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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; al Qaeda</title>
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		<title>Al-Qaeda’s Younger Brother in Florida</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joe-kaufman/al-qaedas-younger-brother-in-florida/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-qaedas-younger-brother-in-florida</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Dec 2014 05:14:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alazhar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nabil el-Shukri]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248048</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Nabil el-Shukri trying to fill the shoes of his extremist lineage?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Nabil.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248049" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Nabil-450x330.jpg" alt="Nabil" width="262" height="192" /></a>Nabil el-Shukri’s terrorist family has been decimated. His father, who was the imam of what has been labeled one of the most dangerous mosques in America and the translator for the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has long been gone. And now his older brother, a top-ranking al-Qaeda Commander, has been killed by the Pakistani military. With his two biggest influences dead, will el-Shukri choose to lead a similar path? The extremism he has exhibited and is exhibiting today leads one to believe that it is a foregone conclusion.</p>
<p>Nabil el-Shukri is the administrator and the acting imam at the Alazhar School for children, PK – 8th Grade, located in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Tamarac, Florida. He has been with the school, since it was incorporated in September 2008. While he is married with a child, today he no doubt feels quite lonely, as he has lost yet another piece of his radical Muslim family.</p>
<p>On a raid in the tribal district of South Waziristan, which began Friday, December 5<sup>th</sup> and ended the following day, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/06/world/asia/pakistan-al-qaeda-death/">al-Qaeda Commander Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah was killed</a> and confirmed dead by the Pakistani military. According to a resident from the area, he had been living there for two weeks, after having been forced out of North Waziristan during a military operation against militants <em>there</em>.</p>
<p>While with al-Qaeda, Adnan had quickly climbed ranks to reach the lofty position of head of external operations, a title once possessed by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In that capacity, he had been indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the 2009 terrorist plot to blow up New York City&#8217;s subway system. At the time of his death, he was 39 years old, born in 1975 to a mother who was merely 16 years of age and a father who was 47.</p>
<p>Adnan had been on the radar of the intelligence community, since he abruptly left town in May 2001. Two years later, his father told the <em>Associated Press</em> that the reason Adnan had left was because he disliked the American lifestyle and was offended by women who wore skimpy clothing.</p>
<p>The father, Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukrijumah, had spent much of his life as a missionary for the Saudi Arabian government. In 1986, he was sent to Brooklyn, New York to head a mosque, Masjid Nur al-Islam. He also had involvement with another mosque that was located only blocks away, Masjid al-Farooq, the home for many of those involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.</p>
<p>Gulshair was a translator for the spiritual leader of the attack, the ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel-Rahman. As well, during the federal trial concerning the attack, Gulshair was a chief/character witness for Clement Rodney Hampton-El, the individual who was believed to be the one who taught the terror cell how to build the bomb used in the attack. Hampton-El was one of the congregants at Gulshair’s mosque.</p>
<p>In a photo taken at Gulshair’s Brooklyn mosque, which was uploaded to the internet by his son Nabil, Gulshair is pictured reading with two young boys. Behind him, on the blackboard, it is written, “The human being is under the oppression of the kuffar [unbelievers, non-Muslims].”</p>
<p>In 1995, Gulshair moved himself and his family to Miramar in South Florida, where the Saudis once again set him up with a mosque to run. That mosque, Masjid al-Hijrah, has the dubious distinction of being named the No. 2 biggest “Sanctuary of Terror” by author Paul Sperry in his book <em>Infiltration</em>. At this mosque, Gulshair counseled the likes of convicted terrorist “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla, who also had dealings with Gulshair’s son, Adnan.</p>
<p>When the subject of his son’s terrorist activity became too hot, Gulshair was released from his duties as imam of al-Hijrah. He did not have to wait long to find a new job, though, as he was soon taken on as a director at the Shamsuddin Islamic Center, located in North Miami Beach. The mosque had recently moved across the street from its original location, at the same address as the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group run by Shukrijumah family friend Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, who was an advisor to the mosque.</p>
<p>Zakkout previously had been the Vice President of the Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP), a now defunct Hamas-related group run out of Deerfield Beach, Florida. Earlier this month, Zakkout posted on his Facebook page a photo of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat <a href="http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee431/kaufmanforcongress/Sofian_Zakkout-Ahmed_Yassin_Yasser_Arafat.jpg">embracing late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin</a>.</p>
<p>In June 2004, Gulshair el-Shukrijumah died at the age of 74, following a series of strokes claimed to have been brought on by news related to his oldest son, Adnan.</p>
<p>With both his older brother and father gone, Nabil el-Shukri has been left as the elder male figure in the radical Shukrijumah household. The question is will things be different with him than were with his two predecessors. The answer is probably no.</p>
<p>El-Shukri’s MySpace page is currently locked and restricted from public view. No longer can anyone go on it to see <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/NabilShukrijumah_MySpace.htm">graphics of jihadis brandishing rifles</a> and al-Qaeda black flags or photos of killed U.S. troops. However, his Facebook and YouTube pages are entirely open for scrutiny, and what is found on them is also very disturbing.</p>
<p>On his Facebook site, el-Shukri posted different items associated with the Muslim American Society or MAS, including a <a href="http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee431/kaufmanforcongress/Nabil_el-Shukri_MAS.jpg">MAS produced video, titled ‘Bassem is Trying.’</a></p>
<p>Last month, it was widely reported that MAS was named a terrorist organization by the UAE, on a list that included al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram. In the recent past, MAS has used its official websites to praise Hamas and to call for violence upon and/or denigrate Jews, Christians, homosexuals and women. The National Executive Director of MAS, Mazen Mokhtar, is a proponent of suicide bombings and has previously served as a web designer for what was then the main website raising funds and recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Qoqaz.net.</p>
<p>In January 2010, El-Shukri posted on his Facebook site a video, titled ‘The Arrivals pt.47 (The Free Human),’ which includes the following anti-Semitic rant from Islamic scholar Imran Hosein:</p>
<p>“What’s the new money that Israel will use to enslave mankind, the way the United States used the dollar? … It will be electronic money. And the strange thing – the dangerous thing – about electronic money is it is controlled by the banking system around the world, and the Jews control the banking system. That’s not an uncharitable statement… That’s the truth. We said that Israel is about to wage a big war. They prepared for this, when the Israeli Mossad and the CIA attacked America on September 11 and put the blame on us, us Muslims.”</p>
<p>In another video el-Shukri posted, titled ‘The Arrivals pt.26 (The Antichrist / Dajjal is Here),’ the same Imran Hosein describes a Satanic conspiracy between Britain, the United States and Israel. The video includes an image of the anti-Semitic fraud <em>Protocols of the Elders of Zion</em>, and states that “9/11 was an inside job.”</p>
<p>El-Shukri has not been shy about voicing his own fanatical views. He has a YouTube page, where he has uploaded a number of extreme speeches he has delivered in front of a mosque congregation. In one speech he posted in February 2010, titled ‘Al-Dajjal (Anti-Christ),’ he discusses his belief that, if Muslims try to become “moderate,” they are rejecting the Islamic religion and, instead, listening to the “Dajjal” or Devil.</p>
<p>He states: “We have to understand that we have to train ourselves – what is acceptable in this dunya [world]? Have we compromised our religion of Allah SWT? How much of our din [religion] has been compromised by this dunya? What is the definition of a moderate Muslim? &#8230; A moderate Muslim does not accept the Caliphate [Islamic rule]. A moderate Muslim wants to live under democracy – abolish the Caliphate. A moderate Muslim does not want the Sharia Law.”</p>
<p>Nabil’s radical views appear to be very much in line with that of his father and older brother. As well, his life seems to mimic Adnan’s. Both Nabil and Adnan had cell phone businesses. They both were involved in website design. They both attended classes at Broward College (Nabil is still attending classes there). And they both lectured in Islam, like their dad.</p>
<p>In December 2006, more than two years after the death of his father, Nabil el-Shukri wrote the following message on the MySpace page he created for Gulshair: “As Salaam Alaikum Dad, you’re still living among all of us, will see you later but not that much later.”</p>
<p>What does “not that much later” mean?</p>
<p>Given Nabil’s radical Islamic preoccupations and family history, these four words imply something very sinister which does not portend well for the future. His present, however, as administrator and acting imam of the Alazhar School is also cause for alarm, as he has been handed a forum to indoctrinate impressionable young minds with his toxic Islamist agenda and ideology.</p>
<p>In a June 2011 video interview with al-Hikmat, the media group run by the Darul Uloom mosque located near the home of the Shukrijumahs, where a number of al-Qaeda, including at least one of the 9/11 hijackers, had come to pray, el-Shukri called himself a “role model” for the Alazhar kids.</p>
<p>Question: What kind of parents would wish for their children to have a role model such as this? Those who keep their kids in this school are giving their tacit approval to the extremism that is represented by el-Shukri and his family’s lineage.</p>
<p><em>Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.</em></p>
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		<title>Should the United States Declare War on the Islamic State?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/should-the-united-states-declare-war-on-the-islamic-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=should-the-united-states-declare-war-on-the-islamic-state</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/should-the-united-states-declare-war-on-the-islamic-state/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 04:21:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rand Paul]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Congress authorized military force against Al Qaeda and its various affiliates on September 11. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/isis.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-246076" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/isis-450x253.jpg" alt="isis" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>Rand Paul is pushing for a resolution declaring war on the Islamic State.</p>
<p>Most of the criticisms of it involve its implicit recognition of the Islamic State as a country. Even after September 11, the United States did not declare war on Al Qaeda. Paul&#8217;s resolution declares a &#8220;state of war between the United States and the organization referring to itself as the Islamic State&#8221;.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m less concerned with inflating ISIS by declaring a war against it, though it would have that effect. In a more practical sense, the resolution is pointless.</p>
<p>ISIS used to be Al Qaeda in Iraq. There were authorizations to use force against Al Qaeda and against Iraq.</p>
<p>Paul&#8217;s resolution specifies that,</p>
<blockquote><p>Nothing in this section shall be construed as declaring war or authorizing force against any organization-<br />
(A) other than the organization referring to itself as the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); or<br />
(B) based on affiliation with the organization referring to itself as the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).</p></blockquote>
<p>You can see the problem with that already.</p>
<p>Paul has to list two names for ISIS and include affiliates, which is a grey area that could concievably cover half the world considering some of the international pledges of loyalty coming in.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s likely that Rand Paul didn&#8217;t realize that, he did after all run a filibuster which also suggested that Al Qaeda affiliates weren&#8217;t our problem, which raises other questions about his basic understanding of the War on Terror.</p>
<p>ISIS has gone through multiple transformations. Its affiliates consist of umbrella groups which call on the loyalty of militias whose names shift and whose people blend together. This is one reason why the CIA tried to put the brakes on arming any rebels.</p>
<p>A terrorist group is not a country. It&#8217;s one thing to declare war on a country. It&#8217;s another to declare war on a terrorist group which keeps morphing and transforming and which relies on extended international networks.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t make sense to declare war on a terrorist group which is not bound by any treaties or international laws and which doesn&#8217;t even have a conventional shape or clearly defined territory.</p>
<p>What happened if ISIS renames itself? Do we need a new declaration of war? It&#8217;s an absurd but serious question considering that his resolution also attempts to repeal the Iraq AUMF by arguing that &#8220;The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) does not provide any authority for the use of military force against the organization referring to itself as the Islamic State, and shall not be construed as providing such authority.&#8221;</p>
<p>Not only did the 9/11 AUMF cover that, but the Iraq AUMF explicitly mentioned the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq as one of the reasons for military action. It states that,</p>
<blockquote><p>acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take  the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.</p></blockquote>
<p>That clearly covers conflicts with Al Qaeda in Iraq. So Rand Paul is wrong unless his entire argument is that a terrorist organization that changes its name requires a new resolution.</p>
<p>Rand Paul isn&#8217;t really doing this to declare war, but to roll back assorted warmaking powers. But he isn&#8217;t very good at that either.</p>
<p>After declaring war, he tries to bar the use of ground troops, but leaves open use of &#8220;advisory&#8221; ground troops. He doesn&#8217;t seem to be aware that Obama designated the remaining US troops as advisory. US forces in Afghanistan will soon be advisory too.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a hole the size of a barn door which again shows that Rand Paul is inexperienced when it comes to the practical issues.</p>
<p>This resolution is pointless. Congress authorized military force against Al Qaeda and its various affiliates on September 11. It authorized military action against terrorists to prevent future attacks on America.</p>
<p>Considering the threats ISIS has made and its growing collection of weapons and fighters, it&#8217;s clearly covered by the 9/11 AUMF.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no reason to puff up ISIS by treating it like a country. We have enough restraints on fighting Muslim terrorists that we don&#8217;t need to pile on more.</p>
<p>Until not that long ago, it was understood that fighters who did not wear uniforms or follow any laws of war had no rights or protections of any kind. They were pirates. Since 9/11, the rights and protections accorded to terrorists have increased significantly. The last thing we want is to start treating them as prisoners of war.</p>
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		<title>Muslim Terrorists Want to Stage a European 9/11 for Christmas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslim-terrorists-want-to-stage-a-european-911-for-christmas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-terrorists-want-to-stage-a-european-911-for-christmas</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslim-terrorists-want-to-stage-a-european-911-for-christmas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2014 17:07:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamizationofeurope]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246436</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslims have plans to give Europe a Christmas present.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/santa-mo.gif"><img src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/santa-mo.gif" alt="santa-mo" width="432" height="324" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-246437" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/report_christmas_plot_by_terrorists_to_blow_up_5_planes_in_europe.html">Muslims have plans to give Europe a</a> Christmas present. It&#8217;s the same present they give infidels for Chanukah or Thanksgiving or Election Day. Lots of <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/541725/REVEALED-Al-Qaeda-plot-to-blow-up-5-European-passenger-jets-in-Christmas-spectacular">bodies and burning wreckage</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>An airport security source told the Sunday Express: &#8220;We&#8217;ve been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They&#8217;ve been waiting for the big one.</p>
<p>The plot, which has been known about for the past two months, is thought to involve Islamists smuggling bombs on to planes bound for major European destinations before Christmas.</p>
<p>The well-placed security insider said talks had been held about how to deal with it, with suggestions made to ban hand luggage.</p></blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s a more obvious thing to ban than hand luggage. Hand luggage doesn&#8217;t kill people. Muslim terrorists kill people.</p>
<blockquote><p>Dr. Leivesley, a former Home Office risk adviser, said that terrorists are now more likely to be &#8220;white, blond and blue eyed&#8221; who are radicalized in as little as five weeks.</p>
<p>She also claimed that female terrorists were becoming a significant risk, adding: &#8220;Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative.</p>
<p>&#8220;They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists.</p>
