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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Syria</title>
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	<item>
		<title>Biden Spins Fantasies, Middle East Heats Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/biden-spins-fantasies-middle-east-heats-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=biden-spins-fantasies-middle-east-heats-up</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:22:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saban Forum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Reports: Israel hits targets in Syria.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/628x471.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247032" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/628x471-450x321.jpg" alt="628x471" width="374" height="267" /></a>Speaking to the Saban Forum in Washington on Saturday, Vice-President Joe Biden <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/07/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-2014-saban-forum"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that the talks with Iran, which began about a year ago and recently were extended for another seven months, had “brought significant benefits” and slowed down Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Biden added that the talks were providing time to “see if it’s possible to reach a comprehensive agreement that can peacefully ensure that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon,” and that “all of this was accomplished with very modest sanctions relief.”</p>
<p>The speech also included very positive words about Israel and the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Israel, however, needs more than words.</p>
<p>On Sunday, one day later, Israeli national security adviser Yossi Cohen gave a briefing to the Israeli cabinet that <a href="http://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/iran-retains-its-nuclear-capabilities-as-sanctions-regime-eroding-nsc-chief-says-383899"><span style="color: #0433ff;">contradicted Biden on every point</span></a>.</p>
<p>In a statement that later was issued by the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Cohen said that Iran was continuing to pursue a nuclear weapon, that the extension of the talks was enabling it to maintain and even strengthen its nuclear capabilities, and that the sanctions are “in danger of collapse. This is something that could lead to a regional nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”</p>
<p>Cohen also said Israel had played an important role in ensuring that the U.S.-led P5+1 countries did not reach a “bad” agreement with Iran last month, but that meanwhile Iran was continuing a huge military buildup and masterminding terrorism all over the globe.</p>
<p>That was Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon two sites near Damascus were bombed from the air. Although Israeli officials are not saying a word about the incident, reports outside of Israel, as well as statements from Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah, say Israel was responsible.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4600771,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">commentary</span></a>, Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was</p>
<blockquote><p><i>continu[ing] to play with fire by equipping Hezbollah with arms that have the capability to cause widespread losses and destruction in Israel…. It is widely believed that shipments of missiles and other arms destined for Hezbollah land in Iranian cargo jets at the airport in Damascus, then [are] transferred to a Syrian military storage site, until they are sent over the border to Lebanon.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On Monday, Arab media <a href="http://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/report-two-hezbollah-operatives-killed-in-sundays-alleged-iaf-strikes-in-syria-384003"><span style="color: #0433ff;">were cited as reporting</span></a> that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>the airstrikes destroyed a storage facility housing anti-aircraft missiles and drones belonging to Hezbollah, and cut off the power supply from Damascus International Airport.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>It was also reported that “two Hezbollah militants were killed” during the strikes, one of them a “senior military official.”</p>
<p>According to reports outside of Israel, never officially confirmed by Jerusalem, in 2013 Israeli planes struck at least five weapons consignments in Syria that were on their way to Hezbollah, and earlier this year struck a Hezbollah base within Lebanon.</p>
<p>Although in most of these cases Hezbollah and the Syrian regime, both of them embroiled in the fighting in Syria, have refrained from retaliating, accounts say that in this latest case Israeli forces have been on high alert for a possible counterstrike.</p>
<p>Meanwhile it was also <a href="http://www.jpost.com/middle-east/russia-wants-israeli-explanation-for-aggressive-actions-in-syria-383986"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> on Monday that Russia was “demand[ing] an explanation” for Israel’s “aggressive action” in Syria and was “deeply worried by this dangerous development.”</p>
<p>And finally, a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/us-iran-economy-iduskbn0jl0h320141207?feedtype=rss&amp;feedname=topnews"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Reuters report</span></a> bears out the words of the Israeli national security adviser and belies the cheerful words of Vice-President Biden:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will hike military spending by more than a third in the next fiscal year despite presenting a “cautious, tight” budget to parliament on Sunday in response to falling oil prices…. [D]efense expenditure will rise 33.5 percent to about 282 trillion rials, most of which will be assigned to the elite Revolutionary Guards…. Iran is stockpiling rockets, missiles and other conventional weapons…. Nuclear talks between Iran and six powers have been extended until June. In the meantime, Iran can still access $700 million per month of frozen oil revenue held abroad. </i></p></blockquote>
<p>In other words: thanks to the talks Iran can keep funding its needs.</p>
<p>This confluence of events gives rise to two points.</p>
<p>One is that a belligerent, confident Iran, a belligerent, intrusive, and threatening Russia, is how the Middle East looks at a time of feckless U.S. policy based—at best—on self-delusion.</p>
<p>The other is that, even though Netanyahu’s government now faces an election campaign and is in a lame-duck status, no one should think it will take its eye off the ball.</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&#8217;s Weakness Is Emboldening ISIS and Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/how-obamas-weakness-is-emboldening-isis-and-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-obamas-weakness-is-emboldening-isis-and-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 04:20:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weakness]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243895</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And why a new strategy is necessary. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #1a1a1a;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/iran_7.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243896" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/iran_7-450x347.jpg" alt="iran_7" width="327" height="252" /></a>Iranian leaders, particularly the senior cadres of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have successfully sensed, invested in, and exploited the White House&#8217;s weaknesses and hesitation in following up on its words.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">When it comes to Syria, President Obama has sent a strong signal to the Islamic Republic that Washington would not dare cross Iran’s influence in the country. On several occasions, when President Bashar Al Assad and his armed forces crossed President Obama’s multiple red lines, President Obama decided to sit at the margin, not taking action, which led to the questioning of US credibility.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">This projection of weakness has not only empowered the Islamic Republic, its military activities, and intervention in other countries in the Middle East, but has also emboldened extremists groups such as the Islamic State.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Islamic Republic no longer hides its military, financial, intelligence, and advisory assistance to Assad, and it does not shy away from its engagements in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, or other regional nations. Groups such as the powerful Iranian-backed Shia Badr brigade are being publicly utilized in Iraq. The fighters from Hezbollah (Lebanon&#8217;s pro-Iranian Shiite movement) and Quds forces (an elite branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps), have been publicly operating in several foreign territories. This issue has been significantly instrumental in tipping the balance of power in favor of the Syrian government, as well as keeping Assad in power after more than three years of the conflict in Syria.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds force (an elite branch of the IRGC), who has always kept a low profile, is now boasting about his army&#8217;s presence in Iraq. Suleimani has been <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/news/640586"><span style="color: #0433ff;">taking</span></a> professional pictures for the sake of publicity for the Iranian government. Iranian state TV has also been showing the pictures of Suleimani in foreign territories and pointing to the Islamic Republic’s indispensable power and influence in the Middle East. In addition, Yadollah Javani, a senior adviser to Khamenei, recently <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/14/suleimani-high-profile-to-publicise-irans-key-anti-isis-role"><span style="color: #0433ff;">stated</span></a> that “Baghdad was prevented from falling because of the presence and assistance of the Islamic republic.”</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">These moves are unprecedented in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, and they highlight a crucial strategic shift in the Iranian leader’s tactics, mission, regional hegemonic ambitions, and search for regional supremacy in the Middle East. Iranian leaders are attempting to reassert their power and supremacy in the Middle East more publicly, as well as sending the signal to other states that Iran is in fact the sole regional power to rely on rather than the United States and Western allies.</p>
<p style="color: #1a1a1a;">In addition, through their media and TV outlets, Iranian leaders have been trying to circulate an image of Iran to the Iranian people, that the Islamic Republic can defeat the Islamic State by itself and act as a regional power. For example, Amirali Hajizadeh, the airforce commander of Iran’s Revoluationary Guard Corps, confirmed the presence General Qassem Suleimani in Iraq on Iran’s national TV, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/14/suleimani-high-profile-to-publicise-irans-key-anti-isis-role"><span style="color: #0433ff;">adding</span></a> “If it wasn’t for Iran’s help, Iraq’s Kurdistan would have fallen into the hands of Daesh.”</p>
<p style="color: #141414;">Currently, the Islamic Republic’s strong position is that Iran is drawing red lines for the United States. More fundamentally, President Obama seems to have accepted and recognized Iran’s red lines with regards to Assad, and the White House appears to overlook or appease the Islamic Republic&#8217;s objectives in that regard. Since the White House has been indirectly cooperating and coordinating aerial and ground battles against the Islamic State, President Obama has come to the understanding that he will carry out an appeasement policy towards Iran’s role in the region, its military involvement in Syria, and Iran-Iraq ties.</p>
<p style="color: #141414;">For Washington, the battle against the Islamic State is at the top of its foreign policy agenda. The future Assad, his use of brute force, and Iran’s IRGC assistances have definitely become secondary and marginal objectives to tackle. In addition, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have also slid to the sidelines of the US and Western allies’ objectives, as the battle against the Islamic State goes on. The US, the major negotiator in the p5+1 group (<span style="color: #323333;">China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), has significantly softened its position towards Iran’s nuclear program by favoring policies such as nuclear containment rather than dismantlement of Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure. This follows that Iran might be allowed, like Japan, to be a nuclear threshold state.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414;"><span style="color: #323333;">President Obama’s foreign policy of compartmentalization – which focuses on the Islamic Republic&#8217;s assistance in defeating the Islamic State while overlooking all other activities of the Islamic Republic &#8212; will lead to costly long-term and short-term outcomes. </span>The most effective approach is to simultaneously address the Islamic Republic’s multi-dimensional functions across the Middle East, including its military, financial intelligence, advisory assistance to President Bashar Al Assad, military involvements in Iraq and Yemen, the involvement of pro-Iranian and pro-Shiite proxies and militias in the region, as well as Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This comprehensive strategy will address some of the crucial underlying factors behind the crisis in the Middle East, including the rise of extremist groups such as the Islamic State. By not taking Iran’s nuanced role in the Middle East seriously, and by turning a blind eye to all Iranian military activities in Syria and other countries &#8211;due to the notion the Islamic Republic is assisting the United States and Western allies in their fighting campaign against the Islamic State &#8212; will solely ratchet up the conflict and eventually lead to significant blows to American national security, political and economic interests.</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>ISIS and Why the Left Was Wrong About the Golan Heights</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/isis-and-why-the-left-was-wrong-about-the-golan-heights/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-and-why-the-left-was-wrong-about-the-golan-heights</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Oct 2014 04:10:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Golan Heights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sea of Galilee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243418</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How a rejected land deal with Assad spared Israel from another terrorist hotbed on its doorstep. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132363524_21n.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243423" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/132363524_21n-450x310.jpg" alt="132363524_21n" width="334" height="230" /></a>It is truly maddening to consider how close Israel came to turning the Golan Heights over to Syria in the year 2000 and how close Israel came to having hordes of ISIS terrorists sitting smack on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, directly across from Tiberias.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the year 2000 the Israeli Labor Party ruled the country and Ehud Barak was Prime Minister.  Negotiations were being conducted about a complete and total Israeli &#8220;withdrawal&#8221; from the Golan Heights.   The Syrian border would have moved to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and Syria would have been granted water rights to the Kinneret.  This took place under the coaxing of Barak&#8217;s party&#8217;s &#8220;doves&#8221; and especially Itamar Rabinovich, a past president of Tel Aviv University, a relative of Yitzhak Rabin, and an ex-Ambassador to the US. Rabinovich saw himself as some sort of authority on Syria and led the Labor-Left&#8217;s campaign to strike a deal-at-any-cost with Syria.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israel in fact did offer Syria the entire Golan Heights, only to find that the Syrians were demanding MORE than that.  In what can only have been a divinely decreed miracle, the deal did not go through.  Like with Pharoah, the Assad dictator&#8217;s heart was hardened mysteriously, and he failed to grab the prize when it was proffered.  <a href="http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/02gresh">Here</a> is the Le Monde report on what appeared in 2000 to be an imminent &#8220;peace agreement.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In reality, of course, Assad was offered everything including the kitchen sink. Since then the Israeli Left has invented a new pseudo-history of this episode, claiming Barak was in fact holding back and not making &#8220;enough&#8221; concessions to Assad.  After all, Barak failed to offer Assad all of Rabinovich&#8217;s Tel Aviv University.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">To read the opinion pieces and speeches in Israel from the 1999-2000 era of negotiations with Assad is to enter the Twilight Zone.  