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Former UK Defense Chief: Cameron lacked “balls” to head off rise of Islamic State

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“Lord Richards reportedly told author Sir Anthony Seldon that the prime minister had in 2012 rejected a ‘coherent military strategy’ to take on the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, which would in his view have seen the Islamic extremists ‘squeezed out of existence.’” It seems fanciful that taking on the Islamic State’s enemy, Assad, would have “squeezed” the Islamic State “out of existence,” but it is manifestly true that David Cameron lacks the courage and vision to take on the jihad threat in general, and is instead following a disastrous policy of appeasement and accommodation of Islamic supremacists that is going to result in nothing less than the ruin of Britain if it isn’t stopped.

“Too often it seems to be more about the Notting Hill liberal agenda rather than statecraft.” No doubt about that.

“David Cameron lacked ‘balls’ to head off the rise of Isis, says former defence chief,” by Frances Perraudin, Guardian, August 30, 2015 01.06 EDT
Last modified on Sunday 30 August 2015:

David Cameron lacked “the balls” to take the military action in Syria that could have prevented the rise of Islamic State, a former head of the armed forces has said.

In a scathing analysis of the UK prime minister’s approach, Gen Lord Richards of Herstmonceux said Cameron’s approach seemed “more about the Notting Hill liberal agenda rather than statecraft”.

Lord Richards reportedly told author Sir Anthony Seldon that the prime minister had in 2012 rejected a “coherent military strategy” to take on the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, which would in his view have seen the Islamic extremists “squeezed out of existence”.

The comments are detailed in Seldon’s biography of Cameron – titled Cameron at 10: the Inside Story 2010-2015 – which is being serialised in the Mail on Sunday.

Lord Richards, who was chief of the defence staff from October 2010 to July 2013, is quoted as saying: “If they had the balls they would have gone through with it … if they’d done what I’d argued, they wouldn’t be where they are with Isis.

“In Ukraine, as in Syria and Libya, there is a clear lack of strategy and statecraft. The problem is the inability to think things through. Too often it seems to be more about the Notting Hill liberal agenda rather than statecraft.”

The House of Commons voted against military action in Syria in 2013 and parliamentary authorisation has so far only been given to UK airstrikes against Isis in neighbouring Iraq.

But Cameron and the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, made clear they were considering extending the military air campaign to Syria in the wake of the Tunisian beach massacre on 26 June, which claimed 30 British victims among the 38 dead….

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Will the Film ’13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi’ impact the 2016 Election?

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Scott Mendelson in his Forbes article “‘13 Hours’ Trailer: Is Michael Bay’s Benghazi Action Pic The Next ‘American Sniper’?” reports:

It is not surprising that Paramount/Viacom Inc. would choose the opening weekend of Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation to unveil the first trailer for their early 2016 release 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. We now have the first trailer to what will surely be the first water cooler movie of 2016. The film is based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s acclaimed moment-by-moment account of what went wrong when the embassy was attacked by armed militants on September 11th, 2012.

Oh yes, we are all going to be talking about this one on January 15th, 2016. I won’t pretend I am an expert on the book or the incident just because I read some lengthy reviews of the book in order to prepare for this piece, but the book seems to focus on the handful of private security officers who attempted to defend the trapped civilians, as opposed to throwing partisan blame in one direction or another. I’m sure we’ll see Paramount, director Bay, and stars John Krasinski and James Badge Dale stressing the non-political nature of the story, how it’s about the bravery of the men who fought regardless of who was to blame, etc, etc.

But that won’t mean that this film won’t be something of a lightning rod basically a month away from the Iowa caucuses which will basically kick off the primary election process for the 2016 presidential race. [Emphasis added]

Watch the trailer for ’13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi’ set for release on January 15th, 2016:

RELATED ARTICLE: What Michael Bay’s ’13 Hours’ Reveals About the Benghazi Attacks

Obama: “Ideologies are not defeated with guns”

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1. Yes, they are. Cf. National Socialism.

2. The United States is not trying to defeat the Islamic State, or the global jihad in general, with “a more attractive and more compelling vision.” Instead, we supervised the installations of constitutions that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Imposing Sharia is the goal of all jihad groups, including the Islamic State. The United States has never stood in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else, for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, equality of rights for women, etc. — all of which are denied in Sharia. In other words, we didn’t counter their ideas with a more attractive and compelling vision. We didn’t counter them at all, and still aren’t doing so, because to do so would be considered “Islamophobic.”

And how is he going to counter their ideology when he won’t even acknowledge what it is?

3. “Our efforts to counter violent extremism must not target any one community because of their faith or background.” If he is referring to attacks on innocent Muslims, of course, no innocent Muslims should suffer any harm or injustice. He seems to be saying more than that. The idea that it is wrong to fight Islamic jihad by paying attention to Muslim communities more than Baptist or Jewish or Hindu or Amish communities is absurd. Islamic jihad is committed by Muslims. Obama won’t even call it Islamic jihad or admit that it is a specifically Muslim phenomenon, and insofar as he diverts any resources to tracking “right-wing extremism” on the basis of bogus studies, he makes us all less safe.

“Obama’s War Speech: ‘Ideologies Are Not Defeated With Guns,’” by Charlie Spiering, Breitbart, July 6, 2015:

At the Pentagon, President Obama delivered an update on his war against Islamic State terrorism, saying that the operation would take time to defeat the terrorist organization.

“This will not be quick, this is a long-term campaign,” he asserted, describing ISIS as “nimble” and infiltrated with civilians across the Middle East.

Obama did not announce any major shifts in his strategy, but reminded reporters that the fight was “not simply a military effort.”

“Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision,” he said.

Obama warned Americans of the increasing threat of individual acts of terror by lone wolf terrorists, but warned against targeting the region of Islam.

“Our efforts to counter violent extremism must not target any one community because of their faith or background – including patriotic Muslim Americans who are keeping our country safe,” he said.

But he admitted that ISIL was targeting Muslims.

“We also have to acknowledge that ISIL has been particularly effective at reaching out to and recruiting vulnerable people around the world including here in the United States and they are targeting Muslim communities around the world,” he said.

When asked by reporters if he was considering the use of American ground troops to defeat ISIS, he insisted that it was not under consideration.

“If we try to do everything ourselves all across the Middle East, all across North Africa, we’ll be playing ‘Whack-a-mole’ and there will be a whole lot of unintended consequences that ultimately will make us less secure,” he said.

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The Ideological Gutting of American Foreign Policy

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It was clear on the morning of September 11, 2001, that the United States was at war with Islamic radicals, and while there may have been differences of opinion regarding strategy, there was no denying the need to defeat doctrinal terrorism.  But as the U.S. became mired in foreign wars, critics questioned whether its actions were achieving the goal, and ultimately whether the goal was even justified.  Voices on the left falsely claimed that Arab-Muslim extremism was an understandable response to western chauvinism, and instead of condemning terrorists for their actions, they started blaming the victims for allegedly insulting Islam.

We saw it with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, when progressive pundits blamed free expression for inciting violence instead of the ideology that sanctified the killing of “infidels,” “heretics” and “blasphemers.”  Such attitudes arise from a perverse political correctness that elevates radical sensitivities over western cultural values.  But how can secular apologists defer to a doctrine that repudiates liberal democratic traditions?  How can they dignify claims of blasphemy against those who criticize beliefs they don’t consider sacred?

These questions were discussed at a program in Massachusetts entitled, “Freedom Isn’t Free: From the Greatest Generation to the Challenges of Today,” featuring former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney, former CIA Operations Officer Clare Lopez and retired Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons, Jr., who provided insight into how such issues affect government policy.

Progressives who reflexively condemn religion in politics or any perceived trespass of faith into the affairs of state are strangely silent when the religion is Islam.  Incongruously, they often discourage free speech to avoid insulting radical beliefs.

The panel agreed that such muddled thinking influences the Obama administration’s views regarding national security and foreign policy.  Despite the global threat represented by ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and regardless of the nuclear danger posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the White House has taken the dangerous road of appeasing the unappeasable.  Since his first days in office, President Obama has turned American foreign policy away from its traditional allies and towards an axis of regimes committed to doctrinal totalitarianism.

He seems driven by the progressive compulsion to validate claims of Arab-Muslim victimhood while denying the extremism and anti-Semitism so common in Islamic society.  Secular liberals often misrepresent Islamist aspirations by claiming that jihad means “introspection” or “inner striving,” and by denying the history of Islamic conquest in the Mideast, Asia, North Africa and Europe.  They also ignore the theological motivations for persecuting non-Arabic and non-Muslim indigenous peoples, such as Copts, Yazidis and Maronites.

Lenin described western leftists as “useful idiots” for supporting communism over their own national interests; the term applies to progressives today who defend or justify Islamism.  Frank Gaffney described the left-wing’s relationship with radical Islam as a “red-green alliance.”

According to Gaffney, the term “jihad” has only one meaning under Sharia, and that meaning is holy war.  He said it motivated the 9/11 attacks, the 1983 bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut, the Fort Hood massacre in 2009, and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish market in Paris earlier this year.  While not all Muslims support jihad –indeed many come to the West specifically to escape doctrinal extremism – there is no definition of the concept that preaches respect for “infidels” or their beliefs.

Those unable to engage in violent jihad, says Gaffney, are exhorted to engage in “civilizational jihad” by transforming western society from within.  The process includes disseminating propaganda in public schools, promoting sharia courts over civil courts, pursuing sharia-compliant financing requirements, and using societal institutions to assist in spreading the faith.  Gaffney said the existence of the “Civilizational-Jihadist Process” was confirmed in a Muslim Brotherhood documententitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” which sets forth mission and strategy.

The success of this program in the West, said Gaffney, is reflected by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s pervasive influence in the United Nations and the establishment of Sharia compliant zones throughout Europe.  This strategy is pursued in the U.S. through initiatives seeking civil recognition of sharia court jurisdiction, the circulation of educational materials produced by Islamist front organizations, legal and illegal immigration, and efforts to gain access to the White House and the security, defense and intelligence establishments.

Islamist intrusion in government (with the complicity of the left) affects national security through the adoption of policies contrary to American strategic interests, said former CIA officer Clare Lopez.  Progressive-Islamist cooperation, she said, was instrumental in purging the FBI’s clandestine library of materials deemed offensive to Islam – though these materials were essential for teaching how to identify Islamist terrorists – and in depriving the military of the means to spot Islamist sympathizers within the ranks.

According to Lopez, the shielding of Islamists from scrutiny is not simply a case of political correctness run amok, but of government policy to empower the Muslim Brotherhood and support its ascendancy in the Mideast.  She said this was the crux of Presidential Study Directive 11 (“PSD 11”), which reportedly called for backing the Brotherhood to force political change in the Mideast and North Africa.  Leaks from this classifieddocument suggest the administration supported the Brotherhood and related groups when they toppled governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, she explained.

This policy produced disastrous consequences across the region, said Lopez, observing that “the outcomes [were] chaotic … shortsighted and ignorant.”  These would have been egregious if only caused by negligence.  However, the uprisings misleadingly dubbed the democratic “Arab Spring” were ignited by a strategy that in itself “wasn’t error [but] policy,” she said.  These policy failures were especially glaring after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

Lopez and the panel believe the Benghazi attack resulted from the administration’s support of militias linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in their quest to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi (and also the governments in Egypt and Tunisia).  Although Qaddafi had renounced terrorism, relinquished weapons of mass destruction, submitted to nuclear inspections, and jailed terrorists released from Gitmo, Islamist opposition militias in Libya were supported with arms funneled by the U.S. through Benghazi.  After he was overthrown, she said, weapons from Benghazi were redirected to anti-government militias in Syria.

During this time the Ansar al-Sharia moved near the consulate and called for attacks on Americans.  Lopez explained that when Ambassador Chris Stephens requested increased security, he was denied by Hillary Clinton’s State Department because of optics; with the 2012 election approaching, the administration wanted to continue claiming it had defeated al-Qaeda and won the war on terror.  Thus, despite multiple warnings of impending attack, no reinforcements were provided, the consulate was overrun and four Americans were killed.  According to Admiral Lyons, there were military assets in the region that could have been deployed, but which inexplicably were not.

The White House and State Department thereafter claimed the attack was a spontaneous reaction to a video critical of Islam – although information immediately available showed it was preplanned and unrelated to the video.  The ruse continued for weeks and included Mr. Obama’s statement during a “60 Minutes” interview the next day that it was “too early to know exactly how it came about” and Susan Rice’s repetition of the false video narrative during multiple television appearances.

