George Bush’s Prediction of the Iraq Meltdown

by David Paulin



 

Former President George W. Bush is remaining mum on the tragedy unfolding in Iraq. But as an army of bloodthirsty Islamists rampages across Iraq with the goal of establishing a 7th century religious tyranny — a caliphate — it’s worth recalling who years ago had predicted this would happen if the Democrats got their way.

It was President George W. Bush and his top officials.

They warned early on that Iraq was ripe for the rise of an Islamic caliphate — either in a failed state created by Saddam Hussein or, they later contended, if the U.S.-led coalition bugged out without leaving behind a stable Iraq. Two years into the U.S.-led occupation, in 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that a premature withdrawal would be disastrous — and he foresaw what has in fact happened. He explained, “Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also warned of the rise of a caliphate if the U.S. withdrew before Iraq was capable of governing and defending itself. “They talk about wanting to re-establish what you could refer to as the seventh-century caliphate” to be “governed by Sharia law, the most rigid interpretation of the Koran,” he said.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, then America’s top commander in the Middle East, also offered prescient testimony in 2005 to the House Armed Services Committee, forseeing what the terror masters would do in a weak Iraqi state. “They will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world. Just as we had the opportunity to learn what the Nazis were going to do, from Hitler’s world in ‘Mein Kampf,’ we need to learn what these people intend to do from their own words.”

Liberals jeered such dire predictions — and especially at the repeated use of the word “caliphate.”

The New York Times, for instance, ran a piece on December 12, 2005, that mocked the forgoing Bush-administration officials for their warnings of a “caliphate” — portraying them as foreign-policy amateurs peddling an alarmist view of the Middle East. Wrote reporter Elisabeth Bumiller:

A number of scholars and former government officials take strong issue with the administration’s warning about a new caliphate, and compare it to the fear of communism spread during the Cold War. They say that although Al Qaeda’s statements do indeed describe a caliphate as a goal, the administration is exaggerating the magnitude of the threat as it seeks to gain support for its policies in Iraq.

Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, obviously don’t believe what’s printed in The New York Times. ISIS, incidentally, has reportedly been preparing to make its move for several years — right under the radar of the Obama administration. Were they emboldened by President Obama’s endless apologies to the Muslim world? Or the deadlines he’d set for leaving Iraq and Afghanistan? Probably all of the above. But what no doubt really energized them was President Obama’s failure to negotiate a deal with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that would have left sufficient U.S. troops in Iraq.

President Bush, for his part, issued a prophetic warning in 2007 when vetoing a Democratic bill that would have withdrawn U.S. troops. “To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States,” he said.

It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.

A little history is worth recalling. Saddam’s failure to account for his weapons of mass destruction, including remnants of his toxic arsenal (some of which was in fact found), gave the Bush administration legal cover for going into Iraq. But only a fool would believe weapons of mass destruction were the only reason for the war. The U.S.-led invasion, or liberation, was in fact part of a vision to remake the Middle East: a long-term project to liberate millions in Iraq; nudge the region toward modernity; and above all make America safer in a post-9/11 world — all by correctly defining who the enemy was and taking the war on terror to them.

The Bush administration certainly encountered setbacks in Iraq and made mistakes; the fog of war invariably upsets the best-laid plans of politicians and generals. But Iraq only plunged into utter chaos after President Obama brought home U.S. troops, despite warnings that Iraq was not ready to govern or defend itself. The blood and treasure that America spent in Iraq has been squandered.

The terror masters were energized in Syria, thanks to the Obama administration’s tepid support of moderate rebels there. Now they are on the march, just as President Bush and his top officials had predicted. After they establish their regional caliphate in Iraq and Syria, expect them to next turn their attention toward their real enemies: America, Israel, and the West. Oil prices are bound to go through the roof, sending the global economy into a tailspin.

President Obama and his foreign-policy advisors have blood on their hands. But if Obama remains in character, he’ll do what he usually does — blame it all on George Bush.


David Paulin

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-paulin/george-bushs-prediction-of-the-iraq-meltdown/

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

Stealth Jihad Meets PC America

by William Kilpatrick


[To order William Kilpatrick's new book Insecurity, click here.]
 
My new book Insecurity is a comedy about political correctness run amok in the government and the military. But, as recent events show, there is a decidedly unfunny side to the world that political correctness is helping to create.

Up until recently, the colloquialism “heads will roll” referred to a threat to fire employees. Nowadays, however, that phrase is more likely to evoke its original literal meaning—as in the beheadings that have become a common feature of the daily news cycle. The streets of Mosul in Iraq are reportedly lined with the severed heads of police and soldiers—victims of the ISIS jihadists. A photo circulating on the web shows one of the recently released Taliban leaders in the days before his capture posing with his trophy collection of five lopped-off heads. Those who thought that decapitation went out with the French Revolution have come in for a rude awakening.

It’s disturbing to realize that such things can happen in this day and age, but we in America tend to console ourselves with the reassuring thought that, thank God, it can’t happen here. Or can it? Why shouldn’t it happen here? Or, to put it another way, “Who’s going to stop ‘em?”

The most obvious answer to that question—the one that will jump most readily to mind—is the Army. And certainly, the U.S. Army is more than a match for any invading force of Middle Eastern jihadists. But, although our army can repel armed jihad, it’s not very well-equipped to resist the other kind—namely, stealth jihad. And if the conquest of America ever comes—as Islamists say it will—it will come about through stealth jihad.

