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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; ISIL</title>
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	<item>
		<title>More Beheadings, More Denial</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/more-beheadings-more-denial/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=more-beheadings-more-denial</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIL]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peter Kassig]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245406</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How many more will feel the blade at their necks before Obama and the rest embrace reality?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/67035_54_news_hub_60072_588x448.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245410" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/67035_54_news_hub_60072_588x448-450x342.jpg" alt="67035_54_news_hub_60072_588x448" width="338" height="257" /></a>All you have to do is change the name of the victim, and this could be a story from August, or September, or October: the Islamic State has beheaded yet another hostage, this time Peter Kassig, aka Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and Barack Obama has declared yet again that the beheading has nothing to do with Islam. Obama might as well have a form ready for the next jihad beheading or mass murder attack: all he will have to do is fill in the blank and then take to the airwaves to say that the latest bloodshed has nothing to do with Islam. If the victims are British, he can lend his form to David Cameron.</p>
<p>But all this repeating of the political elites’ “Islam is peace” meme will never make it so. And the constant repetition of this falsehood is doing nothing less than endangering Americans. It keeps people ignorant who might otherwise get a clear idea of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. It fosters complacency. It makes all too many Americans assume that this kind of behavior is restricted to the “extremists” of the Islamic State, and could never happen here.</p>
<p>It could happen here. It could happen anywhere that people read the phrase “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4) as if it were a command of the Creator of the Universe. But to point out that simple and obvious fact nowadays only brings down upon one’s head charges of “hatred” and of “demonizing all Muslims,” when in a sane society it would bring honest explanations from Muslims of good will of what they were doing to ensure that no Muslim ever acted on that verse’s literal meaning.</p>
<p>In reality, they’re doing nothing. No Muslim organization, mosque or school in the United States has any program to teach young Muslims and converts to Islam why they should avoid and reject on Islamic grounds the vision of Islam – and of unbelievers – that the Islamic State and other jihad groups offer them. This is extremely strange, given the fact that all the Muslim organizations, mosques and schools in the United States ostensibly reject this understanding of Islam. And even stranger is that no American authorities seem to have noticed the absence of such initiatives, much less dared to call out Muslim groups about this.</p>
<p>On the contrary, instead of calling on Muslim groups to take some action to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/11/obama-islamic-states-actions-represent-no-faith-least-of-all-the-muslim-faith-which-abdul-rahman-adopted-as-his-own"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama’s latest denial</span></a> was even more strenuous in its dissociation of the beheading from Islam: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.”</p>
<p>“Least of all”! As if it were possible that the Islamic State’s actions represented Buddhism, or Methodism, or Christian Science, or the Hardshell Baptists, or the Mandaeans, to greater or lesser degrees, but the most far-fetched association one could make, out of all the myriad faiths people hold throughout the world, would be to associate the Islamic State’s actions with…Islam. The Islamic State’s actions represent no faith, least of all Islam – as if it were more likely that the Islamic State were made up of Presbyterians or Lubavitcher Hasidim or Jains or Smartas than that it were made up of Muslims.</p>
<p>Why do not just some, but all of the political leaders in Western countries cling to this outlandish fiction? Because reality indicts them. Not only do they insist that Islam is a religion of peace despite an ever-growing mountain of evidence to the contrary; they have made that falsehood a cornerstone of numerous policies. They have encouraged mass immigration and refugee resettlement from Muslim countries, without even making an attempt to determine whether or not any of the people they were importing had any connections to or sympathies with jihad groups. Their governments have for years partnered with and collaborated with groups with proven ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. They have favored and aided the Brotherhood and groups like it to attain power in the Middle East and North Africa, deeming them “moderate” because they claimed to eschew violence, and blithely ignoring that their goals were the same as those of groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.</p>
<p>If Barack Obama or David Cameron admitted that Islam was not a religion of peace, all these disastrous policies and others would be called into question. Cameron’s government might, quite deservedly, fall, and Obama’s would be crippled.</p>
<p>However, the primary reason why Obama and his cohorts continue to stand athwart the pile of beheaded bodies shouting that Islam is a religion of peace is because if they didn’t, the mainstream media – following its own policies as delineated by the Society of Professional Journalists – would immediately denounce them as “racists,” “bigots,” and “Islamophobes,” and their career not just as politicians but as respectable people would be over. It’s not that bad, you say? Just look at how the sharks are circling Bill Maher and tell me that.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the Big Lie, however ascendant it may be today, is foredoomed. The fact that it is repeated, and must be repeated, so often is evidence of that. No one has to run around insisting that Christianity is a religion of peace, because Christian leaders are reacting to the escalating Muslim persecution of their brethren by opening up their churches to Muslim prayer and muting their criticism of that persecution out of deference to their Muslim “dialogue” partners. If anything says “religion of peace,” it’s Christians <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/11/woman-proclaiming-christ-ejected-from-muslim-prayers-at-national-cathedral"><span style="color: #0433ff;">forcibly ejecting</span></a> a Christian woman from a Christian cathedral for proclaiming Christ, so that Muslims could deny him there.</p>
<p>“Religion of abject surrender” might be more apt, but in any case, no one thinks contemporary Christianity is a religion of war. All too many Muslims worldwide, however, energetically go about illustrating every day that Islam is not a religion of peace, and so they keep Obama’s printer busy turning out denial forms, ready for him to fill in the blanks with the name of the next victim: “The murder of _________ has nothing whatsoever to do with the great religion of Islam…”</p>
<p>But this is a counsel of despair. The truth will get out; indeed, it is already abundantly out. We can only hope that not too many more will have to feel the blade at their necks before Obama and the rest can no longer avoid taking realistic and effective action.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Dawn Perlmutter</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing <strong>Why ISIS Beheads</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/joXLdNnxKd8" 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>A Dead Caliph vs. the Hydra of Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/a-dead-caliph-vs-the-hydra-of-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-dead-caliph-vs-the-hydra-of-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/a-dead-caliph-vs-the-hydra-of-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:35:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abu Bakr al Baghdadi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dead]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245305</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Has the self-appointed leader of the Islamic State been killed? Does it matter? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245306" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-398x350.jpg" alt="Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi" width="306" height="269" /></a>Is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-styled “caliph” of the Islamic State, injured or dead, as some in the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/4883/can-islamic-state-survive-without-baghdadi"><span style="color: #0433ff;">media are eagerly speculating</span></a>?</p>
<p>Better question: does it really matter?</p>
<p>For almost a decade now, every time an Islamic jihadi leader is killed, the Western mainstream media exult, portraying the death as a major blow to the jihad.  And, for almost a decade now, I have responded by posting an article that I first wrote in 2006 for Victor Davis Hanson’s website, <a href="http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5559"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Private Papers</span></a>.</p>
