Beware Syrians Bearing Gifts

by Gary C. Gambill


It should come as no surprise that Syrian President Bashar Assad is adding new conditions to his government's recent pledge to relinquish control of its chemical weapons (CW) to international monitors, now that the immediate threat of U.S. air strikes has receded. Assad's CW arsenal is absolutely critical to his regime's survival – he won't give it up unless and until he can dupe the West into helping him achieve this end (if then).

The Syrian regime cannot hope to win the war through conventional warfare. The country's disenfranchised Sunni Arab majority has a fivefold demographic advantage over Assad's quasi-Shiite Alawite sect, which dominates pro-regime forces. Moreover, Syria is surrounded by hostile Sunni states and Assad lacks the manpower to plug its porous borders.

Despite a growing infusion of Iranian resources and foreign Arab Shiite fighters in recent months, the regime continues to lose ground to the rebels. Its much-bemoaned recaptures of Qusayr and the Khaldiyeh district in Homs have been more than offset by losses elsewhere,[1] and both are exceptions that prove the rule – Assad's forces are manifestly incapable of expelling enemy combatants from heavily Sunni neighborhoods and villages without either razing them to the ground or capturing them through battles of attrition they can ill afford. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Ghouta suburbs of eastern Damascus targeted in the August 21 chemical attack. The rebels there had not only repeatedly thwarted regime efforts to drive them out, but were reportedly funneling in fighters from outside the area in preparation for a push into the capital.

Unrestrained use of CW has the potential to turn the tide of the war, at least in the short-term. Although some venerable analysts maintain that their introduction onto the battlefield will have no more than a "marginal" impact on the course of the conflict, the conventional wisdom that CW are of limited military value only applies to set-piece engagements between armies. Saddam Hussein's infamous March 1988 gas attack against civilians in Halabja worked swimmingly in blunting Iraqi Kurdish collaboration with invading Iranian forces.

CW are ideally suited to the task of terrorizing ordinary Syrians into spurning rebel fighters in their midst. Conventional artillery bombardments are scary, but civilians can usually take cover easily enough once they hear one beginning. Chemical warheads typically don't explode – they simply drop from the sky and quietly release their toxins with little warning (especially if they are fired at night, as was the case in Ghouta). With the large majority of Syrian civilians potentially within range of government artillery (and all within range of aircraft), widespread CW deployment could eviscerate the rebellion in heavily populated areas of the country.

Assad probably didn't want to play this card just yet. Intercepted calls reviewed by Washington reportedly show that Syrian officials were surprised by the devastation of the August 21 attack, suggesting that field commanders either acted on their own or bungled what was intended to be a small-scale release of toxins designed, like previous ones, to test the effectiveness of the weapons and gauge international reaction. According to intercepts obtained by Germany's intelligence agency, Assad repeatedly denied requests by division and brigade commanders to use chemical weapons in recent months.

Assad presumably hoped to put off large-scale CW deployment until the day when his regime can no longer deflect decisive rebel advances through conventional means. After that tipping point, the expected benefits of CW deployment will far outstrip the expected costs of American reprisals. Given the acute fears of Sunni Islamist domination and score-settling felt by many regime supporters, it's difficult to imagine a situation in which rebels are pushing into Damascus in force (or, further down the road, closing in on remaining regime outposts in the Alawite heartland of northwestern Syria) and Assad's forces choose not to blanket their enemies with poison gas. Assad may wager that the threat of catastrophic CW use at this stage of the game (and fear that the weapons will fall into jihadist hands once they are widely introduced on the battlefield) will persuade the United States to press for a ceasefire and negotiations without preconditions (which the rebels have hitherto refused).
Contrary to the prevailing conventional wisdom, Assad's sudden disarmament offer probably wasn't motivated first and foremost by fear of what Secretary of State John Kerry assured the world would be an "unbelievably small, limited kind" of U.S. military action. Indeed, a one-off American strike would deliver a substantial political payoff to the regime by legitimizing its claim that the rebellion is a tool of U.S. imperialism and, as Stephanie Gaskell has noted, enable Assad "to boast that he stood up to the powerful United States" without having to contend with the full weight of that power. It could also temper growing unease about Assad's behavior in Iran,[2] his regime's leading external patron, which suffered tens of thousands of deaths from gas attacks during 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
Rather, Assad's disarmament offer appears to be opportunistic. Whether the events of August 21 happened by design or blunder, they achieved one thing for the embattled Syrian dictator – giving the world a taste of the horrors that will ensue if and when he gives his commanders the green light. Now is as good a time as any to hold out the carrot of CW disarmament and see what he can get from a world that doesn't want to see rows of dead Syrian children again. Any disarmament plan would lock U.S. officials into dealing routinely with his government and give them a stake in its survival for as long as the process takes (which Assad will therefore be sure to drag out). On top of this, he is now demanding that Washington stop arming Syrian rebels as a quid pro quo. Other demands and provisos are sure to follow.

Preventing, or at least minimizing, further poison gas attacks in Syria is a noble objective, to be sure (those who dismiss CW as accounting for only "a tiny sliver of the killing" thus far are missing the point). However, Obama administration officials must recognize that they cannot rid the world of Assad's chemical weapons and rid the world of Assad at the same time. If they think they're clever enough to achieve both, they're going to get duped.