What is stealth jihad? It’s the incremental spread of Islamic law in a society by means of activism, propaganda and lawfare, and by the gradual co-option of schools, courts, and media. It’s the long march through the institutions that the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci recommended to European communists. Leftists have already co-opted many of society’s institutions. What’s to prevent jihadists from doing the same?

Stealth jihad is much more difficult to detect and resist than the armed variety. It’s not the type of aggression the Army is trained to deal with. And, in fact, the Army has proven itself on several occasions to be an enabler of stealth jihad. Take the case of Major Stephen Coughlin. He was the Army’s top expert on Islamic law until he made the mistake of pointing out that Islamic law obliges Muslims to wage jihad. The Army didn’t cotton on to that idea and Coughlin was dismissed from his Pentagon job as an intelligence contractor. The official attitude was nicely captured by an admiral who, upon hearing Coughlin’s assessment, replied that he would first “have to check with my imam on that.”

You can see why the military has to contract out for its intelligence. Why would a high ranking officer have to consult his imam? Well, for reasons of political correctness, of course. It would be offensive not to bring the imam into the loop. For similar reasons, General Petraeus used to visit provincial leaders in Afghanistan dressed up as Lawrence of Arabia, and for similar reasons a manual for U.S. troops in the region directed them to avoid “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” or “anything related to Islam.”

Luckily for stealth jihadists, the resurgence of militant Islam happened to coincide with the emergence of political correctness. The long march through the institutions needn’t take that long when the institutions are putting out the multicultural welcome mat. Just as bacteria feeds on sugar, stealth jihad feeds on political correctness.

“Jihad” is not the kind of thing one mentions in polite society. And for having the temerity to bring up the subject in connection with Islam, Major Coughlin lost his army contract. Coincidentally, he was terminated at the behest of one Hesham Islam, a special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense. As the deputy secretary is rumored to have said, “I’ll have to check with my Islam on that.”

Islam? In the Pentagon? Well, never mind. Better not go there. Apparently Mr. Islam was in charge of outreach to the Muslim community. He outreached to the Islamic Society of North America and to other Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and invited them to luncheons in the Pentagon. In this, he was carrying on a long tradition of Pentagon outreach. For example, shortly after 9/11, future terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki was invited to attend a luncheon at the Pentagon because the Secretary of the Army was anxious to diversify his dinners with some moderate members of the Muslim community.

At that time, the FBI was already aware that al-Awlaki was tied to the 9/11 hijackers, but apparently the Army was not (presumably their intelligence contractors were on vacation). This state of unawareness seems to have persisted for a long time. At about the same time that Major Coughlin’s superiors were checking with their imams, Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood, was checking with his own imam about the fine points of jihad, and whether or not killing U.S. soldiers would qualify one for martyr status.

Who was his imam? It was none other than the ubiquitous Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. The FBI knew about these communications between Hasan and al-Awlaki (there were eighteen in all), but decided that no action was necessary. Many of Hasan’s own colleagues in the Army thought of him, in the words of one, as “a ticking time bomb,” but they also took no action. Hasan’s stealth jihad was not particularly stealthy. In fact, he wore his jihadist sympathies on his sleeve, but the etiquette of political correctness required that his fellow officers look the other way lest they be accused of Islamophobia.

Who’s going to stop ‘em? As we can see, the Army isn’t particularly effective at spotting stealth jihad. And, although the FBI has a better record in this regard, it too is hampered by PC protocols. Who else, then, can we look to? The CIA? A couple of years ago a Washington Post article revealed, without naming names, that the then-current chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center had converted to Islam six years before. The lengthy piece treats the conversion as a mere point of interest—the kind of minor detail that would not be of any real concern to the Post’s sophisticated readers. Although converts to Islam have a higher incidence of radical activity than the general Muslim population, the WaPo reporter gives no indication that anything could possibly go wrong. On the other hand, maybe it’s fortunate that somebody in the higher ranks of the CIA knows something about Islam, seeing that John Brennan, the CIA chief, seems to know so little. He has been in the habit of defining jihad as “a holy struggle…to purify oneself or one’s community.” If that’s so, then it must follow that a stealth jihadist is like a secret Santa who quietly goes around performing acts of purification without even waiting to be thanked.

If not the CIA, then maybe the police? The trouble is, the only police force with a highly effective counterterrorism program, the NYPD, recently bowed to pressure and shut down a major component of that program—its surveillance of certain mosques and Muslim student associations. The surveillance operation was deemed “offensive” by the Muslim community.

How about Congress? Congress is on guard, but not against stealth jihad. When, in the summer of 2012, five House members requested an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the government, they were scolded by fellow Congress members for being offensive and insensitive to the Muslim community. The five were particularly concerned that the Department of State had been taking actions that “have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, had close personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the five thought someone should look into the matter.

Was there any merit to the concern over Abedin? We may never know. It was enough to know that the request was “ugly,” “vicious,” “hurtful,” “outrageous,” and “dangerous.” In short, the investigation was never conducted. House and senate members seemed more worried about the possibility that they could be accused of “McCarthyism” than the possibility that Islamists could be infiltrating the government. Judging by their reaction, “infiltration,” like “jihad,” was no longer a suitable topic for polite company.

