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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Arab Spring</title>
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		<title>Juan Cole’s ‘New Arab’ Fantasies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/juan-coles-new-arab-fantasies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=juan-coles-new-arab-fantasies</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 04:07:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[juan cole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243790</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The vain search for lasting democracy in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/juan-cole.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243791" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/juan-cole-450x307.jpg" alt="juan-cole" width="355" height="242" /></a>The “advent of a new generation” of Arabs was the overly optimistic theme for University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole’s recent <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=otj666baaa043fca648f191abced399970924#bookmark=http://www.gwu.edu/~imes/events/IMES.cfm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lecture</span></a> at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Relations.  Cole’s discussion of his new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Arabs-Millennial-Generation/dp/1451690398"><span style="color: #0433ff;">book</span></a>, <i>The New Arabs:  How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East</i>, to an audience of about fifty, mostly Elliot School students, failed to substantiate his ongoing hopes for the so-called Arab Spring.</p>
<p>Elliot School professor <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/gnehm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm</span></a> introduced Cole as a Middle East expert who is popular on television, a supposedly confidence inspiring credential. Cole focused on Tunisia, noting that this comparatively small North African country with no oil resources had received “insufficient press.”  His main concern was “youth revolutionaries,” as the Arab press termed Arab Spring regime opponents in Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Cole began by claiming that a “relatively successful . . . transition away from authoritarianism” under the “Ben Ali clique,” who were “basically bank robbers,” had marked Tunisia’s Arab Spring.  Nonetheless, Tunisia is still “on a tightrope,” he added, as some Tunisian regions are prone to violence and Tunisia’s neighbor Libya also presents dangers.  The “Mad Max-like scenes of post-apocalyptic horror” previously described in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-cole-arab-spring-millenials-20140629-story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Cole’s writings</span></a> “have . . . dashed” the Arab Spring’s “bright hopes” in Libya and elsewhere.  Elliot School professor <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/part-time-faculty-l"><span style="color: #0433ff;">William Lawrence</span></a> noted in a post-lecture conversation that Libya’s parliament has now fled the capital Tripoli for a Greek <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/09/libyas-exiled-government-is-living-inside-a-car-ferry/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">car ferry</span></a> moored in Tobruk.  However, in December 2011, Cole stated erroneously that the “Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration.”</p>
<p>Cole contrasted Libya with Tunisia, calling the new 2014 Tunisian <a href="http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/pages/articledetails.aspx?aid=577"><span style="color: #0433ff;">constitution</span></a> “very good on paper” and “very nicely worded.”  The “secularists won” in defeating attempts to codify sharia, which Cole dubiously compared to Catholic canon law, as well as a gender “complementarity” clause.  “The feminists in the room know what that means,” Cole said of the latter, before equating the “party of the Muslim religious right,” Tunisia’s Islamist, pro-jihadist <a href="http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2012/09/13/moderates-or-manipulators-tunisias-ennahda-islamists/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ennahda Party</span></a>, initial supporter of both measures, with American conservatives.</p>
<p>But Cole conveniently omitted key passages of Tunisia’s constitution, including the opening traditional Islamic invocation, “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.”  Other passages stipulate Tunisia’s “Islamic-Arab identity” and “civilizational affiliation to the Arab-Islamic nation.”  The preamble also supports “just liberation movements . . . against all forms of occupation and racism,” whose “forefront . . . is the Palestinian liberation movement.”  Article 1, which “cannot be amended,” further proclaims that Tunisia’s “religion is Islam” while Article 6 denotes state duty “to protect the sacred.”</p>
<p>Tunisia’s regionally unique “broad spectrum of politics” includes “militant” secularists, even though Ennahda won a thirty-seven percent plurality in the October 23, 2011 constitutional assembly <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/11/20111114171420907168.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">elections</span></a>, Cole observed.  “People will say things in Tunisia that if you said them in Cairo you certainly would be killed” by some Muslim vigilante, he noted.  Yet even Tunisia “pushing the boundaries,” erroneously compared by Cole with American history, has its limits.  A television broadcast of <i>Persepolis</i> depicting God as an old man brought a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/tunisian-who-showed-persepolis-on-tv-fined-in-free-speech-case/2012/05/03/gIQA0GpzyT_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">blasphemy conviction</span></a>, he warned.</p>
<p>Cole contrasted his book’s focus on “secular, leftist movements” with what he called the media’s obsession with the “Arab world—Muslim barbarians,” but audience questions prompted him to address the role of Islam.  “I can’t deny that religious themes are very important in politics” in Iraq now, Cole conceded.  Yet Shiites and Sunnis killing each other over theology “just doesn’t seem to me . . . the way the world works,” he incorrectly concluded.</p>
<p>Cole praised the Middle East’s “new political generation,” noting that, according to polls, it’s “significantly less religiously observant” than previous generations.  He warned, however, that democracy is “not necessarily . . . breaking out.” Elaborating on his Arab variant of the secularization thesis (refuted throughout history), he added that countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya had urbanized in past decades.</p>
<p>“At this point in the American Revolution, the British still had Staten Island,” was Cole’s ahistorical Middle East/America comparison.  Presidential term limits in Egypt’s new constitution, for example, show that “things are changing a little bit.”  Events are “still changing . . . fluid,” and it’s “too early to call” on renaming the Arab Spring the “Islamic Winter.”</p>
<p>Despite Cole’s wishful thinking and strained comparisons of Arab upheaval with American political history, the Middle East’s road to liberty under law will remain rocky.  Small, atypically secular Tunisia’s narrow democratic success does not justify Cole’s optimism that the Middle East will develop open societies freed from Islamic atavism.  While the Shiite-Sunni sectarian strife Cole consistently downplays ravages Iraq, Syria, and beyond, jihadists hail from Saudi Arabia, other urbanized parts of the Middle East, and the West.  As with Arab Spring Libya, Cole will certainly err again.</p>
<p><i>Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the</i> <a href="http://www.thelawfareproject.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Lawfare Project</i></span></a><i>; follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for</i> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Campus Watch</i></span></a><i>, a project of the</i> <a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Middle East Forum</i></span></a><i>.</i></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>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>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>

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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>Another Arab Spring Success: Shiite Rebels Seize Gov Buildings in Yemeni Capital</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/another-arab-spring-success-shiite-rebels-seize-gov-buildings-in-yemeni-capital/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=another-arab-spring-success-shiite-rebels-seize-gov-buildings-in-yemeni-capital</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:07:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Houthi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yemen]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241426</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The minister urged "cooperation" with the rebels]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/yemen1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-241427" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/yemen1-450x271.jpg" alt="yemen1" width="450" height="271" /></a></p>
<p>The Arab Spring certainly hasn&#8217;t brought reform or meaningful democracy, but it <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-21/yemen-s-houthi-rebels-seize-control-of-cabinet-office-army-base.html">has destabilized every country it touched</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized control of cabinet headquarters in the capital Sana’a as clashes showed no sign of letting up even after the United Nations envoy said he brokered an agreement to end the crisis.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwah resigned today, Al Jazeera reported, without saying where it got the information. The Houthis captured the cabinet building and a military camp guarding the state radio offices in the capital, Mohammed Abdulsalam, a spokesman for the Shiite rebels, said on Facebook. They also seized the headquarters of the First Armored division, Ali al-Emad, a Houthi leader, said by phone.</p>
<p>Deteriorating security across a country bigger than Spain has raised the prospect of the state’s collapse along tribal and sectarian lines, and is providing a haven for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Stability in the country of 25 million people has worsened, with more kidnappings and assassinations since popular unrest pushed President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office in 2011.</p></blockquote>
<p>Popular unrest in this case is spelled Arab Spring.</p>
<p>You know that Arab Spring which was supposed to herald a new wave of change across the region. It did, just not the ones that the media and the foreign policy experts owned by Qatar were promising us.</p>
<blockquote><p>Yemen&#8217;s interior ministry urged the security services on Sunday to avoid confronting Shiite rebels who have seized key institutions in Sanaa, in a statement posted on its website.</p>
<p>Interior Minister Abdo al-Tarib urged &#8220;all members of the ministry not to confront Ansarullah (rebels)&#8221;, the website statement said.</p>
<p>The minister urged &#8220;cooperation&#8221; with the rebels &#8220;to strengthen security and stability, preserve public property and guard government installations&#8230; and to consider Ansarullah friends of the police,&#8221; the statement said.</p></blockquote>
<p>That should work well.</p>
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		<title>Robert Spencer: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/robert-spencer-we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=robert-spencer-we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2014 04:45:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[truth]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Anti-jihad warrior warns of the dangers we face when truth becomes forbidden knowledge. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript to Robert Spencer’s address at the Freedom Center’s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/97581204" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: Thank you very much. Thanks for coming.</p>
<p>This book, The Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In, is necessary because the truth about the war we’re in is so completely obscured these days, such that we’re in a very strange situation.</p>
<p>We are, in this room right now, the children and heirs of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. The Judeo-Christian West has given the world its notions of human rights, freedom of speech, the dignity of all human beings and so on, the concepts of the importance of human rights that are held universally around the world by all cultures, except one.</p>
<p>And so that culture that rejects those understandings of human rights is aggressive, violent, intolerant and more confidently advancing than it has in centuries at this point. And yet we know our ideas are better, what we say is the truth, and that we stand for better principles.</p>
<p>So why is it that the West is, at this point, so confused and, indeed, retreating before the advance of Islamic Jihad, and not only Islamic Jihad, but Islamic supremacism, the spread of concepts of Islamic law into the West and the undermining of the foundations of the civilization that has made the West great? Why is this happening?</p>
<p>In the first place, the answer comes, of course, from the great philosopher, Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who wrote the cartoon, Pogo, which some of you may be old enough to remember, where we said, We have met the enemy and he is us.</p>
<p>Islamic Jihadis would not have been able to bomb the Boston Marathon or to shoot 13 Americans dead at Fort Hood or to shoot two U.S. military men outside a recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas, or mount so many of the foiled Jihad plots that we have seen over the last few years were it not for us, were it not for the loss of our societal self-confidence and cultural self-confidence and the blanketing denial and willful ignorance that manifest our response to the Jihad threat in general, even among the people who seem to be taking a strong stance.</p>
<p>Couple of examples. You may have heard a few days ago that Subway, the restaurant chain, in the United Kingdom, in Great Britain, 200 Subway restaurants are no longer going to serve anything with pork in it &#8212; no ham, no bacon on your sub &#8212; and they will only serve halal meat.</p>
<p>Now, they said that they were doing this in response to overwhelming demand from their &#8212; and I quote &#8212; multicultural customers, but if you think about that a minute, what if you want ham on your sub. Well, you can’t go to Subway anymore, at least those 200 Subways in Great Britain. In other words, it was not a concession to multicultural customers. It was not multiculturalism that was served by the decision. It was monoculturalism. It was a single culture. If you are a Muslim or if you are willing to obey and adhere to Islamic food laws, then you can go to Subway in Britain. Otherwise, you’re out of luck. You gotta go somewhere else.</p>
<p>Now, this might seem to be a trivial example, but the fact is that there are still not all that many Muslims in Britain to warrant 200 restaurants of a chain being dedicated solely to their preferences, but they have so much power and influence in Britain now that what Subway did is no doubt just the first of many such decisions by other restaurant chains and represents, in truth, the wave of the future, as is evidenced by a much more ominous example that also happened just a few days ago.</p>
<p>There is a politician in Britain named Paul Weston, who I have had the pleasure of meeting, and he is a fine man who stands for the principles of Western civilization. And he heads up a new political party in Britain called Liberty GB.</p>
<p>And he was speaking, he was giving a speech last week, and in the speech he quoted Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill has said, as you may know, some very critical things about Islam, and he said that Islam is in a human being what hydrophobia is in a dog. And he decried the oppression of women under Islamic law. And he said other things that Muslims have found offensive, although what he said in terms of the oppression of women and the other factual statements that he made were entirely correct.</p>
<p>Paul Weston was quoting Churchill, whereupon a woman in the crowd exclaimed, &#8220;This is disgusting,&#8221; called the police. The police came quickly, arrested Weston, and he is facing trial and could be jailed for two years for the crime of quoting Winston Churchill.</p>
<p>Now, this shows exactly how much Great Britain and how much the West has changed since the time of Churchill. And what it manifests is a sense that the British authorities have that to speak the truth about Islam, to challenge Islamic Jihad, to say frankly that there’s something wrong with Islamic law in its institutionalized oppression of women, in its institutionalized oppression of non-Muslims and its denial of freedom of speech, that is, according to the British authorities, racial and religious harassment and thus to be prosecuted.</p>
<p>Now, the question will become, as Paul Weston faces trial, is truth a defense? And that’s an open question. If Paul Weston can show that what he was saying or what he was quoting from Churchill is factually accurate, he ought to be let off, right? One would think, but things aren’t so easy anymore.</p>
<p>The Grand Mufti and Sheikh ul-Islam of the Caucasus, Allahshukur Pashazadeh, he complained recently that in the West there are some people who even try to identify Islam with terrorism, and he was indignant about this.</p>
<p>Now, of course, it doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to know that the people who are identifying Islam with terrorism are not people like me or Paul Weston. They are Islamic Jihadis, who ascribe their actions to Jihad and Islam on a routine basis.</p>
<p>This is not only happening just in England either. In the United States, after many, many delays, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is about to open in New York, and some people were invited last week to go in and see the exhibits as they had been prepared. In the course of this, they watched a video that is available &#8212; going to be available at the museum in which the highjackers’ attachments to al-Qaeda are explained, and what al-Qaeda is is explained.</p>
<p>There were some local Muslim leaders who saw that video and were enraged, and they said, &#8220;You cannot have this video here.&#8221; It’s Islamophobic. This video gives the impression that there’s some connection between Islam and terrorism. This video gives the impression that the highjackers were Islamic Jihadis. (Laughter.)</p>
<p>And the museum immediately took the words “Islamic terrorists” off its website. Right now, they’re holding firm about the video, but considering that the museum board is made up entirely of New York liberals, I don’t think they’re going to hold out very long.</p>
