third intifada which, according to the plan, would be joined by Israeli Arabs to augment the deaths of thousands of Israelis killed by rockets and the mass murders through the attack tunnels planned for the eve of the Jewish New Year.
In his recent UN speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebutted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ accusations of Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinian people. He reminded his audience of Hamas’ use of Gazan civilians as human shields and of the rockets fired to attack specifically civilian Israeli targets. Unfortunately, he did not mention the Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of all the Jews. The fact that Abbas now heads a national consensus government in which Hamas is a full partner commits him to the slaughter of the Jewish people – a true genocide – and it is to the disgrace of the international community that such an individual was permitted to address the UN instead of being tried for war crimes.
In fact, the similarities between Hamas and ISIS are clearly stated in the Hamas charter, which defines Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamic movement. One of its objectives is to fight “infidel Christian imperialism” and its Zionist emissaries in Israel in order to impose the Sharia, Islamic religious law, on the world. According to the charter’s paragraph 7, Hamas’ intention is to slaughter every Jew, as ordered by Muhammad and those who accept his legacy. That is the basis for the threat issued by ISIS “Caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that under his leadership, Islam will “drown America in blood.”
Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel. Since its founding, Hamas has attacked Israel and murdered thousands of its citizens exactly as ISIS has attacked and murdered “infidels.” They share the same slogans, with “There is no god but Allah” and “Allah, Prophet Muhammad” inscribed on their flags and headbands. Hamas terrorists have blown themselves up in Israel’s coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, buses, malls and markets, wherever there are large concentrations of civilians. The way Hamas executed suspected collaborators during the final days of Operation Protective Edge bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida execution of Daniel Pearl and the ISIS beheading of James Foley and others.
In the decades during which Hamas has carried out a continual series of deadly terrorist attacks against Israel, wearing the same “Allah, Prophet, Muhammad” headbands as ISIS terrorists, the international community rarely voices its support for Israel, or takes into account that by defending itself Israel also defends the West, which has failed to understand that “political Islam” inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood was setting up shop in the free world’s backyard and that the ticking bomb was set to go off sooner than expected. The West has not clearly condemned Qatar for openly supporting Hamas and its terrorist activities against Israel or demanded that it stop.
While Israel responded to Hamas’ rocket attacks on civilian targets to keep thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Israeli civilians from being killed, the international community demanded “proportionality.” That requirement kept Israel from responding as it should have and encouraged Hamas to fire ever more rockets at “military targets” such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When Israel built its security fence to keep Hamas suicide bombers from infiltrating into Israeli territory to blow themselves up in crowds of civilians, the international community opposed it, rushed to embrace the Palestinians’ vocabulary of “racism” and “apartheid,” and willingly played into the hands of Hamas and Abbas. This reaction occurred although Israel is the only truly democratic country in the Middle East, where Jews and Arabs can live in peace without “apartheid.”
Today President Obama says he “underestimated” the threat posed by ISIS, while Israel has been warning the world of extremist military Islam for at least a decade, as Netanyahu warned the world of a nuclear Iran in his UN speech.
The international community has been curiously silent about the genuine apartheid in the Arab states neighboring Israel. There, descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees, by now in their fourth generation, still live in refugee camps, do not have citizenship, and are excluded from jobs and social benefits. Israel, however, absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, many of them destitute, who fled Europe and were expelled from the Arab countries when the state was founded, and were given citizenship and enjoy full rights, as do the Arabs who remained in Israel after the War of Independence.
Israel, which has nothing against the Palestinian people, would like to see the Gaza Strip rebuilt for both humanitarian reasons and to give Hamas something to lose. Radical Islamic elements around the globe, however, including Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaida, the Al-Nusra Front and Hizballah, all financed by Qatar, do not want to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved. They all have the same global agenda, based on fueling the conflict to unite Islam around it, under their leadership.
