Obama’s Self-Defeating Fight

WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

The United States has a problem with Islamic State. Its problem is that it refuses to acknowledge why Islamic State is a problem.

The problem with Islamic State is not that it is brutal. Plenty of regimes are brutal.

Islamic State poses two challenges for the US. First, unlike the Saudis and even the Iranians, IS actively recruits Americans and other Westerners to join its lines.

This is a problem because these Americans and other Westerners have embraced an ideology that is viciously hostile to every aspect of Western civilization.

Last Friday, Buzz Feed published a compilation of social media posts published by Western women who have left their homes in Chicago and London and other hometowns to join IS in Syria.

As these women’s social media posts demonstrate, the act of leaving the West and joining IS involves rejecting everything the West is and everything it represents and embracing a culture of violence, murder and degradation.

In the first instance, the women who leave the West to join IS have no qualms about entering a society in which they have no rights. They are happy covering themselves in black from head to toe. They have no problem casting their lot with a society that prohibits females from leaving their homes without male escorts.

They have no problem sharing their husband with other wives. They don’t mind because they believe that in doing so, they are advancing the cause of Islam and Allah.

As the women described it, the hardest part about joining the jihad is breaking the news to your parents back home. But, as one recruiter soothed, “As long as you are firm and you know that this is all for the sake of Allah then nothing can shake you inshalah.”

Firm in their belief that they are part of something holy, the British, American and European jihadistas are completely at ease with IS violence. In one post, a woman nonchalantly described seeing a Yazidi slave girl.

“Walked into a room, gave salam to everyone in the room to find out there was a yazidi slave girl there as well.. she replied to my salam.”

Other posts discussed walking past people getting their hands chopped off and seeing dead bodies on the street. Islamic State’s beheadings of American and British hostages are a cause for celebration.

Their pride at the beheadings of James Foley and others is part and parcel of their hatred for the US and the West. As they see it, destroying the US and the West is a central goal of IS.

As one of the women put it, “Know this Cameron/ Obama, you and your countries will be beneath our feet and your kufr will be destroyed, this is a promise from Allah that we have no doubt over…. This Islamic empire shall be known and feared world wide and we will follow none other than the law of the one and the only ilah!” These women do not feel at all isolated. And they have no reason to. They are surrounded by other Westerners who joined IS for the same reasons they did.

In one recruitment post, Western women were told that not knowing Arabic is no reason to stay home.

“You can still survive if you don’t speak Arabic. You can find almost every race and nationality here.”

The presence of Westerners in IS, indeed, IS’s aggressive efforts to recruit Westerners wouldn’t pose much of a problem for the US if it were willing to secure its borders and recognize the root of the problem.

But as US President Barack Obama made clear over the summer, and indeed since he first took office six years ago, he opposes any effort to secure the US border with Mexico. If these jihadists can get to Mexico, they will, in all likelihood, have no problem coming to America.

But even if the US were to secure its southern border, it would still be unable to prevent these jihadists from returning to attack. The policy of the US government is to deny the existence of a jihadist threat by, among other thing, denying the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad.

When President Barack Obama insisted last Wednesday that Islamic State is not Islamic, he told all the Westerners who are now proud mujihadin that they shouldn’t worry about coming home. They won’t be screened. As far as the US is concerned their Islamic jihad ideology doesn’t exist.

So whereas every passenger arriving in the US from Liberia can be screened for Ebola, no one will be screened for exposure to jihadist thought.

And this brings us to the second problem IS poses to the US.

As a rising force in the Middle East, IS threatens US allies and it threatens global trade. To prevent its allies from being overthrown and to prevent shocks to the international economy, at a minimum, the US needs to contain IS. And given the threat the Westerners joining the terror army constitute, and Washington’s unwillingness to stop them at the border, in all likelihood, the US needs to destroy IS where it stands.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the US is willing or able to either contain or defeat IS.

As US Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales wrote over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal, from a military perspective, IS is little different from all the guerrilla forces the US has faced in battle since the Korean War. Scales argues that in all previous such engagements, the outcomes have been discouraging because the US lacks the will to take the battle to the societies that feed them or use its firepower to its full potential out of fear of killing civilians.

Clearly this remains the case today.

Moreover, as Angelo Codevilla explained last month in The Federalist, to truly dry up the swamp feeding IS, it is necessary to take the war to its state sponsors – first and foremost Turkey and Qatar.

In his words, “The first strike against the IS must be aimed at its sources of material support. Turkey and Qatar are very much part of the global economy… If…

the United States decides to kill the IS, it can simply inform Turkey, Qatar, and the world it will have zero economic dealings with these countries and with any country that has any economic dealing with them, unless these countries cease any and all relations with the IS.”