One after the other, these people hectored and browbeat the Israeli public about what a wonderful and unique historic opportunity this was. All Israel had to do was to surrender to all of Assad&#8217;s demands. Moreover, time was of the essence. Every second that passed without a capitulation deal to Syria would see Israel&#8217;s situation worsen and would produce existential dangers for Israel. Some of these pseudo-analyses and predictions were re-published over the past weekend by Haggai Segel in Makor Rishon, and reading them is truly eye-opening.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time I did my own small part to belay the catastrophe being planned by Rabinovich and Barak.  I published<a href="http://www.meforum.org/476/the-collapsing-syrian-economy"> this</a> article in 1999 in the Middle East Quarterly.  In it I argued that not only was time not pressing for a deal with Syria, but time was very much running AGAINST Syria, because the Syrian economy was deep in the depths of implosion. Hence Israel could only benefit from stalling any attempt at reaching a deal with Syria.  Say what you wish about the myopia of economists, but THIS prediction turned out to be right smack dab on the money.  Syria indeed collapsed, and not only economically.  The article at the time gained enormous attention and excerpts ran in the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">When Assad hardened his Pharoah&#8217;s heart and rescued Israel, the drama did not end.  During the next decade or so, swarms of Israeli leftists from the Labor Party and elsewhere tried to reconstruct the &#8220;deal&#8221; that Ehud Barak almost signed, demanding that Israel; enter negotiations with Syria from the last negotiation position by Barak.  In other words, start with Barak&#8217;s last offer of total capitulationas the starting point  and then negotiate NEW additional concessions to Syria from there.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It should be noted, by the way, that at this point the Golan Heights have been part of the state of Israel for more than twice as long as they were ever part of the state of Syria before 1967.   If it had been all up to the Israeli Labor Party, ISIS terrorists would be today encamped on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and sending out murder parties each evening into the Galilee in rowboats and rafts.   Israel was spared this fate not because of any serendipitous dose of common sense by its leaders, but thanks to the miracle of the Pharaoh-like hardening of the heart of the Assad beast.</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>We Don’t Need to Ally with Terrorists to Defeat ISIS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/we-dont-need-to-ally-with-terrorists-to-defeat-isis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=we-dont-need-to-ally-with-terrorists-to-defeat-isis</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 04:54:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shiite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sunni]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241528</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia and Iran aren’t our friends.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isis.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241800" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isis-431x350.jpg" alt="isis" width="289" height="235" /></a>The big foreign policy debate now is whether we should ally with Sunni or Shiite Jihadists to defeat ISIS.</p>
<p>The pro-Iranian camp wants us to coordinate with Iran and Assad. The pro-Saudi camp wants us to arm the Free Syrian Army and its assorted Jihadists to overthrow Assad.</p>
<p>Both sides are not only wrong, they are traitors.</p>
<p>Iran and the Sunni Gulfies are leading sponsors of international terrorism that has killed Americans. Picking either side means siding with the terrorists.</p>
<p>It makes no sense to join with Islamic terrorists to defeat Islamic terrorists. Both Sunni and Shiite Jihadists are our enemies. And this is not even a “the enemy of my enemy” scenario because despite their mutual hatred for each other, they hate us even more.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://cns.miis.edu/reports/pdfs/binladen/indict.pdf">1998 indictment of bin Laden</a> accused him of allying with Iran. (Not to mention Iraq, long before such claims could be blamed on Dick Cheney.) The <a href="http://www.meforum.org/670/irans-link-to-al-qaeda-the-9-11-commissions">9/11 Commission documented</a> that Al Qaeda terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, freely moved through Iran. Testimony <a href="http://www.cfr.org/terrorist-organizations-and-networks/al-qaeda-hezbollah-relationship/p11275#p1">by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants</a> showed that he had met with a top Hezbollah terrorist. <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/12/dc_court_iran_showed.php">Court findings concluded</a> that Iran was liable for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies. Al Qaeda terrorists were trained by Hezbollah.</p>
<p>While Shiite and Sunni Jihadists may be deadly enemies to each other, they have more in common with each other than they do with us. Our relationship to them is not that of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s their relationship to each other when it comes to us. In these scenarios we are the enemy.</p>
<p>The pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions in our foreign policy complex agree that we have to help one side win in Syria. They’re wrong. We have no interest in helping either side win because whether the Sunnis or Shiites win, Syria will remain a state sponsor of terror.</p>
<p>It’s only a question of whether it will be Shiite or Sunni terror.</p>
<p>Our interest is in not allowing Al Qaeda, or any of its subgroups, to control Syria or Iraq because it has a history of carrying out devastating attacks against the United States. We don’t, however, need to ally with either side to accomplish that. We can back the Kurds and the Iraqi government (despite its own problematic ties) in their push against ISIS in Iraq and use strategic strikes to hit ISIS concentrations in Syria. We should not, however, ally, arm or coordinate strikes with either side in the Syrian Civil War.</p>
<p>Both the pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian sides insist that ISIS can’t be defeated without stabilizing Syria. But it doesn’t appear that Syria can be stabilized without either genocide or partition. Its conflict is not based on resistance to a dictator as the Arab Springers have falsely claimed, but on religious differences.</p>
<p>Helping one side commit genocide against the other is an ugly project, but that would be the outcome of allying with either side.</p>
<p>Stabilizing Syria is a myth. The advocates of the FSA claimed that helping the Libyan Jihadists win would stabilize Libya. Instead the country is on fire as Jihadists continue to fight it out in its major cities.</p>
<p>Even if the FSA existed as an actual fighting force, which it doesn’t, even if it could win, which it can’t, there is every reason to believe that Syria would be worse than Libya and an even bigger playground for ISIS. The FSA enthusiasts were wrong in Egypt and Libya and everywhere else. They have no credibility.</p>
<p>The pro-Iranians claim that helping the Syrian government will subdue ISIS, but Assad hasn’t been able to defeat the Sunni Jihadists even with Russian help. The Syrian army and its Hezbollah allies are still struggling despite having an air force, heavy artillery and WMDs. Not only shouldn’t we be allying with Shiite terrorists who have killed plenty of Americans over the years, but it would be extremely stupid to ally with incompetent terrorists. Allying with the FSA or Assad makes as much sense as allying with ISIS.</p>
<p>The difference is that ISIS at least seems to be able to win battles.</p>
<p>Some pro-Iranian wonks claim that if we don’t get Assad’s approval for air strikes, he will shoot down Americans planes. That’s about as likely as Saddam Hussein returning from the dead to audition for American Idol. Assad didn’t even dare shoot down Israeli <a href="http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2013/04/report-israeli-jets-buzz-assad-palace.html">planes who were buzzing his palace</a>. The odds of him picking a fight with the United States Air Force are somewhere between zero, nil and zilch.</p>
<p>We don’t need Assad’s permission to hit ISIS targets in Syria and, in one of the few things that this administration is doing right, we aren’t asking for it. Unless Assad experiences a bout of severe mental illness, he isn’t going to fight us for the privilege of losing to ISIS. Not even Saddam was that crazy.</p>
<p>The big potential problem in this war is mission creep. That’s why we should avoid committing to any overarching objectives such as stabilizing Syria. Unfortunately that is exactly what Obama has done.</p>
<p>It’s not our job to stabilize Syria and short of dividing it into a couple of majority states in which the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurds, the Christians and maybe even the Turkmen get their own countries, it’s not a feasible project. We have the equipment and power to pound ISIS into the dirt when its forces concentrate in any area. We can send drones to target their leaders. If Assad or the FSA want to provide us with intel, we can use it as long as we don’t begin working to help them fulfill their own objectives.</p>
<p>We need to remember that we are not there for the Syrians or Iraqis; we’re there for ourselves.</p>
<p>After September 11 we learned the hard way the costs of letting enemy terrorists set up enclaves and bases. But we also learned the hard way the costs of trying to stabilize unstable Muslim countries.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda, in its various forms, will always find sanctuaries and conflicts because the Muslim world is unstable and widely supportive of terrorism. For now this is a low intensity conflict that denies the next bin Laden the territory, time and manpower to stage the next September 11. We can do this cheaply and with few casualties if we keep this goal in mind.</p>
<p>This isn’t nation building. It’s not the fight for democracy. All we’re doing is terrorizing the terrorists by using our superior reach and firepower to smash their sandcastle emirates anywhere they pop up.</p>
<p>Allying with terrorists to defeat terrorists is counterproductive. The Muslim world will always have its Jihadists, at least until we make a serious effort to break them which we won’t be doing any time soon. But we can at least stop making the problem worse by arming and training our own enemies.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on this week&#8217;s Glazov Gang discussing <strong>&#8220;ISIS Rising&#8221;</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9E8gGysQZzU" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
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		<title>Don’t Mention the War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/dont-mention-the-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dont-mention-the-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 04:35:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The administration can’t agree on what it needs to find a strategy for.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obama-0828.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241123" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obama-0828-432x350.jpg" alt="obama-0828" width="344" height="279" /></a>Bill Clinton was ambiguous about the definition of “sex” and “is.” Barack Obama is uncertain about what the definition of “war” might be.</p>
<p>And wars are central to the duties of the man in the White House.</p>
<p>Whether or not we’re in a war depends on who you ask and on which day of the week you ask him. Secretary of State John Kerry said that bombing ISIS in two countries wasn’t a war. After the White House spokesman said it is a war, Kerry agreed that maybe it might be a war after all.</p>
<p>Forget about finding a strategy, this administration can’t even agree on whether the thing that it needs to find a strategy for is a war.</p>
<p>Democrats don’t like the “W” word. They bomb more countries than Republicans do, but they find a prettier name for it.</p>
<p>One of the first things that Obama did in Iraq was to change the name of the war. It was no longer Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was now Operation New Dawn. Even though there were 50,000 troops in Iraq, the combat mission was officially over. The 50,000 were renamed “Advise and Assist” brigades.</p>
<p>As John and Yoko said, the “W” word really could be over if you wanted it to be. Or pretended it was.</p>
<p>Obama bombed Libya to implement regime change, but no one called it a war. It was just one of those things where we dropped a lot of bombs on another country in coordination with rebels on the ground to help them take over that country. Definitely not a war. Possibly one of those “man-caused disasters.”</p>
<p>At least that was how Obama Inc. tried to rename terrorism in the early heady days of hope and change.</p>
<p>A compulsive need to avoid calling things what they are is an obvious form of denial. But when a politician at the head of a government begins behaving in that shifty way, it’s also deeply dishonest.</p>
<p>Democrats could defend Bill Clinton’s need to lie about what they termed his private life, but even they can’t defend an administration that plays Clintonesque word games with something as big as a war.</p>
<p>We are currently not in a war with the Islamic State, which according to this administration is neither Islamic nor a State, with a strategy of possibly destroying them (unless that doesn’t work out and then we’ll settle for degrading them) and we are backed in this non-war by a coalition of Muslim nations that can’t as of yet be named, but which have possibly pledged to help us with certain undetermined things.</p>
<p>These undetermined things include aiding the Syrian Islamist rebels, some of whom are fighting alongside ISIS, some of whom are fighting ISIS and some of whom switch back and forth based on their mood, the latest shipment of TOW missiles from the CIA and how much the Saudis are paying them.</p>
<p>We don’t know a lot more about the war, which may or may not be a war, than we know about it.</p>
<p>And that’s the problem.</p>
<p>Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was mocked for talking about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” by people who are too stupid to realize that their ignorance has turned the world around them into “unknown unknowns.”</p>
<p>Obama’s culture of denial, his charm bracelets of Orwellian synonyms for conflict that seem to have been invented by a bureaucrat with no sense of humor, turn everything into unknown unknowns. If we can’t even properly define what we’re doing, how can we do it at all? If we can’t even admit that we’re fighting a war and that ISIS is inspired by Islam, how can we beat an enemy that we can’t fight or name?</p>
<p>For the longest time this administration refused to admit that ISIS was a threat or that it was at war with us. Only when the Jihadists were preparing to knock on the doors of the US embassy in Baghdad, was it finally able, after a delay of some weeks, to use the “W” word.</p>
<p>What you call something is important. Ideologues, like the kind that fill the ranks of Obama Inc, think that changing a name changes reality. It doesn’t. A rose will still be the same plant by any other name and ISIS will still be the same band of Islamic headchoppers even if you insist on referring to them as a junior varsity team of man-caused disasters belonging to no particular faith or religion.</p>
<p>It’s your awareness of reality that changes.</p>
<p>Casinos and credit card companies use substitution to diminish your awareness that you are spending money.  Drug companies play soothing music and show pastoral scenes while telling you the lethal side effects. Car salesmen and cable companies avoid giving you the full amount that you’ll be paying.</p>
<p>Obama has a bad habit of using these same tactics. His administration tried to make the illegal war in Libya look good by refusing to call it a war and comparing the cost to the Iraq War using bogus figures. It tried to erase the existence of terrorism by refusing to use the word to describe terrorist attacks that were taking place, whether at Fort Hood or in Benghazi.</p>
<p>His tactics showed that he didn’t believe that the problem was terrorism, but the overreaction of Americans to terrorism. All he had to do whitewash every attack as an isolated incident that had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism and then Americans would cease to be aware of terrorism. If Iraq were to vanish from the evening news, no one would know that Al Qaeda there was getting bigger and bolder.</p>
<p>In the latest leaked private conversations printed in the <i>New York Times</i>, Obama whines and mopes, he blasts critics and denies that his policies have failed. Despite his muscular rhetoric in public, in private he complains that he is being stampeded into bombing ISIS. It’s a revealing conversation because it shows a man who believes that his failures are not the problem. It’s other people becoming aware of those failures that concerns him and forces him into addressing them. ISIS isn’t the problem: America is.</p>
<p>ISIS is to Obama as Monica was to Bill Clinton. They’re both the dirty little secrets of powerful men that they did everything possible to hide. And once that was no longer an option, they quibbled over words.</p>
