Tag Archive for: Middle East

Obama: “Ideologies are not defeated with guns”

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.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Syria: Obama-backed rebels persecute Christians, force them from their homes

UK: Man carries Islamic State flag by Big Ben & Houses of Parliament, police refuse to arrest him

U.S.: Iran’s Support for Terror Undiminished

Despite the fact that Iran’s global terror activities were “undiminished” between 2013 and 2014, the U.S. State Department is still entirely committed to pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.

“We think it’s essential that we pursue those negotiations,” said Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. “None of that implies that we would be, again, in any way taking our eye off the ball with respect to what Iran is doing as a supporter of terrorism.”

Iran’s support for terror was documented in the State Dept.’s annual report on global terrorism, which was released Friday. The report says “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished,” which makes the State Dept. “very, very concerned,” according to Kaidanow.

While the June 30 deadline for the deal is now fewer than 10 days away, the release of the report shows, “Iran continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world,” according to Kaidanow.

The report specifically mentions Iran’s continued support for the Shiite terror organization Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as those fighting with embattled Syrian President Bashaar al-Assad.

The Clarion Project reported last week that Iran is supporting more than 100 terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq alone.

In an interview with The Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obamas admitted that some of the money freed up the deal’s proposed sanction relief may up going towards terrorism, although he argued that Iranian government would have to make good on their commitments to improve the country’s economy.

“I don’t think …anybody in this administration said that no money will go to the military as a consequence of sanctions relief,” Obama said. “The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion? Does that $150 billion then translate by orders of magnitude into their capacity to project power throughout the region? And that is what we contest …”

The report also showed that between 2013 and 2014, there was a significant rise in global terror attacks, causing an increase in over 80 percent of violent deaths from the previous year (which itself had seen a 43 percent increase from the year before). In addition, the report showed:

  • There was an average of 1,122 attacks per month
  • Kidnappings increased by one-third, with more than with 9,400 people taken hostage
  • The number of global attacks rose by 35 percent
  • 32,727 people were killed worldwide (versus 17,800 in 2013)
  • 34,700 people were injured in attacks in close to 95 countries
  • In Iraq alone,  10,000 people died in 3,360 attacks representing close to a third of all people killed in terror attacks worldwide

RELATED ARTICLES

Nuclear Agreement Misleads About Iranian Breakout Time
‘Iran Supporting More than 100 Shiite Terror Groups’
Why People Become Islamic Extremists
Women’s ‘Rights’ in Iran: 5 Laws That Will Appall You

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of members of the Iranian volunteer Basij militia. Photo: © Reuters.

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The Islamic State is the Fourth Reich by V.S. Naipaul

A grotesque love of propaganda. Unspeakable barbarity. The loathing of Jews – and a hunger for world domination. In this stunning intervention, literary colossus V.S. Naipaul says ISIS is now the Fourth Reich

Imagine a world in which a young man is locked in a cage, has petrol showered over him and is set alight to be burnt alive.

Imagine the triumphant jeering of an audience that has gathered to witness this. Imagine, also, a 12-year-old child with elated determination on his features shooting at close range a kneeling man with his arms tied behind his back.

Then picture the spectacle of a hundred beheadings of victim after victim in humiliating uniforms, their hands and feet bound, kneeling with their backs to their black-robed executioners who wield knives to cut their throats as though they were sacrificial lambs.

Picture queues of helpless men and women being marched by zealous executioners who nail them to wooden crosses and crucify them, howling and bleeding to death as crowds watch.

Then picture thousands of girls and women, their arms tied, being marched by hooded and armed captors into sexual slavery. And then, if that is not enough, picture men being thrown off cliffs to their deaths because they are accused of being gay.

Yes, all these scenes could have taken place in several continents in the medieval world, but they were captured on camera and broadcast to anyone with access to the internet. These are scenes, of yesterday, today and tomorrow in our own world.

I have always distrusted abstractions and have turned into writing what I could discover and explore for myself.

So I must begin by admitting that I have not recently travelled in those regions threatened by barbarism — the Middle East, the north west of Africa, in pockets of Pakistan and in the Islamic countries of south eastern Asia.

However, in the 1980s and early 1990s I undertook to examine the ‘revival’ of Islam that was taking place through the revolution in Iran and the renewed dedication to the religion of other countries.

I travelled through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia attempting to discover the ideas and convictions behind this new ‘fundamentalism’.

My first book was called Among The Believers and the second, perhaps prophetically, Beyond Belief. Since those books were written, the word ‘fundamentalism’ has taken on new meanings.

As the word suggests, it means going back to the groundings, to the foundations and perhaps to first principles. It is used to characterise the interpretation given to passages of the Koran, to the Hadith, which is a collection of the acts in the life of the Prophet Mohammed and to an interpretation of sharia law.

However, the particular fundamentalist ideology of ‘Islamist’ groups that have dedicated themselves to terror — such as Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and now in its most vicious, barbaric and threatening form the Islamic Caliphate, Isis or the Islamic State (IS) — interprets the foundation and the beginning as dating from the birth of the Prophet Mohammed in the 6th Century.

This fundamentalism denies the value and even the existence of civilisations that preceded the revelations of the Koran.

It was an article of 6th and 7th Century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical. There was no room for the pre-Islamic past.

So an idea of history was born that was fundamentally different from the ideas of history that the rest of the world has evolved.

In the centuries following, the world moved on. Ideas of civilisation, of other faiths, of art, of governance of law and of science and invention grew and flourished.

This Islamic ideological insistence on erasing the past may have survived but it did so in abeyance, barely regarded even in the Ottoman Empire which declared itself to be the Caliphate of all Islam.

Islamic State is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust

But now the evil genie is out of the bottle. The idea that faith abolishes history has been revived as the central creed of the Islamists and of Isis.

Their determination to deny, eliminate and erase the past manifests itself in the destruction of the art, artefacts and archaeological sites of the great empires, the Persian, the Assyrian and Roman that constitute the histories of Mesopotamia and Syria.

They have bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharukkin and smashed Assyrian statues in the Mosul museum. Destroying the winged bull outside the fortifications of Nineveh satisfies the same reductive impulse behind the destruction by the Taliban of the Bhumiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has described this destruction of art, artefacts, inscriptions and of the museums that house them not only as a butchery of civilisational memory but as a war crime.It is telling that the victims of Wednesday’s barbarous shootings were visitors to the great Bardo Museum in Tunis, a repository of art and material from Tunisia’s rich, pre-Islamic past.Isis is dedicated to a contemporary holocaust. It has pledged itself to the murder of Shias, Jews, Christians, Copts, Yazidis and anyone it can, however fancifully, accuse of being a spy. It has wiped out the civilian populations of whole regions and towns. Isis could very credibly abandon the label of Caliphate and call itself the Fourth Reich.

bulldozing historic statues

Isis has bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharukkin and smashed Assyrian statues in the Mosul museum (pictured).

Like the Nazis, Isis fanatics are anti-semitic, with a belief in their own racial superiority. They are anti-democratic: the Islamic State is a totalitarian state, absolute in its authority. There is even the same self-regarding love of symbolism, presentation and propaganda; terror is spread to millions through films and videos created to professional standards of which Goebbels would have been proud.

Just as the Third Reich did, Isis categorises its enemies as worthy of particular means of execution from decapitation to crucifixion and death by fire.

Whereas the Nazis pretended to be the guardians of civilisation in so far as they stole art works to preserve them and kept Jewish musicians alive to entertain them, Isis destroys everything that arises from the human impulse to beauty.

Such barbarism is not new to history and every nation has suffered mass murder and barbaric cruelty in the past.

That Isis has revived the religious dogmas and deadly rivalries between Sunnis and Shias, Sunnis and Jews and Christians is a giant step into darkness.

That a European country in the 20th Century launched a holocaust on the basis of race is a matter of the deepest shame

The Arab lands, relatively stable under the Ottoman Empire, were divided up by the British and French victors of the First World War into the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Jordan at the Cairo Conference of 1920. Borders were drawn in straight lines and the sons of the Mufti of Mecca imposed on the newly carved territories as kings.

Winston Churchill was advised at the Cairo conference by T. E. Lawrence and by Gertrude Bell, who should have known that the Shia would not readily welcome or acknowledge a Sunni king and vice versa.

After upheavals, rebellions and military coups, the region settled down under dictatorships in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Ba’athist Party was, in some senses, a modernising force and Saddam Hussein, though a Sunni, ruled the predominantly Shia and partly Kurd nation of Iraq with a ruthless hand. Wherever two or three were gathered in the name of the Almighty, he sent in his police.

He may not have been a savoury character but his overarching policies were holding on to power and modernising Iraq.

He was the cat that kept the rats of Islamism at bay. His invasion of Kuwait, another artificial sheikdom, poor in territory at the knee of Iraq but rich in oil, triggered the international reaction against him. The Bush-Blair alliance invaded Iraq and the puppet regime they set up executed Saddam. In the absence of the cat, the rats ran riot.

And so it has proved throughout the region. The Libyans, with the assistance of a European alliance, overthrew Gaddafi. The country is now at the mercy of Islamic militants. The same Arab Spring saw democratic protest against the Egyptian dictator and resulted for a while in an elected regime veering towards the repressions of Islamism.

