A Confluence of Folly. Part I

 

by D. L. Adams

1^st part of 3

The barely prevented horror that was the recent Christmas Day jihad terror attack on an inbound flight to Detroit from Amsterdam seems to have affected people in our country in a way that other recent terror attacks have not. Only eight years since 9/11 and only weeks from the atrocity at Fort Hood, it is now clear that we continue to be unsafe and profoundly vulnerable; the commonalities of our daily lives put us at risk in ways that we never thought could be possible in our country.

There is loaded symbolism also in Abdulmutallab's terror attack of Christmas Day; an inbound flight to perhaps America's most devastated city (Detroit) was almost destroyed by an ideologically driven[1] sadist and would-be mass murderer. The image of a blown up (with all its attendant casualties) American aircraft at the aerial doorway of Detroit is horrific; a revolting unity of destruction and failure in the air and on the ground. The just-prevented terror attack is a symbol that every American city could one day become just like Detroit through acts of jihad war and hate.

The economic failure of Detroit is complex and occurred over many decades; the devastating cultural bankruptcy that now impedes the legitimate defense of every American city will likely result in future catastrophic disasters that will take only seconds to transpire, not decades. The failure of Detroit is not an illustration of the failure of Americanism, or democracy but rather a failure of attention paid; we have an obligation to do our best for the city of Detroit (or any American city) just as we have an obligation to secure our people, borders, cities, and the infrastructure of our country.

After the Christmas Day attack on the Detroit flight we stand at a crossroads; a crossroads where denial [2] and ignorance meet rationality and common sense. We enter the New Year observing a disturbing confluence of errors, mistakes, malfeasance and incompetence.[3] that puts every American and all of our friends across the world at increased risk. The last minute prevention of the "crotch bomber's"[4] attack is a rare bright spot for us; there are few silver clouds to be found in these dark linings.

We continue to send our best and brightest men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president[5] said recently in a speech at West Point that U.S. troop levels would be increased by 30,000 in the Afghanistan theater of operations — a new surge. The president[6] did say during the campaign that Afghanistan was the most important fight[7] and Iraq was not; why this was so was never explained other than with derisive accusations of the previous president's "errors." The comparison dismissed by the current resident[8] of the White House is an important one and should not be so readily minimized; Iraq and Afghanistan are the same battle in a much wider war.

Afghanistan and Iraq — War for the Enemy's Ideology

While his "progressive" supporters were almost universally condemnatory[9] of this new surge, those on the political right were almost universally supportive.[10] But they are all wrong because the foundations of both conflicts are built upon concepts that are contrary to American ideas of freedom, tolerance, equality of the sexes, and justice.

This "mission" in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to be "nation building" with ideals of democracy given lip service but no substantive backing. This is because the constitutional foundation of both beneficiary "states" is Islam and Sharia law.

There can be no doubt that Sharia law is anti-women, anti-tolerance, anti-homosexual, and anti-democratic and contrary to our concepts of justice and human rights. American support for such a brutal and anti-human system in two countries with the blood of our best and a great part of our national treasure derived from all citizens through taxation defies explanation.

If the foundation of both "states" is the law of Islam (Sharia) and the law of Islam is contrary to American concepts of freedom, justice, equality, and tolerance why then do we support these "states"?

When questions of ideology are presented to the planners of the wars and our leadership, the questioner is excoriated for his/her intolerance and impropriety and lack of consideration for another "culture;" but the questions themselves are never answered. We are experts at blowing things up, but we seem ill prepared for the ideological component of this massive conflict of which Iraq and Afghanistan are but a part.

The indefensible fact that no answers are forthcoming and, that the questions themselves cannot be asked, is a national tragedy upon which future tragedies will be constructed and for which our leadership must be held accountable.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply flawed because we are fighting for Sharia law (Islamic Law) in both countries. We are, in effect, fighting for anti-democracy and monoculture (Islam), hatred, intolerance, and jihad. Astoundingly, we are fighting for the same ideology then for which our existential jihadist enemies fight — the creation of an Islamic state and the rule of Sharia law.

In Afghanistan, does it make sense to support a Sharia law country (Karzai's government) that is fighting a Sharia law former government (Taliban) when Sharia law itself is fundamentally opposed to everything for which the United States stands? Can there be a national foreign policy anywhere based upon greater moral, ethical, and intellectual confusions, ignorance, and foolishness than this?

The idea that American soldiers fight and die, and that America would stretch its economy to the breaking point, for a totalitarian system of brutality and cruelty (Sharia) would have been unthinkable only a generation ago. We have surely passed some kind of red line.

Afghanistan[11] Afghanistan Constitution: Article One Ch. 1. Art. 1 Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state. Iraq[12] Iraq Constitution: Article 2 — First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation: A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.

 

If establishing Sharia Law[13] with all its cruelty, misogyny, brutalities, anti-homosexuality, anti-religious freedom, denial of individual rights, and the inculcation of Islamic supremacism and obligatory jihad is not the purpose of the United States government in supporting Iraq and Afghanistan it is certainly going to be the result. The purpose of jihad is to actively oppose the existence of systems of government, cultures, and religions that are not Islamic and bring the entire world under Islam and jihad.