<p>Denial only works until reality forcibly intrudes. Even with a friendly media, the philandering of the President of the United States couldn’t continue indefinitely. And even with a friendly media, the rise of a new generation of Al Qaeda after the Arab Spring wouldn’t stay buried in the back pages forever.</p>
<p>It was only a matter of time until everyone knew.</p>
<p>Futile exercises like debating the meaning of “War” are delaying tactics. People are not interested in abstractions like the meaning of “Is,” “War,” “Sex” or “You can keep your doctor.” They take words at their common meaning. If bombs are falling, it’s a war. And if it’s a war, then it has to be won.</p>
<p>Democrats don’t believe in wars now because they don’t believe in winning. Instead of wars, they spend a lot of time on “interventions” as if dropping tons of explosives on a country is like telling your drunk cousin to stop drinking. They never win any of these interventions and that’s fine because Americans don’t really care what happens in Yugoslavia, Haiti or Somalia.</p>
<p>But on September 11, thousands were murdered in one day.  The Democrats don’t like calling what happened on that day an act of war. Americans however know it’s a war and are determined to win it.</p>
<p>Obama was guiding Americans away from the awareness that we were in a war. In wars, someone wins and someone loses. If he refused to call it a war, maybe we wouldn’t realize that we were losing.</p>
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		<title>The War at Home</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-war-at-home/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-war-at-home</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2014 04:24:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Ali Muhammad Brown]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240980</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Muslim serial killer in America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ali-Muhammed-Brown.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240981" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Ali-Muhammed-Brown-445x350.jpg" alt="Ali-Muhammed-Brown" width="267" height="210" /></a>As the Islamic State beheads a third hostage and the world recoils in horror and <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/uk-beheaded-aid-workers-brother-says-islam-not-to-blame">reassures</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/cameron-on-islamic-states-claim-to-be-islamic-nonsense-islam-is-a-religion-of-peace">itself</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/uk-muslim-leaders-demand-that-cameron-call-the-islamic-state-the-un-islamic-state">that</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/australian-pm-high-terror-alert-not-about-religion">all</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/when-is-an-islamic-state-not-islamic">this</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/catholic-cardinal-mccarrick-embraces-islam">has</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/uk-historian-bill-maher-is-wrong-we-cant-blame-islamic-state-on-islam">nothing</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/us-terror-expert-islamic-state-not-bound-by-the-structures-of-traditional-islamic-warfare">to</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/obama-the-islamic-state-is-not-islamic">do</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/kerry-islamic-states-hateful-ideology-has-nothing-do-with-islam">with</a> <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/australia-police-raid-islamic-bookstore-two-muslims-face-terror-charges-official-says-this-has-got-nothing-to-do-with-islam">Islam</a>, it is useful to remember that jihad activity continues in the United States – although hardly anyone notices amid the rush to dissociate Islam from the mounting violence committed in its name and in accord with its literal teachings.</p>
<p>Take, for example, a Muslim from Seattle, Ali Muhammad Brown. <a href="http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2014/08/20/seattle-double-murder-suspect-ali-muhammad-brown-fourth-homicide/14324141/">KING 5 News</a> reported that Brown is “currently in jail on $5 million bail for the alleged murder of a college student in late June.” He has “already been charged with gunning down two men at 29th and King Street in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood on June 1.” And he is “now the prime suspect in a fourth homicide.”</p>
<p>The report noted laconically in its fifth paragraph, without elaboration, that “multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation say Brown told police he carried out the murders because he was on a jihad to kill Americans.” <a href="http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2014/08/accused_serial_killer_says_livingston_teens_murder_was_vengeance_against_us.html">NJ.com added</a>, also deep in its story on Brown’s murders: “Prosecutors say Brown is a devout Muslim who had become angered by U.S. military intervention in the Islamic world, which he referred to as ‘evil.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2014/08/accused_serial_killer_says_livingston_teens_murder_was_vengeance_against_us.html">That report also noted</a>: “Ali Muhammad Brown said he considered it his mission to murder 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as an act of ‘vengeance’ for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. ‘All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life.’” This is a reference to the Qur’an: “We ordained therein for them: ‘Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal’” (5:45).</p>
<p>New York radio host Todd Pettengill, host of WPLJ’s “The Todd Show,” <a href="http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2014/09/radio_host_livingston_teens_murder_evidence_that_domestic_terrorism_is_already_here.html">said</a> that Brown’s murder of Tevlin was evidence that “domestic terrorism is already here.” Pettengill declared: “It was in fact an act of jihad, perpetrated by a fellow American who sympathized more with those who want to annihilate us than with his own country and its people.”</p>
<p>Pettengill is right. Domestic terrorism is indeed already here. And it was here before Ali Muhammad Brown went on his killing spree. Another Muslim from Seattle, Musab Mohamed Masmari, was <a href="http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/07/31/masmari-sentence-to-10-years-in-prison-for-neighbours-arson">sentenced on July 31</a> to ten years in prison for pouring gasoline onto a stairway in a famous gay nightclub, Neighbours, and setting the stairway on fire last New Year’s Eve, when the club was crowded. If the fire had not been put out – the carnage would have been great.</p>
<p>Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said: “One of Masmari’s close associates was interviewed by investigators and reported that Masmari confided in him that he ‘burned a gay club’ and that he did it because ‘what these people are doing is wrong.’” In <a href="http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/friend-said-gay-club-arson-suspect-may-be-planning/ndPpr/">another report from February</a>, we learn that an informant told the FBI before this attack that Masmari could be planning “terrorist activity,” and that he had “opined that homosexuals should be exterminated.”</p>
<p>This incident should have been the impetus for a national discussion of violent Sharia enforcement in the U.S., and an examination of what could be done to stop Sharia vigilantism. Instead, the mainstream media largely ignored the obvious motive; in this report, it is discussed as “homophobia,” with no hint that this was one of the first incidents of violent Sharia enforcement in the U.S.</p>
<p>There are many more recent domestic terrorism cases as well. In mid-June, a Tampa Muslim named Sami Osmakac was convicted of plotting to bomb a Tampa bar and then blow himself up in a jihad-martyrdom suicide attack in another crowded area of the city. <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/jury-starts-deliberating-sami-osmakac-terrorism-case/2183695">Osmakac said of non-Muslims</a>: “We will go after every one of them, their kindergartens, their shopping centers, their nightclubs, their police stations, their courthouses and everything until we have an Islamic state the whole world.” Shades of “slay them wherever you find them” (cf. Qur’an 2:191; 4:89; 9:5).</p>
<p>Then there was<b> </b>Ahmed Abassi, who, according to the <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/06/03/tunisian-man-gets-plea-deal-for-amtrak-terror-plot/">New York Post</a>, wanted to derail a New York-to-Toronto Amtrak train. He also discussed with another jihad terrorist “a plot to release bacteria in the air or water to kill up to 100,000 people.” He was also, according to Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, plotting to “commit acts of terror and develop a network of terrorists here” in the U.S.</p>
<p>Abassi could have gotten fifty years in prison, but he “avoided terrorism charges by pleading guilty in Manhattan federal court to lying on his visa application and to immigration officials when asked why he flew to the United States in 2013.” Consequently, he could soon be a free man. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
<p>And let’s not forget Mufid Elfgeeh, a Muslim businessman from Rochester, New York. <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/yemeni-accused-plotting-kill-troops-191419361.html">AP</a> reported on June 2 that Mufid Elfgeeh “bought two handguns and the silencers as part of a plan to kill members of the U.S. armed forces returning from war as well as Shiite Muslims in western New York.”</p>
<p>AP, as anxious as Barack Obama or David Cameron to absolve Islam of responsibility for the evils done in its name, explained that Elfgeeh (like Ali Muhammad Brown) was plotting to kill troops “as vengeance for American actions overseas.” So why did he want to kill Shi’ites as well? As vengeance for Iran being a bitter enemy of his bitter enemy, the U.S.? Obviously Elfgeeh is a Sunni Islamic jihadist who wants to kill members of groups that he considers to be enemies of Islam. But AP will never tell you that.</p>
<p>The war is not just in Iraq and Syria (and Nigeria, and Thailand, and the Philippines, and Afghanistan, and Israel, and Egypt, and on and on). It is in the United States already. That war is the Islamic jihad against the West and the free world. There will be many more men like Ali Muhammad Brown and Musab Mohamed Masmari in the United States in the coming years. Actions like theirs will one day, not too long from now, be a more or less daily occurrence in the United States. But no need to be concerned: just remember, when things get really hot, that <i>all this has nothing to do with Islam</i>.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Robert Spencer</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing Jihad-Denial and the  hazardous danger our society faces by indulging in it:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MNA-WH-kBzI" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
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		<title>Of Politicians and Moral Courage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/of-politicians-and-moral-courage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=of-politicians-and-moral-courage</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/of-politicians-and-moral-courage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2014 04:54:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[courage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moral]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politicians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240833</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's lack of moral clarity will make it impossible for him to address threats to America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/09102014_Obama_ISIS_Speech.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240836" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/09102014_Obama_ISIS_Speech.jpg" alt="09102014_Obama_ISIS_Speech" width="282" height="250" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Of-politicians-and-moral-courage-375120">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Leaders are not elected. Politicians are elected. Their election in turn provides politicians with the opportunity to become leaders.</p>
<p>You don’t become a leader by telling people what they want to hear, although doing so certainly helps to you get elected. A politician becomes a leader by telling people what they don’t want to hear.</p>
<p>If they are lucky, politicians will never have to become leaders. They will serve in times of peace and plenty, when it’s possible to pretend away the hard facts of the human condition. And they can leave office beloved for letting people believe that the world is the Elysian Fields.</p>
<p>Certainly this has been the case for many American politicians since the end of World War II.</p>
<p>This is not the case today. In our times, evil rears its ugly head with greater power and frequency than it has in at least a generation. As Americans learned 13 years ago this week, evil ignored is evil empowered.</p>
<p>Yet fighting evil and protecting the good is not a simple matter. Evil has many handmaidens.</p>
<p>Those who hide it away enable it. Those who justify it enable it. Those who ignore it enable it.</p>
<p>To fight evil effectively, a leader must possess the moral wisdom to recognize that evil can only be rooted out when the environment that cultivates it is discredited and so transformed. To discredit and transform that environment, a leader must have the moral courage to stand not only against evildoers, but against their far less controversial facilitators.</p>
<p>In other words, the foundations of true leadership are moral clarity and courage.</p>
<p>On Wednesday two American elected leaders gave speeches. In one, a leader emerged. In the other, a politician gave a speech.</p>
<p>The first speech was given by Texas Senator Ted Cruz.</p>
<p>On Wednesday evening, Cruz gave the keynote address at the inaugural dinner of an organization that calls itself In Defense of Christians.</p>
<p>The purpose of the new organization is supposed to be advocacy on behalf of oppressed Christian communities in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Ahead of the dinner, The Washington Free Beacon website questioned Cruz’s decision to address the group. Several Christian leaders from Lebanon and Syria also scheduled to address the forum had records of public support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and Hezbollah, and had made egregiously anti-Semitic statements.</p>
<p>For instance, Church of Antioch Patriarch Gregory III Laham blamed jihadist attacks on Iraqi Christians on a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam” aimed at making Muslims look bad.</p>
<p>Probably the organization’s leaders assumed that Cruz would give their group bipartisan credibility and never considered he might challenge their anti-Jewish prejudices. No American politician in recent memory has made an issue of the rampant Jew-hatred among Middle Eastern Christians. Probably they figured that he’d make an impassioned speech about the plight of Christians under the jackboot of Islamic State, enjoy warm applause, leave the hall and clear the path for other speakers to blame the Jews.</p>
<p>Cruz did not follow the script. Instead he used the opportunity to tell his audience hard truths.</p>
<p>In a statement released by his office, Cruz summarized the events of the evening.</p>
<blockquote><p>“I told the attendees that those who hate Israel also hate America&#8230; that those who hate Jews also hate Christians. And that anyone who hates Israel and the Jewish people is not following the teachings of Christ.</p>
<p>“I went on to tell the crowd that Christians in the Middle East have no better friend than Israel. That Christians can practice their faith free of persecution in Israel. And that ISIS [Islamic State], al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah, along with their state sponsors in Syria and Iran, are all part of the same cancer, murdering Christians and Jews alike. Hate is hate, and murder is murder.”</p></blockquote>
<p>For his decision not to take the low road, Cruz was subjected to angry boos and heckling from the audience, whose members angrily rejected his remarks.</p>
<p>“After just a few minutes, I had no choice,” Cruz said. “I told them that if you will not stand with Israel, if you will not stand with the Jews, then I will not stand with you. And then I walked off the stage.”</p>
<p>Cruz’s action was an act of moral leadership.</p>
<p>He stood before his audience of fellow Christians and told his co-religionists that their hatred of Jews and Israel is un-Christian. He told them as well that their bigotry blinds them to their own plight and makes them reject their greatest ally in securing their future in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Cruz’s strategy for fighting Islamic oppression of Christians involves uniting all those oppressed and attacked by jihadists. In all honesty, it is the only policy that has a chance in the long term of securing the future of the Christians of the Middle East.</p>
<p>For Cruz to reach this conclusion, he first had to possess the moral clarity to recognize that Christian Jew-hatred is a major obstacle to securing the future of the Middle East’s Christians.</p>
<p>In other words his strategic vision is anchored in moral courage.</p>