It was overthrown by a military coup whose leader, General el-Sisi, speaking to the clerics and supposed scholars of the authoritative Islamic university Al-Azhar, called on them to denounce Isis as the greatest threat to international peace and exhorted them to declare the ideology of Isis a heresy. The mullahs of Al-Azhar have not as yet complied.

In Syria, the conflict of groups opposed to the government of Bashar Al-Assad resolved itself in the formation of a Sunni Islamicist militia, which in turn evolved — after a significant bloodletting — into Isis.

Are Isis and its followers heretics? The politicians of Europe and America, including David Cameron, Barack Obama and Francois Hollande, after every Islamicist outrage insist on describing them as a lunatic fringe. Their constant refrain is that these perpetrators of murder and terror have as much to do with Islam as the Ku Klux Klan has to do with Christianity or the testament of Jesus Christ. But does such political assurance bear scrutiny?

nazis pretended to be civilized

Whereas the Nazis pretended to be the guardians of civilisation in so far as they stole art works to preserve them and kept Jewish musicians alive to entertain them, Isis destroys everything that arises from the human impulse to beauty.

Of course the politicians, church leaders and others who say ‘these atrocities have nothing to do with Islam’ are not making a researched or considered theological statement. They are attempting, quite rightly, to prevent civil discord in a world in which there are considerable Muslim immigrant populations in most countries of Europe and in the US.

So what impels the tiny minority of young men and women from immigrant communities to volunteer themselves to ‘jihad’ and to almost certain self-destruction, or young women to abscond from their families and from European reality to become jihadi brides.

When I visited Pakistan, I discovered what I have characterised as the effects of an ideological nurture. The Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslim is taught that he or she has no historical antecedents before the conquest of parts of India and its conversion to the faith.

The pressures of poverty and promise bring this Muslim to Britain. He and his family don’t speak English.

They are confined to work and live in an exclusively immigrant area of an inner city — say Bradford, Tower Hamlets or parts of Greater Manchester or Birmingham.

Their children are raised as Muslims, some strict some not so strict, and are sent to the normal city schools which soon become almost exclusively immigrant.

Some find that the values that traditionally inform them are at variance with those of the lives they see around them. This is true for even those Muslim young men and women who are being educated, through Britain’s by-and-large egalitarian system, to be surgeons or computer programmers.

Islamism is simpler. There are rules to obey, a jihad to fight against the civilisation you can’t comprehend, a heaven to go to when you martyr yourself and now a real fighting force in the world which you can join to simplify and solve your existence: no history to complicate your self-awareness, no art to distract you, no ambivalence and choices that ‘Western’ civilisation offers you, no doubt about the fruits of martyrdom, no allegiance to the country in which you were brought up and which gave you a free education and perhaps welfare benefits. A gun, a half-understood prayer and the simplicity that a simple and singular upbringing craves.

That is why they go. And volunteer for death, and die.

In the past three or four centuries since Descartes, Leibniz and Newton, Islam remained encrypted in the revelations of the Koran and the Hadith of a 6th Century life.

The expansion of the scientific enquiry coincided with or possibly caused the maritime expansion of European colonialism. Empirical science, the progress of liberal religion and the germination of modern democratic ideas coincided with European colonial dominion over Asia and Africa.

The process of decolonisation in the 20th Century gave rise to the idea that every advance in civilisation, scientific or democratic, was to be condemned as ‘colonial’. There may be no ideological answer to such bigotry.

The Islamic world does contain currents that are opposed to the interpretations that Isis gives to the Koran, the Hadith and to sharia. These are yet to declare themselves.

Though the appeal of Isis can be challenged by other strands of Islam, its murderous presence persists in the failed states of Iraq and war-torn Syria and threatens to spread through northern Africa.

The crippled Iraqi government has launched its reluctant armies against Isis. The Iranians, being Shias opposed to Sunni Caliphates, are supporting the Iraqi army and the Shia militias, who are a considerable force independent of the Iraqi government, are in a coalition to fight Isis on the ground. With air support from the West, they may manage to push Isis back.

Such an offensive, with the immediate objective of regaining Iraqi territory has to be urgently expanded. Isis has to be seen as the most potent threat to the world since the Third Reich.

Its military annihilation as an anti-civilisational force has to now be the objective of a world that wants its ideological and material freedoms.

ABOUT V.S. NAIPAUL

VS Naipaul

The Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul has warned that Islamic State are the most potent threat to the world since the Nazis.The Daily Mail (UK) wrote of this article: In a hard-hitting article in today’s Mail on Sunday, the revered novelist brands the extremist Muslim organisation as the Fourth Reich, saying it is comparable to Adolf Hitler’s regime in its fanaticism and barbarity.

Calling for its ‘military annihilation,’ the Trinidadian – born British writer says IS is ‘dedicated to a contemporary holocaust’, has a belief in its own ‘racial superiority,’ and produces propaganda that Goebbels would be proud of.

A long-term critic of Islam as a global threat, he also challenges those who say the extremists have nothing to do with the real religion of Islam, suggesting that the simplicity of some interpretations of the faith have a strong appeal to a minority.

The author of A House For Mr Biswas, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, is known for his sharp views.

He has likened Tony Blair to a pirate whose socialist revolution had imposed a ‘plebeian culture’ on Britain and found himself embroiled in controversy in 2001 by comparing Islam to colonialism, saying the faith ‘has had a calamitous effect’ as converts must deny their heritage.”

EDITORS NOTE: This article originally appeared  on March 21, 2015 in the Daily Mail (UK) and is archived here.

Jihad on Churches: Muslim Persecution of Christians

On Sunday, March 15, as Christian churches around the world were celebrating morning mass, two churches in Pakistan—one Catholic, one Protestant—were attacked by Islamic suicide bombers. At least 17 people were killed and over 70 wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility. It is believed that the group had hoped for much greater death tolls, as there were almost 2,000 people in both churches at the time of the explosions.

According to eyewitnesses, two suicide bombers approached the gates of the two churches and tried to enter them. When they were stopped—including by a 15-year-old Christian youth who blocked them with his body—the Islamic jihadis self-detonated. Witnesses saw “body parts flying through the air.”

According to an official statement of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Episcopal Conference of Pakistan, despite all the threats received by the churches, authorities only provided “minimal” security.

As in other Muslim-majority nations, churches in Pakistan are under attack.  On September 22, 2013, in Peshawar, Islamic suicide bombers entered the All Saints Church right after Sunday mass and blew themselves up in the midst of approximately 550 congregants, killing nearly 90 worshippers. Many were Sunday school children, women, and choir members. At least 120 were injured.

One parishioner recalled how “human remains were strewn all over the church.” (For an idea of the aftermath of suicide attacks on churches, see these graphic pictures.)

In 2001, Islamic gunmen stormed St. Dominic’s Protestant Church, opening fire on the congregants and killing at least 16 worshippers, mostly women and children.

The rest of March’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches and Monasteries

Central African Republic: At least eight churches were burned in the northern province of Nana Grebizi, after heavily armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacked several villages. Two Christians, including a pastor, were killed in the attack; another Christian was severely tortured. After the carnage, the Islamic herdsmen started fires and looted the local population. The blaze destroyed swathes of farmland, at least eight churches, several other mission centers and an unknown number of Christian homes.

Egypt: During the early morning hours of March 9, the Coptic Catholic Church of Kafr el-Dawar was attacked by armed men who used an explosive device against the place of worship.  Two policemen were hospitalized after the attack.  Separately, Dr. Yusuf al-Burhami, a leading cleric in Egypt’s Salafi movement, appeared in a video that surfaced in March saying that “Destroying churches is permissible—as long as the destruction does not bring harm to Muslims, such as false claims that Muslims are persecuting Christians, leading to [foreign] occupations.”  He further added that “the reason we agree to their [churches] being built, via the article in the constitution dealing with worship, and the reason we do not collect the jizya [tribute] from the Christians, is because the condition of Muslims in the current era is well known to the nations of the world—they are weak and deteriorating among the people.” Burhami explained that when the Arab Muslims first conquered Egypt in the 7th century, the ancient nation was Christian, and because the Muslims were few in number, Coptic Christian churches were allowed to remain—“just as the prophet allowed the Jews to remain in Khaibar after he opened [conquered] it, but once Muslims grew in strength and number, [second caliph] Omar al-Khattab drove them out according to the prophet’s command, ‘Drive out the Jews and Christians from the Peninsula.’”

Germany: A potential jihadi attack on the cathedral and synagogue in Bremen was averted following action by police, a Belgian newspaper reported.  Numerous police guarded the cathedral and synagogue and searched a local Muslim cultural center.

Iraq: Islamic State militants blew up a 10th century Chaldean Catholic church north of Mosul and bulldozed a nearby graveyard.  According to Nineveh Yakou—an Assyrian Archaeologist and Director of Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Affairs at A Demand for Action—the Saint George monastery was “wiped out” by IS.  The building was founded by the Assyrian Church in the 10thcentury but rebuilt as a seminary by the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1846. “The current monastery was built on an archeological site containing ancient Assyrian ruins. It was an important show of continuity from the Assyrian to our culture,” Yakou said. “ISIS is wiping out the cultural heritage of Iraq. The monastery was classified as cultural heritage. It’s a cultural and ethnic cleansing.”