<p>&#8220;These sleepers will have been from ordinary and not very religious families and not only is the threat from them here but also when they return battle hardened from Syria and Iraq.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s the same old story. Muslim university grad marries fellow infidel student, converts her to Islam, convinces her to kill her people in the name of Allah.</p>
<p>Banning hand luggage won&#8217;t stop that. Otherwise these will be the new carols for Europe.</p>
<p><iframe width="554" height="310" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/A7ob_xMuPbk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><iframe width="554" height="310" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/rEsTexVZSjg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
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		<title>Trapped in Afghanistan Between Obama and the Taliban</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/trapped-in-afghanistan-between-obama-and-the-taliban-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trapped-in-afghanistan-between-obama-and-the-taliban-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/trapped-in-afghanistan-between-obama-and-the-taliban-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2014 05:12:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S. soldiers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246029</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama plays a cynical game with the lives of American soldiers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/us-soliders.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246083" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/us-soliders-450x271.jpg" alt="us-soliders" width="289" height="174" /></a>Never before has an administration been so casual about putting American troops in harm’s way to protect a politician’s approval ratings.</p>
<p>American forces were supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but in a covert acknowledgement that Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq was a disaster, that isn’t happening.</p>
<p>Afghanistan has been Obama’s bloodiest war and his most neglected war. It’s a war that hardly appears in major papers anymore, but while in terms of damage done Iraq and Libya may be Obama’s biggest disasters, in terms of American lives lost there’s no question that Afghanistan was his worst war.</p>
<p>Obama never had a strategy for Afghanistan. As best as anyone could determine he made a major commitment to it to provide political cover for his Iraq withdrawal. Once he committed to Afghanistan, he had no idea what to actually do there except get a lot of Americans killed while trying to appease the “moderate” Taliban who turned out not to exist despite Qatar’s best efforts to manufacture them.</p>
<p>Since Al Qaeda was a major threat in Iraq (a threat that eventually became ISIS) and Obama needed to disguise his withdrawal from Iraq by blaming Bush for being too weak on national security (a difficult trick for an anti-war lefty), he falsely claimed that Bush had neglected fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>There was just one problem, Al Qaeda had largely been broken in Afghanistan and had scattered to other conflicts. There were a handful of Al Qaeda fighters left. There was certainly nothing that required a major troop surge to handle. There was nothing for American soldiers to do there except die.</p>
<p>Bush had gone into Afghanistan with a plan to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. Obama dusted off that same plan without caring as to whether or not there were even any Al Qaeda in Afghanistan while mixing it together with Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. If nothing else the end result was bound to be Bush’s fault.</p>
<p>Obama went into Afghanistan as a distraction. Unable to make decisions about the war, he forced the commanders to embarrass him by shaking him down for troops. Obama responded by lashing out and replacing commanders the way that losing teams replace coaches. It was an ugly spectacle that wrecked morale and set the tone for a destructive and contentious relationship with the military.</p>
<p>American soldiers were thrown into battle without being allowed to win. They weren’t fighting a war for territory, but for hearts and minds. It was a senseless strategy that threw away the lives of American soldiers in the hopes of winning a local popularity contest against the Taliban.</p>
<p>The rules of engagement focused on preventing Afghan civilian casualties in a war where the other side wore no uniforms. Air support was denied. The odds between ISAF and the Taliban were evened out. And a lot of lives were lost. More American soldiers died in Afghanistan during one term of Obama than had been killed during the entire Bush presidency.</p>
<p>The plan to split the Taliban into moderate and extreme wings by making them unpopular failed miserably. Everything since then has been a holding pattern. The number of casualties has dropped with the actual fighting. American soldiers are still there not to win or even to fight, but to keep Obama from looking bad in case anything goes wrong.</p>
<p>Obama signed on to a troop surge in Afghanistan to cover for his disastrous move in Iraq. Now the troops are staying on to avoid the spectacle of the Taliban overrunning the country ISIS style. Afghanistan has never been an actual priority for Obama. It has always been a way for him to deal with the political consequences of his decisions in Iraq.</p>
<p>Now the war has ground down to its predictable final stage in which the American presence is renamed as advisory even while combat operations continue.</p>
<p>Obama can’t leave Afghanistan because of the political consequences. But he still has no plan for Afghanistan and it’s the generals who are once again pushing him to have a strategic plan that protects American lives and accomplishes something useful instead of a political agenda that protects his own approval rating.</p>
<p><a href="http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/11/23/nyt-blindly-reports-obamas-reluctance-let-troops-defend-afghanistan/">As J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer</a>, pointed out, “The generals… want to be proactive in defending their troops against terrorist threats. They don’t want to just wait – hunkered down on bases, or exposed and vulnerable while they’re out supporting the Afghan national forces – for terrorists to find American troops and attack them.”</p>
<p>But Obama has achieved what he sees as the best of both worlds, a troop presence with low casualty levels that provides him with all the political cover he needs, but with none of the negatives of flag-draped caskets. The official word is that the United States is assisting and advising, it’s helping stabilize the government of Afghanistan and those are safe buzzwords that few can possibly object to.</p>
<p>When it came to Afghanistan, Obama always wanted to be seen doing something. His motives were political. His objectives in Afghanistan were not those of national security, but domestic politics.</p>
<p>Obama had an actual objective, regime change, in Libya, but he didn’t even have that much in Afghanistan. Instead he constantly framed the war in terms of fighting a phantom Al Qaeda enemy. And since the enemy didn’t exist he could easily claim to have beaten it while ignoring the rise of ISIS in Iraq that so many Americans had died trying to prevent.</p>
<p>Now Obama is stuck in Afghanistan because he’s too afraid of the political fallout of leaving.</p>
<p>The only lesson that Obama learned from his disastrous withdrawal from Iraq was that it was safer not to withdraw. Instead American soldiers are trapped between Obama’s approval ratings and the Taliban with no mission left to accomplish except to avoid attracting attention to themselves by dying or killing.</p>
<p>There is no longer a plan to deal with the Taliban. The idea that Afghanistan will retain a stable government is implausible. Even the idea that its military can take the weight of a serious assault is also unlikely. But Obama wants all of that to be someone else’s problem. He is passing on Afghanistan as a hot potato to his successor so that someone else will have to take the blame for Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama’s actions in Afghanistan tell the story of his ugly disregard for national security and the lives of our soldiers. The surge was sold using a lie about an Al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan that no longer existed. Now the presence of American forces is being passed off as advisory when what that really means is that Americans will be under fire, but unstable to set the terms on which they meet the enemy.</p>
<p>After all this time Americans deserve the truth. If American soldiers are going to be in harm’s way, they should have a mission and the ability to accomplish it.</p>
<p>Those are two things that they never had under Obama.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on this week&#8217;s <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" tabindex="0" data-ft="{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}"><span class="hasCaption"><strong>Obama&#8217;s Fantasies about Un-Islamic Jihad:</strong></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/28J1kYbaqbc" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Trapped in Afghanistan Between Obama and the Taliban</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/trapped-in-afghanistan-between-obama-and-the-taliban/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trapped-in-afghanistan-between-obama-and-the-taliban</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2014 05:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[troops]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245954</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Never before has an administration been so casual about putting American troops in harm’s way to protect a politician’s approval ratings.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-veterans-affairs-carejpeg-01d5e.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245955" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-veterans-affairs-carejpeg-01d5e-391x350.jpg" alt="Eric Shinseki" width="303" height="271" /></a>Never before has an administration been so casual about putting American troops in harm’s way to protect a politician’s approval ratings.</p>
<p>American forces were supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but in a covert acknowledgement that Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq was a disaster, that isn’t happening.</p>
<p>Afghanistan has been Obama’s bloodiest war and his most neglected war. It’s a war that hardly appears in major papers anymore, but while in terms of damage done Iraq and Libya may be Obama’s biggest disasters, in terms of American lives lost there’s no question that Afghanistan was his worst war.</p>
<p>Obama never had a strategy for Afghanistan. As best as anyone could determine he made a major commitment to it to provide political cover for his Iraq withdrawal. Once he committed to Afghanistan, he had no idea what to actually do there except get a lot of Americans killed while trying to appease the “moderate” Taliban who turned out not to exist despite Qatar’s best efforts to manufacture them.</p>
<p>Since Al Qaeda was a major threat in Iraq (a threat that eventually became ISIS) and Obama needed to disguise his withdrawal from Iraq by blaming Bush for being too weak on national security (a difficult trick for an anti-war lefty), he falsely claimed that Bush had neglected fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>There was just one problem, Al Qaeda had largely been broken in Afghanistan and had scattered to other conflicts. There were a handful of Al Qaeda fighters left. There was certainly nothing that required a major troop surge to handle. There was nothing for American soldiers to do there except die.</p>
<p>Bush had gone into Afghanistan with a plan to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. Obama dusted off that same plan without caring as to whether or not there were even any Al Qaeda in Afghanistan while mixing it together with Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. If nothing else the end result was bound to be Bush’s fault.</p>
<p>Obama went into Afghanistan as a distraction. Unable to make decisions about the war, he forced the commanders to embarrass him by shaking him down for troops. Obama responded by lashing out and replacing commanders the way that losing teams replace coaches. It was an ugly spectacle that wrecked morale and set the tone for a destructive and contentious relationship with the military.</p>
<p>American soldiers were thrown into battle without being allowed to win. They weren’t fighting a war for territory, but for hearts and minds. It was a senseless strategy that threw away the lives of American soldiers in the hopes of winning a local popularity contest against the Taliban.</p>
<p>The rules of engagement focused on preventing Afghan civilian casualties in a war where the other side wore no uniforms. Air support was denied. The odds between ISAF and the Taliban were evened out. And a lot of lives were lost. More American soldiers died in Afghanistan during one term of Obama than had been killed during the entire Bush presidency.</p>
<p>The plan to split the Taliban into moderate and extreme wings by making them unpopular failed miserably. Everything since then has been a holding pattern. The number of casualties has dropped with the actual fighting. American soldiers are still there not to win or even to fight, but to keep Obama from looking bad in case anything goes wrong.</p>
<p>Obama signed on to a troop surge in Afghanistan to cover for his disastrous move in Iraq. Now the troops are staying on to avoid the spectacle of the Taliban overrunning the country ISIS style. Afghanistan has never been an actual priority for Obama. It has always been a way for him to deal with the political consequences of his decisions in Iraq.</p>
<p>Now the war has ground down to its predictable final stage in which the American presence is renamed as advisory even while combat operations continue.</p>
<p>Obama can’t leave Afghanistan because of the political consequences. But he still has no plan for Afghanistan and it’s the generals who are once again pushing him to have a strategic plan that protects American lives and accomplishes something useful instead of a political agenda that protects his own approval rating.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/11/23/nyt-blindly-reports-obamas-reluctance-let-troops-defend-afghanistan/">As J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer</a></span>, pointed out, “The generals… want to be proactive in defending their troops against terrorist threats.  They don’t want to just wait – hunkered down on bases, or exposed and vulnerable while they’re out supporting the Afghan national forces – for terrorists to find American troops and attack them.”</p>
<p>But Obama has achieved what he sees as the best of both worlds, a troop presence with low casualty levels that provides him with all the political cover he needs, but with none of the negatives of flag-draped caskets. The official word is that the United States is assisting and advising, it’s helping stabilize the government of Afghanistan and those are safe buzzwords that few can possibly object to.</p>
<p>When it came to Afghanistan, Obama always wanted to be seen doing something. His motives were political. His objectives in Afghanistan were not those of national security, but domestic politics.</p>
<p>Obama had an actual objective, regime change, in Libya, but he didn’t even have that much in Afghanistan. Instead he constantly framed the war in terms of fighting a phantom Al Qaeda enemy. And since the enemy didn’t exist he could easily claim to have beaten it while ignoring the rise of ISIS in Iraq that so many Americans had died trying to prevent.</p>
<p>Now Obama is stuck in Afghanistan because he’s too afraid of the political fallout of leaving.</p>
<p>The only lesson that Obama learned from his disastrous withdrawal from Iraq was that it was safer not to withdraw. Instead American soldiers are trapped between Obama’s approval ratings and the Taliban with no mission left to accomplish except to avoid attracting attention to themselves by dying or killing.</p>
<p>There is no longer a plan to deal with the Taliban. The idea that Afghanistan will retain a stable government is implausible. Even the idea that its military can take the weight of a serious assault is also unlikely. But Obama wants all of that to be someone else’s problem. He is passing on Afghanistan as a hot potato to his successor so that someone else will have to take the blame for Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Obama’s actions in Afghanistan tell the story of his ugly disregard for national security and the lives of our soldiers. The surge was sold using a lie about an Al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan that no longer existed. Now the presence of American forces is being passed off as advisory when what that really means is that Americans will be under fire, but unstable to set the terms on which they meet the enemy.</p>
<p>After all this time Americans deserve the truth. If American soldiers are going to be in harm’s way, they should have a mission and the ability to accomplish it.</p>