Participation in jihad is an obligation for all adherents of Islam. In Koran this "fighting in Allah's cause" and is mentioned over 100 times; it is a central if not the central them of Islam itself.

The question must be asked: What is our purpose in supporting the creation and growth of societies and governments that are fundamentally opposed to our existence (as delineated in their founding documents and in Islamic doctrine) and the concepts of liberty and freedom, tolerance and openness, for which the United States has always, until recently apparently, so steadfastly stood?

Wars of Self-Destruction — Abandoning our Heritage

What, then, do our American ideas of freedom and justice mean when we encourage the existence and growth (with both blood and treasure) of societies that are opposed to such ideas? These wars are a disaster whose purposes must be understood. American support of Sharia law anywhere is evidence of an American cultural failure and an abandonment of the foundational concepts that form our national character and the foundations of our country. Support of Sharia law anywhere by the United States here at home or abroad is a foundational failure of understanding the doctrine of Islam.

Alexis De Tocqueville in Democracy in America compared the importance of the concepts of religion and American civilization in the early 19th century. His observations are as valid today as they were in 1840.

Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The Gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods. — Democracy in America, Vol 2, Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1840; reprint, 1863); p.26.

The conceptual foundations of America as understood by early historians of the republic and of later analysts is in the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman tradition. De Tocqueville's assessment is essentially correct in analysis but mistaken in its prediction; how could he have known that we ourselves would finance the resurgence of Islam through the greatest transfer of wealth in human history through our purchases of Arab/Islamist oil?[14]

Over time it appears that we have been our worst enemy — forgetting those profound concepts of freedom and justice upon which the republic was fashioned with the intention that, like the Union itself, these concepts would be perpetual through our protection of them.

In our forgetting, we have created an intellectual environment of radical tolerance for other ideologies and cultures — even to the existential detriment of our own.

Islamic justice, peace, war, tolerance, and civilization itself are profoundly opposed to American understanding of the same concepts. The failure of American leadership in acknowledging the fundamental oppositional relationship between Islam and American democracy is at the core of our failure post 9/11, to Fort Hood and the skies over Detroit.

Because the Taliban is entirely ideologically motivated (by the Islamic doctrine), and since their purpose is the implementation of Sharia Law wherever they hold power, what is the difference between the Taliban and the Karzai government? The Afghan Karzai constitution states in its first article that Afghanistan is an "Islamic Republic" and in the 3rd article that

"In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."

What can be the difference between the Taliban and Karzai's government except the cooperation that the Karzai government provides to the kaffir[15] Americans? The two forces are unified by Islamic ideology after all; the Taliban fights the Karzai government because the American -supported government isn't Islamic[16] "enough"; that is, most importantly, they cooperate with the kaffir (non-Muslim).

Why are we fighting a war in which the purpose of both sides is the implementation of Sharia law?

In plain terms, what is the difference if Karzai and his kleptocrats[17] implement Sharia or the Taliban does? Either way, American support of Sharia law and its savagery is a humanitarian and philosophical failure.

In such a conflict how is "victory" defined — through self-negation? Everyone will accept American funds and all sides will continue to fight for the success of Islam.

Prior to 9/11, our foreign policy was founded upon both national defense and support for those who wanted freedom if it was within our power to support them. Now, we ignore the freedom fighters on the streets of Iran and fight for Sharia law states in two countries; our foreign policy is overturned.

The "progressives" who opposed the surge in Afghanistan are correct but for the wrong reasons; the surge in Afghanistan is a mistake because the mission itself is confused and based upon a total ignorance of Islamic doctrine and purposes; goals in which both local sides in these conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) share.

If the conflict in ideologies between American society and the Taliban/Karzai administration weren't enough, there are the lessons of the Vietnam War that must be acknowledged but thus far have been ignored or too derisively dismissed.

Denial of History

Ngo Dinh Diem[18] was the corrupt ruler of Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. Unwilling to check corruption and unwilling to follow the American line, Diem was overthrown with American help (and John F. Kennedy's personal approval) in 1963 only a month before Kennedy's assassination. The parallels between the Obama Afghan surge and Johnson "surge" in 1965 in Vietnam (despite Johnson's promise to continue President Kennedy's policies[19] of slow disengagement) are mistakenly ignored.[20] It should be our policy universally to avoid the errors of our past.

There is no question whatever that our support of the implementation of Sharia law in Afghanistan by either the corrupt Karzai government[21] or the abysmal Taliban[22] is morally and ethically untenable. These facts put our entire effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq[23] into serious question.

If the leadership in Kabul which we support is corrupt, and if the people there know it, and if we know it, and if the purposes of the supported government there and the opposing party (Taliban) are essentially the same (implementation of Sharia law and creation of an Islamic state), we have neither provided the people of the country with a viable alternative to the ideology of the forces we oppose or the conflict itself has been couched in terms that are false.