<p>But the fact is that what we have is essentially a war on the truth, a war on free speech. If you read the &#8212; There is a letter, actually, that the 9/11 plotters, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other plotters, who are still being held and their trial is held up in miles of red tape, they wrote in 2009, when their trial was just supposed to be beginning, a response, called, The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations. The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations. That is the nine charges that they face for masterminding the 9/11 attack.</p>
<p>And in that they wrote &#8212; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others wrote, Many thanks to God for His kind gesture in choosing us to perform the act of Jihad &#8212; that is, the 9/11 attacks &#8212; for His cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks are all considered to be a great, legitimate duty in our religion. These actions are our offerings to God.</p>
<p>And yet these Muslim leaders say that if you have a video about how they were in al-Qaeda it will link Islam with terrorism. Obviously, they linked Islam with terrorism. Obviously, they were the ones who said this.</p>
<p>But the Grand Mufti of the Caucasus is not the only Islamic leader or non-Muslim leader, for that matter, who pretends that it is spokesmen like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and me in the United States and others who I work with in the United States who are actually pretending that this connection between Islam and terrorism is actual, when, really, it’s only incidental, that it’s as if these people just happened to be Muslims and for entirely other reasons they took down the towers, which is belied by their own words.</p>
<p>Now, all this would just be more idiocy and silliness were it not for the fact that the United States Government adopted this as its official policy, and that happened on October 19, 2011.</p>
<p>On October 19, 2011, 57 Muslim and allied organizations wrote a letter to John Brennan, who was then the Homeland Security advisor, and, now, of course, is the head of the CIA, and in it they demanded that counter-terror trainers, including me &#8212; and they named me specifically, and a few others &#8212; because I had been training FBI members in &#8212; FBI and military in the nature and magnitude of this threat, teaching them about Islam and Jihad. Obviously, you can’t defeat an enemy that you don’t understand.</p>
<p>Anyway, they wrote to Brennan and they said, You gotta get rid of Spencer and these other people, and you have to cleanse all counter-terror training materials of any mention of Islam and Jihad in connection with terrorism. And they pointed to things like a PowerPoint presentation that said that people might be on the path to become home-grown Islamic extremists if they are wearing traditional Muslim attire, growing facial hair, frequently attending mosque, traveling to a Muslim country and have increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or political cause.</p>
<p>Now, those things are manifestly true. It is true that virtually all Jihad terrorists in the United States and elsewhere, before they start plotting their terrorist activity, start to wear traditional Muslim attire, grow facial hair, frequently attend mosque, travel to a Muslim country and increase activity in a pro-Muslim social group. This is true of many secular and ostensibly moderate Muslims, notably Mike Hawash out in Portland.</p>
<p>In 2000-2001, he was known &#8212; He was very popular in his community. He was a big community activist. I mean, I’m talking about in the general community in Portland. A secular, moderate Muslim, he was an executive at Intel, the corporation, had a $360,000 a year salary, wrote some technical books that are still available at Amazon, at least last time I looked, and a pillar of the community.</p>
<p>Then, he started to wear traditional Muslim attire, grew his facial hair, started to attend mosque frequently, and, ultimately, he was found to be recruiting people to go join up with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and fight against American troops in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>So, in other words, the presentation was entirely true and reasonable, but it was adduced, without any evidence, as a sign that the government was teaching Islamophobia to FBI and military personnel, and that that had to stop because it was breeding hate and victimizing innocent Muslims and so on.</p>
<p>John Brennan immediately complied. He wrote a letter back to Farhana Khera, who was the author of the letter in question on behalf of the 57 organizations. Farhana Khera is the head of a Muslim lawyers association called Muslim Advocates.</p>
<p>And he wrote back to Khera, and the letter was on White House stationary, as if to emphasize, we take this seriously at the very highest levels. And he told her that they would take care of this immediately. Not only would all counter-terror training materials be scrubbed of any mention of Islam and Jihad, but any agent of the FBI or any other agency who had been trained by Spencer or by any of these other horrible Islamophobes or who had read this material that they objected to would be reeducated.</p>
<p>How pleased Chairman Mao would have been.</p>
<p>Right around that time, and not coincidentally, the Russians told the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was later to become the Boston Marathon Jihad bomber, was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer &#8212; that was their words, a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer &#8212; who had tried to join underground groups in Dagestan. Dagestan is in the Caucasus in southern Russia. It is a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity. The only underground groups in Dagestan are Jihad terror groups. So they were essentially telling the FBI in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an Islamic Jihad terrorist.</p>
<p>The FBI made a perfunctory investigation and decided that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was no threat, but consider the political culture of the FBI at the time that they received this information from the Russians. In the FBI, at that time, it was forbidden, it was just becoming forbidden to speak honestly about Islam and Jihad in connection with terrorism. So either the agent who received this material &#8212; agent or agents who received this material from the Russians, they either were part of the new regime and thought, Well, he’s a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer. How nice, or, they had been trained previously and they knew that material about Islam and Jihad, especially material referring to Muslims affecting Muslim dress, going to mosque frequently, wearing the long beard and so on, that that was no sign of radicalization, and that it was wrong and Islamophobic to think otherwise.</p>
<p>Whether they bought all that or not, they knew that it was not possible in the current political culture prevailing in the FBI to do anything serious about that, and so they didn’t.</p>
<p>The only time that any investigation or anything close to an investigation was actually made touching on Tamerlan Tsarnaev was when the FBI visited the Islamic Society of Boston, which is a mosque that was founded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now in prison for funding al-Qaeda, and he was a close friend, by the way, of Republican strategist Grover Norquist.</p>
<p>Abdurahman Alamoudi founded the Islamic Society of Boston. It was attended not only by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but by Tarek Mehanna, who is now doing 17 years in prison for aiding al-Qaeda, and by Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving 86 years in prison for trying to murder American soldiers in the name of Islam and Jihad.</p>
<p>The FBI went to that mosque, but they did not actually go to the mosque to investigate. They went to the mosque for outreach in order to reassure the Muslim community in Boston that their law-enforcement efforts were not Islamophobic and hateful and would not be targeting innocent Muslims. And, of course, innocent Muslims should not be targeted, but the question is should the FBI have concentrated solely on outreach in such an obvious hotbed of Jihad terror as the Islamic Society of Boston?</p>
<p>The Boston Globe loves the Islamic Society of Boston, and the local imam there is named Suhaib Webb, William Webb, until he converted to Islam. And Suhaib Webb has been the subject of several adoring pieces in the Boston Globe tauting his moderation.</p>
<p>You can also go on YouTube and see a video of Suhaib Webb where he says that secularism is a ridiculous ideology and the only way society should be ordered is by the law of Allah; that is, by Islamic law, which mandates discrimination against women, the discrimination against non-Muslims, the denial of the freedom of speech and so on, and is, in other words, inimical to constitutional values and freedoms in numerous ways. But he’s a moderate.</p>
<p>Now, if the FBI had dared or had known to take the &#8212; what they had gotten from the Russians seriously &#8212; And then they complained, of course, that the Russians didn’t tell them enough and that they went back to the Russians and the Russians wouldn’t give them more information. What more did they need? They had enough already. And since when has it become the responsibility of Russia to do our intelligence and law-enforcement work for us?</p>
<p>If they had acted upon it properly, the Boston Marathon bombing would never have happened.</p>
<p>Same thing with Fort Hood. Nidal Malik Hasan, Army Major, murdered 13 Americans at Fort Hood in November 2009, shouting, Allahu-akbar, after he passed out Korans that morning and told a neighbor he was going to do a great work for God. It was very clearly an Islamic Jihad attack.</p>
<p>Of course, probably most of you know that it was classified by the Obama administration as workplace violence. But there’s something else also. I have in the book his performance evaluations from his superiors, and he was given glowing recommendations all the way up the line. Every time he came up for a performance evaluation they said, This is a great officer, who could teach a lot to American soldiers about Islam. And he sure did, but not in the way they expected.</p>
<p>What happened was he got these performance evaluations at the same time when his superiors knew that he was in touch with Anwar Al-Awlaki, in contact &#8212; regular contact with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Jihad terror leader, and when he had already terrified his coworkers on several occasions by his open talk of Jihad violence, such that many of them expressed the fear that he would himself one day turn violent.</p>
<p>Now, why, knowing all this, did they give him these positive recommendations? It’s very easy to see why. Imagine if they hadn’t. Imagine if they had said, This guy’s nuts. Imagine if they had said, This guy keeps going around talking about Jihad war against the infidels, and he means us. This guy is in touch with Anwar Al-Awlaki who masterminds Jihad terror attacks against Americans. What would have happened?</p>
<p>I’ll tell you what would have happened. You probably already know what would have happened. You would have turned on CNN that night and there would have been a big expose, Islamophobia in the Military. A decent American Muslim Army Major vilified simply for practicing his Islamic faith. New York Times exposes. Council on American-Islamic Relations would have had a field day.</p>
<p>And the careers of his superiors would have been ruined. They would have been ruined for daring to report a Muslim soldier. We want Muslim soldiers, remember? We have to have them to show that we are not at war with Islam and that this is not about religion at all. Remember that the Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, said, right after the Fort Hood massacre that it would be even worse than the massacre itself if our diversity in the military suffered.</p>
<p>And so 13 people are dead at Fort Hood because we refused to tell the truth and refused to face the reality of the war that we’re in. Both of those attacks, Boston and Fort Hood, could have been prevented.</p>
<p>And there is much more of this kind of thing. Just yesterday, a man in Seattle named Musab Mohamed Masmari &#8212; I think he’s a Muslim &#8212; he pled guilty to an arson attack at a Seattle nightclub on New Year’s Eve, and that was how it was reported. As a matter of fact, the report that I saw just before I came here a little while ago was &#8212; It didn’t even give his first name. It just said, Masmari Pleads Guilty. And in the whole story it called him Masmari, no Musab, no Mohamed, especially.</p>
<p>But what exactly was Musab Mohamed Masmari doing? The nightclub in question was actually a gay nightclub, and he was there on New Year’s Eve. He took a can of gasoline and he poured it all the way up and down the stairway, the only stairway leading out of the club, and then he set it on fire. There were 750 people in the club at the time, and he wanted to kill them all, obviously, because he was concentrating his arson on the place where &#8212; the only way they could get out.</p>
<p>Not only that, but it came to light after his attack that he had said that homosexuals should be exterminated, which is, of course, in line with Islam’s death penalty for homosexuals. Musab Mohamed Masmari, in other words, was the first exponent of violent, vigilante Shari’ah enforcement in the United States.</p>
<p>Violent, vigilante Shari’ah enforcement is something that we see in many other countries, especially in Muslim countries, where, in many cases, where countries are Islamizing &#8212; such as Turkey, Egypt, Syria and so on &#8212; where there &#8212; Iraq &#8212; where there had been relatively secular regimes followed by Shari’ah states or large armed groups that want to create a Shari’ah state. Women who don’t cover their heads are brutalized, sometimes even killed and alcohol shops, liquor stores are shot up and burned and so on.</p>
<p>Even in London last year there was a group calling itself the Muslim Patrol that went around, and people carrying alcohol, they would tell them to get rid of it. They would tell women to cover their heads, and they would threaten them if they didn’t.</p>
<p>Musab Mohamed Masmari was the first time that that happened in the United States, but not, by any means, the last. The problem, however, is that in the news reports about him there was no mention of any of this motivation. There was no mention that he said homosexuals should be exterminated. There was no mention that he was a Muslim or that the attack had anything to do with any other attack in the United States, when, actually, it was a manifestation &#8212; it was yet another attack from an adherent of the same ideology that caused the Fort Hood massacre, the Boston Marathon bombing, 9/11, the Little Rock shooting and so many others.</p>
<p>This denial at the top of government law enforcement and media is obviously self -defeating to the point of being suicidal, and if it continues, then, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. In Europe there are already enclaves, whole cities &#8212; Malmo in Sweden, the Molenbeek District of Antwerp and some areas of London already, as well as Paris &#8212; where non-Muslims venture at their own peril. In Malmo, even the police and firefighters don’t dare to go into the city, and Islamic law prevails in those areas. The secular law has no sway.</p>
<p>The governments of those countries are either, at some point, going to have to crack down and say, There is one law for this land and you’re going to obey it, and then there will be civil conflict, or, they will let these areas grow, as they will certainly grow with unrestricted immigration, and then they will be increasingly aggressive and increasingly assertive over the non-Muslim population, and there will be civil conflict. In other words, there’s really no escaping it now for Europe, but I think that there is still a chance for the United States, but only if there is a drastic change in the political culture.</p>
<p>I mentioned Grover Norquist in passing earlier, and it is important to note that Grover Norquist, as the head of Americans for Tax Reform, is probably the single most powerful power broker in the Republican Party, and you can’t really run for national office as a Republican without his benediction. And, yet, he did take money from Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was also financing al-Qaeda, and he does have numerous ties to groups with links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and he has stymied the Republicans from forming any kind of effective or coherent alternative to the Democrats’ wholesale capitulation to this multiculturalist fiction and to Islamic supremacist groups.</p>
<p>As a result, there really isn’t any effective opposition in the United States today. There is no party, there are very few politicians &#8212; Congressman Gohmert being a notable exception and a few others &#8212; that even stand up and defend and articulate the reality of what we’re facing. And too long, people who support the Republicans have allowed this to continue, perhaps because they themselves did not understand or grasp the nature and magnitude of the threat that we face.</p>
<p>The most significant aspect of it is the war on free speech, because if we cannot speak out about it, then we cannot do anything about it to defend ourselves. Obviously, the freedom of speech was put into the Constitution as the fundamental bulwark against tyranny. If we can’t speak out against the tyrant, he can do whatever he wants. And, of course, Barak Obama said, The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.</p>
<p>It’s useful to remember, in connection with that sentence, that slander, in Islamic law, refers not to lying about somebody, but speaking truths about them that they don’t want known. That’s the definition of slander in Islamic law. So when Barack Obama says, &#8220;The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam,&#8221; he means, if you speak unwelcome truths, such as the link between Islam and terrorism, which is obvious from the Jihadis words and not from those of Islamophobes, then the future does not belong to you. And I think that may be so the way things are going.</p>
<p>Right after the Benghazi Jihad attack, which, of course, we all now know was a Jihad attack by al-Qaeda, probably with weapons that the Obama administration had supplied to al-Qaeda to topple Qaddafi, right after the attack, it was known in the White House and the State Department that it was a Jihad attack, and there were emails that have now just come to light &#8212; you’ve probably seen them &#8212; that show that they deliberately chose to blame this Mohammed video that nobody had ever seen or cared about.</p>
<p>Now, the implications of that are enormous because in choosing to blame the Mohammed video and saying the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam, the Obama administration was essentially saying the problem is our First Amendment. The problem is the freedom of speech. The problem is if we just keep saying these things that they don’t like us to say, they’ll keep bombing us. If we shut up and obey Islamic blasphemy laws, then everything will be okay.</p>
<p>And Hillary Clinton told the father of Tyrone Woods, a Navy Seal who was killed along with Ambassador Stevens, We’re going to have that filmmaker arrested and prosecuted. And she did. They found that he was a sort of a shady character, which is completely irrelevant, actually, to this video and what happened to him, but he did &#8212; he was out on probation, and one of the conditions of his probation was that he not go on the Internet. And so they figured, Well, this video is up on YouTube. He must have gone on the internet to upload it. Therefore, he went back to jail.</p>