<p>Those are two things that they never had under Obama.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Cuddly&#8217; Justice For Muslim Terrorists in Germany</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/stephenbrown/cuddly-justice-for-muslim-terrorists-in-germany/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cuddly-justice-for-muslim-terrorists-in-germany</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2014 05:09:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[killers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[light sentences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorists]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245518</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Germans outraged by light sentences court gives to al-Qaeda killers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PHO-09Apr28-159822.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245519" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PHO-09Apr28-159822-450x334.jpg" alt="-" width="325" height="241" /></a>While many Germans are calling the sentences a Dusseldorf court handed down to four convicted al Qaeda terrorists last week <i>‘ein Witz’ </i>(a joke), it is no laughing matter.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And it is no wonder Germans are taking such a gloomy view of their justice system. This latest group of Islamist killers to appear before a German court received what many regard as ‘soft’ sentences, ranging from only four and half to nine years, for planning homicidal acts of terrorism that were aborted only by their arrests. In this case, the ‘Dusseldorf cell’, as the German media dubbed them, intended to massacre as many Germans as possible with ‘<i>splitterbomben’ </i>(anti-personnel bombs) in carefully prepared attacks.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The sentences handed out last week for plotting such horrific and deliberate acts of slaughter, as well as the perceived kid-glove treatment of other Islamist and non-Islamist violent criminals by German courts in general, have earned the German justice system the nickname <i>‘Kuscheljustiz’</i> (‘cuddly justice’) among more law-abiding Germans.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“This verdict is shameful and a punch in the face for all those who have been killed by such types,” wrote one upset reader in a German newspaper. “Here, there can and should be only one sentence: imprisonment and isolation forever.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Not bad for planned mass murder of infidels,” sarcastically wrote another of the light sentences, while a third writer commented that “tax evasion is punished more severely” in Germany.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The leader of the terrorist cell, 33-year-old Abdeladim El-Kebir, received the longest sentence of nine years, despite having been described as the “highest-ranking al Qaeda terrorist (to appear) before a German court until now.” In 2010, El-Kebir, a native of Morocco who has German citizenship, travelled to an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan where he received his terrorist education and had “direct contact” with al-Qaeda leaders. After his return to Germany, he wrote in one of his emails to the al-Qaeda leadership: “Oh, our sheikh, we shall keep our promise. We shall start the slaughtering of the dogs.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And Germans are not expected to be angry about El-Kebir’s <i>kuschel</i> sentence after reading this?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The planned terrorist attack in Germany appears to have had the approval of Osama bin Laden himself, indicating its importance. The German newspaper, <i>Die Welt,</i> reports that among the documents US Navy Seals seized during the raid on the bin Laden compound in 2011 that resulted in the al Qaeda leader’s much unlamented death was an unfinished note, hand-written by bin Laden himself, which, purportedly, contained El-Kebir’s name.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“The USA supplied an English translation of the Arabic letter to several European intelligence services, among them also Belgian intelligence,” <i>Die Welt </i>reported. “The possible reason for this is that bin Laden speaks of several terror cells in the letter and mentions other terrorist suspects by name.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">El-Kebir was taken into custody just five days before the raid on bin Laden’s compound. But it was warnings in the fall of 2010 about possible terrorist attacks that first put German intelligence, assisted by the CIA and Moroccan security agencies, on his trail. Three of the four terrorists, including El-Kebir, lived together near the University of Dusseldorf, where authorities kept them under 24-hour observation for more than a year.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“When the activities in the apartment and the purchases made by the men indicated the building of a bomb, the three were arrested…,” reported <i>Die Welt</i>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The fourth man, who was responsible for the cell’s financing and logistics, resided in Bochum, another Rhineland city near Dusseldorf. In doing his part to carry out the murder plot, he committed internet fraud with ebay accounts to raise money, rented several apartments, and obtained false identity papers, reportedly from Morocco. Strangely, he was not considered a member of the cell and received the lightest sentence of four years and a half years despite El Kebir having once emailed him: “Brother, let us carry through the work to the end.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Like El Kebir, the three other convicted Islamist terrorists are German citizens of Muslim immigrant background.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">German anger about the sentences is compounded by the fact that El-Kebir will most likely remain in prison only for six years, since he is eligible for a sentence reduction of about a third for ‘good behaviour’.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But besides anger, there also exists a feeling of anxiety among Germans about the case. With good reason, some believe that after serving their short sentences, the four terrorists will simply take up where they left off in regard to trying to kill as many Bundesrepublik citizens as possible. After all, they will have plenty of time in prison to plan new strikes. America experienced a similar situation with some Guantanamo prisoners who returned immediately to terrorism upon their release. And such Islamist fanatics often leave prison angrier and more determined to kill infidels than before they went in.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In this particular case, it was reported none of the Dusseldorf cell members expressed any remorse for their homicidal actions. In fact, they remained silent during their two-year trial that saw 22 experts, including an FBI official, and 145 witnesses testify. No regrets and no admissions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“In cases such as this one, our ideal of re-socialization is simply out of place,” commented one German observer.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And since it is all but impossible to integrate these Islamist criminals into German society and in order to protect themselves from possible future attacks, a growing number Germans are calling for two things. The first is that the Dusseldorf cell terrorists, and other convicted Islamists like them, be kept in isolation when in prison. This would help prevent them from both laying future plans for mass murder and from radicalising and recruiting other prisoners to help carry them out.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Such a move is not unprecedented in Germany. The Baader-Meinhof and other left-wing terrorists were isolated for similar reasons when imprisoned during their heyday in the 1970s. And while deadly, Germany’s leftist killers did not pose anywhere near as grave a threat to German lives and society as the Islamists do today.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The second measure concerned Germans want to see adopted is the immediate deportation of the four back to their countries of origin upon their release. Such a move would include stripping them of their German citizenship, a privilege they have more than abused. Only with permanent removal from their country would Germans know that they are safe from any further homicidal plots by these particular criminals.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But besides security reasons, some maintain that deporting the Dusseldorf cell is the only measure that would remove somewhat the sting of the ‘soft’ sentences. As well, there are financial benefits for the German taxpayer in short sentences combined with deportation. Besides avoiding the obvious expense associated with longer prison terms, the Dusseldorf cell’s removal would save the taxpayer the costs of police observation upon their release, the social welfare benefits they will most likely receive, and the financial burden of any possible future trial and second prison term.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unfortunately, sensible Germans are under no illusion that their government, tied down by the fallacies of multi-culturalism and political correctness, will act soon upon such urgent, possibly life-saving measures. Instead, they expect to see Islamist criminals, like those in the Dusseldorf cell, continue merrily on their way upon release from prison, happily plotting the murder of innocent people and the destruction of German society while their “cuddly” justice system hands out sentences that do not protect them from, let alone deter, Islamic terrorism, but rather serve to encourage it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Brookings Institution’s New Idea: Try Failed Solutions Again</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/brookings-institutions-new-idea-try-failed-solutions-again/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brookings-institutions-new-idea-try-failed-solutions-again</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2014 05:50:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brookings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245178</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The influential Qatar-funded think tank scapegoats Israel and ignores history.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/cia_vet_bruce_riedel_the_brookings_institution.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245181" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/cia_vet_bruce_riedel_the_brookings_institution.png" alt="cia_vet_bruce_riedel_the_brookings_institution" width="243" height="203" /></a>Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Institution’s Intelligence Project, published a piece in the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/09/why-s-al-qaeda-so-strong-washington-has-literally-no-idea.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Daily Beast</span></a> last Sunday with the provocative title, “Why’s Al Qaeda So Strong? Washington Has (Literally) No Idea.” That is certainly true, but Riedel’s recommendations for how the political establishment can get a clue and finally defeat the jihadis are nothing but tired retreads of analyses that have been tried and have failed again and again. Coming from a think tank as influential as Brookings, this goes a long way toward explaining why neither party seems able to reevaluate and discard political points of view and plans of action, no matter how many times they lead to disaster.</p>
<p>Riedel rightly faults the U.S. for not meeting the ideological challenge that groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State pose, but then he advocates essentially what mainstream analysts on both the Left and the Right have advocated for years: establishing a State of Palestine, supporting “reform and justice” in Muslim countries, and working to end Sunni-Shi’ite sectarianism. These solutions have been tried, repeatedly, and every time they failed abysmally.</p>
<p>While Riedel is correct that the U.S. hasn’t countered the ideology of jihad groups, he shows no sign of knowing what that ideology really is. In fact, he demonstrates that he shares the same false premises that have led the U.S. government to its abysmal failure to understand why jihad groups are so strong and how they can be countered. Both Riedel and Washington policymakers assume that the appeal to Muslims of the stated goals and motivations of jihad groups — establishment of the caliphate, destruction of non-Sharia regimes, and ultimately global Islamic dominance — can be blunted, if not extinguished altogether, by essentially giving jihadis and Islamic supremacists some of what they want. They assume that in that event, the larger aggregate of Muslims will respond the way Westerners in secular democracies would respond: by accepting the compromise and rejecting more extreme solutions.</p>
<p>We have the record of the last thirteen years and more to show that this assumption is false.</p>
<p>First and foremost among Riedel’s faulty analyses is his scapegoating of Israel for the failure to achieve peace with the Palestinians. “Unfortunately,” Riedel laments, “for six years the Obama team has tried to push the two-state solution without any success. It rightly blames both Israeli and Palestinian intransigence for its failure. But the core issue is Israel’s refusal to end the occupation of the West Bank.”</p>
<p>One word exposes the falsity of this analysis: Gaza. Anyone who still thinks after the Gaza withdrawal that a Palestinian state would bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians (and yes, I know they are legion, and in both parties, and in all the corridors of power in the U.S. and Europe) hasn’t been paying attention. We were told in 2005 that “occupation” was the problem, and if Israel withdrew from Gaza, the Gazans would turn to peaceful pursuits. Only a few people, including me, warned that Gaza would just become a jihad base for newly virulent attacks against Israel. Events proved us correct.</p>
<p>Now Riedel wants Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, and assures us that <i>this</i> withdrawal from <i>this</i> “occupation” is really the one that will finally bring peace and take the wind out of the jihadis’ sails. A Palestinian state, he says, will “severely undermine” al-Qaeda’s appeal “and over time dry up its base” — and he claims this even after acknowledging that “Israel’s destruction” is al-Qaeda’s goal.</p>
<p>Why would the establishment of a Palestinian state now, after the Arab Muslims rejected it in 1948 and the “Palestinians” rejected it in 2000 (and other times) bring peace when the goal of Israel’s total destruction, which Hamas has repeatedly and recently reiterated, would remain? Why would another Israeli withdrawal accomplish what earlier Israeli withdrawals — not just from Gaza, but also from Sinai and southern Lebanon — did not?</p>
<p>Riedel doesn’t consider these questions. He can’t, because any honest answer would show his analysis to be false and based on wishful thinking.</p>
<p>Then Riedel goes on to advocate another failed remedy, claiming that “the extremists’ narrative argues that only violent jihad can bring about change and justice in the Islamic world. They argue the Arab spring proves that peaceful protests and demonstrations, elections and democratic change don’t work in Arabia and the world of Islam. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt is cited as evidence that ‘moderate’ Islam is too weak to fight the Zionist-Crusader conspiracy and it’s [sic] Quisling allies like Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian army.”</p>
<p>Consequently, he says, “chaos and failed states, not democracy, are what the foreseeable future holds for Arabia. But a Western policy that is blind to the urgent need for reform and justice is certain to end in catastrophe. More immediately, it cedes the ideological battle to al Qaeda’s simple solution that only jihad brings change. Close attachment to autocratic regimes by the West pays short-term dividends but will antagonize generations of Muslims.”</p>
<p>Yet this was precisely the Obama Administration’s policy when it turned against Hosni Mubarak and warmly endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt. This was the analysis Obama was following when he aided the Libyan jihadis against Gaddafi and the Syrian jihadis against Assad (although in the latter case the rise of the Islamic State has exposed his Syria policy as confused and incoherent).</p>
<p>Riedel mentions the fall of the Ikhwan regime in Egypt as part of the jihadis’ recruitment rhetoric, but he misses its real import: when the U.S. followed his recommendations and stopped backing dictators in Muslim countries, favoring instead popular revolutionaries and the “democratic process,” the result was not stability and the weakening of jihad groups, but chaos and anarchy in Libya, unrest and instability in Egypt, and the strengthening of jihad groups the world over. The Brotherhood regime in Egypt fell because many secular Muslims don’t want to live under Sharia oppression. However, Sharia advocates are numerous in Egypt and other Muslim countries — so the result of backing “democracy” in Egypt and other Muslim countries was not the establishment of peaceful, stable Sharia regimes (which would not be a desirable outcome anyway, cf. Saudi Arabia and Iran), but more violence. The dictators were bloody and reprehensible; the “democratic process” in all too many Muslim countries has resulted in regimes that are scarcely less bloody and far less stable.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Riedel says, “Full speed ahead.” What would he say if there were a free election in Iraq and Syria now and the Islamic State won, or even got a significant percentage of the vote? He seems to assume, as George W. Bush and so many others assumed, that elections in Muslim countries would lead to the establishment of pro-Western, secular, stable republics. It has never happened. Why will it happen next time?</p>
<p>Riedel then offers yet another faulty analysis: “The extremist message also encourages sectarianism and intolerance. The Shia are portrayed as false Muslims and brutally attacked to encourage Sunni-Shia hatred. Sectarian strife now empowers the civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and Al Qaedaism flourishes in the chaos. The West says far too little about the cancer of sectarianism.”</p>
<p>Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/world/19rice.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fR%2fRice%2c%20Condoleezza&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said this about it in 2007</span></a>: “There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” The Bush Administration tried in numerous ways to help them overcome it in Iraq. It held one-person, one-vote elections that resulted in a Shi’ite regime in Baghdad — an outcome that was absolutely predictable, since Shi’ites are a majority in Iraq. That regime was supposed to include Sunnis. It was absolutely predictable also that it did not manage to do so, both because it didn’t want to and Sunnis didn’t want to participate anyway.</p>
<p>The Sunni-Shi’ite divide is 1,400 years old. The history of Islam is filled with occasions when it erupted into violence. The idea that the non-Muslim West can heal this or should even try to do so is as hubristic as it is myopic, and shows that Riedel (and Condoleezza Rice, and myriad others) have no idea of the history or beliefs of either group.</p>
<p>That is no surprise. The real reason why the U.S. and the West in general haven’t confronted the ideology of jihad groups is because they refuse to admit that it even exists. They insist that Islam is peaceful and that groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have nothing to do with Islam. They don’t have any curiosity about how this supposed misunderstanding of Islam came to be so widespread and powerful, and they have never pressed Muslim groups that ostensibly reject it to do anything to blunt its appeal for young Muslims.</p>
<p>So Riedel is right: Washington has no idea why al-Qaeda is so strong. Neither does he. And a strong indication of why is Riedel’s affiliation with Brookings, a Qatar-funded group that <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/how-qatari-donations-turned-the-brookings-institution-into-an-apologist-for-jihad-terror"><span style="color: #0433ff;">publishes justifications for jihad terror</span></a> and <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/supporters-and-enablers-of-jihad-terror-join-global-elite-at-brookings-institution-forums"><span style="color: #0433ff;">gives jihad terror supporters and enablers access to the world’s most powerful people</span></a>. It also is <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/4640/brookings-scholars-hawk-qatar-hamas-talking-points"><span style="color: #0433ff;">strongly pro-Hamas and anti-Israel</span></a>.</p>
<p>Brookings is responsible to an immense degree for the application of these failed policies over the last few years. It should be recognized for what it is and not allowed to lead the U.S. over the cliff yet again.</p>
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		<title>Exposed: Obama Helped Decade-Old Plan to Create IS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/exposed-obama-helped-decade-old-plan-to-create-is/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exposed-obama-helped-decade-old-plan-to-create-is</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2014 05:40:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The resurrection of the caliphate was planned—and exposed to the world—nearly ten years ago.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/20140613_ISIS8.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244703" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/20140613_ISIS8-388x350.jpg" alt="20140613_ISIS8" width="290" height="262" /></a>Although the birth of the Islamic State and the herald of the caliphate are often regarded as some of 2014’s “big shockers,” they were foretold in striking detail and with an accurate timeline by an al-Qaeda insider nearly one decade ago.</p>