<p>The same evening that Cruz was booed off the stage by an audience of anti-Semitic Christians, US President Obama gave a speech to the general audience where he set out his rationale for fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and his strategy for doing so.</p>
<p>In some ways, it is unfair to compare Obama’s speech to Cruz’s. Cruz addressed a narrow constituency and Obama gave his speech to all Americans, and indeed to the entire world.</p>
<p>A more apt comparison would be between Cruz’s speech to the pro-terror Christians and Obama’s speech to an audience that included Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo in 2009.</p>
<p>Indeed, the chief reason that Cruz’s speech was an act of leadership, and Obama’s was the address of a politician, is that Obama’s speech reflected his remarks in Cairo and his subsequent speeches to Muslim audiences and about Islam throughout the intervening years.</p>
<p>Neither during his speech in Cairo nor in subsequent remarks has Obama ever called out the world’s Muslims for their bigotry against Jews, Christians and others. Neither during his speech in Cairo nor in subsequent addresses has Obama spoken out against Islamic terrorism or the jihadist world view that stands at the foundation of Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p>Rather, throughout his presidency Obama has denied the existence of the jihad, its ideology and the fact that it is a force shaping events throughout the world.</p>
<p>Wednesday’s speech was no exception.</p>
<p>At the outset of his remarks, Obama insisted that Islamic State, or (ISIL has he calls it), “is not ‘Islamic.’” Obama may be right, and he may be wrong.</p>
<p>That’s for Muslims to determine. But whatever the truth is about Islam and jihad, the fact is that hundreds of millions of Muslims believe that Islamic State and other jihadist groups and regimes, of both the Shi’ite and Sunni variety, are accurate expressions of Islam. This is why thousands of Muslims from Europe and the US are flocking to Iraq and Syria to join Islamic State.</p>
<p>Obama’s policies for contending with Islamic jihadists are a natural extension of his refusal to speak hard truths to Muslims or speak truthfully about Islamic terrorism and jihadism. His whitewashing of jihadist Islam on Wednesday night similarly was reflected in the strategy he set out for fighting Islamic State.</p>
<p>As Fred and Kim Kagan noted in The Weekly Standard, Obama’s decision to use counterterror strategies for fighting Islamic State is a recipe for failure. What Obama referred to as “a terrorist organization,” is actually an insurgency that fights battles against standing armies and wins.</p>
<p>Counterterror operations cannot work against such a force.</p>
<p>So, too, Obama&#8217;s asserted that his strategy for fighting Islamic State has been tried and succeeded in Somalia and Yemen. Yet by all accounts, jihadist forces in both countries are not only undefeated, they are becoming stronger.</p>
<p>Obama’s strategy involves joining US air power with anti-Islamic State forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria. Yet aside from the Kurds, all the forces on the ground in both countries are deeply problematic.</p>
<p>Just hours before Obama’s speech, the leadership of Syria’s “moderate” rebel forces was decapitated in an explosion. And for all their moderation, the leaders were part of an anti-Assad coalition that included Islamic State.</p>
<p>Although he is an Alawite, Bashar Assad and his forces are members of the Shi’ite jihadist coalition led by Iran that includes Hezbollah.</p>
<p>These forces are more dangerous than Islamic State. Yet US air strikes against Islamic State will redound to their direct benefit.</p>
<p>Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the existence of jihad – of both the Sunni and Shi’ite variety – makes it impossible for him to devise a realistic strategy for defeating jihadists. He rightly defines Islamic State as an enemy of the US, but because he denies the existence of jihad, he is incapable of putting Islamic State in its proper strategic context. Among the many forces fighting on the ground in Iraq and Syria today, you have two jihadist forces – one Shi’ite and one Sunni – that are fighting each other. Both are enemies of America and its allies.</p>
<p>To be sure, Islamic State must be confronted and defeated – just as Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaida, Hamas and Boko Haram need to be defeated.</p>
<p>Defeating only one group empowers others, and so you keep ending up where you started.</p>
<p>Yet rather than understand that while jihadist forces may oppose one another, the threat they pose to the free world is indivisible, as Obama focuses on Islamic State, he is enabling Iran to expand its power in Iraq and Syria, and to complete its nuclear weapons program.</p>
<p>Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran continues to hide key information about its nuclear program from the UN nuclear watchdog, despite its agreement to provide the IAEA with full transparency last November.</p>
<p>The Iranians continue to bar IAEA inspectors from the suspected military nuclear installation at Parchin. Negotiations on a nuclear accord between the US and its partners and Iran are going nowhere. According to Western diplomatic sources, the failure to reach an accord owes entirely to Iran’s refusal to compromise on any substantive nuclear issues.</p>
<p>While Iran refuses to provide transparency to the IAEA, its guiding strategy is clear to the naked eye. It is prolonging negotiations to buy time to complete its nuclear program.</p>
<p>However, Obama, who insists that Islamic State “terrorists are unique in their brutality,” refuses to see the true picture.</p>
<p>The truth revealed on Wednesday night is that Obama cannot lead a successful war against the forces of Islamic jihad that threaten humanity. He cannot do so because he rejects the moral clarity required to confront the danger.</p>
<p>He cannot successfully lead the war because, as we saw once again on Wednesday night, he is not a leader. He is a politician.</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>Terrorist Recruiters in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/terrorist-recruiters-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=terrorist-recruiters-in-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2014 04:30:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ACLU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amir Meshal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mosque]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recruit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240640</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And how the ACLU abets them. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/amir-meshal-false-imprisonmentjpg-21f37145361bc25f_large.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240641" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/amir-meshal-false-imprisonmentjpg-21f37145361bc25f_large.jpg" alt="amir-meshal-false-imprisonmentjpg-21f37145361bc25f_large" width="297" height="287" /></a>A federal grand jury investigation going on all summer in St. Paul, Minnesota has been focused on a group of 20-30 Somali-Americans allegedly conspiring to join the fight with ISIS in Syria. Most of the youths being investigated have been going to the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center and mosque in Bloomington, where sources <a href="http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/274233901.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the Star Tribune that 31-year-old Amir Meshal, an American of Egyptian descent, may have influenced them to join the jihadist movement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been aware of Meshal for quite some time. The native New Jerseyan was detained and interrogated by the agency in 2007 in Kenya, following his escape from Somalia. Meshal admits he attended a terrorist training camp in Somalia, but insists he isn’t a terrorist, claiming he went to that war-torn nation to enrich his study of Islam.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A 2009 <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Meshal_v._Higgenbotham_Complaint_11.10.09_0.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">lawsuit</span></a> filed by the ACLU on his behalf alleged that after being arrested in a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the Somalia-Kenyan border, Meshal was transferred between jails in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia without ever being charged or having access to counsel. During that time he was allegedly interrogated by two Supervising Special Agents of the FBI more than 30 times, during which he said he was repeatedly threatened with “torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm” in order to coerce a confession. He was ultimately brought back to the United States and released without being charged.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite the ACLU’s contention that Meshal’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated, along with the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, the case was <a href="https://www.aclu.org/national-security/court-dismisses-aclu-suit-behalf-us-citizen-abused-fbi-abroad"><span style="color: #1255cc;">dismissed</span></a> by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 13. Despite buying the government’s argument that national security considerations abroad preclude judicial remedies for the mistreatment Meshal allegedly endured, Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, was <a href="http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/06/17/judge-finds-courts-cannot-protect-us-citizens-tortured-by-us-government-officials-abroad/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">distressed</span></a> by the decision. &#8220;The facts alleged in this case and the legal questions presented are deeply troubling,” he contended, before conceding his hands were tied. “Although Congress has legislated with respect to detainee rights, it has provided no civil remedies for US citizens subject to the appalling mistreatment Mr. Meshal has alleged against officials of his own government.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This past summer, Meshal began occasionally <a href="http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/26469968/man-booted-from-minn-mosque-an-isis-recruiter-or-fbi-mole"><span style="color: #1255cc;">showing</span></a> up at the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center, where hundreds of Muslims show up for prayer on Fridays at one of the largest mosques in the Twin Cities. He was known for having lots of money and driving a fancy BMW. In June, a parent at the center complained about Meshal promoting radical Islam. That aroused the suspicion of mosque director Hyder Aziz, who was so concerned about Meshal’s intentions he went to the police that same month and obtained a no-trespass order. “I made a decision that he needs to be removed from the premises,” Aziz said. “I will call police if he ever shows up and they will arrest him.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It may be too late. Federal authorities believe that at least a dozen Somali men and three women have traveled to the Middle East to join in jihad directly, or aid the terrorists in some capacity, including two people who attended Al Farooq and disappeared, presumably to Syria. One is a 19-year-old Somali woman from St. Paul who was not identified. The other is 20-year-old Abdi Mohamed Nur who played basketball at the center and attended the Bloomington mosque. He disappeared around the same time the no trespass order against Meshal was issued.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In June the FBI prevented another teen from boarding a plane at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport because they believed his final destination was Syria. He had been dropped off at school by his father, after which he allegedly changed clothes and headed to the airport with a suitcase. When the FBI arrested him they made it clear to his family they were less interested in him than who recruited him.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet as the grand jury investigation has revealed, the level of distrust among members of the community is impeding the investigation. “The relationship between our community and law enforcement has been, at times, very tense and full of suspicion,” said Omar Jamal, director of the St. Paul-based nonprofit American Friends of Somalia. “We’re improving, but we’re not there yet. Both sides are coming to realize that in order to stop these recruitments, we have to work together. One side can’t accomplish the task without the other.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nonetheless, many of those who have been subpoenaed are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to answer questions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hashi Shafi, director of the Somali Action Alliance in Minneapolis, claims many people want to speak, but are “scared.” Yet Shafi and other community leaders are urging families who have lost children to jihad recruitment to speak up. “We are the victims of this violent extremism so we have to stand up and lead these kinds of efforts,” he explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Meshal himself remains at large. The 18-year-old youth stopped at the airport in June has <a href="http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/26469968/man-booted-from-minn-mosque-an-isis-recruiter-or-fbi-mole"><span style="color: #1255cc;">accused</span></a> him of being his recruiter. The youth’s attorney upped the ante, accusing Meshal of being a double-agent for the FBI and ISIS. The lawsuit filed by the ACLU provides some insight into the accusation: Meshal claimed the FBI tried to turn him into a government informant, taking him off the government’s no-fly list if he cooperated. And while the youth’s lawyer is sticking with that assertion, the teen himself will not testify against Meshal unless he is granted immunity.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Last month two Americans from Minnesota, Douglas McCain and Abdirahmaan Muhumed, aka Abdifatah Ahmed, were killed fighting for ISIS. In a shocking <a href="http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/26441293/details-of-isis-fighters-minneapolis-airport-security-clearance"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revelation</span></a> that underscores America’s continuing vulnerability to terror attacks, the Metropolitan Airports Commission conceded that Ahmed held a Secure Identification Display Area (SIDA) security badge, granting him airport security clearance and unfettered access to the tarmac and planes to perform his job as an aircraft fueler and cleaner. He performed the jobs intermittently between 2001 and 2011.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Shafi and other area leaders are apparently committed to rooting out the extremism afflicting their community. They have begun holding meetings with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department and Department of Homeland Security’s civil liberties division. An additional meeting is being planned with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and airport administrators. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger is also meeting with local imams on a regular basis &#8220;to develop strong personal and professional relationships with leaders in the Somali community,” in an effort to stop those &#8220;who seek to recruit Somali and other youth into a life of crime, violence and terror.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann will <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/02/are-you-kidding-me-michele-bachmann-shares-what-fbi-allegedly-told-her-about-islamic-state-terrorists-returning-to-u-s/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">introduce</span></a> legislation aimed at preventing any citizen who goes overseas to engage in jihad from returning to America. “In my opinion, they should lose their American citizenship,” she explained. “Because at that point, you have turned against the United States. ISIS has declared the United States as their enemy. Once you join an enemy army … you should, by definition, lose your American citizenship, therefore your passport. You should have no ability to get back into the United States.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">All of these efforts are well-intended and may also be effective—up to a point. &#8220;For some, terrifyingly, the jihad has become a badge of radical chic,” <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/2014/08/31/3405047_is-jihad-britians-latest-radical.html?rh=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">writes</span></a> journalist Alex Massie. &#8220;A lifestyle choice like any other.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is doubtful that the Obama administration is up to the task of deterring people from this lifestyle. Obama&#8217;s newfound commitment to take seriously the threat of ISIS has a troubling backdrop &#8212; namely, the administration’s ongoing determination to <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Emerson/Obama-Islamic-Extremism-Jihad/2013/05/14/id/504527/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">avoid</span></a> identifying the threat as Islamic terror, Obama&#8217;s initial dismissal of ISIS as a “javee” organization, and a 2012 <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/04/20/Flashback-FBI-Training-Manual-Purged-References-To-Islamic-Terror"><span style="color: #1255cc;">purge</span></a> of the FBI&#8217;s <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/93235898/FBI-Counterterrorism-Analytical-Lexicon"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Counterterrorism Analytic Lexicon</span></a>, eliminating the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” “Muslim Brotherhood,” “Hamas,” and “sharia” in the process.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Absent a radical change of direction by this president and his administration, America will remain fertile ground for terrorist recruiters and their willing followers. Amir Meshal is ostensibly one of them. It is virtually certain there are many more.</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 Global Map, 2017</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-global-map-2017</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 04:56:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[allies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama's radical transformation hasn't stopped with America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240660" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg" alt="world-on-fire-creative-commons" width="314" height="228" /></a>Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn&#8217;t stop at America. President Obama&#8217;s greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map.</p>