<p>Although I changed the names of the jihadi leaders killed to suit the occasion—first <a href="http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5559"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi</span></a>, then <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/terrorists-die-but-ideology-lives/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Abu Laith al-Libi</span></a>, then <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/defeating-radical-islam-the-herculean-strategy/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Misri,</span></a> and finally <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/bin-laden-and-the-eternal-hydra-of-war/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Osama bin Laden</span></a>—my conclusion has remained the same:</p>
<blockquote><p>The West’s plight vis-à-vis radical Islam is therefore akin to Hercules’ epic encounter with the multi-headed Hydra-monster.  Every time the mythical strongman lopped off one of the monster’s heads, two new ones grew in its place.  To slay the beast once and for all, Hercules learned to cauterize the stumps with fire, thereby preventing any more heads from sprouting out.</p>
<p>Similarly while the West continues to lop off monster heads like figurehead Zarqawi [or bin Laden, al-Baghdadi, etc.] it is imperative to treat the malady — radical Islam—in order to ultimately prevail.  Victory can only come when the violent ideologies of radical Islam are cauterized with fire.</p>
<p>But alas, the Hydra-monster is myth, while radical Islam is stark reality.</p></blockquote>
<p>Eight years later, this “stark reality” has manifested itself into a head-chopping, infidel-crucifying, mass-murdering, female-enslaving Islamic State.</p>
<p>And yet, in the previous years, proclamations of “victory” were habitually made by media and politicians whenever a top jihadi was killed.</p>
<p>Recall all the exultation that took place in 2006 after al-Zarqawi—the forefather of the Islamic State, or “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/exposed-decade-old-plan-to-create-islamic-state-and-obama-helped/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Al-Qaeda Second Generation</span></a>”—was killed.   Then, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060800114.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">almost every major politician</span></a>, including President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki, gave some sort of victory speech.  The <i>New York Times</i> called his death a “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/world/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">major watershed in the war</span></a>.”</p>
<p>Similarly, in 2008, after Abu Laith al-Libi was killed, Congressman <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/31/alqaeda.death/index.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Peter Hoekstra</span></a> issued a statement saying that his death “clearly will have an impact on the radical jihadist movement.”</p>
<p>More myopic triumphalism was in the air after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri were killed in 2010 during a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation.  Then, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden said the “deaths are potentially devastating blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq [the original name of the Islamic State],” adding “This operation is evidence in my view, that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country”—an assertion that has now proven woefully wrong.</p>
<p>Similarly, U.S. commander Gen. Raymond Odierno <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/04/25/iraq.militant.leaders.killed/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">asserted</span></a> that “The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” adding that it would be “very difficult” for the al Qaeda network to replace the two men.</p>
<p>And who could forget all the media triumphalism, if not hysteria, surrounding <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/osama-bin-laden-chicken-or-egg/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden</span></a>?  Then, <a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/04/bin-ladens-theology/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">CNN</span></a> security analyst <a href="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/bergen-time-to-move-on-from-war-on-terror/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Peter Bergen declared</span></a> that “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now.” Insisting that the “iconic nature of bin Laden’s persona” cannot be replaced, Bergen further suggested that “It’s time to move on.”</p>
<p>Another CNN analyst, <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/al-qaeda-is-dead/?hpt=T2"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fareed Zakaria</span></a>, assured us that “this is a huge, devastating blow to al-Qaeda, which had already been crippled by the Arab Spring. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”</p>
<p>In retrospect, surely all these assertions and assurances have proven to be immensely puerile—even for mainstream media “analysts.”</p>
<p>To recap, for years, U.S. leadership and its media mouthpiece so misled Americans about the status of al-Qaeda (code name for the amorphous jihad)—thus directly contributing to the rise of the Islamic State: we were repeatedly told that al-Qaeda was suffering “devastating blows”; that the killing of individual jihadis were “major watersheds in the war”; that “the end of the war on terror” occurred in 2011, when bin Laden died (“it’s time to move on,” counseled Peter Bergen); and “that the future of Iraq will not be shaped by those who would seek to destroy that country,” according to Biden.</p>
<p>Yet, lo and behold: an Islamic State, a caliphate engaged in the worst atrocities of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, has been born—despite the deaths of Zarqawi, bin Laden, et. al.</p>
<p>When it comes to the significance of the killing of this or that jihadi leader, the best prediction I have ever read—a prediction that has proven too true—comes not from U.S. politicians, “experts,” or media.  It comes from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Asked in a 2005 interview about the status of bin Laden and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, he confidently replied:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization</i>. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are<i> merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time</i> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Qaeda-Reader-Essential-Terrorist-Organization/dp/076792262X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415844801&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=al+qaeda+reader"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>The Al Qaeda Reader</i></span></a>, p.182, emphasis added).</p></blockquote>
<p>And there it is: jihad “transcends time” and is not personified by this or that leader—something our myopic leaders and experts, who apparently can’t see beyond their noses, will never comprehend (and how can they, when Barack Obama has <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/obama-administration-bans-knowledge-of-islam/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">banned knowledge of Islam</span></a> from U.S. intelligence?).</p>
<p>Jihadi leaders, ideologues, emirs, sultans, caliphs, even the prophet of Islam himself, have come and gone for nearly 1,400 years—but the jihad rages on.  It’s time Western leaders began to respond to the jihad and not just its individual practitioners.</p>
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		<title>Islamist Turkey&#8217;s Betrayal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/islamist-turkeys-betrayal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamist-turkeys-betrayal</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2014 04:05:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bomb]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kobane]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kurds]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243322</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Helping ISIS by bombing kurds.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Kobane_3071699b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243324" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Kobane_3071699b-423x350.jpg" alt="Kobane_3071699b" width="346" height="286" /></a>The struggle for Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town on the border with Turkey where the Kurdish forces alone are battling the barbaric hordes of the Islamic State, aka ISIS, is reminiscent of the Polish uprising in Warsaw against the Nazis in August, 1944. While the Polish Home Army fought courageously against the might of the superior armed Nazis, the Soviet Union’s Red Army stood by across the River Vistula, which divides Warsaw, watching the merciless slaughter of Polish civilians and the destruction of the city.</p>
<p>The Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, like the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin before him, showed no consideration for the lives of innocent Kurdish civilians already butchered by the sadists of the Islamic State mercenaries. For those still alive in Kobani, unless rescued by outside intervention or supplied with heavy arms and ammunition, will also die a gruesome death. Turkish tanks, in the meantime, are ensconced on the crest overlooking Kobani. They can help save the remaining Kurds should Erdogan give them the order to fire on the ISIS fighters. But, just as Stalin wanted the Nazis to decimate the Polish nationalist Home Army, Erdogan is wishing for ISIS to destroy the Syrian Kurds.</p>
