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US military chiefs overrate damage to ISIS

May 28, 2016

US military chiefs overrate damage to ISIS, DEBKAfile, May 28, 2016

The US military chiefs fighting ISIS, have recently claiming that the US has re-organized its military resources and is determined to cut down the Islamic state after its lame efforts in the last two years.

These words of encouragement have come from genral Votel commander of US Middle East forces and the first US General to be assigned to Syria in its nearly six years of war, and Lt. Gen Charles Brown commanding the US Al Udied Air Base in Qatar where 750 aircraft operating in the Gulf and Middle East are based.

When US airstrikes against the Jihadist organization began the offensive in late 2014 was marred by inadequate intelligence and (specifically that of intelligence analysis), and sporadic aerial action.

DEBKAfiles repeatedly reported that American and coalition air strikes  against the Jihadists were too few, misfired and many of the bombers returned to base with much of their ordinance unused.

It appears that the Obama administration has finally decided to tackle ISIS in earnest.

Our military and anti-terror experts claim it is too soon to determine whether the US commitment is real.

It is true that there are signs of limited US military movement in Syria, Libya and Iraq indicating a possible change.

For example: Increasing the number of US special forces in these three countries, far beyond the framework that President Obama is talking about publicly, when he says ‘small forces’.

There are about 7,500 US soldiers deployed in Iraq and Syria, with an additional  2,000-3,000 fighters working for private security contractors. In Libya there are an additional 1,000 to 1,250  soldiers. American planes take off from Incirlilk base in South Turkey 350km by air from Raqqa, ISIS Syrian capital, and 700km from Mosul, ISIS Iraqi capital, and do not need to fly more than 1,450km (about 770 miles) when they approach from the Persian Gulf.

ISIS still shows no sign of cracking or dismantling its Islamic Caliphate, and its military and terrorist capabilities.

ISIS_State_of_war_25.5.16

There are several reasons for this:

ISIS is expanding fast. While the Obama administration treats Iraq and Syria as the main fronts against the jihadi organization, ISIS has opened three more fronts: in Egypt, Sinai Peninsula, and Libya. While the US had quietly added 4 to 5 detachments of US special forces, these forces are too small to be a military challenge to the terror organization, and all they can do is fight ISIS with the help of local forces, as the US are doing in Iraq and Syria.

In addition to Mosul and Raqqa, the ISIS has established capitals at the Lybian port of Sirte on the Mediterranean Sea and in Jabal Halal mountain range in central Sinai with a cluster of ISIS bases. They provide a fallback option for the terrorist organization in the still distant prospect of Raqqa and Mosul falling to US and local forces.

When General Brown reported that the US Air Force is now hitting ISIS held oil fields, funds and headquarters, and that its revenue has fallen “only” to $56 million per day, he omitted to mention the ISIS Lybian oil fields and their revenue. In fact, DEBKAfile’s military sources note that ISIS is making up for revenue shortfalls in Syria and Iraq by pumping oil in Libya and the surrounding desert.

While US military sources claim that 45 percent of the territory the Islamic State seized in Iraq in 2014, and 20 percent in Syria, has been reclaimed, ISIS still hangs on to its key strategic assets.

Furthermore ISIS this week launched an offensive in the northern and eastern Syrian regions of Aleppo, Azaz, and Deir-a-Zor`; and inflicted damaging assaults on May 14 and May 23 on Russian bases and Syrian Syrian government centers near Jableh and Tartous in Western Syria. It is obvious its external terrorist capacity has not been cut down as was expected.

US and Middle East intelligence agencies hold information showing that ISIS is going to expand its bomb attacks in major cities in Europe and the Middle East, in the coming weeks. This follows an estimate of the organization’s leaders that the attacks on the Russian and Egyptian passenger aircrafts, and the terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Tunisia, to be very successful.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iraq war, Islamic State, Libya, Obama and Islamic State, Siani, Syria war, U.S. combat troops, U.S. Military
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Obama: This is the most peaceful era in human history

April 25, 2016

Obama: This is the most peaceful era in human history, Israel National News, Shlomo Pyotrkovsky, April 25, 2016

In Germany, Obama makes surprising assessment of world peace, even while calling for Europe to do more to fight brutal ISIS jihadists.

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US President Barack Obama said on Monday at a trade fair in Hannover, Germany, that this is the most “peaceful and prosperous era in human history.”

Obama’s comments came during a visit to Germany where he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and called for Europe and NATO to do more to fight the brutal Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization that has sprung up on his watch, committing mass rapes, beheadings, and genocide.

But according to the president, there’s never been a better time for the world, and if someone had to choose a time in history to be born, it would be today.

Even while acknowledging there is suffering and tragedy, he nevertheless called this the “most peaceful era in human history,” noting on longer life expectancies and better education, and saying it has been decades since the last time major powers warred against each other.

