Learning to Love Our Terrorist Friends

a140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6Israel was told not to take down Arafat or Hamas would take over. Now Israel is being warned that if it destroys Hamas, ISIS will take over.

The distinction between Hamas and ISIS is obvious. One is a violent Islamic terrorist group that is determined to destroy Israel. And the other is a violent Islamic terrorist group determined to destroy Israel. Hamas is funded by Qatar. So is ISIS. Hamas likes to wear green. ISIS sticks to black and white.

If you have to choose between genocidal Islamic terrorist groups, go with the one that has a wider range of color in its wardrobe. Your civilians will regret it, but at least their killers will look fabulous.

Also ISIS hates Shiites while Hamas accepts Iranian weapons.

Clearly Hamas is moderate and ISIS is extremist. Maybe if ISIS also agrees to accept Iranian weapons with which to kill Jews, we will all be able to breathe a sigh of relief at its new moderate attitude.

The good news is that in the last few months Al Qaeda also became moderate. Numerous news stories tell us that Al Qaeda thinks that ISIS is “crazy”. Al Qaeda has less to say about it than the Western pundits speaking on its behalf, but it’s rumored that Zawahiri beheaded a Western aid worker without inviting Baghdadi which is considered a major snub in the high society codes of top terror groups.

That raises the question, should we have destroyed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?

Wouldn’t it have been better to leave it intact to prevent ISIS from taking over? Indeed didn’t weakening Al Qaeda make it possible for ISIS to emerge as a dominant global Jihadist force? Look for this to become a major theme of mainstream media foreign policy commentary and of Obama’s new Iraq strategy.

The only way to defeat terrorists is by not fighting them. Only by doing nothing can we hope to prevail.

And who is to say that ISIS is as extreme as it gets? Shouldn’t we be careful not to bomb ISIS too much or it will be replaced by an even more extreme group such as SuperJihad or “Behead Anyone Who Isn’t a Salafi”? It not only could happen, it probably will. Islam is good at replacing one bloody maniac with another bloody maniac. If Baghdadi lives long enough, he’ll end up in a house with three wives, a dozen cans of Viagra and an email account that no serious Jihadi forwards fatwas to… just like Osama.

Every Muslim terrorist is potentially a moderate, not because he moderates his position, but because tomorrow someone will chop off twice as many heads. If Malik has a six-year-old chop off three heads, Mohammed will have a three-year-old chop off six heads and Abdallah will have a one-year-old shelling Kurdish villages. And then Hamid will get his hands on some WMDs and a bunch of two-month- olds and we’ll realize that Malik, Mohammed and Abdallah were really moderate Muslim terrorists after all.

Imagine if we decided that Charles Manson really wasn’t so bad compared to later successors like John Wayne Gacy. We would have to free Manson and set him up with a new cult and a bunch of weapons. And then when the Green River Killer showed up, we would have to reconsider whether maybe Gacy wasn’t the lesser evil. And it’s not like any of them hold a candle to Abdul Djabar who raped 300 men and boys while strangling them with a turban back in 1970s Afghanistan.

But wait, sure Abdul seemed like a bad guy then but compared to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS, he was really a moderate. It’s a shame he was executed. Maybe we could have negotiated with him in Qatar.

It’s not just a joke; it’s also our foreign policy.

Obama did his best to negotiate with the “moderate” Taliban and they not only raped boys, but they also inflicted horrifying tortures that made Abdul with his turban strangling seem like a nice guy.

We can’t define democracy by the popular vote and we can’t define moderates in relation to the bloodiest murderer on the block. But that’s the kind of common sense that rarely enters the heads of policymakers who keep trying to make friends with Abdul even while he’s strangling them with a turban.

Hamas, we are now told, is the only thing keeping ISIS out of Gaza. But ISIS is already in Gaza since anyone can become ISIS by affiliating with it. The Fort Hood Jihadist announced that he wants to join ISIS last week, but that doesn’t mean much as long as he’s locked up in prison and needs help going to the bathroom.