Kenya: On the afternoon of February 28, in Maramande, Hindi, Muslims from neighboring Somali set a Christian church on fire.  This same church was set on fire last July 5, 2014, but was built again in January 2015.  According to the pastor of the twice-torched church, “These people do not want Christianity in this area….  They want to finish me so that Christianity will not go on here. But I will continue raising up my eyes to God for help.”  According to Morning Star News, “Violence in Kenya’s coastal region has accelerated in the past few years. On Jan. 11 in the Mombasa area, a gunman shot a Christian dead at the gate leading to a church building, apparently after mistaking him for the church pastor. Police reportedly said the assailants could be members of an active Islamic extremist terror cell in Mombasa blamed for past gun and grenade attacks.”

Lebanon: Unidentified persons invaded Mar Elias, an ancient Maronite church in Bekaa.  Along with damaging one of the church’s windows, they destroyed a portion of the flooring, as they dug a large hole near the altar.  According to Maronite Bishop Joseph Mouwad, much of the church’s sacred items were left intact and not stolen.  Instead, “they broke the tiles and dug the ground, apparently looking for something, though we do not know what.”  Fingerprints and cigarette butts were found. 

Muslim Slaughter of Christian ‘Infidels’

Central African Republic:   An argument between a taxi driver and his Muslim passenger led to the slaughter of at least 16 Christians in Bangui, the nation’s capital.  A Muslim man known as Aladji hailed a motorcycle taxi and asked to be taken to a Muslim-dominated district of Bangui. He was carrying a bag of grenades. When the motorcycle broke down, the driver stopped to fix it, but his agitated passenger pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. The driver overpowered Aladji and killed him instead.  After his body was found, Muslims marched to the Christian sector of the city where they slaughtered at least 16 Christians—some decapitated.  Authorities arrested 10 members of Seleka—the almost entirely Muslim rebel group—following the killings…. Click for complete report

RELATED ARTICLE: The Islamic State has displaced 100,000 Christians from Mosul

No Strategy. No Clue.

The Wednesday, June 10 Wall Street Journal headline at the top of the page was “Obama Set to Expand Troops in Iraq.” We were 589 days into the two terms Barack Hussein Obama has served in the office of President of the United States and he is as clueless now as he was when he arrived on January 20, 2009.

“President Barack Obama is poised to send hundreds more American advisers to a new base in a strategic Iraqi region to help devise a counterattack against marauding Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said Tuesday, a shift that underscores American concern over recent battlefield losses.” It’s 450 “trainers.”

We have had losses because (1) Obama was elected on a promise to end the conflict in Iraq and (2) reelected by pulling out troops to the point that the remaining Iraqi troops—Shiites in the south—decided it wasn’t worth dying for their leaders. Can’t say I blame them, but dying at the hands of ninth century Islamic fanatics is the fate that threatens the entire Middle East, not just Iraq or what’s left of it.

This is how we lost the war in Vietnam. There was a time when Americans utterly destroyed their enemies on the battlefield. In the latter half of the last century, starting in Korea, we forgot how to do that and why that’s how wars are won.

In all candor, like a lot of Americans, I went back and forth about the Mideast conflicts. Looking back, I think George H.W. Bush showed remarkable insight when, after driving Iraq’s Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he stopped at the border and came home. George W. had the notion he could somehow introduce democracy to the region. He couldn’t and it will likely never really occur there because Islam is the only law and it has kept the region ignorant, backward, and under the thumb of tyrants for centuries.

The Islamic State troops must be stopped at some point, but Obama is not the President who will do it. Whatever U.S. backed combat occurs will be just enough to present enough television news images to convince the gullible that progress is being made.

Obama arrived in office without any strategy and has spent the last six and a half years “muddling through” as the British say. He and the Democratic Party had only one goal; to win the elections. After that, they wanted to “fundamentally transform” the greatest nation on planet Earth. They have largely made a mess out of everything they touched from ObamaCare to Common Core.

There’s a reason why Obama will send more troops and that’s because every one of our allies has told him that, if the U.S. does not again assert its role of global leadership, they are not going to cooperate with him in a thousand different ways.

Our allies in the Mideast have told him they lack the military strength (and will) to conduct any kind of war with ISIS. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world cannot afford to sit by and let the enormous oil wealth and reserves of the Mideast come under the control of ISIS.

So, once again we read headlines about U.S. troops returning to the Mideast.

What that means is that the 2016 elections are more critical to the future of the nation than all previous ones.

I think Americans, liberals, conservatives and independents alike have had more than enough of President No Strategy. I think there are enough older Americans who remember and take pride in a nation that was unabashedly the world’s leader in the pursuit of peace and democracy. And I think that the thirty percent or so of brain-dead liberals are not sufficient to affect the outcome of a 2016 election devoted to restoring the nation’s economy and leadership.

It can be done. John F. Kennedy was on his way to doing so. Reagan did so. In 590 days from now, we can begin to do so again.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: President Obama’s Failed ISIS Strategy in Iraq

Rubio: Obama’s Strategy for the Middle East has Backfired

In a Washington Post op-ed piece Florida Senator Marco Rubio wrote:

The fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to the Islamic State and recent gains by the group in Syria are the latest signs that President Obama’s strategy to defeat this brutal terrorist group is failing. But the problem is far bigger than that. The president’s entire approach to the Middle East has backfired.

The Middle East is more dangerous and unstable than when Obama came into office — a time when Iraq and Syria were more stable, the Iranian nuclear program was considerably less advanced and the Islamic State did not yet exist.

Much of this instability is a result of Obama’s disengagement from the region, best symbolized by the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. The vacuum created by America’s pullback has been filled by bad actors, including terrorist extremists, both Sunni and Shiite, who have flourished in the absence of U.S. leadership.

On one side are the radical Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and affiliated groups. The Islamic State has capitalized on the political grievances many Iraqi Sunnis have with their sectarian Shiite leaders, as well as the divisions between Syrian Sunnis and the brutal Alawite-dominated Assad regime, which is supported by Iran. The Islamic State’s black banner is now spreading as far afield as Libya and Afghanistan.

On the other side is Iran, a country run by a militant Shiite clerical regime that is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and has as its primary goal regional domination and the export of the Iranian revolution. As the Obama administration has focused on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, Tehran has exploited U.S. weakness and expanded its reach into Syria, Iraq and Yemen, among other countries.

To begin to deal with the challenges we face, we need a reassertion of U.S. leadership in the region and specifically in the fight against the Islamic State.

Keep reading here.

Defeating ISIS: A Biblical View of America’s Role [Part 3]

PART THREE: 

HIGHLIGHTS OF PART TWO

Part two explained from scripture that God’s love of people and His hatred of evil are inseparable and presented what should be the natural and necessary response of righteous men and women who wish to live in a world of justice, compassion, and order.  Part two also cited studies that identify the large majority of Americans as Christians of some “brand” and who, basically, concur with the moral principles of the bible. Let’s now consider the immediate and necessary role for America to play in quickly stopping the rapidly advancing Nazis of our time (to which millions have people have chanted for 70 years, “Never again!)

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

RESPONDING AS A NATION: THE POWER OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES, THE NEW COALITION OF ARAB NATIONS, AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AMERICA

On a larger scale, just as ungodly nations were destroyed in the Old Testament, the ungodly “world scale gang-bangers” need to be destroyed.  In Old Testament times, there was one situation in which God specifically told the Israelites not to pray for the enemy: “Do not pray for the well-being of this people” (Jeremiah 14:11).  Similarly, in the New Testament, Jesus did not pray for Satan.  ISIS is not simply the radical arm of Islam that establishes Sharia and devises even more cruelty than is conceived by the policies of these laws (cutting off limbs, executing women who have been raped, etc.).  The mission of ISIS is purely demonic and in this writer’s opinion, the “soldiers” (given: this is an insult to the word “soldier”) of ISIS are either demonically oppressed or possessed.

Because America is ultimately threatened in the not too distant future, we must participate in pushing back the forces of evil.  The evil has spread too far around the world already, and it’s already present here in America (see Parts I and II for more information).  We’ve already seen an Islamic extremist military psychiatrist murder many soldiers at Ft. Hood, many people killed in the Boston marathon, a woman’s head severed while she was at work in a factory in Moore, Oklahoma, and more horrors right here in our homeland.  Whether we like it or not, America is already “in the thick of things.”  The battle exists not only half-way around the world, but in America.

Also, whether it was right or wrong to seek to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, we committed to help the people of these countries live in freedom.  Formerly known as Mesopotamia, Iraq is the very cradle of Christianity (and is now nearly devoid of Christians).  How much more should we now rescue those who suffer the backlash of our abandonment?  Psalm 82:4 says, “Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”  Do you remember when thousands of joyful Iraqi’s proudly held their ink stained thumbs in the air, indicating that they had just voted?  We have left almost all of them to be driven from their homes or to be struck down by the swords of ISIS.

It is way past time for our leaders to map out and enact a clear strategy to defeat our enemies.  We could have stopped ISIS by leaving 15,000 troops in Iraq, but our president chose not to do that (our military leaders advised against this action).  We could have stopped them as they left Syria.  We could have stopped them as they marched from city to city in Iraq.  Iraq isn’t exactly covered with forests and canyons to protect them from our sight.  In Desert Storm, we discovered how easily we destroyed forces of evil with such basic weaponry as A-10 jets (while some people questioned if these planes could be useful at all).  Of course, presently A-10’s are being decommissioned right here in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, where many of our A-10’s are based.