<p>What is puzzling in all this is the role the U.S. is playing. In his September 10, 2014 speech, President Obama said that, “military advisors are needed to support Iraqi and <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/statement-president-isil-1"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Kurdish forces</span></a> with training, intelligence, and equipment.” Hitherto, there has been no supply of equipment or training of the Kurds. In fact, the Obama administrations blind support for a unitary Iraqi state led by Shiite ruled Baghdad government is in contradiction with the realities on the ground. The Shiite-led Iraqi army folded in the face of the jihadi ISIS guerrilla offensive, and in the process, abandoning U.S. supplied heavy weapons including tanks, armored cars, Humvees, etc. The Kurdish Peshmergas alone hold the line against ISIS, and they are not getting the promised arms because the U.S. has long insisted that all sales of U.S. weapons must go through Iraq&#8217;s central government, despite Kurdish complaints that Baghdad had deprived them of promised military equipment and financial support.</p>
<p>Washington has not overruled Baghdad on issuing direct shipments of arms to the Kurds.  The Iraqi government has demanded that all shipments to the Kurds arrive first in Baghdad. Iraqi officials have regularly blocked or delayed these shipments to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil. Moreover, U.S. State Department regulations bar the KRG from purchasing U.S. made weapons without “<a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/resetting-the-u.s.-kurdish-baghdad-relationship"><span style="color: #0433ff;">end-user certificates</span></a>” issued by Baghdad. According to the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, “Baghdad is bent on wielding this authority to prevent the <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/resetting-the-u.s.-kurdish-baghdad-relationship"><span style="color: #0433ff;">KRG</span></a> from developing antitank and antiaircraft arsenals.”</p>
<p>The Kurds in both Iraq and Syria are the only effective fighting force, boots on the ground, capable of stopping the ISIS hordes. In Iraq, the Peshmergas, the Kurdistan Regional Government defense forces are facing ISIS while armed with antiquated Russian Kalashnikovs (AK-47) and machine guns mounted on open Toyota pick-up trucks. Britain, France and Germany pledged to supply arms, but the KRG, while welcoming such support, has yet to receive them.</p>
<p>In Syria, the Kurdish defenders of Kobani are encircled on three sides with their backs pressed against the Turkish border, and the only supply line is through Turkey. Erdogan and his government however, have branded the defending Kurds as terrorists. Erdogan has argued that the Kurds of Kobani are no better than ISIS. The <i>New York Times</i> (October 12, 2014) quoted Erdogan as saying, “The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/world/middleeast/kurdish-rebels-assail-turkish-inaction-on-isis-as-peril-to-peace-talks.html?mabReward=RI%3A14&amp;module=WelcomeBackModal&amp;contentCollection=Middle%20East&amp;region=FixedCenter&amp;action=click&amp;src=recg&amp;pgtype=article"><span style="color: #0433ff;">P.K.K</span></a>. and ISIS are the same for Turkey…It is wrong to view them differently. We need to deal with them jointly.”</p>
<p>The P.K.K. is indeed considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, yet the P.K.K. has been in peace negotiations with Ankara, demanding not the destruction of Turkey (unlike Hamas’ aim of destroying Israel) but merely cultural rights. The P.K.K demands include use of the Kurdish language in educational institutions, reduction in the threshold for elections to parliament from 10% to 5%, greater decentralization, and the removal of all discriminatory provisions against Kurds from the constitution and other laws.</p>
<p>It is highly hypocritical for Erdogan to compare the P.K.K. to the fanatical Islamist group ISIS, when he has been one of the chief supporters of the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas. And, if there is to be a fair comparison, it would be between ISIS and Hamas, both seeking to create an Islamic Caliphate, and the expulsion of non-Muslims from the region.</p>
<p>Kobani is being defended by the People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., an affiliate of the P.K.K. Erdogan’s concern is that the Syrian Kurds might try to establish an autonomous region on the border, which Turkey wants to prevent. Again, Erdogan’s transparent hypocrisy is clear to see. He actively supports Hamas and Palestinian independence but seeks to deny the same to the Kurds, the end result being that he will allow the Kurds of Kobani to perish while at the same time looking the other way while the ISIS jihadists use Turkey as a corridor for their recruited fighters to enter Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s Turkey is a member of NATO, yet in 2003 he refused Turkish airspace to U.S. and allied forces on the way to Iraq. <i>The New York Times</i> reported (October 7, 2014) Turkish President Erdogan said “Turkey would not get more deeply <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/world/middleeast/isis-syria-coalition-strikes.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">involved</span></a> in the conflict with the Islamic State.” Erdogan conditioned Turkey’s possible involvement in fighting ISIS on the U.S. giving greater support to the rebels trying to oust Bashar Assad, the Syrian President. Turkey has, moreover, denied that it has signed an agreement authorizing the U.S. and the coalition forces to use its airbases for operations against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic told <i>Reuters</i>: “<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/13/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-idUSKCN0I210L20141013"><span style="color: #0433ff;">There is not an agreement</span></a>; no decision has been taken with regard to using Incirlik air base.” He refuted U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s claim on <i>NBC News ‘Meet The Press’</i> show on October 12 (2014) that Turkey had agreed to allow the use of the Incirlik airbase against IS.</p>
<p>The U.S. should react to the Turkish treachery by removing its airbase from Incirlik, Turkey to Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. The U.S. should immediately provide the KRG with heavy weapons, including tanks, artillery, anti-armor rockets, and Humvees. The equipment should be sent directly to Erbil bypassing Baghdad. The State Department must change its regulations, and allow the KRG to become a certified “end-user,” instead of being at the mercy of Iranian controlled Baghdad.</p>
<p><i>The Wall Street Journal</i> headline on October 15, 2014 reading “Turks Bomb Kurds, Not Islamic State” is most telling. It is in essence siding with the enemies of the U.S. and its NATO allies. Considering Turkey’s behavior as a NATO member, it is time to consider its leader – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for what he really is – an anti-western pro-Jihadist dictator. If anything, in Kobani, Erdogan has shown the world his treacherous nature by betraying the Kurds with whom he has been negotiating peace.</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>Will the West Defend Itself?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/will-the-west-defend-itself/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-the-west-defend-itself</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:05:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[defeat]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242009</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ISIS can be defeated -- if we have the will to do it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isisi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242010" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isisi-450x337.jpg" alt="isisi" width="290" height="217" /></a>The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), sometimes called ISIS or IS, is a Sunni extremist group that follows al-Qaida&#8217;s anti-West ideology and sees a holy war against the West as a religious duty. With regard to nonbelievers, the Quran commands, &#8220;And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out.&#8221; The Quran contains many other verses that call for Muslim violence against nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.</p>
<p>Contrast the words of the Quran with the statements of limp-wristed Western leaders such as this by President Barack Obama: &#8220;We have reaffirmed that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace.&#8221; While reacting to ISIL&#8217;s slaughter of British citizen David Haines, Prime Minister David Cameron said, &#8220;Islam is a religion of peace.&#8221; Then there was the U.S. secretary of state&#8217;s explanation: &#8220;The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings.&#8221; But John Kerry and other Western politicians calling Islam a religion of peace doesn&#8217;t make it so.</p>
<p>A debate about whether Islam is a religion of peace or not is entirely irrelevant to the threat to the West posed by ISIL, al-Qaida and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups. I would like to gather a news conference with our Army&#8217;s chief of staff, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno; Marines&#8217; commandant, Gen. Joseph Dunford; chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert; and Gen. Mark A. Welsh, the U.S. Air Force&#8217;s chief of staff. This would be my question to them: The best intelligence puts ISIL&#8217;s size at 35,000 to 40,000 people. Do you officers think that the combined efforts of our military forces could defeat and lay waste to ISIL? Before they had a chance to answer, I&#8217;d add: Do you think the combined military forces of NATO and the U.S. could defeat and eliminate ISIL. Depending on the answers given, I&#8217;d then ask whether these forces could also eliminate Iran&#8217;s capability of making nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>My question to my fellow Americans is: What do you think their answers would be? No beating around the bush: Does the U.S. have the power to defeat the ISIL/al-Qaida threat and stop Iran&#8217;s nuclear ambitions — yes or no?</p>