Therefore, Qatar continues to support global Islamic terrorism. On Sept. 13, Qatar paid the Al-Nusra Front a ransom of $20 million to free abducted UN soldiers from Fiji. The world praised Qatar for its philanthropy, but in effect, it was a brilliant act of manipulation and fraud, both filling the Al-Nusra Front’s coffers and representing itself as the Fijians’ savior. Qatar is using the same underhanded trick in the Gaza Strip. After sending Hamas millions of dollars to fund its anti-Israeli terrorist industry, itpledged $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip during last weekend’s conference in Cairo.
While the world hopes Operation Protective Edge was the last round of Palestinian-Israeli violence, senior Hamas figures reiterate their position of gearing up to fight Israel again. Not one Hamas leader is willing to agree to a full merger with the Palestinian Authority to establish a genuine unified Palestinian leadership. Hamas rejects even the idea of disarming or demilitarization as part of an agreement to rebuild the Gaza Strip and promote the peace process. Unfortunately, no one has suggested it as a pre- condition for any U.S. dollars that will be contributed to the reconstruction of Gaza.
All that is left now is to hope that the billions of dollars poured into the Gaza Strip for its rebuilding will be accompanied by the disarmament of Hamas and the establishment of an honest mechanism for overseeing the money and materials Egypt and Israel allow into the Gaza Strip. It is imperative that they not be diverted to rebuild Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and tunnels, or to bribe UNRWA officials to look the other way, as has happened so often in the past. There is every indication that only Hamas and Qatar know whether there is anything to justify that hope.
Dr. Reuven Berko has a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, is a commentator on Israeli Arabic TV programs, writes for the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel’s top experts on Arab affairs.
(OK, but assuming that the defeat of the Islamic State is our goal, how is that to happen? Clearly, we will not go to war with Islam. Yet. — DM)
Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.
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The big foreign policy debate now is whether we should ally with Sunni or Shiite Jihadists to defeat ISIS.
The pro-Iranian camp wants us to coordinate with Iran and Assad. The pro-Saudi camp wants us to arm the Free Syrian Army and its assorted Jihadists to overthrow Assad.
Both sides are not only wrong, they are traitors.
Iran and the Sunni Gulfies are leading sponsors of international terrorism that has killed Americans. Picking either side means siding with the terrorists.
It makes no sense to join with Islamic terrorists to defeat Islamic terrorists. Both Sunni and Shiite Jihadists are our enemies. And this is not even a “the enemy of my enemy” scenario because despite their mutual hatred for each other, they hate us even more.
The 1998 indictment of bin Laden accused him of allying with Iran. (Not to mention Iraq, long before such claims could be blamed on Dick Cheney.) The 9/11 Commission documented that Al Qaeda terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, freely moved through Iran. Testimony by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants showed that he had met with a top Hezbollah terrorist. Court findings concluded that Iran was liable for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies. Al Qaeda terrorists were trained by Hezbollah.
While Shiite and Sunni Jihadists may be deadly enemies to each other, they have more in common with each other than they do with us. Our relationship to them is not that of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s their relationship to each other when it comes to us. In these scenarios we are the enemy.
The pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions in our foreign policy complex agree that we have to help one side win in Syria. They’re wrong. We have no interest in helping either side win because whether the Sunnis or Shiites win, Syria will remain a state sponsor of terror.
It’s only a question of whether it will be Shiite or Sunni terror.
Our interest is in not allowing Al Qaeda, or any of its subgroups, to control Syria or Iraq because it has a history of carrying out devastating attacks against the United States. We don’t, however, need to ally with either side to accomplish that. We can back the Kurds and the Iraqi government (despite its own problematic ties) in their push against ISIS in Iraq and use strategic strikes to hit ISIS concentrations in Syria. We should not, however, ally, arm or coordinate strikes with either side in the Syrian Civil War.
Both the pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian sides insist that ISIS can’t be defeated without stabilizing Syria. But it doesn’t appear that Syria can be stabilized without either genocide or partition. Its conflict is not based on resistance to a dictator as the Arab Springers have falsely claimed, but on religious differences.