Yet, as we saw on the ground this weekend with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed mission to secure Turkish support for the US campaign against IS, the administration has no intention of taking the war to IS’s state sponsors, without which it would be just another jihadi militia jockeying for power in Syria.

And this leaves us with the administration’s plan to assemble a coalition of the willing that will provide the foot soldiers for the US air war against Islamic State.

After a week of talks and shuttle diplomacy, aside from Australia, no one has committed forces. Germany, Britain and France have either refused to participate or have yet to make clear what they are willing to do.

The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan. The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will either cheer the US on from a distance, or in the best-case scenario, provide logistical support for its operations.

It isn’t just that these states have already been burned by Obama whether through his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. And it isn’t simply that they saw that the US left them hanging in Syria.

They see Obama’s “strategy” for fighting IS – ignoring the Islamic belief system that underpins every aspect of its existence, and expecting other armies to fight and die to accomplish the goal while the US turns a blind eye to Turkey’s and Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamic State. They see this strategy and they are convinced America is fighting to lose. Why should they go down with it? Islamic State is a challenging foe. To defeat it, the US must be willing to confront Islamism. And it must be willing to fight to win. In the absence of such determination, it will fight and lose, in the region and at home, with no allies at its side.
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  • marlene

    I’m glad these traitors left our country. sheep to the slaughter is their lot.

    • Bamaguje

      Indeed, good riddance to very bad rubbish!!
      Just think about the havoc bloodthirsty Jihadi savages could have caused if they remained in the West.
      Even the so-called “moderate” Muslims in the West should be encouraged to leave, because there’s always the risk that they can suddenly become devout and violent – Sudden Jihad syndrome.
      Furthermore, many of the supposedly non-violent Muslims are instruments of stealth Jihad.

    • Hammerstrike

      Beside the White converts they are not traitors, on the contrary, they stick ton their own kind despite all the claims that they would become fully “westernized” after a few decades.

      Interesting that twatter and facebook doesn´t convince the followers of Allah that they should be “moderate”.

  • Softly Bob

    Of course Obama doesn’t want to defeat ISIS. He’s caught in a position where he realizes that he has to be seen to do something but he doesn’t really want to.
    He’s like something out of a comedy farce where he pretends to go and do a job but is later found sleeping behind the store cupboard, or the man who when asked “what are you going to do about this?”, points at the sky and says “look what’s that up there?” then runs away when everybody is looking upwards. This is something from a a 1930s Black & White comedy skit.
    Obama just wants the job o President to be one long party where it’s all about him. He doesn’t want the responsible bits, that’s too much like hard work.
    But what makes him even worse is that he genuinely wants to caliphate to succeed, so he’s much more than a useless, lazy rogue – he’s a traitor too. The man is not fit for office. He is fraudster, a charlatan and deserves to be impeached and I dare say, even sent to the gallows.

    • EasterBEspino

      My Uncle Benjamin got a stunning green Porsche Cayenne Diesel only from working off a macbook… see this googleprojectpay.com

    • wesley69

      Is Obama capable of winning??? Does he want to lose??? One thing for sure, would you join a coalition where the leader has apologized for the evils of his country, appeased its enemies, insulted or dismissed its allies, retreated and surrendered on many fronts???? A sane country wouldn’t. When you have a president and political party that blames a president six years out of office for the current situation in Iraq, a sane country would conclude that this leadership can’t take responsibility for its own actions and blames others for its failures. Can you trust such a leader????????

      When we got into Iraq, everyone had the SAME intelligence concerning WMD’s there. Democrats were calling for an end to Hussein prior to the 2000 election. The problem President Bush had was not putting enough troops in place for the occupation. Then after two huge military successes in Afghanistan in toppling the Taliban regime and in Iraq with the overthrow and capture of Hussein, Democrats started to turn on the president.

      The leftist media followed and as evidence of no huge caches of WMD”s were found, they joined the Democrats in condemning Bush, doing what they did in Vietnam with body counts and the like. Senators such as Reid said the war was lost as the insurgency gained stream throughout Iraq and the ancient hatred between Sunnis and Shiites was renewed.

      Bush did not fabricate any stories to prove that WMD’s were found, To his credit, he told the truth. When the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed, the leftist media had a field day in condemning the Bush White House, as did the Democrats. For the Democrats, their opposition was always political, not in the interest of winning it which was in the interest of this country as a whole.