A practical approach to keeping ISIS out of Gaza would be to ‘Nidal Hassan’ both Hamas and ISIS until they need help going to the bathroom, let alone launching rockets at the Golan Heights or Tel Aviv.  A completely insane approach is believing that we need Hamas to launch rockets at us so that ISIS doesn’t launch rockets at us.

And if SuperJihad ever shows up, we’ll have to turn Gaza over to ISIS before you can say the Shahada six times fast so that it can bomb Tel Aviv before SuperJihad bombs Tel Aviv.

Hamas and Al Qaeda in Iraq have historically enjoyed positive relations. If Hamas decides, it can join ISIS whenever it pleases. Without Hamas, ISIS is unlikely to take over Gaza since it would need to spend decades building a political infrastructure. Without that it would be stuck trying to fight the same kinds of battles as Hamas, but without any local or international support. It would lose and lose badly.

But let’s set aside these practical considerations.

The very notion that we should continually choose to support the lesser terrorist evil to hold at bay the bigger terrorist evil (until it too becomes the lesser evil) isn’t policy; it’s an untreated mental illness.

If you accept the premise that Hamas is the lesser evil, then Israel has to leave it intact, endure the rockets falling on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the huge numbers of civilians packed into bomb shelters, because if ISIS takes over Gaza it will be even worse. And Israel taking over Gaza would somehow be even worse than that, even though there were no rockets falling on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem back then.

This isn’t a strategy. It’s learned helplessness.

Hamas shut down Israel’s international airport, forced residents from its major cities into bomb shelters and dug tunnels meant for major incursions into Israel. Now Hamas has become the buffer zone against ISIS while Abbas is the buffer zone against Hamas and ISIS will one day be the buffer zone against the Martyrs Brigades of Abdul Djabar who strangle and rape their victims; not necessarily in that order.

An Islamic terrorist group that shells your major cities is not a buffer zone.  One serial killer is not more moderate or extreme than another. Neither of them should be on the loose.

The options were always clear and they were laid out during the Disengagement; Israel can be in Gaza or it can be attacked from Gaza.

There is no third option except wishful thinking.

The new moderate reimagining of Hamas and Al Qaeda is the work of the same diseased minds that got us into this mess and can’t wait to drag us in even deeper. It needs to be rejected if we’re ever going to break the cycle of arming and funding the “moderate” terrorists to stop the “extremist” terrorists.

Either that or we can start climbing into bed with the ISIS moderates now.

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  • truebearing

    Another brilliant autopsy on brain-dead Leftist “thinking.”

    The interesting thing about this diseased thinking that encourages Israel not to destroy bad because evil will follow really doesn’t fit the Left’s usual lies about historical progression. Since when did allowing bad prevent the advent of evil? There is a lie at the center of this craven counsel.

    “But wait, sure Abdul seemed like a bad guy then but compared to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS, he was really a moderate. It’s a shame he was executed. Maybe we could have negotiated with him in Qatar.

    It’s not just a joke; it’s also our foreign policy.”

    Our foreign policy is a joke. It just isn’t particularly funny.

    Maybe there are too many in the State Department who secretly enjoy being strangled with Abdul’s turban…

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      It’s not funny to us…

      • truebearing

        Yes, the Russians and Chinese are yukking it up, and no doubt the Islamists are splitting a rib.

        • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

          They just need to reach people who will use those ideas and onwards

        • gerry

          Of course the Chinese and Russians are laughing,and they are not the only ones.

  • semus

    Excellent piece. Apt description of a something that not too long ago would not have been believed possible. Eliminate the mass musders, rapes and destruction and this could be a comedic farce that could only be the product of someones imagination.

  • drygoldfeld

    The West allows corrupt Islamic regimes to fund psychopath bands while bribing individuals and organizations to portray these bestial killers as moderates .