<p>On August 12, 2005, Spiegel Online International published an article titled “<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-future-of-terrorism-what-al-qaida-really-wants-a-369448.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">The Future of Terrorism: What al-Qaeda Really Wants</span></a>.”  Written by Yassin Musharbash, the article was essentially a review of a book written by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist with close access to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who pioneered the videotaping of beheadings “to strike terror into the hearts” of infidels (Koran 3:151).</p>
<p>As Hussein explained in the introduction of his book <i>Al Zarqawi: Al Qaeda’s Second Generation</i>: “I interviewed a whole range of al-Qaeda members with different ideologies to get an idea of how the war between the terrorists and Washington would develop in the future.”</p>
<p>And in fact the book details the master plan of al-Qaeda—in its “second generation” manifestation known as the “Islamic State” which follows much of Zarqawi’s modus operandi—to resurrect a caliphate.  This plan is sufficiently outlandish that Yassin Musharbash, the author of the Spiegel article reviewing Hussein’s book, repeatedly casts doubt on its feasibility.  Thus al-Qaeda’s plan is “proof both of the terrorists’ blindness as well as their brutal single-mindedness”; there is “no way” al-Qaeda can follow the plan “step by step”; “the idea that al-Qaeda could set up a caliphate in the entire Islamic world is absurd”; and the following “scenario should be judged skeptically.”</p>
<p>Yet it is all the more remarkable that much of this plan—especially those phases dismissed as infeasible by Musharbash (four and five)—have come to pass.</p>
<p>In what follows, I reproduce the seven phases of al-Qaeda’s master plan as presented in Musharbash’s nearly ten-year-old article (in bullet points and italics, bold for emphasis),<b><i> </i></b>with my commentary interspersed for context.  Phases four and five are of particular importance as they describe the goals for recent times, much of which have come to fruition according to plan.</p>
<p><b>An Islamic Caliphate in Seven Easy Steps</b></p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The First Phase</i></b><i> Known as “the awakening”—this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby </i><b><i>“awakening” Muslims</i></b><i>. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaeda as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Much of this is accurate and makes sense.  Sadly, if any eyes were opened after the 9/11 attacks on American soil, they weren’t Western eyes—certainly not the eyes of Western leadership, mainstream media, and academia.  But to many Muslims, the strikes of 9/11 were inspiring and motivating, giving credence to Osama bin Laden’s characterization of America as a “paper tiger.” A few years after the Islamic strikes of 9/11, Americans responded by electing a man with a Muslim name and heritage for president, even as he continuously <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/obamas-proxy-war-on-mideast-christians/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">empowers</span></a> in a myriad of ways—including <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/obama-administration-bans-knowledge-of-islam/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">banning knowledge of Islam</span></a>—the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-calm-before-the-jihadi-storm/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">same ideology behind the strikes of 9/11</span></a>. Meanwhile, the average Muslim relearned the truths of their religion, namely that the “infidel” is an existential enemy and jihad against him is a duty, as al-Qaeda and others had successfully shown.</p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Second Phase</i></b><i> “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in [writing in 2005] and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy </i><b><i>aware of the “Islamic community.”</i></b><i> Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaeda wants </i><b><i>an organization to develop into a movement</i></b><i>. </i><b><i>The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states</i></b><i>.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>This too is accurate.   Among other things, the “Islamic community,” the <i>umma</i>, began to be more visible and vocal during this time frame, including through a rash of attacks and riots following any perceived “insult” to Islam, growing demands for appeasement, and accusations of “Islamophobia” against all and sundry.  If there weren’t any spectacular terror attacks on the level of 9/11, young Muslim men were quietly enlisting and training in the jihad—or in western parlance, “radicalizing.”  Al-Qaeda went from being an “organization” to a “movement”—international “radicalization.”  Most importantly, Iraq, as the world now knows, certainly did become the “center for all global operations” with an “army” of jihadis set up there.</p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Third Phase</i></b><i> This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. </i><b><i>“There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein</i></b><i>, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and </i><b><i>some are in Iraq</i></b><i>. Attacks on Turkey and—even more explosive— in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaeda’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Much of this third phase as described and transpired seems to have been an extension of phase two.  In retrospect, there certainly appears to have been a focus on Syria, even if the jihad started there one year behind schedule (2011).  And many of the jihadis were “already prepared” and “some are in Iraq.”   None of this was a surprise, of course, as U.S. intelligence always indicated that if American forces withdrew from Iraq, the jihadis would take over.</p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Fourth Phase</i></b><i> Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that </i><b><i>al-Qaeda will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments</i></b><i>. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaeda.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>This is immensely prophetic.  Recall that the timeline given (2010-2013) coincides remarkably well with the so-called “Arab Spring,” which culminated with Islamic terrorists and their allies taking over the leadership of several Arab countries formerly ruled by secularized autocrats: Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (which <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/islams-good-copbad-cop-routine/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">plays Dr. Jekyll to al-Qaeda’s Mr. Hyde</span></a>); Libya, al-Qaeda/Islamic jihadis; ongoing Syria, al-Qaeda/Islamic jihadis (or their latest manifestation, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda’s “second generation”), etc.  It should be remembered that in each of these nations—Egypt, Libya, Syria—the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/world-leaders-lambast-obamas-failures-in-the-middle-east/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama administration played a major role in empowering the jihadis, though in the name of “democracy.” </span></a></p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Fifth Phase</i></b><i> This will be the point at which an </i><b><i>Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared</i></b><i>. The plan is that by this time, </i><b><i>between 2013 and 2016</i></b><i>, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaeda hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Again, right on time: the “Islamic State” declared itself the “caliphate” in 2014, with many Muslim organizations and persons around the world pledging their allegiance, if not imitating their slaughter, with inspired “lone wolves” already beheading “infidels” in Western nations.   And if the administration helped empower jihadis during the “Arab Spring” and in the name of “democracy” in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/how-obamas-arab-spring-created-the-islamic-state/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">it helped the creation of the Islamic State by withdrawing U.S. military forces that were keeping al-Qaeda at bay</span></a> in Iraq.  Recall that in 2007 George W. Bush said that “To begin withdrawing [military forces] before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States.  It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to Al Qaeda.  It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale.  It would mean we allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan.  It would mean we’d be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.” All of these predictions have proven remarkably prescient—not because Bush was a prophet but because U.S intelligence clearly understood the situation in Iraq, and briefed Obama on it just as it did Bush. Yet, in 2011, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/14/barack-obama-iraq-war-success"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama declared the Iraq war a success</span></a> and pulled out American troops, leaving the way wide open for the jihadi master plan of resurrecting the caliphate to unfold.</p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Sixth Phase</i></b><i> Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of “total confrontation.” As soon as the caliphate has been declared the “Islamic army” it will instigate the “</i><b><i>fight between the believers and the non-believers</i></b><i>” which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>This needs clarification.  While many assume that the “fight between the believers and the non-believers” is between Muslims and non-Muslims, this is not always the case.  Soon after the announcement of the caliphate, the Islamic State <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/new-islamic-caliphate-declares-jihad-on-muslims/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">made clear that it was in the phase of waging jihad on “apostates” and “hypocrites,”</span></a> meaning all the “apostate” or “infidel” Arab leaders like Bashar al-Assad, as well as Muslim populations that are insufficiently “Islamic.”  It is for this reason that the new caliph took on the name of “Abu Bakr”—the name of the first historic caliph (632-634) whose caliphate was characterized by fighting and bringing back into the fold of Islam all those Arabs who broke away after Muhammad died.   Afterwards, when all the Arab tribes were unified under the banner of Islam, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-historical-reality-of-the-muslim-conquests/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the great historic conquests</span></a>, or jihads against neighboring “infidels,” took place.</p>
<blockquote><p><b><i>•The Seventh Phase</i></b><i> This final stage is described as “definitive victory.” Hussein writes that in the terrorists’ eyes, because </i><b><i>the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the “one-and-a-half billion Muslims</i></b><i>,” the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn&#8217;t last longer than two years.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Phase seven remains to be seen, as it is has another five years to go.  As for the world being “so beaten down by the one-and-a-half billion Muslims,” actor Ben Affleck <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/ben-affleck-portrait-of-islams-clueless-apologetics/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reflected this sentiment recently</span></a> when he kept apologizing for Islam by saying Muslims “are a billion and a half.”   At any rate, considering that the preceding phases have all largely come to pass—with a passive West doing nothing to prevent them, that is, when not actively aiding them—there is certainly no good reason to think Western leadership will stop the final phase from occurring: a unified, aggressive, expansionist, and eventually possibly even nuclear armed caliphate preparing to terrorize its neighbors on a grand scale—just like its historic predecessor did for centuries.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Raymond Ibrahim</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing</em><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title long-title " dir="ltr" title="The Glazov Gang-Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS's Islamic Inspirations."><em><strong> ISIS&#8217;s Islamic Inspirations</strong>:</em> </span></p>
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		<title>How Obama’s Arab Spring Created the Islamic State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/how-obamas-arab-spring-created-the-islamic-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-obamas-arab-spring-created-the-islamic-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:20:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Does the administration see Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki as another Hosni Mubarak? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Muslim-brother-3-500x340.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242425" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Muslim-brother-3-500x340-450x334.jpg" alt="Muslim-brother-3-500x340" width="338" height="251" /></a>Over a decade ago, the U.S. conquered Iraq; its military and intelligence were on the ground for years with autonomy.   In other words, U.S. influence and authority was more pronounced in Iraq than probably any other Muslim country in the world.</p>
<p>And yet it is in this one Muslim nation, where the U.S. had most authority, where U.S. blood and treasure were spent, that the absolute worst Islamic terrorist group—the Islamic State—was born.</p>
<p>Coincidence?</p>
<p>Or is this too related to the great “Arab Spring” failures of the Obama administration?</p>
<p>Consider: <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-was-warned-repeatedly-of-consequences-of-withdrawal-from-iraq/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama was repeatedly warned</span></a> that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to something exactly like the Islamic State—with all the atrocities that have become synonymous with that name.</p>
<p>Indeed, arguing against early troop withdrawal, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, once made the following now prophetic <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/11/bush-in-2007-delivered-eerily-accurate-warning-about-iraq-unrest/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">remarks</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States.</p>
<p>It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale.</p>
<p>It would mean we allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>It would mean we’d be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.</p></blockquote>
<p>The point here is not to “side” with Bush—the idea of transporting “democracy” to an Islamic country was ill-conceived from the start—but rather to demonstrate that Obama was thoroughly warned what troop withdrawal would lead to: the Islamic State.   The same U.S. military and intelligence sources that allowed Bush to make that prescient statement also <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/02/panetta-memoir-blames-obama-for-collapse-in-iraq/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">shared their assessments with Obama</span></a>.</p>
<p>Yet Obama withdrew anyway.  In December 2011, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/14/barack-obama-iraq-war-success"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama declared the Iraq war a success</span></a> and pulled out American troops.  And, to the eyes of most Americans, things were relatively quiet—until, of course, the world heard that a head-chopping, infidel-crucifying, mass-murdering “caliphate” had “suddenly” arisen.</p>
<p>Was Iraq also part of the euphoria of the Obama-endorsed “Arab Spring”?</p>
<p>Recall that final troop withdrawal from Iraq occurred at the height of the Arab Spring when the Obama administration was simultaneously betraying key U.S. allies in the Islamic world such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.</p>
<p>If the U.S. was not going to stand by its former “secular strongmen,” but instead was willing to hold hands with their traditional enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, why should it have supported Iraq’s Nouri Maliki?</p>
<p>After all, the narrative adopted by the Obama administration was that the Arab people were breaking the bonds of authoritarianism, and the U.S. administration was supporting their efforts, most notably by turning its back on longtime allies in the name of “democracy.”</p>
<p>And surely Maliki was seen as the greatest of all “U.S. puppets,” a divisive figure that stood in the way of the Sunni Spring?</p>
<p>Despite the narrative that Maliki was for complete troop withdrawal, “<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380508/no-us-troops-didnt-have-leave-iraq-patrick-brennan"><span style="color: #0433ff;">it’s</span></a> well-established that behind closed doors, he [Maliki] was interested in a substantial U.S. presence.”  Indeed, the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/world/middleeast/failed-efforts-of-americas-last-months-in-iraq.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=1&amp;"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> that Joe Biden had said that “Maliki wants us to stick around because he does not see a future in Iraq otherwise.”</p>
<p>More specifically, in a 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/11/obama-adjusts-iraq-narrative-now-blames-george-w-b/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama decried the presence of any American forces in Iraq</span></a> (video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgyu11TZEFc"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>), adding that</p>
<blockquote><p>You’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean. Now, you [Romney] just gave a speech a few weeks ago in which you said we should still have troops in Iraq.  That is not a recipe for making sure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the Middle East.</p></blockquote>
<p>What do Obama’s assertions mean?</p>
<p>Was Obama being “clear, both to our allies”—the Sunni Islamists whom he allied with during the Arab Spring—“and our enemies”—the Arab autocrats who stood in their way?</p>
<p>Was Obama showing both groups “where you [U.S. president] stand and what you mean”?</p>
<p>Was troop withdrawal Obama’s way of “taking advantage of the opportunities”—riding the Arab Spring wave—“and meeting the challenges of the Middle East”—winning Muslim hearts and minds by abandoning autocrats?</p>
<p>Here, then, is another perspective on the rise of the Sunni Islamic State in Iraq—one closely connected to the many other Arab Spring failures of the Obama administration.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Raymond Ibrahim</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing</em><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title long-title " dir="ltr" title="The Glazov Gang-Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS's Islamic Inspirations."><em><strong> ISIS&#8217;s Islamic Inspirations</strong>:</em> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bFkGgNsqQ_4" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama: I Underestimated Al Qaeda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-i-underestimated-al-qaeda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-i-underestimated-al-qaeda</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-i-underestimated-al-qaeda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2014 17:32:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241900</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama said ISIS was able to "attract foreign fighters who believed in their jihadist nonsense."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/toon130809.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-241901" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/toon130809-450x321.jpg" alt="toon130809" width="450" height="321" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-u-s-underestimated-rise-of-isis-in-iraq-and-syria/">You don&#8217;t say? Really?</a> I thought they were on the run.</p>