Also, we chose to ensure the downfall of Gaddafi without helping to stabilize Libya, predictably enabling the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power.  In fact, America sent tanks, fighter jets and millions of dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood.

We could have stood our ground when Assad crossed our president’s “line in the sand,” leaving more room for the terrorists to gain ground.  Of course, these and many other examples of non-action have proven the disastrous consequences of America’s continual abdication of world leadership.

Fortunately, people as evil as the ISIS terrorists are “like the chaff which the wind driveth away” (Psalm 1:1).  But it is probable that righteous men and women must do their part in this life before the Lord executes final judgment in the life to come.  Hopefully, the civilized world will unite around strong leadership, which we pray will emerge (and discussed soon).

First to lead the fight was the King of Jordan, and America is giving a billion dollars to Jordan over the next two years.  Even China is giving aid to fight ISIS.  Saudi Arabia has over 200,000 active duty personnel with 75,000 soldiers, the fourth largest military budget in the world (52 billion per year), and has just agreed to take the lead in an Arab coalition to fight ISIS.  This coalition is only in the planning stages and will not be formed in time to save Yemen.  But at least many countries of the Middle East are beginning to clean up their own mess.  Certainly, the Saudis have a more immediate investment in seeing the defeat of ISIS.  Of course, in doing so, they come against Iran, as well, which is a necessary course of action.

The Egyptian Armed forces is reported to have more than 468,500 active personnel, in addition to 800,000 personnel available in reserve and over 400,000 paramilitary personnel making it one of the largest armies in the world (Wikipedia).

Jordan has the fifth most militarized nation in the world with 100,000 active military personnel and nearly 65,000 active reserves.  They will contribute to the coalition.  However, there are internal problems that have kept these countries from working well together.  But if these countries used even half of their forces, ISIS could be destroyed very quickly.

Strong leadership has not yet emerged from the United States.  How strong will be the leadership of Saudi Arabia has yet to be seen.  Of course, God has allowed the present circumstances for a reason, but that does not let America or any nation off the hook from standing up for righteousness against an evil enemy.  Especially an enemy that has designs upon our own nation (indeed, this is its foremost goal).   While the Arabs are forming a coalition, America could act now.  America could immediately provide strong leadership and take much stronger action than it is taking.  Of course, even if victory is quickly achieved, it will take at least a generation to defeat other forms of terrorism around the world, and in this writer’s view, battles against evil will never cease until the return of Christ (see the last chapter of the Book of Revelation).

It’s never too late to take leadership and then turn it over to Arab coalition, should that coalition prove effective.  Keep in mind that the number one responsibility of our government is the security of Americans and that America is presently “in the thick of things” right here on our own soil (see Parts I and II for more details).  Keep in mind that a great threat to America exists at this very moment and the time for decisive action is passing quickly.  Eight miles from the border of Texas is an ISIS training camp.  The State Dept. denies that this is true, but offers no proof of this denial.

Whether you believe we must individually forgive these particular enemies or not is irrelevant to the needed action.  Forgive and love our enemies all you want to, personally.  That’s what Jesus commands.  But our nation must help to stop the senseless murder and rapid advance of darkness, just as the world should have stopped Hitler and could easily have stopped him early in his campaigns.

America must lead the execution of thorough judgment upon ISIS, upon all Islamic terrorists (including upon those that have been released from GITMO and from the jail that released the present leader of ISIS), and upon any other mutation of terrorism that threatens our national security.

Do we need boots on the ground?  We need Arab boots. That’s for certain.   One biblical objection to this suggestion to join with the Arabs is that in biblical times, whenever the armies of Israel joined with ungodly nations, no good came of it.  But these Islamic theocracies are not technically our “enemies.”  As with all the Arab nations, they violate human rights as a way of life, and they persecute women in heinous ways.  Therefore, they are not ideal allies.  Yet considering that these nations are not our enemies and considering how easy it would be for them to defeat ISIS with the right leadership, it seems incumbent upon the United States to provide this leadership.  Such leadership would include providing air power, weaponry and Intel on the ground.  If this leadership proves to be necessary only temporarily, all the better.  Aligning with the Arab nations is no different than aligning with China and Russia to defeat Germany in WWII.  Some people believe that we should withdraw entirely from the Middle East.  We already see how our abdication of leadership has affected Russia, China, and Iran, as well as how this show of apathy and cowardice has affected our allies.  Further or continued abdication would continue to erode the trust of any nation that we can still call an ally.   Also, as already mentioned, whether America likes it or not, we are truly in the middle of the fight right now with terror cells in every state.  As smoke rises in the Middle East, we can provide leadership there – now – or we can exponentially increase our efforts to combat evil in America in the future.

Joining with Iran would be the height foolishness.  That would be the clear equivalent of God’s injunction in the Old Testament to not unite with our enemies.  Yet this is what America seems to be doing!  Iran is the #1 supporter of terror in the world and chants of “death to America” continue to ring in the darkness that covers that land.  Presently, Iran’s Middle East direct influence extends into Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.  Is it any wonder that Arab nations that are friendly to the United States are drawing closer to Israel, hoping that help can come from that nation?  Saudi Arabia has even offered a corridor through their nation for Israel to attack Iran.

Iran would easily defeat ISIS, but it would also add to its territory.  In fact, as America does little, the Shia fighters of Iran are taking the lead.  These Shia militias are quickly eclipsing the Iraqi forces in importance in Iraq.  The result of letting Iran take the lead will likely be to firmly establish Iran as the dominant force in Iran, doubling their territory while on their way to create nuclear weapons in the near future.  Providing help to the Arab nations, primarily in the form of leadership, would press Iran back out of the picture and help to preserve religious liberties in Iraq, helping Iraqis to regain ground lost when American pulled out the 15,000 troops.

Putting his own life in danger, Egypt’s President El Sisi has spoken directly to the leaders of Islam, advocating for them to stand up against Islamic fanaticism and also advocating for Arab boots on the ground.  El Sisi took the stand of a righteous man.

Can America provide air power, Intel on the ground, and weaponry?  Of course.  America could easily take the lead in the battle to defeat ISIS.   Our efforts to merely “contain” ISIS are not working.  Can we airlift those in danger out of Iraq and other nations in order to save them?  We have done this with over a thousand Muslims, as well as with many Syrians, even bringing many of them to America.  With the Syrians that we’ve brought to America, we haven’t even attempted to separate the oppressed from the oppressors.  Why not airlift Christians and those of other faiths out of harm’s way?

Is it worth it to stand up against the darkness?  Here’s another way to ask the same question (biblically): “Is it worth it to live for Jesus, rather than let darkness rule the globe, resulting in the murder of millions of Christians and millions upon millions of people of many faiths and cultures?”  Christians and tens of thousands of people of other faiths are presently being slaughtered.

Pacifism is not advocated in the bible.  Powerful action is not optional.  It’s what defeated the Third Reich and with God’s help – and only with God’s help – it’s what will defeat Islamic terrorism and all forms of terrorism.  I say “only with God’s help” because without God’s favor, Israel was consistently subjugated by other nations.  With God’s favor Israel could not be defeated even by “giants.”  As Psalm 127:1-2 says, “Except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it.”  America will have victory over any evil only to the extent that the nation turns to God as her strength.  Therefore, from a biblical point of view, God’s believing church in America must call out to Him and pray for the heavens to open in order for God’s power to flow through (2 Chronicles 7:14).  From a biblical point of view, and in the belief of this writer, only through such spiritual warfare will the necessary earthly battle turn in America’s favor.   Keep in mind that as posited in the many scriptures above, love of God goes hand in hand with hatred of evil; and it’s the hatred of evil – this outrage against mass extinction of innocents – that will undergird the passionate pursuit to rid the world of pure evil.  As Bernie Goldberg said recently, “When outrage dies, a piece of humanity dies with it.”   An upsurge of love of God in America, therefore, will greatly help to ignite outrage and necessary action.

While praying for our nation to turn to God, action against the enemies of civilization must be taken quickly.   Of course, believers in Christ know that He will someday go to war against Satan to bring last day’s events to a conclusion.  Until the return of the conquering Messiah, His expectation, I believe, is that Christians and righteous men and women of all faiths will protect their brothers and sisters around the world, as well as in their own countries.  Therefore, fighting Satan in these times agrees with scripture, just as the natural manifestation of righteousness is to hate evil and to love and protect innocent lives.  Leviticus 19:16 says, “Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life.”  How much more should we stand up for the lives of millions of innocents, including the lives of fellow Christians, and including the lives of our own families?  Let’s remember that Jesus was not a peacekeeper; He was a peacemaker.

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Obama’s Middle East Debacle

Saudi Arabia's King SalmanI had to laugh when I heard that the new King of Saudi Arabia, Salmon, told the White House he wasn’t going to attend Thursday’s photo-op get together of Arab leaders. Some lesser Saudi officials will attend. The message is clear enough, so long as Obama continues to make nice with Iran, the center of the problems in the Middle East, the Saudis and the others are going to be wary of any proposal that comes out of the White House.