People should take confidence “in our ability to shape our down destiny,” he said.

Ironically, data indicates that Obama’s hands-off approach has in fact led to more global war deaths. Under Obama – who was “surprised” when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 just after taking office – global war deaths doubled as compared to George W. Bush’s presidency.

During his visit to Germany, Obama on Monday called for Europe to do more to fight ISIS, and called on NATO to pay more to fund the alliance, while urging a “united” Europe.

“This remains a difficult fight and none of us can solve this problem by ourselves. Even as European countries make contributions to ISIL, Europe and NATO can still do more,” Obama said, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

“I’ll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense,” he added in a slap at Europe.

“We need to integrate Muslims”

The US president also spoke about a growing nationalistic, euroskeptic and anti-immigration trend sweeping the continent, as seen Sunday when a candidate of Austria’s far-right party handily won the first round of presidential elections for the first time ever.

Belittling the backlash to mass Muslim immigration that has brought with it an escalation in rape and sexual assault, he said, “in the vacuum, if we do not solve these problems, you start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way.”

He said there was “a creeping emergence of the kind of politics that the European project was founded to reject, an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality that tries to blame our problems on the other.”

“You see increasing intolerance in our politics. And loud voices get the most attention.”

“I want you to remember that our countries are stronger, they’re more secure and more successful when we integrate people of all backgrounds and faiths, and make them feel as one. And that includes our fellow citizens who are Muslim,” he added.

Categories: Obama and history, Obama and Islamic State, Peace in our time
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Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs

March 31, 2016

Shifting blame, White House faults war general’s 2014 ISIS assessment as he departs, Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, March 30, 2016

obama_lea_c0-80-4500-2703_s885x516President Obama (center) and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (left) greet Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, on the apron at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin relinquished command in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday of the U.S. forces fighting the Islamic State –– as a bit of a sour note hung in the air back in Washington.

President Obama has been consistently criticized for a 2014 comment to the New Yorker magazine that the Islamic State, as it invaded Iraq from Syria, was merely the “jayvee.” In other words, it was not to be taken seriously. Months later, the terror army controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria, forcing Mr. Obama to ordered a new war.

Then, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed Mr. Obama and came out with a long favorable story this month on the commander in chief’s foreign policy views. In the story is this:

“Early in 2014, Obama’s intelligence advisers told him that ISIS was of marginal importance. According to administration officials, General Lloyd Austin, then the commander of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the White House that the Islamic State was ‘a flash in the pan.’ This analysis led Obama, in an interview with The New Yorker, to describe the constellation of jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria as terrorism’s ‘jayvee team.’”

The quote clearly showed the White House was shifting blame from Mr. Obama to Gen. Austin, a 40-year Army combatant, leader and commander, as he went out the door.

Gen. Austin, through his public affairs office at U.S. Central Command, has denied ever making such a remark.

His supporters point out that, as the last four-star general to leave Iraq in December 2011, he had recommended to the White House that more than 20,000 American troops remain in the country because the gains there were reversible.

At the time Mr. Obama downplayed the Islamic State, then known by a different name, it had built a large army in Syria and had begun its expansion into Iraq.

Mr. Obama has a track record of shifting blame. For example, when the White House plan to train a Syrian army to fight the Islamic State failed, he told an interviewer that he always knew it would not work.

Gen. Austin turned over command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., to Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who had been chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

At the ceremony, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter heaped praise on Gen. Austin, a West Point graduate and recipient of the Silver Star for gallantry in battle.

As CentCom leader for three years, he has directed operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and kept watch on an expansionist Iran in the Persian Gulf.

“The people of CentCom have met these challenges under the extraordinary leadership of a towering figure in the life of our military, General Lloyd Austin,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s one of the highest compliments in the Army to be called ‘a soldier’s soldier.’ For more than four decades, Lloyd Austinhas not only demonstrated what it means to be a soldier’s soldier. He has come to define it.”

At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Peter Cook, Mr. Carter’s spokesman, was asked if the secretary would clear the four-star general of the “flash in the pan” quote at the change of command.

“I don’t think Secretary Carter needs to clear General Austin of that,” Mr. Cook said. “I think General Austin himself has indicated that that statement is factually incorrect, and I believe there are others who have said the same.  So I’m not aware that General Austin ever made that comment, and I think I would refer you to the White House as well if you want to check with them.

“But General Austin does not need to have his name cleared for any reason.  He has led admirably and with distinction for, as I said earlier, close to 40 years, and I think his record of accomplishment speaks for itself.”

Categories: Gen. Lloyd Austin, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Shifting blame
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Pakistan on the Mediterranean

March 28, 2016

Pakistan on the Mediterranean, Washington Free Beacon, , March 28, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)

President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.