<blockquote><p>President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. underestimated the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL) and overestimated the ability of the Iraqi military to fend off the militant group in an interview that will air Sunday on 60 Minutes.</p>
<p>The president was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft about comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has said the U.S. not only underestimated ISIS, it also overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi military to fight the extremist group.</p>
<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s true,&#8221; Mr. Obama said. &#8220;That&#8217;s absolutely true.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Jim Clappper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,&#8221; he said, blaming the instability of the Syrian civil war for giving extremists space to thrive.</p></blockquote>
<p>The buck doesn&#8217;t stop with Clapper though. There were plenty of intel warnings from the US and Iraq of what was happening. At the same time that Obama was dismissing ISIS as a JV team, they had taken Fallujah.</p>
<p>And he knew that because it was the subject of the question.</p>
<p>Obama is still trying to shift the blame onto intelligence failures when it was in fact his policy to assume that Iraq would be fixed through a US withdrawal while ignoring everything that was going on in Iraq.</p>
<blockquote><p>The group was able to &#8220;attract foreign fighters who believed in their jihadist nonsense and traveled everywhere from Europe to the United States to Australia to other parts of the Muslim world, converging on Syria,&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Really? Jihadist nonsense.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Willful Blindness to Global Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/willful-blindness-to-global-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=willful-blindness-to-global-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/willful-blindness-to-global-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 04:10:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241554</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim discusses Islamic State, the U.S., and much more on Secure Freedom Radio.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2848102080.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241559" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2848102080-423x350.jpg" alt="2848102080" width="280" height="232" /></a>Raymond Ibrahim was <a style="color: #cf0000;" href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/09/19/willful-blindness-to-global-jihad/">recently interviewed</a> on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy.   Split into four 10-minute segments, the 40-minute interview follows:</p>
<p style="color: #202021;">PART 1: <a style="color: #cf0000;" title="Download: Ibrahim One" href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/0/09192014_Seg1_Ibrahim_web.mp3"><img src="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<ul style="color: #202021;">
<li>How ISIS plays into the bigger picture of global jihad</li>
<li>America’s willful blindness to the fact that to defeat an enemy, one must know the enemy</li>
<li>The American far-left’s apologist-position towards radical Islam</li>
</ul>
<p style="color: #202021;">PART 2: <a style="color: #cf0000;" title="Download: Ibrahim Two" href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/1/09192014_Seg2_Ibrahim_web.mp3"><img src="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<ul style="color: #202021;">
<li>Defensive versus offensive jihad in Shariah doctrine</li>
<li>Comparing ISIS and Al-Qaeda</li>
<li>The consequences of ISIS declaring an Islamic Caliphate</li>
</ul>
<p style="color: #202021;">PART 3: <a style="color: #cf0000;" title="Download: Ibrahim Three" href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/2/09192014_Seg3_Ibrahim_web.mp3"><img src="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<ul style="color: #202021;">
<li>President Obama’s misleading remarks about the connection of jihadist terrorism to Islam</li>
<li>The long history of Christian persecution in the Muslim world</li>
</ul>
<p style="color: #202021;">PART 4: <a style="color: #cf0000;" title="Download: Ibrahim Four" href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/3/09192014_Seg4_Ibrahim_web.mp3"><img src="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<ul style="color: #202021;">
<li>Recommendations for future U.S. policies to combat the global jihad</li>
<li>Lessons learned from the American strategy that defeated the communist ideology of the Soviet Union</li>
<li>Problems with the labels put on those who question the radical aspects of Shariah law</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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<enclosure url="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/1/09192014_Seg2_Ibrahim_web.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg" />
<enclosure url="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/2/09192014_Seg3_Ibrahim_web.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg" />
<enclosure url="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/podpress_trac/web/189561/3/09192014_Seg4_Ibrahim_web.mp3" length="0" type="audio/mpeg" />
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		<item>
		<title>ISIS: Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Al-Qaeda on the Run&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/isis-obamas-al-qaeda-on-the-run/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-obamas-al-qaeda-on-the-run</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/isis-obamas-al-qaeda-on-the-run/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2014 04:17:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[on the run]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Al Qaeda isn’t on the run, Obama is.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/o3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240475" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/o3-333x350.jpg" alt="President Obama Makes Statement On The Sequestration" width="230" height="242" /></a>Obama often boasted that Al Qaeda was on the run. However it was Obama who had been running away from Al Qaeda ever since he took the job.</p>
<p>The botched surge in Afghanistan, where his own intelligence people had told him there were barely a 100 Al Qaeda fighters left, had been an attempt to escape Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Not the terrorists themselves, but the issues they raised.</p>
<p>September 11 had disrupted the multicultural consensus by raising serious questions about immigration and Islam. It had also thrown away the consensus that the collapse of the USSR had made American military power obsolete. Obama had come to revive these consensuses and as recently as the last election dismissed Romney as a reactionary warmonger who didn’t understand the new world order.</p>
<p>Obama had declared victory over an undefeated enemy. He had passed off a strategic withdrawal as a victory. His wars, victories and withdrawals were a series of blatant lies that are catching up with him.</p>
<p>His administration tried to blame the takeover of Libya by Islamist militias after his disastrous regime change intervention on a YouTube video. But there isn’t a YouTube video big enough to blame ISIS on.</p>
<p>Obama was determined to go on pretending that ISIS didn’t exist. Even while drones were hitting Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Caliph got a free pass from our drones and our custody. When ISIS took Fallujah, he dismissed it as a JV team. Now he’s trying to build a coalition, but his air strikes are a belated response to a threat that he should have been on top of all along.</p>
<p>Even without boots on the ground, the United States could have continued suppression operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq after the withdrawal. Drones would have ruled out the problem of Americans being tried in Iraq, the supposed reason for the total withdrawal.</p>
<p>A responsible administration wouldn’t have had to scramble for a strategy at the last minute because it would have been on top of the problem all along. But Obama cared more about being able to check the Iraq box and the Al Qaeda box in the election than about stopping the rise of Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Despite claims of bad intelligence, Obama did know what was happening. Last year Iraq <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/iraq-may-be-prepping-for-chemical-weapons-civil-war/">had already been preparing</a> for WMD attacks by ISIS by buying some expensive gear from us. Meanwhile Obama was acting as if the real issue was how much aid to provide to ISIS’ Free Syrian Army allies.</p>
<p>In 2006, John Kerry told students that if they weren’t smart, they would “get stuck in Iraq”. Now he and his boss, two veteran anti-war activists, are stuck in a war in Iraq that they desperately tried to avoid. They are stuck cobbling together a coalition of the willing for a war and trying to stabilize Iraq. History is repeating itself a second time as farce as the two politicians who were Bush’s biggest critics are stuck doing his job.</p>
<p>Their only comfort is blaming Bush, but this isn’t Bush’s war. It’s their war.</p>
<p>George W. Bush left behind a far more stable Iraq in which Al Qaeda had been pushed to the side. Bush had made his mistakes, but unlike Obama, he had not been a prisoner of a rigid ideology.</p>
<p>In the Senate, Obama had insisted that the surge in Iraq couldn’t possibly work. He went on denying it past the point of absurdity. In Iraq and everywhere else, Obama had put his ideology ahead of reality. Senator Obama had believed firmly that Sunnis and Shiites were only quarreling because of the American “occupation”. Once the United States left, they would stop fighting among themselves.</p>
<p>Out of its opposition to the Iraq War, the Democratic Party evolved the claim that Al Qaeda had never existed in Iraq until we invaded it. As an implicit corollary, it would stop existing if we left Iraq.</p>
<p>Problem solved.</p>
<p>Like Carter, Obama didn’t just have a different strategy, he had a different worldview. On the surface, Obama continued many of Bush’s existing War on Terror policies. The real gap was in his worldview.</p>
<p>The maligned Axis of Evil line had localized the problem of Islamic terrorism in state sponsorship by enemy states. It was a flawed and incomplete explanation, but far preferable to the liberal foreign policy assessment which viewed such terrorism as a reaction to American foreign policy in the Middle East.</p>
<p>To Bush, Al Qaeda was an active force that had to be confronted or it would attack us. To Obama, Al Qaeda was a reactive force that was responding to something that we did, whether it was supporting Mubarak or making YouTube videos.</p>
<p>The fault was not in the Jihadists; it was in ourselves.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring was Obama’s equivalent of regime change in Iraq. It was a big grandiose program for changing the Middle East by changing its governments, but where Bush had sought regime change for enemy terror states, Obama wanted regime change for American allies.</p>
<p>In 2002, Obama had delivered a speech in which he called on Bush to stay out of Iraq and instead “Fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people and suppressing dissent.”</p>
<p>Once in office, Obama pursued that program. Regimes fell and chaos spread. Terrorist groups became armies taking over entire countries. The Middle East began to burn.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda in Iraq had been a murderous band of suicide bombers before the Arab Spring. Like the Jihadist forces in Libya that now hold Benghazi and Tripoli, the Arab Spring made it an army.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda in Iraq was a vicious sociopathic JV team before the Arab Spring. Now it’s an Islamic State.</p>
<p>The media which was complicit in the celebration of the Arab Spring won’t tell the truth about what went wrong. Obama certainly won’t.</p>
<p>Until a few months ago, he was pretending that there wasn’t a problem in Iraq. It’s anyone’s guess how long he’ll go on pretending that there isn’t a problem in Libya. The Yazidis forced him to turn to air strikes and he’ll keep them up long enough for everyone to forget about Iraq. At least that’s the plan.</p>
<p>The problem with the plan is that ISIS has no intention of letting him forget.</p>
<p>What the left has persistently refused to understand is that it only takes one side to make a war. And that side isn’t the United States. Chris Hedges’ facile “War is a force that gives us meaning” isn’t true of America, but it is true of ISIS. It’s true of all the Jihadists.</p>
<p>The Islamic world is seeking to reclaim its identity through a Jihad against the West. This Jihad is the force that gives it meaning. Ignoring it is not an option. Blaming American foreign policy is as foolish as the dog that tries to bite its own tail.</p>
<p>Obama has been running away from Al Qaeda and now it has caught him. He imagines that he can escape with a few air strikes, a few speeches and a pivot to something else, but it won’t be that simple. This is a war that cannot be escaped or avoided, speechified or shrugged off.</p>
<p>Saturday Night Live routines won’t deter the Jihad. It can be killed, but it can’t be ignored.</p>
<p>As Churchill famously said of Munich, &#8220;You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama chose appeasement. He chose denial. He chose the Arab Spring. He chose the golf course. He chose to ignore the problem.</p>
<p>Now he has a war on his hands.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Learning to Love Our Terrorist Friends</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/learning-to-love-our-terrorist-friends/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=learning-to-love-our-terrorist-friends</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:35:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Moderate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS are the new moderates.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/a140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240006" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/a140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6-450x334.jpg" alt="a140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="300" height="223" /></a>Israel 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Also ISIS hates Shiites while Hamas accepts Iranian weapons.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>That raises the question, should we have destroyed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The only way to defeat terrorists is by not fighting them. Only by doing nothing can we hope to prevail.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It’s not just a joke; it’s also our foreign policy.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But let’s set aside these practical considerations.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This isn’t a strategy. It’s learned helplessness.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>There is no third option except wishful thinking.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Either that or we can start climbing into bed with the ISIS moderates now.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Managing&#8217; of ISIS &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/obamas-managing-of-isis-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-managing-of-isis-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:00:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Radical-in-Chief's disdain for American victory.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ob6.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240503" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ob6-450x337.jpg" alt="ob6" width="288" height="216" /></a><strong>[<a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Subscribe</a> to <em>The Glazov Gang</em> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">LIKE</a> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.]</strong></a></p>
<p>This week&#8217;s Glazov Gang was guest hosted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MPHaus.US">Michael Hausam</a> and joined by <strong>Mark Tapson</strong>, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, <strong>Mike Munzing,</strong> a Tea Party Activist and <strong>Jennifer Van Laar, </strong>a writer at <a href="http://www.ijreview.com/">Independent Journal Review</a>.</p>
<p>The guests gathered to discuss <strong>Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Managing&#8217; of ISIS</strong>, analyzing the Radical-in-Chief&#8217;s disdain for American victory:<strong><br />
</strong></p>
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<p><strong>To watch previous <em>Glazov Gang</em> episodes, </strong><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><strong>Click Here</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Indifference to the Islamic State Nightmare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obamas-indifference-to-the-islamic-state-nightmare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-indifference-to-the-islamic-state-nightmare</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:55:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The "soldiers of the Caliphate" warn America: They're coming. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238468" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6-450x334.jpg" alt="140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="267" height="198" /></a>Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS,” also known variously as &#8220;Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant&#8221; or simply the &#8220;Islamic State&#8221;) is metastasizing throughout northern and western Iraq and swaths of Syria. It won’t stop there. Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and other parts of the Middle East are within its sights. Ultimately, its pathological leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi warned, ISIS is after the United States. “Our last message is to the Americans. Soon we will be in direct confrontation, and the sons of Islam have prepared for such a day,” he said last January. More recently, an ISIS spokesperson declared “we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.&#8221;</p>
<p>President Obama, after months of dithering, finally authorized air strikes against ISIS, which are helping to slow down their advance against the Kurds in northern Iraq and to provide space for urgent humanitarian relief to besieged minority groups under threat of genocide by ISIS jihadists. However, as welcome as this is, the president still views ISIS as a local Iraqi problem to be dealt with by instituting a more inclusive centralized government in Baghdad rather than seeing ISIS as part of a much larger global ideological threat.</p>
<p>ISIS has a swelling army of more than 10,000 fighters, including jihadists and Sunni sympathizers, and advanced weapons seized from storehouses in conquered territories.  ISIS is largely self-financed from such lucrative sources as the sale of oil from seized territories, looting of banks, taxes imposed on subjugated individuals trapped in the conquered territories, ransom paid for abductees, and donations from rich supporters in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.</p>