Helping one side commit genocide against the other is an ugly project, but that would be the outcome of allying with either side.
Stabilizing Syria is a myth. The advocates of the FSA claimed that helping the Libyan Jihadists win would stabilize Libya. Instead the country is on fire as Jihadists continue to fight it out in its major cities.
Even if the FSA existed as an actual fighting force, which it doesn’t, even if it could win, which it can’t, there is every reason to believe that Syria would be worse than Libya and an even bigger playground for ISIS. The FSA enthusiasts were wrong in Egypt and Libya and everywhere else. They have no credibility.
The pro-Iranians claim that helping the Syrian government will subdue ISIS, but Assad hasn’t been able to defeat the Sunni Jihadists even with Russian help. The Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies are still struggling despite having an air force, heavy artillery and WMDs. Not only shouldn’t we be allying with Shiite terrorists who have killed plenty of Americans over the years, but it would be extremely stupid to ally with incompetent terrorists. Allying with the FSA or Assad makes as much sense as allying with ISIS.
The difference is that ISIS at least seems to be able to win battles.
Some pro-Iranian wonks claim that if we don’t get Assad’s approval for air strikes, he will shoot down Americans planes. That’s about as likely as Saddam Hussein returning from the dead to audition for American Idol. Assad didn’t even dare shoot down Israeli planes who were buzzing his palace. The odds of him picking a fight with the United States Air Force are somewhere between zero, nil and zilch.
We don’t need Assad’s permission to hit ISIS targets in Syria and, in one of the few things that this administration is doing right, we aren’t asking for it. Unless Assad experiences a bout of severe mental illness, he isn’t going to fight us for the privilege of losing to ISIS. Not even Saddam was that crazy.
The big potential problem in this war is mission creep. That’s why we should avoid committing to any overarching objectives such as stabilizing Syria. Unfortunately that is exactly what Obama has done.
It’s not our job to stabilize Syria and short of dividing it into a couple of majority states in which the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurds, the Christians and maybe even the Turkmen get their own countries, it’s not a feasible project. We have the equipment and power to pound ISIS into the dirt when its forces concentrate in any area. We can send drones to target their leaders. If Assad or the FSA want to provide us with intel, we can use it as long as we don’t begin working to help them fulfill their own objectives.
We need to remember that we are not there for the Syrians or Iraqis; we’re there for ourselves.
After September 11 we learned the hard way the costs of letting enemy terrorists set up enclaves and bases. But we also learned the hard way the costs of trying to stabilize unstable Muslim countries.
Al Qaeda, in its various forms, will always find sanctuaries and conflicts because the Muslim world is unstable and widely supportive of terrorism. For now this is a low intensity conflict that denies the next bin Laden the territory, time and manpower to stage the next September 11. We can do this cheaply and with few casualties if we keep this goal in mind.
This isn’t nation building. It’s not the fight for democracy. All we’re doing is terrorizing the terrorists by using our superior reach and firepower to smash their sandcastle emirates anywhere they pop up.
Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.
(They should go to Iraq, Syria and other places infested by the Islamic State, its predecessors, cohorts and progeny to preach the Gospels. Surely, all involved Islamists would then understand that their violent ways are evil misguided because contrary to not only to the Gospels but also to their own religion. What could possibly go wrong? — DM)
Islamic State militants assassinate Iraqis
These Christian activists have adopted the Islamist narrative while ignoring the Islamists’ words about their own intentions. By teaching their supporters that ISIS is the result of American “aggression,” they are promoting inaction that will further the Islamist extremist cause and enable the persecution of fellow Christians.
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A group of 53 Christian leaders and activists are urging the Obama Administration not to militarily strike the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq and Syria in a published letter. Several of the organizations represented have a history of willful blindness to the Islamist ideology and have allied with American Islamists with extremist histories.
The letter was published by the Catholic Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. One of the group’s stated objectives is:
“Identifying and eliminating the root causes of violence and conflict with a focus on…U.S. aggression and national security policy (e.g. war on terrorism and war in Iraq and Afghanistan). The nexus of violence and poverty is clear.”