<p>If our military tells us that we do have the capacity to defeat the terror threat, then the reason that we don&#8217;t reflects a lack of willingness. It&#8217;s that same lack of willingness that led to the deaths of 60 million people during World War II. In 1936, France alone could have stopped Adolf Hitler, but France and its allies knowingly allowed Hitler to rearm, in violation of treaties. When Europeans finally woke up to Hitler&#8217;s agenda, it was too late. Their nations were conquered. One of the most horrible acts of Nazi Germany was the Holocaust, which cost an estimated 11 million lives. Those innocents lost their lives because of the unwillingness of Europeans to protect themselves against tyranny.</p>
<p>Westerners getting the backbone to defend ourselves from terrorists may have to await a deadly attack on our homeland. You say, &#8220;What do you mean, Williams?&#8221; America&#8217;s liberals have given terrorists an open invitation to penetrate our country through our unprotected southern border. Terrorists can easily come in with dirty bombs to make one of our major cities uninhabitable through radiation. They could just as easily plant chemical or biological weapons in our cities. If they did any of these acts — leading to the deaths of millions of Americans — I wonder whether our liberal Democratic politicians would be able to respond or they would continue to mouth that &#8220;Islam teaches peace&#8221; and &#8220;Islam is a religion of peace.&#8221;</p>
<p>Unfortunately for our nation&#8217;s future and that of the world, we see giving handouts as the most important function of government rather than its most basic function: defending us from barbarians.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Self-Defeating Fight</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/obamas-self-defeating-fight/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-self-defeating-fight</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:40:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241097</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the world thinks America is fighting to lose against Islamic State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #000000;"><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241098" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992-432x350.jpg" alt="WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992" width="315" height="255" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Obamas-self-defeating-fight-375428">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The United States has a problem with Islamic State. Its problem is that it refuses to acknowledge why Islamic State is a problem.</p>
<p>The problem with Islamic State is not that it is brutal. Plenty of regimes are brutal.</p>
<p>Islamic State poses two challenges for the US. First, unlike the Saudis and even the Iranians, IS actively recruits Americans and other Westerners to join its lines.</p>
<p>This is a problem because these Americans and other Westerners have embraced an ideology that is viciously hostile to every aspect of Western civilization.</p>
<p>Last Friday, Buzz Feed published a compilation of social media posts published by Western women who have left their homes in Chicago and London and other hometowns to join IS in Syria.</p>
<p>As these women’s social media posts demonstrate, the act of leaving the West and joining IS involves rejecting everything the West is and everything it represents and embracing a culture of violence, murder and degradation.</p>
<p>In the first instance, the women who leave the West to join IS have no qualms about entering a society in which they have no rights. They are happy covering themselves in black from head to toe. They have no problem casting their lot with a society that prohibits females from leaving their homes without male escorts.</p>
<p>They have no problem sharing their husband with other wives. They don’t mind because they believe that in doing so, they are advancing the cause of Islam and Allah.</p>
<p>As the women described it, the hardest part about joining the jihad is breaking the news to your parents back home. But, as one recruiter soothed, “As long as you are firm and you know that this is all for the sake of Allah then nothing can shake you inshalah.”</p>
<p>Firm in their belief that they are part of something holy, the British, American and European jihadistas are completely at ease with IS violence. In one post, a woman nonchalantly described seeing a Yazidi slave girl.</p>
<p>“Walked into a room, gave salam to everyone in the room to find out there was a yazidi slave girl there as well.. she replied to my salam.”</p>
<p>Other posts discussed walking past people getting their hands chopped off and seeing dead bodies on the street. Islamic State’s beheadings of American and British hostages are a cause for celebration.</p>
<p>Their pride at the beheadings of James Foley and others is part and parcel of their hatred for the US and the West. As they see it, destroying the US and the West is a central goal of IS.</p>
<p>As one of the women put it, “Know this Cameron/ Obama, you and your countries will be beneath our feet and your kufr will be destroyed, this is a promise from Allah that we have no doubt over&#8230;. This Islamic empire shall be known and feared world wide and we will follow none other than the law of the one and the only ilah!” These women do not feel at all isolated. And they have no reason to. They are surrounded by other Westerners who joined IS for the same reasons they did.</p>
<p>In one recruitment post, Western women were told that not knowing Arabic is no reason to stay home.</p>
<p>“You can still survive if you don’t speak Arabic. You can find almost every race and nationality here.”</p>
<p>The presence of Westerners in IS, indeed, IS’s aggressive efforts to recruit Westerners wouldn’t pose much of a problem for the US if it were willing to secure its borders and recognize the root of the problem.</p>
<p>But as US President Barack Obama made clear over the summer, and indeed since he first took office six years ago, he opposes any effort to secure the US border with Mexico. If these jihadists can get to Mexico, they will, in all likelihood, have no problem coming to America.</p>
<p>But even if the US were to secure its southern border, it would still be unable to prevent these jihadists from returning to attack. The policy of the US government is to deny the existence of a jihadist threat by, among other thing, denying the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad.</p>
<p>When President Barack Obama insisted last Wednesday that Islamic State is not Islamic, he told all the Westerners who are now proud mujihadin that they shouldn’t worry about coming home. They won’t be screened. As far as the US is concerned their Islamic jihad ideology doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>So whereas every passenger arriving in the US from Liberia can be screened for Ebola, no one will be screened for exposure to jihadist thought.</p>
<p>And this brings us to the second problem IS poses to the US.</p>
<p>As a rising force in the Middle East, IS threatens US allies and it threatens global trade. To prevent its allies from being overthrown and to prevent shocks to the international economy, at a minimum, the US needs to contain IS. And given the threat the Westerners joining the terror army constitute, and Washington’s unwillingness to stop them at the border, in all likelihood, the US needs to destroy IS where it stands.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the US is willing or able to either contain or defeat IS.</p>
<p>As US Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales wrote over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal, from a military perspective, IS is little different from all the guerrilla forces the US has faced in battle since the Korean War. Scales argues that in all previous such engagements, the outcomes have been discouraging because the US lacks the will to take the battle to the societies that feed them or use its firepower to its full potential out of fear of killing civilians.</p>
<p>Clearly this remains the case today.</p>
<p>Moreover, as Angelo Codevilla explained last month in The Federalist, to truly dry up the swamp feeding IS, it is necessary to take the war to its state sponsors – first and foremost Turkey and Qatar.</p>
<p>In his words, “The first strike against the IS must be aimed at its sources of material support. Turkey and Qatar are very much part of the global economy&#8230; If&#8230;</p>
<p>the United States decides to kill the IS, it can simply inform Turkey, Qatar, and the world it will have zero economic dealings with these countries and with any country that has any economic dealing with them, unless these countries cease any and all relations with the IS.”</p>
<p>Yet, as we saw on the ground this weekend with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed mission to secure Turkish support for the US campaign against IS, the administration has no intention of taking the war to IS’s state sponsors, without which it would be just another jihadi militia jockeying for power in Syria.</p>
<p>And this leaves us with the administration’s plan to assemble a coalition of the willing that will provide the foot soldiers for the US air war against Islamic State.</p>
<p>After a week of talks and shuttle diplomacy, aside from Australia, no one has committed forces. Germany, Britain and France have either refused to participate or have yet to make clear what they are willing to do.</p>
<p>The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan. The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans.</p>
<p>Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will either cheer the US on from a distance, or in the best-case scenario, provide logistical support for its operations.</p>
