Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

Obama’s vanishing deterrent

Barack Obama appears at this writing to be poised to embroil the United States in a new war in Syria in response to the recent, murderous use of chemical weapons there.  Ill-advised as this step is, it is but a harbinger of what is to come as reckless U.S. national security policies and postures meet the hard reality of determined adversaries emboldened by our perceived weakness.

The focus at the moment is on what tactical response the President will make to punish Syrian dictator Bashar Assad for his alleged violation of Mr. Obama’s glibly declared “red-line” barring the use of such weapons of mass destruction.  There seems to be little serious thought given at the moment to what happens next:  What steps Assad and his allies, Iran and Hezbollah, may take against us, our interests and allies; what the repercussions will be of the United States further helping the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda forces who make up the bulk of Assad’s domestic opposition; and the prospects for a far wider war as a result of the answers to both of these questions.

Even more wanting is some serious reflection about decisions taken long before Mr. Obama came to office – but that are consonant with his own, deeply flawed predilections about deterrence.  Over two decades ago, President George H.W. Bush decided he would “rid the world of chemical weapons.”  The UN Chemical Weapons Convention has had the predictable – and predicted – result that the United States has eliminated all such arms in its arsenal, leaving only bad guys like Assad with stockpiles of Sarin nerve gas and other toxic chemical weapons.

No one can say for sure whether the threat of retaliation in kind would have affected recent calculations about the use of such weapons in Syria.  What we do know is that they have been used, evidently repeatedly, in the absence of such a deterrent.

Unfortunately, President Obama seems determined to repeat this dangerous experiment with America’s nuclear forces.  He has made it national policy next to rid the world of these weapons.  And, as with our chemical stockpile, Mr. Obama seems determined to set an example in the hope that others will follow.

This policy has set in train a series of actions whose full dimensions are not generally appreciated.  All planned steps to modernize our nuclear arsenal have either been cancelled or deferred off into the future – which probably amounts to the same thing.  Consequently, we will, at best, have to rely indefinitely on a deterrent comprised of very old weapons.  Virtually all of them are many years beyond their designed service life and most are deployed aboard ground-based missiles, submarines and bombers that are also approaching or in that status.

Confidence in the safety, reliability and effectiveness of these weapons has, since Bush 41’s tenure, relied upon exotic scientific calculations bereft of actual underground nuclear tests to confirm their accuracy.  Accordingly, certifications on these scores by the directors of the nation’s national nuclear laboratories have become a function of informed guesswork, rather than empirically proven analysis.  This is not a basis for reliable deterrence.

Another symptom of the deteriorating condition of our nuclear arsenal is the fact that the Air Force has taken disciplinary action for the second time in the past few months against some of those responsible for the operations of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.  There are surely specific grounds for these punishments.  But we are kidding ourselves if we fail to consider the devastating impact on the morale and readiness of such personnel when they are told, at least implicitly, by the Commander-in-Chief that their mission is not only unimportant; it is one he wishes to terminate as soon as practicable.

Seem far-fetched?  Recall that eliminating outright our land-based missile force is something Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel personally endorsed prior to taking office. That may be the result if the President succeeds in reducing our nuclear forces to just 1,000 deployed weapons.  As of now, it is unclear whether he intends to take that step only if the Russians agree, or will do so unilaterally if they don’t.  Another uncertainty is whether Congress will go along with such rash cuts.

What is clear is that – with no more serious debate than has been applied to the implications of becoming embroiled in another war in the Middle East, this time with a country armed with chemical weapons against which we can threaten no in-kind retaliation – the United States has been launched on a trajectory towards a minimal nuclear deterrent.

Fortunately, a group of the nation’s preeminent nuclear strategists and practitioners under the leadership of the National Institute for Public Policy has just published a powerful indictment of this misbegotten policy initiative entitled Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence.  It lays bare the faulty assumptions that underpin the Obama denuclearization agenda – not least the fact that the other nuclear powers, including all the threatening ones, are not following the president’s lead.

Some say America can no longer afford a strong and effective deterrent.  We may be about to test that proposition in Syria.  Heaven help us if we compound the error there by continuing our slide towards a minimum nuclear deterrent posture, en route to a world rid only of our nuclear weapons.

Resetting US foreign policy

Aside from the carnage in Benghazi, the most enduring image from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as US secretary of state was the fake remote control she brought with her to Moscow in 2009 with the word “Reset” in misspelled Russian embossed on it.

Clinton’s gimmick was meant to show that under President Barack Obama, American foreign policy would be fundamentally transformed. Since Obama and Clinton blamed much of the world’s troubles on the misdeeds of their country, under their stewardship of US foreign policy, the US would reset everything.

Around the globe, all bets were off.

Five years later we realize that Clinton’s embarrassing gesture was not a gimmick, but a dead serious pledge. Throughout the world, the Obama administration has radically altered America’s policies.