To sum up, neither the Army, the FBI, the CIA, the police, nor Congress seem up to the task of resisting stealth jihad. That leaves…the president. At about the same time that the House five were making known their concerns about actions that “have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood,” the president was making plans to send F-16s and Abrams tanks to assist the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In the president’s mind, the real danger emanated not from the Muslim Brotherhood, but from “those who slander the Prophet of Islam.” Meanwhile, his Department of Justice was busy purging FBI training manuals of guidelines for spotting stealth jihadists. As DOJ spokesman Dwight Holton put it, “training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.” Henceforward, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would have to confine itself to inoffensive investigations.

When he was released from an American detention camp in Iraq in 2009, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is now the leader of the ISIS terrorists in Iraq, told his captors, “I’ll see you guys in New York.” Hint to Mr. Baghdadi: If anyone questions you when you come to New York to scout for targets, just tell them that their questions are deeply offensive to you and to the whole Muslim community. They’ll give you the keys to the city.

Heads should have rolled (in the metaphorical sense) a long time ago in the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, the DOJ, and among the president’s foreign policy advisors. Because that never happened, heads are rolling (in the literal sense) all over the Muslim world. Because our leaders have chosen to put their heads in the ground regarding the nature of jihad, a lot more heads may soon be on the block.


William Kilpatrick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/william-kilpatrick/stealth-jihad-meets-pc-america/

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

Saddam Era WMDs Captured in Iraq by ISIS

by Dale T. Armstrong

The British newspaper, The Telegraph reported this stunning little nugget yesterday, on June 19^th:

Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX.

Wait……WHAT?

I thought there were no WMD’s in Iraq, of any kind?  Whatsoever!

I think that, because for the past eleven years, I’ve had to hear it every single time I’ve watched a leftist/liberal/progressive/Democratic television station or show; read a blog, read a newspaper, read a book, read a magazine, had a discussion with someone, etc. 

I’ve had it pounded into my brain relentlessly, the same litany of moonbat talking points:  No WMD’s in Iraq, hence the war was started under “false pretenses”; Bush lied; intel was cherry-picked; it was an illegal war; Bush is a War Criminal, no WMD’s whatsoever…ad nauseum!

None.  No room for equivocation, there were no WMD’s, of any kind.

Of course, we know that’s a lie, but it’s now become leftist/liberal/progressive/ Democratic “fact”, actually settled “history” to paraphrase the left’s new meme, that none ever existed.

And now we find out, that there was in fact an entire Saddam WMD complex, seized now by the ISIS that was known about, with bunkers full of deadly WMD’s/Chemical weapons, and it’s been sitting there all along.

Its history is so well known, that none other than the CIA keeps an updated page on the site, describing it down to the smallest detail.

Yes, the facility is “old." Yes, the facility has been known about since the 1980’s. Yes, the WMD’s seized by ISIS aren’t thought to be safe to be moved, or are even viable. Yes, the WMD’s in question were supposed to be in sealed bunkers, and last sighted by UN Weapons inspectors in the 1990’s.

But WMD’s in Iraq; the ones that don’t, or never existed?  Amazing, just amazing!  The fact that they were still there, in 2014, just waiting for ISIS to come along and seize them, makes me wonder what the hell the US Military was doing from 2003 – 2009?  With all the resources we had in country, with all the US Dollars wasted in that country, we couldn’t decontaminate that site, and incinerate them to insure that they never fell into the wrong hands?  I thought that was the reason we went there to begin with?

Maybe the US Military couldn’t find them?  And the leftists deny they ever existed.  But, ISIS knew they existed, and they sure knew where to find them, and now they have them.  

Whether they’re still fully potent and viable is not the issue; what is the issue is that they are still dangerous and deadly….. to someone.

And ISIS has them. 

Hooray!

Dale T. Armstrong is a Former United States Marine Corps Major Intelligence Officer.  He has spent the greater portion of the past thirty-five years studying and writing about the intricacies of Islamic fundamentalism and its many sects, movements, and Sufi Tariqa.  He attended the American University in Cairo, studied Arabic, was in Northern Iraq for Operation Provide Comfort, and was awarded the Legion of Merit Medal as a Marine Corps Captain, for a successful Counter-Intelligence Operation against the Iraqis during the Gulf War. 

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/06/saddam_era_wmds_captured_in_iraq_by_isiswaitwhat.html

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

Guarding American Interests in the Sunni-Shiite War

by Shoshana Bryen

Either way, bottom line: no nuclear Iran. The U.S. retains a still-vast ability to meet its national defense priorities. The open questions are: the political skill to define them, and the will to ensure that that the greatest threat to regional and world stability -- Iranian nuclear capability - is stopped for good.

The rapid (although not unpredicted) entry of radical Sunni jihadists into Mosul, Tikrit and other largely Sunni areas of Iraq, and their movement toward Baghdad, has prompted cries from left, right and center about the failure of U.S. policies in the region. And failure it is, although not of the "Bush should never have gone there," or "Obama should never have withdrawn from there," or – perhaps most oddly, "If Obama had only armed the 'moderate, secular opposition' in Syria, this never would have happened" sort.