As far as the Middle East is concerned, Obama seems to have no idea of the history or the dynamics that affect all the actions there. His Secretary of State, Kerry, is no better. He met with Arab officials last Friday and they told him they want a defense treaty in the event they were attacked by “external forces”, something that the Congress will not approve so long as Obama is in the White House.

One would think that any President at this point would have concluded that the Palestinians have no intention of signing onto a peace treaty with the Israelis.

Writing in The New York Times on May 8, Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, put it bluntly, “It doesn’t matter what these politicians think now or have said in in the past. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not happening in the next two years.” That’s how long we all have to wait until Obama leaves office.

David P.Goldman, a Senior Fellow of the Middle East Forum, writing in Asia Times Online on May 10, spelled it out. “It is inconvenient for diplomats to say so, but the Palestinian Authority collapsed quite some time ago,” noting that “President Mahmoud Abbas’ term in office began in 2005 and ended six years ago, and he has not called new elections for the simple reason that Hamas—the Palestinian branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood—would win those elections.” These days the Egyptians label Hamas a terrorist organization and have taken steps to eliminate the Brotherhood. At least they know who the enemy is.

Obama has been antagonistic to Israel from before he was elected and has made little effort to hide it. Consider this, as Goldman notes, “Hamas fired over 4,000 rockets at Israel in 2014, prompting Israeli counterstrikes during the summer.” Its declared intention and the reason for its existence is to eliminate the State of Israel. Why are we surprised to hear that Obama wants to take the statehood issue to the United Nations, a hotbed of anti-Semitism, and has little to say of the Palestinian Authority’s assertion that it wants to drag Israel in front of the International Criminal Court for having defended itself against the attacks by Hamas!

Not only has the Saudi King sent Obama a message, but so did the Israelis when they overwhelmingly reelected Benjamin Netanyahu as their Prime Minister. “The Israelis look around the Middle East and see nothing but conflict, carnage, instability and danger,” said Schanzer. “The Obama doctrine—which includes a deliberate contraction of American power in the Middle East—has undeniably made Israel less safe.”

It has made the U.S. and the world less safe too.

One of the most obscene aspects of the Obama obsession with Iran is that, in return for any deal—which Iran would ignore and cheat—they are ready “to provide as much as $120 billion in sanctions relief to satisfy the narrow technical parameters of a nuclear deal, which would legitimize Iran as a threshold nuclear state. These funds,” said Schanzer, “will flow to Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Iran terror proxies dedicated to Israel’s demise.”

To put all this in perspective, as Goldman reminds us, “From Israel’s standpoint, the Palestinian Authority was offered 95% of Judea and Samaria in return for a final peace agreement, and both times (at Camp David in 1999 under Ehud Barack and in 2008 under Ehud Olmert) the offer was rejected.”

“The U.N. Security Council,” said Goldman, “will punish Israel for the failure of negotiations that were meaningless to begin with, and establish a Hamas-controlled state within nine miles of the Mediterranean coast. Iran has already promised to arm West Bank Arabs, just as it armed Hezbollah and Hamas.”

Israel which has enjoyed the support of the United States since it declared its independence in 1948 is now put at risk by the first administration to deliberately turn its back on it in preference for a deal with the leading terror-sponsor, Iran, in the Middle East.

You cannot make a greater mess of the mess that already exists in the Middle East, but Obama is doing his best to add to it. What else should we expect from a President who refuses to utter words like “Islamic terrorism”?

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Rubio warns Bad Nuke Deal With Iran ‘Almost Guarantees War,’ by Ken McIntyre

The Senate must review whatever deal the Obama administration strikes with Iran to delay its gaining a nuclear weapon, Sen. Marco Rubio said this morning, arguing that “a bad deal almost guarantees war.”

The Florida Republican said Israel won’t accept an agreement that doesn’t recognize its right to exist, and shouldn’t have to, provoking applause.

“The argument the White House uses [to garner Democrats’ support] is that if you are not in favor of this agreement, you are in favor of war,” Rubio said. “I would argue a bad deal almost guarantees war because Israel is not going to abide by any deal that they believe puts … their existence in danger.”

Rubio, who announced April 13 that he is running for president, said other Middle East nations including Saudi Arabia will want their own nuclear weapon if they see Iran’s getting one as only a matter of time.

He also said the final deal “has to mirror the fact sheet” the administration put out when a framework was struck with the Iranians. It is “incredibly worrisome,” he said, that the White House rejects that idea.

Read more.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar – A Warning To America, Israel and the West [Video]

mordechai_kedar

Dr. Mordechai Kedar

The United West is proud to bring you another installment of our Israel Trip Series featuring Israeli Scholar and National Security subject matter expert, Dr. Mordechai Kedar. The title of Dr. Kedar’s presentation is “A Warning To America – National Security And Understanding The Muslim Mind.”

Dr. Kedar combines his 25 years in various IDF Intelligence Units, fluency in Arabic dialects, and a stellar academic career at Bar Elon University into a National Security Briefing you must watch from beginning to end.

“We in the West often delude ourselves into believing that all cultures have exactly the same goals (peace, prosperity, freedom) and exactly the same values (human life, honesty, human rights). And although all of these goals and values are undoubtedly part of every human culture, not all cultures value them to the same degree that we do in the West.”

In this briefing Dr. Kedar will present a compelling look into understanding the Middle Eastern mind, culture, religion, and how the Muslim world sees Western culture. Only by understanding how the Muslim world sees us will we be able to properly defend our culture from The Global Jihad Movement.

In this briefing Dr. Kedar covers these topics:

  1. The Family unit and population demographics are a National Security issue.
  2. 14:43 Understanding Islamic immigration to the West and why the export or Hijra is vastly important but misunderstood by Americans and Europeans. How this works into the framework of the Greater Middle East.
  3. 45:40 Understanding the two types of threats emanating from the great Middle East and Persia.
  4. 1:03:00 The Big Picture. The West’s Geo-Strategic picture with Iran.
  5. What the Israeli message to Iran will have to be.
  6. 1:11:00 How the Iranian mind thinks and processes information using their own imagery. The Shia Iranians do not think like us politically. Dr. Kedar takes Iranian political propaganda and deconstructs what it means from their perspective. What we think is irrelevant in dealing with the Iranians.

After you watch and absorb what Dr. Kedar is telling you about the Iranian mind you will be angry at how the current U.S. administration is dealing with our Iranian adversaries geo politically and even more urgently with the Iranian Nuclear program.

This lecture should be mandatory watching for President Obama, John Kerry, and everyone at the U.S. State Department.

To follow Dr. Kedar’s body of work go to: http://mordechaikedar.com/

Go to www.TheUnitedWest.org and listen to our daily simulcast AM radio show – Enemies Of The State.

Special thanks to Dr. Bob – 00Z – CVC

Israel – 67 Years of Fighting for Freedom

We present a special show today focusing on Israel’s 67th anniversary of their Independence Day which follows their solemn Memorial Day.

Join me and our team as they go back to Life Magazine, 1948 and see how life was in Tel Aviv during the British handover of Israel.

Our special guest, Israeli, Arie Egozie walks us though the tough past and maybe tougher future awaiting this tiny but very strong nation.

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Soviet Fascism in the 21st Century: The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction 

Russia’s recent strategy worldwide is extremely alarming, showing Russia’s real aggressive face: Russian Government breaches the security of the White House and our State Department, it harasses NATO in the skies, and continues killing people in Ukraine. I have been warning America about Russian ideology for the last twenty years. Alas, all my writings about Stalin’s Doctrine of Soviet Fascism have been blocked by the White House. This is the reason why none of the Republican candidates to the Presidency in 2016 is addressing the threat of Russian ideology. Yet nothing can stop me from warning you as the harm done to us by Russia has brought America to a threshold of a point of no returns. Moreover, the Democrat Party and its left extremism have learned, embraced, and exploited Stalin’s strategy, tactics, and modus operandi in its fight against the Republicans. This is the time for the Republicans to go on the offensive and save America the Beautiful. Hence the awareness of Stalinism is a Must.

Stalin’s rules: Divide and Conquer

The motto of Divide and Conquer came from the ancient world and has been used many times and mostly successful. You saw it in the1950s –Stalin’s war against Korea and as a result Korea was divided. Then Vietnam, Afghanistan and so on–the wars against Western civilization were going on in the 20th century. Yet. as the history illustrates the motto has not always been successful. The victory of Benjamin Netanyahu is a stunning victory of Western civilization in the Middle East in March 2015. Israeli’s media called the election fateful or prophetic to Israel. They were right. The election was also no less a stunning defeat of our enemies, if you know who they are. For the last twenty years, I have been writing about the war against Western civilization waged, handled, and coordinated by our enemies– the Soviets, then Russia for many decades. Isn’t it strange that the American administration and the Democratic Party provided the leftists in Israel with money for the buses to transport the Arab electorate to vote. This exact fact makes Netanyahu’s victory in the 21st century equal to that of President Reagan’s victory over the Evil Empire in the 20th century. Reagan’s foreign policy “we win, they lose” is the litmus test, which produced an incredible result in 2015.