Gary C. Gambill is an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum, and was formerly the editor of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin and Mideast Monitor.

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[1] On July 22, jihadist rebels captured the town of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province and promptly executed 51 captured government soldiers. In the first week of August, jihadist rebels captured 10 Alawite villages in the Jabal al-Akrad area of Latakia province and carted off hundreds of villagers to hold for ransom, including a prominent Alawite cleric, Sheikh Badreddine Ghazal. On August 5, they captured Menagh Air Base in Aleppo province after a yearlong siege. On August 26 they had seized Khanasir, a town along the regime's supply route connecting Hama and Aleppo.
[2] Earlier this month, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said that "the [Syrian] people have been the target of a chemical attack by their own government."


Gary C. Gambill is an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum, and was formerly the editor of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin and Mideast Monitor.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3610/syria-chemical-weapons

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

Barry Rubin: Startling Parallels: Obama Appeasement Policy and British Intelligence Files on Hitler

by Barry Rubin

Last week President Barack Obama proposed a policy of allying with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, and al-Qaida against Syria.

 

What is amazing about Islamism parallels the debate on appeasing—rather than opposing–Hitler based on newly released British intelligence documents.

 

One of the themes then, as now, was to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter what a violent and threatening past he had. Ideology is ignored.

 

The day after Hitler took power, on January 30, 1933, the Times of London, (a newspaper like the New York Times) editorialized.

 

“That Herr Hitler who leads the strongest party in the Reichstag and obtained almost one third of the votes at the last election should be given the chance at showing that he is something more than an orator and an agitator was always desirable.”

 

About the same day, Guy Liddell of British intelligence, responsible for Germany, wrote in a secret report, that while he knew about antisemitic persecution in the new Germany: there had indeed been too much Jewish political power there. Liddell was strongly anti-Nazi and not personally antisemitic but he was a supporter of the appeasement bloc in the British government.

 

As opposed to the British international intelligence (MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA), British counterintelligence (MI-5, the equivalent of the FBI), wanted a strong stand against Germany:

 

“No reliance can be placed on any treaty which has been signed, or may be signed, by Germany or Italy….”  It took what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf seriously. He intended to conquer Europe.

 

One reason MI-6 knew this was that it listened to anti-Nazi German agents. The main hero was Wolfgang zu Putlitz, a diplomat at the German embassy in Britain and later Holland. Along with John “Klop” Ustinov (father of the actor Peter Ustinov) the two men had no illusions about the Nazis.  In fact they nagged British intelligence all the time about the need to get tough.

 

So did the second main agent, General Baron von Schweppenburg, the German military attaché in London. In the summer of 1938 he told Putlitz, “We simply must convince the British to stand firm, if they give in to Hitler now there will be no holding him.”

 

But although the British government was repeatedly warned the prime minister and government knew better. There were two factions—which is more than the U.S. government has now regarding radical Islamism.

 

One of the factors in British policy was a hope that if the Germans were flattered and treated properly, they would not be aggressive. Another reason was that the British felt guilty that they had formerly treated Germany so badly after World War One (Germanophobia?)

 

An MI-6 document of the time said:

 

“There have been times that he [Putlitz] has said that the English. Are hopeless and it is no use trying to help them to withstand the Nazi methods which they so obviously fail to understand.…”

 

It was these factors that convinced Hitler, in the words of a contemporary MI-6 report, that Britain “decadent” and lacks “the will and power to defend” itself.

 

  Hitler himself was directly quoted as saying:

 

“It is astounding how easy the democracies make it for us to reach our goal.”

He was also directly quoted as calling Chamberlain an “arsehole.” ( I wonder what Putin said about Obama.)

The prime minister’s own press aide, George Steward, told the German press attaché—no kidding—that Britain “would give everything Germany asked for the next year.”

 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, according to a senior British diplomat, “was completely bewitched by his German friends and reported myopically that ‘the German compass was pointed toward peace.’”

With Obama’s friends telling him that the Islamists’ compass was pointed toward peace guess that proves the price of having an incompetent leader.

 

As late as February 19, 1940, Chamberlain wrote,”All the information I seem to get points to peace.”

In fact, we know this is not true. Even his former allies were jumping ship, horrified by what they had done and knowing war had become inevitable.

 

Robert Vansitart, a foreign policymaker who was one of the leaders of the tough position, along with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, wrote:

“Nothing seems any good. It seems as if nobody will listen to or believe me.”

 

I’ve had days like that myself. But then the United States has never allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, or in Syria, al-Qaida.

 

Oh, and at least a lot of courageous people in the establishment denounced the policy and even risked their careers to do it.

 

All quotes from Christopher Andrew, The Defense of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Penguin Books (London, 2110).

 

Pulitz and Ustinov were given safe haven in Britain; General Baron von Schweppenburg fought in the war for Germany and later helped rebuild the West German army

Or to quote another expert dictator,
 

:”Don’t scare anyone. But once you gain ground then move ahead. You must utilize as many people as possible who may be of use to us.” –Joseph Stalin to future Communist dictator of Hungary Rakosi, December 5, 1944.  Cited below page 23. Quoted in Victor Sebestyen, Twelve Days: Revolution 1956, p. 24.