<p>But he was really a political prisoner and a prisoner of the freedom of speech. It was obvious there are far more serious probation violators walking around. Probably we could find some &#8212; Well, not here in Dallas, but out in Los Angeles they’re crawling with them.</p>
<p>And so why this guy? Because it is becoming illegal to speak the truth about the Jihad threat. That has to be a cornerstone of a new and articulate response to Barak Obama. And if we do not find politicians and elected officials who will stand for this swiftly, then the enemy who is us will win and freedom will lose.</p>
<p>Thanks very much. (Applause.)</p>
<p>So we have time for some questions, comments, death fatwas, whatever. (Laughter.)</p>
<p>UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Start here with [Pat].</p>
<p>Q: Thank you. About six months ago, I watched Representative Michael McCaul give a presentation at the Heritage Foundation. During the Q&amp;A, he said that we would win the war on terror by winning the ideological battle by appealing to moderate Muslims that our ideology is better. Can you comment?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: That would be nice, but nobody’s doing that. We have never done that. We have never said, Our ideology is better. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States Government sponsored and oversaw the installation of Shari’ah constitutions that enshrined Islamic law as the highest law of the land. That is not standing for our values. That’s betraying our values. Our values are equality of rights for all people, the equality of dignity of all human beings, which means that women have rights in the society and are not to be treated as chattel.</p>
<p>We have a tradition of open political discourse and the freedom of speech. Although it is under far more grave attack than most people realize, we still have the long tradition of it. Islam does not. In Islam it is against the law, it is a death-penalty offense to criticize Islam or Mohammed. The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.</p>
<p>And the thing is we put those constitutions there. If we had been standing for our values, the situation would have been very different.</p>
<p>I do believe that Congressman McCaul is correct that if there were a United States that were standing up and saying, Well, anyone who loves the freedom of speech, who loves a free society, who loves equal rights for all people before the law, who loves the idea of making a decision in conscience about what you believe is true and not being killed for it, we stand for that, then many Muslims would support us. But we’ve never stood for that.</p>
<p>Hello.</p>
<p>Q: Could you comment on the Tartars in the Crimea?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: Well &#8211;</p>
<p>Q: How that complicates the whole Russian &#8211;</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: It’s very complicated, and it does complicate it to a tremendous degree because the Ukrainian Government has been encouraging the Jihadis in the Caucuses because they know that the Jihadis in the Caucuses will hit the Russians. And so it becomes a very complicated situation. It’s not so easy as to say, Well, there’s the big, bad imperialist, Putin, and the plucky, independent Ukrainians. I would love to be able to say that because the idea of the Soviet Union reuniting and oppressing those peoples anew is repulsive.</p>
<p>At the same time, there really aren’t any good actors in this battle, as is so often the case. Just like as with Assad and his opponents in Syria.</p>
<p>Q: (Inaudible) in Crimea?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: Um-hum. Yes.</p>
<p>Q: (Inaudible?)</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: Yes. Precisely.</p>
<p>Q: (Inaudible?)</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: How might it evolve? I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball on that, but I think that you’re going to see far more Jihad activity in that area, because the Ukrainians are, no doubt, going to continue to try to exploit these groups to strike at the Russians. And so that could enflame that whole region, really. I don’t see that as beyond the realm of possibility at all.</p>
<p>Hello.</p>
<p>Q: Hi. There is a mosque in my neighborhood, and after doing some digging, found that it is owned by NAIT, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. I also did a little bit more digging and found some literature from Mustapha [Monsur], which, of course, said that it’s the obligation of every woman and man to turn this nation into a caliphate.</p>
<p>So I guess my question is do we have to wait until somebody does an act of Jihad before something is done or can something be done before that?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: This is the great question. The North American Islamic Trust, in the first place, is NAIT, and they own 80 percent of the mosques in the United States, and they all teach this kind of thing.</p>
<p>There have been four separate, independent surveys done since 1999 of the mosques in the United States, and all found, independently of one another, that 80 percent of the mosques were teaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity, ultimately, to replace the Constitution with Shari’ah law. So Monsur is not singular in this.</p>
<p>Now, the problem is is that there is a law &#8212; And I’m no lawyer and no politician, but I know that there is a law on the books which outlaws plotting or calling for, advocating the violent overthrow of the United States Government.</p>
<p>I think that there need to be political and legal scholars, at this point, who can examine the possibility of a law that could outlaw the non-violent overthrow of the U.S. Government and any kind of action against constitutional values and principles.</p>
<p>Now, how this &#8212; What form exactly this would take and how various pitfalls and minefields would be avoided, I’m no lawyer or a politician, but I think that that sedition law that exists about the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government being illegal &#8212; although it’s hardly enforced today anyway &#8212; would be a pathway that might show us how to proceed in that manner.</p>
<p>Congressman Gohmert.</p>
<p>CONGRESSMAN GOHMERT: Thank you. I’m intrigued by the notion that all it’ll take is an ideological win of moderate Muslims over the radical Islamists. You and I know that in Afghanistan, the moderate Muslim Northern Alliance defeated the radical Islamists with our air cover, a few hundred of our embedded special ops. But, Robert, you know the history even better than I do, can you think of any time in world history when radical Islamists were defeated or overcome by winning an ideological battle using moderate Muslims?</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know, was that an ideological win in Vienna when they were stopped? I’m trying to remember.</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: (Laughter.)</p>
<p>CONGRESSMAN GOHMERT: But, anyway, can you think of a time ever &#8212; Maybe the Barbary Pirates, maybe that was an ideological win, but can you think of a time when radical Islam was ever defeated by winning an ideological battle with moderate Muslims, unless they were winning the ideological battle with weapons and killing their enemies? Can you think of a time?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: No, Congressman, you’re absolutely right. There has never been a case where an ideological battle against Islamic Jihadis has ever been won. And the whole thing actually comes down to what one defines as a moderate Muslim, and the United States Government, of course, thinks that if a Muslim is not strapping on a bomb vest, then he’s a moderate.</p>
<p>But as far as reality goes, one of the great difficulties of fighting this conflict is that people use this term, throw around the term moderate Muslim without defining what it is. Most people assume that by moderate Muslim they mean a Muslim who rejects the idea that Muslims should wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law.</p>
<p>Actually, that is a core tenant of Islam that is taught in the Koran and taught in the Hadith and taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. The Muslims who would actually explicitly reject that in principle you could probably count on one hand. Juhdi Jasser and then who? That’s it.</p>
<p>Moderate Muslims, on the other hand, might be people who are just ordinary people who might live in a secular culture and are not interested in waging Jihad. They want to just raise their families and have a life and have a job and take care of themselves, and that’s it. There are lots of those people.</p>
<p>But the question becomes then, which side will they side with if it came down to a conflict? And probably &#8212; There doesn’t seem to be any indication that they would not side with their more radical brethren in that case. There has never been a case where this was not done without a shooting war.</p>
<p>At the same time, there is a crisis within Islam, because Western ideas have permeated the Islamic world. They were much more current 100 years ago than they are now, much more prominent, but they still existed &#8212; I’ll wrap up &#8212; but, nonetheless, they still exist. And so I think &#8212; When I was talking about the ideological conflict in reference to Representative McCaul’s statements before, I was referring to the fact that we &#8212; I think we can and should appeal on the basis of notions of human rights that come from the West to Muslims who may not want Islamic law. But that’s not going to win the battle, not going to win the war, not at all.</p>
<p>Q: Okay. What can you tell us about green-on-blue killings in Afghanistan, the insider killings? Is there anything that could be done about that, any sort of profiling on infiltrators in the Afghan security force?</p>
<p>ROBERT SPENCER: No, the green-on-blue killings, the killings of our troops, our personnel by their ostensible allies, there’s nothing that can be done about them, except we should just get out of there.</p>
<p>The fact is that there is no way to distinguish between a peaceful Muslim, that is a Muslim who doesn’t want to kill us, and a Muslim who does. I didn’t use the term moderate Muslim because it is so fraught and likely to create confusion.</p>
<p>The fact is, though, that this is the fundamental problem, that the United States Government assumes that these people are all of good will and doesn’t make any attempt even to profile or discern or screen people who join the Afghan Police or the Afghan Army and so on. They don’t even try. And so then they get these attacks.</p>
<p>But the fact is if they did try, it wouldn’t work, and that’s one of the reasons why this misadventure in Afghanistan is so disastrously wrongheaded. There’s no objective. There’s no goal. There’s not even an enemy. Barak Obama has already told Karzai that he doesn’t think the Taliban is the enemy. And then I think, well, then why are our troops there serving as a shooting gallery for the Afghans? This is nothing short of treason.</p>
<p>Anyway, on that happy note, thanks very much. (Applause.)</p>
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		<title>Will a Rogue General Undo Obama&#8217;s Regime Change in Libya?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/will-a-rogue-general-undo-obamas-regime-change-in-libya/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-a-rogue-general-undo-obamas-regime-change-in-libya</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2014 04:34:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225943</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Say goodbye to the last of the Arab Spring.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gh34.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225948" alt="Khalifa Hifter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gh34.jpg" width="343" height="253" /></a>It didn&#8217;t take Egypt very long to revert back to a military oligarchy. The Arab Spring was trumpeted as a new era in the history of the Middle East. But the Middle East is better at undoing history than the media is at writing it.</p>
<p>In Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi brushed away the Arab Spring. Now in Libya, General Khalifa Hifter is set to undo Obama&#8217;s military intervention which put the Muslim Brotherhood on the road to taking over Libya.</p>
<p>Forty-five years ago a group of officers led by Colonel Gaddafi seized control of Libya. Gaddafi enjoyed support from the military and Federalist opponents of a central government.</p>
<p>Now General Khalifa Hifter is leading another military coup while vowing to free Libya of chaos, instability and corruption. His forces pounded Islamic militias in Benghazi, including those responsible for the murder of four Americans, and seized the parliament in Tripoli.</p>
<p>Hifter, who has spent a long time living in the United States, claims to have American support, but his real support probably comes from the east.</p>
<p>Like Gaddafi, Hifter is supported by the military and the Federalists. However he isn&#8217;t fighting a weak monarchy, but the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other Islamist militias. But like Gaddafi, his takeover was probably inspired by Egypt and possibly even planned out by Egypt.</p>
<p>Egypt&#8217;s new government, which overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, can&#8217;t risk allowing the group to control a bordering country and one of the largest oil reserves in Africa. Gaddafi used Libya&#8217;s oil wealth to fuel his insanity and fund terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood would funnel it into pursuing its program of regional and global takeovers and the Islamic militias that control much of Libya would become a problem for Egypt.</p>
<p>Egypt&#8217;s immediate security agenda is to control border instability fed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and Sinai. It would only be natural for Egypt&#8217;s new rulers to turn their attention to their country’s large western border with Libya.</p>
<p>When he released a video calling for a change of power, General Hifter appeared marginalized and isolated. Now he has powerful financial, military and tribal allies. And many ordinary Libyans see him as a possible alternative to the unstable brutality of militia rule, of which the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans was just one example, the collapsing governments and the threat that the simmering civil war which never really ended might heat up until the bloodshed becomes as extreme as anything in Syria.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil War is also Hifter’s best asset and greatest threat. The conflict called away many Jihadis who had originally fought in Libya, but if that unholy war collapses and there isn&#8217;t a more appealing conflict waiting in the wings, they may drift back to Libya to fight its military. Al Qaeda has training camps in Libya and the Islamic militias are doing well, but they may not have the numbers to take on General Hifter’s forces. And with Syria and Egypt consuming the energy and attention span of Jihadis worldwide, this may be Libya&#8217;s only chance to beat them.</p>
<p>Even though Hifter is stepping into the slot occupied by Gaddafi, it doesn&#8217;t mean that he is another Gaddafi.</p>
<p>General Hifter had close links to the United States and the CIA. In the Middle East that doesn&#8217;t mean much, but he is less likely to share Gaddafi&#8217;s resentment of the UK or his demented flavor of Socialism. Gaddafi had the same relationship to Egypt as Kim Jong Il did to the People&#8217;s Republic of China. Like China, Egypt thought it was getting a smaller version of its own rulers; instead it got an insane maniac who couldn’t be controlled by anyone including his backers.</p>
<p>This time Egypt may actually get what it wants; a stable Libya under military officers who, like their Egyptian counterparts, are less interested in revolution and more interested in the good life. In the best case scenario, the generals may stabilize Libya. If they don&#8217;t, Libya will wait for a strongman to finally get the job done.</p>
<p>The question is whether General Hifter can get the job done.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s roots in Libya have always been weak. Unlike Egypt, it hasn&#8217;t done too well at straight elections and has been forced to resort to political machinations. It got the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to switch its orientation from Al Qaeda to the Brotherhood long enough for Gaddafi to set them loose and for them to help overthrow him. But that left the Brotherhood dependent on Islamic militias with unstable allegiances and a hunger for power.</p>
<p>That hasn&#8217;t worked too well for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria where its influence has been swamped by Al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is a parasite that depends on a facsimile of civilization even as it works to destroy it. Post-Gaddafi Libya is closer to Syria than to Egypt, its tribal links are more powerful than political slogans and even religion.</p>
<p>If Libya&#8217;s generals can win quickly, the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s hopes of getting its greasy hands on the country&#8217;s oil wealth will go the way of its brief time ruling Egypt. If they can&#8217;t, then Libya may go the way of Syria. The Libyan military was known as a joke under Gaddafi and its performance during the Libyan Civil War didn&#8217;t do much to impress anyone.</p>
<p>And then there is the Obama card.</p>
<p>General Hifter claims American support, but it&#8217;s doubtful that he has anything except maybe a few leftover contacts in the CIA. The Arab Spring was never about democracy, it was about convincing Islamists to pursue their Caliphate dreams through political elections, instead of suicide bombings. Hifter, like Al-Sisi, is upsetting that particular apple cart and the vendors of its sour fruit in Washington and Brussels won&#8217;t thank him for it.</p>
<p>But Al-Sisi also demonstrated that Obama is too weak to be worth fearing. Despite his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama was forced to accept a new Egypt. And, after kicking and screaming, even provide it with military aid. Hifter is gambling that Obama won&#8217;t turn to a second unpopular military intervention in the Middle East and will accept a fait accompli.</p>
<p>Especially if it turns out to have been backed by Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Egypt was meant to be a model for the revolutions of the Arab Spring, but instead it became a counterrevolutionary model. Even if Egypt isn&#8217;t behind Hifter, the general obviously drew inspiration from what the Egyptian military did to a much more powerful Muslim Brotherhood regime. And he also drew inspiration from Obama&#8217;s inability to meaningfully respond to it.</p>
<p>Like Obama, the pundits and talking heads will learn little humility from the swiftness with which the Middle East erased their new era of history from history. They thought that their plans for the region were set in stone. Instead they were writing on sand. The wind has blown across the desert and their plans have blown away with it.</p>