As the administration supported Sunni militias aligned with the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Syria and North Africa, it pandered to Iranian Shiites around the Persian Gulf.  According to Lopez, Obama’s policy was to recognize Iran as the hegemonic power in the Mideast.  He thus snubbed Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia and embraced a Shiite regime that threatens those allies, condemns America as the “Great Satan,” seeks Israel’s destruction, and exports international terrorism.

The courting of extremist Sunnis on one side of the Mideast and apocalyptic Shiites on the other might seem incongruous, but Admiral Lyons sees it as consistent with the goal of fundamentally changing America.  “Never in my lifetime did I think I’d ever see America taken down by our own administration,” he said, observing that challenging U.S. influence is considered a progressive virtue.  Admiral Lyons believes that President Obama always intended to restructure national policy according to progressive ideals that disparage America, Israel and the West, and instead validate Islamist, Iranian and anti-western interests.

He cites as evidence the President’s use of sequestration to cut defense spending and disarm unilaterally at a time when China and Russia are growing in influence, militant Islam is on the rise, and military reductions are viewed as weakness.  “We’re headed for the smallest army since [before] World War II,” he said, noting that military experts are no longer certain the U.S. could prevail in a conventional regional conflict.  The question is how such fundamental changes could have occurred without significant opposition.

The answer, said the panel, lies in the pervasive acquiescence to anti-American priorities and sensibilities.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the liberal affinity for anti-blasphemy laws that contravene free speech.  The U.N. periodically entertains resolutions seeking to criminalize “slander” of Islam, and these are supported by progressive governments and NGOs.  Moreover, a number of European nations have enacted laws banning criticism of Islam as hate speech.

Though such laws would violate the First Amendment, many American progressives favor them as a way of curtailing “hate-speech” and encouraging diversity.  Even without such laws on the books, liberals often discourage free discourse by accusing those who criticize radical Islam of Islamophobia.  This attitude seems to pervade Obama’s denial of the religious basis of Islamist terrorism, and much of his Mideast policy.

The panel concluded that Obama’s policies have compromised America’s ability to defend itself and lead the world.  He has spurned Israel, appeased Islamists, reduced the military, enabled Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and refused to acknowledge the existential threat of ISIS.  These acts and omissions are not hallmarks of effective leadership, but of submission to a feckless worldview that has damaged U.S. power and influence to a degree that may not be easily reparable.

EDITORS NOTE: This op-ed column originally appeared in Arutz Sheva – IsraelNationalNews.com.

Where’s the Pope’s Encyclical on Christian Persecution? by Raymond Ibrahim

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Pope Francis recently released a new encyclical. Portions of it deal with environmentalism, global warming, and climate change. Naturally, this has prompted controversy.

It’s noteworthy that Francis didn’t merely make a passing comment on global warming during this or that sermon, but that he issued a papal encyclical on the matter. Encyclicals are much more formal and significant than remarks made during mass. They are letters written by a pope and sent to bishops all around the world. In turn, the bishops are meant to disseminate the encyclical’s ideas to all the priests and churches in their jurisdiction, so that the pope’s teaching reaches every church-attending Catholic.

All this leads to the following question: Where is Pope Francis’ encyclical concerning the rampant persecution that Christians—including many Catholics—are experiencing around the world in general, the Islamic world in particular?

To be sure, the pope has acknowledged it. On April 21, during mass held at Casa Santa Marta, Francis said that today’s church is a “church of martyrs.” He even referenced several of the recent attacks on Christians by Muslims (without of course mentioned the latter’s religious identity).

Said Pope Francis:

In these days how many Stephens [early Christian martyred in Book of Acts] there are in the world! Let us think of our brothers whose throats were slit on the beach in Libya [by the Islamic State]; let’s think of the young boy who was burnt alive by his [Pakistani Muslim] companions because he was a Christian; let us think of those migrants thrown from their boat into the open sea by other [African Muslim] migrants because they were Christians; let us think – just the day before yesterday – of those Ethiopians assassinated because they were Christians… and of many others. Many others of whom we do not even know and who are suffering in jails because they are Christians… The Church today is a Church of martyrs: they suffer, they give their lives and we receive the blessing of God for their witness.

The pope is acquainted with the reality of Christian persecution around the world.  So why isn’t he issuing an encyclical about it?  Such an encyclical would be very useful.

The pope could instruct bishops to acknowledge the truth about Christian persecution and to have this news spread to every Catholic church.  Perhaps a weekly prayer for the persecuted church could be institutionalized—keeping the plight of those hapless Christians in the spotlight, so Western Catholics and others always remember them, talk about them, and, perhaps most importantly, understand why they are being persecuted.

Once enough people are familiar with the reality of Christian persecution, they could influence U.S. policymakers—for starters, to drop those policies that directly exacerbate the sufferings of Christian minorities in the Middle East.

Whatever the effects of such an encyclical—and one can only surmise positive ones—at the very least, the pope would be addressing a topic entrusted to his care and requiring his attention.

As recent as 1958, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical that addressed the persecution of Christians.  A portion follows:

We are aware—to the great sorrow of Our fatherly heart—that the Catholic Church, in both its Latin and Oriental rites, is beset in many lands by such persecutions that the clergy and faithful … are confronted with this dilemma: to give up public profession and propagation of their faith, or to suffer penalties, even very serious ones.

[…]

Missionaries who have left their homes and dear native lands and suffered many serious discomforts in order to bring the light and the strength of the gospel to others, have been driven from many regions as menaces and evil-doers…

Note that Pius does not mention the burning and bombing of churches, or the abduction, rape, enslavement, and slaughter of Christians.  The reason is that Christians living outside the West in 1958 rarely experienced such persecution.  In other words, today’s global persecution of Christians is exponentially worse than in 1958.  Pius complained about how Christianity was being contained, not allowed to spread and win over converts…

Keep reading

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That Imaginary War Room by Hugh Fitzgerald

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We have all had fantasies — have we not? — of being President or Chief of Staff, and being present, somewhere in the Pentagon, in a War Room that, we like to think, directs that campaign of self-defense against the hydra-headed Jihad.

And we like to imagine, too, what might go on in that room, what kinds of things we hope are being discussed and planned.

Consider, among the many imagined scenarios, these three:

1) A War Room devoted to the counter-Jihad in the Muslim World itself. In this War Room, the computers bristle with information about the active fighting going on in the Middle East and North Africa (Libya) and Central Asia (Afghanistan), and with news of what war materiel has been requested, and is being sent, and what troops have been sent, too, to Egypt, to Iraq, to Jordan, to Yemen, to a dozen other possible places. And there are solemn debates about how to keep the countries of the Middle East from being “failed states” and succeeding, thanks to our help, with the assumption being that this is the only conceivably correct goal.

2) A War Room devoted to the domestic front — for by now there would be recognition that there is a war inside our countries, too. That would take the form of non-military aid being given to “moderate” Muslims in the United States and Western Europe, who, if only they are given enough access to, and support from, Western leaders and the media, and funds, too (as the French government supplies so generously to what it thinks are “tame because government-subsidised mosques” in France), these “moderates” will be able to sway the local Muslims, now within the West by the millions, to embrace, unswervingly, democratic ideals, and what those ideals imply, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And little is said about what is in the Qur’an and Hadith; for the planners, such a discussion would only complicate matters, would make what they are doing seem even less plausible, would show up the egg on too many faces. So what is in the Qur’an, as glossed by the Sunnah (Hadith and Sira), doesn’t come up. It’s “real people” who are being kept in mind in this particular War Room.

3) Finally, in the third of our imagined War Rooms, everyone is already well-versed in Islam, and disinclined to deny what is contained in the texts; disinclined, too, to find reasons to explain or interpret away those texts. The strategies of denial that were in fashion for so very long, despite all the evidence, have finally been put to rest. And it is the members of this hard-headed group, chastened by more than a decade of experience dealing with Islam and Muslim peoples, in this War Room, on whose computer screens would be displayed the strategies for demoralizing and dividing the Camp of Islam. Not much about soldiers and weapons here, for military intervention in Muslim lands is not regarded as much use. It has only allowed Muslims to blame the interfering Infidels, and not one another, nor themselves. But in this War Room, measures are discussed to limit, in the West, the survival — or still worse, spread — of intellectual bromides about Islam that do not correspond to what the best-prepared students of the subject, which includes the “defectors” from Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq, tell us that Islam inculcates. The internecine conflicts within the Muslim world would not be deplored, but regarded with grim satisfaction, knowing that such conflicts have no natural end.

Indeed, who thinks the conflict in Syria will come to an end, or that Syria itself can possibly be reconstituted? How exactly would the bitterest of enemies now make peace and live together? It isn’t possible. Instead, in this War Room the discussion would be about how refusing to intervene leads to a better outcome for the West, if not for Muslims.

And in this War Room, a great deal of the planning would be about how best to support and protect  non-Muslim figures, especially those members of the media who, having prepared themselves at length by appropriate reading of Qur’an and Hadith, and a lot else besides, are of great national worth, for everyone who writes in a no-nonsense fashion about Islam has overcome an atmosphere of such nonsense and lies as to deserve a Pulitzer just for that mental persistence. Instead of mockery, they deserve  thanks, support, and dissemination of their message.

The theme of the third imagined War Room is Division and Demoralization — of Muslims. This involves exploiting, often by not moving to mend, the fissures within the Muslim Camp, the main one being that between Sunni and Shi’a, but there are also the ethnic hostilities between Arab and non-Arab Muslims, most obviously between Arab and Kurd in Iraq, but hardly limited to that case. The non-Arabs can be encouraged to note, and resent, the conviction of the Arabs that they are superior in the Muslim hierarchy, that it is right that non-Arabs must forget their own histories and civilization, for as Muslims they must  read the Qur’an in Arabic, turn Arabia-wards five times a day in prayer, emulate the mores of 7th century Arabs, and ideally take Arab names. That resentment surely can be encouraged; the rich pre-Islamic pasts of many Muslim peoples could be written and spoken about, and the consciousness raised about how Islam has razed history the way the Islamic State has razed historical monuments.

Of the three, which do you favor? Do you think constant military intervention, and especially the wars in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya, have been a wise use of Western resources? Is Islam weaker as a result? Has the West been made more secure? And is the Muslim presence in the West smaller or larger, and growing? Has the experience of the past 15 years made a sufficient number of people in the West more aware of what they face, or simply anxious and confused, and feeling things are out of their hands, “there is nothing we can do,” for example, when our governments increase the number of Muslim immigrants?

Have the “moderate Muslims” in Europe, other than an occasional showy denunciation of this or that Islamic State outrage as “un-Islamic,” done a single thing to further the right education of non-Muslims, and to come to grips with the need to discuss, in order if possible to modify (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali holds out, just, as a possibility), through interpretation, what is contained in the Qur’an and, especially, the Hadith? They have not, and they cannot. So it is up to the people in that imaginary third War Room to help create demoralization, as well as to do nothing to prevent division within the Camp of Islam.

How many Muslims are capable of interpreting the Qur’an in such a way, and ignoring so much of the Hadith, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali suggests will be necessary if there is to be co-existence, or any sort of harmony? Many? Few? And how might one encourage their numbers to grow, or even to encourage people to do that seemingly impossible thing, leave Islam altogether? One way, as those in that third War Room know, is to make public as much news about the relative performance of Muslim peoples and states as possible. Long ago, the scholar Armand Abel wrote an article that deserves widespread study:  “Underdevelopment, stagnation, and decadence. The study of a psychotype: the case of Islam.” Why is it that Muslim states have not created modern economies? The handful of Croesus-rich oil sheikdoms are not exceptions; they are rentier-economies, dependent on the result of an accident of geology. What Muslim state has succeeded, or put differently, is it not true that those Muslim states that have either had a significant non-Muslim population (as Lebanon and Malaysia) or a long secular history (Kemalist Turkey), have created those economies not dependent on the three mainstays of most Muslim states: oil, Western tourism, Western foreign aid?