Barry Rubin

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/09/startling-parallels-obama-appeasement-policy-and-british-intelligence-files-on-hitler/

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

America’s Syrian Jihad

by Arnold Ahlert

 

The American policy with regard to Syria remains in utter disarray. Despite public declarations by Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama that any punitive strike against Syria would not be about regime change, the CIA and the State Department have begun delivering weapons and other gear to the Syrian rebels in the hopes that their 

effectiveness will be enhanced. What will also be enhanced is the horrific brutality of these “rebels,” as they continue to commit one heinous jihadist atrocity after another.

Photographs obtained by Time magazine emphasize this gruesome reality. They show a young Syrian man kneeling blindfolded before anti-regime rebels in the town of Keferghan, near Aleppo. They were taken August 31 by a photographer unaffiliated with either side in the conflict. They depict a public beheading. It was the fourth beheading witnessed by the photographer that day.

An eyewitness who lives in the area alleged the killers belong to the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a ruthless group of terrorists with battle 
experience in Chechnya, Iraq, and Mali. Due to that experience, they are one of the dominant rebel forces in Syria. Last June in Aleppo, ISIS also executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his family for the “crime” of blasphemy.

Another Islamist rebel force, Jund al-Sham, executed seven government soldiers last April. The scene was captured by a mobile phone and smuggled across the Syrian border. It was submitted to the New York Times by an ex-rebel who claimed he could no longer stomach the atrocities committed by his fellow jihadists.

In May, Abu Sakkar, who claims to be the head of the anti-Assad Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, is shown in a video eating the lung of a dead Syrian soldier. After cutting out the liver and the heart as well, Sakkar turns to the camera and shouts, “I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs – we will eat your heart and livers!” He continued: “Takbir! God is Great! Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!”

Last July, three men were beheaded by rebels in the video shown here, and a Catholic priest, Father Francois Mourad, was shot to death by anti-Assad rebels, who put eight bullets in his body as he tried to defend nuns at St. Anthony’s monastery in Ghassanieh. “Islamists attacked the monastery, ransacking it and destroying everything,” said Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who heads the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, a jurisdiction that includes Syria and Egypt. “When Father Francois tried to resist, defending the nuns, rebels shot him.”

Local sources identified his killers as members of al-Nusra Front, another group linked to al-Qaeda.
Eliminating Christians is an intrinsic part of the rebels’ strategy, and they are being “targeted with summary executions, forcible conversions to Islam and expulsions from their homes as a result of actions taken by the courts of the ‘Caliphate of Iraq and the Levant,’ the name the al-Nusra Brigade and other Islamist rebels use in reference to the Syrian territory under their control,” Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told Congress at the time.
Also at the time, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked how the United States could be certain that aid given to the rebels would not end up in the hands of jihadists. Psaki replied that Secretary Kerry was making it a “priority” that military aid would be sent to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army. “That’s been something that’s he’s been working with Congress on and has been encouraging our other partners around the world to do the same,” she said.
That would be the same Free Syrian Army (FSA) with whom the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) announced it would be coordinating activity late last month. They are seeking revenge for the chemical attack allegedly perpetrated by the Assad regime. The United States fought ISIL’s predecessor in Iraq from 2004-2011.

Furthermore, despite denials by senior FSA leaders, units of their brigade have fought with several terrorist groups including the ISIS, along with the ISIL, Ahrar al Sham, the Qatar government-backed Ahfad al-Rasoul Brigade, the Islamic Kurdish Front and the Al Nusrah Front.

Yesterday it was revealed that the Al Nusrah Front is allegedly responsible for another atrocity, the massacre of 22 people in an Alawite village in central Syria. The dead included seven women, three men over the age of 65, and four children under the age of 16, as part of what is being called an ”Eye for an Eye” campaign for the chemical attack.

The origin of that chemical attack was cast into further doubt on Wednesday, when two Europeans kidnapped and held in Syria for seven months claim they overheard a Skype conversation in which their captors suggested that rebels were behind the Damascus chemical attack. “In this conversation, they said that the gas attack on two neighborhoods of Damascus was launched by the rebels as a provocation to lead the West to intervene militarily,” said journalist Domenico Quiric, one of the prisoners. He also insisted that one the three people he overheard speaking identified himself as an FSA general. Both he and his fellow prisoner, Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin, are astounded that the U.S. would intervene on the side of the rebels. Piccinin believes it would be “insane and suicidal for the West to support these people.”

Nonetheless, two of the FSA’s biggest supporters are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Kerry, both of whom made the case to Congress last week that terrorists comprise only a small portion of rebel forces. To buttress their contentions, both men cited a Wall Street Journal op-ed, ”On the Front Lines of Syria’s Civil War,” written by Elizabeth O’Bagy, who was initially identified as a “senior analyst” at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). She contended “that the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al Qaeda die-hards.”

On Monday, O’Bagy was revealed to be the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a pro-rebel lobbying organization. Two days later, the ISW fired O’Bagy for lying about her educational credentials.

O’Bagy’s push to intervene on the side of the rebels was apparently taken up by NBC. They spoke with Syrian opposition activists who claim that allowing Assad to get away with the chemical attack will drive rebel forces into the arms of al Qaeda. “If there is no action, everyone will be desperate. We are already desperate. We are dying. Many will join al-Qaeda. Even the educated will join them, because no one else is helping,” a Syrian rebel said.