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		<title>The Arab Spring Killed the Left’s Foreign Policy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-arab-spring-killed-the-lefts-foreign-policy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-arab-spring-killed-the-lefts-foreign-policy</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Jan 2014 05:55:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cairo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217353</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Blaming America for the Middle East no longer works.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fall1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217356" alt="fall" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fall1.jpg" width="384" height="216" /></a>Three years later, no one talks about the Arab Spring. Its anniversaries pass in rioting and terror; clubs, bombs and juntas mixing together in a bloody cocktail. Protesters die, police die and the liberals who once claimed that the Age of Aquarius had come to the Land of the Nile have turned their faces away.</p>
<p>In the bleak grey skyscraper towering precariously over Eight Avenue, the filing cabinets bulge with back issues of the <i>New York Times</i> full of optimistic speculations about the future. But now the Old Grey Lady hardly mentions the Arab Spring except when she’s talking about insurgencies and riot casualty counts.</p>
<p>Only a few years ago, she fell head over heels for the bad boys of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, despite the best efforts of her procurers of Islamism like David Kilpatrick and Robert Mackey, she has stopped taking their phone calls and has settled down to placidly chronicling the daily urban disorders of Egypt.</p>
<p>Despite her disregard, the Arab Spring countries are slowly sorting themselves out. Egypt has ratified its constitution and is moving ahead to elections. Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League and Chairman of the Committee of 50 that drafted the Constitution is assuring reporters that General al-Sisi “will assume the seat of power in a democratic way, because he will win the majority of the votes.”</p>
<p>“There is nothing else to say,” he added. When it comes to Middle Eastern elections, there usually isn’t.</p>
<p>Tunisia is stumbling in its efforts at both a constitution and a government, but the Islamic parties in Egypt and Tunisia have been forced to retreat. The Arab Spring has receded and the new battle will be between Islamic terrorist groups, including those that temporarily went ‘straight’ to try the democratic path to power, and the authorities. And that will be better than the ‘democratic’ Caliphate alternative.</p>
<p>The Syrian opposition has been forced to the negotiating table because Assad’s Russian backers proved more determined than Obama and the rag-ends of a NATO alliance unwilling to take on Syria without the United States leading the charge. Its politicians are busy with their petty bickering and the fighters are killing each other over the loot of the cities and towns that they expect to lose before too long.</p>
<p>By the fourth anniversary of the Arab Spring, it is entirely possible that most of the countries affected by it will look a lot like they did before it took place with the exception of Libya where NATO intervention has turned the country over to Islamic militias linked to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>In Cairo, anniversary celebrations cheer the fall of Mubarak and welcome the future presidency of General al-Sisi while the Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters unleash a new wave of terror. In Tunisia, some Islamists denounce the “secular” constitution while others support it. In Egypt and Tunisia, both the Islamic parties and the left have tried to claim the mantle of a revolution that no longer exists.</p>
<p>What the West mistook for a reform movement, the East misread as a revolutionary movement and the end result has been neither revolution nor reform but a slow crawl back to the status quo of the Shaitan that everyone knew, hated and could count on. In Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, people power no longer stands for change, but for the status quo. The weight of democratic opinion is on the side of stability.</p>
<p>Salafist terror might still sweep across the region as parts of Iraq and Syria transform into a new Afghanistan, but it isn’t likely to happen unless the United States gives the Sunni opposition hope that it will intervene. The Libyan uprising would have imploded without NATO intervention and the Syrian civil war has no future as long as Syria’s allies are prepared to continue upping the ante. The infighting between Sunni groups and the futile negotiations suggest a last ditch effort before the end.</p>
<p>The smugglers, kidnappers and drug dealers will go back to their labs, hidden routes and the caves where their victims end up. The Pakistanis and Chechens will return home, the Iraqis will refocus on the Sunni Triangle and the European Muslims and Muslim converts will return with weapons training that they will put to use in London, Paris and New York.</p>
<p>But the fall of the Arab Spring hits liberal critics of American foreign policy even harder than the Syrian Sunnis. The left was convinced that everything wrong with the Middle East had been caused by American foreign policy. But this time the United States backed the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt and the Islamist rise in Tunisia. It bombed Libya and threatened to do the same thing to Syria.</p>
<p>The old argument that the region was unstable and that we were hated because of the dictators no longer holds water. The United States pushed out the dictators; their own people brought them back.</p>
<p>The left will try to use Kerry’s belated attempts at working with the new Egyptian government and Obama’s fumbling in Syria as an indictment, but their worst accusation is that the United States did not do enough for the Arab Spring and that is a long way from the old indictments that we were oppressing the Islamists with puppet regimes and stirring up anger against ourselves by supporting the dictators.</p>
<p>History is as malleable for the left as it is for the protesters booing Mubarak and cheering al-Sisi and it will transform the Cairo speech and the Libyan intervention into a complicated plot to seize someone’s oil. Having learned nothing from history, the left will once again champion “moderate” Islamists as the solution to the turmoil. Meanwhile the left will have to go back to using American support for Israel as the default explanation for the terrorism and for absolutely everything that is wrong with the region.</p>
<p>And that is because beyond Israel, it no longer has American foreign policy to kick around anymore.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring killed the left’s foreign policy. Obama has pivoted away from the Arab Spring and the Middle East because he no longer has a road map; except the familiar one of blaming Israel. The left’s bet on the Islamists crashed and burned. The radical foreign policy experts responsible for the invention of the Arab Spring are tiptoeing away while hoping that nobody notices the mess they left behind.</p>
<p>Above Eight Avenue, the Old Grey Lady, once so optimistic about the Middle East, has grown pessimistic again. <i>New York Times</i> editors peer through the windows to the east through the pelting snow where they once saw the Arab Spring from their offices and then turn away while in Cairo the streets burn and clubs hit flesh and a new democratic dictator rises out of the ashes.</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>How the Arab Spring Unleashed Al Qaeda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/how-the-arab-spring-unleashed-al-qaeda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-the-arab-spring-unleashed-al-qaeda</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jan 2014 05:33:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214708</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new wave of terror.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jihg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214234" alt="jihg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jihg-450x304.jpg" width="315" height="213" /></a>Open up a national newspaper and flip to the stories about the Middle East. The daily toll of bombings and shootings, starving refugees and demolished cities have little resemblance to the cheerful stories about the transformation of the Middle East that were running during the boom days of the Arab Spring.</p>
<p>There isn’t much mention of the Arab Spring anymore. The same media outlets that were predicting that the Middle East was about to turn into Europe have fallen silent. They are eager to forget their own lies.</p>
<p>But it was the Arab Spring that unleashed this horror. The Arab Spring was not an outburst of popular democratic sentiment. It was a power struggle of a clearly sectarian nature. It was the rise of Sunni Islam under the black and white Salafist flags.</p>
<p>Obama and his people favored takeovers by “moderate” Salafi groups that appeared to accept Western ideas such as democracy and modernization. The “moderate” Salafis however worked closely with their “immoderate” Salafi cousins playing a game of Good Salafi and Bad Salafi with America.</p>
<p>The “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt opened the door for Al Qaeda in the Sinai. Its Syrian branch, along with other “moderate” Salafist militias in the Free Syrian Army, fought alongside the Al-Nusra Front which was then Al Qaeda in Syria.</p>
<p>The takeovers led to civil war in Egypt and Syria and escalated a sectarian regional conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. The biggest beneficiary of the Arab Spring was Al Qaeda in Iraq.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda in Iraq had defined itself by the killing of Shiites. Its murder of Americans took second place to its fanatical hatred of Shiites. Its killing sprees had alienated other Muslims at a time when America was seen as the central enemy. But the Arab Spring had made the Islamic terrorist group relevant again.</p>
<p>Iraq’s government tilted toward its Shiite roots as the Arab Spring split the region down the middle creating no room for middle ground. Peace in Iraq had depended on locking Al Qaeda out with a political alliance between Sunnis and Shiites. Bush had made that alliance temporarily work. Obama, who had repeatedly denounced the Iraq Surge, washed his hands of it as quickly as he could.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring helped kill what was left of that alliance as Sunni-Shiite civil wars moved the arc of history in the direction that had been carved out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during the Iraq War. Al Qaeda in Iraq was no longer seen as a bunch of homicidal lunatics. They had become visionaries.</p>
<p>The media had chosen to wipe Al Qaeda in Iraq out of the headlines after Obama’s victory. The withdrawal cemented the silence.</p>
<p>When Obama claimed that he needed to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan where it was hardly a presence, instead of in Iraq where it was still a menace; they didn’t ask many questions. Buried in the news stories were reports that Obama knew that Al Qaeda had ceased to be a major player in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>If Obama had been a Republican, there is no doubt that those stories would have turned into a major issue and the issue into a narrative about a president who lied about a war.</p>
<p>But Obama was a Democrat and those stories and the stories about Al Qaeda in Iraq escalating its attacks remained no more than background noise. Iraq was yesterday’s news. Tomorrow’s news was the Cairo speech and the Arab Spring. Terrorism was over. The tyrants were falling. A new wave of change was coming. And the region would never be the same.</p>
<p>Change did indeed come.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring split the region more sharply than ever across Shiite and Sunni lines. Syria became the fault line in the bloody end of the Arab Spring. And Al Qaeda made its biggest power play yet.</p>
<p>Mali showed that Afghanistan was yesterday’s news. Al Qaeda franchises no longer needed to rely on a Taliban to carve out a territory for their training camps. They could become their own Taliban and seize an entire country.</p>
<p>It took the French to stop them in Mali after the disastrous Libyan War; the most destructive effort at implementing the Arab Spring. But the question is who will stop Al Qaeda in Syria?</p>
<p>The various branches of Al Qaeda and their allies may win in Syria. And Syria is not Afghanistan. It has huge stockpiles of advanced weapons, dwarfing the Gaddafi stockpiles that have already caused a great deal of damage, not to mention the chemical and biological weapons that it will likely hold on to despite the brokered disarmament deal. Syria even had an infant nuclear program.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, now envisions a vast territory under its rule. It is surging in Syria and Iraq and has reached into Lebanon to strike at Hezbollah. There is little to mourn about Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups killing each other, but it would be wishful thinking to imagine that a vastly expanded Al Qaeda with access to advanced weaponry and cities full of manpower will not eventually direct that weaponry at the United States.</p>
<p>The Emirate, like most of Al Qaeda’s plans, will probably go nowhere. The various Al Qaeda groups descending from Al Qaeda in Iraq can barely get along with each other. If Syria falls to the Salafist militias already fighting each other over the spoils, they will probably go on killing each other over bakeries, oil refineries and drug smuggling routes.</p>
<p>But there was a time when Western experts thought the same thing about the “Reds” in Russia.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil War is as chaotic as that civil war with militias battling each other, clumsy attempts at Western intervention and new countries forming out of the rubble of the old. And it may be that the experts predicting that the Arab Spring was just like Europe in 1848 got it very wrong.  Instead of looking at Europe in 1848, they should have been looking at Russia and Eastern Europe in 1919 instead.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring did to the Middle East what WWI did to Russia and Eastern Europe. Al Qaeda, like the Bolsheviks, plans to pick up the pieces. The new Soviet Union may be an Islamic state that stretches across the Middle East while the Salafi preachers and thugs terrorizing Europe play the role of Communist infiltrators in the West. And another world war may be here before we even know it.</p>
<p>It seems unlikely now, but unlikely events can happen faster than we expect.</p>
<p>In 1903 the Bolsheviks were a quarreling band of radicals, in 1923 they had formed the Soviet Union and two decades later they ruled an alliance that reached all the way to Western Europe and was aiming at the conquest of the world.</p>
<p>Lenin and Bin Laden built their respective organizations as a base around a core elite that would serve as the revolutionary vanguard. Lenin’s approach produced the Soviet Union. We have yet to see where Bin Laden’s approach will lead.</p>
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		<title>Moderate Muslims Threaten Elementary School Teachers with Death for Not Wearing Burka</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/moderate-muslims-threaten-elementary-school-teachers-with-death-for-not-wearing-burka/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=moderate-muslims-threaten-elementary-school-teachers-with-death-for-not-wearing-burka</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Dec 2013 15:38:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Burka]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212584</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The organization calls itself a repression cell in the region]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/burka.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-212585" alt="burka" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/burka-450x318.jpg" width="450" height="318" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2013/12/tunisia-salafists-threaten-to-kill.html">Women with uncovered faces might give </a>the little tykes all sorts of ideas. This isn&#8217;t happening in Afghanistan&#8230; but in Tunisia. The heartland of the Arab Spring.</p>
<blockquote><p>A group of Salafites has issued death threats against teachers at an elementary school in Djerba, Tunisia, if they will not start wearing the Islamic veil within a week.</p>
<p>In a letter with the logo of Ansar al Sharia, a Salafist Islamic group suspected of terror activities and banned by the Tunisian government, the teachers are threatened by an organization which calls itself a repression cell in the region.</p>
<p>The death threat was denounced by the school director who took the letter to the police.</p>
<p>Primary schools have long been targeted by Islamists as part of what appears like a general plan to set up, without authorization, dozens of Koranic schools with programmes which are completely different from official ones.</p></blockquote>
<p>A repression cell. How precisely accurate.</p>
<p>Handy solution. If you have trouble setting up your own schools just threaten all the other schools into complying with your program.</p>
<p>Some might complain that it&#8217;s unfair to call Salafis moderate. But I&#8217;m not being sarcastic. If the Muslim Brotherhood can be repeatedly referred to as a moderate group as well as many of the Salafist militias in Syria that aren&#8217;t Al Qaeda&#8230; that clearly isn&#8217;t a problem.</p>
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		<title>John Kerry: Islamic Movements Hijacked the Arab Spring</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/john-kerry-islamic-movements-hijacked-the-arab-spring/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-kerry-islamic-movements-hijacked-the-arab-spring</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/john-kerry-islamic-movements-hijacked-the-arab-spring/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:56:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Secretary of State John Kerry]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211268</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kerry said that the Egyptian revolution was stolen by the Muslim Brotherhood.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/131120-john-kerry-215p.photoblog600.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-211269" alt="131120-john-kerry-215p.photoblog600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/131120-john-kerry-215p.photoblog600-450x303.jpg" width="450" height="303" /></a></p>
<p>I have to ask, is John Kerry just screwing with Susan Rice and Obama now?</p>
<p>What he&#8217;s doing <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/20/21550530-kerry-egyptian-revolution-stolen-by-muslim-brotherhood">is sensible enough from a diplomatic standpoint</a>, but it flies in the face of every position that Obama and his people have taken on the overthrow of Morsi and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Kerry may not even believe what he&#8217;s saying, but he understands that no one in Egypt is going to listen to anything an American diplomat has to say as long as the Muslim Brotherhood = United States equation remains in place. The only way to defuse the political bomb is to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. That&#8217;s something that both Obama and McCain refused to do.</p>