<p>Fast forward three years. Here&#8217;s where we stand.</p>
<p>Given Europe&#8217;s failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia&#8217;s borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>But it didn&#8217;t stop there. Russia began squeezing Georgia again, and pro-Russian regimes are consolidating their power in Kazakhstan and Belarus. Belarus asked the Russian government to place 15 warplanes inside the country in 2014; Kazakhstan got into a tiff with Russia over comments Putin made unsubtly suggesting a possible invasion of the country, then complied with Putin&#8217;s demands when the West did nothing.</p>
<p>Thus far, Putin has not invaded any NATO countries. But that could change, given the high Russian population in Latvia and Estonia.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jordan&#8217;s kingdom has fallen, replaced by a radical Islamist regime. That Palestinian Arab regime has attempted to consolidate its power by forming an alliance with Hamas in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In Lebanon, the Iranians and Syrians have effectively annexed southern Lebanon. Israel&#8217;s only quiet border is now its southern border with Egypt.</p>
<p>In Syria, Bashar Assad has retained a measure of power by essentially conceding territory to ISIS in the eastern part of the country; after a halfhearted intervention against ISIS, the international community went quiet as ISIS formed its sought-after caliphate in eastern Syria and northern Iraq.</p>
<p>In response, Iran essentially invaded southern Iraq, and Turkey launched covert action against the Kurds in order to prevent the formation of a broader Kurdistan encompassing parts of Turkish territory.</p>
<p>With the withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan, Pakistan has once again made its presence felt. The Taliban have effectively taken control of large swaths of territory, with the help of the Pakistani regime, which has shifted leadership but not position with regard to radical Islam.</p>
<p>In the most stunning international move, China has threatened full-scale annexation of Taiwan, barring access to the South China Sea from Western countries and cutting off Taiwan&#8217;s trade routes. The West has refused to leverage China, fearing financial retaliation. China has made similar moves against the Philippines.</p>
<p>Come 2017, this will be President Obama&#8217;s legacy: a world of redrawn borders, all to the benefit of some of the worst regimes on the planet. When America retreats from the world, its enemies expand.</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>Rand Paul was Against America Being Iran&#8217;s Air Force, Before He was for It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rand-paul-was-against-america-being-irans-air-force-before-he-was-for-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rand-paul-was-against-america-being-irans-air-force-before-he-was-for-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2014 13:32:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rand Paul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It involves the U.S. taking a backseat to Iran and Syria.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_240185" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/pol_senate30__01__970-630x420.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-240185" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/pol_senate30__01__970-630x420-450x300.jpg" alt="Two empty suits" width="450" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Two empty suits</p></div>
<p>There are some ways in which Rand Paul reminds me of Obama. It&#8217;s not just that his view of foreign policy has anti-American roots, but that he paves it over with self-contradictory slickness using expediency to hide his views.</p>
<p>And like Obama, every one of his pronouncements on foreign policy is treated with artificially inflated significance. But if the pronouncement is compared to the complete contradictory thing he was saying before that, its significant collapses.</p>
<p>Case in point, Rand Paul now has a great new plan for ISIS. Be<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/03/rand-paul-wants-to-team-up-with-assad-and-iran-to-stop-isis.html"> Iran&#8217;s air forc</a>e.</p>
<blockquote><p>President Obama may not have a strategy to combat ISIS, but Rand Paul does. And it involves the U.S. taking a backseat to Iran and Syria.</p>
<p>“Right now, the two allies that have the same goal would be Iran and Syria, to wipe out ISIS. They also have the means, and the ability, and they also have the incentive to do so because [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad’s clinging for power and clinging for life there,“the junior Kentucky Senator told Sean Hannity on Wednesday.</p></blockquote>
<p>If Iran and Assad had the means to do it, then why haven&#8217;t they done it yet? Because we haven&#8217;t shown up to be their air force.</p>
<blockquote><p>Paul, who is an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination (though he hasn’t officially announced his candidacy) said that he believes there is a role for the U.S. in fighting ISIS along with Iran, Syria, and Turkey, and if he were president, he would seek congressional approval to “take care” of them “militarily.”</p>
<p>But, he said, “I still would like to see the ground troops and the battles being fought by those who live there, and I think we can give both the technical as well as air support that can be the decisive factor in this.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Rand Paul wants us to support a dictator. This is exactly the kind of thing that he and his father would lecture us about and then claim that the next terrorist attack was blowback for. Except the rules don&#8217;t apply to them.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s the ridiculous thing. You might think that describing Rand Paul&#8217;s plan as turning the US into Iran&#8217;s air force was harsh and unfair&#8230; <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/no-rand-paul-doesnt-support-destroying-isis/">but those were his words</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>In June, Rand Paul was arguing against air strikes on ISIS with an op-ed titled, “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War”</p>
<p>&#8220;What would airstrikes accomplish? We know that Iran is aiding the Iraqi government against ISIS. Do we want to, in effect, become Iran’s air force?…&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Apparently now Rand Paul does want us to be Iran&#8217;s air force. That&#8217;s literally his new plan.</p>
<p>But wait a month or two and Rand Paul will have another editorial out arguing that the &#8220;interventionists&#8221; like Rick Perry want to turn America into Iran&#8217;s air force.</p>
<p>And absolutely no one will remember that he was urging just that in September.</p>
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		<title>The Mideast Through the Eyes of a Lebanese Expat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/the-mideast-through-the-eyes-of-a-lebanese-expat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-mideast-through-the-eyes-of-a-lebanese-expat</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:05:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph Hakim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refugee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The only way to secure Christian survival in the Middle East.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/22003232.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239425" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/22003232-447x350.jpg" alt="22003232" width="329" height="257" /></a>Lebanese born Joseph Hakim is a patriotic American who is deeply involved in community affairs. A successful businessman who came to America with less than $500 in his pocket, he has built a multi-million dollar business. It is not money however, that excites Hakim and gets him going. He is devoted to a single cause, which is saving the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East. Toward that end, he has assumed the presidency of the International Christian Union (ICU), an organization that seeks to secure the existence of Christian communities across the Middle East through advocacy in the U.S. Congress, as well as educational and informational campaigns, and speaking to diverse audiences.</p>
<p>Hakim has just returned from Lebanon and this reporter asked him how Lebanon has changed since his last visit three years ago. Hakim explained,</p>
<blockquote><p>I saw more congestion, and more visible poverty. Syrian refugees are all over the streets of Beirut. Child beggars as young as 5-years old roam the streets asking for money and sometimes food. Approximately <a href="http://www.ihh.org.tr/en/main/news/0/ihhs-oriental-sore-project-in-lebanon/2333"><span style="color: #0433ff;">2 million Syrian</span></a> refugees flooded Lebanon, and there are over 500,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanese camps, as well as Iraqi refugees, fleeing the mayhem there.</p>
<p>It has changed the demography of Lebanon, transforming it from a balanced multi-cultural society to a predominantly Islamic nation. The Christian community feels threatened. I met with Christian religious and political party leaders, and they all spoke about the urgent need to arm the Christian community. They expressed the need to foster a security system for the Christian communities in Lebanon.</p>
<p>Frankly, I was shocked to hear from my Lebanese friends that allegedly the US and the West have conspired with the Turks, Qataris, and Saudis to cleanse the Christian minorities in the Middle East. This is being promoted in the Hezbollah media, with the underlying message that neither the US nor the West is going to come to the aid of the Christian minorities in the Middle East or the Lebanese-Christians. Al-Manar-TV, Hezbollah’s mouthpiece, is seeking to impress the Lebanese-Christians that Hezbollah alone can save them.</p>
<p>There is a feeling that Lebanon is descending back into the 1975 civil war in which the Palestinians and Sunni-Muslims engaged the Christians. The Christian community today understands the Sunni-Shia threat to their existence in the region, as well as in Lebanon.</p></blockquote>
<p style="color: #444444;">We continued the interview as follows:</p>
<p style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #000000;">Joseph Puder: </span><i>As the President of the ICU how do you propose the US should help Christians in the Middle East, especially those in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories?</i></p>
<p style="color: #444444;">Joseph Hakim: ICU seeks US Congressional legislation that would provide ironclad protection for endangered Christian communities throughout the region, especially in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories. Violators of the bill or persecutors of Christians as well as denial of their religious freedom, would lead to criminal charges in the International Court of Justice. Governments of Muslim states that sanction terror against their Christian minorities should be dealt with as if they declared war against the US and its vital interests.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">As the colonial boundaries drafted by Sykes-Picot are disintegrating in Iraq and Syria, ICU envisions an expanded Christian state in Lebanon that would incorporate areas of Syria with a predominant Christian population. The remaining Christian minorities in Iraq and Syria should be granted autonomous status in a federated Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">The Palestinians for example, will always choose the radical Islamic leaders over moderate leaders, but the Christians living in their territories are voiceless with few choices but to flee.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">The US and its European allies must decide whether they can protect their oil interests while ignoring the growing Islamist resurgence or perhaps they can also secure the lives of peace loving Christians in the region.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #000000;">JP: </span><i>ISIS or as it is now called IS (Islamic State) is threatening to overrun Lebanon. What would you propose the US administration should do? Should it provide additional weapons to the Lebanese Army, or send US troops to help the Lebanese Army?</i></p>
<p style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #000000;">JH</span>: About two weeks ago, ISIS attacked the Sunni village of Arsal in Lebanon. The Lebanese army Special Forces, the moujawkal (a counter-sabotage Regiment) and the Maghawir (Lebanese Commando Regiment) halted the ISIS advance, without which, the Bekaa Valley and Lebanon as a whole would have fallen into ISIS’ hands. As President of ICU, I strongly recommend that the US arm the Lebanese Army with advanced weapons, and secure them in safe military bases in the Maten or Keserwan areas. I also recommend joint US-Lebanese army military exercises and joint operations.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">The radicalized predominantly Sunni-Muslim Palestinians in Lebanon pose a grave threat to Lebanon’s delicate demographic balance. Therefore, ICU recommends that the US and the UN devise a roadmap for the removal of the Palestinian camps from Lebanon and their relocation in any one of the vast oil-rich Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, etc.). These Arab states should provide them with decent housing, health care, jobs, and educational opportunities.  Lebanon simply cannot afford it. Under present conditions, the Palestinians amount to a ticking time bomb for the Cedar state. In settling the Palestinians in Arab countries, it would eliminate the corruption surrounding the UNRWA administration of the camps that benefit Lebanese and Palestinian politicians to the detriment of the poor Palestinians.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">Last but not least, along with the Palestinian relocation into the oil-rich Arab states, there must be the disarming of Hezbollah. These two elements along with IS are existential threats to the integrity of Lebanon. Conversely, if that cannot be done, a serious consideration must be given to the arming of Lebanese Christian militias, as well as of Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #000000;">JP</span>: <i>What is your vision for ICU? Given the proper resources, how would you go about protecting Christians in the region?</i></p>
<p style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #000000;">JH</span>: ICU’s mission is to build solid bridges of understanding and brotherhood among Middle Eastern Christians throughout the world, especially in the US. We are a global organization that seeks to unify Christians everywhere, and serve to awaken the Christian conscience to the suffering of Christians throughout the Islamic dominated Middle East.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">As we approach the 100-year anniversary of the Armenian-Christian genocide by the Ottoman Turks, we need to remember that over a million Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians perished. The looming threat of the IS is to the remaining Assyrian Christians as well as to Greek-Orthodox and Catholic-Maronite Christians in Syria and Lebanon. Hopefully, ICU is not a lonely cry in the desert. Ours is meant to be a warning call to western Christians to show solidarity with their persecuted brothers-in-faith.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">ICU has dedicated its efforts towards empowering Christians to assert their unique way of life and values. This runs in conflict with the jihadist aims of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, and IS, whose violent agendas threaten the survival of Christians in the region.  This is the reason ICU is calling for an independent Christian state, as a haven for persecuted Christians, just as Israel served as a haven for the persecuted Jews.</p>