This third War Room would conduct a campaign to unsettle and demoralize the enemy, a war of propaganda. It involves holding up, for constant inspection and discussion, all the ways that Islam itself can be considered a retrograde (Churchill’s word) force. Does Islam encourage democracy, or in Islam is the despot to be obeyed as long as he is Muslim? Does Islam encourage economic innovation, or does Islam denounce bida (innovation, new ways of doing things)? Does Islam encourage equality of the sexes and equal treatment of minorities under law? What is the evidence that we see before us, presented in the news every day? Does Islam encourage people to think for themselves, or does it discourage free and skeptical inquiry? Have you heard of anyone being lashed recently, or attacked by a mob, or killed, because that someone dared to question something about Islam? Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia, the freethinkers hacked to death in Bangladesh, the endless attacks on those who dare to think for themselves in Pakistan, the endless prison sentences meted out in Iran — what should we make of this, if not that Islam does indeed punish free inquiry? Can’t you feel sympathy for the people living in these places, who think for themselves but can never express it?

The third War Room would offer subventions to publishers, so that works by ex-Muslims, as valuable as that of defectors from the KGB, would appear, in millions of copies, small in format so that they could be easily smuggled in, and of course — most important — there would be websites, well-publicized websites, where such works could be read in full.

Islam itself is the source of the many failures, political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual, of Muslims themselves. How many times have I said this? It is the spelling out of that proposition that requires efforts, at length,  ad nauseam, till it all seems so obvious that no one in his right mind could disagree. That is the task of this ideal War Room. Political failure: the despot is permitted in Islam; the citizen, rather than the subject, protected by civil rights that we take for granted in the West, does not exist. That is not complicated to say, but apparently complicated enough so that many refuse to understand.  Economic failure: inshallah-fatalism, the belief that everything is in the hands of Allah, who can undo our efforts at whim, and to whom we also owe our riches (and the oil of the Gulf might be seen to confirm it), suggests to Muslims that neither hard work, nor entrepreneurial flair, are either sufficient or necessary. And the readiness of the West to supply aid to so many Muslim states has allowed them to think of this, too, as a kind of jizyah, a tribute exacted on the non-Muslims to which they willingly submit, manna that will not stop.

Those in the third War Room should not be swayed by talk of “failed states.” They should stop all American aid to Muslim states, in order to allow the economic failures of Islam to become more apparent to Muslims themselves. Social failures: the War Room will promote discussion of how women are mistreated in Islam, how minorities are treated, and why these reflect the teachings of Islam, clearly misogynistic and clearly uninterested in the position of non-Muslim minorities. Moral failures: vide the Islamic State. Or see how both sides treat the other side in Syria or Libya or Yemen or Iraq. This is what that War Room should be publicizing, talking about, forcing Muslims to talk about.

The Islamic basis for Muslim failure is now much more widely understood among non-Muslims; websites such as this one have had a considerable role in forcing this understanding. But the trick is to force Muslims to understand the sources of their own unhappinesses of so many different kinds. Look at Al-Sisi. Do you not sense in him someone who knows that Islam has to be modified, or re-interpreted, or if nothing else will work, ruthlessly constrained, as he is doing with the True Believers the Muslim Brotherhood? For Al-Sisi is afraid of the effect of too much Islam, taken straight up, on the minds of True Believers. And that is because he has spent decades thinking about Islam, and having studied in the United States, surely noted from afar the very failures that we’ve been discussing.

Would that in the Pentagon and the White House there were more who have come to the conclusion that Islam itself, with its amazing power over the minds of men, is the problem. Then imagine a thousand articles commissioned by that War Room from authorities in different fields: economists would write about the lack of major innovation in Islamic world, political scientists would write about  the persistence of despotism in the Islamic world, sociologists would study the comparative treatment of women, and the position of minorities; psychologists would write about the moral insensitivity of Muslims to the suffering of their enemies (see those Yazidi women). This would create an atmosphere — call it demoralization —  that could force Muslims to admit that something was wrong, and then to begin to analyze the problem correctly, and not find themselves suppressed. The ability to think would come, albeit slowly. All of this has been said before, and all must be said again and again.

But isn’t this the essential strategy worth trying, not only in that Ideal War Room of our imagination, but in the real one?

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Obama knew jihadis were planning Benghazi attack 10 days in advance

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This makes his blaming of the freedom of speech — his attribution of the attack to a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video — frankly insidious. What anti-free speech initiative was he hoping to implement in the wake of the attack?

“JW: Obama Admin Knew About Benghazi Before It Happened,” Judicial Watch, May 18, 2015:

Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq 

Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.

A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.”  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council.  The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).”  The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.”  The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons.  Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock.  They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.”

The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents, in “a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters…that contain information on all of the AQ activity in Libya.”

(Azuz is again blamed for the Benghazi attack in an October 2012 DIA document.)

The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

The DIA document further details:

The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.  The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]

The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.

Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:

The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:

This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.

Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”…

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The Islamic State Caliphate is Pure Islam

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In the March New English Review (NER) we wrote about the failure of the Countering Violent Extremism Summit of President Obama.

On Wednesday, February 18, 2014 at a White House Summit, President Obama presented his views on countering “violent extremism.” He suggested that Islamic terrorists misappropriate Islamic doctrine, exploit disaffected youths in communities across the US and globally throughout the Ummah – the community of Muslim believers. He suggested that youths prone to radicalization outside the US may be victimized by poverty, without job opportunities and oppressed by corrupt regimes. Countering violent extremism he suggests is a multi-pronged approach involving economic programs, political reform and community involvement to halt radicalization. His focus in the US was on creating community partnerships and pilot projects in several American cities, endeavoring to integrate Muslims in America, preserving and protecting their civil rights under our constitution against untoward surveillance. The President gathered Muslim and other religious clerics from the U.S. and abroad, community leaders, law enforcement, homeland security officials, and high tech entrepreneurs seeking means of stopping radicalization of youths. These youths are attracted by the “successes” of the Islamic State blasted around the world via the internet, tens of thousands of tweets, high production videos and on-line webzines in a number of languages including English.

Nowhere in his remarks did the President explain what the Islamic doctrine is that has attracted tens of thousands of foreign fighters, Americans among them, to be recruited to the cause of this self-styled Caliphate, the Islamic State (IS). What he has called ISIL, the Islam State in the Levant (ISIL) is a reference to the broad geographic area that stretches from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Persian Gulf. Those “successes” include videos of the savagery perpetrated against the hated Kuffars, meaning infidels, including Christians, Jews, ancient religious minorities and apostate Muslims. Those videos show barbaric beheadings, burnings, crucifixions, mass shootings and enslavement. The President mentioned recent incidents in Paris, Copenhagen, Ottawa and Sydney of attacks on victims without naming the victims; leftists, free thinkers, Christians and Jews. Neither did he identify the perpetrators.

Just prior to the mid-February White House Summit, The Atlantic Magazine published an article by Graeme Wood, What ISIS Really Wants which stated:

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse.

Russian historian at Connecticut Central State University, Professor Jay Bergman, wrote, “I read it. Superb. The [President] should read it. But of course…he won’t.”

According to Wood, IS bases all of its power and authority on a strict adherence to a Salafi literal interpretation of Islam and Sharia law, with almost a total focus on the doctrine of Tawhid. Tawhid calls for strict adherence to the laws of Allah as revealed by the Prophet Mohammed. Further, that all man-made laws and systems must be rejected. IS considers any Muslim who doesn’t adhere to the doctrine of Tawhid an infidel, including “core Al Qaeda” and other Salafists who object to IS public displays of savagery.

We concluded:

Countering violent extremism as propounded by President Obama evaded his responsibility to identify the radical Islamic doctrine of IS. He engaged in the delusion that by campaigning for community organization, jobs and faith based programs we might prevent radicalization of Muslim youths. Instead he should listen to the wise counsel of former DIA chief, Army Gen. Michael Flynn, who in media interviews and testimony before the House Armed Services Committee called for a global war against IS. Flynn suggested the first cornerstone of a strategy to “degrade” and “defeat” IS is to define the ideology behind radical Islamic extremism. The fact that liberal publications like The Atlantic have exposed the barbarity of strict adherence to Tawhid in Islam clearly communicates that destroying IS through the exercise of American and allied military power should be the first order of business.

The President’s “violent extremism” Conference in Washington demonstrated that soft power is trumped by raw Islamic Jihad every time. That is embodied in failure to recognize the Qur’anic doctrine behind the rise of IS.  To paraphrase a State Department anti-ISIS message, “Think Again, Turn Away” from Taqiyya – lying for Allah.

On March 16th, 2015, Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner, Chairman of The Forensic Panel, was interviewed on Bill Bennett’s Morning America program about what attracts Western and other foreign Muslims, to join the barbaric cause of the Islamic State. Welner provided insights as to what attracts Islamic State recruits that raise serious questions about the social media messaging initiatives of the Obama Administration. Dr. Welner explains the root of ISIS’s appeal and why people continue to join its cause.

In the face of the rise of the Islamic State and its ability to attract Muslims to Syria and Iraq from all over the world, syndicated radio host Bill Bennett welcomed Michael Welner, M.D. back to his program to discuss the apparent popularity of ISIS. Dr. Welner, known to NER readers, as one of America’s most highly-regarded forensic psychiatrists. He is routinely consulted on the most complex forensic cases across the United States, such as the ongoing New York trial of the accused kidnapper of young Etan Patz.  He is known to our readers for his work on the Omar Khadr Guantanamo case and in pioneering research an evidence-based standard of the worst of crimes, the Depravity Standard.

In response to Bennett’s invitation, Dr. Welner confronted the apparent paradox of ISIS recruitment successes in the face of its disturbing beheadings. As he explained to Bennett, Dr. Welner noted that non-Muslims do not appreciate the significance of the Caliphate declared by ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. ISIS is attracting followers of a utopian and unadulterated Islam abandoned over 1000 years ago, of a faith of strict dogmatic adherence to the Qu’ran. These Caliphate ideals prompt an obligation among the devout to serve the Caliphate in whatever capacity needed, and involve a plan of nation building based on the idealized Muslim society on land the Caliphate controls. Beheadings (and enslavement and immolation) are prescribed by the Qu’ran for cleansing those Muslims deemed to be apostate. Followers allow for these methods as necessary measures in the building of a messianic ideal, reminiscent of the “cleansing” of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. ISIS exploits these punitive options to inspire fear of the consequences of resistance among its local opponents. At the same time, ISIS inspires quiet among Muslims generally because to contest its methods would be to contest the Qu’ran. This psychological control, explains Dr. Welner, is an adaptation of political correctness, Muslim style.

The Western media and ruling classes muddle through by looking away from how ISIS is laying waste to all religions in the Arab world. That is consistent with the intelligentsia’s uselessness in genocide historically, Dr. Welner lays out an approach for how America should confront the ISIS threat militarily and in its public information in a segment Bennett termed “masterful.” Readers of the NER will be familiar with how American exceptionalism is key to the solution from our interview with Dr. Welner in the aftermath of the (Oklahoma Beheading NER interview).

The National Review On-line rated the Bennett-Welner discussion the best of the Week of March 16 to 20, 2015 on this topic. Clare Lopez, former CIA Operations officer and Senior Fellow at the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy commented:

Great interview with Dr. Michael Welner….he understands appeal of IS better than the entire USG put together right now. I must say it was fascinating to listen to someone from completely outside the political realm nail it like that. Meanwhile all the so-called counterterrorism ‘experts,’ and Islam ‘experts’ are so far off base we know the bad guys are laughing at us all.

Against this background, here is an edited version of the Bennett-Welner interview.

Bill Bennett

William J. Bennett:  It is morning in America. Good morning, welcome back everybody. Sorry I’m tripping on my words. I’m going to get out of the way and let our guest speak. In any case Dr. Michael Welner, Forensic Psychiatrist, Chairman of The Forensic Panel and this morning I want to emphasize his work as the Architect of The Depravity Scale, Dr. Welner’s practice is in New York and surrounding areas.  Good morning Dr. Welner.

Dr. Michael Welner

Dr. Michael Welner:  Good morning Bill. Very nice to be back with you and hope you have been doing well these days. We have all been busy but I miss you.

Bennett:  I missed you too and that’s why we called you because it was time to talk to you so thank you very much. I want to talk about ISIS and related phenomena, two, really two questions. One is, we have been witnessing on TV, video and the internet a level of depravity, a word you know best better than most. We don’t usually see the beheading of people, children burying people alive, and crucifixions. I have two questions. One, the second one really frightens me, but the first one is does this kind of thing go on a lot all the time? We just don’t see it and ISIS likes to publicize it for whatever odd reasons it has. The second question is does this have appeal to people?  Aristotle says man seeks the good. Is this a recruiting tool in some bizarre, depraved way?