  • Fear Propaganda

    Why are Democrats and Republicans promoting the same Propaganda across all major news networks?

    Is there an alternative to these identical parties in 2016?

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      Vote Ron Paul or Jill Stein. Maybe they represent your point of view better?

      • Fear Propaganda

        This article explains it better. We have a legitimacy issue.

        http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/02/377474/isis-is-americas-new-terror-brand/

        • truebearing

          You and press tv have a legitimacy issue, not to mention paranoia and rampant paralogic.

          • Fear Propaganda

            Amazing how many people are falling for this main stream media garbage. What does it feel like to be a member of the herd?

      • Jack Schitt

        Ron Paul says 9/11 was an inside job…sounds legit o_O

  • camp7

    Q: Rabbi, what is a fortune?
    A: A fortune is to live in Israel, our homeland.
    Q: And what’s a misfortune?
    A: A misfortune is to have such a fortune.

    Jewish humor is rooted in history’s earliest recorded documents, the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Talmud. Since then it has become even more refined as exemplified in Daniel Greenfield’s humorous irony in the face of severity. Suffering tempers witticism over the centuries, I guess.

    A few years ago, I chanced to meet a Rabbi along a wayside stop. A very novel occasion this far north. He was a short plump man wearing the traditional Yarmulke. We struck a conversation which led me to ask: “In your opinion, what do you think might resolve the Muslim terrorism against the Jews. Without hesitation he replied: “For every Jew they murder, kill ten thousand of them.” I was somewhat taken aback from his bluntness. As we continued our conversation I asked him if he carried a weapon. “Yes” he replied, “I go to Israel every year and keep an Uzi. Good Israeli made gun. You can shoot it from the shoulder pow,pow… or you can fold the stock and shoot it from the hip, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow.”

    I chuckled and said: “You sound pretty serious.” He answered: “Only when I’m not joking about the Jews.”

    • mollysdad

      It seems that this conversation is leading to a conclusion which envisages the destruction of the Islamic Caliphate by all necessary means, not excluding nuclear weapons.

      • The March Hare

        It has for years. It is just that the right people haven’t been part of the conversation as of yet. The destruction should have happened years ago. This isn’t the first time Islam has risen and conquered others and we can’t let it keep reaching the overwhelming proportions as in the past. It took centuries to get rid of the scourge and I don’t have that long.

      • camp7

        I would suggest yes. At an earlier stage, genocide seemed idealistically abhorrent. Now it seems it is a prerequisite for the survival of civilized society. I am sorry to express such sentiment.

        • mollysdad

          If they can escape destruction by converting to another religion, it wouldn’t be genocide.

          • IslamDownpressesHumanity

            And if woodchucks could talk, I’d ask a woodchuck how much wood can a woodchuck chuck?

        • truebearing

          Evil removes all of your choices but to survive. The onus is on evil, not those who have no choice but to fight it.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    I was playing chess the other day. When I was getting ready to strike one of my opponents players, a shadowy guru whispered in my ear from behind me that it would be a bad idea. He told me that if I strike that player, my opponent will simply replace it with another.

    I instantly saw the wisdom in his advice.

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      This is why liberals avoid score keeping in games. It’s bad for self-esteem

  • StanleyT

    this column stands up there with “The Deadly Israeli House” as one of your absolute best! Thanks Daniel.

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      thank you

  • Servo1969

    Progressives: If we’re really nice to the crocodiles they will eat us last. Perhaps they will be so full they won’t even bother to eat us!

  • Texas Patriot

    Another set of brilliant insights by our friend, Daniel Greenfield. But from my standpoint, the problem with this article is the title. It is not possible to learn to love our “terrorist friends”, because they are not our friends. They are our enemies. The truth of the matter is that the ideology of Islamic jihad has always been at war with non-Muslims, and those Muslims who have chosen to pursue the path of Islamic jihad are only too happy to destroy us and our way of life unless we submit to Islam. So where does that leave us? Is it possible to learn to “love” our terrorist enemies? From my standpoint that’s a lot like asking the question of whether it was possible to love Old Yeller after he had gotten rabies.