      In spite of this and risking his own political parties future and possible impeachment, Bush ordered the surge and with the defection of the Sunnis from the ranks of Al Qaeda, the unrest slowly died down. Al Qaeda was on the run. The Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites agreed to form a government and staged their first democratic elections in their history.

      When Bush left office, violence had been tremendously reduced to the point that President Obama and VP Biden called Iraq one of THEIR great achievements.

      However, Obama, in withdrawing all US forces from Iraq, failed to negotiate a status of forces agreement. He basically left Iraq to fend for itself. With a Shiite majority, Prime Minister Maliki, a Shiite, ousted his Sunni VP and ordered his arrest. He replaced competent Iraqi commanders with Shiite loyalists. Violence between the Sunni and Shiites resumed, but where was the US? Instead of the US influencing Maliki, Iran and its Mullahs had filled that vacuum.

      During the Syrian Civil War, ISIS arose. When Obama backed away from his red line against Assad and refused to arm the Syrian rebels, the ranks of ISIS increased. The hatred of the Shiites motivated Sunnis in Syria and Iraq to support ISIS. Well equipped, trained and motivated by JIhad, ISIS took over Syria and moved into Iraq. While officials in the Department of Defense watched and warned, Obama, for over a year, he chose to do nothing, even denying Iraq the use of American Air Power to stall their advance. ISIS did not stop, defeated the Iraqi Army and took over a third of the country.

      Somehow, the left says this is Bush’s fault. THEY has short memories and are guilty of trying to rewrite the past. It is easier to blame the man at the top and run from him when the going got tough. Granted, Bush screwed up the occupation, the intelligence was wrong (though I would point to conveys of Iraqi trucks going into Syria, prior to the invasion).

      Though Democrats shouted that they supported our troops, they also shouted the war was a lost cause. They pointed out the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. How did this support our troops????? The Democrats were doing Vietnam all over again, a war THEY lost because THEY cut the funding to the South Vietnamese regime and refused to allow US air strikes to stop the North Vietnamese advance.

      The rise of ISIS is the fault of Prime Minister Maliki because of his treatment of the Sunnis. He sought retribution instead of true reconciliation, something Obama has done regarding race relations in this country. The fault is shared by Obama who did little to secure the status of forces agreement with Iraq, than walked away as Iran filled the power vacuum in that region. Obama claimed he would fight his “good” war in Afghanistan, then backed away from the concept of outright victory at the continued expense of American lives. Why fight a war unless you plan to win??????

      The fault is Obama’s because he failed to act against ISIS in the beginning, answering Iraq’s request for military aid. Why? BECAUSE JUST LIKE THE WAR ON TERROR, Iraq was a war that had been won with the enemy on the run.

      I leave it to the reader, as to who is at fault for our possible return to Iraq?????? I would also point out that countries around the world know the truth about this president. That is why few flock to his war standard because they know his heart is not in it and is willing to settle for something less than victory.

    • objectivefactsmatter

      The only military victory 0′Bama is interested in is the destruction of the Republican Party and the “bitter clingers,” AKA “Tea Party.”

  • Adrian

    I see six ads for “overweight people,” three ads for “old folks” and one for “preppers.”

    ‘Nuff said.

  • Bert

    Obama does not want to recognize that Islam is the source of terrorism. But America, with too few exceptions, refuses to recognize that we have elected a committed Muslim Jihadist as president who is operating on all fronts to dismantle America and pave the way for a Muslim takeover. And he still has over two more years to achieve this. Even if he loses the Senate in November his agents have already infiltrated all departments of our government which enables him to ignore the law and govern by executive order. Nothing short of a public insurrection will change anything and Obama has already put into place the firepower to put down any civilian uprising. Most Americans still cling to the fantasy that we have a functioning democracy.

  • Hard Little Machine

    Obama sees everything 100% in terms of US domestic politics. What is good for Obama backed candidates is good. Now that Obama is poison to the Democrats with 7 weeks left he will run out the clock. It’s just that simple.

    • Hammerstrike

      Just ask yourself, what will increase Obama´s ratings the highest by November?

  • http://www.clarespark.com/ Clare Spark

    The question is why any Western female in her right mind would join jihadism. See http://clarespark.com/2014/09/12/ray-rice-and-domestic-abuse-of-women/. “Ray Rice and domestic abuse of women.” Women are socialized to be masochistic.

  • Libslayer

    If it was CSIS, Christian State of Iraq and Syria, and they were touting free market principles instead of beheading people, Obama would have “executive ordered” a nuclear strike by now.