Welner:  There are a number of very important things for us all to get oriented in to understand this that may be beyond our view where we sit here in America. It illustrates the complexity of the problem not only from behavioral standpoint how we react to it but how others in the Muslim world react to it and also those who are recruited. First of all, we have to get away from the notion that the idea of Islamist, Islamofascism and political Islam means the same thing to every movement. ISIS is very different from the fascism of Iran and their key difference explains ISIS’s success. What ISIS has tapped into is the notion of the Islamic Caliphate. For those who are devout Muslims, they are very vulnerable, very sensitive to the idea that a Caliphate is required in order for a Muslim to adequately observe one’s faith. It is the equivalent of what we have seen in other faiths of false messiahs. The notion of a messiah — if you can carry it off — is so powerful that it gives the movement, for those who subscribe to it, the entitlement to say come and join and be part of what gives the Caliphate the opportunity to declare itself: that it has land, and that’s what has always distinguished ISIS from Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda may have some of the same ideological orientation. However, it isn’t just about the idea of “Come and behead people,” it’s “We have land, we want to establish a Caliphate.” It’s the equivalent of saying, “We’re building Mecca or we’re building something holy. Come and fight for it.” Thus, people are fighting for a cause and that’s why they are joining. They are not joining because of You Tube; they are not joining because of social media. Social media only enable them to be reached, to be energized, to go beyond themselves and to get caught up in something messianic.

Bennett:  Let’s go back to my first question, is this sort of thing we have seen and I have described, beheading, burying children alive, etc., etc., does this kind of thing go on all of the time in the world, we just don’t see it or is this pretty unusual?

Welner:  Well the reality is that it does. There are far more people who are beheaded by governments, for example, like Saudi Arabia and other countries that nominally adhere to Muslim teachings. The idea of beheadings and stonings and even setting people on fire is totally consistent with Muslim teaching, which is one of the problems within the Muslim world. We think we are the only ones who are politically correct? The political correctness that exists within the Muslim world is such that while these kinds of actions when they are broadcast to the world in an obnoxious way, in an outrageous way, in a provocative way, may be embarrassing to Muslims who are secularized. At the same time they recognize that because it is in line with the Qur’an and not at all inconsistent with ISIS’s claim that it is a purified strain of Islam, they can’t criticize it. That is their political correctness. The pushback against ISIS from within the Muslim world isn’t just because there is death and destruction of Muslims killing Muslims it’s because the leaders themselves are threatened. It’s because Jordan recognizes that the Kingdom is in peril. When the Saudis recognize that their reign is threatened, it isn’t beheadings, because they do beheadings. ISIS can claim the high road because they say: “We are following the Qur’an to the letter. Come and join us.” That freezes devout Muslims who say “Well, you know they really are devout Muslims.”

Bennett:  I think it’s important to bring up in this context talking about ISIS. It’s important to remind people about King Abdullah and even Egyptian President Al-Sisi are going to fight back against this. However, as you have said Dr. Welner, the task here is to be a good Muslim and thus to establish the Caliphate. Then these beheadings and burying people alive just an unpleasant means to the end that we just sort of look past them or is there an appeal per se in these things to the young unhinged or even not unhinged young male?

Welner:  The beheadings, the stonings and the killings that are going on regularly are essentially reflecting an ethnic cleansing that is going on right now in the Arab world. Salafist Muslims who feel that they are a pure example of Islam are essentially doing what Pol Pot was doing in Cambodia to get rid of a segment of the population in order to create the kind of population, the kind of Muslims that they want. The shocking nature of it, the broadcast of it, intimidates people into not fighting. It intimidates the West into not fighting. It is designed to do that. It is propaganda by design. It is done in accordance with law. However, the way it is done is in order to send a message and to get people to freeze and be afraid to fight.

Bennett:  Let me come at this another way. We saw the news story Dr. Welner of the three young Muslim women, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, leaving from London going off to Istanbul and then from there into Syria, Iraq and to join up with ISIS. The only thing that would make sense to a lot of Americans and a lot of commentators was they don’t know what they are getting into. They are so young and naive. My fear was that they knew exactly what they were getting into.

Welner:  You’re right because we are not seeing the whole picture. All we are seeing of ISIS is the beheadings. What these young Muslim women are seeing of ISIS is essentially nation building saying, come, help us build a nation. We need doctors, we need engineers. We need people who want to live in this pure messianic society where you will achieve your spiritual purification by serving the Caliphate. That is why they are going. They are going as any nationalist and identified people would go to start something ideal and that is what’s being tapped into. They are not watching beheading videos and running there saying I want to go behead someone. We are only getting a part of the picture and that’s why it’s working for them.

Bennett:  I take it, that it doesn’t make them pause. That is, to go to establish the Caliphate and you watch these things, you see what they do. A lot of people you know I think would say and would think, I think I’m going to pause on this. You know I was going to join because I really would like to see a Caliphate. But wait a minute. I don’t want to be part of a group that does this.

Welner:  Those people were not inspired to join; the alternative view is I am devout. I want to be part of a pure Islam; one that we haven’t had for a thousand years. Therefore purification by getting rid of infidels and unbelievers is a necessary evil prescribed by the Qur’an. So by going to the Islamic State – the declared Caliphate, I will be living the Qur’an. I don’t expect myself to behead someone but I’m going to live by the law and I shouldn’t have any problems under the circumstances. Don’t forget they are offering free health care, jobs, from a social welfare standpoint. That also gets caught up with the idea of nation building being ignored in the West. This is far more than the idea of Al Qaeda even though it is outside of its influence and viewed as so outlandish in the use some of its methods.

Bennett:  I was going to make fun of the Administration proposed jobs program. That is the notion that they are joining because they want job security. I fear it’s something worse than that but I may be missing something very important here. I want to come back to ISIS, the Caliphate and the slaughters etc. So the dream of the Caliphate which is part of the faith here, the true believer means that you look the other way? You say well the end justifies the means? I’m not really for beheadings, but you know this is the way we get there. I think of that stupid old joke I learned when I was a kid about the kamikaze pilots, you know the guys announces to all the future kamikaze pilots, you go up in your plane, you are loaded with explosives, you aim your plane toward the American ship and it blows up and you die for the glory of Japan. Any questions?  The guy says, what you are out of your mind? I mean if someone promises me the Caliphate and says when we get there the gates of paradise all you have to do is cut people’s heads off, crucify them, rape the women, have total disregard for human life I’m going to pause aren’t I? Aren’t I going to pause and say wait a minute! That isn’t any way to build a Caliphate that is worthy.

Welner:  I think those of us who are not as familiar with Islam as others may be have to realize that the idea of a Caliphate runs to the core of the idealized version of Islam and its revival. There has not been a Caliphate for a thousand years. Al-Baghdadi, who declared himself to be the Caliph is actually from the appropriate family line of Muhammed and so there is a certain credibility that he has had among some in declaring himself to be a Caliph and the head of the Caliphate. The significance of that is within Islam if you fulfill your obligations as a Muslim to the Caliphate. That means going to the Caliphate and serving it. Then you will have fulfilled your obligations to the most pure degree. Otherwise you will die ignorant. For someone who is extremely devout — if that is they believe in — what al-Baghdadi is pitching is something messianic, hoping they are going to buy into it. Now, of course there are those who do not believe in him and yet at the same time they respect the Caliphate and what it means. They just say he’s not the one and these are not the circumstances under which it will happen. That is very similar to those who may have read Erich Fromm’s The True Believer and in appreciating fascism and how Hitler and other fascist leaders are able to mobilize people to just great intensity for the cause. When you throw into the mix an idealized form of religion that so many people share, all bets are off.

Bennett:  How do we combat this? What is the first and most obvious way?

Welner:  There are ways that we can combat it among our own citizens. However, I don’t see that we can’t combat this unless we are militarily involved, because it’s not going away. People do things in the name of the Muslim faith and in a way that gathers momentum, for example, Boko Haram and others, declaring allegiance to ISIS and gathering more land, they are not going away. What we don’t recognize is that they are going after Muslims first. That is their first target so we have a lead time and we have been through this before as a country. You have to deal with the problem when it’s small or you have to deal with the problem when it is much bigger.

Bennett:  Shouldn’t we be in a warmer embrace of Egyptian President Al- Sisi and King Abdullah and those who want to take on ISIS in military and in terms of their own religion?

Welner:  I think that President al-Sisi is a very important man of his generation, who is very clear-eyed about the ISIS threat. We have the wherewithal to support the coalition of the willing. However, there is an Iraqi military that cannot fight. There have not been alliances in Syria that can coalesce. The Jordanian military is really just ineffectual. The Egyptian military is extremely powerful. They are American armed. There is a traditional alliance that goes a long way. As far as I’m concerned and I say this as a very proud supporter of Israel I see President al-Sisi as a man of peace. He is not a troublemaker. He’s not looking like late President Nasser before him to establish his own hegemony and he is naturally aligned with the United States. Egypt didn’t kill 243 U.S. Marine servicemen as Iran’s proxy in Beirut did in 1983. Egypt didn’t take American hostages, Iran did. Egypt isn’t taking over Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon and Iraq, as has Iran with its own Shia version of a Caliphate, the Imamate. Astonishing to me that with Egypt so willing and so experienced in having to eradicate its own destabilizing force of Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood and now Salafists and that the United States is sort of slow on the ball. Unfortunately because al-Sisi is a man of action he’s just going have to do it without us. President Obama is going to be left once again following from behind. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a man who can make a difference in a vacuum.

Listen to the Bill Bennett Morning in America interview with Dr. Michael Welner, Chairman of the Forensic Panel:

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

The Betrayal Papers: A New Genocide

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Part I of The Betrayal Papers explained the history and context of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the American government.

Part II looked at the associations of seven Obama officials with Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the United States.

Part III traced the Muslim Brotherhood’s and the State of Qatar’s influence on domestic policy and Obama administration scandals.

Part IV will examine foreign policy under Obama.  It will explain how the Obama administration and U.S. Department of State have used the American military and standing in the world as tools to kick start the creation of a new Islamic Caliphate.  Obama’s unconscionable enabling of and silence regarding a new genocide will be revealed.  Finally, this article will offer a cursory reassessment of America’s allies, and which countries we have lost as friends.

“The transformation of America has been in the full swing ever since 2008.  President Obama’s no-show in Paris was an embarrassment for all Americans.  But it also was a signal to the Islamic jihadis.  It’s one of the many signals he’s sent over the years while he’s in office.  Now there’s no question: We got a hell of a job ahead of us…  with the Muslim Brotherhood penetration in every one of our national security agencies, including all our intelligence agencies.” –  Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons, speaking at the Center for Security Policy

Is Obama a Muslim?

This is the question that many Americans and people around the globe are asking themselves lately.  From his refusal to label the Islamic State “Islamic,” to his lecture about the Crusades at the National Prayer breakfast, what once was taboo is now starting to be verbalized.

Yet this may be the slightly wrong question to ask.  The ruling establishment of Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, is rightly considered an authoritative voice of Islam.  In case you missed it, the Saudis have emerged as some of Obama’s biggest critics.

In doing so, the Saudis also revealed the truth regarding the Arab Spring.

Writing in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, columnist Dr. Ahmad Al-Faraj, while supporting Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, not only called Obama “one of the worst U.S. presidents;” he also exposed the nature of so-called “democratic revolutions” in the region.  Stated al-Faraj:

“Since Obama is the godfather of the prefabricated revolutions in the Arab world, and since he is the ally of political Islam, [which is] the caring mother of [all] the terrorist organizations, and since he is working to sign an agreement with Iran that will come at the expense of the U.S.’s longtime allies in the Gulf, I am very glad of Netanyahu’s firm stance and [his decision] to speak against the nuclear agreement at the American Congress despite the Obama administration’s anger and fury.”

Translation: Obama served as a mouthpiece for, and armed,the Muslim Brotherhood (i.e., “political Islam”) revolutionaries in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria.  He was aided in this incredibly destructive policy of jihad by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until her resignation in 2013, and has been further aided by her successor, John Kerry.

The original Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1927.  The conservative Wahhabi Saudi royals have traditionally had little use for exporting jihad, and indeed are one of the United States’ oldest strategic allies in the region.  Despite Americans’ revulsion at Saudi Arabia’s application of barbaric sharia (i.e., Islamic) law in their own country, outside the Kingdom Saudis have every reason to maintain the status quo with neighbors, including Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.  That means keeping the Muslim Brotherhood out of power.