    Old Yeller is a classic Disney movie about a beloved family dog (a yellowish hound nicknamed “Old Yeller”) that had gotten rabies and had to be killed. The choices were stark and awful. Old Yeller had proven time and time again that he was a faithful family friend and protector who had saved the lives of one or more family members on several occasions. But once Old Yeller was infected with rabies, there was no way to cure him, and Travis, the boy who had originally befriended Old Yeller, was faced with the prospect of having to kill the dog that had protected his family. The alternative was to expose himself and his family to a rabid dog that only wanted to kill or infect them. Travis did what he had to do. Did he enjoy killing Old Yeller? No, it was the most difficult and painful thing he had ever done, and he did it with tears in his eyes.

    The good news is that, unlike rabies, the ideology of Islamic jihad is not always fatal. Why? Because the path of Islamic jihad is not always chosen by Muslims, and even when it is chosen, it is not always permanent. The truth of the matter is that there are hundreds of milions of Muslims who have never chosen the path of Islamic jihad, and those Muslims probably represent no immediate threat to non-Muslims. Possibly even more encouraging is the fact that there are thousands of former jihadis who have renounced the path of Islamic jihad, and are now fighting against those who have chosen it.

    Is it possible to love those who have chosen or may choose the path of Islamic jihad? I would say that the answer to that question is a very qualified yes. Jesus Christ taught that if we want to be children of God, we must love and pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. How is that possible in the case of those who have chosen the path of Islamic jihad? It is written in the Book of Genesis that all men and women are created in the image of God. Therefore, it is probably not possible to look in the face of any human being, however deranged, and not see some trace of the divine.

    Is it possible to trust those who have chosen or may choose the path of Islamic jihad? That is a much more difficult question. Ronald Reagan’s formula for dealing with the Soviets was “trust but verify”, and that may be helpful to us. As difficult as it may be, somehow we are going to have to find a way to verify how and to what extent we can possibly trust those who have chosen or may possibly choose the path of jihad. But we must never assume that they are not our enemies. Unless and until they have completely renounced the teachings and life example of Muhammad and his followers, there is always the possibility that they will choose the path of Islamic jihad.

    • elizabeth greeley

      Now that is what I call living in the land of OZ.

      • Texas Patriot

        Where is the Wizard of Oz when we need him?

    • DVG

      Listen to what they keep saying. There is no moderate islam.
      OK…What do we do? Outlaw islam. Close every mosque in the US. And STOP buying their oil. Islam is evil, period.

      • Gee

        Kill them might work.

    • IslamDownpressesHumanity

      If you have so much faith in those other “good” moslems then why don’t you move to an islamic state?

  • Gbrandstetter

    The o ly problem with piece is the assumption Hamas or al qaida or IS are distinct from the population in whi ch they thrive. Killing Hamaas is easy removing Hamas ideolody from Mulims is impossible. So unless you are willing to de- islamise the populace you cnnt win you can mow the grass regRdless of its nom de jour

    • http://sultanknish.blogspot.com Daniel Greenfield

      Destroying their hope of winning can be almost as good

      • NSNZ

        Calling them ‘WAS’ gives the tingle of certainty!

      • Gbrandstetter

        If Islamism is their guide, the hope, the centainty of winning in the end, never wanes, is never destroyed. Not even Egypt which seemed to have given up on its hope of winning is willing to let go of the hope that the Palestinian tool will achieve the goal. You raise the iron wall, the iron dome, and use their intrasigence to remove them where they belong: Europestan

    • objectivefactsmatter

      Grass isn’t shy about growing again after a good mowing. Jihadis are, if it’s done right.