<p>It isn’t just that these states have already been burned by Obama whether through his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. And it isn’t simply that they saw that the US left them hanging in Syria.</p>
<p>They see Obama’s “strategy” for fighting IS – ignoring the Islamic belief system that underpins every aspect of its existence, and expecting other armies to fight and die to accomplish the goal while the US turns a blind eye to Turkey’s and Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamic State. They see this strategy and they are convinced America is fighting to lose. Why should they go down with it? Islamic State is a challenging foe. To defeat it, the US must be willing to confront Islamism. And it must be willing to fight to win. In the absence of such determination, it will fight and lose, in the region and at home, with no allies at its side.<br />
<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 Islamic State Has Nothing to Do With Islam?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 04:57:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What’s behind the rush to separate the religion from its most notorious exponents.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239627" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg" alt="An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP" width="305" height="236" /></a>Whatever they may disagree about, Western leaders are in complete agreement about one thing: the new self-styled caliphate, the Islamic State, has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. It’s a comforting, reassuring vision for Western non-Muslims facing a massive influx of Muslim immigrants and jittery about the prospect of Islamic terrorism, except for just one problem: it’s entirely false.</p>
<p>Barack Obama has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-remarks-on-the-execution-of-journalist-james-foley-by-islamic-state/2014/08/20/f5a63802-2884-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">made it clear</span></a>: “ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” David Cameron <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11038121/David-Cameron-Isil-poses-a-direct-and-deadly-threat-to-Britain.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">intoned</span></a>: “What we are witnessing is actually a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other. These extremists, often funded by fanatics living far away from the battlefields, pervert the Islamic faith as a way of justifying their warped and barbaric ideology – and they do so not just in Iraq and Syria but right across the world, from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”</p>
<p>State Department spokesperson Marie Harf <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/state-dept-beheading-us-journalist-not-about-united-states"><span style="color: #0433ff;">emphasized</span></a> that Obama meant what he said: “ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion. The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.” British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/iraq-philip-hammond-james-foley-beheading-isis-is-isil"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a>: “[ISIL]’s so-called caliphate has no moral legitimacy; it is a regime of torture, arbitrary punishment and murder that goes against the most basic beliefs of Islam.” The British opposition agrees: Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/killing-of-james-foley-an-utter-betrayal-of-britain--foreign-secretary-philip-hammond-9687959.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that Islamic State “extremists are beheading people and parading their heads on spikes, subjugating women and girls, killing Muslims, Christians and anyone who gets in their way. This is no liberation movement — only a perverted, oppressive ideology that bears no relation to Islam.”</p>
<p>Cooper’s statement was a bit more specific than most others of its kind, and shows up the weakness of all of them. For every Islamic State atrocity she enumerated, there is Qur’anic sanction:</p>
<p>Beheading people: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4).</p>
<p>Subjugating women and girls: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them” (Qur’an 4:34).</p>
<p>Killing Muslims: “They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal (like one another). So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah (to Muhammad SAW). But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them” (Qur’an 4:89).</p>
<p>Killing Christians: “Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).</p>
<p>Even if the Islamic State is misinterpreting or misunderstanding these verses, it is doing so in a way that accords with their obvious literal meaning. Yet this denial from Western leaders is nothing new. Obama, for his part, excuses and apologizes for Islam every time a jihadist atrocity affects the U.S. in some way. Of course, most would wave away his denial as a political necessity, and ask why it matters anyway &#8212; why does it make any difference whether or not what the Islamic State is doing is in accord with Islamic texts and teachings? Among other reasons, because it will help determine how much support the new caliphate will ultimately get from Muslims worldwide, and will serve as an indicator of how much we can expect to see the actions of the Islamic State replicated by other Muslims elsewhere.</p>
<p>The blizzard of articles and statements from Muslims and non-Muslims, including the leaders of the principal nations of the Western world, assuring us that what the Islamic State is doing has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam are designed to reassure non-Muslims in the West that they need not have any concerns about massive rates of Muslim immigration and the Muslims already living among them: “Not to worry, folks, your friend Ahmad down at the office will never start acting like those nuts in the Islamic State.”</p>
<p>One problem with this is that it prevents authorities from calling upon Muslim communities to teach against the doctrines that the Islamic State acts upon, and to work for genuine reform. And so the door remains open to the possibility that the actions of the Islamic State <i>could</i> be repeated in Western countries. Barack Obama and David Cameron would do far better to confront the Islamic State’s Islamic justifications for its actions and call on Muslims in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere to teach against these understandings of Islam that they ostensibly reject.</p>
<p>But they never do that, and apparently have no interest in doing it. Instead, they foster complacency among the people of the U.S. and Britain. For doing so, they may never pay a price, but their people will almost certainly have to pay, and pay dearly.</p>
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		<title>Why Obama Ignored Iraq</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/why-obama-ignored-iraq/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-obama-ignored-iraq</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/why-obama-ignored-iraq/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2014 04:57:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235726</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama isn’t opposed to war. He’s opposed to America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235727" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b-418x350.jpg" alt="Iraq-Jihadist-flag_2947305b" width="306" height="256" /></a>ISIS marching through Iraq has smashed the media’s taboo against criticizing Obama’s foreign policy. Substantive discussions are taking place about why his foreign policy is such a miserable failure.</p>
<p>And they mostly miss the point.</p>
<p>Liberal journalists still proceed from the fallacy that there was a foreign policy debate between neo-conservative interventionists and liberal non-interventionists. These are a series of digested Bush era talking points that have no relationship to reality since Bush’s foreign policy on Iraq carried over from Bill Clinton. It’s why Hillary gets so uncomfortable when she has to discuss her vote on Iraq.</p>
<p>The liberals weren’t non-interventionists who insisted on multilateralism and UN approval before acting. Obama, like virtually every other Democrat, disproved that myth as fast as he could. Nor were they even opponents of the Iraq War until opposing the war became politically convenient.</p>
<p>Obama however isn’t on this map at all. It’s not that he is an opponent of intervention. The Libyans can tell you that. It’s that his reasons for intervening fall completely outside the grid of national interests.</p>
<p>The anti-war activist as pacifist is largely a myth. There are a few anti-war activists who oppose all wars, but mostly they just oppose America. Obama, who got his foot up the political ladder by flirting with the anti-war movement, falls into that category. Obama isn’t opposed to wars. He’s opposed to America.</p>
<p>Obama is an ideological interventionist, not a nationalist interventionist. And despite his multilateralist rhetoric, he isn’t your usual globalist either. Instead he uses national and international power as platforms for pursuing ideological goals without any regard to national or international interests.</p>
<p>That is true of both his foreign and domestic policy.</p>
<p>Obama’s foreign policy is issue oriented, just like his domestic policy is. There is no national agenda, only a leftist agenda. America is just a power platform for pursuing policy goals.</p>
<p>Domestically, Obama does not care about fixing the economy. The economy is a vehicle for pursuing social justice, environmental justice and all the many unjust justices of the left. It has no innate value. Likewise national security and power have no value except as tools for promoting leftist policies.</p>