And disaster has followed. Never since America’s establishment has the US appeared so untrustworthy, destructive, irrelevant and impotent.

Consider Syria. Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of Obama’s pledge that the US would seek the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime if Assad used chemical weapons against his opponents.

On Wednesday, Assad’s forces used chemical weapons against civilians around Damascus. According to opposition forces, well over a thousand people were murdered.

Out of habit, the eyes of the world turned to Washington. But Obama has no policy to offer. Obama’s America can do nothing.

America’s powerlessness in Syria is largely Obama’s fault. At the outset of the Syrian civil war two-and-a-half years ago, Obama outsourced the development of Syria’s opposition forces to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. He had other options. A consortium of Syrian Kurds, moderate Sunnis, Christians and others came to Washington and begged for US assistance. But they were ignored.

Obama’s decision to outsource the US’s Syria policy owed to his twin goals of demonstrating that the US would no longer try to dictate international outcomes, and of allying the US with Islamic fundamentalists.

Both of these goals are transformative.

In the first instance, Obama believes that anti-Americanism stems from America’s actions. By accepting the mantel of global leadership, Obama believes the US insulted other nations. To mitigate their anger, the US should abdicate leadership.

As for courting Islamic fundamentalists, from his earliest days in office Obama insisted that since radical Islam is the most popular movement in the Islamic world, radical Islam is good. Radical Muslims are America’s friends.

Obama embraced Erdogan, an Islamic fascist who has won elections, as his closest ally and most trusted adviser in the Muslim world.

And so, with the full support of the US government, Erdogan stacked Syria’s opposition forces with radical Muslims like himself. Within months the Muslim Brotherhood comprised the majority in Syria’s US-sponsored opposition.

The Muslim Brotherhood has no problem collaborating with al-Qaida, because the latter was formed by Muslim Brothers.

It shares the Brotherhood’s basic ideology.

Since al-Qaida has the most experienced fighters, its rise to leadership and domination of the Syrian opposition was a natural progression.

In other words, Obama’s decision to have Turkey form the Syrian opposition led inevitably to the current situation in which the Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian regime is fighting an opposition dominated by al-Qaida.

At this point, short of an Iraq-style US invasion of Syria and toppling of the regime, almost any move the US takes to overthrow the government will strengthen al-Qaida. So after a reported 1,300 people were killed by chemical weapons launched by the regime on Wednesday, the US has no constructive options for improving the situation.

A distressing aspect of Obama’s embrace of Erdogan is that Erdogan has not tried to hide the fact that he seeks dictatorial powers and rejects the most basic norms of liberal democracy and civil rights.

Under the façade of democracy, Erdogan has transformed Turkey into one of the most repressive countries in the world. Leading businessmen, generals, journalists, parliamentarians and regular citizens have been systematically rounded up and accused of treason for their “crime” of opposing Turkey’s transformation into an Islamic state. Young protesters demanding civil rights and an end to governmental corruption are beaten and arrested by police, and demonized by Erdogan. Following the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt last month, Erdogan has openly admitted that he and his party are part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama’s approach to world affairs was doubtlessly shaped during his long sojourn in America’s elite universities.

Using the same elitist sensibilities that cause him to blame American “arrogance” for the world’s troubles, and embrace radical Islam as a positive force, Obama has applied conflict resolution techniques developed by professors in ivory towers to real world conflicts that cannot be resolved peacefully.

Obama believed he could use the US’s close relationships with Israel and Turkey to bring about a rapprochement between the former allies. But he was wrong. The Turkish-Israeli alliance ended because Erdogan is a virulent Jew-hater who seeks Israel’s destruction, not because of a misunderstanding.

Obama forced Israel to apologize for defending itself against Turkish aggression, believing that Erdogan would then reinstate full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Instead, Erdogan continued his assault on Israel, most recently accusing it of organizing the military coup in Egypt and the anti- Erdogan street protests in Turkey.

As for Egypt, as with Syria, Obama’s foreign policy vision for the US has left Washington with no options for improving the situation on the ground or for securing its own strategic interests. To advance his goal of empowering the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama pushed the Egyptian military to overthrow the regime of US ally Hosni Mubarak and so paved the way for elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

Today he opposes the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government.

The US claims that it opposes the coup because the military has trampled democracy and human rights. But it is all but silent in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood’s own trampling of the human rights of Egypt’s Christian minority.

Obama ignores the fact that Mohamed Morsi governed as a tyrant far worse than Mubarak.

Ignoring the fact that neither side can share power with the other, the US insists the Brotherhood and the military negotiate an agreement to do just that. And so both sides hate and distrust the US.