<p>Strangely enough, Kerry is showing more foreign policy competence than either of the two men who ran in 2008. It might be just his natural appeasement instincts kicking in though, but it&#8217;s a rather clear defiance of the White House position.</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Egyptian revolution was &#8220;stolen&#8221; from the youth who started it by the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>&#8220;Those kids in Tahrir Square, they were not motivated by any religion or ideology,&#8221; Kerry told an international security forum at the State Department on Wednesday.</p>
<p>“They were motivated by what they saw through this interconnected world and they wanted a piece of the opportunity and a chance to get an education and have a job and have a future. And not have a corrupt government that deprived them of all of that and more…. That&#8217;s what drove that revolution and then it got stolen. By the one single most organized entity in the state, which was the Brotherhood.”</p>
<p>It is not the first time Kerry has been critical of the Brotherhood and its actions in Egypt. In September, Kerry said the Egyptian military had been &#8220;restoring democracy&#8221; when it arrested Morsi this summer to quell worsening violence.</p></blockquote>
<p>A look at the location and the full speech is even more interesting. This isn&#8217;t a speech that Kerry is delivering to Egyptians, but to American businessmen in Washington D.C.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/11/217782.htm">challenging the Obama narrative on Egypt in Washington</a>. And he&#8217;s doing more than that.</p>
<blockquote><p>That Tunis fruit vendor who self-immolated and started a revolution in Tunisia – there was no religion, nothing, no extremism and ideology behind it. And he got slapped around by a police officer, he was tired of corruption, and he wanted an opportunity to lead his life by being able to sell his wares.</p>
<p>And those kids in Tahrir Square, they were not motivated by any religion or ideology. They were motivated by what they saw through this interconnected world, and they wanted a piece of the opportunity and a chance to get an education and have a job and have a future, and not have a corrupt government that deprived them of all of that and more. And they tweeted their ways and Facetimed their ways and talked to each other, and that’s what drove that revolution. And then it got stolen by the one single-most organized entity in the state, which was the Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Same thing in Syria. Syria didn’t start Sunni-Shia or anything else. It started with young people who wanted reform. And regrettably, Assad responded to their request for reform with bullets and bombs and violence. And that’s led to where we are today to an increasingly sectarian struggle.</p></blockquote>
<p>Much of the rest of it is boilerplate stuff about opportunity, but a careful look shows that Kerry isn&#8217;t just disavowing the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Tunisian Islamists and, to some degree, the Sunni Syrian rebels. He&#8217;s arguing that the revolutions were hijacked by Islamic secterianism.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not a completely radical view, but it&#8217;s certainly not in vogue in the corridors of power right now. The Arab Spring was supposed to reward Islamic political movements.</p>
<p>Kerry just threw that out the window.</p>
<blockquote><p>But there’s also risk from it, because there is a clash in certain parts of the world between culture, tradition, history, current mores, and the future, modernity. And as everybody in this room knows, some places are having a harder time managing that transition than others. That’s what we see in some of this emotion, particularly around religious extremism, which we see expressed in many of these suicide – individual suicide operations and other kinds of confrontations that take place.</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s not quite Clash of Civilizations, but it&#8217;s tiptoeing in that general direction. So far it&#8217;s still Thomas Friedman territory, indeed the speech reads like watered down Friedman, but it&#8217;s already a departure from Obama Inc&#8217;s contention that terrorism is caused by injustice and American foreign policy&#8230; rather than Islamic resistance to modernity.</p>
<p>He never uses the word Islam, he never even calls the Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood, but the meaning is still there.</p>
<p>Kerry is tapping into rhetoric from a more moderate liberal worldview. And considering his background, that&#8217;s certainly an interesting development.</p>
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		<title>Obamageddon in the Middle East</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamageddon-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamageddon-in-the-middle-east</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:55:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[France]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210940</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[France is the new leader of the free world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ker1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210942" alt="ker" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ker1-450x260.jpg" width="315" height="182" /></a>The easiest way to tell that Obama has run out of things to do in the Middle East is his desperate pivot to the peace process. The never-ending peace process, which is now on its fourth administration and its sixth prime minister, is the gift shop in the museum of the Middle East. It’s the place you stop by on the way to the exit because it’s convenient and everyone back home expects some souvenir peace t-shirts.</p>
<p>In 2013, the West Bank and Gaza are more irrelevant to events in the Middle East than ever before. Like toddlers left alone in their high chairs, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have spent the last year whining that no one is paying attention to them. And no one in the Arab world is paying attention to them because suddenly killing Shiites has become more of a priority than killing Jews.</p>
<p>If in the past Western diplomats could claim with a straight face that peace would stabilize the region, after the diplomats tore it apart with the Arab Spring that line ought to come with its own laugh track.</p>
<p>If Arafat’s corpse rose from the grave to dance the Hora and Netanyahu learned to shout, “Allahu Akbar,” no one in the region would even notice. The Syrians, Turks, Qataris, Saudis, Lebanese and Iraqis are too busy fighting in the misnamed Syrian Civil War to even pretend to care about a peace process that they never really cared about even back when they were pretending to care about it.</p>
<p>Now they aren’t even pretending.</p>
<p>Obama’s trip to Israel to jumpstart another miserable round of non-negotiations between an Israeli side that wants a deal and a Palestinian Authority side that wants an excuse not to make a deal because it wouldn’t survive a day after signing an agreement was another international demonstration of his cluelessness.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry’s fumbling attempts to play peacemaker in Israel while the rest of the region burns is proof that the administration he works for has no idea what to do about the Sunni-Shiite civil war tearing apart the Middle East.</p>
<p>Iran, like Syria, has been offered another feeble face-saving agreement after hollow threats of action that no one, including the Syrians or Iranians, actually believed. Kerry had to be saved from humiliating his country by the French. And it’s the President of France who headed to Jerusalem to address the Israeli parliament, a task that Obama dodged to push a peace speech to a selected student audience.</p>
<p>After its intervention in Mali, its push for action on Libya, Syria and now Iran; France is far more relevant in the Middle East than Obama.</p>
<p>France isn’t right, but it is decisive and its leaders understand that nuance is a game for fools. The cheese-eaters that devoted liberal turophiles like John Kerry once looked to as a counterweight to the Texas cowboy have once again become the leading Western practitioners of cowboy diplomacy.</p>
<p>After the collapse of Obama’s Arab Spring, France began to set the Western agenda in the Middle East. It was the French who pushed hardest for intervention in Libya. Obama was just the muscle they brought along. And it was the French who would have dragged him into Syria if not for the UK parliament.</p>
<p>While Obama was making empty boasts about Al Qaeda being on the road to defeat, the French were actually doing something about it by going into Mali. It was the French who stopped Kerry from giving a blank check to Iran’s nuclear program. Now France’s nerdy bespectacled president is being received with cheers in Jerusalem while vowing to stand up to Iran, even as Obama’s visit is a fading memory.</p>
<p>Right or wrong, France has an agenda for the Middle East, while America’s Nero is playing second fiddle to François. France is rising as a regional power, while Obama’s America has become a running joke.</p>
<p>America’s relationships in the Middle East are over. Egypt is turning back to the Russians, Turkey is looking to China and even the Saudis are sick and tired of dealing with a government that can’t make up its mind about anything bigger than a presidential banquet. Israel, which seems to be the only country whose leaders actually thought Obama would do something about Iran, is angry and disgusted.</p>
<p>And those were the four countries in the region that American influence depended on.</p>
<p>France, for better or worse, has picked a side in the Sunni-Shiite split. Obama not only won’t pick a side, he refuses to recognize that the split exists. Instead his Iranian negotiations were taking place in some alternate universe in which the goal was a settlement, rather than a balance of power.</p>
<p>There’s only one thing that is going to prevent the Middle East from going nuclear, in more than one sense of the word, and that’s an end to the Iranian nuclear program. The Saudis, Egyptians and other Sunni powers are not going to stop their own rush to the bomb for Kerry’s “24 Hours to a Nuke” deal with Iran. And the Israelis aren’t going to stop mapping bombing runs from Saudi airfields over it.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t something Kerry could deliver. Clinton’s sanctions didn’t stop North Korea from going nuclear. Obama’s sanctions weren’t going to stop Iran from doing the same thing.</p>
<p>Kerry’s nuke giveaway only demonstrated American irrelevance in the age of Obama. The deal would have accomplished nothing except to give Obama a distraction from the unraveling of his disastrous domestic policies. And so the French, in their new capacity as leaders of the free world, slapped down the master yachtsman and sent him back to dogpaddle in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>It was an embarrassing setback, or would have been if a single American newspaper had done anything except reprint talking points from the administration and its supporters praising the deal, but in the Middle East, it was the final blow to American prestige.</p>
<p>John Kerry had taken the already low bar set by Hillary “Reset Button to Benghazi” Clinton and found a way to limbo under it.</p>
<p>The Middle East is still tearing itself apart in a Sunni-Shiite war. It’s an Obamageddon unleashed by the Arab Spring which broke along explicitly religious lines in Syria and is taking the rest of the region with it. As the Sunni axis of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt prepares to collide with the Shiite axis of Iran, Iraq and Syria, the man who helped unleash it all stands on the sidelines and scratches his head.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong></strong> <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about Obama&#8217;s Destructive Agenda, his Muslim Brotherhood Romance, the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin saga, and much, much more:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></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>The Left Side of History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-left-side-of-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-left-side-of-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Nov 2013 04:20:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210932</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s history is all wrong.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/obama-benghazi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210936" alt="obama-benghazi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/obama-benghazi-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>&#8220;As frustrating as HealthCare.gov may be sometimes,&#8221; Obama told ObamaCare navigators and volunteers. “We’re on the right side of history.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first time that Obama had invoked the right side of history to rally the troops. During the Arab Spring, as Mubarak resigned on his orders, he said, &#8220;History will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history.&#8221;</p>
<p>It’s hard to be on the right side of history at every juncture. But Obama believed that he had achieved the feat by backing Mubarak, then backing his overthrow and then backing the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Two years later, history recorded that Obama was on the wrong side of history with the fiction of the Arab Spring being swept away by the impersonal forces of history which despite  liberal claims to the contrary do not care who was claiming to be on their good side last week.</p>
<p>After lying to Americans and telling them that his intervention in Libya was about protecting Benghazi from a massacre that was never going to happen, he told the Democratic National Committee; “We&#8217;re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.”</p>
<p>The Libyan rebels began targeting Africans and Christians, then they attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and today the country is run by warring militias; including Al Qaeda groups which recruit fighters and obtain weapons for their campaigns in Mali and Syria.</p>
<p>In the summer of this year, Obama told Democratic members of Congress who were concerned that the ObamaCare rollout was going to be a mess, that there was no reason to worry. “We are on the right side of these issues and the right side of history in terms of providing health care to Americans.”</p>
<p>Now the right side of history is starting to look like the left side of history.</p>
<p>At least one of the Democrats, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, decided that she had been on the wrong side of history and voted for the “You Can Keep Your Plan” Act.</p>
<p>The right side of history is where the left wants to be, but it’s a famously elusive place.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton warned Russia and China that they had to stand on the right side of history against Assad. Since then Obama has moved closer to the Russian side of history than the Russians have to his side.</p>
<p>Afterward, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an editorial titled “On the Right Side of History”; sardonically mentioning that his regime’s solution was the way to stay “as it has become fashionable to say, ‘on the right side of history.’”</p>
<p>After her resignation, Hillary Clinton took credit for the Arab Spring telling <i>The Economist</i>, “I do think we are on the right side of history” and insisted that “focusing on how to assist these new governments&#8230; that are heavily dominated by Islamist parties, is very much in America&#8217;s interests.”</p>
<p>Fast forward through a little history and the Tunisian Islamists she was discussing are on the ropes and on the wrong side of history.</p>
<p>In 2008, Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention, &#8220;The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn&#8217;t work in 1992 because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.&#8221;</p>
<p>Clinton was inexperienced. His failure to cope with Al Qaeda led to September 11 and his failure to force Saddam Hussein to comply with his agreements led to the Iraq War. Clinton left behind a mess for Bush to clean up. If he was on the right side of history, the world he left behind would have been a lot neater.</p>
<p>Now his wife is preparing to launch a presidential campaign by arguing that her husband was a liar, that Obama was inexperienced and that she can do better.</p>
<p>During the presidential debate, Mitt Romney challenged Obama, warning that “We&#8217;re four years closer to a nuclear Iran.”</p>
<p>Obama arrogantly retorted, “They can look at my track record, whether it&#8217;s Iran sanctions, whether it&#8217;s dealing with counterterrorism… and they can say that the president of the United States… has stood on the right side of history.”</p>
<p>On this side of history, Obama ‘s track record is that he trashed Iranian sanctions and attempted to give their nuclear program a blank check. Al Qaeda is romping around the world while he scrambles to appease the Taliban. If that’s his idea of the right side of history, then it also happens to be the side of history favored by Iran and Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Obama wasn’t the first man of the left to believe that he was on the right side of history.</p>
<p>Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had told Western diplomats, &#8220;Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!&#8221;</p>
<p>Eight years later, he had been removed from power and was being written out of Soviet history by his own comrades. His only recourse was to smuggle his memoirs to the only place that would print his version of history… the United States.</p>
<p>Khrushchev had told Nixon that his grandchildren would live in a Communist America. Nixon had replied that the Soviet leader’s grandchildren would live in a capitalist Russia. Both men proved to be right and wrong at the same time. Christopher Cox Nixon lives in Bill de Blasio’s New York while Khrushchev’s son applied for permanent residency in the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>History is famously elastic and only progressives believe that it has a right side and a wrong side. There is no such thing as the right side of history; just as there is no such a thing as the right side of age. History, like age, is mortality. The only truly inevitable outcome of history is death.</p>
<p>History does not have sides; only outcomes.</p>
<p>Everything wrong with Obama’s attitude can be gleaned from his quote. “If you&#8217;re walking down the right path and you&#8217;re willing to keep walking, eventually you&#8217;ll make progress.”</p>
<p>It’s the sort of quote that sounds inspirational if you don’t think too much about the implications of a world leader who already claims to know what the right path is and believes in determinedly moving down it, without regard to consequences, because he is certain that if he persists, progress will come.</p>
<p>Obama believes that the left side of history is the right side of history and has a radical faith that whatever goes wrong will eventually be set right again by the inevitable progressive force of history.</p>