<p>ISIS’s jihadist ideology and methods are barbarous. Its brutality includes summary executions, crucifixions, beheadings, abductions, forced conversions to Islam on penalty of death for disobedience, and the trafficking of girls as sex slaves. But added to their savagery, which knows no bounds, is their command of 21<sup>st</sup> century Internet technology to widely broadcast their brutal acts as a way of instilling fear in their “infidel” enemies and propagandizing their exploits. An additional worry is the probability that their conquests will enable them to obtain weapons of mass destruction, such as toxic chemicals stored in the conquered territories, as may have already happened. The result, as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters on August 12<sup>th</sup>, is that “the poison of hatred and brutality is spreading.”</p>
<p>Despite the rapid spread of ISIS from its expanding bases in Syria back into Iraq where ISIS had begun its operations, President Obama essentially sat on his hands. Iraqi officials began requesting almost a year ago that the U.S. carry out drone strikes against ISIS while ISIS was still in the process of mobilizing its forces. U.S. intelligence and military experts also warned of ISIS’s rising threat. Drones could have struck ISIS fighters as they were establishing bases in Iraq’s western desert and then moving convoys across the desert – all before ISIS reached any major civilian population areas. Obama refused to take action.</p>
<p>“This was a very clear case in which the U.S. knew what was going on but followed a policy of deliberate neglect,” said Vali Nasr, the dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department adviser on the Middle East. “This miscalculation essentially has helped realize the worst nightmare for this administration, an administration that prided itself on its counterterrorism strategy. It is now presiding over the resurgence of a nightmare of extremism and terrorism.”</p>
<p>President Obama’s assertion last week that U.S. intelligence had under-estimated ISIS is patently false and just a cover for his own indecisiveness.</p>
<p>When Fallujah fell months ago, Obama still did little other than to increase some military aid to the Iraqis. There was still no direct use of American airpower to stop ISIS. The ISIS threat continued to grow exponentially.</p>
<p>When Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was captured by ISIS in June and Christians there were being killed or displaced if they refused to convert to Islam, Obama remained his usual laid-back self. More study and analysis were needed, he concluded. Aside from sending a few hundred military advisors to assess the situation in Iraq and provide training to Iraqi forces, as well as some Marines to help guard U.S. facilities, he continued to watch and wait.</p>
<p>The president waited because he did not want to be seen as sending U.S. military forces back to Iraq after he had kept his campaign promise to withdraw all troops. He has also derided the capabilities of ISIS, comparing it to a junior varsity team. “If a J.V. team puts on Lakers’ uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” is how the president trivialized the ISIS threat. And he has blamed its rise on the lack of an inclusive government in Iraq.</p>
<p>However, President Obama’s hand was finally forced in the last week by an impending genocide of Christians and Yazidis in areas controlled by the Kurds in northern Iraq that ISIS was overrunning, and the imminent risk to American personnel located in the Kurdish capital of Erbil which ISIS forces were fast approaching. Thus, on August 7<sup>th</sup>, President Obama authorized the U.S. military to launch air strikes against ISIS jihadists in these areas and to airlift emergency humanitarian assistance to Yazidis stranded on a remote mountainside. In remarks he made from Martha’s Vineyard, where he is vacationing, President Obama reported that U.S. air and drone strikes have been successful in slowing the ISIS advance. The U.S. is also sending weapons directly to the Kurds, whose Peshmerga fighters have begun to push back against ISIS and have retaken several towns. This decision to bypass Iraq’s central security forces and deal directly with the Kurds is apparently a reversal of previous policy. The State Department had reportedly refused to permit direct shipment of arms to the Kurds from a U.S. company whom had been contacted by the Kurds requesting such weapons.</p>
<p>Yet despite President Obama’s welcome but belated action to intervene more directly against ISIS, the Obama administration still refuses to see ISIS as part of a larger global jihadist threat that is a direct danger to the U.S. homeland. The administration still views ISIS through the lens of a regional conflict over territory and power that has gotten out of hand because the Iraqi government has not been sufficiently inclusive.</p>
<p>Ben Rhodes, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, posted on the White House blog a ludicrous attempt to distinguish al Qaeda and its spin-off ISIS (which he refers to as ISIL):</p>
<blockquote><p>Is ISIL more dangerous than al-Qaeda right now?</p>
<p>While both are terrorist forces, they have different ambitions. Al-Qaeda&#8217;s principal ambition is to launch attacks against the west and U.S. homeland. That&#8217;s the direct threat that we have taken direct action against for many years. Right now, ISIL&#8217;s primary focus is consolidating territory in the Middle East region to establish their own Islamic State. So they’re different organizations with different objectives.</p></blockquote>
<p>Implicit in Rhodes’ comment is the fallacious assumption that ISIS would be content with “their own Islamic State” carved out of territory in the Middle East region and that their caliphate ambitions pose no direct threat to the U.S. homeland. ISIS now already controls territory larger geographically than Great Britain and rules over six million people. But if Rhodes thinks that ISIS would stop there, he is living in an alternative universe. Both al Qaeda and ISIS are driven by the same jihadist goal of a world-wide Islamic caliphate.</p>
<p>In other words, ISIS and al Qaeda follow the same jihadist ideology, with the same objective of establishing the worldwide supremacy of Islam and submission or death of all infidels. Neither has an interest in participating in any sort of inclusive government. Indeed, they both reject the very idea of a self-governing democracy or compromise with those whom they consider infidels. And the only limiting factors on their continuing expansion are their weaponry, number of recruits and finances.</p>
<p>If anything, ISIS poses more of a threat to the U.S. than ISIS’s parent al Qaeda because it has managed to create a well-armed, well-financed army with control of large swaths of territory from which to further expand and to plot much wider ranging assaults. Moreover, as hard as it is to believe, the sheer brutality shown by ISIS reportedly even disturbed al Qaeda leaders.</p>
<p>Rhodes went on in his blog post to deny that the U.S. is at war with the jihadists. That is certainly not the way ISIS sees it. As one of its followers declared in a video released by ISIS, &#8220;Our message to the entire world is that we are the soldiers of the Caliphate state and we are coming.&#8221;</p>
<p>Rhodes is simply reflecting the fallacious assumptions that underlie President Obama’s feckless policies in dealing with the Islamic supremacist ideology of jihad. It is pre-September 11, 2001 thinking, the same turning of a blind eye when Osama bin Laden had declared war against the United States during the 1990’s. ISIS is doing the same now, and building a more dangerous base from which to launch their deadly attacks against Americans than Osama bin Laden had in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>In short, the strategic objective of the United States in fighting against ISIS is not for the sake of Iraq, whether it has an inclusive government or not. The strategic objective is to cripple ISIS enough to prevent it from wreaking a repeat of 9/11 or worse on the U.S. homeland.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Why Obama Ignored Iraq</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/why-obama-ignored-iraq/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-obama-ignored-iraq</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2014 04:57:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235726</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama isn’t opposed to war. He’s opposed to America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235727" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b-418x350.jpg" alt="Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b" width="306" height="256" /></a>ISIS marching through Iraq has smashed the media’s taboo against criticizing Obama’s foreign policy. Substantive discussions are taking place about why his foreign policy is such a miserable failure.</p>
<p>And they mostly miss the point.</p>
<p>Liberal journalists still proceed from the fallacy that there was a foreign policy debate between neo-conservative interventionists and liberal non-interventionists. These are a series of digested Bush era talking points that have no relationship to reality since Bush’s foreign policy on Iraq carried over from Bill Clinton. It’s why Hillary gets so uncomfortable when she has to discuss her vote on Iraq.</p>
<p>The liberals weren’t non-interventionists who insisted on multilateralism and UN approval before acting. Obama, like virtually every other Democrat, disproved that myth as fast as he could. Nor were they even opponents of the Iraq War until opposing the war became politically convenient.</p>
<p>Obama however isn’t on this map at all. It’s not that he is an opponent of intervention. The Libyans can tell you that. It’s that his reasons for intervening fall completely outside the grid of national interests.</p>
<p>The anti-war activist as pacifist is largely a myth. There are a few anti-war activists who oppose all wars, but mostly they just oppose America. Obama, who got his foot up the political ladder by flirting with the anti-war movement, falls into that category. Obama isn’t opposed to wars. He’s opposed to America.</p>
<p>Obama is an ideological interventionist, not a nationalist interventionist. And despite his multilateralist rhetoric, he isn’t your usual globalist either. Instead he uses national and international power as platforms for pursuing ideological goals without any regard to national or international interests.</p>
<p>That is true of both his foreign and domestic policy.</p>
<p>Obama’s foreign policy is issue oriented, just like his domestic policy is. There is no national agenda, only a leftist agenda. America is just a power platform for pursuing policy goals.</p>
<p>Domestically, Obama does not care about fixing the economy. The economy is a vehicle for pursuing social justice, environmental justice and all the many unjust justices of the left. It has no innate value. Likewise national security and power have no value except as tools for promoting leftist policies.</p>
<p>Obama thinks of the ideological issue first. Then he packages it as a national interest for popular consumption. It’s a Wilsonian approach that is not only far more extreme than the policies of most White House occupants have been, but also more detached.</p>
<p>Wilson couldn’t understand that American power couldn’t exist without a national interest. Obama and his staffers see America as just another transnational institution that they happen to be running, not all that different than a corporation, non-profit or UN body. They don’t see it as a country, but a series of policymaking offices that reach across the country and the world.</p>
<p>It’s a globalized mode of thinking that is common among Eurocrats, but has never been represented in the Oval Office before.</p>
<p>Obama doesn’t just oppose America. He disregards it as an outmoded institution. When confronted with the border crisis or the rise of ISIS, he doesn’t see them in terms of American interests or even world interests, but in the narrow terms of leftist ideology.</p>
<p>He will use national and international institutions to promote LGBT rights or Green Energy. He won’t however get involved in actively using them for national security unless he absolutely has to in order to protect his own political power.</p>
<p>To a transnational mindset, institutions exist to promote issues. America is only of value to the extent that it can promote the left’s agenda. To the extent that it doesn’t, America is dead weight.</p>
<p>Once Bush was out, Iraq ceased to matter because it was no longer a packaged issue. It couldn’t be broken down into a simplistic Blame Bush policy agenda. And so Obama stopped paying attention.</p>
<p>Now Iraq is getting in the way of the things that he really cares about, such as illegal alien amnesty, dismantling Israel and transsexual bathrooms, because these are ideologically meaningful issues to him. And like every other obstacle, whether it was the national debt or the VA scandal, he pretends to take them seriously until a sufficient amount of time passes and he can dismiss them as “phony scandals”.</p>
<p>Obama didn’t just ignore Iraq because he wanted to avoid any connections to a war that he had helped make unpopular. He ignored Iraq because it had nothing to offer his ideology. If Iraq had a secular dictator, he might have been interested. If Islamists were fighting to take over from that dictator, there would have been planes and diplomats flying over Baghdad before you could shout, “Allah Akbar.”</p>
<p>It’s why he backed the Islamist overthrow of Arab governments, but not the popular protests against Islamist governments in Iran or Turkey.</p>
<p>But Iraq was a battle between Sunni and Shiite Islamists, backed by the Saudis and Iran. Even the left has trouble picking a side between two anti-American Islamic factions who are divided over theological issues, instead of practical things like dialectical materialism and the discourse of othering. In a pinch they pick the Iranian side as being more anti-American, but the prospect of American intervention on the same side as the Shiites confuses them even further and they have to go lie down in a dark room.</p>
<p>When there is no clear ideological guide, Obama takes meetings with generals, tunes them out, plays with his phone and delays doing something for as long as possible. That was the pattern in Afghanistan and Syria. Ideologues can’t function without an ideological orientation. When the ideological value of a problem is unclear, Obama either freezes up, like a robot whose manual was misplaced, or ignores it.</p>
<p>Obama’s only approach to Iraq came from Bush era opposition. Without Bush to push against, he had no idea what if anything should be done about Iraq. He still doesn’t. Instead he resorts to the antiquated attacks on Bush because it’s the last time that Iraq made any sense to him. It was the last time that the left had successfully packaged Iraq into a simple scenario in which there was only one right choice.</p>
<p>Ideologues are not big on independent thinking. When everything is politicized, they lose the ability to see the things that can’t be neatly assigned to one side or another.  America is being run by a blinkered ideologue who ignores issues that fall outside his ideological spectrum.</p>
<p>Those problems that he doesn’t cause directly and intentionally through his ideology, he causes indirectly and unintentionally by being unable to operate outside his ideology except in an emergency. Like the difference between the pilot who flies a plane deliberately into a mountain and the one who accidentally flies it into a mountain, there is a gap in motivation, but not in outcome.</p>
<p>History will not record why Obama screwed everything up. It will only record that he did it.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>If We Want to Beat Al Qaeda, We Have to Stop Arming It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/if-we-want-to-beat-al-qaeda-we-have-to-stop-arming-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=if-we-want-to-beat-al-qaeda-we-have-to-stop-arming-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 04:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[$500 million]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235190</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We can’t win by aiding our worst enemies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/isis1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235193" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/isis1-450x299.jpg" alt="isis" width="293" height="195" /></a>Obama’s call for $500 million to arm and train Syrian Jihadist fighters couldn’t have possibly come at a more inappropriate time as Al Qaeda in Iraq menaces both countries.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the Iraq War that made the Al Qaeda affiliate so dangerous. In 2008 it specialized in suicide bombings. It wasn’t marching on Baghdad with an army behind it.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring destabilized the region while money, weapons and recruits poured into Libya and Syria. Obama’s regime change war in Libya led not only to the takeover of entire Libyan cities by Al Qaeda, culminating in the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, but to an Al Qaeda affiliate seizing much of neighboring Mali. Libyan terror training camps also led to an attack on the Amenas gas plant in Algeria.</p>
<p>Three Americans were killed in that attack bringing the US death toll from Obama’s Libyan War up to seven.</p>
<p>But that was last year. This year it’s the Syrian Civil War that turned its local Al Qaeda affiliates into breakout Jihadi stars seizing entire cities and terrorizing the region.</p>
<p>Obama’s solution is to direct money intended for counterterrorism partnerships to terrorists in Syria.</p>
<p>This may be one of the worst ideas that he has ever come up with. Attempts to control the flow of weapons likely played a role in the Benghazi attacks. NATO forces enforcing an arms embargo on Libya <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obama-administration-oversaw-arms-shipments-to-al-qaeda-in-libya/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">had been told to ignore Qatari weapons shipments</span></a> that were meant for “moderates”.</p>
<p>Instead they went to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry, not to mention Graham and McCain, believe that weapons can be directed to “moderate” Syrian groups and that by arming the “good” terrorists, we’ll stop the “bad” terrorists.</p>
<p>But there are no “good” terrorists. Promises of delivering weapons only to “pre-vetted” groups are worth as much as Obama’s assurances that Al Qaeda was on the run and that ISIS is only a jayvee team.</p>
<p>Kerry met with Ahmad al-Jarba, the President of the Syrian National Coalition. Al-Jarba said that $500 million wouldn’t be enough and demanded more weapons. Meanwhile Al-Jarba was feuding with Ahmad Tohme, the Prime Minister of the SNC’s fictional government. Tohme had attempted to disband the Supreme Military Council over corruption charges while firing the head of the Free Syrian Army.</p>
<p>None of this really matters because the SNC is a puppet regime with many puppet masters and no puppets. The Syrian front men for the Saudis, Qataris, the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey and other factions are constantly firing each other. Their Free Syrian Army is a label stamped on a bunch of Islamist militias, many of whom openly support Al Qaeda.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/4-of-5-moderate-free-syrian-army-front-commanders-demand-to-work-with-al-qaeda/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Four out of five of the FSA’s</span></a> front commanders had demanded to work with Al Qaeda last year. Parts of the FSA joined the Islamic Front and seized the FSA’s weapons warehouses taking anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. The FSA fighters fled. Earlier ISIS had seized USAID items intended for the FSA.</p>