Wresting an Israeli apology to Turkey was Obama’s only accomplishment during his trip to Israel in March. Secretary of State John Kerry’s one accomplishment since entering office was to restart negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Just as the consequence of Israel’s apology to Turkey was an escalation of Turkey’s anti- Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, so the consequence of Kerry’s “accomplishment” will be the escalation of Palestinian terrorism and political warfare against Israel.

As Jonathan Tobin noted Wednesday in Commentary, to secure Palestinian agreement to reinstate negotiations, not only did Kerry force Israel to agree to release more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists from prison. He put the US on record supporting the Palestinians’ territorial demands. In so doing, Kerry locked the US into a position of blaming Israel once the talks fail. When the Palestinians escalate their political and terrorist campaign against Israel, they will use Kerry’s pledges as a means of justifying their actions.

The current round of talks will fail of course because like the Turks, the Syrians and the Egyptians, the Palestinians are not interested in resolving their conflict.

They are interested in winning it. They do not want a state. They want to supplant Israel.

Clinton’s Reset button was played up as a gimmick. But it was a solemn oath. And it was fulfilled. And as a result, the world is a much more violent and dangerous place. The US and its allies are more threatened. The US’s enemies from Moscow to Tehran to Venezuela are emboldened.

The time has come to develop the basis for a future US policy that would represent a reset of Obama’s catastrophic actions and attitudes. Given the damage US power and prestige has already suffered, and given that Obama is unlikely to change course in his remaining three years in power, it is clear that reverting to George W. Bush’s foreign policy of sometimes fighting a war on nebulous “terrorists” and sometimes appeasing them will not be sufficient to repair the damage.

The US must not exchange strategic insanity with strategic inconsistency.

Instead, a careful, limited policy based on no-risk and low-risk moves that send clear messages and secure clear interests is in order.

The most obvious no-risk move would be to embrace Israel as America’s most vital and only trustworthy ally in the region. By fully supporting Israel not only would the US strengthen its own position by strengthening the position of the only state in the Middle East that shares its enemies, its interests and its values.

Washington would send a strong signal to states throughout the region and the world that the US can again be trusted.

This support would also secure clear US strategic interests by providing Israel with the political backing it requires to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, it would bring coherence to the US’s counter-terror strategy by ending US support for Palestinian statehood. Instead, the US would support the institution of the rule of law and liberal norms of government in Palestinian society by supporting the application of Israel’s liberal legal code over Judea and Samaria.

Another no-risk move is to support former Soviet satellite states that are now members of NATO. Here, too, the US would be taking an action that is clear and involves no risk. Russia would have few options for opposing such a move. And the US could go a long way toward rebuilding its tattered reputation.

Low risk moves include supporting minorities that do not have a history of violent anti-Americanism and are, in general, opposed to Islamic fascism.

Such groups include the Kurds. In Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, the Kurds represent a national group that has proven its ability to self-govern and to oppose tyranny. With certain, easily identified exceptions, the stronger the Kurds are, the weaker anti-American forces become.

Then there are the Christians. The plight of the Christians in the Islamic world is one of the most depressing chapters in the recent history of the region. In country after country, previously large and relatively peaceful, if discriminated against, Christian minorities are being slaughtered and forced to flee.

The US has done next to nothing to defend them.

Strong, forthright statements of support for Christian communities and condemnations of persecution, including rape, forced conversions, massacre, extortion and destruction of church and private Christian-owned property from Egypt to Indonesia to Pakistan to the Palestinian Authority would make a difference in the lives of millions of people.

It would also go some way toward rehabilitating the US’s reputation as a champion of human rights, after Obama’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Under Obama, America has made itself worse than irrelevant. In country after country, it has become dangerous to be a US ally. The world as a whole is a much more dangerous place as a consequence.

Nothing short of a fundamental transformation of US foreign policy will suffice to begin to repair the damage.

Releasing Jihadists

Prisons are topping the news lately – usually concerning dangerous jihadist inmates being turned loose and the likelihood that they’ll resume their efforts to attack and kill people like us.

President Obama wants to repatriate jihadists from Guantanamo Bay. Al Qaeda has enabled hundreds of terrorists to return to the fight with a series of successful jailbreaks around the world.

And today, at the insistence of our government, Israel may do the same with the latest in a series of releases of murderous Palestinians.  These are not political prisoners.  They’re people who believe it’s God’s will that they kill infidels.  It’s insanity to think they won’t do more of it. Giving them that chance – ostensibly to promote a “peace process” – will produce more innocent victims, not peace.

The Mosque: Center of Religion, Politics and Dominance

Islamic-style authoritarianism is the dominant characteristic shared by both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, theocrats and non-theocrats: one or the other must be dominant. The cannot share power. One side or the other must come out on top. Both of these conflicts, in Syria and Egypt, are, at their base, about the inseparability of Mosque and State in Islam, and the burning zeal of those believers who have no tolerance for Arab and Muslim regimes they see as allowing the two to function apart.