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On March 18, European and Turkish diplomats signed off on a comprehensive deal on migrants pouring from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East through Turkey and into the European Union. Under the terms of the deal, for every illegal migrant the E.U. returns to Turkey, Turkey would send one refugee for resettlement in Europe. Additionally, Turkey and Europe agreed to re-open discussions concerning the Muslim country’s efforts to join the E.U., and Europe agreed to allow Turks visa-free travel throughout the Schengen zone.

Two days after the deal was announced, a Turk who had joined the Islamic State blew himself up among tourists on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street, one of the city’s major shopping and tourism districts. Two days after that, ISIS suicide bombers killed dozens in two separate attacks in Brussels. ISIS called what occurred in Belgium “a drop in the sea” compared with what the terrorists have in store for “nations of disbelief.”

Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have used the growing threat to argue that the West must better conform its policies to Turkey’s desires. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu chided Europe. “Europe has no partner other than Turkey to provide its regional security,” he declared, adding a subtle threat: “They should see this reality and act accordingly.” Meanwhile President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.

The reality Davutoğlu deliberately ignores, however, is his own country’s role in allowing ISIS to develop and metastasize. The Turkish government is adept at pulling the wool over Western officials’ eyes. Erdoğan pays lip service in meetings with European and American officials to the importance of both democracy and the Turkish partnership with the West, for example, declaring, “Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions.” He speaks differently to his Turkish audience. As mayor of Istanbul, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul” and declared, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of Shari‘a.” He is famous for his quip, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” In recent years, he has declared his goal to be to “raise a religious generation.”

This “religious generation” is flowing into the cauldron of Syria and Iraq. More than 30,000 foreign fighters from as many as 100 countries now fight with the Islamic State. The bulk of these soldiers—perhaps 90 percent—crossed into the Islamic State from Turkey. Turkish visa policy contributes to the problem. A direct correlation can be drawn between foreign fighters serving ISIS and those nationalities from which Turkish authorities require no visa or provide waivers: Several thousand more Moroccans and Tunisians, who need no visas to transit Turkey, fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq than Algerians and Libyans, who do. If Erdoğan simply required visas in advance for those under the age of 40 coming from countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan—or, for that matter, from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Australia—the flood of recruits into the Islamic State would slow to a trickle.

ISIS terrorists regularly traverse the Turkish border, not only for medical care but also for rest and relaxation. Some merchants in Istanbul openly sell ISIS propaganda and promise that proceeds from their sale will benefit the group’s fight in Syria and Iraq. Smugglers peddling contraband oil to fund ISIS rely on Turkey to bring the oil to market, paying off local and perhaps even national officials of the AKP, Turkey’s governing party, along the way.

Turkey has done more than lend passive support to Islamist radicals. In his 13 years in power, Erdoğan has transformed Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy into Pakistan-on-the-Mediterranean. There was, for example,the leak of documents from the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT), Turkey’s intelligence service, showing Turkish support of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria. And, rather than give medals to the Turkish soldiers who intercepted truckloads of weaponry destined for Syrian radicals, Erdoğan ordered their arrest.

Likewise, when Turkish journalists exposed—with photographic evidence—the transfer of munitions and other supplies from the Turkish border to ISIS, Erdoğan’s response was not to applaud the media but to seize the newspaper and arrest its editors and many of its reporters.

There is also evidence that, as Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani in 2014 began to turn the tide against the radical group, Erdoğan and Turkish intelligence officials allowed ISIS fighters to pass through Turkey and attack Kobani from across the border, a flank the town’s largely Kurdish residents assumed was secure.

From the beginning, Erdoğan has looked at the Syrian refugee crisis not as a humanitarian tragedy but an arrow in his quiver. Inside Turkey, he has offered Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship if they settle in Turkish provinces currently dominated by the Shi‘ite offshoot Alevi sect. And, whereas the world condemns ISIS “genocide” against the Yezidi, the Yezidi who sheltered in Turkey were then victimized, again, by local AKP-run municipalities who refused to provide services offered to Sunni refugees.

Allowing Turkey to choose which refugees to send to Europe and promising to eliminate visa restrictions for Turks only rewards Erdoğan for his behavior and gives him additional leverage in his dealings with the West. Nor is this the type of policy Erdoğan’s neighbors would support. Earlier this year, King Abdullah II of Jordan told Congress, “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.” He added that, “radicalization was being manufactured in Turkey.”

Abdullah’s message fell on deaf in ears in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin. It is Erdoğan who has the initiative as he pursues the Islamicization of Turkey and neo-Ottoman imperialism. He has built a Pakistan on the Mediterranean: an incubator of terror that markets itself as the only available partner of the West, with tragic results.