The pertinent question is not whether Obama is secretly a Muslim, per se, but rather if Obama is a secret Muslim Brother.  That is the real question.

The Words of Obama, Dalia, and Rashad

If we take the Saudis, the most influential Gulf country, seriously, then it follows that Obama and his administration must have had a plan for the Arab Spring that goes back several years, i.e. 2008.

Part II of The Betrayal Papers identified seven Obama administration officials who had/have associations with several Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the United States (CAIR, ISNA, MSA, etc.).  It also tracked their associations with Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, both recipients of significant amounts of money from the State of Qatar, the home of many prominent Muslim Brothers.

One of those officials is Rashad Hussain, who is Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.  In August 2008, Hussain co-authored a paper for the Brookings Institution called Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy.  The paper, which calls Islam the “strongest ally” in the “global effort to end terrorism,” explicitly calls for the American government not to reject political Islam, but to utilize Islamic scholars and Islamic “policymaking” to reject “terrorism.”  It also recommends that “policymakers should reject the use of language that provides a religious legitimization of terrorism such as ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘Islamic extremist.’”

Is it any wonder now why Obama says that the Islamic State “is not Islamic?”  This is the deceptive language of the Muslim Brotherhood, recently welcomed to the White House.

Let’s now turn our attention at a report co-authored by Dalia Mogahed, who was a member of Obama’s Advisory Council of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and influential in writing Obama’s nefarious 2009 speech in Cairo.  Additionally, Mogahed is currently listed as a member of Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs.

Mogahed was part of the Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement.  Other members of the group were former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (of World Trade Center Mosque notoriety), and Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Ahmed Younis.  The report issued by the group called for engagement and cooperation with political Islam, and specifically with the Muslim Brotherhood:

“The U.S. must also consider when and how to talk with political movements that have substantial public support and have renounced violence, but are outlawed or restricted by authoritarian governments allied to the U.S. The Muslim Brotherhood parties in Egypt and Jordan are arguably in this category. In general, the Leadership Group supports engagement with groups that have clearly demonstrated a commitment to nonviolent participation in politics.”

Indications of a plan to work with the Muslim Brotherhood were evident as early as June 2009, when the President went to Cairo’s Al-Azhar University to address the Muslim World.  The audience included prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood that Obama insisted on having seated in the front row.  Said Obama, “[The] partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.  And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

With the statements of the Saudi journalist, Hussain, Mogahed, and Obama himself in mind, presented below is a thumbnail sketch of the Arab Spring and its consequences, and the intersection between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood.  This is only a fraction of the evidence that proves Obama has worked hand-in-hand with the Muslim Brotherhood to transform the Middle East.

Tunisia

In Tunisia in 2011, the government of Ben Ali fell after a man self-immolated, sparking a wave of protests.  Subsequently, Tunisia elected the Muslim Brotherhood Ennahda party, with a plurality of 37% of the vote.  In October 2014, Tunisia elected a secular government.

Libya

Libya exemplifies the essence of the so-called Arab Spring, an anarchic Muslim Brotherhood revolution that thrives on violence and chaos.

In such ungovernable disarray are significant parts of Libya today, that it is actually being used as a staging ground by ISIS for an invasion of Europe.

Despite repeated warnings and advice by the United States military to leave Muammar Gaddafi in power, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama launched a disastrous war against the Gaddafi regime, leaving a power vacuum for Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood to fill.

Practically, Libya served as armaments bazaar for the Muslim Brotherhood and all associated terrorist groups.  Libyan weapons have ended up in the hands of jihadis across North Africa, potentially contributing to the stockpile of arms of Boko Haram.  These weapons were also sent to Syrian rebels, including groups who are now part of ISIS.

Currently, an ongoing proxy war rages in Libya.  The anti-Muslim Brotherhood countries of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates battle Qatar and Turkey (close allies of the Obama administration) and the local Islamic terrorists.

Benghazi

Benghazi and all the mystery that surrounds it can mostly be dispelled in a few short paragraphs.  A few facts will inform the reader, and then the attack that killed four Americans on September 11, 2012 can be then put in the larger context of a Muslim Brotherhood-guided American agenda.

First, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, aka Ansar al-Sharia, was hired to guard the compound by the American government.  In a word, they are a jihadi militia.

Second, the compound in Benghazi was crawling with CIA agents.  According to CNN’s Jake Tapper, there were “dozens” of CIA personnel present the night of the attack, and the Obama administration has gone to “great lengths” to obscure their activities.  Many speculate that Ambassador Stevens was a CIA asset in the State Department.

Third, only hours before the attack, Stevens met with a Turkish ambassador at the compound.  Turkey, it should be recalled, was a transshipment point for some Libyan weapons that were shipped out of the country to jihadis elsewhere.

Fourth, the Muslim Brotherhood Morsi government of Egypt was involved with the attack.  In fact, some of the terrorists were caught on video saying “Don’t shoot!  Dr. Morsi sent us!”

These facts beg the question: If Ambassador Stevens was in fact overseeing a gun running operation to Islamic/jihadi/Muslim Brotherhood militias, why would the same people kill him?

Given the above evidence, the prominent theory that Stevens was going to be a trade for the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, seems a plausible explanation.  (Morsi was dedicated to the release of Rahman.)  And this theory is endorsed by no less an authority than retired four star Admiral James Lyons.

Once this plan went spectacularly wrong, a number of other things occurred, which again, fit into the larger picture of a Muslim Brotherhood-control Obama administration.

In an alarming breach of protocol and duty, Obama’s Special Advisor, Valerie Jarrett, issued the order to the military “stand down.”  In other words, she ordered that Stevens and the other Americans be left to fend for themselves against a well-armed jihadi militia.

Regarding the now infamous Talking Points scandal involving Susan Rice, et. al., that blamed the attack on obscure and poorly produced movie, an MSA member from George Washington University was copied on the email sent by Ben Rhodes (who, recall, wrote Obama’s 2009 Cairo Speech).

Finally, George Soros is also connected to this scandal.  The Obama-appointed lead investigator for the attack was Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who has ties to CAIR, a well-known Muslim Brotherhood front group in the United States.  At the time of the investigation, Pickering was the co-chair of the Soros’ International Crisis Group.  He is still a trustee.

Egypt

So much has been written about Obama’s decision to force the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, and the subsequent election of Mohamed Morsi to the Egyptian Presidency, that the space here will be used only to reinforce some key and lesser known points.

  • Mubarak was the lynchpin of regional stability, the president of the most populous Arab country who maintained not only peace but a strong relationship with Israel and the United States.
  • Mohamed Morsi likely joined the Muslim Brotherhood through the Muslim Students Association in America, while he was a student at University of Southern California.
  • The wife of Mohamed Morsi was a long-time friend of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  • When Morsi came to power and began to implement sharia law, Obama promised the Morsi government $8 billion in exchange for land in the Sinai for Palestinians (Hamas).  Once Morsi was removed, following a brief, murderous, and highly destructive reign of power, Obama immediately withheld military aid to Egypt.
  • Through 2013, the Clinton Foundation received between $1 million and $5 million from Qatar.
  • It appears likely that close Obama friends, the domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and wife Bernadine Dohrn, played a significant role in fomenting the protests which led to the resignation of Mubarak.  Terrorist birds of feather flock together.

In case you were wondering, Obama advisor Dalia Mogahed considered the ouster of Morsi a “coup,” and CAIR and ISNA were likewise critical of the restoration of secular law in Egypt, which no doubt has prevented the slaughter of countless Coptic Christian lives.

Syria, Iraq, and ISIS – A Lost War, a Genocide, and a Rape of Humanity

Say what you will about Bashar al-Assad, he and his father Hafez have always strongly opposed the Muslim Brotherhood.  Indeed, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, aka Abu Musab al-Suri, a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and architect of the Madrid train bombings, spent most of his life trying to overthrow the Assads and implement sharia law.  (Not only is Nasar Syrian, his nom de guerre “Al-Suri” means “the Syrian.”)  As late as 2008, none other than Nancy Pelosi was hobnobbing with the secularly minded Assads.  John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry also dined with and were entertained lavishly by the Assads in 2009.

What Obama has unleashed in Syria by supporting jihadi rebels is an apocalyptic force of total depravity that specializes in genocide and cultural annihilation.  There are few words that do justice to the evil, inhumanity, and unbelievable cruelty that define ISIS and their end-of-times approach to warfare.

Not only do they set people on fire, but they also behead and torture children.  Americans are bombarded with these images regularly.  Equally as atrocious and appalling, they openly and gleefully destroy everything pre-Islamic.  Much like the Buddhas in Afghanistan that the Taliban dynamited, ISIS believes in the Islamic concept of Jahiliyyah, which demands that all traces of civilization before the time of Mohammed the Prophet be erased.

ISIS is literally rampaging across the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, laying waste to some of humanity’s oldest faith communities, artifacts, and landmarks.  Simultaneous to the modern day Holocaust that is happening to ancient Christian communities in the occupied regions, ISIS trumps even the art-hoarding Nazis in their total disregard for all things that make us human.

In the face of this unspeakable crime against humanity, Obama has not once mentioned the ongoing genocide, much less the irreplaceable loss of culture and tangible history.  The airstrikes ordered by Obama and his advisor Valerie Jarret against ISIS have been described as “pin-pricks.”  This shows that they are either lackadaisical in the face of the genocide, or more likely do not wish to be bothered.  So committed is Obama to America’s defeat in the Middle East that he has appointed the above-mentioned Rashad Hussain, a documented supporter of political Islam, as a social media “warrior” to lead the cyber charge against these subhuman savages.

In time, the enormity of this crime will be examined through a historical lens.  A few decades from now people will wonder how the liberty-loving United States elected a hollow, morally insipid man named Barack Hussein Obama, who armed and trained a jihadi army that destroyed our common human heritage and murdered entire tribes by the thousands.

Of great concern, domestically the soulless ISIS is now operational in all 50 states (according to the FBI), and ISIS training camps have been discovered in various states.  A not-so-unexpected consequence of Obama’s open borders policy, indeed.

Regarding Iraq, it is no surprise and it is not hyperbole to simply state the obvious: Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood surrendered Iraq to the enemy, willingly and consciously.  Into this void steps an emboldened and rejuvenated Iran.

Afghanistan

Much like Iraq, Afghanistan is in the process of being surrendered to the Taliban.  Not only has the administration and (Afghan President) Karzai negotiated with the Taliban, they also idly watched as the same terrorists who hosted Osama bin Laden set up an embassy in Doha, Qatar.  A national intelligence estimate as early as December 2013 predicted that all progress would be lost once a military draw down began.

True to form, seven months after this estimate was released Obama swapped one American deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, for five high ranking Taliban commanders released from Guantanamo Bay, and a significant sum of money.

Following Obama’s policies, all the American blood and treasure spent liberating Afghanistan will be sacrificed by Obama, to the absolute benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As a postscript, it will be noted that a primary source of Taliban funding, poppies for opium, have seen record Afghan crop yields in 2013 and 2014.

Nigeria

While #BringBackOurGirls may have been a temporary PR win for the Obama administration, it obscured the fact that the administration has been consistently enabling the growth of the jihadi army of Boko Haram by downplaying them as a threat.  As if on cue, last week Boko Haram pledged allegiance (bayah) to the Islamic State.

According to one report that rings true, Boko Haram began with a $3 million grant from Osama bin Laden.  One senior U.S. intelligence official stated, regarding the matter, “There were channels between bin Laden and Boko Haram leadership… He gave some strategic direction at times.”  This connection evidently does not phase the Obama administration and U.S. Department of State.

As Andrew McCarthy wrote regarding the Clinton State Department’s position on Boko Haram:

“Instead, ignoring what Boko Haram pronounces its goals to be, the Obama administration portrayed it as a diffuse organization with no clear agenda that was ascendant due to the policies of the Nigerian government (which is under Christian leadership).”

Hillary Clinton’s successor at State, John Kerry, sings the same tune, while thousands of Nigerians are massacred.  Following air strikes by the Nigerian government, Kerry urged restraint, warning Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan “to respect human rights and not harm civilians.”

Meanwhile, this African scourge has amassed a “massive army” that is reportedly stronger than the Nigerian Army.  Defeating Boko Haram will likely take the coordinated efforts of Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, which has close ties to a very sympathetic Israel.  The French Army is right now operating out of Mali in Nigeria, contributing to the fight against the jihadis.