<p>He believes that ObamaCare will work because socialized medicine is on the right side of history and the free market is on the wrong side of history. It is this faith in a radical muse of history that will fix websites, soothe terrorists and calm the angry peasants that moves him from one disaster to another.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong></strong> <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about Obama&#8217;s Destructive Agenda, his Muslim Brotherhood Romance, the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin saga, and much, much more:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></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>Arab Spring Disaster Cost $800 Billion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/arab-spring-disaster-cost-800-billion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=arab-spring-disaster-cost-800-billion</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 22:58:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206946</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What is the price of years of chaos and violence? Apparently it's $800 billion. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_206947" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bp6.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-206947" alt="Not pictured... economic prosperity" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bp6-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Not pictured&#8230; economic prosperity</p></div>
<p>What is the price of years of chaos and violence? A<a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/economy/2013/10/09/Arab-Spring-to-cost-Middle-East-800-bln-HSBC-estimates-.html">pparently it&#8217;s $800 billion</a>. And Tom Friedman won&#8217;t be footing the bill&#8230; even though he deserves to. (via <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/">Religion of Peace</a>)</p>
<blockquote><p>The Arab Spring uprisings will end up costing Middle Eastern economies about $800 billion in lost output by the end of next year as countries struggle to restore stability, banking giant HSBC estimated on Wednesday.</p>
<p>In a research report, HSBC predicted that at the end of 2014, gross domestic product in the seven hardest-hit countries &#8211; Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Bahrain &#8211; would be 35 percent lower than it would have been if the 2011 uprisings had not happened.</p></blockquote>
<p>Ironically it was economic discontent that really fueled the Arab Spring protests and now everyone&#8217;s economy is even worse than it was before which means there&#8217;s less money for fuel and food subsidies&#8230; but governments have no choice but to spend money they don&#8217;t have on social welfare.While that 800 billion is not coming directly out of our pockets, a number of the countries on this list do get by on our foreign aid, which means some of the 800 billion cost will be kicked back to us anyway.</p>
<blockquote><p>HSBC forecast GDP growth in the Middle East and North Africa would slow to 4.0 percent this year, reviving only slightly to 4.2 percent next year, from 4.5 percent last year and 4.9 percent in 2011.</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile our GDP growth rate under Obama is below 3 percent. But we&#8217;re still footing the bill.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>When The Arab Spring Died</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-arab-spring-is-dead/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-arab-spring-is-dead</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:39:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205828</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The movement that was born in Tunisia, dies in Tunisia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tunis-islamist-protest.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205838" alt="T" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tunis-islamist-protest-450x310.jpg" width="270" height="186" /></a>The Arab Spring was born in Tunisia. It died in Tunisia. Its funeral was attended by the same violent flag-waving protests as its birth.</p>
<p>The ruling Islamist Ennahda party has agreed to step down. Ennahda’s move came after months of violent clashes and even murders. The Islamists had held out against the protesters, swapping out governments, but Morsi’s example frightened them into backing away from a final confrontation for fear that their movement might suffer the same punitive outlawing as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Egypt and Tunisia were the two great victories of the Arab Spring. Now both of them have been undone.</p>
<p>The picture doesn’t look any brighter for the Islamists elsewhere. The Muslim Brotherhood in Morocco faces rising protests. The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood bit off more than it could chew with its attempted coup and risks plunging the country into a civil war with no NATO warplanes to bail its fighters out.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign to capture Syria is collapsing as its Free Syrian Army fighters lose to the more suicidal Jihadists of Al Qaeda and the superior firepower of the Syrian military. Its only hope in lay in Western military intervention and that hope died with Cameron’s parliamentary defeat in the UK and Putin’s outmaneuvering of Obama.</p>
<p>In Syria and in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, with its army of infiltrators and foreign agents, had bet everything on Western support. But Obama couldn’t save Morsi and it doesn’t look like he will be able to save the Free Syrian Army. The Brotherhood’s decades long effort to build influence in the West may have proven to be worthless, helping them topple weak regimes, but unable to keep them in power.</p>
<p>Obama was at once their greatest gift and their greatest curse. He gave the Islamists an American leader who was overtly sympathetic to their cause, but who was also too weak to protect them. Obama may have rolled over for the Muslim Brotherhood, but he also rolled over for Russia and Saudi Arabia. And when the dust settled, so did the hopes of the followers of Qutb.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring was designed to move the Muslim Brotherhood into power. Now it’s dead and an identical combination of factors; a sympathetic American leader, global economic depression, regional turmoil, terror fears and European immigration integration panic, may never come around again. More than anything else, the Islamists were undone by the same economic problems that allowed them and their leftist allies to topple their former governments.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda made the mistake of assuming that their political victories would allow them to implement their religious agenda before producing actual economic improvements. That was the opposite of the Turkish model where Erdogan’s economic shell game produced enough gains to allow him to arrest political opponents and wreck the rule of law in order to implement Islamic law.</p>
<p>Another reason that Ennahda may have been more willing to step down was that Tunisia’s economy is approaching a critical point. Economic growth in Tunisia fell 2% after the Arab Spring, its currency fell 10%, the budget deficit doubled and external debt is approaching 50%. Ennahda may have gambled that its best bet was to leave before its economic policies were completely discredited.</p>
<p>If the Muslim Brotherhood had been a little more pragmatic, it might have come to the same conclusion. Egypt’s economy was a disaster and the new government has resorted to higher subsidies to hold on to its popularity. Those subsidies had to be cut by Mubarak and Morsi because Egypt couldn’t afford them. And despite the flow of UAE and Saudi aid and investment money into Egypt, that hasn’t changed.</p>
<p>Even Sudan’s bloody butcher, President Omar Al-Bashir, was forced to cut fuel and cooking oil subsidies leading to violent riots.</p>
<p>In Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood’s subsidy cuts are touching off waves of protests, alienating its liberal allies and pitting it against the rival Islamists of the Justice and Spirituality Organization. With the left and even its own Islamists turning on the Moroccan Brotherhood, its political prospects are dim. But like Sudan, it can’t afford to keep up the subsidies which cost billions.</p>
<p>Western support for Islamist regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco came with the expectation of the IMF that they would make the hard decisions of economic reform. Morsi had trouble committing and his attempts to cut subsidized fuel use only further enraged the Egyptian public. Morocco’s Brotherhood is finding out the dangers of touching fuel subsidies after mass outrage over an 8% fuel price increase.</p>
<p>But the successful counterrevolutions against Muslim Brotherhood rule may have actually salvaged its reputation.</p>
<p>Had the Brotherhood gone down in complete economic disaster, it would have been obvious that it was not only brutal and tyrannical, but also incompetent at everything except setting up front organizations and infiltrating other movements. Instead the Brotherhood has been able to play the victim. Instead of being seen as a failure, it has reinvented brutal power-hungry thugs like Morsi as revolutionary martyrs.</p>
<p>Imagine if the Bolsheviks had been forced out in the 1920s. Millions of lives would have been saved, but Stalin would have been remembered as a political martyr, instead of as a monster. Communism would not have been discredited in the stark economic terms that the slow collapse of the Soviet Union, its growing indebtedness to the United States and the defection of its allies into the Capitalist camp did.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood was forced out before its Caliphate experiment could become as great a disaster as the Soviet Union and its ideas have not been completely discredited. Discrediting it however might have proven as costly in human lives as the discrediting of Communism. As the Russian scientist Pavlov once said, if Communism were an experiment, he would not spare a frog’s hind legs for it.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood’s experiments in the Middle East deserve even less than a frog’s hind legs.</p>
<p>The real story of the Arab Spring is not that the Muslim Brotherhood failed as a political movement, but that it was not up to the task of dealing with the economic turmoil. Like the Communists, it excelled at organizing its core activists, but proved incapable of actually running a country.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring was born out of economic discontent and it died because of economic discontent. The Muslim Brotherhood did not lose the battle for the soul of the Muslim Middle East.</p>
<p>It lost the battle for its wallet.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Arab Spring End: Tunisia&#8217;s Ruling Islamists Fall</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/arab-spring-end-tunisias-ruling-islamists-fall/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=arab-spring-end-tunisias-ruling-islamists-fall</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 14:26:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ennahda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205277</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Arab Spring began in Tunisia. It may end there.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/reu-tunisia-crisis_protests.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-205283" alt="Supporters of the Islamist Ennahda movement light flares and wave flags during a rally in Tunis" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/reu-tunisia-crisis_protests-450x265.jpg" width="450" height="265" /></a></p>
<p>Despite being the wellspring of the Arab Spring, Tunisia hasn&#8217;t gotten much attention. But the counterrevolution that took down the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt really began in Tunisia.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/are-egypt-and-tunisia-headed-for-counter-islamist-revolutions/">Back in October of last year</a>, I predicted that Egypt and Tunisia were both headed for Counterrevolutions against Islamist rule. The revolution in Egypt happened and the protests and unrest in Tunisia has been growing.</p>
<p>Now <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2013/09/24/tunisia-faces-confrontation-as-islamists-dig-in-against-resignation-calls/">events are approaching the endgame</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Tunisia’s ruling Islamists rejected on Monday a plan for them to step down pending elections, deepening a confrontation with secular opponents that threatens the most promising democratic transition to have emerged from the Arab Spring.</p>
<p>The Islamist government that replaced Tunisia’s longtime ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had on Thursday cautiously agreed to talks on stepping down, after reading opposition protests as a sign it is time to compromise instead of digging in.</p>
<p>On Monday it appeared to take a step back.</p>
<p>“We cannot accept the threat of pressure from the streets,” said Ennahda vice president Adb el Hamid Jelassi. “There should be more guarantees.”</p>
<p>Stubbornness was the undoing of its affiliate in Egypt – the Muslim Brotherhood which won office through the ballot box after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak but alienated the masses and the army by refusing to share power.</p>
<p>“We have said that this government would not step down concretely before the completion of the constitution,” Rafik Abd Essalem, a senior Ennahda official, told reporters.</p></blockquote>
<p>Of course they intend to lock in the constitution first. That&#8217;s their endgame. But the Morsi constitution is already being rewritten. No reason that the Ennahda one can&#8217;t be.</p>
<p>UPDATE: <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304526204579103140180696908.html">Ennahda down</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Tunisia&#8217;s governing Islamist party has agreed to step down following negotiations with opposition parties that begin next week.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the main labor union said months of talks with the Islamist-led government had finally reached an agreement Saturday. Bouali Mbarki of the UGTT union said the deal calls for three weeks of negotiations to appoint an interim, non-partisan government.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>The Egyptian Pyramid Scheme</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-egyptian-pyramid-scheme/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-egyptian-pyramid-scheme</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 04:56:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tahrir Square]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204334</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The truth about the Arab Spring is that it never existed.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ObamaP.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-204337" alt="ObamaP" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ObamaP-266x350.jpg" width="266" height="350" /></a>Deserts are funny things. A big wide open space in which nothing moves can play tricks on the mind. Spend enough time looking at a desert and you will see things moving in it because your mind needs to believe that there is life in it. Look hard enough and you will see democracy, progress and change.</p>
<p>But when you close your eyes and open them again, you will see that there is only a desert. And that there only ever was a desert.</p>
<p>Everything else was a mirage.</p>
<p>Egypt has gone back to what it was before the Arab Spring. It is now once again a country ruled by the military and bureaucratic institutions that are the legacy of British colonialism. Mubarak will not return to power again, but there are plenty of other military men to squat on top of a bankrupt oligarchy that lives on foreign aid and pride.</p>
<p>The mirage of Tahrir Square, the fireworks, fires and social media protesters brandishing smartphones and throwing down with riot police, is fading away. There will be more riots and fires and rapes. But that false sense of history being made will never return.</p>
<p>The truth about the Arab Spring is that it never existed. The term was coined by Marc Lynch, a George Washington University professor, who had spent years urging engagement with Hamas and championing the role of the Muslim Brotherhood as a “firewall” against Al-Qaeda “radicalism.”</p>
<p>This Arab Spring had nothing to do with democracy or freedom. It was a scheme to split the Islamist ranks by turning over the Middle East to political Islamists. It was Zbigniew Brzezinski&#8217;s Green Belt strategy practiced on a grander scale than Iran. Instead of Jimmy Carter hoping that the Ayatollah Khomeini would checkmate the USSR, there was Barack Obama counting on Muslim Brotherhood election victories to make the practice of international terrorism passé.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring was a cheerful brand, a shiny media package, covering up an ugly truth. The optimistic implications of its name kept many from looking at the list of ingredients and finding out that the only things inside were Islamists and more Islamists.</p>
<p>The pyramid scheme would keep investing in new Islamist governments and they would pay us back by discrediting Al Qaeda’s campaign of terror and that, the liberal foreign policy mavens insisted, would allow us to bring an end to the War on Terror.</p>
<p>Egypt was where it was all supposed to come together. It was the most powerful Arab country standing and its political system was a legacy of European colonialism. The Muslim Brotherhood had been born there and Al Qaeda, in its own way as well, with ambitious Egyptian Brotherhood members like Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s current leader and former grey eminence, using Bin Laden as a hand puppet.</p>
<p>That was why Obama went to Cairo. His new beginning had its biggest implications for Egypt. This was where the Muslim Brotherhood was supposed to turn his Post-American foreign policy into a success.</p>
<p>Not only didn’t the Arab Spring do what it falsely promised; open up closed societies, expand freedom and reform the region; but it didn’t even do what its backers wanted.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring was supposed to bring stability, but it made Egypt more unstable. It was supposed to work economic miracles by fusing devout Islam with free market capitalism. Western useful idiots told Morsi to use Turkey as a model. He did. The real Turkey is a paranoid oligarchy in debt up to its eyeballs.</p>
<p>Finally, it was supposed to neuter Al Qaeda. Instead it only encouraged it. Islamists taking power by winning elections was supposed to convince Al Qaeda members that it was time to trade in the bomb for the ballot box. Instead the Muslim Brotherhood used Al Qaeda to play a game of “Good Terrorist” and “Bad Terrorist” with the United States the way most Muslim countries do.</p>
<p>The traditional Egyptian authorities, the old oligarchy, disliked the Muslim Brotherhood businessmen financed by Qatari cash and propagandized by its Al Jazeera megaphone, even more than Mubarak’s son. They knew that given time, Morsi would take their posts and business monopolies and hand them over to his supporters. The issue for them wasn’t Islam; it was power and money.</p>