<p>After these embarrassments Obama was forced to temporarily suspend aid to the Free Syrian Army.</p>
<p>A senior Al Qaeda terrorist who answered to Ayman Al-Zawahiri was a leading figure in the Islamic Front through Ahrar al Sham, which operated alongside the FSA, until he was killed in an attack by ISIS. Ahrar al Sham had a powerful role in the Supreme Military Council through Deputy Chief of Staff Abdel-basset Tawil.</p>
<p>The FSA, to the extent that it exists, consists of bearded Salafist fighters and commanders in the field and “moderate” leaders in suits in Qatar and Turkey who usually never set foot in Syria. They obtain weapons and money from the West for Jihadists who are much less camera friendly.</p>
<p>Groups such as Liwa al Ummah choose to affiliate with the FSA even while they continue fighting alongside the Al Nusra Front. Experts label some Syrian Jihadist groups as moderate and others as extremist, but the “moderates” and “extremists” fly the black flag of Jihad and fight for an Islamic state.</p>
<p>Pre-vetting the groups means nothing because names like the Free Syrian Army or the Supreme Military Council are only fronts for outside interests. Even the names of the individual militias are often meaningless because new groups and new umbrella groups are constantly being created and dissolved.  Fighters and commanders move from one group to another taking their weapons with them.</p>
<p>Keeping track of the various pseudonyms used by the commanders is already a full time job. It is often impossible to tell whether two Jihadist commanders with the same pseudonym are even the same person. Figuring out the relationship between various groups means depending on intelligence from those groups and various activists on the ground who all have their own alliances and agendas.</p>
<p>No meaningful vetting is possible under these circumstances and supplying weapons to “pre-vetted” groups is as good as supplying them to Al Qaeda. Supplying weapons to pre-vetted groups only  means that it will take longer for those weapons to reach Al Qaeda through barter, alliance or capture.</p>
<p>And even if the weapons don’t end up with Al Qaeda, they will go to Salafist groups that share its goals. The difference is that those have not yet officially declared war on us. That same false sense of security led to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi.</p>
<p>We should not be arming any Islamic militias. We certainly should not be arming Salafi Jihadis who wave the black flag of Jihad. That would be more foolish than anything that Carter did in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>And even if we could control who the weapons went to and even if the Free Syrian Army were moderate, prolonging the Syrian Civil War only makes Al Qaeda more dangerous. Some have said that the best scenario is for both the Sunni and Shiite sides to go on bleeding. But the Syrians and Iraqis are not Americans. They have a much higher birth rate and a much lower regard for individual life.</p>
<p>A prolonged conflict will not break them. It will however train them.</p>
<p>Iran and Iraq bounced back from a much more devastating war to become serious threats.  Conflicts in the region are training grounds that make enemies more dangerous, not less. The longer the fighting goes on, the more fighters will be recruited and the more competent commanders will emerge.  And no matter how the fighting ends, many of those fighters and commanders will go on to other wars.</p>
<p>Afghanistan produced many of the Al Qaeda fighters and commanders who became a threat to the United States. The Arab Spring wars are producing a new generation of fighters. Their expertise will lead to multiple terror attacks and wars around the world. There is already concern about Muslim settlers in America, Europe, Canada and Australia who have gone to fight in Syria returning to the West.</p>
<p>The longer the conflict goes on, the more of them there will be. Prolonging the fighting by aiding the Sunnis is a mistake that ultimately helps Al Qaeda, not to mention Hezbollah, become more dangerous.</p>
<p>The myth of a moderate alternative to Al Qaeda that we can create with weapons shipments is an appealing fiction. The FSA couldn’t stand up to the Islamic Front. It certainly can’t stand up to ISIS. And there is no need for it to do so. The opposition fighters all want the same thing. They only disagree on who will have the upper hand. That is why Al Nusra fought against ISIS before kissing and making up.</p>
<p>The forces of the Sunni opposition have much more in common ideologically and culturally with each other than they do with us. Their common goal is a Sunni Islamic state built by the Jihad.</p>
<p>We can’t win by supporting them. We can only lose.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing Obama&#8217;s catastrophic foreign policy:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WUz9-fhF9uw" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Fourth-Ranking House Dem Wants to Know Why Bombing Al Qaeda is in America&#8217;s Interest</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/fourth-ranking-house-dem-wants-to-know-why-bombing-al-qaeda-is-in-americas-interest/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fourth-ranking-house-dem-wants-to-know-why-bombing-al-qaeda-is-in-americas-interest</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 28 Jun 2014 20:37:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congressman McDermott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xavier becerra]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235126</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Congressman Becerra voted against asking Obama to "detail US security interests and objectives" in Libya.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/01.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-235127" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/01-450x337.jpg" alt="0" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>Congressman Xavier Becerra voted against denying Obama funds to wage a war against Gaddafi and for Al Qaeda in Libya. He voted against asking Obama to &#8220;detail US security interests and objectives&#8221; in Libya.</p>
<p>He also voted against a commendation for US troops for their service in Iraq.</p>
<p>So if Becerra sounds like a typical lefty hypocrite, it&#8217;s<a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/210361-house-democrats-fear-another-vietnam"> because that is exactly what he is</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), the fourth-ranking House Democrat, laid out a three-part test he said President Obama must clear in order to win support from the Democratic caucus for renewed operations there.</p>
<p>First, they want evidence the Iraqis are taking diplomatic steps to keep themselves united as one country. Second, they want an explanation of the administration’s ultimate goal in applying force — an “endgame” strategy that justifies its use. And third, they want to know why a military intervention is in America’s best interest.</p>
<p>“Before we put an American in harm’s way, tell us why,” Becerra said Tuesday.</p></blockquote>
<p>Becerra is, of course, a lying clown, since Obama has already said that no combat troops will be deployed. There is, a very distant possibility, of air strikes on Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Does Becerra really want an explanation for why bombing Al Qaeda is in America&#8217;s interests?</p>
<blockquote><p>“There’s a lot of concern about getting embroiled in another Vietnam and &#8230; about sending American troops once again to fight someone else’s war,” Becerra said after a closed-door meeting of the caucus in the Capitol.</p></blockquote>
<p>What is Becerra even talking about? Vietnam?</p>
<p>We were already in Iraq. Is Becerra so relentlessly clueless and knee-jerk left that he has to aimlessly toss out Vietnam, when he can just critique engagement in Iraq based on an existing war?</p>
<p>It&#8217;s like Xavier Becerra is an idiot composed entirely of talking points he borrowed from decades ago.</p>
<p>But a Dem Anti-War rally wouldn&#8217;t be complete without a McDermott.</p>
<blockquote><p>Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) is among the leery. The 13-term liberal said Obama’s choices are “very limited” considering the history of conflict in the region, America’s role in propping up al-Maliki and the sheer number of sects vying for power. He noted that the Vietnam War also began as a limited engagement.</p>
<p>“I’m old enough to remember John Kennedy sending a few advisers into Vietnam,” McDermott said. “I’m very worried we’ll get in and we’ll get mired down in something we don’t have any idea what to do [with].”</p></blockquote>
<p>Again, what does Vietnam have to do with anything? We&#8217;ve been involved in Iraq long enough that it can be critiques on its own.</p>
<p>Why must McDermott keep turning his acid flashbacks into a policy critique?</p>
<p>But was McDermott equally opposed to a Libyan Vietnam? Is a Democrat ever opposed to helping Al Qaeda?</p>
<p><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/02/lawmakers-step-up-criticism-of.html">McDermott endorsed the call for a &#8220;No Fly Zone&#8221;</a> which was underhanded regime change. He voted against banning armed forces deployment in Libya without Congressional approval.</p>
<p>And <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/03/22/mcdermott-praises-obama-handling-of-libya/">he was a big fan of Obama&#8217;s Libyan Vietnam</a>&#8230; which turned over much of the country to Islamist militias, some aligned with Al Qaeda.</p>
<blockquote><p>The way President George W. Bush took the United States to war in Iraq had no more trenchant critic than Seattle’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott.</p>
<p>Eight years later, he is endorsing a president for more deliberately entering into harm’s way.</p>
<p>As some on the left criticize President Obama, McDermott is praising the 44th president of his handling of military intervention to enforce a no-fly zone to protect Libyans from their murderous, not-often-rational dictator.</p>
<p>“He (Obama) did not rush out and do it like George Bush a decade before:  He waited and got a United Nations Security Council resolution.  He waited until the Arab League was on board.”</p></blockquote>
<p>McDermott is, of course, a crazy liar. There was no UN Security Council approval for regime change or sustained bombing campaigns against the Libyan military. The No Fly Zone resolution was never meant to cover the things Obama did with it.</p>
<p>So McDermott is praising Obama for getting the UN and Arab League on board by lying to them. Both the UN and Arab League then blasted the US for its bombing campaign and called for an end.</p>
<blockquote><p>“It was quite unlike Iraq where we blundered in with, what was the phrase for it, a ‘coalition of the willing’,” McDermott said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Except Libya was another Coalition of the Willing.</p>
<p>The moral of the story is that Democrats are still complete hypocrites. Also they use Vietnam in every other sentence.</p>
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		<title>Melancholy Lessons from Iraq</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/melancholy-lessons-from-iraq/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=melancholy-lessons-from-iraq</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:50:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hussein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234718</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hard truths from Iraq that transcend administrations. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140111_MAP001_0.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234720" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140111_MAP001_0.jpg" alt="20140111_MAP001_0" width="278" height="219" /></a>The unfolding collapse of Iraq’s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama’s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is consolidating a Sunni terrorist state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, replete with mass executions, sharia law, and the beheading of violators. With revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling the Shia faithful to arms, a vicious civil war between Shia and Sunnis will likely intensify in the coming days. But whoever wins, the fallout for our security will be disastrous – a Shiite “crescent” from Aleppo to Mosul allied with Iran, which looks ever more likely to be nuclear armed, and a safe haven for terrorist training camps to prepare “martyrs” for attacks against the West. And our allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all will to various degrees find their own security and interests impacted by this administration’s criminal foreign policy negligence.</p>
<p>Obama deserves the lion’s share of the blame for many reasons. Most important is his failure to secure a status of forces agreement that would have left in Iraq sufficient American firepower to deter both Prime Minister Maliki from indulging his autocratic tendencies and abusing his power to subjugate the rival Sunnis, and the ISIS from attempting to expand its territorial reach through sectarian violence and mayhem. This catastrophic error was the result of Obama’s political narrative that he ended George Bush’s “bad” war in Iraq and brought all of our troops home, a potent campaign slogan in the 2012 presidential election. That sacrifice of America’s security and interests, and betrayal of the soldiers killed and maimed during the Iraq war – just to gratify political necessity and an ideological disbelief in the goodness of American power – will join Congress’s abandonment of Vietnam in 1973 on the roll of American foreign policy dishonor and disaster. Yet there are larger lessons from the debacle in Iraq that transcend one administration’s incompetence.</p>
<p><i>Democracy’s Foreign Policy Weaknesses</i></p>
<p>Political freedom depends on the accountability of politicians to the voters whose interests they must serve. Yet as democracy’s critics starting in ancient Athens have pointed out, electoral accountability to the conflicting interests of citizens and factions makes foreign policy difficult. “The structures and habits of democratic states,” Churchill wrote after World War II, “lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to the humble masses.” Foreign policy often requires long-range planning and steadfastness that are compromised by two-year election cycles and the eagerness of self-interested partisan politicians to respond to the short-term interests, impatience, anger, or indifference of the citizens. The hardships of war – the loss of life, the expense, the inevitable blunders and unforeseen consequences, and the necessary brutality that define armed conflict –especially try the patience of citizens and politicians to whom military professionals are accountable. Yet giving in to such impatience can be dangerous in the long run. As Tocqueville wrote, “The people are more apt to feel than to reason; and if their present sufferings are great, it is to be feared that the still greater sufferings attendant upon defeat will be forgotten.”</p>
<p>The current collapse in Iraq confirms this analysis. As a senator Obama campaigned against the war in Iraq, untainted as he was by the vote to authorize the war burdening Hillary Clinton, his rival in the presidential primaries. In 2007 he vigorously opposed the “surge” in troops that would create the success he is now squandering as president, calling it a “mistake” and a “reckless escalation.” He also introduced legislation to remove all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 2008. He was elected to his first term in part because of the voters’ weariness of 7 years of war. Since becoming president he has acted on his campaign rhetoric that Iraq was George Bush’s “bad” war and that he would bring everybody home, most destructively by failing to secure the status of forces agreement and by setting a date-certain for withdrawal. In his Second Inaugural he claimed, “A decade of war is now ending,” and in 2013, “The war in Iraq is over, and we’ve welcomed our troops home.” Yet in these and many other <a href="https://grabien.com/file.php?id=19573&amp;searchorder=date"><span style="color: #0433ff;">boasts</span></a> about ending the war, he showed no awareness that the war ended only because he abandoned the fight while the outcome was still in doubt.</p>
<p>Yet Obama’s political expediency has been in synch with the sentiments of a majority of Americans. A February 2014 Gallup <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/iraq.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">poll</span></a> found 57% thought the U.S. “made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq.” This opposition reflects a broader drift towards displeasure with intervention abroad. A December 2013 Pew <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-points/u-s-foreign-policy-key-data-points/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">poll</span></a> found that 52% of Americans thought the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” a 40-year low in support for U.S. global leadership. And 80% agreed with the belief that “We should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home.” In the long term, however, this thinking is dangerous. The globalized economy that has created unprecedented worldwide prosperity requires a tutelary power subject to law and accountability, and founded on respect for human rights and freedom, to keep order. Only the United States has both the military reach and the political virtues that make us worthy of that responsibility.</p>
<p><i>Democracy Promotion</i></p>
<p>The shift of emphasis in the Iraq war’s mission from destroying Saddam Hussein’s regime to creating political freedom and democracy in Iraq was naïve and misguided. Authentic liberal democracy is not a question of electoral mechanisms like voting, those photogenic purple thumbs that we celebrated when Iraq held its first free elections. Liberal democracy comprises popular sovereignty and individual rights not just codified in laws, constitutions, and transparent and fair political procedures and institutions, but also daily reinforced and strengthened through social mores, customs, and habits. This complex nexus of virtues, principles, laws, and customs cannot be bestowed from without, but must develop organically from within, in cultural soil conduce to their growth.</p>
<p>As the continuing failure of the “Arab Spring” revolutions to create genuine democracies shows, the Muslim Middle East is difficult terrain for many of these democratical elements. The cultural and religious impediments are immense. The persistence of tribal and feudal mentalities about women, family honor, clan loyalty, and religious minorities; and Islamic dogmas that subordinate all political and civic life to Allah’s will and the 7<sup>th</sup> century model of Mohammed, are two of the most obvious. After all, in the West, liberal democracy took 2300 years to triumph, and even then, in the 20<sup>th</sup> century it faced existential threats from fascism, Nazism, and communism, its victory a close-run thing costing millions of lives. To think we could achieve in a few years what took the West centuries to create was and remains naïve. And to charge our military with building the infrastructure of democracy and civil society at the same time it was called upon to destroy a committed and vicious insurgency was delusional. Don’t forget that Japan’s and Germany’s democracies were built only <i>after</i> the occupying Allies had left both countries in ruins and millions dead.</p>
<p><i>Nations for Everybody</i></p>