It is a failure to look back, look forward and look around. It is a failure to ask the truly existential questions, "What can the United States tolerate in the world – what MUST we tolerate because we are not prepared to stop it?" and the corollary, "What can the United States simply not afford – not now, not later, not ever – and how are we going to keep truly intolerable things from happening?"

• The United States can afford for Iraq not to be a "democracy." In fact, we can afford for no truly democratic Arab governments to emerge in the Middle East. It would be a shame for the millions of Arabs and Muslims who aspire to better, but the scrabble of dictatorships, religious and secular, emerging and falling, are a running pattern that is much older and better entrenched than is the constitutional form of government with which we are familiar.
  • This should prompt a "reset" of U.S.-Egyptian relations. Sisi is doing no more than identifying the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential Islamist threat, like ISIS, and doing what dictators do to retain power; in this instance, power that has never threatened U.S. interests.
• The United States can afford a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil. In fact, if it resulted in the return of Qatar and Saudi Arabia to sand dunes, perhaps so much the better – given that they have been the source of much of the funding of Sunni jihadists, until the jihadist groups figured out how to steal large sums themselves (including perhaps $1.5 billion in Mosul). The oil cutoff would devastate some countries and inconvenience others, but the United States is in a position not only better to weather the storm, but to profit.
  • It might also encourage those who rely on American naval power to ensure their supply of oil to consider the cost. Japan, South Korea and China import the majority of their oil through shipping lanes that we patrol on their behalf. China? Maybe they would like to build a pipeline to get that Iranian oil across Central Asia, through Uighur-controlled territory and on to their east coast.
• The United States can afford for Iran to be the leader of the Shiite side of the post-Mohammad-Islamic war in which Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged since the Battle of Siffin (657 CE) and which intensified after the Battle of Karbala (680 CE).

If we can tolerate (because we cannot stop it) the ongoing Sunni-Shiite war, and if it does not require us to choose sides (because there is no side that is our side), what are the requirements for long-term American interests?

Look back. American successes in alliances are enormously important. NATO changed the pattern of behavior of Europe as well as collapsing the Soviet empire, and South Korea and Japan are democratic powerhouses – but they required our long-term physical presence and political will even, and especially, when they were failing. What if the Russian-sponsored "Zero Option" to prevent the installations of U.S. Pershing Missiles in Europe had prevailed?

Our failures come when we assume others can and will stand without us. "Vietnamization" should have been a clue. But the United States has continued to arm and train other people's militaries in the hopes that they will do it our way without us.

The Palestinian army is a very expensive case in point. The U.S. provides nearly $115 million annually for security services, separate from "aid" to the Palestinian Authority [PA], in the hope that the PA military will a) cooperate with the Israel and b) fight Hamas. The first is not a steady proposition, and the new Palestinian unity government may preclude the second.

In Mali, we created an army, then pulled our political support from the government for its failure to meet "democratic norms". This refusal to be involved precipitated the Tuareg/al Qaeda war that, without French intervention would have given al Qaeda a base in a new part of Africa.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Yemen, we armed, trained and spent larger and smaller fortunes for general failure. The Gulf States, at least, paid for their own equipment. Egypt, thus far, has proven to be among our best returns, although the current U.S. Administration doesn't seem clear on the point.

Look around. Arming a rump opposition group in Syria and a) expecting it to have any impact on Assad's military and b) expecting it THEN to turn away the well-armed, well-trained, professional forces of ISIS was always a pipe dream. The U.S. did ship weapons to the opposition – from stores in Libya, and to our dismay, we are still finding out what was in some of those shipments. There are now reports that ISIS has Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Pentagon sources simply say, "The U.S. provided no such missiles to Iraqi military forces." Well, maybe not, but they provided "such missiles" to the Libyan opposition.

Also, please notice who comes "home." British security authorities say "volunteers" returning from fighting in Syria can be arrested and have their passports confiscated – a start to limiting the damage they can do at home.

Look ahead. Stick with your friends, including friends in this hemisphere, and make life as difficult as possible for those who get in your way, including Russians, Chinese, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Or Saudis and Qataris. Put them on notice: the United States will not do everything – we cannot and do not want to – but we will protect our irreducible interests which are, in fact, quite narrow: a) the ability and will to punish egregious infractions of international norms, including the use of chemical weapons on civilian populations; and b) the utter unacceptability of nuclear weapons in the hands of radical Islamist factions.

The game-changer in the long religious war now wracking the region is the possible introduction of nuclear weapons by Iran. Conventional wisdom is that Iran wants nuclear weapons either to destroy Israel or to enhance its position as hegemon of the Persian Gulf to discomfit and oust the Americans. If conventional wisdom is right, Iran cannot be permitted to be a nuclear power. If conventional wisdom is wrong and Iran plans to use nuclear weapons, or threatens to, "only" to balance the "religious scales" (Shiites comprise only 11-12% of the world's Muslim population), Iran still cannot be permitted to be a nuclear power.

"The game-changer in the long religious war now wracking the region is the possible introduction of nuclear weapons by Iran."

Either way, irreducible bottom line, no nuclear Iran. The U.S. retains a still-vast ability to meet its national defense priorities. The open questions are: the political skill to define them, and the political will to ensure that the greatest threat to regional and world stability -- Iranian nuclear capability -- is stopped for good.