<p>Obama thinks of the ideological issue first. Then he packages it as a national interest for popular consumption. It’s a Wilsonian approach that is not only far more extreme than the policies of most White House occupants have been, but also more detached.</p>
<p>Wilson couldn’t understand that American power couldn’t exist without a national interest. Obama and his staffers see America as just another transnational institution that they happen to be running, not all that different than a corporation, non-profit or UN body. They don’t see it as a country, but a series of policymaking offices that reach across the country and the world.</p>
<p>It’s a globalized mode of thinking that is common among Eurocrats, but has never been represented in the Oval Office before.</p>
<p>Obama doesn’t just oppose America. He disregards it as an outmoded institution. When confronted with the border crisis or the rise of ISIS, he doesn’t see them in terms of American interests or even world interests, but in the narrow terms of leftist ideology.</p>
<p>He will use national and international institutions to promote LGBT rights or Green Energy. He won’t however get involved in actively using them for national security unless he absolutely has to in order to protect his own political power.</p>
<p>To a transnational mindset, institutions exist to promote issues. America is only of value to the extent that it can promote the left’s agenda. To the extent that it doesn’t, America is dead weight.</p>
<p>Once Bush was out, Iraq ceased to matter because it was no longer a packaged issue. It couldn’t be broken down into a simplistic Blame Bush policy agenda. And so Obama stopped paying attention.</p>
<p>Now Iraq is getting in the way of the things that he really cares about, such as illegal alien amnesty, dismantling Israel and transsexual bathrooms, because these are ideologically meaningful issues to him. And like every other obstacle, whether it was the national debt or the VA scandal, he pretends to take them seriously until a sufficient amount of time passes and he can dismiss them as “phony scandals”.</p>
<p>Obama didn’t just ignore Iraq because he wanted to avoid any connections to a war that he had helped make unpopular. He ignored Iraq because it had nothing to offer his ideology. If Iraq had a secular dictator, he might have been interested. If Islamists were fighting to take over from that dictator, there would have been planes and diplomats flying over Baghdad before you could shout, “Allah Akbar.”</p>
<p>It’s why he backed the Islamist overthrow of Arab governments, but not the popular protests against Islamist governments in Iran or Turkey.</p>
<p>But Iraq was a battle between Sunni and Shiite Islamists, backed by the Saudis and Iran. Even the left has trouble picking a side between two anti-American Islamic factions who are divided over theological issues, instead of practical things like dialectical materialism and the discourse of othering. In a pinch they pick the Iranian side as being more anti-American, but the prospect of American intervention on the same side as the Shiites confuses them even further and they have to go lie down in a dark room.</p>
<p>When there is no clear ideological guide, Obama takes meetings with generals, tunes them out, plays with his phone and delays doing something for as long as possible. That was the pattern in Afghanistan and Syria. Ideologues can’t function without an ideological orientation. When the ideological value of a problem is unclear, Obama either freezes up, like a robot whose manual was misplaced, or ignores it.</p>
<p>Obama’s only approach to Iraq came from Bush era opposition. Without Bush to push against, he had no idea what if anything should be done about Iraq. He still doesn’t. Instead he resorts to the antiquated attacks on Bush because it’s the last time that Iraq made any sense to him. It was the last time that the left had successfully packaged Iraq into a simple scenario in which there was only one right choice.</p>
<p>Ideologues are not big on independent thinking. When everything is politicized, they lose the ability to see the things that can’t be neatly assigned to one side or another.  America is being run by a blinkered ideologue who ignores issues that fall outside his ideological spectrum.</p>
<p>Those problems that he doesn’t cause directly and intentionally through his ideology, he causes indirectly and unintentionally by being unable to operate outside his ideology except in an emergency. Like the difference between the pilot who flies a plane deliberately into a mountain and the one who accidentally flies it into a mountain, there is a gap in motivation, but not in outcome.</p>
<p>History will not record why Obama screwed everything up. It will only record that he did it.</p>
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		<title>The Islamic Caliphate: the Obama Administration&#8217;s Failed Foreign Policy in The Middle East</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-caliphate-the-obama-administrations-failed-foreign-policy-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-caliphate-the-obama-administrations-failed-foreign-policy-in-the-middle-east</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2014 04:06:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235578</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama leads from behind -- and lets Iran and Russia run the show. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/isis-EIIL.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235579" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/isis-EIIL-416x350.jpg" alt="isis-EIIL" width="275" height="231" /></a>As the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or Islamic Caliphate) pushes across Iraq and other countries in the region, and as they score unprecedented victories in order to establish their Islamic Caliphate, the Obama administration remains indecisive and hesitant to take any assertive position.</p>
<p>Due to their military advancements and practical vision (in contrast to more theoretical underpinnings  of Al-Qaeda), ISIL has been capable of attracting more Jihadist, young people, and wealthy donors who would like to see the establishment of an Islamist Caliphate stretching from Iraq to the West.</p>
<p>While addressing US foreign policy towards the Middle East, President Barack Obama stated, &#8220;it is in our national security interests not to see an all-out civil war inside of Iraq, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because that ultimately can be destabilizing throughout the region&#8221;.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the major issue is that, beyond this nice rhetoric, what are the real and concrete actions taken by President Obama and his administration to prevent the unprecedented rise of Islamists, protect US allies in the region, preserve US security, geopolitical, economic and national interest as well as prevent the destabilization of the region and oil market?</p>
<p>America&#8217;s rivals have been the most assertive, decisive, and conclusive when it comes to preserving their national, geopolitical and strategic interests.</p>
<p>The easiest approach for the Obama administration has been to apply a “wait and see” foreign policy, hide behind other regional and global powers, and publicly indicate the declining influence and power of the US on a global stage.</p>
<p>According to New York Times,  Russia is currently sending 12 warplanes to the Iraqi government as well as advisory assistance by its military experts.</p>
<p>For Moscow, the crucial foreign policy objective that lead its indirect intervention and advisory and military assistance to the Iraqi government is linked to rebuking United States influence in the region by delivering arms rapidly. Several Iraqi politicians have long complained that the timetable which United States has used to deliver weapons and aircraft is very slow.</p>
<p>From the perspectives of Russian leaders, this is a clear  opportunity and opening to show the declining power of the US.  While Washington appears to be indecisive to take action, Moscow has projected its power and the assertiveness of its foreign policies toward the Middle East.</p>
<p>According to Haaretz: “On Friday, Iraqi Air Force Commander Hameed al-Maliki confirmed that he had signed contracts for the purchase of Russian MI-35 and MI-28 attack helicopter to “keep up the momentum” in the attacks against the Sunni insurgents, Ruptly news agency reported….. At the same time, Maliki criticized the United States for taking too long to deliver F-16 jets ordered by Iraq.”</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Russia has also tilted toward </span>the Shia powers in the region. Although Russia supports both secular Sunni governments and Shia groups in the Middle East, it’s foreign policies has favored Shiite powers recently due to their public resistance towards United States and other Western powers.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Syrian government has joined the Islamic Republic  in backing the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fight with Sunni insurgents. According to Wall Street Journal, Bashar Al-Assad’s government has utilized its warplanes to carry out airstrikes in the western part of Iraq.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic is also intervening with its home-made drones and troops on the ground from the elite Iranian units of Revolutionary Guards Corps. Ghasem Soleimani, the commander of the Qods Force (a section of the IRGC), is apparently running the show in Iraq.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad mostly pursues the foreign policy agenda and objectives of the Islamic Republic, when it comes to addressing the Iraqi conflict. In addition, the major objective for Damascus is thwarting the raising power of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant which can threaten the hold on power of the Syrian regime in a long-term.</p>