Categories: Erdogan, Europe, Foreign policy, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Middle East, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Turkey, Turkey
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Two left feet: Obama’s week of ‘bad optics’ really just bad leadership

March 28, 2016

Two left feet: Obama’s week of ‘bad optics’ really just bad leadership, New York Post, Kyle Smith, March 27, 2016

obama_us_analysisBarack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. Photo AP

To be a president means regularly to find oneself caught off balance. Sometimes you want to chill at the same moment your enemies move to kill. You may find yourself doing an innocent photo op reading a book to little kids when terrorists launch a coordinated attack on the country.

So let’s have a little sympathy for President Obama this week. It has to be frustrating when you set out to make nice with the leaders of a mass-murdering fanatical regime and at the exact same time a mass murder is carried out by a completely different group of fanatics — the ones you keep saying are no big deal.

It has to get under your skin when you bring a planeload of fanboy hacks with you to a tropical paradise on the understanding that they’ll write nice stories about your kicking back with one half of a pair of homicidal brothers when instead people get all distracted about the tiny detail of 31 people getting killed by a different pair of homicidal brothers.

The president whose acolytes call him No Drama Obama aren’t quite right, but they are on to something. The president does get angry, but not at terrorists, dictators or mass murderers. Every time rage sneaks into his face, he’s talking about his domestic political opponents. He’s talking about budgetary disputes, federal appointments, Constitutional interpretation.

Blood literally running in the streets of Belgium? Heads being cut off by sabers? A movement that wants to kill every Jew and Christian? Shrug. Obama spoke about the ISIS mass murder briefly.

Then he did “the wave” with Raul Castro.

cuba_obama4Obama and Castro wave to the crowd during a exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team.

As one newspaper headline put it, juxtaposing a photo of Obama doing the tango in Argentina against an image from the latest ISIS atrocity, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” That’s the polite way of referring to the words that are ordinarily indicated by “WTF?”

There are often no great options for a president in times of strain; if President Bush had, when informed that the second plane had hit the World Trade Center, scared the kids by throwing down his copy of “The Pet Goat” and said, “Holy s–t! We’re under attack!” he would have been criticized even more heartily than he was for continuing to read for seven more minutes. (Though it’s hard to grasp exactly what exactly liberals find so outrageous about that notorious delay: Would they be happy if Bush had invaded Afghanistan seven minutes sooner than he did?)

Once Obama decided to go to the ballgame, his only choices were to stick with it and risk looking out of sync with the world’s mood, which is what he did, or ruin his fun day out with a new pal who once ordered up the execution of hundreds of political enemies.

Hey, at least Raul Castro never did anything really vile like declining to appear on a television program with Obama. (In January, The Hill reported, the president grew “visibly angry” when he mentioned the NRA at his gun-control town hall.)

Maybe Obama was invisibly angry with ISIS after the Brussels slaughter. But if you were looking for a signal that he was taking it seriously, you were disappointed. “We defeat them in part by saying, ‘You are not strong, you are weak,’” was his message, reverting to his default reasoning about how terrorism is really all a matter of adjusting your perceptions because the bad guys obviously can’t hurt us if we keep saying we’re not hurt.

usa-argentina_3Obama tangos in Argentina.Photo: Reuters

It’s the same logic you heard in high school from your highly educated feminist English teacher, the one who drove a rusted Chevette with a bumper sticker reading, “It will be a great day when schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” She told you the best way to beat bullies was to deny them any satisfaction, i.e. to pretend they weren’t pummeling you. “Just curl up into the fetal position, Johnny, you’ll have the last laugh when their punching muscles wear out in an hour or two.” Roughly at the same time, you developed strange new respect for your meathead gym teacher, the one who taught you how to throw a punch in such a way that it would definitely make a nose bleed.

What this week really demonstrated was not that Obama has a wee problem with “the optics” of his job, but that he’s stuck forever in campaign mode, confusing rhetoric with leading. ISIS just laughs and reloads when the president chides them.

Beginning to normalize relations with Cuba is a good idea — but Obama loved the picture of himself giving a speech in Havana so much that he skipped over the part where he’d win concessions from the regime. Giving away the game was his opening bid.

We have the kind of president who would drive away from a car lot congratulating himself on his sweet deal after paying the sucker’s price — plus extra for the “protective undercoating.”

 

Categories: Brussels terror attack, Cuba, Free world, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Cuba, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's leadership
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Fighting ISIS plays into ISIS’ Hands?

March 28, 2016

Fighting ISIS plays into ISIS’ Hands? Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 28, 2016

isis-shooting-syria

If you’re keeping score, freeing Islamic terrorists from Gitmo does not play into the hands of ISIS. Neither does bringing Syrians, many of whom sympathize with Islamic terrorists, into our country. And aiding the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of ISIS does not play into the Islamic group’s hands.