Shoshana Bryen

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4371/sunni-shiite-war

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

Destabilizing the Middle East

by Richard Baehr

New York Times reporter Jody Rudoren accuses Israel of destabilizing both Israeli-‎Palestinian relations and the new "unity government " of the Palestinians, and ‎sentencing the Palestinians to collective punishment as it seeks to find the three ‎boys kidnapped a week back, almost certainly by Hamas operatives. The three kidnap victims and their families are, ‎of course, only deserving of a modicum of international sympathy, since they supposedly ‎belong to "settler families" living on land "promised to," and rightfully belonging to ‎the Palestinians. (In fact, only one of the three families lives in a settlement.) In pretty much every story on the three boys in European papers ‎or The New York Times, it is obligatory to mention the settler aspect, since this ‎suggests the families to some extent had it coming to them for their participation in ‎a colonial enterprise. Perhaps the only thing that could have muddied the waters ‎further would be if the three boys had been wearing Washington Redskins tee ‎shirts at the time of the kidnapping, which ‎would have conclusively demonstrated their lack of concern for all those less ‎privileged and more deserving of the world's concern.‎

There are of course, plenty of destabilizing things going on in the Middle East, ‎though hitchhiking teenage boys, and the Israeli government's interest in finding ‎them while they are still alive, hardly fall in that category. The unity agreement ‎between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was a particularly destabilizing ‎event. With no change in any of the expressed objectives of Hamas, the unity ‎agreement was essentially a formal marriage between the PA and a terrorist entity ‎committed to the murder of Jews in Israel and anywhere else they could find them. ‎That agreement was bound to destabilize Israeli-Palestinian relations, as was the ‎kidnapping of three teenage boys by the new partner in the PA government. ‎

The Israeli search for the kidnappers and their victims is what governments in ‎civilized countries do to protect their people. Kidnapping children is what terrorist ‎regimes do and is designed to destabilize. Hamas clearly sees a path to power in ‎the West Bank, much as it has achieved power in Gaza. Forcing the PA on the ‎defensive -- appearing to accede to Israeli demands to cooperate in the search for ‎the kidnappers, while Hamas remains resolute in supporting such attacks, is bound ‎to improve Hamas' standing versus the PA among a population that loves to glorify ‎terrorist killings and kidnappings and prefers them over deals with the "Zionist ‎entity."‎

The Hamas message of how Jews should be treated anywhere you can find them ‎seemed to have been well understood in Europe -- in Paris and Brussels and ‎Antwerp in recent days. In Antwerp, it ‎appeared to be Jewish 5-year-olds that proved so unsettling and destabilizing to ‎the Muslim attackers. ‎

It is of course no surprise that the attacks in Europe are occurring now with such ‎increased frequency. The European governments, as evidenced by the latest ‎craven capitulation by their diplomats to Arab and Muslim demands in the ‎‎"Declaration Adopted at the Third European Union-League of Arab States Foreign ‎Affairs Ministerial Meeting" in Athens last week have ‎effectively become mouthpieces for the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League. ‎Since the Palestinian Authority now also means Hamas, it is no surprise that ‎European nations have been speaking with forked tongues about the kidnapping ‎and its aftermath. One might say that the attacks on Jews in European cities have ‎been destabilizing to the normal life that has been promised to all the citizens of ‎the social welfare paradises that presumably exist on the continent. But fear not, ‎since most of the attacks are characterized by these governments as actions by ‎‎"lone wolves," and there can't be too many of those types around among Europe's ‎more than twenty million Muslims, a significant number of whom have clearly been ‎radicalized in recent decades. That very destabilizing radicalization process is one that the EU nations are afraid to confront due to their near total commitment to ‎the multicultural enterprise, despite its evident failure to produce any real ‎assimilation.‎

Outside of the Israeli-Palestinian arena, there have been plenty of destabilizing ‎events the past few years and days in the Middle East. Unfortunately for those who ‎claim that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so central to calming the ‎region, the instability in Egypt, Syria, Libya, and now Iraq appear to be completely ‎unrelated to the flow and the ups and downs of the so-called peace process. On the ‎other hand, the perception of a disappearance of American resolve in the region ‎has undoubtedly played a real destabilizing role. Would Sunni jihadists be in the ‎position they are now in Syria and Iraq had the Obama administration been ‎clearer on our goals and on whom we were supporting in the Syrian civil war, and ‎not wavered on enforcing our red lines? Had we left a small military force in Iraq ‎and applied more pressure on the Maliki government to be more inclusive, would ‎the country be in its current state of near collapse with the possibility of splitting ‎apart into religious/ethnic areas dominated by Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites? ‎

To hear what comes out of the State Department these days, or for that matter from NASA, or the Veterans Affairs Department, American domestic and foreign policy objectives seem to focus on just a ‎few areas -- climate change; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender initiatives, and a little further down the list, ‎celebrating Muslim achievements in space so as to lift their self-esteem. Of course, ‎also near the top of the agenda is insuring that the United States and other ‎countries have healthy school lunches.‎

The triviality of American foreign policy initiatives and the leadership vacuum we ‎have created abroad, which others are moving quickly to fill (in very destabilizing ‎fashion), appear to be deliberate -- an attempt to reduce our American footprint ‎and avoid even the threat of military engagement. ‎