If Islam and its draconian and savage "legal system" of Sharia law is itself a form of slavery and barbarism and totalitarianism we have failed to provide an alternative to the people of either Iraq or Afghanistan; this is a failure on our part.

If we had created a secular state in either country in which religion was subordinate to the state (as in the American system) then we would have provided a beneficial alternative to Sharia and Islam to the people of both countries. However, in Islam there is no separation between religion and state; Islam is both a religion and a political ideology.

Even in Afghanistan in 2006 years after the Karzai government had been installed, leaving Islam (apostasy) was a crime punishable by death; this is Sharia law.

Regardless of the self-destructive extreme radical tolerance[24] now in vogue in the United States support of a culture and ideology whose adherents are literally hostages to the ideology of the state itself (Islam is the state in both Afghanistan and Iraq) is clearly contrary to American concepts of justice, and individual rights.

If the people of Afghanistan wish to continue living in an Islamic society then we have no cause in which to be involved in what is essentially an internal conflict between adherents of Islam. What kind of "nation building" is possible when the only result can be a Sharia law "state"?

There has been no discussion of freeing the people of Afghanistan from the tyranny of Islam, as they appear to have no such interest; nor is it within our capabilities at this time to do so if we were to embrace such a concept. (Because of the totalitarian nature of Islam the people of Afghanistan, or any Islamic state, do not have the means of communicating such a desire.) Of course, such an approach would be condemned by those who know nothing of Islam, jihad or the doctrine of cruelty, hatred, and war upon which[25] Islam is constructed; such an approach would be condemned as "intolerant" or simply "not nice."

Afghanistan and Iraq — The Victory of Islam with American Aid

The people of Afghanistan with or without American help will continue to live under Islam because this is the only option that they have. The victory of Islam in Afghanistan which will occur with either a Karzai or Taliban victory is a negative result for Americans and lovers of freedom everywhere.

What is the difference between the brutality of the Taliban implementing Sharia and Karzai's corrupt government implementing Sharia? Even after years of American military and financial support the Karzai government had plans to kill an Afghani who had converted to Christianity in 2006.[26]

Abdul Rahman, 41 years, is separated from his wife; he was arrested last month after his family — fighting with him over the custody of his children — denounced him for being a convert. The man, who was found carrying a Bible, was accused of having rejected Islam.

The "rejection of Islam" is a crime under Islamic/Sharia law. The penalty for this crime is death under Sharia law.[27] There is no religious freedom in any state under Islamic law; leaving Islam is a matter of both religious and state authority; it is the gravest of crimes in Islam, it is considered worse than murder.

But any of you who renounce your faith and die an unbeliever, will have your works count for nothing in this world and the world to come. These people will be prisoners of the fire, where they will live forever. (Koran 2:216)

The Karzai government rejected the death sentence for the Christian convert only because of American outrage; biting the hand that feeds has never been a great strategy in international relations. The Afghan authorities conveniently however found though that the convert was suffering a mental illness which is one of only several ways in which a convert is spared the death sentence.

The minister said: "We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to.
"His family were there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."
Deputy Attorney General Mohammed Eshak Aloko said prosecutors issued a letter calling for Mr Rahman's release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial".
Mr Aloko added Mr Rahman may be sent overseas for medical treatment.
Critics said Mr Rahman should be free to follow the religion of his choice but under Afghanistan's deeply conservative Sharia law, he had committed a capital crime.
Hundreds of clerics and students chanted "Death to Christians" at a protest against dropping the charge. SkyNews[28]

Ibn Warraq, the celebrated scholar of Islamic doctrine (and former Muslim),[29] explains the exceptions as follows.

Under Muslim law, the male apostate must be put to death, as long as he is an adult, and in full possession of his faculties. If a pubescent boy apostatizes, he is imprisoned until he comes of age, when if he persists in rejecting Islam he must be put to death. Drunkards and the mentally disturbed are not held responsible for their apostasy. — Apostasy and Human Rights, International Humanist Ethical Union[30]

The critically important differences between the Afghan government that we support and our own society could not have been more starkly on display. The differences remain but we as a culture mainly pretend that they do not exist. Our denial[31] of the totalitarian nature of Islam is folly.

The purpose of jihad is the advance of Islam and the destruction[32] of all non-Islamic religions, political systems and cultures. The holding of great wealth (the jihadist on the Detroit flight lived in a £2 million apartment in London) is irrelevant to those who adhere to and embrace the doctrine of Islam and its warfare against the kaffirs (unbelievers). Jihad war is not about the frustrations of poverty.[33]

Abdulmutallab, 23, had lived a gilded life, and, for the three years he studied in London, he stayed in a £2m flat. — Independent-UK[34]

Our failures to prevent crimes of doctrinally motivated Islamic killers (even when we are warned by their parents) is further evidence that we do not take the threat doctrine of Islam-motivated haters seriously enough.

You are commanded to fight although you may dislike it. You may hate something that is good for you, and love something that is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not. (Koran 2:216)

 

D. L. Adams

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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