The worldview of this Christian group is that Islamic extremism is a response to American imperialism. In other words, its America’s fault and the Islamist terrorists are victims, even if their methods are deplorable.
This perspective is fundamentally in error and naïve. ISIS calls itself the Islamic State because that’s what it is fighting for. According to its own words, it is fighting for a caliphate and sharia governance (i.e, an Islamic State). There is no logical way to connect opposition to American foreign policy with this agenda.
In a blunt interview with NBC News, an American from North Carolina who tried to join ISIS and was arrested said, “My reason for the support of ISIS is because they’ve proven time and time again to put Islamic law as the priority and the establishment of an Islamic state as the goal,” Don Morgan said.
By characterizing American military action as “aggression” and ISIS as victims, the organization is assuming the worst of American intentions and the best of ISIS’, even going so far as to ignore ISIS’ own words and actions.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns views Islamic terrorism as an outburst against inequality and poverty. Studies have repeatedly debunked this. The latest was a Queen Mary University of London study that concluded that there is no connection between Islamic terrorism and poverty, lack of education or unemployment.
This latest letter endorsed by 53 Christian activists claims that, “More bombing will ultimately mean more division, bloodshed, recruitment for extremist organizations, and a continual cycle of violent intervention.” They argue that U.S. military action “will only propitiate more armed intervention in a tit-for-tat escalation without addressing the root causes of the conflict.”
The logic is that military action is always counter-productive. If this logic were followed during World War II, the existence of Nazi Germany would be accepted. The Nazi regime was dismantled because the Allies accurately attributed the conflict to an immoral ideology.
The letter’s policy recommendations have already been mostly tried, yet its authors present it as something new and innovative. This includes humanitarian assistance, engagement of Iraqi leaders, sanctions and replacing U.S. airstrikes with “community-based nonviolent resistance strategies.”
Endorsers of this letter include leaders of the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee, professors from various universities and clergy from around the country.
While activists like these may argue that they don’t necessarily oppose all uses of force, their worldview inevitably leads to appeasement and inaction in the face of major threats and human rights abuses.
Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy,writes that proponents of this trend “often demand maximalist, unattainable standards [for military action] that default towards a functional pacifism.”
In the current instance of ISIS, Tooley compares the letter to “telling a woman being chased down the street by a rapist that instead of seeking an armed police officer she should urge her aspiring assailant to get counseling for his anger issues.”
Yet, the protest by some of the letter’s endorsers is unsurprising given their history of partnering with Islamists. The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society endorsed a2012 letter protesting five members of Congress for requesting investigations into the relations between U.S. governmental agencies and Muslim Brotherhood entities.
The letter defends the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group founded by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues.
The United Methodist Church is listed on ISNA’s website as an interfaith partner. The church also endorsed a letter protesting the New York Police Department for its intelligence-gathering programs and showing of The Third Jihad, a Clarion Project documentary that exposes the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist extremists.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) participates in the same actions and more. It works with Islamists in producing reports on Muslim-Christian relations and published a book whitewashing radical clericImam Zaid Shakir and the school he founded, Zaytuna College. In July, the Church divested $21 million from Israel. The Iranian regime and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke celebrate the anti-Israel activism of the Church.
The Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Kairos Response, United Church of Christ Israel-Palestine Network and others belong to the Interfaith Boycott Coalition, the faith-based wing of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. This bloc isdefending a woman accused of perpetrating a bombing of civilians in Israel.
Overwhelmingly, the American people reject these Christian activists’ arguments. The latest poll shows that 71% of Americans support airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and 65% support doing the same in Syria. About 58% support arming Kurds fighting ISIS.
Another poll found 76% in favor of airstrikes on ISIS with only 23% opposed. About 62% favor military aid to forces fighting ISIS. These high numbers come before President Obama’s speech making the case for military intervention.