<p style="color: #444444;">Our vision of the future is one of building rather than destroying (the MO of radical Islam). We seek religious harmony instead of religious intolerance as practiced by the Islamists and jihadists. We want to build libraries and theatres while they want to burn them. We hope to contribute to humanity’s advancement, while they seek to roll us back to 7<sup>th</sup> Century barbarism and bloodshed. With the above in mind, our future rests with a secure and independent Christian state allied and protected by the US and the West.</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: Rockets from Syria Now Being Fired into Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/arab-spring-rockets-from-syria-now-being-fired-into-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=arab-spring-rockets-from-syria-now-being-fired-into-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2014 13:16:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239387</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This was always inevitable. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/beer.jpg_wa.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-239388" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/beer.jpg_wa-450x253.jpg" alt="beer.jpg_wa" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s why Israel never got behind the Syrian opposition. As bad as Assad was, the Shiite regime was at least predictable and accountable. Turning over that territory to assorted Sunni Jihadists creates a situation similar to the one in Gaza and Lebanon.</p>
<p>And now <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/five-rockets-fired-from-syria-into-golan-heights/">rockets are being fired into Israel </a>from all three places.</p>
<blockquote><p>“At least five rockets fired from Syria hit different locations across the Golan Heights,” the Israeli army said in a statement.</p>
<p>An army spokeswoman told AFP that it was not known who launched the rockets and the Israeli military did not return fire.</p>
<p>She said there were no casualties in the attacks, at around 1:30 am (2230 GMT) on Sunday, the 48th day of a war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas in and around Gaza.</p>
<p>Several people were treated for shock.</p></blockquote>
<p>Israel has tried to develop some kind of relationship with some of the Sunni groups short of arming them. It has provided medical care and some humanitarian aid.</p>
<p>But this was always inevitable.</p>
<p>The Syrian border is turning into the same mess. The new border threat is less from surprise attacks by organized armies, but the old-fashioned insurgent harassment that Israel was experiencing a lot of before the big wars began. Except that rockets make the insurgencies much more disruptive and able to terrorize larger populations.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s failure to seriously break Hamas encouraged further attacks from Lebanon and Syria. This is how it works. An incomplete offense followed by a withdrawal emboldens other terrorist groups to try their luck.</p>
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		<title>Why Is the Islamic State Behaving This Way?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/why-is-the-islamic-state-behaving-this-way/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-is-the-islamic-state-behaving-this-way</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2014 04:45:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Koranic blueprint for the atrocities currently underway in Iraq. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/390510-456a0a56-fa56-11e3-9463-539ac6ca705b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238919" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/390510-456a0a56-fa56-11e3-9463-539ac6ca705b-450x314.jpg" alt="390510-456a0a56-fa56-11e3-9463-539ac6ca705b" width="292" height="204" /></a>The Islamic State is turning into a huge public relations problem for groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies. For years they have insisted that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorism committed with alarming regularity in its name, and that the people responsible for linking Islam with terrorism were not Islamic jihad terrorists, but “Islamophobic” opponents of jihad terror. But then comes along a group calling itself The Islamic State, committing unimaginable atrocities and presenting each one as an authentic embodiment of Islamic texts and teachings, and the deception campaign at which CAIR officials have labored so assiduously for so many years, and with such great success, is in danger of crashing around their uneasy necks.</p>
<p>Take, for example, the recent revelation that, according to the <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48477"><span style="color: #0433ff;">UN News Centre</span></a>, “some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery.” A similar kidnapping by Islamic jihadists in Nigeria recently horrified the world, but much overlooked was the fact that such behavior is sanctioned by the Qur’an. According to Islamic law, Muslim men can take “captives of the right hand” (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general, as does this passage. “Certainly will the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer humbly submissive, and they who turn away from ill speech, and they who are observant of zakah, and they who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed” (Qur’an 23:1-6).</p>
<p>These passages have not gone unnoticed. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni <a href="http://www.translatingjihad.com/2011/05/egyptian-shaykh-jihad-is-solution-to.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a> in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that meant Muslims would take slaves. In a subsequent interview he elaborated:</p>
<blockquote><p>Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.</p>
<p>When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name <i>milk al-yamin</i>, “that which your right hands possess” [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The <i>milk al-yamin</i> are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a <i>wali</i>. All scholars agree on this point—there is no disagreement from any of them. [...] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.</p></blockquote>
<p>Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also <a href="http://www.translatingjihad.com/2011/06/video-kuwaiti-activist-i-hope-that.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">spoke out</span></a> in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.</p>
<blockquote><p>A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up [this man’s] situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”</p>
<p>The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”</p>
<p>“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The Islamic State acts on these beliefs, which are Qur’an-based. The kidnappings, meanwhile, have taken place amid a backdrop of unimaginable slaughter. The victims were those who refused the Islamic State’s demand that they convert to Islam to save their lives: <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/iraq-were-fleeing-because-jihadists-told-us--convert-to-islam-or-we-slaughter-you-9668760.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">a Yazidi woman</span></a> explained last week why thousands of Yazidis had fled the area of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State: “We came here because the terrorists said, ‘Either you convert to Islam or we slaughter you.’”</p>
<p>The Quran says “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) – a verse much beloved of Western non-Muslim multiculturalists, but it also says that Muslims must fight unbelievers until “religion is all for Allah” (8:39). And it insists that Muslims should “slay them” wherever they’re found (cf. 2:191; 4:89; 9:5).</p>
<p>It also says that Muslims must fight against the “People of the Book” – Jews, Christians, and others who are considered to have received previous revelations from Allah – until they “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). That option of submission and subjugation, however, is not open to groups that have no written revelation that could qualify them for “People of the Book” status. Hence for the Yazidis, to convert or die are the only Qur’anic options open for them.</p>
<p>The Islamic State’s actions are an open book, and that book is the Qur’an. American Muslim spokesmen would do well to explain how they are misinterpreting the Islamic holy books, but claims to that effect have been vague and short of references to problematic passages. As long as that refusal to confront the problem continues, so will the killing.</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>Busting the Media’s ISIS Myths</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/busting-the-medias-isis-myths/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=busting-the-medias-isis-myths</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2014 04:55:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What is wrong with ISIS is what is wrong with Islam.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/isis.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238570" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/isis-426x350.jpg" alt="isis" width="277" height="228" /></a>Know your enemy. To know what ISIS is, we have to clear away the media myths about ISIS.</p>
<p>ISIS is not a new phenomenon.</p>
<p>Wahhabi armies have been attacking Iraq in order to wipe out Shiites for over two hundred years. One of the more notably brutal attacks took place during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson.</p>
<p>That same year the Marine Corps saw action against the Barbary Pirates and West Point opened, but even Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Howard Zinn chiming via Ouija board would have trouble blaming the Wahhabi assault on the Iraqi city of Kerbala in 1802 on the United States or an oil pipeline.</p>
<p>Forget the media portrayals of ISIS as a new extreme group that even the newly moderate Al Qaeda thinks is over the top; its armies are doing the same things that Wahhabi armies have been doing for centuries. ISIS has Twitter accounts, pickup trucks and other borrowed Western technology, but its ideology and brutality have always been part of Islam. They are not a new phenomenon.</p>
<p>Sunnis and Shiites have been killing each other for over a thousand years. Declaring other Muslims to be infidels and killing them is also a lot older than the suicide bomb vest.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda and ISIS are at odds because its Iraqi namesake had a different agenda. Al Qaeda always had different factions with their own agendas that were not more extreme or less extreme, but emerged from varying national backgrounds.</p>
<p>Bin Laden prioritized Saudi Arabia and America. That allowed Al Qaeda to pick up training from Hezbollah which helped make 9/11 possible. This low level cooperation with Iran was endangered when Al Qaeda in Iraq made fighting a religious war with Shiites into its priority.</p>
<p>That did not mean that Bin Laden liked Shiites and thought that AQIQ was “extreme” for killing them.</p>
<p>During the Iraq War, Bin Laden had endorsed Al Qaeda in Iraq’s goal of fighting the Shiite “Rejectionists” by framing it as an attack on America. AQIQ’s Zarqawi had privately made it clear that he would not pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden unless the terrorist leader endorsed his campaign against Shiites.</p>
<p>Bin Laden and the Taliban had been equally comfortable with Sipahe Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which provided manpower for the Taliban while massacring Shiites in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last year LEJ had killed over a hundred Shiite Hazaras in one bombing.</p>
<p>The narrative that ISIS was more extreme than Al Qaeda because it killed Shiites and other Muslims doesn’t hold up even in recent history.</p>
<p>The media finds it convenient to depict the rise of newly extremist groups being radicalized by American foreign policy, Israeli blockades or Danish cartoons. A closer look however shows us that these groups did not become radicalized, rather they increased their capabilities.</p>
<p>ISIS understood that targeting Shiites and later Kurds would make it more appealing to Sunni Arabs inside Iraq and around the Persian Gulf. Bin Laden tried to rally Muslims by attacking America. ISIS has rallied Muslims by killing Shiites, Kurds, Christians and anyone else who isn’t a proper Sunni Arab.</p>
<p>Every news report insists that ISIS is an extreme outlier, but if that were really true then it would not have been able to conquer sizable chunks of Iraq and Syria. ISIS became huge and powerful because its ideology drew the most fighters and the most financial support. ISIS is powerful because it’s popular.</p>
<p>ISIS has become more popular and more powerful than Al Qaeda because Muslims hate other Muslims even more than they hate America.</p>
<p>ISIS is not an outside force that inexplicably rolls across Iraq and terrorizes everyone in its path. It’s actually the public face of a Sunni coalition. When ISIS massacres Yazidis, it’s not just following an ideology; it’s giving Sunni Arabs what they want.</p>
<p>A surviving <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/arab-muslims-neighbors-joined-in-murder-of-yazidis/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Yazidi refugee had told CNN that</span></a> his Arab neighbors had joined in the killing. This wasn’t just ISIS terrorizing a helpless population. It was Islamic Supremacism in action.</p>
<p>ISIS is dominating Iraq and Syria because it draws on support from the Sunni Arab population. It has their support because it is killing or driving out Christians, Yazidis, Shiites and a long list of peoples who either aren’t Muslims or aren’t Arabs while giving their land and possessions to the Sunni Arabs.</p>
<p>The media spent years denying that the Syrian Civil War was a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. It’s unable to deny the obvious in Iraq, but it carefully avoids considering the implications.</p>
<p>An army alone will have trouble committing genocide unless it has the cooperation of a local population that wants to see another group exterminated.</p>
<p>When we talk about ISIS, we are really talking about Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria. Not all of them, but enough that ISIS has become the standard bearer of the Sunni side in the civil wars in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton and John McCain can complain that we could have avoided the rise of ISIS if we had only armed the right sort of Jihadists in Syria, but if ISIS became dominant because its agenda had popular support, then it would not have mattered whom we armed or didn’t arm.</p>
<p>We armed the Iraqi military to the teeth, but it didn’t do any good because the military didn’t represent any larger consensus in an Iraq divided along religious and ethnic lines.</p>
<p>To understand ISIS, we have to unlearn what the media tell us. The media tells us that terrorists only represent an extreme edge of the population. If they have popular support, it’s only because the civilian population has somehow become radicalized. (And usually it’s our fault.)</p>
<p>And yet that model doesn’t hold up. It never did.</p>
<p>The religious and ethnic strife in the Middle East out of which ISIS emerged and which has become its brand, goes back over a thousand years. If support for terrorism emerges from radicalization, then the armies of Islam were radicalized in the time of Mohammed and have never been de-radicalized.</p>
<p>The Caliphate, like the Reich, is a utopia which can only be created through the mass murder and repression of all those who do not belong. This isn’t a new vision. It’s the founding vision of Islam.</p>
<p>What is wrong with ISIS is what is wrong with Islam.</p>
<p>We can defeat ISIS, but we should remember that its roots are in the hearts of the Sunni Muslims who support it. ISIS and Al Qaeda are only symptoms of the larger problem.</p>
<p>We can see the larger problem flying Jihadist flags in London and New Jersey. We can see it trooping through Australian and Canadian airports to join ISIS. We can see it in the eyes of the Sunni Arabs murdering their Yazidi neighbors.</p>
<p>ISIS is an expression of the murderous hate within Islam. We are not only at war with an acronym, but with the dark hatred in the hearts of Jihadists in Iraq and Pakistan… and next door.</p>
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		<title>World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/world-ignores-christian-exodus-from-islamic-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=world-ignores-christian-exodus-from-islamic-world</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:35:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Christian persecution exposes the Left's bigotry toward Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/110682225.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238076" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/110682225-450x307.jpg" alt="110682225" width="296" height="202" /></a>Originally published by the <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4572/christian-exodus-islamic-world">Gatestone Institute</a>.</em></p>
<p>While the world fixates on the conflict between Israel and Hamas—and while most mainstream media demonize Israel for trying to survive amid a sea of Arab-Islamic hostility—similar or worse tragedies continue to go virtually ignored.</p>