However if you use the words “Islamic terrorism” or even milder derivatives such as “radical Islamic terrorism”, you are playing into the hands of ISIS. If you call for closer law enforcement scrutiny of Muslim areas before they turn into Molenbeek style no-go zones or suggest ending the stream of new immigrant recruits to ISIS in San Bernardino, Paris or Brussels, you are also playing into the hands of ISIS.

And if you carpet bomb ISIS, destroy its headquarters and training camps, you’re just playing into its hands. According to Obama and his experts, who have wrecked the Middle East, what ISIS fears most is that we’ll ignore it and let it go about its business. And what it wants most is for us to utterly destroy it.

Tens of thousands of Muslim refugees make us safer. But using the words “Muslim terrorism” endangers us. The more Muslims we bring to America, the faster we’ll beat ISIS. As long as we don’t call it the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but follow Secretary of State John Kerry’s lead in calling it Daesh.

Because terrorism has no religion. Even when it’s shouting, “Allahu Akbar”.

Obama initially tried to defeat ISIS by ignoring it. This cunning approach allowed ISIS to seize large chunks of Iraq and Syria. He tried calling ISIS a JayVee team in line with his recent claim that, “We defeat them in part by saying you are not strong, you are weak”. Unimpressed, ISIS seized Mosul. It was still attached to the old-fashioned way of proving it was strong by actually winning land and wars.

Then Obama tried to defeat ISIS by arming the Islamist allies of Al Qaeda and now a lot more American weapons are in the hands of Islamic terrorists. Some of them are even in the hands of ISIS.

Europe and the United States decided to prove that we were not at war with Islam by taking in as many Muslims as we could. Instead of leading to less terrorism, taking in more Muslims led to more terrorism.

Every single stupid counterintuitive strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism has been tried. And it has failed miserably. Overthrowing “dictators” turned entire countries into terrorist training camps. Bringing Islamists to power in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia led directly to attacks on American diplomatic facilities. The Muslim Brotherhood showed no gratitude to its State Department allies. Instead its militias and forces either aided the attackers or stood by and watched while taking bets on the outcome.

Islamic terrorism has followed an entirely intuitive pattern of cause and effect. There’s a reason that the counterintuitive strategies for fighting Islamic terrorism by not fighting Islamic terrorism don’t work. They make no sense. They never did. Instead they all depend on convincing Muslims, from the local Imam to Jihadist organizations, to aid us instead of attack us by showing what nice people we are. Meanwhile they also insist that we can’t use the words “Islamic terrorism” because Muslims are ticking time bombs who will join Al Qaeda and ISIS the moment we associate terrorism with the I-word.

The counterintuitive strategy assumes that Islamic terrorism will only exist if we use the I-word, that totalitarian Jihadist movements just want democracy and that our best allies for fighting Islamic terrorism are people from the same places where Islamic terrorism is a runaway success. And that we should duplicate the demographics of the countries where Islamic terrorism thrives in order to defeat it.

The West’s counterterrorism strategy makes less sense than the ravings of most mental patients. The only thing more insane than the counterintuitive strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism is the insistence that the intuitive strategy of keeping terrorists out and killing them is what terrorists want.

If you believe the experts, then Islamic terrorists want us to stop them from entering Europe, America, Canada and Australia. They crave having their terrorists profiled by law enforcement on the way to their latest attack. And they wish we would just carpet bomb them as hard as we can right now.

When ISIS shoots up Paris or Brussels, it’s not really trying to kill infidels for Allah. Instead it’s setting a cunning trap for us. If we react by ending the flow of migrants and preventing the next attack, ISIS wins. If we police Muslim no-go zones, then ISIS also wins. If we deport potential terrorists, ISIS still wins.

But if we let ISIS carry out another successful attack, then ISIS loses. And we win. What do we win?

It depends. A concert hall full of corpses. Marathon runners with severed limbs. Families fleeing the airport through a haze of smoke. Only by letting ISIS kill us, do we have any hope of beating ISIS.

Politicians and experts claim that ISIS is insane. It’s not insane. It’s evil. Its goals are clear and comprehensible. The objectives of the Islamic State are easy to intuitively grasp. Our leaders and experts are the ones who are out of their minds. They may or may not be evil, but they are utterly insane. And they have projected their madness on Islamic terrorists who are downright rational compared to them.

Unlike our leaders, Islamic terrorists don’t confuse victory and defeat. They aren’t afraid that they’ll win. They don’t want us to kill them or deport them. They don’t care whether we call them ISIS or Daesh. They don’t derive their Islamic legitimacy from John Kerry or a State Department Twitter account. They get it from the Koran and the entire rotting corpus of Islamic law that they seek to impose on the world.

Our leaders are the ones who are afraid of winning. They distrust the morality of armed force and borders. They disguise that distrust behind convoluted arguments and counterintuitive rationales. Entire intellectual systems are constructed to explain why defeating ISIS is exactly what ISIS wants.