<p>We can also argue that the lack of decisiveness and clarity in President Obama’s Middle East foreign policy is contributing to the rise of one of the most robust, organized, and coordinated terrorist and radical group which can destabilize of the whole region.</p>
<p style="color: #212f40;">It goes without saying that US underlying objectives in the Middle East are to serve its national, geopolitical and strategic interests, ensuring the stability of oil market, backing up its strategic allies, including Israel, and preventing destabilization of the region by rise of extremists and fundamentalist groups. However, the foreign policies of Obama’s administration have never been carried out or articulated clearly.</p>
<p style="color: #212f40;">Instead, currently, the US is finding herself hiding behind the Islamic Republic, Syria and Russia and hoping that these countries will resolve the crisis in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p style="color: #212f40;">Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has not yet learned a lesson from his leadership failures in Syria. Obama adminsitration still avoids taking any responsibility or holding assertive and decisive position.</p>
<p style="color: #212f40;">Unlike Russia, Syria, and the Islamic Republic in which hold assertive, conclusive and clear foreign policies when it comes to their power manifestation, balance of power and preserving their interests in the region,  Obama’s administration has never articulated a  clear foreign policy agenda towards the crisis in Iraq, Syria, or Middle East in general.</p>
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		<title>The Caliphate Restored</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-caliphate-restored/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-caliphate-restored</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2014 04:42:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why The Islamic State’s declaration matters.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/isis-declares-islamic-caliphate-in-occupied-areas-in-iraq-and-syria-1404070577.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235404" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/isis-declares-islamic-caliphate-in-occupied-areas-in-iraq-and-syria-1404070577-401x350.jpg" alt="isis-declares-islamic-caliphate-in-occupied-areas-in-iraq-and-syria-1404070577" width="254" height="222" /></a>The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has declared itself a caliphate, renamed The Islamic State, and named its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph, and demanded that all Muslims worldwide pledge allegiance to him. Al-Baghdadi has called upon all Muslims to relocate to his caliphate to wage war against non-Muslims. Many have ridiculed and denigrated this declaration; few have realized its implications.</p>
<p>The restoration of the caliphate has for decades been the central goal of jihad groups worldwide. The caliphate (<i>khilafa</i>) was from the beginnings of Islam until the early twentieth century, at least among Sunnis (who constitute eighty-five to ninety percent of Muslims worldwide), the center of the supranational unity of the global Muslim community (<i>umma</i>). The caliph, who was theoretically chosen from among the most pious and capable men of the community, was considered to be the political, military and religious successor of Muhammad as the leader of the Muslim community. He ruled according to the dictates of the Sharia (Islamic law), implementing Allah’s decrees of justice on earth.</p>
<p>The caliphate was abolished by the secular Turkish government in 1924. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 partly as a reaction to the end of the caliphate, and from the beginning a central part of its program has been the need to work toward restoring it and then recovering lands that had been lost to Islam. Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna explained:</p>
<blockquote><p>We want the Islamic flag to be hoisted once again on high, fluttering in the wind, in all those lands that have had the good fortune to harbor Islam for a certain period of time and where the muzzein’s call sounded in the takbirs and the tahlis. Then fate decreed that the light of Islam be extinguished in these lands that returned to unbelief. Thus Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the islands of the Mediterranean, are all of them Muslim Mediterranean colonies and they must return to the Islamic fold. The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea must once again become Muslim seas, as they once were.</p></blockquote>
<p>The kind of government that would then be established would not be a pluralistic democracy by any stretch of the imagination. Hamza Tzortzis of the Britain-based Islamic Education and Research Academy has stated this plainly:</p>
<blockquote><p>We as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom. We see under the Khilafa [caliphate], when people used to engage in a positive way, this idea of freedom was redundant, it was unnecessary, because the society understood under the education system of the Khilafa state, and under the political framework of Islam, that people must engage with each other in a positive and productive way to produce results.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>*</strong></span></p></blockquote>
<p>The desired results, obviously, have nothing to do with freedom as it is understood in Western societies. Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of the Syrian jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front), has expressed a desire to establish a caliphate in Syria, explaining: “Being Muslims, we do not believe in political parties or parliamentary elections, but rather in an Islamic regime based on the Shura (advisory council) and which implements justice &#8230; Our heading towards the establishment of Islamic law is jihad in Allah&#8217;s way.”</p>
<p>Ahmad ‘Issa, commander of another Syrian jihad group, the Suqur Al-Sham Brigades, interviewed on Al Jazeera network on June 12, 2013, joined Barack Obama in praising Islam’s imperative for justice, which he said the caliphate had always manifested: “We have been providing the minorities with their rights ever since the establishment of the state of Islam, since the beginning of the Caliphate in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, and in the days of the Righteous Caliphs, and to this day. Throughout history, nobody has suffered injustice under the state of Islam – the state of truth and justice.” Nobody!</p>
<p>However, his idea of justice did not involve non-Muslims having the right to equal participation in the nation’s political life. “Islam,” he said, “must be the single source of authority of the state…We demand that the president and parliament speaker be Sunni Muslims, and that the state’s sole source of authority be Islam.” He said that his group would “not accept” a Christian as the head of the Syrian state. And this would not be a democracy, but a state ruled by Islamic law: “We are talking about a state of justice and truth. We want the people to be ruled by an infallible law – the law of Allah. We do not want people to be ruled by man-made laws&#8230;.”</p>
<p>On June 21, 2013, Al Jazeera aired a speech of Professor Mohammed Malkawi, the founder of the Chicago-based organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) America, which is dedicated to non-violent implementation of Sharia in the U.S. and around the world. The speech illuminated the Islamic supremacist perspective on the abolition of the caliphate and the necessity for its restoration. Malkawi blamed non-Muslims for Islam’s decline and the fall of the caliphate: “After Islam had reached the peak of glory and the Muslims were masters of the world, there came a time when the infidels conspired against the Muslims, who were in a deep slumber. Britain conspired against them, along with Arab and Turkish collaborators and traitors, and ended the Islamic Caliphate and its glory.”</p>
<p>This was, he said, a great tragedy, for also like Barack Obama, Malkawi believed that a state based on Islamic law embodied justice: “Ever since the Caliphate was destroyed, the world has lost an exemplar of justice, a model for humanity in its entirety. Since then, the world has been held hostage by wolves, who do not respect the honor of a man or a believer. Two world wars cost the lives of over 70 million people, yet they accuse us of terrorism. They killed over 70 million people, and dropped atomic bombs on Japan, yet they level accusations against us.”</p>
<p>In contrast, Malkawi said, “We demand a state ruled by the Koran,” and led the crowd in chanting that phrase. Another speaker added: “We reject secularist rule. We reject the rule of Satan.”</p>
<p>Malkawi asserted that the U.S., and Barack Obama in particular, had made people “terrified of the word ‘caliphate.’” He continued:</p>
<blockquote><p>They say to you: “You can say anything except that you want Islamic law.” For them, Islamic law is something unimaginably harsh. For them, Islamic law prevents usury. It prevents them from exploiting the peoples. Islamic law and the caliphate bring about the rule of justice, which will make all those rulers face piles of garbage— for garbage is all that they are worth.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is not really why people think Islamic law is harsh. People think Islamic law is harsh because of the stonings, the amputations, the institutionalized oppression of women and non-Muslims, the denial of the freedom of speech, the death penalty for apostasy, and so much more. But as far as Malkawi is concerned, those things and the other elements of Sharia are what constitute justice.</p>