Like Kerry and McCain, NBC characterizes the FSA as a moderate group that wants democracy, even as it aligns itself with terrorists who want an Islamic state — all because America refuses to step up.
Even the New York Times sees through that contention, noting as far back as last April that the FSA’s Supreme Military Council “is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government,” and that there is no “secular fighting force to speak of” anywhere in those parts of Syria controlled by rebel forces.

Hot Air’s Allahpundit reveals the insanity of what would now be a quixotic attempt to “re-secularize” rebel forces, even as the Obama administration attempts to punish Assad. He explains that such a reality would amount to the United States ”taking on both sides” in the Syrian civil war.

Regardless, the Obama administration, according to the Washington Post, is “determined to increase the cohesion and structure of the rebel fighting units,” under the command of Gen. Salim Idriss, who heads the SMC. The same SMC with the aforementioned Islamist ambitions, and an organization from which four of their five front commanders threatened to resign in August. The men promised to break “red lines” and work “with all forces fighting in Syria,” according to a statement released by Colonel Fatih Hasun, commander of the SMC’s Homs Front and Idriss’s deputy chief-of-staff. The resignation threat may have been empty, but Hasun is already forging his own relationships with terror groups al-Nusra and ISIS.

Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria, sums up the Obama administration’s pie-in-the-sky ambitions. “When you finally have a free Syrian government, you will know them and they will know us,” he said. “We will have been working with them week after week, month after month. These won’t be strangers.”

The left-leaning Daily Beast has a far more accurate take. Syria is “slowly becoming the jihadist haven al Qaeda has historically sought in the heart of the Arab world.”

A dozen years after 9/11, that reality is being aided and abetted by a radically leftist president, who has assembled perhaps the most reckless group of foreign policy officials the nation has seen in quite some time.


Arnold Ahlert

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-u-s-backed-syrian-jihad/

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

Opinion: The Arab Situation

by Bakr Oweida


Whether the US directs military strikes against specific facilities in Syria or not, whether Bashar Al-Assad turns over his chemical weapons stockpiles or not, whether the Assad regime remains in power or not. . . Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that we are beginning to see the emergence of the features of a new Middle East, with a new Middle East project well underway. Nail after nail is being hammered into the coffin of the Middle East, and the consequence of this “creative chaos” is not limited to the Mashriq, with the Maghreb to witness its share of the problems soon.

Have I been infected, like others before me, with the conspiracy theory bug, blurring my vision and making it so that I am unable to see clearly? Even when I contemplate an issue as clear as day, I find myself afflicted by paranoia and the belief that everything happening in our region is a dark plot conceived by our enemies.

More important than all this, however, is trying to understand why Arabs are on the verge of seeing their countries divided into entities reminiscent of the past, when the Arab world was comprised of sectarian states. Is this situation caused solely by foreign powers aspiring to secure a foothold in the Arab region that lies at the center of international trade routes, not to mention the region’s mineral and oil wealth?

This question has a simple and easy answer: No. Those who go to great lengths to convince themselves that the Arabs’ situation today is due to foreign intervention are simply deluding themselves.

It is easy to consider placing complete responsibility for the Arab situation today on the post-Nakba (1948 Palestinian exodus) regimes. However, this is a form of prejudice tantamount to exploiting the indignities suffered by these regimes; we must also note that it was these same indignities that led these regimes to suppress their own people. The Ba’athist regime in Syria is one such regime.
This is a valid opinion and anyone can entertain it. However, this does not deny the fact that the ultimate fates of such regimes have always remained tied to the Palestinian cause. There is no need here to give examples of leaders and regimes—some of whom are still in office—that oppressed their people in the name of Palestine.

As anyone who has enough life experience knows, speaking the truth is painful. Nothing can be said to justify the mistakes these regimes committed against their own people; neither can they be absolved from the blame for the fate of these countries, which had seemed to be heading towards a bright future in the early 1960s.

No-one denies the existence of conspiracies. In fact, there have been conspiracies since the time of Cain and Abel, and even sacred books make reference to them. Conspiracies are nothing new. However, the fact that the Arabs are increasingly warning of plots hatched against them—whether out of self-interest or general ignorance—is tragicomic.

Having spent a long day following the Syrian crisis and the tempest surrounding it, as well as the repercussions of this on the ground, and having become almost convinced that the world is on the verge of World War III, I found myself watching an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This version saw Helen Mirren playing the role of Prospera—a female version of the traditional Shakespearean character Prospero—who wants to take revenge on Antonio, the duke of Milan, in order to secure her daughter Miranda’s future. In order to achieve this, Prospera calls a tempest by means of her magical powers.

While watching the movie I found myself wondering: Who stands in for Prospera and Antonio in the Arab world? The answer, of course, varies depending on one’s opinion and vision. But Miranda is the same for all Arab countries: Palestine.

Some prefer to live within their capabilities, while others insist on indulging in the world of fantasy. Well, life has a place for everyone. But we have to expect a price, because nothing comes for free. The price of imagination is often more painful, especially when the person wakes up to the bitter reality.