Don’t be shocked by my comparison, it has its logic. Both cases have defeated the same ideology–Stalin’s Doctrine of Divide and Conquer. Have you heard the term carousel (roundabout) used in the election to the Russian parliament Duma in2007? Do you know what it means? Hearing this word in Russian, I did not understand its application at first. The events that followed had given me the meaning of the word. The United Russia party together with the Kremlin administration had organized the youth movement’s groups providing them with a caravan of buses. I watched them on Russian TV. Young people, singing with enthusiasm occupied the buses and moved along the streets to the voting precincts one after another. The voting ballots were waiting for them and they all voted for United Russia Party. Then they left for other voting places where they voted again and again for United Russia. Reportedly, in several cities printing houses reported that 109 percent voted for United Russia. Do not be surprised. Welcome to the country of Soviet Fascism run by Stalin’s Soviet mafia! Look at the famous Reagan’s creed “we win they lose”–Western civilization won, Obama lost in the Middle East. This is the crux of the matter–the Republican idea has defeated Stalinist Doctrine the way Reagan’s victory over the Evil Empire–”we win, they lose.”

Middle East Yesterday and Today

Of course, there are some differences in the mechanism of application: in Russia everybody was aware of the organized buses, in Israel, it was an American covert, underground operation by a group of Democrats from Chicago that costs the Americans taxpayers $350.000. This is a typical Stalinist performance with blaming Netanyahu for the Palestinian issue. The war by America against Israel had begun. Both cases are analogous–Divide and Conquer. Yet, Obama’s war against Israel is also a conjunction with Stalin’s anti-Semitism. I won’t be surprise if the next American accusation of Israel will be espionage, also a Stalin’s obsession. Moreover, there is another caveat of Russian connection. As you know, recruited in 1957 Arafat is dead, but we have Arafat number 2–Mahmout Abbas; the connection with the Kremlin stays the same. He is literally a student of Moscow with Soviet “academic credentials”; his dissertation had denied the Holocaust. Look at Arafat’s corrupt people surrounding Abbas: the same corrupt structure plus Hamas and Hezbollah under Russia’s supervision, ready to wipe off Israel from the world map. Iran (another Russian proxy) is also there and can become our legal ally soon.

The troublesome events in the Middle East force me to return to the history of the region. Go back to the period 1960-1990 and recall the Soviet activities and actions in the region, particularly in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Iran. It was a time of overwhelming recruitment, infiltration, and radical indoctrination by the Soviet ideology. Stalin’s idea to use the hands of Islam in his war against the West has a long life. Research the time of birth of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Democratic Republic of Yemen building communism in the 1970s then put all the information together vis-a-vis with their connection to contemporary Russia–they are all a product of the same ideology–Soviet Fascism. Don’t be surprised that all terrorists groups, regardless of their names have the same behavior, modus operandi, and agenda. Reading Stalin’s bio, written by me, you will find the explanation for the idea. Stalin was brought up by the Muslim culture and had been an organizer of the Marxists groups in the Islamic part of the Russian Empire–the initial connection of Communism and Terrorism. Stalin had dealt with Sunnis and Shiites and managed to use both skilfully. He worked also in Iran and knew Middle East and Iran pretty well. His political Doctrine and the human capacity for evil have been inherited and used subsequently without any deviations by all Russian leaders who followed him, including Putin.

We, the former citizens of the Socialist countries were growing up in Stalin’s era of hate and bigotry, studying together with the people from Middle East and Africa in the Soviet universities and other educational facilities. The foreign students also got the special training, similar to that received by Arafat in the 1950-1960s. Arafat is dead, yet we have Mahmout Abbas; the connection with the Kremlin stays the same.  Arafat’s corrupt people surrounding Abbas: the same corrupt structure. Look at Yemen, the war started by the Soviet stooges building a communist state in the 1970s never ended there. I expect a more sophisticated global game by Putin with no substantive changes on those places.The only difference is a master-puppet: If it was the Russian supervision and coordination, in the 1950-90s now it is Iran’s–the Russian proxy. The rest is the same–Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestinians (Hezbollah and Hamas) under Iran’s supervision, continue threatening to destroy Israel. We have today what the Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov ( a devoted Stalin’s disciple) had promised to create in the 1970s. According to Andropov:” The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor.” Russian Footsteps, by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24, 2008.)

I have been writing about the future of the Middle East in two Chapters 7 and 8. giving the detailed activities and revealing illustration of Soviet Fascism in the 20 century, in my book What is Happening to America? Xlibris, 2012. The 20th century was Russia’s concealed and planned preparation for the Middle East in the 21st century.. Today the Middle East is on a fire and we are witnessing a multi-Russian aggression on the land, sea, and space, putting fear and pressure on the West. The Middle East is only one front of Russian aggression–Ukraine and Europe are the major task for Putin presently. The Middle East, under Iran’s supervision will play a role by diverting attention from the aggression in Ukraine–a typical Stalin’s double-game with the tricks and propaganda threat. “What’s been going on in Ukraine represents a monumental turning point in the balance of world geopolitical/military power. Why? Well, it’s simply this: Ukraine will very likely go down in history as the country where America, the supposed sole superpower in the world, was checkmated and met its match at the hands of the other superpower in the world – Russia.” April 12, 2015 | Authors: Michael Payne | Nation of Change | Op-Ed.This paragraph has some truth in it. I hope you grasp the predicament in the world–Iran is a player, but not the major player, Russia is. Today America is fully invested in the Middle East being challenged by the Stalinist Doctrine.

Who is to blame for the Escalation of Violence in the World.

Unfortunately, American politicians and media downgrade the importance of ideology. It is an elephant in the room and a tremendous force in contemporary politics, which is not being addressed. For twenty years I have been writing about Soviet Fascism and now I would like to add one crucial aspect of Nationalism–Chauvinism. Chauvinism in politics has been identified very clearly, it is an Ideology — “excessive or prejudiced loyalty or support for one’s own cause, group, or gender” Encyclopedia. Have you ever compared German National-Socialism and Soviet Stalinism?They are identical in cause and means to achieve the objectives. I suspect, you would argue that Stalin did not have gas chambers for Jews. Wrong! He had applied even more barbaric methods to Jews and Christians–66-80 million of innocent people were annihilated. His death in March 1953 had saved the Jews from genocide equal to that of Chechen, Crimean Tatars, and other groups of different nationalities. As you can see Nationalism and Chauvinism are the features common to both Fascist states. Please read my books and articles for a discussion on the subject of Soviet Fascism.

I have dedicated three books and dozens of articles to the subject. Yet, today we discuss Terrorism more than Ideology; that is the reason why I return to the subject of ideology. Moreover, we are not identifying and naming the enemy, therefore we are confused in the beginning with let alone to identify the Ideology. Stalinism is the foundation of contemporary terrorism–Soviet Fascism has animated Islamic terrorist movement. Hence knowledge of the ideology is a primary task to fight the enemy. Do not forget Stalin’s North Korea with nuclear missiles. As I was writing these words, I am hearing news on the radio that Russia was lifting the ban and shipping a contemporary developed defense-missiles system–S-300 to Iran. Now Russia’s real face described by me in my books, articles, and in this column, vividly exposes Stalin’s agenda of One World Government under the Kremlin auspices and WWIII. Putin is and has always been a devoted disciple of Stalin and Andropov: therefore knowledge of Stalin’s Ideology is a Must today.

The motto Divide and Conquer Stalin learned from Machiavelli and applied it also to already existing divisions. Historically the Muslim world was divided by a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites for centuries. Stalin was dealing with both very skillfully for many years. Putin continues the policy of using both, depending on the location. Look at Yemen today: Shiites, supported by Iran have freed members of Al-Qaeda from a prison and together are fighting Sunnis, supported by Saudi Arabia. And Obama together with Putin are making Iran a strong leader in the Middle East. Doesn’t it make my idea, expressed in this and other articles more and more legitimate? I’ll give you another event to think about. Do you remember who had committed the attacks on 9/11? There were 14 students from Saudi Arabia known to us as the perpetrators of 9/11. Don’t you think that another violent force behind the 9/11 had purposely orchestrated and coordinated the event to spoil relationship between America and Saudi Arabia? Consider the events at Yemen today and the correlation of forces: the answer is there.

Destruction of the Land and Humanity

You have already being informed by me about criminal methods of Stalinism: recruitment, infiltration, drugs, and assassinations. We also discussed the harms inflicted by the Agents of Influence inside and outside our country. To confirm the existential threat upcoming from Russia, let me give you another story, a story of Turkey and its leader. The geographic location of Turkey makes the country a strategical target for Russian objectives. And this story proves it. Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan 2003-2014, became the President of the country in 2014.Turkey had a very good relation with Israel in the beginning of the 21st century. However, the relation has changed dramatically somewhere in 2009-2015–Turkey had become an enemy of Israel, joining Hamas and the Palestinian cause.

Knowing the Russian methods, agenda, and a proclivity to mold a Soviet style charlatan-leaders around the world to engeneere the cadres for fifth column,I started researching the events happening in Turkey. I found out something that attract my attention. During a three year period 2002-2005,Turkey had suffered ten earthquakes. I went to the official statistics and got the dates:January 22,2002, January 27,2003, May 1,2003, March 1,2004, March 25,2004, July 1, 2004, July 30,2004,August 11,2004, January 25,2005, October 20,2005. For those who doesn’t understand the significance of the tragic events in Turkey and drastic changes in its foreign policy, I’d like to add that I have already discussed in my books the Russian ability to create and orchestrate earthquakes. The information will also identify the perpetrator of “climate change” mystery.