The next shoe to drop will probably be with Iran and its nuclear program. What will be sold as a "victory" for the United States in the negotiations ‎will be a deal that culminates Obama's five-year courtship of the mullahs, and has ‎led to "their rejoining the community of nations" and presumably behaving more ‎responsibly (as in our subcontracting to them the military effort to derail the ‎assault by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as it approaches Baghdad). The nuclear deal if it is signed, will preserve ‎Iran's ability to enrich uranium, maintain existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, ‎enable only those inspections Iran is comfortable with, and significantly reduce ‎current sanctions directed against the regime -- a reward presumably for not ‎making a bomb this week, but only a bit later or whenever it chooses to. The fact ‎that American and European pressure on Iran will have been removed, will be ‎destabilizing. Iran will be freer to throw its weight around, with its economy on the ‎mend, and the "international community" moving on to worry about other things ‎than its nuclear program.‎

The killing of Osama bin Laden was supposed to be the capstone to the president's ‎foreign policy achievements -- ending the wars abroad, and wrapping up our ‎business with al-Qaida, producing a new stable world order, with a more ‎comfortable, reduced American role as one among many. It seems more likely ‎today that what the administration views as its achievements are seen abroad as ‎neglect and negligence. Unfortunately, neglect and negligence are destabilizing.‎

Richard Baehr

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8811

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

Stunning: DHS solicited bids for vendor to handle 65,000 unaccompanied minors -- IN JANUARY!

by Thomas Lifson

The Obama administration’s claim to have been surprised by the wave of children flooding over out borders may turn out to be another political lie of the year. Sundance of Conservative Treehouse noticed a very peculiar advertisement:

On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.
Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.
•  Why would DHS and ICE be claiming “surprise” by the current influx of unaccompanied minors on the border in June, when they were taking bids for an exact contract to handle the exact situation in January?
• Secondly, how could they possibly  anticipate 65,000 unaccompanied minors would be showing up at the border, when the most ever encountered in a previous year was 5,000 total ?

The bid specifics are even more suspicious:

[...] The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: 25% local ground transport, 25% via ICE charter and 50% via commercial air.
[...] In addition, the Contractor shall have personnel who are able to communicate with juveniles in their own designated language(s).

Link to the ad here.

This stinks to high heaven. It is time to subpoena the people who placed the ad to give testimony in Congress. We may have a Cloward-Piven strategy on illegal immigration underway. 

Hat tip: Lucianne Goldberg

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/06/stunning_dhs_solicited_bids_for_vendor_to_handle_65000_unaccompanied_minors__in_january.html

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

Has Abbas Lost His Credibility?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Abbas's remarks [that his security forces were working with Israel to find the three kidnapped Israeli boys] came as a "shock" to Palestinians, who consider security cooperation with Israel a "national crime."
"President Abbas does not want to go down in history as a traitor." — Senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians have been radicalized to a point where it has become dangerous to denounce the kidnapping of Israelis or even refer to them as human beings.

Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas is being roundly condemned by Palestinians for speaking out against the abduction of three Israeli youths in the West Bank.

The attacks on Abbas are not only coming from Hamas and other radical groups, but also from within his own Fatah faction, where some senior officials are saying the time has come for the 80-year-old leader to retire.

The campaign against Abbas raises a big question about the prospects of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

If Abbas is now being condemned as a "traitor" for opposing the abduction of the three youths and ordering his security forces to assist in the efforts to locate them, what would have happened to him had he signed a peace agreement with Israel?

That is perhaps the main reason Abbas was unable to continue with the U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel, which ended in late April.

Abbas knows that any agreement he signs with Israel will still leave a majority of Palestinians unsatisfied. Even worse, he is aware that his people would accuse him of making unacceptable concessions if he were to reach a peace agreement with Israel.

As one of Abbas's senior aides explained this week, "President Abbas does not want to go down in history as a traitor."

Abbas's predecessor, Yasser Arafat, faced the same dilemma at the botched Camp David summit in 2000. Arafat, who walked out of the summit even though he had received a generous offer from Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was reputed to have said, "Do you want see me up there having tea with [assassinated Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat?"

The onslaught against Abbas reached its peak earlier this week when he declared, in a speech before the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, his opposition to the kidnapping of the three youths.

"They are human beings and we care about the lives of human beings," Abbas said, referring to the three abductees. The Palestinian Authority security forces, he added, were working with Israel to help find the three Israelis.

Almost immediately after Abbas made his remarks, Palestinians representing various groups, including his own Fatah faction, used Facebook to launch an unprecedented attack on him, with many condemning him and calling for his removal from power.

Hamas, the first Palestinian group to lash out at Abbas, said that his remarks "violate" the reconciliation accord that was signed with Fatah in late April. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Abbas's remarks came as a "shock" to Palestinians, who consider security cooperation with Israel a "national crime."

Palestinians say that the kidnapping of the Israeli youths and Abbas's subsequent condemnation has ended the short-lived honeymoon between Fatah and Hamas. The two parties, which are supposed to be partners in the Palestinian unity government, are once again attacking and threatening each other.

But the reactions of Fatah leaders to Abbas's remarks carry more weight than Hamas's criticism.

Samir Mashharawi, a senior Fatah operative, launched a scathing attack on Abbas, dubbing him a "traitor." In an article entitled, "Mahmoud Abbas and the Ideology of Treason," Mashharawi wrote: "For Abbas, treason has become an ideology and not just a perspective. He is even proud of this ideology."