<p>They knew that there was no Arab Spring. This was a regime change operation. Washington had decided that its old allies were no longer getting the job done and decided to trade them in for the Brotherhood. And they waited, giving the Brotherhood and Obama enough rope to hang themselves with. The same type of manipulated popular revolt that had brought them down would bring Morsi down too. And did.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood went down, denounced as thieves, murderers, terrorists, Zionists and American puppets. Only 3 out of 5 of those charges are actually true, but the other two are the only ones that matter.</p>
<p>Assassinating Sadat was a minor matter. That sort of thing happens in the Middle East. But becoming a tool of American regime change is treason.</p>
<p>Mubarak had kept the Muslim Brotherhood around to demonstrate to the United States that pushing him to democratize was too dangerous; stepping on it just enough to keep it down, but not wipe it out. It took him too long to realize that Obama not only would not stop pushing for elections out of fear of a Muslim Brotherhood victory, but would actually welcome a Muslim Brotherhood victory.</p>
<p>Egypt, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many Muslim countries, had used Islamic terrorism as a counter. Either the United States would support the “moderate” and “responsible” authorities committed to occasionally fighting terrorism or the terrorists would take over. It didn’t expect an America insane enough to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood was the moderate and responsible alternative.</p>
<p>The fury and hate directed at the Muslim Brotherhood comes out that deep sense of betrayal. The Muslim Brotherhood’s political judo trick of flipping its dreaded image as a threat of violence into a gatekeeper of violence should have been anticipated, especially since that is the whole purpose of terrorism, but change comes slowly to the region. And it usually comes from outside.</p>
<p>Egypt’s ruling authorities were shaped by a British colonial patronage whose roots were in a former century. The Muslim Brotherhood was politically influenced by modern transnational movements like Nazism and is far more flexible and light on its feet. And unlike its leftist opposition, which is mainly clever when it comes to making memes, it understands how to seize power.</p>
<p>Obama’s Cairo pivot gave the Muslim Brotherhood its best shot at power in Egypt, but it may have also destroyed it. The Muslim Brotherhood’s continued existence is no longer an asset that keeps American calls for democracy at bay. It has become a Damocles sword of regime change hanging over their necks. And that means it may have to be destroyed. In the peculiar politics of the region, success may be the only thing that can destroy terrorists.</p>
<p>But destroying the Brotherhood is a big job. The authorities would prefer that the Muslim Brotherhood accept its place and return to the way things were.  And that is what everyone really wants. Not hope, change or revolution. Only the past. Even the Islamists only long for a return to an ancient status quo.</p>
<p>The desert is a barren place. It’s not a place of life, growth or change. Western travelers, bored with the lifelessness, squint and think that they can see a revolution coming that will transform the region.</p>
<p>And then they open their eyes and see that there is nothing there.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Middle East Without Christians</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/a-middle-east-without-christians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-middle-east-without-christians</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Aug 2013 04:15:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But in one small enclave the future is bright. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200327" alt="Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo.jpg" width="280" height="210" /></a>Islamist terrorists have exploited the lawless Sinai to perpetrate vicious attacks on Egyptian Christians there, as reported earlier this week in the New York Times. Indeed, throughout Egypt, the Copts continue to be targeted and scapegoated for the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>As defenseless and abandoned as Mideast Christians seem today, it is worth remembering their historical roots, and recognizing just how much the plight of Middle East Christians has deteriorated. Over 2,000 years ago, Christianity was born as a religion and spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Levant, including territories in modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The Christian faith flourished as one of the major religions in the Middle East until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.</p>
<p>Despite Muslim domination of the region, Christians comprised an estimated 20% of the Middle East population until the early 20th century. Today, however, Christians make up a mere 2-5% of the Middle East and their numbers are fast dwindling. Writing in the Winter 2001 issue of Middle East Quarterly, scholar Daniel Pipes estimated that Middle East Christians would &#8220;likely drop to&#8221; half of their numbers &#8220;by the year 2020&#8243; because of declining birth rates, and a pattern of &#8220;exclusion and persecution&#8221; leading to emigration.</p>
<p>The &#8220;Arab Spring&#8221; has only worsened conditions for the indigenous Christians of the Middle East. Like the Kurds, Middle East Christians are a stateless minority, struggling to survive in the world&#8217;s toughest neighborhood. But the Kurds at least have enjoyed partial autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991 and most of them are Sunni Muslim, making it easier for them to survive in the Muslim-dominated Middle East. Christians, on the other hand, are a religious minority that controls no territory and is entirely subject to the whims of their hosts. These host countries – with the exception of Israel – offer a grim future to Middle East Christians. Home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East, totaling 8-12 million people. But because Christian Copts make up only about 10-15% of Egypt&#8217;s estimated 80 million people, they have for decades lived in fear as second-class citizens, subjected to attacks on churches, villages, homes, and shops; mob killings; and the abduction and forced Islamic conversion of Christian women compelled to marry Muslim men. Such abuse took place under the staunchly secular regime of Hosni Mubarak, but grew much worse under the rule of Mohammed Morsi, the jailed Muslim Brotherhood activist who succeeded Mubarak, and they are now being blamed for Morsi&#8217;s ouster.</p>
<p>In Lebanon, Christians represent a bigger portion of the population, so their fate is for now less precarious than that of their Egyptian coreligionists, but their long-term prospects are worrisome. The Christian population is estimated to have dropped from over 50% (according to a 1932 census) to about 40%. Over the last few years, the de facto governing power in Lebanon has become Hezbollah, the radical and heavily-armed Shiite movement sponsored by Iran. With all of the spillover violence and instability produced by the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah&#8217;s open involvement in it, and/or the next war that Hezbollah decides to start with Israel, the emigration of Christians out of Lebanon will probably only increase in the coming years, leaving those who stay increasingly vulnerable.</p>
<p>In Syria, 2.5 million Christians comprised about 10% of the population and enjoyed some protection under the secular and often brutal regimes of the Assad dynasty. But as jihadi groups fighting Assad extend their territorial control, the past protection of Christians is often the cause of their current persecution by resentful Sunnis who revile the Assad regime and seek to impose Sharia law wherever they can. Christians have been regularly targeted and killed by rebels, and the sectarian chaos and violence that will likely prevail in Assad&#8217;s wake will only increase the number of Christians fleeing Syria.</p>
<p>In Iraq, the bloody aftermath of the 2003 invasion demonstrated how dangerous life can become for a Christian minority when a multicultural society in the Middle East explodes into sectarian violence. By 2008, half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians were estimated to have left, rendering those remaining even more insecure. In 2010, Salafist extremists attacked a Baghdad church during Sunday Mass, killing or wounding nearly the whole congregation. Such incidents turn any communal gathering into a potential massacre, forcing Christians across the Middle East to ask the ultimate question of faith: &#8220;Am I prepared to die for Christian worship?&#8221;</p>
<p>The so-called &#8220;Arab Spring&#8221; threatens to exacerbate matters in much of the Middle East, as Islamists now either control the government or influence it enough to persecute Christians with impunity. As new Islamist regimes in the Middle East condone religious intolerance and introduce Sharia and blasphemy laws, the long-term trend for Christians in their ancestral lands will only grow bleaker.</p>
<p>The one bright spot is the state of Israel – &#8220;the only place in the Middle East [where] Christians are really safe,&#8221; according to the Vicar of St. George&#8217;s Church in Baghdad, Canon Andrew White. Home to Christianity&#8217;s holiest sites and to a colorful array of Christian denominations, Israel has the only growing Christian community in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Because Israel is the only non-Muslim state in all of the Middle East and North Africa, it represents a small victory for religious minorities in the region, and serves as the last protector of freedom and security for Jews, Christians, Bahai, Druze, and others. Without Israel, how much more vulnerable would Christians in the Middle East become?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Five Lessons from Egypt and the Arab Spring</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/five-lessons-from-egypt-and-the-arab-spring/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=five-lessons-from-egypt-and-the-arab-spring</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Aug 2013 04:47:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199103</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And what they mean for the Middle East's future. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/koran-egypt.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199130" alt="koran-egypt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/koran-egypt-444x350.jpg" width="311" height="245" /></a><strong>1. Don&#8217;t Believe Anything You Hear</strong></p>
<p>Egyptian liberals allied with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow Mubarak and challenge the military. In those heady Tahrir Square days, they ridiculed the idea that Mubarak&#8217;s overthrow would benefit the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Now those same liberals have teamed up with the military to take down a Muslim Brotherhood government that they told us would never come to power. But don&#8217;t be surprised if a year from now, after the military develops too crushing a grip on power, they don&#8217;t run back to the Muslim Brotherhood and Tahrir Square repeats itself a third time with the banners and fireworks and chants about the will of the people.</p>
<p>And when it does happen, neither the liberals nor the Muslim Brotherhood will ever remember the time when they were deadly enemies. Instead they will pretend it never happened, the way that Egyptian liberals once pretended that the Muslim Brotherhood wasn&#8217;t part of the protests.</p>
<p>Middle Eastern politics is reality-selective. It&#8217;s conspiratorial and it&#8217;s based around shaky alliances between mortal enemies to achieve short term victories. That&#8217;s why the Muslim Brotherhood has done so well; it&#8217;s one of the few factions to practice long-term thinking.</p>
<p>Everyone else just thinks as far as winning the next battle, getting to power and then letting the unambiguous genius of their vision and the adoration of the people carry them to their destiny.</p>
<p>And then it all falls apart. Again.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>2.  It&#8217;s Not Democracy, It&#8217;s Permanent Chaos</strong></p>
<p>Democracy in the Middle East is just another means of political change. It&#8217;s not any different than mob action, a coup or an invasion. It&#8217;s just a way that one government replaces another.</p>
<p>The voting booth depends on a sense of law and order. It carries very little weight in lawless societies.</p>
<p>In Egypt, mass protests really are as legitimate a means of political change as the ballot box. Probably better. It&#8217;s harder to rig rallies of millions of people than it is to fake millions of votes.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring represented political chaos in a lawless society, not social change or cultural enlightenment.</p>
<p>Whoever runs Egypt will still leave it a corrupt place where family connections matter more than merit, where the poor struggle to get by, where everyone resents everyone else, where political alliances fall apart in the blink of an eye and everyone waits around for a tyrant to take matters into his hands and usher in some stability.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>3. Everyone Will Always Hate America</strong></p>
<p>The one thing that everyone in Egypt can agree on is that they hate America. And this time around they almost have a valid reason.</p>
<p>Obama did help overthrow the Mubarak government, but both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian liberals wanted him to do it. They were happy to have him tamper with their politics to remove Mubarak. Now the Egyptian liberals blame him for aiding Morsi, but they were the ones who opened the door.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood, which has been the beneficiary of unprecedented American support, is also denouncing America, even though the White House and the State Department are working to rush through new elections and free Brotherhood detainees.</p>
<p>The Egyptian liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two factions who benefited the most from the fall of Mubarak, hated us all along. They hated us before we helped them overthrow Mubarak. They hate us now. They will go on hating us, whether we oppose them or help them, give them money or bomb them.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>4. Fanatics and Democracy Don&#8217;t Mix</strong></p>
<p>One of the fondest myths of democracy promotion is that bringing terrorists into the political process moderates them. It doesn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Fanatics don&#8217;t compromise because their goals require purity. They feint compromise only long enough to get to power. And then they turn on their former allies.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s goals were obvious from its motto. &#8220;Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur&#8217;an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nothing about that provides any room for compromise. It doesn&#8217;t conclude with political change. Instead, like most fanatical creeds, its great ambition is to demonstrate its commitment to total ideological purity through the death of the fanatic.</p>
<p>The political process did not moderate the Nazis or the Communists. There was even less hope that it would moderate the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose spokesmen have a talent for pitching its message to Western audiences, but which is utterly committed to the absolute tyranny of its objectives.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>5.  The Muslim World Has No New Ideas</strong></p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood has a lot of modern polish, but underneath is the same old message that Mohammed came roaring out of the desert to deliver.</p>
<p>Despite the social media and memes, the Arab Spring unrest was part of a familiar cycle that begins when empires, whether it&#8217;s Rome or Great Britain, withdraw from the area leaving the local fanatics, intellectuals and military men squabbling over how to put their perfect society into place.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no progress being made. All the new things that were injected into the process come from outside and are used to serve ancient goals. The election machine and the social media account are new tools being used to settle old scores.</p>
<p>And the outcome of the struggle is a reversion to the old familiar patterns of a broken society.</p>
<p>A society with no healthy old ideas and no new ideas is doomed to reenact the same drama on new stages. Western experts became excited by the innovative staging and forgot to read the script or they might have realized that it&#8217;s the same old dialogue in a new production.</p>
<p>There may be skyscrapers, nuclear plants, social media feeds and a thousand other modern elements in the mix, but they are all the set design for an old script and for all the old wars.</p>
<p>The three options are still military rule, strongman or theocracy. The Arab Spring tilted the rule of strongmen and soldiers toward theocracy. That outcome was as modern as the Caliphate. Now the military has once again stepped in. Eventually there will be a strongman. Or a theocracy. Or a junta. And they will go on overthrowing each other.</p>
<p>Where there are no healthy ideas, there can be no positive outcomes. Democracy is not a new idea. Nor are constitutional guarantees of human rights. Those are processes by which a society implements healthy ideas about sharing power or the rights of others.</p>
<p>The Muslim world cannot use processes from more advanced societies until it accepts the social and moral premises behind them. Elections are only a process. Their outcome depends on the society. Laws are also a process. They can either be the implementation of deeply felt beliefs or just words on paper.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring pretended that introducing new processes into societies that lack new ideas would fill the cultural gaps and humanize them. That plan failed. Reforms don&#8217;t begin with processes. They begin with moral and intellectual struggles. Only once a consensus has formed, can the process be introduced to implement that consensus.</p>
<p>Without new ideas, new processes are doomed to fall into the old cycles and patterns. That is how the Arab Spring became the Islamist Winter and the Army Summer.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Capitalism and the Arab Spring</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/capitalism-and-the-arab-spring/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=capitalism-and-the-arab-spring</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Jul 2013 14:31:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196804</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In Egypt, for example, to legally own a small business such as a bakery requires dealing with 29 different government agencies and navigating 215 sets of laws. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/grand-bazaar.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-196807" alt="grand-bazaar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/grand-bazaar-450x232.jpg" width="450" height="232" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8959621/what-the-arab-world-really-wants/">Middle Eastern economies largely consist of oligarchs</a> overseeing monopolies. Ironically Mubarak Jr. was supposedly attempting to implement some reforms when Mubarak Sr. was overthrown. The two sets of events may not have been entirely unrelated.</p>