After the San Bernardino shootings, Obama insisted that, “Our success won’t depend on tough talk or abandoning our values…  That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for.” But ISIS does not care whether Obama talks tough, even if it’s only his version of tough talk in which he puffs out his chest and says things like, ”You are not strong, you are weak.” It is not interested in Obama’s “right side of history” distortion of American values either. ISIS is not trying to be counterintuitive. It’s fighting to win.

And our leaders are fighting as hard as they can to lose.

The counterintuitive strategy is not meant to fight terror, but to convince the populace that winning is actually losing and losing is actually winning. The worse we lose, the better our plan is working. And when we have completely lost everything then we’ll have the terrorists right where we want them.

Just ask the dead of Brussels, Paris, New York and a hundred other places.

This isn’t a plan to win. It’s a plan to confuse the issue while losing. It’s a plan to convince everyone that what looks like appeasement, defeatism, surrender and collaboration with the enemy is really a brilliant counterintuitive plan that is the only possible path to a lasting victory over Islamic terrorism.

But intuitive beats counterintuitive. Winning intuitively beats losing counterintuitively. Counterintuitively dead terrorists multiply, but intuitively they stay dead. Counterintuitively, not discussing the problem is the best way to solve it. Intuitively, you solve a problem by facing it. Counterintuitively, collaborating with the enemy is patriotism. Intuitively, it’s treason.

Categories: Islam - the religion of war, Islamic State, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State
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Our Secretary-General In Chief

March 25, 2016

Our Secretary-General In Chief, Washington Free Beacon, , March 25, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama with the First Family and Cuban President Raul Castro make the wave during a baseball game on March 22, 2016 in Havana, Cuba. Mr. Obama, who is on a 48 hour trip to Cuba, is the first sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba in almost 90 years.Photo by Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA

U.S. President Barack Obama with the First Family and Cuban President Raul Castro make the wave during a baseball game on March 22, 2016 in Havana, Cuba. Mr. Obama, who is on a 48 hour trip to Cuba, is the first sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba in almost 90 years.Photo by Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA

[Obama] is far more interested in constraining American power in a shortsighted effort not to repeat the supposed mistakes of his predecessor than in unleashing the full might of the American power and leading a serious and sustained international effort to deny ISIS legitimacy by depriving it of safe haven.

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Terror in Brussels leaves at least 30 dead. Visiting Cuba, President Obama responds. For 51 seconds. Then he gets back to burying the Cold War. Which ended in 1991.

Later in Havana, explaining to ESPN why he followed through with plans to attend a baseball game despite the international crisis, the president invoked David Ortiz of the Red Sox, who rallied Boston after the 2013 marathon bombing. What Obama said of Ortiz is revealing.

“That is the kind of resilience and kind of strength that we have to continually show in the face of these terrorists,” he said. “They cannot defeat America. They can’t—they don’t produce anything. They don’t have a message that appeals to the vast majority of Muslims or the vast majority of people around the world. But what they can do is scare us and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us. As long as we don’t allow that to happen, we’ll be ok.”

Whew, what a relief. Islamic holy warriors bomb, kill, maim, mutilate, decapitate, rape, crucify, and shoot civilians of every sex, age, race, and creed—but they won’t win, so long as the president maintains the fortitude to stick to his schedule and watch a baseball game with a Communist dictator. Now watch Raul and me do the wave.

Rarely has Obama’s attitude toward terrorism been brought into such stark relief. Why does he respond so perfunctorily, so coolly, so stoically to the mayhem? Not because he lacks sympathy. Because he believes his job is to restrain America from overreaction, from hubris, from our worst instincts of imperialism and oppression.

Yes, the thinking goes, ISIS and al Qaeda are threats to be fought, contained, defeated. But the greater threat, in Obama’s view, is that Americans may become scared, afraid, disrupted, divided. We might invade Iraq again, or cut off immigration and trade, or discriminate against the Muslim minority. That is the real danger against which this president stands. Terrorism will burn itself out. The problem of American maximalism remains.

This is not the sort of thing you expect to hear from an American president. It’s what you expect from a secretary general of the United Nations, from the president of the European Commission, from the foreign ministry of France circa 2002. It’s the worldview of the international NGO, of the multilateral bureaucrat: Terrorism? We can manage. But the U.S. hyper-power? We’ve got to put a lid on this problem, stat.

Liberal internationalists have agonized over the wanton use of our power for years. The treaties and institutions they support are brakes on American unilateralism. They bind America’s freedom of action. “It was the Gulliver effect,” wrote Charles Krauthammer in “Democratic Realism.” “Call a committee meeting of countries with hostile or contrary interests—i.e., the U.N. Security Council—and you have guaranteed yourself another 12 years of inaction.”