<p>One of the most ancient Christian communities in the world, that of Iraq—which already had been decimated over the last decade, by Islamic forces unleashed after the ousting of Saddam Hussein—has now been wiped out entirely by the new “caliphate,” the so-called Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym “ISIS.”</p>
<p>As <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/convert-pay-tax-die-islamic-state-warns-christians-181415698--business.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Reuters</span></a> reported:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Islamist insurgents have issued an ultimatum to northern Iraq’s dwindling Christian population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death, according to a statement distributed in the militant-controlled city of Mosul….</i></p>
<p><i>It said Christians who wanted to remain in the “caliphate” that the Islamic State declared this month in parts of Iraq and Syria must agree to abide by terms of a “dhimma” contract—a historic practice under which non-Muslims were protected in Muslim lands in return for a special levy known as “jizya.”</i></p>
<p><i>“We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,” the announcement said.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The amount of <i>jizya</i>-money demanded was $450 a month, an exorbitant sum for Iraq.</p>
<p>Hours after the demand for jizya was made, Islamists began <a href="http://www.qenshrin.com/details.php?id=35341"><span style="color: #0433ff;">painting the letter “n” on Christian homes in Mosul</span></a>—in Arabic, Christians are known as “Nasara,” or “Nazarenes”—signaling them out for the slaughter to come.</p>
<p>Most Christians have since fled. A one-minute video in Arabic of their exodus appears <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=868502626513196&amp;set=vb.100000604016240&amp;type=2&amp;theater"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>—women and children weeping as they flee their homes—a video that will not be shown by any Western mainstream media outlet, busy as they are depicting instead nonstop images of Palestinian women and children.</p>
<p>The Syrian Orthodox bishop of Mosul said that what is happening to the Christians of Mosul is nothing less than “<a href="http://arabic.rt.com/prg/telecast/700106-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%82%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B3-%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%AC%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%AD%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B5%D9%84-%D9%8A%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D9%88%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%B9-%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%AB-%D9%82%D8%AA%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%88-%D8%A7%D8%BA%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%A8/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">genocide</span></a>… not to mention the slaughters and rapes not being reported… Forcing more than a thousand Christian families out of Mosul, and turning Christian churches into Muslim mosques, is equivalent to genocide.”  Of course, the word genocide means to kill or make extinct a people.</p>
<p>Others were not as lucky to flee. According to Iraqi human rights activist Hena Edward, a great many older and disabled Iraqis, unable to pay the jizya or join the exodus, have <a href="http://www.linga.org/international-news/NjY2MA"><span style="color: #0433ff;">opted to convert to Islam</span></a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the jihadis continue destroying churches and other ancient Christian holy sites in the name of their religion, and murdering any Christians they can find. Among other acts, they <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/isis-torches-1800-old-mosul-church-expelling-christians-194750912.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">torched an 1800 year old church in Mosul</span></a>, stormed a fourth century monastery—formerly one of Iraq’s best known Christian landmarks—and <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/jihadists-seize-iraq-monastery-005850871.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">expelling its resident monks</span></a>.</p>
<p>Most recently, in Syrian regions under the Islamic State’s control, <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.vieinter.com/themiddleeast/isis-crucifies-8-christians-in-syria-for-apostasy-from-islam/">eight Christians were reportedly crucified</a>.</span></p>
<p>The Islamic State’s call for Christians to pay <i>jizya</i> is not simply about money. It is about subjugation. Most Western media reporting on this recent call for <i>jizya</i> have failed to explain the accompanying <i>dhimma</i> contract Christians must also abide by. According to the Islamic State, “We offer them [Christians] three choices: Islam; <i>the dhimma contract</i>—involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword.”</p>
<p>The “dhimma contract” is a reference to the Conditions of Omar, an Islamic text attributed to the caliph of the same name that forces Christians to live according to third class citizen status.</p>
<p>In fact, several months back, when the Islamic State was still called “ISIS,” it applied the Conditions of Omar on the Christian minorities of Raqqa, Syria. The Islamic group had <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26366197">issued a directive</a></span></p>
<blockquote><p><i>citing the Islamic concept of “dhimma”, [which] requires Christians in the city to pay tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold in exchange for their safety. It says Christians must not make renovations to churches, display crosses or other religious symbols outside churches, ring church bells or pray in public. Christians must not carry arms, and must follow other rules imposed by ISIS… “If they reject, they are subject to being legitimate targets, and nothing will remain between them and ISIS other than the sword,” the statement said [emphasis added].</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The persecution and exodus of Christians is hardly limited to Iraq. In 2011, the <a href="http://in.christiantoday.com/articles/christians-could-disappear-from-iraq-and-afghanistan/6919.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom</span></a> noted: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt,” all Muslim majority nations.</p>
<p>Under Saddam Hussein, and before the 2003 U.S. “liberation” of Iraq, more than a million Christians lived in Iraq; Mosul had some 60,000 Christians. Today there are reportedly none thanks to the new Muslim “caliphate.”</p>
<p>In Egypt, some <a href="http://www.christiannewstoday.com/Christian_News_Report_900171.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">100,000 Christian Copts</span></a> fled their homeland soon after the “Arab Spring.” But even before that, the Coptic Orthodox Church lamented the “<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3761/guest-column-egypt-christians-distraught"><span style="color: #0433ff;">repeated incidents of displacement of Copts from their homes</span></a>, whether by force or threat. Displacements began in Ameriya [62 Christian families evicted], then they stretched to Dahshur [120 Christian families evicted], and today terror and threats have reached the hearts and souls of our Coptic children in Sinai.”</p>
<p>In late 2012, it was reported that the <a href="http://www.fides.org/en/news/32561?idnews=32561&amp;lan=eng"><span style="color: #0433ff;">last Christian in the city of Homs</span></a>, Syria—which had a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-plight-of-syrias-christians-we-left-homs-because-they-were-trying-to-kill-us-8274710.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Christian population of some 80,000 before jihadis</span></a> came—was murdered. An escaped teenage Syrian girl said: “We left because they were trying to kill us… because we were Christians…. Those who were our neighbors turned against us. At the end, when we ran away, we went through balconies. We did not even dare go out on the street in front of our house.”</p>
<p>In the African nation of Mali, after a 2012 Islamic coup, as many as <a href="http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=15403&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatholicWorldNewsFeatureStories+%28Catholic+World+News+%28on+CatholicCulture.org%29%29"><span style="color: #0433ff;">200,000 Christians fled</span></a>. According to reports, “<a href="http://www.christiantoday.com/article/appeal.for.christians.in.mali/29908.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the church in Mali faces being eradicated</span></a>,” especially in the north “where rebels want to establish an independent Islamist state and drive Christians out… there have been house to house searches for Christians who might be in hiding, church and Christian property has been looted or destroyed, and people tortured into revealing any Christian relatives.” At least one pastor was beheaded.</p>
<p>One can go on and on:</p>
<p>•In Ethiopia, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/24/thousands-christians-displaced-ethiopia-muslim-extremists-torch-churches-homes-2057387870/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes</span></a> when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes.”</p>
<p>•In the Ivory Coast—where Christians have been crucified—Islamic rebels “<a href="http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2012/s12080114.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">massacred hundreds and displaced tens of thousands</span></a>” of Christians.</p>
<p>•In Libya, Islamic rebels forced <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Islamists-chase-nuns-from-Libya,-people-pray-for-their-return-27021.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">several Christian nun orders</span></a> serving the sick and needy since 1921 to flee and killed several Coptic Christians, causing that community also to flee.</p>
<p>•In Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, where hardly a Sunday passes without a church bombing, Christians are fleeing by the thousands; one region has been emptied of <a href="http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/Archives/Islamist-violence-drives-nearly-95-per-cent-of-Christians-from-Nigerian-state.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">95% of its Christian population</span></a>.</p>
<p>•In Pakistan, after a Christian child was falsely accused of desecrating a Koran and Muslims went on an anti-Christian rampage, an entire Christian village—men, women, and children—<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/30/fearful-pakistani-christians-make-home-in-forest/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was forced to flee into the nearby woods,</span></a> where they built a church, to permanently reside there.</p>
<p>Despite all these atrocities, exoduses, and even genocides, the mainstream media seems to spend every available moment airing images of displaced Palestinians and demonizing Israel for trying to defend itself. Yet Israel does not kill Palestinians because of their religion or any other personal aspects. It does so in the context of being rocketed and trying to defend itself from terrorism.</p>
<p>On the other hand, all the crimes being committed by Muslims against Christians are simply motivated by religious hate, because the Christians are Christian.</p>
<p>It is to the mainstream media’s great shame that those who slaughter, behead, crucify, and displace people for no other reason than because they are Christian, rarely if ever get media coverage, while a nation such as Israel, which kills only in the context of self-defense, and not out of religious bigotry, is constantly demonized.</p>
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		<title>A Syrian-Style Deal for the Islamic Republic?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/a-syrian-style-deal-for-the-islamic-republic/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-syrian-style-deal-for-the-islamic-republic</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:05:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[demands]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The key demands the Obama administration must make of the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/o-ROUHANI-facebook.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236706" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/o-ROUHANI-facebook-426x350.jpg" alt="Hassan Rouhani" width="279" height="229" /></a>In July, the brutal Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad was forced to sail away its last declared chemical weapons stockpile from a Danish ship to a US-government container ship, the Cape Ray, which is located at the Italian port of Gioia Tauro.</p>
<p>This serves as an example for an assertive stance in US foreign policy. Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu lobbied for a Syria-type deal for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Netanyahu pointed out to Sky News, &#8220;A good deal is the one that was done in Syria&#8230; The chemicals and the means to make the weapons were dismantled and removed. What Iran is seeking is to keep the materials and the means to make nuclear weapons, and just allow inspections… Keep and inspect, rather than dismantle and remove &#8211; that&#8217;s the bad deal.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Obama administration was coerced into finally taking a strong position after Al Assad and his Armed Forces crossed the “red line” set by the US government multiple times. American credibility was significantly under question and the government had no other option rather than to carry out the policies that it promised to originally fulfill in case Assad crossed the “red line.”</p>
<p>This reveals that when the United States takes a firm position, it can make progressive changes, raise its credibility on the global stage, and prevent dictators and Islamists from growing.</p>
<p>The chemical case in Syria ought to be set as an example for how the United States should address the theocratic regime of Iran.</p>
<p>The Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards did not suddenly change their intentions to be benevolent actors. Although the Islamic Republic spreads propaganda claiming that political and economic sanctions benefit the Islamic Republic due to the notion that sanctions have made Iran self-sufficient in military, defense, and manufacturing rockets and drones, years of political and economic isolation have endangered their hold on power.</p>
<p>As a result, they changed their tactics to gain back their economy and power. At this moment, the Islamic Republic is on its knees, there is a need for formidable leadership on the other side of the equation.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Obama administration is not seizing the opportunity and is looking for a partial final nuclear deal. The administration is compromising more and more, emboldening the ruling leaders of the Islamic Republic. In Geneva, it is the technocratic elite of the Iranian regime who are setting the rules.</p>
<p>The Supreme Leader recently changed his position, observing America&#8217;s weak stance, pointing out that the Islamic Republic of Iran would want 19,000 centrifuges in a few years for the uranium enrichment machines. He stated, “Their aim is that we accept a capacity of 10,000 separative work units, which is equivalent to 10,000 centrifuges of the older type that we already have. Our officials say we need 190,000. Perhaps not today, but in two to five years that is the country&#8217;s absolute need.” A seperative work unit or SWU is a measurement which shows how much work is needed in order to separate isotopes of uranium. On the other hand, this number of centrifuges is almost nine times more than what the international community has asked.</p>
<p>The number of centrifuges is critical due to the fact that with approximately 9,000 first-generation centrifuges spinning at Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant, and with the current enrichment level, the Islamic Republic can produce adequate weapons-grade uranium in order to create and fuel a nuclear warhead in a couple of months, according to nuclear experts.</p>
<p>When it comes to the Islamic Republic, Khamenei and the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps will have the final say. Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and his technocrat nuclear team are only setting the tone on the international arena.</p>
<p>Previously, Netanyahu stated on NBC News’ “Meet the Press&#8221; that a partial nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran will not work and the complete dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons should be used as an outline.</p>
<p>In addition, Netanyahu recently said,</p>
<blockquote><p>I think we have to be clear that it would cross a line of history that would transcend anything else that we&#8217;re seeing in the Middle East… If one of these warring tribes, in this case the militant Shi&#8217;ites backed by Iran, get their hands on nuclear weapons, the world will be forever changed… Iran is run by an unforgiving sect- it puts forward front men and smiling people like Rouhani, but it&#8217;s governed with an iron hand and an iron heart by this man, [Ayatollah] Ali Khameini.</p></blockquote>
<p>It is time for the Obama administration to use the Syrian case, of coercing the regime into fully giving up their chemical weapons as an example.</p>
<p>The following ought to be the rules that the Obama administration should set for Iran (no more, no less).</p>