<blockquote><p>All these other rulers are dwarfs— from Obama, the master of the White House, to the rulers of those palaces in the lands of the Muslims. They are all dwarfed by the Islamic caliphate and law, and that is why they try to make us scared of it. They scare the Muslims. They say to the rebels in Syria: “Do not demand a caliphate out loud, because the US will deny you equipment and aid.” They say to the Egyptian people: “Do not demand to instate Islamic law, because America will not be happy about that.”</p>
<p>They say that the caliphate makes the infidels angry. Don’t we want to make the infidels angry? Isn’t this Islam?</p>
<p>Let America and Britain hate the caliphate. Let Britain, America, and the entire West go to hell, because the caliphate is coming, Allah willing.</p></blockquote>
<p>And now it is here, although it is by no means clear, of course, that The Islamic State will be viable or long-lasting. If it is, however, the world could soon be engulfed in a much larger conflict with Islamic jihadists even than it has been since 9/11. For in Islamic law, only the caliph is authorized – and indeed, has the responsibility – to declare offensive jihad against non-Muslim states. In his absence, all jihad must be defensive only, which is why Islamic jihadists retail laundry lists of grievances when explaining and justifying their actions: without these grievances and a caliph, they have to cast all their actions as responses to Infidel atrocities. With a caliph, however, that obligation will be gone. And the bloodshed in that event could make the world situation since 9/11, with its 20,000 jihad attacks worldwide, seem like a harmless bit of “interfaith dialogue.”</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>*</strong></span><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Update</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">:</span> </strong><span style="color: #222222;">Hamza Tzortzis contacted me via Twitter </span><span class="aBn" style="color: #222222;" tabindex="0" data-term="goog_452464166"><span class="aQJ">on Wednesday</span></span><span style="color: #222222;">, asking that I clear up my “misrepresentation” of him in this piece. He offered this quite equivocal affirmation of free speech at </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/clarifications-and-responses/clarifying-my-views-on-freedom-of-speech/" target="_blank">http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/<wbr />clarifications-and-responses/<wbr />clarifying-my-views-on-<wbr />freedom-of-speech/</a><span style="color: #222222;">: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="color: #222222;">Hamza upholds freedom of expression and asserts that to reject this  liberty is a self-defeating position. However, since he is a student of Islamic thought and philosophy he raises questions on the limits of expression including: since all nations have some restrictions limiting expression, where do we draw the line? What framework of law and values to we use to establish the limits to expression? </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="color: #222222;">Thus Tzortzis clearly wants restrictions on the freedom of speech, and as a Muslim who believes in Sharia, those would no doubt be to restrict the legality of criticism of Islam and negative characterizations of Muhammad.</span></p>
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		<title>The Military Empire of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-military-empire-of-irans-revolutionary-guard-corps/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-military-empire-of-irans-revolutionary-guard-corps</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 04:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Revolutionary Guard Corps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rouhani]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[state sponsor terrorism]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Is the Islamic Republic winning the battle for regional hegemony?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/iran-coup.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235225" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/iran-coup.jpg" alt="iran-coup" width="253" height="200" /></a>Western countries have taken no effective measures with regard to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s increasing interventionist policies in other countries through its Revolutionary Guard Corps.</p>
<p>As the nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany) and Iran is progressing, and the Rouhani-Obama rapprochement is ratcheting up, the Islamic Republic of Iran has expanded the military operations of its IRGC and intensified its interventionist policies across the region.</p>
<p>Instead of warning the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration is still contemplating coopering with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds forces to fight in Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry, who flew to Iraq last Monday, pointed out that the United States “is open to discussions if there’s something constructive that can be contributed by Iran.”</p>
<p>This message indirectly empowers Iran’s pursuit of its regional hegemonic ambitions, legitimizes the Islamist state and its Islamist institution, and emboldens the Islamic Republic to rapidly pursue its nuclear program. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said last Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press program, “I think by far the worst outcome that could come out of this is that one of these factions, Iran, would come out with nuclear weapons capability. That would be a tragic mistake.”</p>
<p>With the assistance of its Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been masterfully capable of creating a Shiite Islamic Crescent, which stretches from Iran to Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, in order to achieve its ideological and Islamic purposes.</p>
<p>First, the Islamic Republic created Hezbollah, then dominated Syria by supporting the Alawite (offshoot of Shiism) regime of Bashar Al-Assad, and ensured the dominance of Shia over Sunni Islam in Iraq.</p>
<p>Quds forces, which the Islamic Republic dispatches for ideological and sectarian purposes to other countries (such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq), are among the most experienced cadre of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Quds forces, led by General Qassem Soleimani, are a secretive branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and a paramilitary arm of the IRGC. Soleimani, who helped build Hezbollah, has been characterized as &#8220;the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today.&#8221;</p>
<p>Under the presidency of so-called moderate Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds forces have expanded their military and intelligence operations throughout the region. A defected Syrian minister pointed out that Syria is no longer run by Bashar Al-Assad, but rather by the senior cadre of the Quds forces and IRGC.  The increasing activities of Iran’s ministry of intelligence, IRGC and Quds forces can be clearly seen across the region.</p>
<p>The IRGC’s key mission is to preserve the ideals, principles, and values of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, which were outlined by its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. There are two crucial tenets to these revolutionary ideals: anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism. Defying the United States and obstructing US foreign policy in the region as well as not recognizing Israel as a state are some of the most fundamental objectives of the IRGC.</p>
<p>Their ultimate goal is to export the ideals, principles and values of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the whole world. According to many credible reports, the IRGC has been involved in several terrorist acts across the region and even in the West. One of the crucial issues that U.S. State Department uncovered was the &#8220;marked resurgence of Iran&#8217;s state sponsorship of terrorism, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force, its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Tehran&#8217;s ally Hezbollah.”  According to the U.S. State Department, <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/05/210103.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">country reports on terrorism</span></a>, the terrorist activities by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force, its Ministry of Intelligence and Security &#8220;have reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s.&#8221;</p>
<p>Under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Major General<b> </b>Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC has become a gigantic economic player in the Islamic Republic of Iran while owning most of Iran’s economic power, industries and operating on the black market enterprise.</p>
<p>Many members and governmental officials in Iran, who strongly defend the work of the IRGC and the principles of the Iranian Islamic revolution, are called principlists. They view the United States and Israel as everlasting enemies and rivals.</p>
<p>Even Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who is projected as a rational, moderate, and prudent person that pursues leniency in foreign policy, has joined the voice of the IRGC and Iran’s Supreme Leader by directly warning other countries against assisting ISIL.  Recently, he pointed out that some countries “feed terrorists by their petrodollars.” He warned that this support will have repercussions on those countries which “feed terrorists.”</p>
<p>A crucial and pressing issue is the increasing power and interventionist policies of the IRGC, as well as the export of its Islamic principles to other countries. Instead of only focusing on Iran’s nuclear program, President Obama should include the interventionist role of the IRGC and Quds forces to the negotiating table.</p>
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