    • Gee

      That is the only workable solution. Until America decides to play Cowboys and Muslims they will be a threat to every freedom loving person on the planet

  • Hard Little Machine

    ISIS is moderate now too, now that they’ve beheaded an Israeli Jew on YouTube.

  • kasandra

    “The very notion that we should continually choose to support the lesser terrorist evil to hold at bay the bigger terrorist evil (until it too becomes the lesser evil) isn’t policy; it’s an untreated mental illness.” Just excellent!

  • patechinois

    The same could be said for Saddam Hussein and all the libs (that voted for the war) second guessing the taking out of Saddam because now we’re left with ISIS. Saddam killed over a million of his people, killed another million in Iran, who knows how many thousands in Kuwait, who knows how many suicide bombers he sponsored throughout the world. ISIS has killed how many in Iraq? Last count was from July at 5500. Even if they’ve killed another 10,000 since,…that’s a far cry from Saddam’s terror. Saddam threw people in wood chippers…feet first. Threw people in acid vats. Gassed the Kurds. Had his boys rape as many girls as they could in a night. Created a paranoid society where brother ratted on brother and no one felt safe saying a thing about anything. But somehow the libs lament the loss of such a MODERATE. HA!

  • MrUniteUs1

    How much more would you would be willing to spend in taxes, to take on ISIS?

    • WhiteHunter

      However much it takes. With a mandatory death penalty for any Damnocrat who diverts even a single dollar of it for any other purpose, like “green energy” boondoggles, Lois Lerner’s pension, bilingual “education” or welfare or lawyers for illegals, or Obama’s next $20 million vacation. How’s that work for ya?

      • MrUniteUs1

        You left out you. How much more would you be willing to spend in taxes to take on ISIS.

  • Fear Propaganda

    This article explains it better. We have a legitimacy issue..

    http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/02/377474/isis-is-americas-new-terror-brand/

  • carpe diem 36

    I do not know which came first: Obama or the Jihadists. I do not know if by electing Obama he invited all those Jihadis to act or when the democrats saw all those Jihadis they decided that the best man (sic) to fight them would be Obama.

  • laura r

    hes just a white boy pretending hes black dont pay attention.

    • MrUniteUs1

      1/8 th Scottish aye

  • Erudite Mavin

    Spot on Daniel.
    Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the list of other Radical Islamic Terrorist Armies,
    all Muslims and Kill those who are not like them.
    To pop the bubble on those who think Al Qaeda is more moderate than ISIS, large numbers of Al Qaeda have joined ISIS and continue to.
    For what ever reason, the general public can’t bring themselves to believe evil exists and waters these armies down to a palatable pill and tollerance

  • Lanna

    The Best analogy came from the mother of one of the Seal Team Six warriors…she nailed it and nailed this administration on their failings and inabilities.

  • Guest1282

    Some good points here. But why exactly can’t we “define democracy by the popular vote”? Most dictionaries would disagree here.

    • WhiteHunter

      That is the definition. The problem is that savages will vote not just for their own enslavement–which is fine–but for ours, too. Which isn’t.

  • ricpic

    Obama and Co. are systematically demoralizing America with their intentional, not learned, helplessness. There is probably no good analogy but the Left’s endgame is a nation like France in 1940, that feeling helpless from top to bottom, utterly demoralized, collapsed with shocking speed when invaded.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    At this point you are correct. We’ve incentivized terror and mendacity to such a degree that now we must destroy them to send a message to those that might follow.

    That’s what you really do:

    You don’t leave them standing. You leave NOBODY standing.

    You have to change the real costs and their analysis of the costs.

  • mtnhikerdude

    What is it going to take to wake up American Citizens ? My guess is another terrorist attack that will surpass 9-11 . Throw in a “Race War” and just possibly the wool will be removed from the apathetic eyes .

    • dba_vagabond_trader

      Nope, they’ll still blame the tea party.