Israel

There is so much in the news regarding Obama’s falling-out with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu that little needs to be added here.  The likely breaking point in the relationship was Obama’s and Kerry’s siding with Qatar and Hamas during the war last summer; and, more recently, with the obvious intention of Obama to permit Iran to develop their nuclear arms capacities.  This week, it is reported that Obama has appointed another Hamas-connected advisor, Robert Malley, to coordinate Middle East policy for the White House.

The deplorable disrespect and insults hurled at Netanyahu by the Democrats during his visit are the mirror image of an America whose college campuses have been overtaken with a virulent anti-Semitism.

Still, this chapter would not be complete without mentioning the integral part that Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, terrorists themselves, played in launching the diplomatically catastrophic “Peace Flotilla” – boats from Turkey, filled with military supplies and other goodies, for Hamas.

Iran

Into the grand void, the power vacuum, created by the Arab Spring, steps a nation largely unaffected by the Arab Spring: Iran.  In fact, when Iran nearly embraced modernity and secular government with its so-called “Green Movement,” Obama and the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett stood conspicuously on the sidelines.  Years in the making, the protestors and activists who challenged the Iranian mullahs paid dearly for their attempt at overthrowing the Islamic Republic while Obama’s administration remained silent and watched them get smashed.

An historic moment was totally squandered.

Whether it is in Yemen or in Iraq, Iran is the beneficiary, net-net, of the Arab Spring.  Even as their Supreme Leader openly calls for the destruction of Israel, the Obama administration proceeds undaunted with negotiations that would give them nuclear capabilities and the means to strike the Middle East, Europe, and the United States with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Conclusion

The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi put it this way: Obama “switched sides in the War on Terror.”  The evidence presented above is but a glimpse into the preponderance of open source, published information that supports the Commission’s conclusion.

We are now faced with a totally new geopolitical situation: geographically, politically, and militarily.

With the body count growing by the day, and with a far larger war looming on the horizon, one would think that the responsible parties still left in government would pause, reflect, and begin to reverse course before it is too late.  Yet as recently as December, NATO hailed its partnership with terrorist financier extraordinaire, the Gulf State of Qatar.  This is tantamount to openly declaring allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood, a totalitarian and genocidal movement whose actions we see manifested daily.

The ultimate fallout from this historic, awful change in American policy may very well be a war of untold destruction.  In the meantime, it is observed that some of America’s former allies have already decided that we, as agents of jihad, can no longer be trusted.  Egypt is forming a closer relationship with Putin’s Russia, as is Saudi Arabia.  India, which had moved closer to the United States under George W. Bush, has also turned toward Russia.  France, with the rise of the National Front party, may very well be next to look east to Moscow.  And Israel is openly courting new strategic alliances.

Truly, there have been few times in American history when our national commitment to morality, decency, and humanity has been so genuinely questionable.  If the majority of the American people understood what has already been risked by this president and his Muslim Brotherhood-aligned administration, they would demand immediate resignation and a full investigation of the government agencies which are in league with, and give aid and comfort to, the enemy.

“The Innocence of Hillary” by Daniel Greenfield [Video]

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This article was written and video produced last year. But it seems like a good time to dust it off!

The Incomparable Daniel Greenfield lays out the case of “The Innocence of Hillary”. Hillary Clinton somehow manages to distance herself from any responsibility for the deaths of four Americans on her watch. An internet filmmaker is where the blame lies, not Islamic jihadists … or HER!

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Islamism: If You Can’t Say it, You Can’t Fight it

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The left seems to have no problem accusing Republicans of fascism, racism or any other malignant “isms” that come to mind, but they simply cannot speak the truth regarding radical Islam.

While the world was reeling from last month’s terror attacks in Paris, there was finally some acknowledgment of the one-sided religious war being waged against the West, as French officials identified the perpetrators as radical Muslims and called for international solidarity against Islamist extremism.

After turning a blind eye for so long – and after enabling extremist organizations such as Hamas and facilitating resurgent anti-Semitism – Europeans finally spoke truth over political correctness. Whether they have the fortitude for sustained confrontation with theological totalitarianism is another matter, but for at least a brief moment in time they recognized the threat for what it is.

In contrast, the Obama administration continued to ignore any connection between terrorism and radical Islam, instead referring to the perpetrators as extremists without identifying their motivating beliefs. In a recent interview the president actually referred to the attack on the kosher market in Paris as “random.”

This refusal to acknowledge the obvious may be political, but it is also myopic – and it undercuts any serious effort to combat global terrorism. Just as the government’s characterization of the Fort Hoot shootings and Oklahoma beheading as “workplace violence” ignored the national ramifications of the terror threat, the president’s refusal to concede the doctrinal roots of the Paris tragedy showed an astonishing failure of world leadership.

This refusal to acknowledge the obvious may be political, but it is also myopic – and it undercuts any serious effort to combat global terrorism.

The left seems to have no problem accusing Republicans of fascism, racism or any other malignant “isms” that come to mind, but they simply cannot speak the truth regarding radical Islam. And by dialoguing with organizations suspected of having extremist ties, by treating the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as political organizations, by supporting those who delegitimize Israel, and by providing safe harbor for progressive anti-Semites, the left has actually helped advance the Islamist agenda.

Progressives seem compelled to excuse Islamism or pretend it doesn’t exist, even when doing so compromises their commitment to constitutional principles. Whenever radical Islamists strike, the progressive impulse seems to be to defend Islam before comforting the victims. In response to beheadings of westerners in Syria, Mr. Obama lectured the American public that ISIS was not Islamic, and after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish market in Paris, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the perpetrators were not Muslim. On what exactly do they base such assertions?

They are misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst. Though certainly not all Muslims support ISIS, it does represent a militant form of Islam similar to that which sparked an era of jihad across the Mideast, Asia, Africa and Europe starting in the eighth century. Moreover, the Paris attacks were motivated by a fundamentalism that endorses violence against blasphemers and infidels.

While ISIS, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood do not represent the views of all Muslims, their beliefs are certainly grounded in scripture and theology. It defies logic to say that such groups are not Islamic simply because other Muslims think differently or disagree with them. The same people who hold thus seem to have no problem blaming all conservative Christians for the acts of a minority of anti-abortion zealots. The inconsistency is glaring.

This is not to say that all Muslims condone the actions of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or that all supported the terror attacks in Paris, the massacre at Fort Hood or the attacks of 9/11. Many Muslims, particularly those acculturated to western democratic values, publicly condemn attacks against non-Muslims. But the question remains whether the wider Arab-Muslim world is philosophically or morally opposed to religious extremism.

Although millions, including Muslim clerics, turned out for the French solidarity march, it remains to be seen whether the event signaled an organic rejection of all forms of terrorism or instead was limited in time and scope. The question hangs heavy in the air amid reports that members of the French government attempted to dissuade Binyamin Netanyahu from attending, but thought it appropriate to invite Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas’s attendance at the rally received front-page coverage, but the press failed to discuss his unity government with Hamas, whose charter calls for jihad and genocide, or to mention that the Palestinian National Covenant continues to delegitimize Israel and the Jewish People. Likewise, the media did not discuss the PA’s continuing support of terrorism, anti-Semitic incitement, and glorification of those who kill Jews. The image of Abbas lauding free speech was surreal considering that the PA and Hamas routinely stifle expression and quash dissent in territories under their control. That Abbas was invited at all suggests a failure to recognize or acknowledge these incongruities. He subsequently praised Hezbollah after its recent terror attacks in the north of Israel.

Those who understand the concept of taqiyya (deception of the infidel) have to wonder how much of the anti-terror sentiment expressed by clerics in Paris was genuine. It does not matter what they say in public before the western media; what matters only is whether they intend to preach tolerance, respect and acceptance in their schools and mosques, and whether reformative change will be reflected in the streets.

The desire for true reformation will only be impeded by those in the west who are more concerned about protecting the sensitivities of a global religious community that numbers more than a billion strong and characterizes outsiders as infidels. Change will not be motivated by those who blame all friction between the West and Muslim society on western chauvinism, but who ignore the historical role of jihad and Islamist supremacism. Neither will it be facilitated by politicians who reflexively deny any connection between radical Islam and terrorism, but who nevertheless accuse their domestic political opponents of the worst kinds of fanatical excesses and malign Israel as a colonial occupier.

Democrats are not all in the leftist camp, but their party has been tilting that way since Barack Obama was first endorsed in 2008. The party’s more progressive elements seem compelled to empathize with nonwestern ideologies they consider to be expressions of indigeneity, but to disparage political opponents who advocate freedom of speech, belief and worship. It is ironic that some progressives accuse Republicans of fascism while giving political cover to extremists whose ideology is truly thuggish and totalitarian. This hypocrisy stems from a traditional affinity for radical ideologies and statism, whether expressed as fascism in the early to mid-twentieth century, or communism until well into the Cold War.

Indeed, as well-documented by author Jonah Goldberg in his book, “Liberal Fascism,” there were many progressive admirers of fascism before Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and Germany attacked Poland four years later. Mussolini’s supporters included H. G. Wells, who in the 1930s exhorted fellow progressives to be “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis,” and who wrote of being struck by fascism’s “relentless logic.” Muckraking journalists adored Mussolini, among them Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. So did influential publishers, such as Samuel McClure, who described Italian fascism as “a great step forward,” and George Soule, editor of the New Republic, who commended the Roosevelt administration for “trying out the economics of fascism.”

Other progressives expressed admiration for Hitler, including W. E. B. DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP, who described the rise of Nazism in Germany as “absolutely necessary to get the state in order” and who asserted that the Nazi rise to power afforded more democracy than Germany had seen in years.

If statism can be defined as the belief that economic and/or social policy should be left in the exclusive control of government, then the left’s affinity for any kind of totalitarianism should not be terribly surprising. When progressive anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel are factored into the mix, the left-wing’s reluctance to condemn Islamists whose world outlook is totalitarian, or to acknowledge their connection to terrorism, seems quite logical.

Those who preach empathy for Islamists never hesitate to condemn conservative Christians for their views or traditional Jews for their adherence to observance. Yet, they refuse to challenge a supremacist theology that is antithetical to the liberal ideals they claim to hold dear. Liberals often cite the U.S. Constitution to justify perverse political correctness, but the First Amendment does not mandate acquiescence to religious extremism or the acceptance of pernicious dogmas. Though freedom of belief is absolute under the Constitution, freedom of practice may not be when it infringes on the rights and liberties of others. Government has a legitimate interest in monitoring ideological movements that threaten public safety and order, whether comprised of white supremacists who preach racial hatred or radical Islamists who believe in jihad and genocide.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama’s media acolytes have drawn false comparisons between activist conservatives and Islamists, implying that the former are just as prone to violent terrorism as the latter, and perhaps even more so. Such comparisons, however, are dishonest and purely partisan.

A common ploy for minimizing the peril of Islamism is to claim that Christian fundamentalism is a greater threat in the United States. But if Christian radicalism can be measured by opposition to abortion, a review of law enforcement statistics shows that it simply is not comparable. Although there has been occasional violence against abortion providers and clinics in the U.S., including arson and a few murders since 1993, such acts – reprehensible though they are – pale in frequency and severity to those of Islamist terrorists, who have attacked and killed tens of thousands of Jews, Israelis, westerners, and even their own people.

Moreover, extreme anti-abortion violence is generally condemned by mainstream Christians, who prefer to express themselves through the political process. In contrast, terrorism against infidels and blasphemers is often celebrated in the Muslim world. It seems ironic that progressives prefer to tarnish all conservative Christians for the acts of a very few, but refuse to condemn supporters of real terrorism.

If President Obama were serious about confronting global terrorism, he would acknowledge the ideology motivating much of it and the historical antecedents that make it possible. This can certainly be done without impugning all Muslims, particularly those who wish to eliminate extremism in their own communities. The president’s failure to do so, and his apparent willingness to appease extremist sensitivities, does not auger well for the war on terror or the continued relevance of American foreign policy.

Jeb Bush is coming to Sarasota, FL: Why?

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To the Republican Party of Sarasota County,

I understand that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will be speaking as your “special guest” at an Election Rally at Dolphin Aviation at 9:00 a.m. on November 3rd, 2014.

Question: Why are you having as a “special guest” the man who presented Hillary Clinton with the Liberty Medal?

Jeb Bush presented Hillary Clinton with the Liberty Medal on September 10, 2013 in Philadelphia on the eve of the the first anniversary of the attack on the Benghazi, Libya mission. Bush praised Clinton by stating:

Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy. These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year’s Liberty Medal.