These Christian activists have adopted the Islamist narrative while ignoring the Islamists’ words about their own intentions. By teaching their supporters that ISIS is the result of American “aggression,” they are promoting inaction that will further the Islamist extremist cause and enable the persecution of fellow Christians.
Articles | August 26, 2014 | Understanding the Shariah Threat Doctrine
Source: FrontPage Mag
What legitimate Islamic organizations must adhere to is obeying Islamic commandments to conquer the world for Islam, defeat and humiliate non-Muslim nations and establish the Kalifate — to be ruled by sharia. That is the plan. It is not the opinion of the writer of this article, but it is the basic objective of Islamic law books, scriptures and preaching, which explicitly define jihad as a war with non-Muslims to establish the religion of Islam. To facilitate this mission, Islamic law freed Muslims from any restrictions on their behavior; they can wage offensive wars, kill, terrorize, behead, lie, deceive, humiliate, slander, use corporal punishment on women and children, and sacrifice the well being of the family, all for the purpose of the empowerment of Islam.
But instead of properly facing the 21 Century Islamic challenge, the West has chosen denial. Obama is being criticized for resorting to golf in a time of trouble, but that is perhaps his only outlet when he feels paralyzed, because what he believed and advocated Islam to be and what it is turned out to be polar opposites.
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It has been 13 years since 9/11 and the West is still reluctant to link the non-ending parade of jihad groups with Islam. The West is also in denial about the similarities all radical Islamic groups share. It is important for the West to realize that there is a natural division of labor between the different terror groups. Some groups specialize in terror against non-Muslims and Western governments while others specialize in terrorizing Arab governments that refused to follow Sharia. But the truly sophisticated groups are those who reside in the West, calling themselves ‘moderate’ while at the same time defending and controlling the direction of Islamist goals through advocacy, diplomacy, negotiation and PR.
All of the above types of Islamist groups work together in perfect harmony like an orchestra that sings to the tune of “Allahu Akbar.” And when Islamic terrorism and beheadings anger the world and turn public opinion against Islam, that orchestra starts playing a different tune to confuse and prevent the world from uncovering their coordinated handy work. While one group proudly takes credit for the terror, another publicly denounces it. But most groups, while enjoying the power and attention the terrorists have bestowed on them, stand by with a look of victimhood saying: “I am a victim too because you condemn me and my peaceful religion when I did not do anything. That is not Islam and you are an Islamophobe.”
Not only is there division of labor amongst Islamist groups, but these groups also often change roles, tactics and appearances — after birthing other more radical terror groups to do the dirty work of terror. Because the West and some Arab governments refuse to deal with terror organizations, these organizations play a game of presenting a face of rehabilitation and moderation, while delegating the terror and assassinations to newer groups. Old guard terror groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Fatah were able to change color and they assumed a new, but only cosmetic, appearance of moderation, but not before birthing the more violent Al-Qaeda and Hamas.
The West was told the MB and Fatah were now the moderate and humanitarian face of Islam that could be counted on and that could run Islamic government. Islam will present itself as working with the rest of the world only for the sake of establishing the Kalifate. The West has been only too happy to welcome the new face of the old terror groups to the camp of moderation. But the new face of evil after the MB became Al-Qaeda.
When the MB won the Egyptian elections, Islamists believed the Kalifate could be achieved through elections, avoiding the usual violent jihad. But when Egyptians realized they had made a mistake by electing the MB and 35,000,000 Egyptians revolted against Islamist rule, the dreams of a Kalifate through peaceful elections were defeated. The only solution for Muslims to achieve their Kalifate is the old fashioned way of 7th century Islam: pure violence, savagery and terror; thus the rise of the newest Islamist terror group, ISIS, while the MB takes a back seat.