I hope you can grasp now my ideas of who is to blame for the escalation of violence in the world. Please, also watch the Democratic Party and especially Obama himself, minimizing the threat of ISIS and other terrorist groups and working in cahoots with Putin to make a major sponsor of International Terrorism Iran a legitimate member of the world community. To confirm the truth of my ideas, of this series and in all my books, please listen to the American Admiral talking about changes the course of History: “ The Obama administration has a strategy: it’s anti-American, anti-Western, it’s pro-Islamic, pro-Iranian, and pro-Muslim Brotherhood.” Former NAVY CINCPAC, Admiral “Ace” James Lyons, speaking February 11, 2015 in Washington D.C.

To save the American Republic and win WW III, awareness and knowledge about the enemy is imperative.

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com.

The Islamic State Caliphate is Pure Islam

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.

Obama’s War on Israel by Jerry Gordon and Ilana Freedman

When the polls closed in Israel on March 17, 2015 for election of a new government, Israel’s Parliament, the Obama White House was poised for a result far different from the stunning victory of Prime Minister Netanyahu. His Likud Party list won a plurality of 30 seats, far ahead of his nearest rival, the Zionist Union, which secured only 24 seats. Although Israel’s second leading party, led by Labor MK Yitzhak Herzog, had been in a tight lead in the exit polls, they failed to achieve the victory over Likud.

The election results turned up another surprise as the party that finished third in the polling was the Joint Arab List (JAL), which claimed 14 seats. JAL is led by charismatic Haifa lawyer and City Council member, Ayman Oded of Hadash, a far left party that includes the Israeli Communist Party and drew votes from leftist Jewish extremists groups like B’Tselem and Peace Now.

While exit polls showed the Zionist Union with a narrow one seat lead, the polls proved to be dead wrong. Many Israeli voters were angered by both the yellow journalism tactics of the major opposition Israeli media, Yediot Ahronoth and Israeli TV channels 2 and 10, and the leaks about the blatant interference by foreign groups allied with President Obama and leftist EU NGOs. Just weeks before the election, it was reported that these groups had spent huge amounts of money to defeat Netanyahu’s party. But the large get-out-the-vote effort in the Israeli Arab community, which had been orchestrated by Obama’s campaign organizers, failed to unseat the beleaguered Likud party. Centrist voters cast their votes for Netanyahu’s party, and even the Israeli Bedouin communities voted overwhelmingly for Likud.

In the end, the vote was clearly a solid win for the Netanyahu camp. As a result, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, in accordance with Israeli election law, invited various party leaders to come for consultations to identify possible partners in a new ruling coalition. On March 24thhe gave the nod to Netanyahu, who had cobbled together a coalition majority of Knesset seats, 67 of which came from a right center-religious coalition of parties.

The President Takes Revenge  

President Obama’s outrage at the election results was immediately apparent. At first, he refused to follow the basic diplomatic custom of calling the newly re-elected Prime Minister to proffer his congratulations. Instead, he waited for several days, and when he finally did make the call, he scolded Netanyahu for his positions rather than congratulating him for his win. Not satisfied with lecturing Netanyahu on alleged racist remarks about Arab voters, he also berated the PM for his remarks rejecting a two-state solution, the centerpiece of Obama’s “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is not altogether clear when the rift between Obama and Netanyahu began, but it certainly dates back to a series of diplomatic slights by the President during several visits by the Prime Minister to the White House.

Most recently, however, Netanyahu’s address before a joint meeting of Congress fanned the flames of Obama’s discontent. The purpose of Boehner’s invitation had been to give Netanyahu the opportunity to present Israel’s position on the danger posed to both Israel and the United States of a nuclear Iran to the members of Congress. This had been made necessary by the President’s own secrecy, keeping Congress in the dark about the ongoing negotiations. But Obama saw the invitation – and Netanyahu’s acceptance – as an affront to him personally, and rather than welcoming this as an opportunity to clarify the issues surrounding Iran’s quest for nuclear development, he took the dysfunction between himself and Netanyahu to a new level.

In his speech, Netanyahu presented the possibility of a nuclear Iran as a security threat to the US, and an existential threat to Israel, calling the P+5 impending deal a “very bad deal,” because it would allow Iran, a terrorist-supporting state, to become a threshold nuclear power. Obama, however, saw Netanyahu’s speech as a challenge to his P5+1 initiative. The now highly politicized negotiations with Iran to lift international financial sanctions against its highly controversial nuclear program had become central to an out and out assault on Netanyahu and the upcoming elections in Israel.

Prior to the PM’s speech, Obama showed his anger by making it clear that he would not “have time” to meet with Netanyahu while he was in Washington, claiming as well that it would give the appearance of interfering in Israel’s upcoming elections on March 17.

In the end, and quite possibly because the President had made such a big issue over it, the Prime Minister gave his speech to a packed House. Ten times the number of people who crowded into the gallery had to be turned away for lack of seating. The speech received international coverage, carried live, complete and uninterrupted, on several international networks. Netanyahu was called “Churchillian” by more than one commentator.

The Prime Minister’s speech was taken very seriously by many in Congress. Only days later, Sen. Tom Cotton (AK-R) authored a letter, co-signed by 46 Senate Republican colleagues, and addressed to the Leaders of the Iranian Islamic Republic. Sent via Twitter, the letter explained the Constitutional requirements for Senatorial advice and consent on treaties and certain executive agreements.

The response to the letter by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei mocked America’s “treachery.” Foreign Minister Zarif’s response went further, revealing that the Administration’s strategy was to sideline Congressional review by seeking a UN Security resolution for the deal with Iran, since the agreement was multilateral. That contention roiled Obama’s Congressional opponents even more. They warned the President not to sideline the US Congress in the Iranian negotiations.

Simultaneously, the bi-partisan US Senate Permanent Investigations Committee called for an investigation into possible violations of U.S. funding laws by those involved in the effort to unseat Netanyahu in the Israeli elections. The alleged non-partisan “get-out-the-vote” campaigns by the Abraham Fund, One Voice, and the Israeli group, V-15, under the leadership of former Obama Campaign field director Jeremy Bird of 270 Strategies, was now coming under scrutiny in Washington.

The Administration responded to these actions by Congress with an unprecedented attack on Israel, involving allegations that Israel had spied on the Iran negotiations and had given classified information to members of Congress. Presidential aides demanded the end of a “50 year occupation” at a J Street Conference in Washington, suggesting that it would support Palestinian statehood.

Israel Surrounded by Muslim States

The Administration further expressed its anger in an unprecedented move by permitting the Pentagon to declassify and release a secret, 1987 report on Israel’s nuclear program, despite a long-standing mutual agreement between the two allies to keep it secret. It was understood that to declassify the secret report would expose the Jewish nation’s known but unrevealed nuclear weapons capabilities, making it vulnerable to further political attack. The release, which was occasioned by a Freedom of Information Act request by the virulently anti-Israel Institute for Research -Middle East Policy, only related to Israel’s nuclear program. Those of other countries, contained in the report, were all redacted. The 386-page top-secret memo, titled, “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” goes into great detail about how Israel turned into a nuclear power in the 1970s and 80s.

Although the details of Israel’s program may be, by now, dated, this unilateral action by the Obama Administration will no doubt bring renewed international pressure on Israel to become a signatory of the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty and be subject to intrusive UN IAEA inspections. A further consequence of the Administration’s declassification of the secret report on Israel’s nuclear program is it could provide a targeting file on possible attack scenarios in any retaliatory exchange with rogue nuclear states. This action is seen by many analysts as further evidence of the revenge campaign, unleashed by the Obama White House to further undermine Israel in the President’s uncompromising push for an agreement with Iran.

Incredulous Americans are now increasingly concerned that the Administration wants to achieve a rapprochement with Iran, ending 36 years of isolation, while marginalizing our closest ally in the region. Even as the Administration continues to placate and appease Iran, its developing anti-Israel policy is taking firm root in the White House and State Department. By negotiating with terrorists, even as a crescendo of cries of “Death to America” are broadcast from the lips of the Ayatollah himself, Obama has created a new reality in the Middle East that is more likely to lead to war than to peace.

Iran’s Expanding Role in the Middle East  

One particularly dangerous aspect of the Obama Iran rapprochement is the latter’s emerging hegemony over Arab States in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Lebanon. The presence of its Quds Force commander, General Qassem Suleimani, in Iraq is particularly worrisome, as he orchestrates campaigns to wrest the city of Tikrit from ISIS, and further entrenches the Iranian presence there.

Following the collapse of the US-supported Yemeni government of President Hadi to a coalition of Shiite Houthi rebels supported by Iran, a new battleground has been created between Iran and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS, unfettered by a pro-West government and a US military presence, which was suddenly and shamefully removed on orders from Washington. The new fighting in Yemen triggered an almost immediate Saudi response. No longer waiting for a US initiative, Saudi Arabia began reinforcing its southern frontier with Yemen with troops and tanks, and deterring cross border assaults by Houthi fighters.

Obama’s naive  paradigm of a geo-political equilibrium between Shia Muslims led by Iran and Sunni Arabs led by Saudi Arabia foundered with the dramatic intervention by the Saudi Air Force on Wednesday March 25, 2015. Attacking Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, the capital, Sana’a and targets near Aden, the Saudi operation “determination storm” began, opening a new page in Middle East history.