<p>1.       The Islamic Republic of Iran should completely dismantle its nuclear program. A partial and compromised nuclear deal that allows Iran to enrich uranium and keep all its nuclear infrastructure, will allow the Islamic Republic to develop a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>2.        The Islamic Republic of Iran should respect human rights. This includes that all kinds of political repression; lack of freedom of speech, press, assembly, women rights, and minorities rights should be addressed.</p>
<p>3.         The Islamic Republic of Iran should halt supporting proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas and cease providing these groups with funds and military and advisory assistance.</p>
<p>4.          Iranian leaders should stop supporting the Assad regime and interfering in Iraq and other regional countries.</p>
<p>5.          Iranian leaders should recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state.</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>Jihadi Rhetoric: Tiresome but Deadly</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/jihadi-rhetoric-tiresome-but-deadly/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jihadi-rhetoric-tiresome-but-deadly</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:45:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[caliphate]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The West ignores the message of Islamic radicals at its own peril. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1404691474000-JENKINS.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235955" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1404691474000-JENKINS.jpg" alt="1404691474000-JENKINS" width="280" height="226" /></a>I just spent the better part of the day reading and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itu6NhED9Yk"><span style="color: #0433ff;">listening</span></a> to sermons by the leaders and jihadis of the new “caliphate” in Mesopotamia, the Islamic State (formerly “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”).</p>
<p>I did so in the vain hopes of learning something “new.”</p>
<p>But it was absolute déjà vu—taking me back to a decade ago, when I was reading and translating the Arabic writings and speeches of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, as collated in <i>The Al Qaeda Reader</i>.</p>
<p>Now as then, it’s the same Koran verses; the same hadiths of Islamic prophet Muhammad waging and praising jihad; the same threats of hellfire for the <i>munafiqun</i> (hypocrites or lukewarm Muslims); the same carnal rewards in the now or hereafter for those who join the “caravan” of jihad.</p>
<p>Consider for instance the following opening words of a recently released short video from the Islamic State titled, “There is No Life Without Jihad”:</p>
<blockquote><p>If you wish to know the way to glory and power, to goodness, security and joy, you must learn that there are no rights without jihad, no justice without jihad, no dignity without jihad, no security without jihad, no future without jihad, no life without jihad, no life without jihad.</p></blockquote>
<p>After this rather hackneyed opening, one Abu Muthana, a jihadi from Britain, appears quoting some more of the usual Koran verses, hadiths, and ulema, in this case, Imam Qurtubi, who wrote that “jihad gives life.”  Finally he summarizes the goal of the jihad—in case anyone is still not sure—namely, to fight until “the law [Sharia] of Allah is implemented and the caliphate restored.”</p>
<p>To reiterate, there is little new or original in the videos and communiques from the Islamic State.  Just static Islamism.</p>
<p>If one turns to the speeches of other Islamic and jihadi groups around the world—from the African groups such as Boko Haram (Nigeria) and al-Shabaab (Somalia), to Asian groups such as Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and the Islamic Movement (Uzbekistan)—it’s the same thing, same themes, same scriptures, same quotations, same exhortations, same condemnations.  Only their temporal circumstances and vicissitudes of victory or defeat differ.</p>
<p>While the Western mentality, so used to seeing and hearing about the “latest” or “newest” fad, may deem the Islamist approach as static or insipid, it is, quite the contrary, immensely effective for its purposes, and thus dangerous.</p>
<p>Consider: It’s the same exact message—of supremacism, hate, and violence, capped off with divine sanctioning—repeated over and over again, from a myriad of sources and organizations, all of which claim authority.</p>
<p>One can think of few better ways to brainwash and indoctrinate young and impressionable minds—to the point that they eagerly embrace death, including through suicide (AKA “martyrdom operations”).</p>
<p>Nor is this message of jihad, conquest, and death-to-the-infidel, limited to the verbiage that transpires among terrorist organizations; instead, this sort of rhetoric has spread far and wide, thanks to modern technology—including the Internet and social media—and the rich Gulf States, chief among them Saudi Arabia, which have seen to it that the jihadi books and passages being quoted are available to all and sundry.</p>
<p>Indeed, and has been demonstrated repeatedly, such jihadi rhetoric is regularly used in mosques all throughout Europe and America—explaining why an inordinate amount of jihadis in Syria and Iraq, such as Abu Muthana,  the aforementioned “Brit,” are in fact from the West.</p>
<p>If the West, in the name of “religious freedom,” is still too fretful to monitor and ban such sermons, in Egypt—a Muslim nation in the heart of the Islamic world—the post Muslim Brotherhood government has come to understand the necessity of <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/105222/Egypt/Politics-/The-fight-over-Egypts-mosques-The-state-versus-the.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">outlawing “certain” kinds of sermons and preachers from the mosques</span></a>, specifically, those about jihad against infidels and apostates.</p>
<p>Of course, such a move sounds extremely “anti-freedom” to the liberal mentality; the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/the-new-york-times-propaganda-war-on-egypt/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">bemoaned it</span></a>, without considering that such a clampdown on sermon topics actually combats terrorism and saves human lives.  For example, the overwhelming majority of attacks on Egypt’s Christian Copts occur on Friday—the one day of the week Muslims congregate in mosques to hear sermons.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, such a move from Egypt—an Islamic nation—is an indicator of just how problematic unregulated (i.e., jihadi) sermons can be: if “moderate” Muslims are fearful from the repercussions of “radicalized” sermons, shouldn’t we “infidels” be even more wary of them?</p>
<p>In the end, there’s good news and bad news in all this: the good news is that one need not be familiar with the constant communiques, videos, and messages emanating from this or that jihadi group—for they are all recycled, all the same.  To hear one, is to  hear them all.</p>
<p>The bad news is that, due to the severe lack of common sense and censorship in the form of political correctness that plagues the West, the rhetoric of jihad and its unvarying message of hate remains wholly unintelligible.</p>
<p>If the jihadis, like parrots, are forever repeating each other—and compelling other parrots to join them—Western leaders and politicians, like ostriches, are forever sticking their heads in the sand, lest they acknowledge the cacophony of hate surrounding them, and us.</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>What an Islamic Caliphate Would Mean for the West</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/what-an-islamic-caliphate-would-mean-for-the-west/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-an-islamic-caliphate-would-mean-for-the-west</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jul 2014 04:40:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim reveals the dire consequences of the meltdown of Iraq.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was recently interviewed by CBN News&#8217; George Thomas on the rise of the Islamic State, its aspirations for caliphate, and what all that means for free peoples around the world:</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>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[caliphate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<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>If We Want to Beat Al Qaeda, We Have to Stop Arming It</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/if-we-want-to-beat-al-qaeda-we-have-to-stop-arming-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=if-we-want-to-beat-al-qaeda-we-have-to-stop-arming-it</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2014 04:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[$500 million]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235190</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We can’t win by aiding our worst enemies.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/isis1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235193" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/isis1-450x299.jpg" alt="isis" width="293" height="195" /></a>Obama’s call for $500 million to arm and train Syrian Jihadist fighters couldn’t have possibly come at a more inappropriate time as Al Qaeda in Iraq menaces both countries.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the Iraq War that made the Al Qaeda affiliate so dangerous. In 2008 it specialized in suicide bombings. It wasn’t marching on Baghdad with an army behind it.</p>
<p>The Arab Spring destabilized the region while money, weapons and recruits poured into Libya and Syria. Obama’s regime change war in Libya led not only to the takeover of entire Libyan cities by Al Qaeda, culminating in the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, but to an Al Qaeda affiliate seizing much of neighboring Mali. Libyan terror training camps also led to an attack on the Amenas gas plant in Algeria.</p>
<p>Three Americans were killed in that attack bringing the US death toll from Obama’s Libyan War up to seven.</p>
<p>But that was last year. This year it’s the Syrian Civil War that turned its local Al Qaeda affiliates into breakout Jihadi stars seizing entire cities and terrorizing the region.</p>
<p>Obama’s solution is to direct money intended for counterterrorism partnerships to terrorists in Syria.</p>
<p>This may be one of the worst ideas that he has ever come up with. Attempts to control the flow of weapons likely played a role in the Benghazi attacks. NATO forces enforcing an arms embargo on Libya <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obama-administration-oversaw-arms-shipments-to-al-qaeda-in-libya/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">had been told to ignore Qatari weapons shipments</span></a> that were meant for “moderates”.</p>
<p>Instead they went to Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Obama and Kerry, not to mention Graham and McCain, believe that weapons can be directed to “moderate” Syrian groups and that by arming the “good” terrorists, we’ll stop the “bad” terrorists.</p>
<p>But there are no “good” terrorists. Promises of delivering weapons only to “pre-vetted” groups are worth as much as Obama’s assurances that Al Qaeda was on the run and that ISIS is only a jayvee team.</p>
<p>Kerry met with Ahmad al-Jarba, the President of the Syrian National Coalition. Al-Jarba said that $500 million wouldn’t be enough and demanded more weapons. Meanwhile Al-Jarba was feuding with Ahmad Tohme, the Prime Minister of the SNC’s fictional government. Tohme had attempted to disband the Supreme Military Council over corruption charges while firing the head of the Free Syrian Army.</p>
<p>None of this really matters because the SNC is a puppet regime with many puppet masters and no puppets. The Syrian front men for the Saudis, Qataris, the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey and other factions are constantly firing each other. Their Free Syrian Army is a label stamped on a bunch of Islamist militias, many of whom openly support Al Qaeda.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/4-of-5-moderate-free-syrian-army-front-commanders-demand-to-work-with-al-qaeda/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Four out of five of the FSA’s</span></a> front commanders had demanded to work with Al Qaeda last year. Parts of the FSA joined the Islamic Front and seized the FSA’s weapons warehouses taking anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. The FSA fighters fled. Earlier ISIS had seized USAID items intended for the FSA.</p>
<p>After these embarrassments Obama was forced to temporarily suspend aid to the Free Syrian Army.</p>
<p>A senior Al Qaeda terrorist who answered to Ayman Al-Zawahiri was a leading figure in the Islamic Front through Ahrar al Sham, which operated alongside the FSA, until he was killed in an attack by ISIS. Ahrar al Sham had a powerful role in the Supreme Military Council through Deputy Chief of Staff Abdel-basset Tawil.</p>
<p>The FSA, to the extent that it exists, consists of bearded Salafist fighters and commanders in the field and “moderate” leaders in suits in Qatar and Turkey who usually never set foot in Syria. They obtain weapons and money from the West for Jihadists who are much less camera friendly.</p>
<p>Groups such as Liwa al Ummah choose to affiliate with the FSA even while they continue fighting alongside the Al Nusra Front. Experts label some Syrian Jihadist groups as moderate and others as extremist, but the “moderates” and “extremists” fly the black flag of Jihad and fight for an Islamic state.</p>
<p>Pre-vetting the groups means nothing because names like the Free Syrian Army or the Supreme Military Council are only fronts for outside interests. Even the names of the individual militias are often meaningless because new groups and new umbrella groups are constantly being created and dissolved.  Fighters and commanders move from one group to another taking their weapons with them.</p>
<p>Keeping track of the various pseudonyms used by the commanders is already a full time job. It is often impossible to tell whether two Jihadist commanders with the same pseudonym are even the same person. Figuring out the relationship between various groups means depending on intelligence from those groups and various activists on the ground who all have their own alliances and agendas.</p>
<p>No meaningful vetting is possible under these circumstances and supplying weapons to “pre-vetted” groups is as good as supplying them to Al Qaeda. Supplying weapons to pre-vetted groups only  means that it will take longer for those weapons to reach Al Qaeda through barter, alliance or capture.</p>
<p>And even if the weapons don’t end up with Al Qaeda, they will go to Salafist groups that share its goals. The difference is that those have not yet officially declared war on us. That same false sense of security led to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi.</p>
<p>We should not be arming any Islamic militias. We certainly should not be arming Salafi Jihadis who wave the black flag of Jihad. That would be more foolish than anything that Carter did in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>And even if we could control who the weapons went to and even if the Free Syrian Army were moderate, prolonging the Syrian Civil War only makes Al Qaeda more dangerous. Some have said that the best scenario is for both the Sunni and Shiite sides to go on bleeding. But the Syrians and Iraqis are not Americans. They have a much higher birth rate and a much lower regard for individual life.</p>
<p>A prolonged conflict will not break them. It will however train them.</p>
<p>Iran and Iraq bounced back from a much more devastating war to become serious threats.  Conflicts in the region are training grounds that make enemies more dangerous, not less. The longer the fighting goes on, the more fighters will be recruited and the more competent commanders will emerge.  And no matter how the fighting ends, many of those fighters and commanders will go on to other wars.</p>
<p>Afghanistan produced many of the Al Qaeda fighters and commanders who became a threat to the United States. The Arab Spring wars are producing a new generation of fighters. Their expertise will lead to multiple terror attacks and wars around the world. There is already concern about Muslim settlers in America, Europe, Canada and Australia who have gone to fight in Syria returning to the West.</p>
<p>The longer the conflict goes on, the more of them there will be. Prolonging the fighting by aiding the Sunnis is a mistake that ultimately helps Al Qaeda, not to mention Hezbollah, become more dangerous.</p>
<p>The myth of a moderate alternative to Al Qaeda that we can create with weapons shipments is an appealing fiction. The FSA couldn’t stand up to the Islamic Front. It certainly can’t stand up to ISIS. And there is no need for it to do so. The opposition fighters all want the same thing. They only disagree on who will have the upper hand. That is why Al Nusra fought against ISIS before kissing and making up.</p>
<p>The forces of the Sunni opposition have much more in common ideologically and culturally with each other than they do with us. Their common goal is a Sunni Islamic state built by the Jihad.</p>
<p>We can’t win by supporting them. We can only lose.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing Obama&#8217;s catastrophic foreign policy:</em></p>
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