In London’s Fleet Street, you could join protests condemning the US F-4 Phantom II bombing of children in Vietnam, and then continue walking into the West End to watch The Phantom of the Opera in order to relax and give free rein to your imagination. You could do the same in Paris. You could find yourselfs engrossed in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wonderful story, without having to worry about the phantom over Vietnam, particularly when there is a Prospero or Prospera who can call a tempest and truly cause carnage. In any case, Putin has banished the specter of directing a strike against the Assad regime; Bashar Al-Assad has grabbed the lifeline that the Russian tsar has thrown to him. Everyone has gained some more time, while the killing continues and the earth can no longer accommodate all the corpses of those killed.

I do not object to those who claim that it is easy to write about this issue. I also acknowledge that I, like many others who enjoy freedom of movement, water to drink, and free air to breathe, have neither experienced the horrors of displacement nor been forced to flee my country. We have not grieved over burying members of our families, friends or neighbors. While I have not experienced any of this, I deeply feel the Syrian peoples’ anguish. I feel sorry for the children of Aleppo. I feel sorry for any bloodshed anywhere. It is only possible to say a few words which we hope will be consoling. I say this while hoping that Arabs will soon find themselves in a much better situation.


Bakr Oweida

Source: http://www.aawsat.net/2013/09/article55316771

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

Revoking Citizenship for Americans Who Fight With Syrian Jihadists

by Joseph Klein

 

Syria has become a magnet for many radical Islamist sympathizers from outside Syria, who have gone over to join the jihad against Bashar Assad’s regime. While the vast bulk of the foreigners are from other Middle Eastern countries or from North Africa and Asia, Westerners, including some Americans, have also shown up to fight.

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller expressed concern last month that Americans fighting with jihadists abroad, including in Syria, will bring back the training and radical ideas they picked up and decide to “undertake an attack upon the homeland.”

Syria, Mueller said, is a harbor for “radical extremists who want to do harm” to the United States.

Estimates vary as to how many Americans may be involved in actual fighting with the jihadists against the Assad regime, but it could be as many as several dozen. That number may rise further if the Syrian conflict intensifies and the United States becomes more deeply involved. Europeans have joined the jihadists from countries such as Germany, France, Great Britain and Belgium. They would be able to enter the United States rather easily, because European nationals often do not require an advance visa to do so.

Tracking the movements of would-be jihadist Americans and Europeans in places like Syria is hard enough. But even with good tracking methods and border controls, a serious question confronts us: What do we do about the American citizens – native born or naturalized – seeking to return to their own country after their Syria jihad days are over? Can the U.S. government strip them of their citizenship on grounds related to their active participation on the side of terrorists sworn to America’s destruction?

Consider this question in the context of the government’s indefinite detention and target lists of U.S. citizens abroad who are suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States under the auspices of a foreign terrorist organization. Such extreme actions against U.S. citizens have not yet been adjudicated flatly illegal by the courts. On the face of it, wouldn’t stripping such an individual of his or her U.S. citizenship be less onerous than depriving the individual of his or her life or liberty? It would seem so, but things are not always as simple as they may appear to be.

Before looking at the limited legal bases for removal of citizenship that currently exist, including proof that a citizen has taken up arms against the United States, what happens when an American citizen is fighting abroad alongside terrorists against a foreign regime that the United States government itself views as an adversary? This would be the case in Syria today.

As former FBI Director Mueller fears, the individual currently operating with the jihadists against the Assad regime, which the U.S. government also opposes, may pick up training and become more motivated to use that training to carry out an attack on the homeland upon his or her return to the United States. However, possibilities of such future action, without some sort of concrete overt conduct by the U.S. citizen in that direction, is most likely insufficient in itself to legally justify removal of citizenship.

More generally, the Supreme Court ruled over 45 years ago that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily (Afroyim v. Rusk). “Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof,” the 1967 majority opinion stated in a case involving a Polish-born man who had voted in an Israeli election after having become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Citing the citizenship privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court concluded in its 5 to 4 decision that “Once acquired, this Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit.”

In a 1980 case (Vance v. Terrazas), the Supreme Court ruled that intent to relinquish citizenship needed to be proved directly by itself, and not automatically inferred from an individual’s having voluntarily performed any action designated by Congress as being incompatible with an intent to keep one’s citizenship.

Thus, there is some well-established court precedents limiting the government’s ability to remove an individual’s citizenship. However, the tide may be turning in favor of the government when it comes to combating the scourge of terrorism.

While not a case involving citizenship revocation, a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in 2010, authored by Chief Justice Roberts (Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project), upheld a federal statute which makes it a federal crime to “knowingly provid[e] material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” as designated by the Secretary of State. The Roberts court concluded that the criminal ban did not violate the First Amendment freedom of speech or freedom of association protections.

Justice Roberts wrote that the “government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order” and cited the “common defense” clause of the preamble to the Constitution to support his conclusion:

“The Preamble to the Constitution proclaims that the people of the United States ordained and established that charter of government in part to ‘provide for the common defence.’ As Madison explained, ‘[s]ecurity against foreign danger is . . . an avowed and essential object of the American Union.’ We hold that, in regulating the particular forms of support that plaintiffs seek to provide to foreign terrorist organizations, Congress has pursued that objective consistent with the limitations of the First and Fifth Amendments.”