The Saudis gave less than one hour notice to the Pentagon and the White House of the launch of the air campaign. The Administration wasn’t consulted. That effrontery to the leader of the free world was in evidence at the 26th Summit of the Arab League in the Egyptian resort of Sharma El-Shaik. Abd-Rabbu Hadi, the ousted US-backed President of Yemen, who had fled from Aden to Saudi Arabia, accused the Houthi of being “stooges” for Iran. He refused any offer of a cease fire while the Saudis and Emirati air units continued attacking Houthi forces. Iran warned the Saudi and Emirate allies of “bloodshed,” if attacks continue, but the Saudis mobilized 150,000 ground forces for possible action.

Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil Al-Araby said the Arab states would “join ranks and look into taking pre-emptive and defensive arrangements to maintain the Arab national security,” and stressed the dire need for “necessary measures to counter them.”

The Washington Post reported Arab leaders had effectively announced a “joint military force to intervene in neighboring states grappling with armed insurgencies.”

All of us underestimated the Saudis. Now they have emerged at the top of a Sunni coalition against Iran–limited for the moment to the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, the most impressive piece of diplomacy in the Sunni world since Nasser, and perhaps in modern times. That attributes a lot of importance to a coalition assembled for a minor matter in a small country, but it may be the start of something important: the self-assertion of the Sunni world in response to the collapse of American regional power, the threat of Sunni jihadist insurgencies, and the Shi’ite bid for regional hegemony.

Obama’s policy of leading from behind has clearly failed to stem the tide of radical Islamic extremists both Shiite and Sunni. Instead, Saudi Arabia has assumed leadership of its own coalition of at least ten Arab states to fight the menace of Iran-led Shia armies.

Against this background, the Obama administration has unleashed his deliberate attack against the only reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel. Surrounded by enemies, including Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, Quds Force, and IRGC troops astride the Golan frontier with Syria, Israel faces the possibility of an imminent war greater than any in the past. Reports of ISIS units actively fighting Assad’s forces in southern Syria, and suggestions that ISIS cells have now infiltrated Gaza, Sinai, and the PA in the West Bank only make the situation for Israel more tenuous and dangerous.

The Controversy and the American Jewish Community

Late on the night of Israel’s election returns, Charlie Rose of the eponymous PBS Show convened a panel of leftists to comment on the Netanyahu victory. The Charlie Rose panel was composed of Jeffrey Goldberg of The AtlanticAri Shavit of Ha’aretz, Ronen Bergman Military Intelligence Columnist of Yedioth Ahronoth, Yousef Munayyer of the US Campaign against Palestine Occupation and Jerusalem Fund advocate for Anti-Israel BDS, and Lisa Goldman of the leftist +972 Magazine and Israel–Palestine Fellow of the New America Fund. The composition of Rose’s panel was unbalanced, to say the least, but, it could be argued, reflected the strong opposition to Israel represented by the left.

Ronen suggested that only the international BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) campaign against Israel could change things by hitting Israelis in their back pockets, calling out Netanyahu as the virtual unbeatable “Caesar from Caesaria.” Goldberg, who has virtually unlimited interview access to the Obama West Wing, predicted that a narrow right-wing government would fall in a year with new elections and that relations with the Obama administration will get even worse. Shavit bemoaned the progressive peacenik failure on the Left in Israel, Israel losing its soul, portending looming violence – a reference to a Third Intifada – and demographic problems ahead. Munayyer hewed to his usual pro-Palestinian anti-Israel stance calling it a tribal election. Goldman in her comments praised the Joint Arab List’s third place showing in the Knesset elections as an important development for “Palestinian Israelis.” Watch the Charlie Rose panel discussion.

Yossi Halevy of the Shalom Hartman Institute was the only voice of reality. He said, “Israelis believe that a Palestinian State may be both an existential solution and a threat, given the impasse over negotiations.” Halevy conveyed the view that Israelis across the spectrum view an Obama consummation of an Iran nuclear deal as an existential threat. Halevy quoted left wing author David Grossman, saying that the Obama Administration on the Iran nuclear deal is “criminally naive and perilous for Israel.

The Obama-led disputes have clearly divided the American Jewish community. Using the Soros-backed J Street, a strident, anti-Israel not-for-profit masquerading as a pro-Israel organization, as a vehicle for airing their anti-Israel rhetoric, the assault turned even more vitriolic. Today, Israel looks more like an enemy to the Obama West Wing than terror-supporting Iran.

The rabbinic leadership of Reform and Conservative Jewish denominations chastised the Netanyahu campaign for campaign remarks about “droves of Arab voters” being driven to the polls in a deliberate attempt to unseat him in programs funded by foreign interests. The Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), a leftist media outlet supported by Jewish Federation news outlets in America, reported how Rabbi Rick Jacobs, a close ally of J Street, condemned Netanyahu for his remarks, taken out of context, of why a Palestinian State was not a realistic prospect under current conditions with a corrupt PA led by President Mahmoud Abbas in a unity government with Hamas.

Not to be outdone, the Rabbinic Assembly of the Conservative Movement, whose leadership at the flagship Jewish Theological Seminary has been an active partner in Jewish Muslim dialogues with Muslim Brotherhood front groups, released a statement accusing Netanyahu of undermining “the principles upon which the State of Israel was founded.”

Further evidence of the American Jewish community divide over the Netanyahu election was reflected in a Ha’aretz report which quoted several American Reform rabbis who sharply criticized Netanyahu for remarks he had made at the end of his campaign.

Daniel Sokatch of the leftist organization the New Israel Fund, who had been taken to task by Netanyahu in campaign remarks, said in a statement issued by the group, “When the Prime Minister urged his base to come out and vote to counter ‘Arabs coming in droves to the ballot box,’ I knew, as you did, that this pandering to fear and prejudice could only exacerbate the divisions between Arab and Jewish citizens.” That the remarks had been taken out of context was ignored and painted a picture of Netanyahu as a bigot who was opposed to Arabs and peace.

In contrast to the liberal Jewish outrage, the ZOA’s Executive Director Mort Klein expressed solidarity with Netanyahu’s positions, saying, “I’m proud that the Israelis chose reality and security over fantasy and a phony hope in change.” Klein blamed the Palestinian Authority for “forcing” Netanyahu to make his video promise not to allow a Palestinian state because “they’ve aligned themselves with Nazi-like Hamas.” Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Presidents of Major American Organizations, also cast his lot supporting Netanyahu and Israel. He said, “We know that politicians in the heat of campaigns in the U.S. and in Israel say things they may not mean to stick with in the long term. [Netanyahu] did not say that he gave up on the two-state solution, but rather that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “does not appear ready to negotiate.”

The Wall Street Journal published a lead editorial with the title, “Obama’s Israel Tantrum,” suggesting that “the leader of the free world takes revenge on an ally.”  “Even if you believe the main challenge in the region is getting Israel to cede more territory to the Palestinians, that day won’t happen until Israelis feel secure. But Israelis can be forgiven for feeling the opposite with a raging civil war in Syria, Islamic State and an offshoot of al Qaeda operating near the Golan Heights, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani leading Shiite militias in Iraq, and a U.S. Administration sounding and acting as if Iran can be a more constructive partner for peace than Israel.” (Read More)

Another Wall Street Journal article, “Israel Spied on Iran Talks,” suggests that accusations of spying by Israel on American negotiations with Iran is yet another effort by the Obama Administration to isolate and blame Netanyahu for damaging the prospects for a P5+1 political agreement with Iran (an agreement that even the French criticize for not being “fool proof”). While senior US officials admit they knew about Israel shadowing the Iran talks, they were incensed when Israel took what information they acquired from various sources, including Iran and other P5+1 participants, to brief Congress on the realities of how bad a deal was emerging.

It is clear that President Obama has unleashed revenge on Israel and PM Netanyahu, outraged that the Jewish nation would not succumb to his version of foreign policy and Israel’s need to comply with his wishes. He ignores Israel’s inherent obligation to assert its sovereign right to defend its people against the existential threats by Iran and its proxies, whose rising nuclear hegemony threatens the Middle East and the US.

America’s truculent president brooks no interference in his program. By attempting to marginalize Netanyahu’s legitimate objections to America’s rapprochement with Mahdist Iran, to US cooperation with Iran in the war against ISIS, and to concluding a political agreement that will enable Iran to achieve nuclear breakout, Obama has placed Israel in an untenable position.

As the Middle East continues to devolve into chaos, Israel remains the only stable democracy in the region. Israel’s future is tied closely to America’s. Often compared to “the canary in the coal mine,” any attack on Israel, which the Iranians call “the little Satan,” will be the precursor to a major attack on the US. That Obama refuses to acknowledge this, and continues to attack and threaten Israel, bodes ill for both countries.

It is not a stretch to say that as the chaos in the Muslim nations surrounding Israel continues to grow, America’s ability to withstand being drawn into another Middle East war will decrease exponentially. Only a strong and sound foreign policy that recognizes our true allies and our true enemies will enable the US to turn this escalating disaster around.

The next war will be more terrible than we can imagine. We cannot avoid it by ignoring the warning signs all around us. Time is running out.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.