What makes Obama unique is not that he subscribes to the multilateral worldview but that he applies it to the American people themselves. He seeks not only to constrain the American military but also the American citizenry, to tamp down our anger and worry and frustration, replace our false consciousness with consciousness-raising, check the emotional and hawkish impulses of a media-addled people. He’s the Ban Ki-moon of the Potomac.

The president, writes Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, “has never believed that terrorism poses a threat to America commensurate with the fear it generates.” When ISIS began its killing spree in the summer of 2014, Obama told an adviser, “They’re not coming here to chop our heads off.” Goldberg reports that Obama has taken to wandering the halls of the White House, reminding “his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do.”

Figures: If terrorism kills fewer Americans than bathtubs, why miss the baseball game? But Obama’s logic is ridiculous. It rests on the mother of all category errors. Auto crashes and life-threatening falls are the result of bad luck. Terrorism and gun crime are acts of human agency. Individuals are behind them. And in the case of terrorism (and of gangs) these individuals are embedded in networks of radicalization, training, equipment, and support.

There is no global conspiracy of Jacuzzis to murder Americans. But there is, as the last decade and a half has made disturbingly clear, a widespread effort by an ideological movement to kill as many people as possible—most of whom, we ought to remember, are Muslims themselves—in the revanchist pursuit of a twenty-first century Caliphate. You insure against accidents. But you fight crime and terrorism and global jihad by raising defenses, securing territory, and disrupting the bad actors before they disrupt you.

“Several years ago,” Goldberg writes, President Obama “expressed to me his admiration for Israelis’ ‘resilience’ in the face of constant terrorism, and it is clear that he would like to see resilience replace panic in American society.” What a low view of the American people is expressed in this anecdote—and what a backhanded compliment of Israel. For there is no “panic” gripping America other than the desire for the president to treat the problem of ISIS and Islamic terrorism more seriously than he has. And Israel’s response to Palestinian terrorism goes far beyond “resilience” in the face of suicide bombs and rocket attacks—to include a global campaign against terror networks, the forward deployment of forces in the West Bank, and retaliatory offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza that the president and his multilateral friends are always so quick to criticize and bring to an end.

There is an old joke about how the U.S. ambassador to the United Nation so often acts as the U.N. ambassador to the United States. As the threat of Islamic radicalism has grown and the lands under its dominion have expanded, President Obama has fallen into the role of the hapless diplomat. He is far more interested in constraining American power in a shortsighted effort not to repeat the supposed mistakes of his predecessor than in unleashing the full might of the American power and leading a serious and sustained international effort to deny ISIS legitimacy by depriving it of safe haven. It must give Barack Obama cold comfort to know that his successor is far more likely to act not as secretary-general of the United States, but as its commander-in-chief.

Categories: Obama and Islamic State
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State: Kerry Needs More Evidence to Determine Genocide by ISIS and Assad

March 16, 2016

State: Kerry Needs More Evidence to Determine Genocide by ISIS and Assad, Washington Free Beacon,  , March 16, 2016

(Kerry is big on evidence. Just look at the Iran scam and nuke inspections. — DM)

 

 

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday that his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, needs more evidence to determine if the Islamic State has committed genocide with its slaughter of thousands of innocents throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Congress had set Kerry a deadline of March 17 to officially determine whether atrocities committed by ISIS constitute genocide, but Toner told reporters during the State Department’s daily press briefing that the department will not have a decision by that date.

“Determining these kinds of legal definitions, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, require a very detailed, rigorous legal analysis,” Toner said. “[Kerry] is a lawyer, and, of course, that’s going to weigh into [how he makes his decision].”

“There are a lot of lawyers on [Captiol] Hill, too,” Associated Press reporter Matt Lee said in response, referring to the House of Representatives unanimously voting 393-0 on Monday to pass a resolution labeling the barbarity ISIS has perpetrated against Christians and other religious minority groups in the Middle East as “genocide.”

Toner clarified that his “only point is that he [Kerry] wants to base his decision on the best evidence available, and he has requested additional evidence, information, in order to [do so].”

“It just seems like there is a lot of evidence already out there,” Lee said in response.

The international community has decried ISIS’ slaughter and enslavement of anyone who does not submit to its uncompromising brand of Sunni Islam, killing Muslims as well as other religious and ethnic groups.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum determined last year in a report that ISIS is guilty of carrying out genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq, a term the museum rarely uses.

“We believe Islamic State has been and is perpetrating genocide against the Yazidi people,” the report says. “Islamic State’s stated intent and patterns of violence against Shia Shabak and Shia Turkmen also raise concerns about the commission and risk of genocide against these groups.”

The jihadist group has also carried out brutal violence against Christians and other groups, with Muslims making up the highest number of its victims.

The European Parliament voted last month to describe ISIS’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria as genocide.

There has been some debate as to whether using the term “genocide” with ISIS in an official capacity would legally obligate the U.S. to take further action against the jihadist group, which some people have argued is why the Obama administration is reluctant to do so.