Such reasoning in an analogous case indicates that the current Supreme Court may well be inclined to revisit the limits on citizenship revocation established by decades-old decisions from the days of more liberal Supreme Court majorities, especially when support of terrorists is involved.

Of course, an individual’s conviction for an act of treason against the United States would be enough to trigger the government’s right to remove that person’s citizenship, but proof of treason is a very high hurdle for the government to overcome.

Short of proof of actual treason, the government may be able to argue that an individual’s intent to relinquish citizenship can be presumed by the very specific action of actively supporting armed forces engaged in hostilities against the United States. A federal statute (8 USC § 1481) provides that a citizen’s taking up arms against the U.S. provides sufficient grounds to establish that such an individual has in effect made the decision to voluntarily relinquish his or her U.S. citizenship. However, the statute containing such grounds for revocation of citizenship refers specifically to “the armed forces of a foreign state,” not to non-state militia or terrorist groups. Moreover, if application of this federal statute were to be challenged in a citizenship revocation hearing, the Roberts court would in fact have to move beyond the constraints imposed by the earlier Supreme Court cases in order for the government to prevail.

Naturalized citizens may run afoul of another federal statute (8 USC § 1451) and have their naturalization revoked on additional grounds such as refusal to testify before Congress within ten years of being naturalized regarding their involvement in any subversive activities. Subversive activities include belonging to a terrorist organization aimed at overthrowing or undermining the U.S. government. A naturalized citizen may also lose his or her citizenship if the U.S. government can prove that such person joined a subversive organization within five years of becoming a naturalized citizen. Subversive organizations would presumably include al Qaeda and its affiliates.

A bill introduced in the United States Senate last year, entitled the Enemy Expatriation Act, would authorize the federal government to revoke the citizenship of anyone voluntarily “engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.” This standard is too broad, providing the Obama administration and future presidents with another weapon to punish or intimidate political enemies. It should focus instead specifically on the threat posed by citizens providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations and affiliates engaged in hostilities against the United States.

Congress would do well to consider adding language such as the following to the existing federal statute dealing with revocation of citizenship (8 USC § 1481):

“Any person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization shall lose his or her nationality by knowingly providing material resources or support to a foreign terrorist organization designated as such by the State Department, including by engaging in hostilities, operational or propaganda activities on behalf of, in coordination or under common cause with such foreign terrorist organization or its affiliates.”

Citizenship is not an absolute right. It carries responsibilities and obligations. A U.S. citizen who betrays his or her own country by teaming with foreign state or non-state entities bent on our destruction should forfeit the rights, protections and privileges of U.S. citizenship and be expelled from the country.


Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/revoking-citizenship-for-americans-who-fight-with-syrian-jihadists/

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

Obama's Syria Debacle

by Alon Ben-Meir


I am not a warmonger; I know the meaning of war -- the death toll, the suffering, and the destruction of property along with the spirits of innocent men, women, and children. That said, regardless of how appalling the use of force is to achieve any objective, there is a time when force must be used to prevent greater calamities.

For more than 30 months the Obama administration watched with equanimity the systematic slaughter of the Syrian people, who rose up only because they wanted to be free, enjoy basic human rights, and have hope for a better future. 

These are presumably the values that America stands for, and President Obama in his own words has reiterated time and again the right of every human being to live in dignity. America is committed to safeguarding these rights; as President Obama put it, "that's what makes America different. That's what makes us exceptional."

Yes, this is who we are, but then nearly 120,000 Syrians have been massacred, among them more than 20,000 children under the age of 15. If these children were alive and joined hands, they would form a line 10 miles long. They died helplessly and needlessly, with the world not knowing they had ever existed.

Throughout this merciless and dehumanizing war, the president has delved into back channel and open diplomatic efforts to stem the violence and oust President Assad from power. Yet thirty months later President Assad is still presiding over his killing machine and no concrete measures have been taken by the United States to precipitate his departure.

Other than humanitarian aid, the White House refused to provide the rebels with any weapons under the pretext that they might fall into the wrong hands. Had such weapons, however, been provided at an earlier stage to vetted rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army, they could have changed the dynamic of the war in favor of the rebels.

Moreover, strengthening the hands of moderate rebel groups could have prevented Al Qaeda and other extremist Islamic elements from becoming a significant factor in the civil war and potentially exercising tremendous leverage in the country following the collapse of the Assad regime.

The White House's inaction and continued indecisiveness has further emboldened Assad to test American resolve by using chemical weapons at least eight times and blatantly crossing President Obama's so-called "red line" with impunity.

Reliable sources suggest that the president's national security team knew with certainty about the earlier use of chemical weapons but chose to continue to "investigate" to play for time, which led to more, larger scale chemical attacks.

The gruesome deaths of 1,423 people (including more than 400 children) resulting from the attack has finally forced the president to face the bitter reality.

I agree that the use of chemical weapons is heinous, incomparable in its horror and inhumanity to any other weapons, and must never be tolerated. But then, isn't it fair to argue that the U.S. could have prevented Assad not only from gassing his citizens but also from indiscriminately killing tens of thousands with conventional weapons?