SOE_Dedication_pic_-_1

9/11 and Fallen Heroes Memorial, Patriots Park, Sarasota, FL. Photo Courtesy of Salt of the Earth.

This act of war got one of our U.S. Ambassadors (the first U.S. Ambassador killed on duty since 1979), his aide and two Navy SEALs killed. Sarasota County is home to Patriots Park where the first and only 9/11 and Fallen Heroes monument stands. Engraved in the black granite are the names of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and Navy SEALs Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. This monument is within miles of where Bush will be speaking.

Hillary Clinton was responsible as Secretary of State to protect the lives of these men. She failed. She is complicit in tyranny not freedom and we in the veteran community want her prosecuted for treason against the United States. Why did Jeb Bush honor this “Jane Fonda” of the 21st century? Why did Jeb Bush break bread with this Democrat and honor her?

Jeb Bush must denounce Hillary Clinton and should not have honored her with a Liberty Medal.

I ask the TEA Party and veterans groups across Florida to be at this event to ask Jeb Bush this simple question: Why did you present a Liberty Medal to a devoted follower of Saul Alinsky?

Hillary Clinton neither embraces freedom nor liberty, she embraces tyranny and evil. Hillary Clinton is a Collectivist who works tirelessly against the unalienable rights embedded in our U.S. Constitution.

RELATED VIDEO: Jeb Bush with Hillary Clinton at the Liberty Medal presentation:

Six (only six?) examples Obama is purposefully enabling the Islamist cause

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The only plausible explanation for many actions taken by President Obama and his administration is that they are working counter to the security of the United States of America. How else can one rationalize the following:

  1. The unilateral release of five senior Taliban back to the enemy while the enemy is still fighting us.
  2. Providing weapons of support to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government — F-16s and M1A1 Abrams tanks — but not to the Egyptian government after the Islamist group has been removed.
  3. Negotiations with Qatar and Turkey, two Islamist-supporting countries.
  4. Negotiations with Hamas, a terrorist group.
  5. Returning sanction money, to the tune of billions of dollars, back to the theocratic regime led by Iran’s ayatollahs and allowing them to march on towards nuclear capability.
  6. Obama’s evident support of Islamists in Libya.

In an operation that was again unilateral with no Congressional approval, U.S. military support and resources were given to Islamist groups fighting against Moammar Qaddafy — and we know the results of that action. Not long after, one of the groups this administration armed, Ansar al-Sharia, took responsibility for the terrorist attack and murder of our U.S .Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glenn Doherty at the Benghazi Special Mission Compound (SMC). Oh, and that same group claims it has established an Islamic caliphate in eastern Libya, based in Benghazi. Just two weeks ago, the United States of America evacuated the Libyan embassy in Tripoli due to security concerns.

But I guess it’s all hunky-dory there now, because according to the Washington Free Beacon, “The Obama administration has lifted longtime restrictions on Libyans attending flight schools in the United States and training here in nuclear science, according to a final amendment of the ban recently approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).”

“Less than two years after the deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is poised to sign off on an amendment reversing the ban, which was enacted following a wave or terrorist attacks in 1980s and prevents Libyans from studying these sensitive trades in the United States.”

We just evacuated Libya due to security concerns. There can be no doubt that Libya is an Islamic terrorist sanctuary state, thanks in no uncertain terms to Obama, and now he wants them to come here and learn how to fly planes and understand nuclear science?

Ok Lucy, ‘splain this to me.

The Free Beacon says “the original law effectively disqualified all Libyan nationals and those “acting on behalf of Libyan entities” from training in “aviation maintenance, flight operations, or nuclear-related fields,” according to the ban. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is amending its regulations by rescinding the regulatory provisions promulgated in 1983 that terminated the nonimmigrant status and barred the granting of certain immigration benefits to Libyan nationals and foreign nationals acting on behalf of Libyan entities who are engaging in or seeking to obtain studies or training in,” the amendment states.”

DHS spokesperson S.Y. Lee who told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is reviewing its policies towards Libya “to see how they might be updated to better align with U.S. interests” in light of its revolution.”

If I may interject here, Libya is not a stable country and there can be no alignment with U.S. interests as long as there are al-Qaida affiliated groups freely operating in that country.

Of course this action is taken when the House and Senate is away on a five-week hiatus from D.C. but at least the House Judiciary Committee responded by acknowledging, “The terror threat continues and numerous news reports document recent terror-related activities coming from Libya.”

Why wouldn’t the Obama administration allow Kurdish Peshmerga members to come to America and receive flight training so they could be given quality helicopter gunships and destroy ISIS? Can anyone explain what the strategy and objective is here in lifting this ban with a nation that is or should be on the terrorist watch list?

Sorry, but I can only explain this one way: Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause. You can go back and listen to his 2009 speech in Cairo, where Muslim Brotherhood associates were seated front and center.

All the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence points to that conclusion. The pivot away from the Middle East seems to be nothing more than an opportunity to enable Islamists and their goals. Anyone supporting this Libyan ban being lifted is indeed an enemy of this state.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy doctrine is self-described as “don’t do stupid s@#t”. But I guess that all depends on what your ultimate goal is.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Israel’s “Long War”

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Tom Jocelyn, the American counter terrorism expert and Senior Fellow at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies is the editor of The Long War Journal. It is a chronicle of the global Islamic jihad in the 21st Century, now in its 13th year. The global jihad was sparked by what the US State Department has taken to calling “core Al Qaeda”, most dramatically with 9/11. Subsequently it has metatisized driven by the Salafist doctrine seeking to replicate the great barbarism of the first jihad that burst out of the Arabian peninsula 14 Centuries ago. In many instances it has been a long war against indigenous populations, both Muslim and not. In the later case, it has witnessed the self-declared Caliphate of the Islamic State, formerly ISIS, confronting non-Muslims with the choice to convert, be subjugated, leave or be killed. It is sacralized barbarity emboldened with arms and advanced military technology abandoned by fleeing armies. It is financed by extortion and billions in booty, money seized in conquered territories and oil resources.

Mideast Israel Palestinians

Israeli Merkava tank leaving Gaza staging area August 5, 2014. Source: The Guardian.

Virtually alone and surrounded by these Jihadist forces is the Jewish nation of Israel. Israel has conducted a long war of its own over the 21 years since the conclusion of the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Authority. An agreement orchestrated by former President Clinton between Israeli Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin and the late Yassir Arafat, first President of the Palestinian Authority. Arafat went on to ignite the Second Intifada in September 2000 using the excuse that the late Israeli PM Ariel Sharon had made an unauthorized visit to the Temple Mount. That intifada saw thousands of Israeli causalities, both dead and wounded,  that morphed into a seemingly unending series of military Operations. It began with Operation Defensive Shield following the bloody Park Hotel Passover suicide bombing in March 2002 that killed many Holocaust survivors. It culminated in the siege of Arafat in the Mukata in 2004 in Ramallah. A brief hiatus following the demise of Arafat saw Israel build a security barrier in the disputed territories that virtually brought to a close the Second Intifada. The late PM Sharon left Likud to found a new coalition party, Kadima, on the strength of a letter in 2004 with former President Bush giving Israel permission to defend itself with US assurances.

That led Sharon in 2005 to order the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza of 9000 settlers and 10,000 IDF personnel under the misguided pretext that it would make Israel more secure. The Bush Administration was preoccupied in the Long War in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It sought to foist the myopic view that the Islamist world could be transformed into budding western style democracies. This despite the rise of anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood elements in Gaza, Egypt and other adjacent Muslim countries. They had been kept in check by autocracies supplied with both US and Russian military assistance and aid. Thus, the Bush Administration thought it had a willing peace partner in Arafat’s successor, the long serving PA President, Mahmoud Abbas. The Bush Administration prevailed upon Israel to relinquish its control over the strategic Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian Gaza frontier installing Fatah bureaucrats. 2006 saw the one vote, one time election in Gaza of a Hamas dominated Palestinian Legislative Council. That  lead to the June 2007 ejection and literal defenestration of Fatah from Gaza, leaving Hamas virtually in control. Israel was forced to engage in a series of air assaults that resulted in assassinations of Hamas leaders, co-founder Sheik Yassin and Dr. Rantisi. Hamas took over the Rafah border with Egypt through which arms, rockets and missiles were infiltrated along with huge infusions of cash from foreign Muslim charities and backers, Iran and Qatar.

In 2006 Israel was embroiled in the Second Lebanon War with Iran proxy Hezbollah supplied by the former with thousands of rockets. That conflict was triggered by a kidnapping of two IDF soldiers followed by massive  Hezbollah artillery rocket barrages. The 34 day War with Hezbollah saw more than 4,000 rockets rain on Israel setting a pattern that was copied by Hamas in Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014. In that first clash with Hezbollah saw Israel’s population in the north sweltered in crude shelters or displaced to the central Mediterranean shore. It also sparked the development of technical countermeasures to protect the both Israel’s population and IDF defense. Those developments included the now recognized Iron Dome system of batteries equipped with Tamir anti-rocket missiles, and the less well known, Trophy system, used effectively in the most recent 2014 Operation protecting armored vehicles against anti-tank rockets and missiles. Just prior to the Second Lebanon War, a cross border raid by Hamas operatives kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, holding him hostage until released in an October 2011 exchange for 1,027 Palestinian terrorist prisoners held by Israel.

In June 2009, President Obama made a dramatic speech at Cairo University extending outreach, many believed that emboldened Islamist elements in the Muslim ummah. In December,2011 the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in Tunisia sparked the so-called Arab Spring that erupted in North Africa and the Middle East. Autocracies in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt were overturned. The latter witnessed the ousting of strongman Mubarak with rise of the Muslim Brotherhood that saw the election of one if its prominent leaders, Mohammed Morsi as its President in June 2012. Morsi was backed by a National Assembly  composed of dominate Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties. They sought to impose Sharia law on women, secular elements and the country’s ancient minority Coptic Christian community. Virtually, a year later, Morsi and thousands of Muslim Brotherhood leaders were ousted, jailed and killed during a coup by his Defense Minister Gen.Abdel- Fattah El-Sisi. He was engaged in a counter terrorism campaign against Hamas linked Salafist terror groups in the Sinai.

The overthrow of the Libyan strongman Qadaffi, with aid from the US and NATO, spawned chaos with warring tribal and jihadist militias. That culminating in the Benghazi attack that killed the US Ambassador and three other Americans, a communications aide, and two CIA-contractors on 9/11/2012.

Meanwhile, Israel was concerned about security on its southern border with Egypt in the Sinai. Following cross border attacks near the Red Sea resort of Eilat it constructed a 200 mile security barrier seeking to prevent intrusion, only to be left exposed to rocket attacks. On Israel’s north eastern Golan frontier a raging civil war in Syria, now well into its third year, saw the Assad regime forces ranging across the Golan frontier fighting opposition rebel groups. These included al Qaeda affiliates the Al Nusrah front and the extremist Salafist spinoff, the Islamic State, formerly ISIS.

The latest IDF Operation Protective Edge that began on July 8th with barrages from Gaza from both homemade and Iranian supplied long range rockets covered fourth fifths of Israel. It was triggered by a botched kidnapping by Hamas operatives and that resulted in the murder of three Jewish yeshiva students, whose remains were discovered on June 30th. The Palestinian Authority in late April had announced a unity government with Hamas that scuppered any chances of a possible final stage agreement sought by US Secretary of State Kerry. Hamas is a foreign terrorist group so designated by the US, Canada and the EU. Its 1988 Charter, had sought not only the destruction of Israel but the killing of Jews globally. Israeli PM Netanyahu and his coalition cabinet had no choice but to call up what ultimately would be a massed IDF force of 80,000 elite brigades and reservists to conduct the ground phase of Operation Protective Edge. That culminated in the launch of ground operations in Gaza that ended with the seventh truce on August 5th that is holding for the moment. That truce occurred ironically on the Jewish Fast Day of Tish B’Av commemorating historic catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people over the millennia.

Jocelyn’s FDD Long War Journal had this entry:

Israel

Israel accepted a Gaza ceasefire plan that will start with a preliminary 72-hour truce beginning tomorrow morning. Israeli officials will work out further details of the ceasefire over the next few days in Egypt. As of Aug. 1, at least 2,909 rockets had been fired at Israel from Gaza and 66 Israelis had been killed. In the first fatal attack in Jerusalem in three years, a Palestinian construction worker drove an earthmover into a bus, flipping it over and killing one Israeli and wounding five more. PM Netanyahu’s spokesman said Israel’s military campaign to destroy the Gaza tunnels is coming to a close, but that the overall operation will not cease until Israel experiences an extended period of quiet and security.