Toner made clear at Monday’s press briefing that no legal requirement comes with using the term, but he stressed the international community has an obligation under the United Nations to stop crimes against humanity and other such atrocities like the ones being committed by ISIS.

In addition to the resolution on genocide passed Monday, the House also voted 392-3 to pass a measure calling for the creation of an international tribunal to try the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for war crimes.

Assad triggered the Syrian civil war in 2011 by slaughtering his own people for peacefully protesting his authoritarian rule. He has since waged a war against the Syrian people who formed an opposition in response, resulting thus far in about 400,000 deaths and the displacement of millions of others.

Assad has received help from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Russia to stay in power.

Categories: Assad, Genocide, Islam and Christianity, Islamic State, Kerry, Obama and Islamic State
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Hamas Supplying ISIS w/Bombs, Guns and Communications

March 3, 2016

Hamas Supplying ISIS w/Bombs, Guns and Communications, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 3, 2016

isis_revised_map_of-world_caliphate

There have been plenty of protests that Israel is “strangling” Gaza with its blockade. That Gaza is an “open air prison” or even a “concentration camp”. The truth is that Hamas is facing restrictions because it’s a terrorist organization that keeps trying to kill people.

The following letter published by Memri also reveals that it’s allied with ISIS in the Sinai is supplying guns and bombs to ISIS.

Anyone who calls for ending restrictions on Gaza is calling for more weapons to be transferred to ISIS. They are a traitor and a terrorist supporter in every possible sense of the word.

On February 24, 2016, a letter from an Islamic State (ISIS) fighter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was posted on social media. In it, the fighter strongly protests the close ties and cooperation between ISIS’s Sinai province and Hamas, particularly Hamas’s military wing.

The letter lays out a variety of Islamic objections to the problem that Hamas has not sworn allegiance to the Caliph of the Islamic State, making them apostates, but Hamas and ISIS in the Sinai nevertheless maintain a close working cooperation. It also lists some of the details of the cooperation between ISIS in the Sinai and Hamas.

“1. Sinai province is smuggling weapons for Hamas in Gaza, because of the province’s fighters’ expert knowledge of the [smuggling] routes from Libya, Sudan, and Egypt.

“2. Sinai province depends very much on Hamas and Al-Qassam for weapons and for explosives and ammunition. There are direct and continuous supply routes from Hamas to Sinai province. The Al-Qassam factories operate assembly lines for manufacturing explosive devices and bombs for the Sinai province, but do not stamp the Al-Qassam logo on them, as they usually do.

The Al-Qassam factories produce most particularly the rather famous Kassam rockets, but other weapons as well. So Hamas is supplying bombs for ISIS attacks on Egyptian forces (so you can see why Egypt has been cracking down so hard on Hamas), but it’s possible that some Hamas weapons filter beyond ISIS in Egypt to core ISIS as well. Certainly to ISIS in Libya.

This is a serious problem that merits investigation, much like the IEDs that Iran supplied to Jihadis in Iraq which killed so many American soldiers.

It also makes it clear that Gaza effectively functions as ISIS’ base in Israel.

“3. Sinai province leaders are regularly visiting the Gaza Strip, and holding cordial meetings with Hamas and Al-Qassam leaders, even [Hamas] government [representatives]. Animals are slaughtered for them, feasts are held, and they are embraced in Gaza.

“4. Hamas and Al-Qassam are accepting all wounded Sinai province [fighters], and they are treated in Gaza Strip hospitals under Al-Qassam’s direct protection.

“5. Hamas is providing wireless communication hubs for Sinai province, because of the difficulty of operating them in Sinai and because they are vulnerable to swift destruction by the Egyptian army.

So Hamas is providing medical care, weapons, communications, supplies and other military support functions to ISIS. It even supplies uniforms to ISIS

“Hamas manufactures the military uniforms for Sinai province – the uniforms we see, and over which we rejoice, in videos are from Hamas, oh our Sheikh Abu Bakr.”

This means that ISIS in Egypt becomes hard to beat without defeating Hamas.

And it means Obama engaged in back channel negotiations with an ISIS ally and that the man responsible for those negotiations, Robert Malley, is now Obama’s anti-ISIS czar.

 

Categories: Gaza, Hamas, Islamic State, Israel, Obama and Islamic State, Palestinian heroes
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Newsmax Prime | Raymond Ibrahim and Nonie Darwish discuss the latest US airstrike in Libya

February 22, 2016

Newsmax Prime | Raymond Ibrahim and Nonie Darwish discuss the latest US airstrike in Libya, Newsmax TV via You Tube, February 19, 2016

Categories: Airstrikes, Caliphate, Europe, Foreign policy, Islamic history, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Obama and Islamic State, Rules of war
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