Following weeks of deliberations, the president finally decided to take military action against some of Assad's military installations, only to vacillate and rescind his decision within hours and turn to Congress for authorization.

Weary of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is understandable that the majority of Americans and their representatives do not want to entangle the country in another war, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration failed to explain to the American public the glaring difference between carrying out limited military strikes against a tyrant to deter him from continuing to slaughter his people, and waging two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while occupying both countries with thousands of troops at a terrible cost in blood and treasure.

Many congressmen who refused to support the bill authorizing the president to use force have taken this position, not as much because they do not wish to punish Assad, but to express a vote of no confidence in the president.

Regardless of the president's intentions, he appeared vacillating and unsure, raising serious questions in the minds of America's friends and allies about his leadership and the U.S.'s credibility.

The Obama administration has failed time and again to draw attention to Russian President Putin's hypocrisy as the latter continued to directly interfere in Syria's civil war by openly supplying Assad with military equipment to crush the rebels and on three occasions preventing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from taking any punitive actions against Assad.

At the same time, he vehemently opposed any outside interference while colluding with Iran and Hezbollah to aid Assad with munitions, arms and fighters on the ground to boost Assad's military capability.

Putin's latest gambit suggesting that the international community "must take advantage of the Syrian government's willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction" is just another cynical move designed to buy more time and allow Assad to consolidate his gains against the rebels.

President Obama and his entourage insist that America's credibility to use force prompted the Russians to persuade Assad give up his chemical weapons to avert an American attack.
In truth, many keen observers who follow the grim political reality in connection with the Syrian crisis suggest that the president was only too eager to grab Putin's proposal, knowing full well that that he does not have congressional support to strike Syria.

Moreover, with the exception of France and Saudi Arabia, no other country has openly declared its willingness to join the U.S. in military strikes against Assad.

Putin's proposal is roundly hollow and warrants no serious consideration. To begin with, it would require the passage of a UNSC resolution that would compel Assad to surrender his stockpile under UN Chapter Seven (which authorizes sanctions and even the use of military force to enforce compliance).

If there is even a small chance for the Russian proposal to work, along with the passage of such a UNSC resolution it must include the following provisions: the departure of Assad along with his top military and internal security echelon, an immediate ceasefire to which all rebels and Assad's military must fully adhere, and a recall of all military personnel and equipment to their barracks under UN supervision, a deal which Russia is not likely to accept.

Second, many experts in the field of chemical weapons attest that even with the full cooperation of the Syrian government and under peaceful conditions, it would take months before these weapons are located and sorted out, and after that it would take at least ten years to destroy them.

Third, given the ongoing civil war and the inaccessibility of many locations, it might be impossible to complete such a task which requires hundreds of inspectors who are not readily available.

When asked if there is anything at this point that Assad's government could do to stop an American attack, Secretary Kerry replied, "Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously." [Emphasis added]

But let us assume that contrary to Kerry's skepticism, Assad will fully comply with his demands. Does that mean that Assad can continue to ravage the country and perhaps kill an additional 200,000 Syrians with conventional weapons on the altar of Russian treachery?

While seeking a political solution that must exclude Assad, President Obama must also be prepared to strike. The U.S. Congress has the responsibility to support the president in this case by rising up against tyranny and giving the Syrian people the chance to live free with dignity.

Yes, we must learn from the experiences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but we cannot be paralyzed by these experiences.

As witnessed in Libya, Egypt, and now in Syria, the Arab Spring will be a long and cruel winter. Every Arab state will be affected by it. It has permanently changed the political landscape in the Middle East where the U.S. has huge economic, military, and national security interests.

This calls on the U.S. to develop a new and comprehensive strategy that corresponds to the ever-changing conditions on the ground. Indeed, how the Syrian civil war ends and what role the U.S. plays in ending it will have far-reaching security ramifications on the U.S. and its allies.

The U.S. remains the only global power with the responsibility to act, preserve global stability and foster political and social values for the betterment of people everywhere.

The President of the United States is the face of America. He is expected to lead with courage and vision and stand by the values that made America what it is, while using his best judgment to act in line with the moral responsibility to which America is held.


Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. alon@alonben-meir.com  Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/obamas_syria_debacle.html

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

Syrian Minister Declares 'Victory'; Thanks Russia

by Rick Moran


Why didn't he thank Obama too? Without our Barry, there would have been no clown opponent to steamroll off the world stage.

CNN:

A Syrian minister declared "victory" for his country on Sunday, thanking Russia for orchestrating a chemical weapons deal to avert U.S. military action, Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.

"We welcome these agreements. On the one hand, they will help Syrians come out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they prevented the war against Syria by having removed a pretext for those who wanted to unleash it," National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar was quoted as saying.

He called the deal an achievement of Russian diplomacy, and "a victory for Syria won thanks to our Russian friends," RIA Novosti reported.

The Syrian regime recently created the "national reconciliation" post to send a message that it wants to end the brutal violence that has led to more than 100,000 deaths, according to U.N. estimates.

The opposition ridicules the post as mere window dressing.

Reuters is reporting that now that the threat of a US attack is gone, Assad has stepped up his conventional attacks on the Damascus suburbs with air power and artillery.

Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.
Syrian rebels, calling the international focus on poison gas a sideshow, dismissed talk the arms pact might herald peace talks and said Assad had stepped up an offensive with ordinary weaponry now that the threat of U.S. air strikes had receded.
President Barack Obama said he may still launch U.S. strikes if Damascus fails to follow a nine-month U.N. disarmament plan drawn up by Washington and Assad's ally Moscow. But a reluctance among U.S. voters and Western allies to engage in a new Middle East war, and Russian opposition, has put any attacks on hold.

The rebels, who have no air power or artillery of their own to speak of, won't be able to overcome this advantage by the Syrian army until someone supplies them with anti-aircraft missiles and heavier weapons. We're not going to do it, but the Saudis may. And you can bet they won't be too discerning about whether al-Qaeda linked rebel groups get their hands on them either.


Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/syrian_minister_declares_victory_thanks_russia.html

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

Asking Forgiveness from the Wrong Side

by Dror Eydar

During these High Holy Days we were treated to yet another article poking us in our collective chests, chiding us that "we have sinned, we have transgressed." Under the headline "Time for forgiveness" in Yediot Ahronoth, former Director of the Department for Special Tasks in the State Attorney’s Office Talia Sasson explains how Yom Kippur connects secular people to their Judaism; we must ask for forgiveness she writes. The reason we must ask for forgiveness quickly becomes apparent. Care to gander a guess? Bingo -- it is because of the "occupation." 

Here are the golden words of the killer of Jewish outposts in the land of our forefathers: "Forty-six years we have controlled a foreign people. Its lands we have taken. Its water we have drunk. We have built our homes on Its land and Its basic rights we have violated. When I think of this I am overcome with disgrace. Yes. You and I who have come to terms with it, who have made it happen, who have spoken highly only of our own rights." She adds that the Israel Defense Forces is immoral due to the occupation and that our democracy is not really democratic because of, yes, the "occupation." Truly model atonement. 

Twenty years have passed since the Oslo Accords; 20 years since the euphoria that flooded our minds thanks to those same old blowhards; since the voice of anyone who criticized the deal and shed a light on its pitfalls was silenced; 20 years since the throngs clamored after the false Messiah of peace. Here is a real reason to atone.

After decades in which we were used as lab rats in Talia Sasson and her friends' diplomatic and military experiments, the time has come for forgiveness to be asked from Israel's citizens. Forgiveness must be asked for slandering us throughout the world; forgiveness from the land of Israel for slandering it and for not remembering the sins of the spies who "scorned the desirable land;" forgiveness from the pioneers of our times, the settlers, who stay close to the good land and cling to it for all of us; forgiveness for the destruction of Jewish communities.

Mrs. Sasson, ask forgiveness for the lies that you and your friends still tell: The lands of which people did we take? From whose water have we drunk? Whose rights have we violated? 

"We have never taken land away from other nations or confiscated anything that belonged to other people. On the contrary, we have simply taken back property that we inherited from our ancestors, land that had been unjustly taken away from us by our enemies at one time or another. We are now only making use of this opportunity to recover our ancestral heritage" (I Maccabees 15:33-34). This is what Simon the Maccabee wrote to King Antiochus almost 2,200 years ago. This simple truth has not changed. 

Who are we controlling, really? Since the Oslo Accords the vast majority of Palestinians is not under our control and has almost complete autonomy. The Palestinians have a few parliaments (in Gaza, Ramallah, and even in Jordan), they have government ministries and receive enormous funds from the world (much of which is pocketed by their leaders and terrorist groups) and an independent education system which teaches its children that no such thing as a state named Israel exists in this area, that the Jews essentially have no historic or religious connection to this land, that there were never any Jews in Jerusalem and that a Temple never stood on the Mount. They have a police and security forces. They of course are dependent on us and the IDF to protect them from a Hamas takeover, which Palestinian documents exposed by WikiLeaks and broadcast by Al-Jazeera prove. There is a problem with border crossings and checkpoints -- but these are emergency measures for defense against terrorists who seek to kill us and them. In peace time these checkpoints will be removed. 

The irony is that Sasson began her article by reminiscing about her grandmother who immigrated in 1920 as a fervent Zionist who helped build a kibbutz in the Jerusalem foothills. From the perspective of Sasson's dear Palestinians, her grandmother also took land that did not belong to her and drank their waters. Here is the distance between the Zionist dream fulfilled merely three generations ago, and the Talia Sassons of the world, who have mortgaged their energies, wisdom and sense of justice for the good of a collective which for 100 years has wanted nothing to do with us, is not willing to accept us being here or share our land with us (yes, our land!), and which invests the very fiber of its being in destroying the Jewish people and their only country. 

But in the kingdom of blindness nothing has changed. The peace is the same peace and the justice is the same justice -- for the Palestinians. With the force of a thousand hammers the storm raging around us is pounding at Talia Sasson and her friends' shuttered windows, yet they refuse to look it in the eye. All they see is the "occupation." Indeed, their consciousness has been occupied. The time has come to rescue the captive national consciousness and return it the fundamental truths of Zionism. 

At the end of her article, I read that Talia Sasson is now the co-chairwoman of the New Israel Fund International Council, and then I understood. Sasson concludes her article with a request: "Perhaps we will now think of forgiveness. Perhaps this time." One can only hope.

Dror Eydar

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5715

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