Another senior Fatah official, Mohamed Dahlan, accused Abbas of "subservience" and abandoning his people in the midst of the battle.

Both Mashharawi and Dahlan have been expelled from Fatah at the request of Abbas. But the two, along with other Fatah officials who were also expelled by Abbas, continue to enjoy widespread support among Fatah loyalists, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Another senior Fatah official, Jibril Rajoub, who regards himself as a successor to Abbas, decided to take advantage of the anti-Abbas fervor by defending the abduction of Israeli soldiers to force Israel to release prisoners. Rajoub, in an interview with a Ramallah-based news website, said that while he was opposed to the kidnapping of civilians, he supported the abduction of soldiers "because this is the only language that Israel understands."

Rajoub's remarks are seen by Palestinians as a direct challenge to the embattled Abbas, who has repeatedly affirmed his opposition to "all forms of violence" against Israel.

Some Palestinians see Rajoub's remarks as the "first shot" in his campaign to succeed Abbas. Rajoub, a former Fatah security commander in the West Bank, knows that statements supporting the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers would turn him into a popular figure and improve his chances of becoming the next Palestinian Authority president. Given the widespread support and jubilation among Palestinians over the kidnapping of the three Israeli youths, Rajoub is not wrong in believing that he could replace Abbas one day.

Jibril Rajoub, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and former commander of the Palestinian security forces, is a leading contender to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as PA president. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

The anti-Abbas campaign provides additional evidence that Palestinians have been radicalized to a point where it has become dangerous to denounce the kidnapping of Israelis or even refer to them as human beings.

Abbas's credibility among Palestinians has been severely undermined as a result of his condemnation of the kidnapping and his insistence on pushing security coordination with Israel. Now that Abbas has been condemned as a traitor, he will never be able to sign a peace agreement with Israel that would win the support of enough Palestinians.


Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4369/abbas-credibility

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

Caroline Glick : The Threat Is Blowback

by Caroline Glick


Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
 
Watching the undoing, in a week, of victories that US forces won in Iraq at great cost over many years, Americans are asking themselves what, if anything, should be done.

What can prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – the al-Qaida offshoot that President Barack Obama derided just months ago as a bunch of amateurs – from taking over Iraq? And what is at stake for America – other than national pride – if it does? Muddying the waters is the fact that the main actor that seems interested in fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq is Iran. Following ISIS’s takeover of Mosul and Tikrit last week, the Iranian regime deployed elite troops in Iraq from the Quds Force, its foreign operations division.

The Obama administration, along with Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, views Iran’s deployment of forces in Iraq as an opportunity for the US. The US, they argue should work with Iran to defeat ISIS.

The idea is that since the US and Iran both oppose al-Qaida, Iranian gains against it will redound to the US’s benefit.

There are two basic, fundamental problems with this idea.

First, there is a mountain of evidence that Iran has no beef with al-Qaida and is happy to work with it.

According to the 9/11 Commission’s report, between eight and 10 of the September 11 hijackers traveled through Iran before going to the US. And this was apparently no coincidence.

According to the report, Iran had been providing military training and logistical support for al-Qaida since at least the early 1990s.

After the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, al-Qaida’s leadership scattered. Many senior commanders – including bin Laden’s son Said, al-Qaida’s chief strategist Saif al-Adel and Suleiman Abu Ghaith – decamped to Iran, where they set up a command center.

From Iran, these men directed the operations of al-Qaida forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab Zarqawi. Zarqawi entered Iraq from Iran and returned to Iran several times during the years he led al-Qaida operations in Iraq.

Iran’s cooperation with al-Qaida continues today in Syria.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in directing the defense of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, Iran has opted to leave ISIS and its al-Qaida brethren in the Nusra Front alone. That is why they have been able to expand their power in northern Syria.

Iran and its allies have concentrated their attacks against the more moderate Free Syrian Army, which they view as a threat.

Given Iran’s 20-year record of cooperation with al-Qaida, it is reasonable to assume that it is deploying forces into Iraq to tighten its control over Shi’ite areas, not to fight al-Qaida. The record shows that Iran doesn’t believe that its victories and al-Qaida’s victories are mutually exclusive.

The second problem with the idea of subcontracting America’s fight against al-Qaida to Iran is that it assumes that Iranian success in such a war would benefit America. But again, experience tells a different tale.

The US killed Zarqawi in an air strike in 2006.

Reports in the Arab media at the time alleged that Iran had disclosed Zarqawi’s location to the US. While the reports were speculative, shortly after Zarqawi was killed, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice floated the idea of opening nuclear talks with Iran for the first time.

The Iranians contemptuously rejected her offer. But Rice’s willingness to discuss Iran’s nuclear weapons program with the regime, even as it was actively engaged in killing US forces in Iraq, ended any serious prospect that the Bush administration would develop a coherent plan for dealing with Iran in a strategic and comprehensive way.

Moreover, Zarqawi was immediately replaced by one of his deputies. And the fight went on.

So if Iran did help the US find Zarqawi, the price the US paid for Iran’s assistance was far higher than the benefit it derived from killing Zarqawi.

This brings us to the real threat that the rise of ISIS – and Iran – in Iraq poses to the US. That threat is blowback.

Both Iran and al-Qaida are sworn enemies of the United States, and both have been empowered by events of the past week.