<blockquote><p>Two years ago, the West thought it recognised what was happening in the Arab world: people wanted democracy, and were having revolutions to make that point. Now, recent events in Egypt have left many open-mouthed. Why should the generals be welcomed back? Why should the same crowds who gathered in Tahrir Square to protest against the old regime reconvene to cheer the deposing of their elected president? Could it be that the Arab Spring was about something else entirely?</p>
<p>I believe so. The Arab Spring was a massive economic protest: a demand that the poor should have the basic rights to buy, sell and make their way in the world&#8230;</p>
<p>This is the case not just for most of the Arab world, but for most of the third world. The phrase ‘black market’ suggests, to western ears, dodgy dealing on the sidelines. But in the Arab world legality is what happens on the sidelines. Economists look only at the official statistics, and imagine, for example, that Egypt has a massive unemployment rate. If you were an out-of-work Egyptian, however, you would be dead after three or four months because you would not have enough food. Most Arabs are working, but in a way that has become invisible not only to their governments but to the West.</p></blockquote>
<p>Most economies are black market economies. That is especially true in the Middle East. There are three types of work. Formal work for a Western or even domestic corporation requiring a degree, or work for the government that requires family and political connections or some sort of manual labor or local enterprise that pays poorly but stays off the books.</p>
<p>Cairo is massive and its human scale is nearly impossible to take in.</p>
<p>This derives from the old feudal split between peasants and landowners that still dominates the &#8220;modern&#8221; economies of the Muslim world.</p>
<blockquote><p> In Egypt alone, the extra-legal sector accounts for 84 per cent of businesses and 92 per cent of land parcels. My organisation, the Peru-based Institute for Liberty &amp; Democracy, estimates that some 380 million Arabs derive most of their income from the ‘shadow’ economy.</p></blockquote>
<p>Population scale makes this inevitable. It&#8217;s virtually impossible to regulate or tax the populations of former peasants who have crowded into super-dense cities like Cairo or Baghdad.</p>
<blockquote><p>In Egypt, for example, to legally own a small business such as a bakery requires dealing with 29 different government agencies and navigating 215 sets of laws. In Arab countries, the poor entrepreneur’s right to transact derives from the goodwill of local authorities, not the law.</p></blockquote>
<p>So much like California.</p>
<blockquote><p>If the West places Egypt and the Arab Spring into the category of ‘Islamist uprising’, it will not only misunderstand the hopes of millions but miss a remarkable opportunity. By our estimates, entrepreneurs who want a legal system with property rights like those in the West outnumber al-Qa’eda members in the region by a ratio of about 100,000 to one.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s not necessarily one or the other. The Brotherhood has run on economic reforms and prosperity. Most Arabs believe that economic and political reforms are tied to integrity. And they believe that Islamists can be trusted to have that integrity. They&#8217;re not particularly impressed by legal reforms, what they want is what they think of as a more moral system as a check on corruption.</p>
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		<title>Good News from Egyptland</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/good-news-from-egyptland/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=good-news-from-egyptland</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2013 20:16:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196209</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Egypt is never going to get any better. And that&#8217;s the good news. If your job involves waiting for some outbreak of Arab Spring to fix the country or the region, you can give up now. Democracy in Egypt and Turkey rewarded the lowest common denominator voter. The type of voter who gets all his [&#8230;]]]></description>
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<p>Egypt is never going to get any better. And that&#8217;s the good news. If your job involves waiting for some outbreak of Arab Spring to fix the country or the region, you can give up now.</p>
<p>Democracy in Egypt and Turkey rewarded the lowest common denominator voter. The type of voter who gets all his ideas from his Islamist cable television channel that he watches in between working some menial job in Cairo or Istanbul while being grateful to be living in a grungy stretch of a city, instead of trying to scrounge a living in what passes for rural areas.</p>
<p>Egypt&#8217;s revolution involved two sets of Western educated elites tugging at a poor post-feudal population that wants cheap bread and some kind of stability, but is filled with simmering anger over a multitude of things.</p>
<p>The first set of Western educated elites are the liberal protesters who take in stunning amounts of American and European pop culture, work for Western tech companies and banks and come from the upper classes. They look and sound a lot like Americans, except that the ability to look and sound like Americans outside the United States is an upper class signifier.</p>
<p>The American twenty-something who checks his Facebook status on his iPhone and has some variably useful degree is likely to be an accident of the middle class. His Third World counterpart usually has wealthy or influential parents. What looks ordinary to Americans is actually upper class in a part of the world where most people are poor.</p>
<p>The second set of Western educated elites are the Islamists, who lack the same pop culture grounding, though even Morsi was able to reference Planet of the Apes in a Time Magazine interview (It&#8217;s unknown if he&#8217;s holed up somewhere now screaming, &#8220;You maniacs, you blew it up) from his days studying in the United States.</p>
<p>The Brotherhood may be out to drag Egypt and every other place they take over back to the 7th century, but they are also led by the wealthy and the well educated. There&#8217;s a reason why the operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood are moving smoothly up the ladder in the United States instead of living in grimy apartments in Jersey City and plotting to blow up bridges and tunnels like their Islamic Group comrades. If they&#8217;re Sonny Corleone, the Brotherhood is Michael Corleone.</p>
<p>Strip away the ideology and there are two sets of technocrats, both running on muddled Western ideas that never actually worked in the West. The Brotherhood pieced together an ideology out of the Koran and Mein Kampf. Their liberal opponents tend toward the same bankrupt Socialism that translate into massive bureaucracies. And the military which played the arbiter in their power struggles only cares about hanging on to its economic monopolies.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t think of what&#8217;s going on in Egypt as some grand ideological struggle. It is, but it also isn&#8217;t. Think of it as three mob families, oligarchies where economic and clan interests overlap, fighting over the scrap heap of the Egyptian economy. The prizes are economic monopolies over everything from cigarettes to soap. And if that doesn&#8217;t seem very romantic, in Syria the rebels are fighting over control of the country&#8217;s most vital resource; bakeries.</p>
<p>The Egyptian military used to have big ideas. Those big ideas led to the end of the monarchy and the posturings of Nasser who spent more time looking at himself in the mirror than planning his futile wars and economic programs. Then came pragmatists like Sadat and Mubarak who were less interested in playing some cheap Hitlers presiding over a banana republic and chose stability instead.</p>
<p>Sadat and Mubarak chose to ally with the United States not because they believed in any common values, but because they were ready to settle down to running a backward country that might be mostly poor and ignorant, but is also reasonably stable and is able to count on American support. That plan came apart when Obama came into office and Sadat&#8217;s killers became the future of Egypt.</p>
<p>The Egyptian military is mostly apolitical these days. And it is willing to play the two politicals, the two sets of technocratic elites, the liberals and the Islamists, against each other. Unlike the Turkish military, it&#8217;s not here to be the guardian of secularism. Like the rest of Egypt, its military is a little bit Islamist and a lot corrupt. It puts family connections and personal profits first and then pays lip service to the Koran of the Islamists and the social justice of the liberals.</p>
<p>Today the Egyptian military cleared out the Islamists for the liberals. Tomorrow it may clear out the liberals for the Islamists. It&#8217;s a very Roman system and is the inevitable outcome of the process.</p>
<p>The United States has invested a whole lot of money into building up an Egyptian military that is never meant to be used. But a giant army doesn&#8217;t just sit there. If it is denied an enemy to fight, then it becomes a domestic political institution.</p>
<p>Regionally large armies unrestrained by a stable government or a powerful dictator become the government. The Egyptian military has been the government in one form or another for generations. Its officers have run the country. Did anyone really think that was going to change because there was an election?</p>
<p>If Egypt had a sane political culture and could produce a democratic playing field in which separate factions and parties could get along, then maybe the Egyptian military would have been reduced to polishing their latest shipments from Lockheed&#8217;s factories. But if Egypt had a sane political culture, history would be entirely different.</p>
<p>Nixon refrained from challenging JFK&#8217;s dubious victory and Gore didn&#8217;t push too hard over Florida. There&#8217;s a tradition of that sort of thing in American politics where fraud is considered less of a threat than an attack on the legitimacy of the process. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why we still haven&#8217;t descended into mob rule and military governments. Even if those might be an improvement at this point.</p>
<p>Democracy was never going to work in Egypt because the players were substantially too far apart. And neither were invested in democracy. Democracy in Egypt was like the awkward press conference that boxers have before a match. They&#8217;re not very good at it and they&#8217;re just trying to get it over with so they can beat each other senseless. No one liked the idea of living within a system in which the lower classes would decide your political fate. What they liked was the idea that the system would declare them the only true rulers of the country for all time.</p>
<p>Dedicated Arab Springers are telling us that reform and political change don&#8217;t happen overnight. That&#8217;s true. But they&#8217;re not going to happen in Egypt any time soon. Egypt isn&#8217;t getting any better. And why should it when the United States isn&#8217;t getting any better. A look around the world shows few examples of improving political cultures. Why should Egypt be the exception?</p>
<p>Anything can happen in Egypt tomorrow.Total totalitarian Islamist rule. A state of permanent anarchy. A military dictatorship. Rule by Egypt&#8217;s endless professional guilds. Or all of the above on a rotating weekly basis.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t really matter one way or another from our perspective as long as none of the Islamist ideologies that are a little too eager to kill us get their hands on all the military equipment we keep shipping Egypt for a war that isn&#8217;t supposed to happen. Everything else isn&#8217;t our problem.</p>
<p>Washington is full of senators demanding that Egypt transition back to a democracy as soon as possible with a new election. Egypt can have a new election. It can have a dozen of them. But you have to be a fool to think that waving the magic cargo cult totem of democracy  will fix anything. Zero sum gamesmanship is incompatible with democracy and a culture where everyone assumes that everything is rigged (and they&#8217;re probably right) is never going to accept the outcome of the ballot box.</p>
<p>Progress isn&#8217;t coming to Egypt any time soon. Its political system isn&#8217;t broken because there aren&#8217;t enough voting booths, but because its culture is broken. Injecting democracy into a broken culture is like throwing cash at a drug addict. All you&#8217;re doing is giving him another way to kill himself.</p>
<p>Democracy in Egypt isn&#8217;t progress, it&#8217;s a civil war by other means. Democracy in Egypt didn&#8217;t point the way to a better world. It began a civil war.</p>
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		<title>Senator McCain’s Arab Spring Syndrome</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/senator-mccains-arab-spring-syndrome/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=senator-mccains-arab-spring-syndrome</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/senator-mccains-arab-spring-syndrome/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2013 04:12:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mccain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196002</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From POW to Political Pilgrim. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/johnm.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-196040" alt="johnm" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/johnm-450x243.jpg" width="315" height="170" /></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Senator John McCain is suffering from the Arab Spring Syndrome. He remains convinced that democracy will flower in places like Syria and Egypt if given a chance.  He evidently believes that Islamists can be persuaded to fully participate in the electoral process and accept the will of the people. In the words of Bruce S. Thornton, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,  </span></b></p>
<blockquote><p>McCain has “a naïve faith in the magic powers of ‘democracy’ to change a culture steeped in 14 centuries of religious intolerance, supremacism, and violence.</p></blockquote>
<p>First, Senator McCain has pushed aggressively for the United States to arm the opposition in Syria, knowing full well that Islamist jihadists dominate the opposition forces. Just as arms in Libya ended up in Islamist hands, any arms we send to the so-called “moderate” elements in the Syrian opposition, assuming they even exist to any significant extent, are likely to be seized by the much more powerful al Qaeda-linked groups such as the al Nusra Front.</p>
<p>Now McCain is demanding that the United States cut off military aid to Egypt in the wake of the Egyptian military’s removal of Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohammed Morsi from power.</p>
<p>“We have to suspend aid to Egyptian military because the military has overturned the vote of the people,” Senator McCain said Friday according to Al Jazeera. “We cannot repeat the same mistakes that we made in other times of our history by supporting removal of freely elected governments.”</p>
<p>When millions of Egyptians from all walks of life filled the streets to protest Morsi’s increasingly autocratic rule, McCain said little. Instead, he is fixated on Morsi’s election as proof positive in his mind that Islamist ideology and democracy are compatible. They are not.</p>
<p>Islamist ideology is totalitarian. It is rooted in an absolutist belief that man cannot govern himself, that man-made law is illegitimate, and that there are no acceptable alternatives to sharia law.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood’s slogan is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur`an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!”</p>
<p>Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Muhammed Badi set out his organization’s real agenda in a September 2010 sermon. The “change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life,” Badi said. “Allah`s word will reign supreme and the infidels` word will be inferior.”</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood has tried to fool Westerners with its moderate appearing façade. Senator McCain is not alone among the gullible leaders who have fallen for the Muslim Brotherhood’s deception. Its decision to participate in the post-Mubarak elections, which it won, was part of that deception. They were simply using the form of a democratic election as their preferred means to take and then monopolize all major levers of power.</p>
<p>During a campaign rally at Cairo University shortly before his election as president, Morsi revealed his true intentions when he told young Egyptians, “The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal. Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia.”</p>
<p>Since the vote, Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood cohorts did all they could to subvert the Egyptian peoples’ rights in their quest to completely Islamicize Egyptian society. The trampling on minorities and on freedom of speech rivaled, if not exceeded, the days of the Mubarak regime. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood cohorts are the ones who carried out a bloodless coup against the masses of Egyptian people who did not want their revolution to simply replace one autocracy with another. Refusing any compromise right to the end, Morsi found himself at the short end of the second phase of the revolution.</p>
<p>Violence remains the Muslim Brotherhood’s alternative path to power. This is the same organization, after all, which helped spawn terrorist groups such as Hamas. And Hamas did not forget its parent. Seven Hamas terrorists were reportedly arrested in Cairo with car bombs.</p>
<p>Even before the military took action against Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood leaders were calling for its members to use &#8220;martyrdom&#8221; to stop the escalating anti-Morsi protests. “Martyrdom” is a euphemism for suicide bombing. When the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government could no longer contain the protests, “martyrdom” to stop the protests was considered as the next viable option.</p>
<p>After Morsi’s removal, the Muslim Brotherhood’s call for a “day of rejection” last Friday turned into a day of rage as the ensuing violence resulted in at least 30 deaths and more than 1000 wounded. Muslim Brotherhood supporters were videotaped pledging to carry out a “death sentence” against all members of the opposition and, in particular, to set Christians “on fire.” Masked men shot dead a Coptic priest. Coptic homes and shops were torched.</p>
<p>Jihadists inside and outside of Egypt have committed to fight to the death to restore the Muslim Brotherhood to power.</p>
<p>Senator McCain would like to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood, as the group that came out on top in the elections, should be trusted to govern in a democratic fashion. Their words and actions tell a different story. Cutting off military aid to the Egyptian armed forces, as McCain recommends, especially while they are trying to fend off Islamist jihadist attacks and contain violence in the Sinai, would be as disastrous as his recommendation to fully arm the rebels in Syria.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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