When Al-Qaeda’s reputation tanked after 9/11, even inside the Middle East, the terror jihadists were forced into working under a new name — same goals, but with a more ferocious appetite for terror and torture. After the defeat of the budding Islamist State through elections in Egypt in 2013, the restrained beast of public beheadings hidden in the Islamic genie bottle finally exploded for the world to see in the form of ISIS; an organization that declared itself as the true long-awaited Islamic State. Force became the only choice. Coincidentally, this follows the example of Mohammed who tried to peacefully Islamize Mecca for 13 years but failed and could only Islamize Arabia by force, terror and the sword when he became a warrior in Medina.
ISIS rushed to declare itself as the Islamic State even before finishing the job of conquering all of Iraq and Syria. It was flaunting its savagery to the world in the hope of giving the message to reluctant Arab countries that they will be next. The plan is very similar to what Mohammed and his followers did in the 7th century: conquer Arabia quickly by force so they could move to more important goals of taking over the outside world, now the West and Israel. By doing that they are confirming to Muslims around the world that terror works and that their prophet Mohammed was correct when he said: “I have been victorious through terror.”
Bottom line: What legitimate Islamic organizations must adhere to is obeying Islamic commandments to conquer the world for Islam, defeat and humiliate non-Muslim nations and establish the Kalifate — to be ruled by sharia. That is the plan. It is not the opinion of the writer of this article, but it is the basic objective of Islamic law books, scriptures and preaching, which explicitly define jihad as a war with non-Muslims to establish the religion of Islam. To facilitate this mission, Islamic law freed Muslims from any restrictions on their behavior; they can wage offensive wars, kill, terrorize, behead, lie, deceive, humiliate, slander, use corporal punishment on women and children, and sacrifice the well being of the family, all for the purpose of the empowerment of Islam.
But instead of properly facing the 21 Century Islamic challenge, the West has chosen denial. Obama is being criticized for resorting to golf in a time of trouble, but that is perhaps his only outlet when he feels paralyzed, because what he believed and advocated Islam to be and what it is turned out to be polar opposites.
Also, instead of facing the incompetence and many obvious weaknesses of Islamic terror groups, the West has chosen to appease an enemy that only respects power. Thus, the Obama administration decided to be more concerned with appearances and saying instead of doing the right thing. For example, Obama likes to correct Americans on the proper pronunciation of Arabic names and expressions such as Pakistan and ISIL instead of ISIS, etc. But when the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was declared the West was too embarrassed to call it what it called itself, the Islamic State, and found the English abbreviation ISIS more appropriate than the Arabic name that linked the new terrorist state to Islam.
I was recently asked by visitors from Egypt, “What is ISIS?” My answer was, it is the preferred name the US administration and media use to refer to the newly declared Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Their response was, “Why? In Arabic they call themselves ‘The Islamic State?’” I told them it is a long story, but the West does not want to offend Muslims who believe that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, tyranny and hatred.
Obama insists on presenting himself as more of an expert on Islam than the founders of ISIS when he stated, “ISIL speaks for no religion.” It is not appropriate for the US government or media to define what is or what is not Islam to Muslims who are reading from their books statements that command them to kill infidels. All we should do is take them for their word.
Both the US government and media have decided, long before Obama, that it would be the wise thing to do to keep US citizens uninformed about the true goals of Islam. The goal of this policy was partially to convince Islamic terror groups to leave the West alone and perhaps in the long run Islam will reform on its own one day. But unfortunately history was not on the side of this theory. Appeasement did not work for Coptic Christians in Egypt nor for Zoroastrians in Persia when in the 7th century the two ancient civilizations fell to the Arab Islamic invasion in the same year. Both Egypt and Persia tried to appease but failed to win hearts and minds of the Muslim invaders who used the most barbaric forms of terror and tyranny to Islamize and Arabize both civilizations. Both Egypt and Persia never saw their glory days again and today they are incapable of ruling themselves without the usual Sharia-enforced oppression and tyranny.
What everyone misses here is the right of the American people to know the full truth about their new enemy directly and honestly from their politicians and media. By caring about the feelings of Muslims more than American citizens’ right to the truth, and without naming Islam by name, the US government and media will usher America into a dark phase marking the beginning of tyranny and the end of liberty.
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