<p>The rise of the nation-state created the preconditions for the creation of liberal democracy in the West by establishing a “unifying principle,” as political philosopher Pierre Manent writes, for establishing the political “communion” that gives citizens a common identity. Yet historically humans have had other “unifying principles,” such as tribal affiliation or religious faith, that give peoples their collective identities. For Muslims, Islam is the unifying force creating the supranational ummah, the global community of the faithful, which is more important than the alien Western concept of nations with distinct identities. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who created the Islamic state of Iran, the most powerful theocracy in the world, allegedly said, “<span style="color: #1b1b1b;">We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”</span></p>
<p>After World War I, however, despite these cultural and religious barriers England and France created by fiat new nations in the Muslim Middle East out of the dismantled Ottoman Empire, which had recognized the ethnic and sectarian differences of the region but subjected them to the overall theocratic rule of the Caliph. With an eye to their own national interests, the European victors created artificial, secular sovereign “nations” that ignored those differences. Hence the “nation” of Iraq was cobbled together out of 3 Ottoman Vilayets or provinces that had roughly corresponded to the concentrations of Kurds, Shia, and Sunni. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, whose brutality kept these ethnic and sectarian divisions in check, and now with the departure of the Americans, these conflicts and rivalries have erupted into the violence tearing Iraq apart today. The lesson is that flags, national anthems, and borders do not create nations any more than elections, campaigns, and political parties create democracies.</p>
<p>Two melancholy conclusions arise from these lessons from Iraq. First, American democracy is unsuited for the consistent, coherent, long-term foreign policy and intervention abroad required to nurture liberal democracy in other countries. Second, Islam’s doctrines and dogmas make creating true liberal democracy – with its separation of state and religion, tolerance for minorities, and respect for individual human rights and freedom – even more difficult. Again Khomeini expresses this divide between the West and traditional Islam: “<span style="color: #1b1b1b;">Don&#8217;t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.” The jihadists rampaging in Syria and Iraq agree, which is why their goal is to restore the caliphate under which Islam dominated the region for centuries.</span></p>
<p>Cataloguing the failures of one president or administration is necessary, but it will not solve these larger problems. Only extraordinary political leadership and vision, and a mind-concentrating existential threat, can overcome those impediments and galvanize the citizens to pay the price and bear the burdens for ensuring our long-term security and national interests.</p>
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		<title>Saddam&#8217;s WMDs: The Left&#8217;s Iraq Lies Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/saddams-wmds-the-lefts-iraq-lies-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saddams-wmds-the-lefts-iraq-lies-exposed</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2014 04:58:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WMD]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the apology to the Bush administration?  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234688" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229-450x300.jpg" alt="BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229" width="255" height="170" /></a>The recent turmoil in Iraq brought on by the rise of the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ironically struck a blow to the American Left’s endlessly repeated narrative that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq prior to the war. The State Department and other U.S. government officials have revealed that ISIS now occupies the Al Muthanna Chemicals Weapons Complex. Al Muthanna was Saddam Hussein’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10910868/Iraq-crisis-Obama-may-launch-air-strikes-without-Congress-amid-calls-for-Maliki-to-go-live.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">primary</span></a> chemical weapons facility, and it is located less than 50 miles from Baghdad.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Obama administration claims that the weapons in that facility, which include sarin, mustard gas, and nerve agent VX, manufactured to prosecute the war against Iran in the 1980s, do not pose a threat because they are old, contaminated and hard to move. &#8220;We do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible to safely move the materials,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The administration’s dubious rationale is based on information provided by the Iraq Study Group, which was tasked with finding WMDs in the war’s aftermath. They found the chemical weapons at Al Muthanna, but they determined that both Iraq wars and inspections by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had successfully dismantled the facility, and that the remaining chemical weapons were rendered useless and sealed in bunkers. The report called the weapons facility &#8220;a wasteland full of destroyed chemical munitions, razed structures, and unusable war-ravaged facilities,” the 2004 <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5_annxB.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> stated.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet other sections of the same report were hardly reassuring. &#8220;Stockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there,” it stated. &#8220;The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers&#8217; contents have yet to be confirmed.” It added, &#8220;These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential black-marketers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Another <a href="http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100304_iraq_cw_legacy.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> paints an even more disturbing picture of the Muthanna facility. It warned that the number and status of Saddam&#8217;s sarin-filled rockets was unknown because facilities were not able to be inspected, leaving investigators only able to surmise about the weapons&#8217; condition. Even in degraded conditions, the report said, these rockets still posed a proliferation risk:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Although the damaged Bunker 13 at Muthanna contained thousands of sarin-filled rockets, the presence of leaking munitions and unstable propellant and explosive charges made it too hazardous for UNSCOM inspectors to enter. Because the rockets could not be recovered safely, Iraq declared the munitions in Bunker 13 as &#8216;destroyed in the Gulf War&#8217; and they were not included in the inventory of chemical weapons eliminated under UNSCOM supervision.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Because of the hazardous conditions in Bunker 13, UNSCOM inspectors were unable to make an accurate inventory of its contents before sealing the entrances in 1994. As a result, no record exists of the exact number or status of the sarin-filled rockets remaining in the bunker. &#8230; In the worst-case scenario, the munitions could contain as much as 15,000 liters of sarin. Although it is likely that the nerve agent has degraded substantially after nearly two decades of storage under suboptimal conditions, UNMOVIC cautioned that &#8216;the levels of degradation of the sarin fill in the rockets cannot be determined without exploring the bunker and taking samples from intact warheads.&#8217; If the sarin remains highly toxic and many of the rockets are still intact, they could pose a proliferation risk.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nonetheless, U.S. officials, who claimed they were well aware of the facility insisted that the United States wouldn’t have left it there if it were a genuine threat. They also continued to stress that the takeover by ISIS doesn’t constitute a military gain by the group because the weapons would prove useless, even if ISIS were able to penetrated the sealed bunkers where they are stored. ISIS has reportedly yet to gain access to the bunkers.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, there are numerous holes in these assessments. The Obama administration, eager to leave a &#8220;sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq” as the president <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380810/disaster-his-own-making-charles-krauthammer"><span style="color: #1255cc;">described</span></a> it in 2011, paid little heed to the prospect of large swaths of that nation being overrun by terrorists who have taken over key cities and military bases, and confiscated sophisticated American military equipment in the process. One defense official conceded as much, telling the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> that had they known the Maliki government would lose control so soon, they might not have left the weapons behind. And Psaki’s contention that the weapons could not be moved safely even by terrorists is hardly reassuring when one considers the reality that ISIS uses suicide bombings as one of it <a href="http://www.syriadeeply.org/articles/2013/10/2558/suicide-bombs-isiss-military-tactic/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">chief</span></a> military tactics.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A far more critical consideration is the possibility that many of the Iraqi Sunnis who have joined ISIS due in large part to their alienation by the Shi’ite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki are comprised of former Saddam Hussein loyalists, some of whom may have working knowledge of the chemical weapons stored at Al Muthanna. Former WMD specialist Paul Perrone extrapolated on where such working knowledge might lead. &#8220;I&#8217;m more concerned with the prospect that these Muslim terrorists have access to formulas or precursors that would enable them to create their own WMD,” he warned.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The latest revelations on the details of Saddam&#8217;s weapons stockpile, now potentially in the hands of Sunni radicals, affirm the Bush administration&#8217;s characterization of Iraq as a territory situated in a hotbed of radicalism, flooded with a bevy of highly dangerous weapons and overseen by a criminal rogue regime. Indeed, the WMDs are to say nothing of the Hussein government&#8217;s nuclear weapons program, also put to a stop by intervention in Iraq. In 2008, American and Iraqi officials had &#8220;completed nearly the last chapter in dismantling Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program with the removal of hundreds of tons of natural uranium from the country’s main nuclear site,” the <i>New York Times</i> <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?_r=2&amp;">reported</a>.</span> Approximately 600 tons of “yellowcake” was removed from the Tuwaitha facility, the main site for Iraq&#8217;s nuclear program. <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/tuwaitha.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">According</span></a> to global <a href="http://security.org/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">security.org</span></a>, uranium enrichment levels of 95 percent were achieved at the Tuwaitha facility. That site was also the location of the Osirak nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel in 1981.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And in what sounded like a harbinger of the future, the <i>Times</i> noted that although the yellowcake could not be used in its current form to produce a nuclear device or dirty bomb, the “unstable environment” in Iraq necessitated its removal, lest it fall into the “wrong hands.” In an updated correction to the article, the <i>Times</i> notes that the Osriak nuclear reactor “theoretically produced plutonium, which can fuel an atomic bomb.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Left dismissed this reality by claiming the yellowcake had been in Iraq prior to 1991 and thus was not the same yellowcake Bush referred to in his 2003 State of the Union address as part of his justification for invading Iraq. Led by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the emboldened anti-war Left attempted to turn the claim into a scandal saying that Bush knowingly lied to the American public regarding Iraq’s effort to procure yellowcake from Niger.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ultimately, Wilson and his story were <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2064"><span style="color: #1255cc;">thoroughly discredited</span></a> a year later by a Senate Select Committee report, which further noted that President Bush had been fully justified in including the infamous “16 words” regarding that intelligence in his speech. Moreover the left has never bothered to explain why yellowcake procured before 1991 was any less dangerous in terms of its WMD potential, given Saddam Hussein’s regular defiance of international law also enunciated by Bush as one of the primary reasons for deposing him.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In 2010, documents procured by Wikileaks revealed more information on the WMD threat posed by Iraq that was known to the government. The self-described whistleblowers, who could hardly be called pro-war, released 392,000 military reports from Iraq that revealed several instances of American encounters with potential WMDs or their manufacture. These included 1200 gallons of a <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/7726706C-22D1-404B-B73C-5BB9F23BD1ED/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">liquid mustard agent</span></a> in Samarra that tested positive for a blister agent; <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/7726706C-22D1-404B-B73C-5BB9F23BD1ED/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tampering</span></a> by large earth movers thought to be attempting to penetrate the bunkers at Muthanna; the <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/ECC9C0F2-5A52-4DA3-AC76-ECC421663C40/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovery</span></a> of a chemical lab and a <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/34B3B909-B0E3-4286-BF06-96B65A121702/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">chemical cache</span></a> in Fallujah; and the discovery of a cache of weapons <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/151E7734-E81A-D113-5818DB36E7BABD4F/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hidden</span></a> at an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint with 155MM rounds that subsequently tested positive for mustard.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Foreign involvement with WMDs in Iraq was documented as well. A war log from January 2006 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq/warlogs/D3127776-BF22-4583-81BD-4DB8CD7F9357"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speaks</span></a> of 50 neuroparalytic projectiles smuggled into Iraq from Iran via Al Basrah; Syrian chemical weapons specialists who came in to support the “chemical weapons operations of Hizballah Islami” (Hezbollah); and an Al Qaeda chemical weapons expert from Saudi Arabia sent to assist 200 individuals awaiting an opportunity to attack coalition forces with Sarin. As Wired Magazine <a href="http://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized</span></a> it, the Wikileaks documents revealed that for several years after the initial invasion, &#8220;U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.”</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Left-wing members in Congress were certainly aware of these threats and more posed by the Hussein regime, which lead them to unanimously authorize war and even vocally champion its necessity. Their assessment was based on nothing less than the very intelligence known to the Bush administration at the time. Secretary of State John Kerry, as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations before war was authorized, <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2013/09/kerry-spins-his-record-on-iraq/">said</a>, &#8220;There&#8217;s no question in my mind that Saddam Hussein has to be toppled one way or another, but the question is how&#8221; and that there was likewise &#8220;no question&#8221; that Hussein &#8220;continues to pursue weapons of mass destruction, and his success can threaten both our interests in the region and our security at home.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intoned in 2002:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #444444;">In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members &#8230; It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #323333;">Justifying her well-known position, Clinton said later said in a 2003 interview with Code Pink, &#8220;<span style="color: #000000;">I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted &#8230; I would love to agree with [Code Pink], but I can&#8217;t, based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation.&#8221; </span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">However, these statements were made in the wake of 9/11 when Democrats sensed hawkishness was the key to their political fortunes. A few short years later, sabotaging the war that they had started and betraying the troops that they had sent to the field was where Democrats&#8217; political futures lied. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others made this transition through a blatant campaign of deceit that went virtually unchallenged by the media. Clinton, for example, averred on the campaign trail, &#8220;[I]<span style="color: #000000;">f we had known then what we know now there never would have been a vote and I never would have voted to give this President that authority&#8221; and claimed that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/13/hillary-clinton-defends-2_n_81261.html">she didn&#8217;t know</a> that her vote for the &#8220;Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002&#8243; was a vote for war. </span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">The con is still on going. In September of last year, Secretary Kerry brazenly <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/10/kerrys-claim-that-he-opposed-bushs-invasion-of-iraq/">asserted</a> that he and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had &#8220;opposed the president&#8217;s decision to go into Iraq&#8221; and that &#8220;evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.&#8221; Chuck Hagel, in fact, also voted in favor of the war before jumping ship, forsaking the lost lives he squandered in the field and joining with the hard left. As for the &#8220;manipulated evidence&#8221; canard cited by Kerry, the latest details of Saddam&#8217;s WMD stockpile &#8212; something there can be no doubt that the Secretary of State was aware of &#8212; exposes yet again the left&#8217;s great deception on the danger of Hussein and the motivation behind the Iraq war.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">And now ISIS, disowned by al Qaeda for being even more ruthless than it is, controls a chemical facility containing contents declared &#8220;destroyed&#8221; because they couldn’t be recovered safely, along with bunkers containing contents “yet to be confirmed.” And an administration with an unparalleled facility for lying assures us everything will be fine because the chemical weapons have no useful military value and can’t be moved safely.  As with the rest of the Left&#8217;s handling of Iraq, this is an analysis that no one should have faith in.</p>
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