  • James_IIa

    Here’s why the threat of the Islamic State (IS) is new compared to al Qaeda or Hamas. We know that there are some 1.2 billion Muslims. Only a small fraction, say 10%, declare themselves in favor of jihad, but a significantly larger number feels some sympathy with the idea of violent jihad. When the new Caliphate was announced it was a call that profoundly affected those who already inclined to jihad, and tugged at those who merely had some vague sympathy for the movement. This explains why recruiting has increased explosively, and why IS has been able to conquer a state-sized territory. It’s enough to show why IS is a huge problem in the Middle East, and a danger to outgrow the feeble responses that have been aimed at it.

    The same factors that emotionally attract Muslims from around the world to join IS may also be deterring heads of state in the area from moving against IS aggressively. Here is Nonie Darwish explaining the reluctance of Arab leaders to tackle IS:

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/why_is_obama_kicking_the_isis_can_down_the_road.html

    There is a real possibility that IS will continue to grow at an alarming rate in the Middle East, but there is an additional danger. At some point the number of fighters in Syria and Iraq could become larger than IS can feed. The Islamic State may not have formulated a plan for this event, but this one suggests itself rather easily: as the numbers increase, take fighters with some training in the art of jihadi warfare, and have them return to fight in their home countries. If there is a constant stream of new recruits we could be seeing large numbers of violent
    warriors on the streets of western countries. These fighters will not have to form an army; they could simply prowl through their home countries as extremely effective killers. And there is evidence, that can be found on these pages, that that sort of model of individual jihad is becoming increasingly common.

  • Hammerstrike

    I love how Cameron’s is scared that ISIS is going to strike a lethal blow to British “multiculturalism” and hence to his career.

    Hope Scotland votes yes and this sets a precedent for Wales and England.

  • RMThoughts

    The one thing always missing: that is where ISIS originated because that would destroy the storyline. If Obama truly wanted to destory ISIS he would invariably have to join forces with Assad, who has been fighting factions of ISIS since the beginning of time – not with other versions of ISIS. And if he joins forces with Assad, then that means the United States spent millions upon millions of dollars supporting the Syrian rebels/jihadists for nothing!

    If the U.S. joins Assad and Russia, ISIS would be defeated in a matter of weeks or days. Certainly no self respecting conservative would want the United States to ally with Syria or Russia, even to defeat this terrible ISIS. It seems that allying with Syria and Russia to defeat them would be worse than ISIS itself. In this case the enemy of our enemy isn’t necessarily our friend.” At least when it comes to fighting ISIS.

    He can rest easy, we know this is not serious until we declare economic sanctions against the EU for admittedly buying ISIS blood oil and filling ISIS’s coffers. Or, until we expels Turkey from NATO, for arming, funding, and allow free transit to ISIS – or expel John McCain from the Senate for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. No, in practice “the enemy of our enemy isn’t necessarily our friend.” Which means we don’t really want to destroy this evil that we are told to fear and which we so diligently helped build – not yet. At least until we have accomplished our goal of Regime change in Syria.

    And for future peace of mind — If We Stop Arming, Funding and Training Terrorists, then Maybe We Won’t Have to Bomb Them Later.

  • Joy Beum

    Couldn’t agree more. Of course he does not want America to defeat his people. I hope someone is working on a secret plan.

  • 1Indioviejo1

    ISIL is just the essence of Islam. We will lose because we don’t wish to know who the enemy is, so we should get ready for Sharia in the Supreme Court, and maybe some guerrilla warfare from some freedom loving Americans. Our own people have chosen this path, and others have explained in depth what circumstances got us here, but we will all pay the heaviest price.

  • billobillo54

    Obama is an Islamophile. His own words and actions demonstrate this. Nothing less than equating Islam with Nazism, Bolshevism, or Maoism is adequate to save us from the plague of Islam. Is the demographic reality a problem for Israel? It is a problem anywhere Muslims are in the world and especially the west. Who can fathom freedom surviving a substantial Muslim population?

  • JayWye

    Comrade Obama In “Audacity of Hope” wrote:
    “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”
    in other speeches;
    1. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”
    2. “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”
    3. “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has
    done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own
    country.”
    4. “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

    Comrade Obama IS the muslim Manchurian Candidate.

    There’s a reason why,post-college,Comrade Hussein traveled to Pakistan,of all places. it’s not because he was a Christian. There’s a reason why Comrade Hussein was aided in getting into college by Saudi money and influence.

    It’s all part of his efforts to weaken the US economically,politically,and militarily.
    “once is accidental,twice is coincidence,three times is enemy action.”

    “The Obama Doctrine can be described in just nine words: Embolden our enemies, undermine our friends, diminish our country.” Frank J. Gaffney Jr.