Because they view the US as their mortal foe, their empowerment poses a danger to the US.

But it is hard for people to recognize how events in distant lands can directly impact their lives.

In March 2001, when the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas statues in Afghanistan, the world condemned the act. But no one realized that the same destruction would be brought to the US six months later when al-Qaida destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon.

The September 11 attacks were the blowback from the US doing nothing to contain the Taliban and al-Qaida.

North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile tests, as well as North Korean proliferation of both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to rogue regimes, like Iran, that threaten the US, are the beginnings of the blowback from the US decision to reach a nuclear deal with Pyongyang in the 1990s that allowed the regime to keep its nuclear installations.

The blowback from Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power is certain to dwarf what the world has seen from North Korea so far.

Yet rather than act in a manner that would reduce the threat of blowback from Iraq’s disintegration and takeover by America’s worst enemies, the Obama administration gives every indication that it is doubling down on the disastrous policies that led the US to this precarious juncture.

The only strategy that the US can safely adopt today is one of double containment. The aim of double containment is to minimize the capacity of Iran and al-Qaida to harm the US and its interests.

But to contain your enemies, you need to understand them. You need to understand their nature, their aims, their support networks and their capabilities.

Unfortunately, in keeping with what has been the general practice of the US government since the September 11 attacks, the US today continues to ignore or misunderstand all of these critical considerations.

Regarding al-Qaida specifically, the US has failed to understand that al-Qaida is a natural progression from the political/religious milieu of Salafist/Wahabist or Islamist Islam, from whence it sprang. As a consequence, anyone who identifies with Islamist religious and political organizations is a potential supporter and recruit for al-Qaida and its sister organizations.

There were two reasons that George W. Bush refused to base US strategy for combating al-Qaida on any cultural context broader than the Taliban.

Bush didn’t want to sacrifice the US’s close ties with Saudi Arabia, which finances the propagation and spread of Islamism. And he feared being attacked as a bigot by Islamist organizations in the US like the Council on American Islamic Relations and its supporters on the Left.

As for Obama, his speech in Cairo to the Muslim world in June 2009 and his subsequent apology tour through Islamic capitals indicated that, unlike Bush, Obama understands that al-Qaida is not a deviation from otherwise peaceful Islamist culture.

But unlike Bush, Obama blames America for its hostility. Obama’s radical sensibilities tell him that America pushed the Islamists to oppose it. As he sees it, he can appease the Islamists into ending their war against America.

To this end, Obama has prohibited federal employees from conducting any discussion or investigation of Islamist doctrine, terrorism, strategy and methods and the threat all pose to the US.

These prohibitions were directly responsible for the FBI’s failure to question or arrest the Tsarnaev brothers in 2012 despite the fact that Russian intelligence tipped it off to the fact that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers were jihadists.

They were also responsible for the army’s refusal to notice any of the black flags that Maj. Nidal Hassan raised in the months before his massacre of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, or to take any remedial action after the massacre to prevent such atrocities from recurring.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the progenitor of Islamism. It is the organizational, social, political and religious swamp from whence the likes of al-Qaida, Hamas and other terror groups emerged. Whereas Bush pretended the Brotherhood away, Obama embraced it as a strategic partner.

Then there is Iran.

Bush opted to ignore the 9/11 Commission’s revelations regarding Iranian collaboration with al-Qaida. Instead, particularly in the later years of his administration, Bush sought to appease Iran both in Iraq and in relation to its illicit nuclear weapons program.

In large part, Bush did not acknowledge, or act on the sure knowledge, that Iran was the man behind the curtain in Iraq, because he believed that the American people would oppose the expansion of the US operations in the war against terror.

Obama’s actions toward Iran indicate that he knows that Iran stands behind al-Qaida and that the greatest threat the US faces is Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But here as well, Obama opted to follow a policy of appeasement. Rather than prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or stem its advance in Syria and Iraq, Obama treats Iran as though it poses no threat and is indeed a natural ally. He blames Iran’s belligerence on the supposedly unjust policies of his predecessors and the US’s regional allies.

For a dual-containment strategy to have any chance of working, the US needs to reverse course. No, it needn’t deploy troops to Iraq. But it does need to seal its border to minimize the chance that jihadists will cross over from Mexico.

It doesn’t need to clamp down on Muslims in America. But it needs to investigate and take action where necessary against al-Qaida’s ideological fellow travelers in Islamist mosques, organizations and the US government. To this end, it needs to end the prohibition on discussion of the Islamist threat by federal government employees.

As for Iran, according to The New York Times, Iran is signaling that the price of cooperation with the Americans in Iraq is American acquiescence to Iran’s conditions for signing a nuclear deal. In other words, the Iranians will fight al-Qaida in Iraq in exchange for American facilitation of its nuclear weapons program.

The first step the US must take to minimize the Iranian threat is to walk away from the table and renounce the talks. The next step is to take active measures to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration appears prepared to do none of these things. To the contrary, its pursuit of an alliance with Iran in Iraq indicates that it is doubling down on the most dangerous aspects of its policy of empowering America’s worst enemies.

It only took the Taliban six months to move from the Bamiyan Buddhas to the World Trade Center. Al-Qaida is stronger now than ever before. And Iran is on the threshold of a nuclear arsenal.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/the-threat-is-blowback/

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