Jonathan Spyer, of the GLORIA Centre in Herzliya, published an assessment of Israel’s Long War in a PJ Media article, “Netanyahu’s Long War Doctrine.”  In it he paid tribute to Netanyahu’s cautious, but resolute position, overwhelmingly supported by Israelis, to bring to a conclusion the Hamas genocidal threat to the Jewish nation. A threat backed and financed by Qatar, a wealthy gas-rich emirate, a supporter of Muslim Brotherhood and extremist Salafist al Qaeda spinoffs. Qatar and the terrorist Salafist groups it funded and gave sanctuary to, including Hamas leaders, are viewed by Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia as a dire threat to their regimes. That created a coalition of interest with Israel tacitly condoning the latter’s war against Hamas. The Administration in Washington and the UN were desperate to end hostilities seeking to engage MB supporting regimes in Turkey and Qatar to convince Hamas to stand down. Newly elected Egyptian President El-Sisi, who had ousted MB President Morsi and closed Gazan smuggling tunnels, had endeavored to broker several cease fires during the 28 day Operation Protective Edge. It became evident that Hamas had been seriously degraded, nearly three dozen terror tunnels neutralized, sustaining an estimated $5 billion in destruction of buildings and infrastructure in the 25 mile square area of Gaza. All while the world media falsely portrayed Israel as perpetrating mounting civilian casualties most graphically at UNWRA- run schools and refuge centers where over 180,000 Gaza residents had sought shelter. These schools were reported to have held rocket caches, that enabled Hamas rocketeers to launch barrages some of which misfired resulting  in civilian casualties. This barbaric strategy was confirmed in a captured combat manual of Hamas uncovered by the IDF in Gaza City.

As to Israeli PM Netanyahu’s conduct of Operation Protective Edge Spyer observed:

Netanyahu, in stark contrast to his image in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, is deeply cautious when it comes to the use of military force.

Indeed, the record shows that Israel elected to begin a ground campaign on July 18th only when it became clear from its actions and its statements that Hamas was not interested in a return to the status quo.

Netanyahu’s caution derives, rather, from his perception that what Israel calls “wars” or “operations” are really only episodes in a long war in which the country is engaged against those who seek its destruction. In the present phase, these forces are gathered largely under the banner of radical Islam.

Spyer concludes his assessment of Netanyahu:

Netanyahu’s vision is a chilly one, though it is not ultimately pessimistic. It aims to provide firm, durable walls for the house that the Jews of Israel have constructed. Within those walls the energies of Israeli Jews will ensure success — provided that the walls can be kept secure, thus believes the Israeli prime minister. It is from the point of view of this broader strategic picture that the current actions of Israel need to be understood. Operation Protective Edge — like Cast Lead and Orchard and Lebanon 2006 and the others — is intended as a single action in a long and unfinished war.

The Tish B’Av truce concluding Operation Protective Edge saw IDF forces leave Gaza, remaining ready if the truce is broken to return, if recalled. The current truce may still hold, but, will not last, unless and until Gaza is demilitarized and its leadership dispatched.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review.

The Malaysian Air MH17 Missile Attack: A Chilling Prod to Airline Security

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The destruction of Malaysian Air Flight MH17 over the Ukraine by a Russian SA-11“Buk”air defense missile on July 17, 2014 took the lives of 298 passengers and crew on board from more than 11 countries. While the largest contingent was 154 Dutch nationals, there were significant numbers of Australian passengers and more than 98 participants in an international AIDS conference in Australia, among them leading researchers and a World Health Organization official. 80 children lost their lives. One Australian family lost relatives on both Flights MH17 and MH370. The Boeing 777-200ER was a sister aircraft to Flight MH370 that disappeared on March 8, 2014 under mysterious circumstances with the loss of 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 nations.

That act allegedly by Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine may have been a blunder by Russian President Putin that brought Western approbation at the UN Security Council debates on July 18th.  The possible complicit involvement of Russia in the missile attack on MH17 is reminiscent of the shoot down by Russian fighters of Korean Air Line Flight 007 from New York to Seoul on September 1, 1983 with the 269 men, women and children on board.  Also recall the accidental missile attack by the USS Vincennes guided missile cruiser that destroyed Iran Air 655 on July 3, 1988 during the Tanker War of 1984-1988 in the Persian Gulf, with the loss of 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew.

BUC SA-11 SystemThe Downing of MH17

The alleged Russian SA-11 missile attack on MH17 raised the matter of airline security in an era with increased threats to international civil aviation from irredentist and terrorist forces. Those threats are not only in the Middle East and Eastern European conflict zones, but elsewhere, including the Western Hemisphere.

The Malaysian Air dispatcher and the flight captain could have judiciously altered the flight plan of MH17 to avoid the no-fly zone over the eastern Ukraine. They could have used more southerly routes followed by major air carriers to reach destinations in South Asia. Instead they chose to fly above the contested eastern Ukraine no-fly zone at an altitude of 33,000 feet. By doing so, they exposed the flight to a missile attack from a mobile SA-11 missile battery similar to one used to down a Ukrainian military transport and fighters. By foolishly opting to economize fuel consumption on a shorter and more dangerous flight plan, they may have inadvertently triggered the deadly attack.  The two Malaysian Air disasters in 2014, MH370 in March and MH17 in July, have claimed the lives of 537 passengers and crew. Under the international Montreal convention, formerly the Warsaw convention of 1929 regarding aviation liability, surviving families may be entitled to $175,000 in compensation. That would translate to $94 million if Malaysian Air  is found liable.

The result was, in the words of a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator, the creation of “the world’s largest crime scene” 30 miles from the Russian border. The area patrolled by separatist militia with little respect for the remains of the deceased passengers has seriously complicated recovery and forensic investigations by NTSB and FBI agents. Standard recovery procedures have been severely compromised by looters, and the forensic operation has become chaotic. Ukraine’s government accused pro-Russian rebels of removing 38 bodies from the scene of the crash and of trying to destroy evidence. The Russian separatists have made it difficult for the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe monitors to even approach the massive debris field.

Finding the MH17 black box and data recorder may be difficult if it has been removed from the scene, and other means may have to be used to corroborate the SA-11 missile attack. Certain data from the INMARSAT system drawn from the ill-fated flight’s engines may at least confirm altitude and flight conditions at the time of missile impact.

The Malaysian Air Flight MH17 incident sends a wake-up call to the Montreal-based UN International Civil Aviation Organization, and major country airways safety groups. These include the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington.

SkyShield SystemThe Elbit SkyShield/C-MUSIC Anti-Missile Defense System

The incident may also lead other airlines to consider the ground-breaking anti-missile defense systems that Israel’s airlines, El Al, Arkia, and Israir are now installing on the Jewish nation’s civil aviation fleet. The SkyShield/Commercial Multi-Spectral Infrared Countermeasures (C-MUSIC) laser system was certified for use in February 2014 and was announced by Elbit Systems, Ltd. (Elbit) of Haifa, the major Israeli defense contractor that developed it.

SkyShield/C-MUSIC has the ability to deflect the guidance systems of incoming man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), using advanced laser technology and thermal imaging to deflect incoming threats by means of jamming their guidance system, usually well before the pilot of the plane may even be aware a threat is on its way. It has the potential of also protecting the plane from high altitude surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) like the SA-11 and the more sophisticated Russian S-300 systems, which have been sold to both Syria and Iran.

Israel’s program to develop this civil aviation missile defense system was prompted by a close call in Mombasa, Kenya, when a terrorist fired a MANPAD at an Israeli Arkia Boeing 757 with 261 passengers aboard in November 2002. That led to an Israeli government-sponsored development program that chose Elbit to develop the Sky Shield system. We understand that, despite the Arab Boycott of Israel, that both Qatar Airways and Emirates Airways have reached out to Elbit seeking information on the Sky Shield system for protection of their air fleets.

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Israeli government ran a series of live-fire trials of the SkyShield missile protection system in February 2014. Brigadier General Eytan Eshel, head of research and development at the Defense Ministry was very satisfied with the experiment, saying, “SkyShield has been validated under the most complex and sophisticated testing conditions ever conducted in Israel and … included a wide variety of threats that the SkyShield system would have to tackle in order to protect passenger aircraft. It is now ready to protect Israeli airlines . . . . The capabilities are extraordinary.”

Watch this brief Elbit YouTube video on how the SkyShield System operates:

MANPADThe Air Defense Threat that the Elbit SkyShield System addresses

There are potentially multiple terrorist threats from MANPADS and mobile air defense missiles that could attack civilian airliners in commercial air lanes over international waters. A 2012 Defense News report pointed out more than 20,000 MANPADS went missing from the arsenals of the late Libyan dictator Gaddafi. Less than 5,000 of those have been recovered. Some of those have been interdicted in transit across Egypt, destined for Hamas in Gaza, and Salafist and al Qaeda affiliates in the Sinai. The Islamic State, formerly ISIS, may have picked up MANPADS and air defense missile systems during its blitz-like conquest of both Syria and Iraq. Not only is the region awash in weapons in the bazaar of weapons-trafficking that now exists in the Middle East, but IS has been systematically looting the stores of American weapons that had been left for the Iraqi military by the departing US forces.

An ex-CIA covert operations officer, who goes by the nom de guerre “Beowulf,” considers a MANPAD attack on vulnerable US and foreign airlines a plausible scenario in the near term. As co-author Freedman commented, “only Israel’s national airline EL AL has fully equipped its fleet” with pods capable of deflecting MANPADS. Freedman observes that Israel is particularly vulnerable to MANPAD attack, as Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s primary international airport, is only kilometers away from the disputed West Bank, from where many of the attacks against Israel emanate. Having participated in a number of MANPADS threat exercises with DHS, the Coast Guard, FBI, TSA and other national security agencies, she underscores the seriousness of the concern. “MANPADS are a largely under-rated threat here in the US. But the threat is as real here as it is in the Middle East. MANPADs are relatively easy to acquire, transport discretely, and deploy from almost anywhere.”

In a US Aviation and Space Technology Weekly article on February 2014, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld discussed the MANPAD threat. She pointed out that while the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on development of a counter-measure, Israeli defense systems company Elbit has successfully developed and installed the light weight Multi-Spectral Infrared Countermeasure system (MUSIC) for both aircraft and helicopters. Israelis are well respected for the speed and efficiency with which they are able to develop cutting edge technology, outperforming most high tech development around the world, and developed this highly sophisticated system within three years.

Ehrenfeld was asked why the American commercial aviation industry has resisted adopting what Israel’s El Al has done to protect its air fleet and passengers:

Despite the alarming spread of MANPADS, U.S. aviation security experts argue that the threat to America’s civil aviation fleet posed by MANPADS is minimal. They say the cost of equipping passenger aircraft with MANPAD countermeasure devices–estimated at $43 billion–is prohibitive and unjustified. However, if a single missile found its way to Hezbollah operatives in Mexico, was then smuggled into the U.S. and fired at any of the 7,000 aircraft comprising the U.S. civilian fleet it would be devastated. Then, U.S. government officials and airline executives could not claim they were unaware of the threat. They could be held responsible for hundreds of deaths.

The downing of MH17 has brought the threat of attacks against commercial airliners to a new level. Because shoulder-fired MANPADS generally have a target detection range of about 6 miles, and an engagement range of 4 miles, aircraft flying above 20,000 feet are relatively safe from them. But the use of a sophisticated SA-11 missile by Ukrainian/Russian separatists has changed the game. MH17 was reported to be flying at 33,000 feet, and was brought down by a SAM. The Israeli SkyShield/C-MUSIC system was developed to defend against multiple threats posed by MANPADS. Three general types of MANPADS use command line of sight, laser guided, and infra-red seeking technology. Whether SkyShield/C-MUSIC can also effectively deflect the longer range SAMs, such as the SA-11 or the S-300, using radar technology to hone it on its target, is not currently known.

However, the technology is already in place and this new threat is not likely to go unnoticed by Israel’s defense industry. Following the downing of MH17, improvements to SkyShield/C-MUSIC will undoubtedly provide a new standard of security for the entire airplane industry.

EDITORS NOTE: This article originally appeared on The New English Review. The featured image is courtesy of the UK Daily Mail.