News reports out of Syria are airing graphic footage of extensive interior damage to the historic Khalid Ibn Al-Walid Mosque in Homs. Syrian government troops, backed by Hizballah fighters, captured the mosque from Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces on July 27, 2013 in heavy fighting that has engulfed the northern Homs neighborhood of Khaldiyeh.

Although the mosque holds little strategic value to the Sunni rebels, it holds great symbolic status as the centuries-old mausoleum of Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, revered by Muslims as a companion of Muhammad, as well as commander of the Islamic military forces that conquered Syria after the defeat of the Christian Byzantine forces at the 636 CE Battle of Yarmouk. Syrian television footage showed the dome of the mausoleum had been knocked out in the recent fighting, causing heavy fire damage to the interior, with debris strewn across the floor. Clearly, the mosque assault by Syrian forces loyal to the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, with back-up support from Shi’ite Hizballah, was intended to incite intra-Islamic sectarian rage from the Sunni rebels.

The extent to which that objective will now be met remains to be seen, but is reminiscent of the February 22, 2006 bombing of the great golden-domed Shi’ite Askaria Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, by al-Qa’eda elements, under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That carefully-calculated outrage is credited with igniting a savage multi-year civil war in Iraq, which, tragically, appears to be breaking out anew: July 2013 attacks on mosques and worshippers have killed at least 700.

Unfortunately, Iraq and Syria are but the current-day iterations of a 1,300-year-old blood feud over who has the greater legitimacy to rule over the Islamic ummah [Nation of Islam]: Shi’ites or Sunnis. After the 632 CE death of Islam’s traditional founder, the companions and bloodline descendents of Muhammad disagreed—vehemently—over whom should be granted the allegiance of his followers, with all the power the position of Caliph entailed. Then, as now, there was never any question about invoking the consent of the governed, or acknowledging the status or natural worth of the individual, to contribute to the political functioning of the Islamic state. As described so starkly by the Greek-American political scientist P.J. Vatikiotis, and cited here by Andrew Bostom, the essentially authoritarian, autocratic ethos of Islam “may be lasting, even permanent,” and shackles its adherents to an endless “No Exit” cycle of coup, counter-coup, revolution and oppression. Shi’ite and Sunni are doomed to internecine combat over the centuries because both Islamic sects are bound to an ideology based on dominance, not good faith mutual concessions or participatory collaboration. The name of this power-obsessed ideology is Islam. As a belief system, it is deeply bound up with the compellingly spiritual dimensions of Islam and cannot be separated from them, but nevertheless, as ideology, prioritizes the political dimensions.

The Islamic forces shredding each other in Syria are fighting at one of the top levels of what Philip Carl Salzman called “balanced opposition” in his compelling 2007 book, “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East.” That level is intra-Islamic: between the Shi’ite-backed Assad regime, whose ability to cling to power even this long is directly due to the massive support from Shi’ite Iran and its Shi’ite terror proxy, Hizballah; and the Sunni rebel militia forces that count Sunni Gulf states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, plus Turkey and the U.S., in their corner.

Virtually all sides in Syria (excepting only the Kurds and the outnumbered pro-democracy forces within the FSA) see things from a “zero-sum-game” theological perspective: whichever side wins is expected to unleash holy genocide on every other group not aligned with it. Ethnic Christians in Syria are already the victims of what Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, has called “ethno-religious cleansing.”

Deeply rooted in pre-Islamic tribal social structures, some of the most primitive of all human drives—to conquer and dominate by force—were brilliantly sacralized in Islamic doctrine. With assassination, banditry, genocide, hatred-of-other, polygamy, rape, pillage, and slavery all divinely sanctioned in scriptures believed to be revealed by Allah himself, the world is not likely to see an end to Islam’s “bloody borders” or “bloody innards” any time soon. In the traditional Arab and Muslim system, there is just too much at stake for those who win, as well as those who lose. There is no such thing as a “win-win” concept in Islam.

Events in Egypt — where so far things have not deteriorated to the levels of carnage now seen in Iraq or Syria — have not reached their conclusion, perhaps not even their mid-point. Islamic-style authoritarianism is the dominant characteristic of governance shared by both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, theocrats and non-theocrats: one or the other must be dominant. They cannot share power. There will be no coalition government or government of national unity. One side or the other must come out on top after the bloodletting is done (which could be a long time indeed). Neither will there be anything approaching genuine liberal democratic civil society in Egypt for possibly an even longer time. The foundational building blocks of civil society—individual liberty, freedom of belief and speech, genuine universal equality before the law, citizens’ participation in their own governance that goes beyond a mere ballot box exercise—are simply not there and cannot develop there as long as so many in Egypt remain in thrall to Islamic law (shariah), to which such concepts are anathema. Indeed, as Vijay Kumar wrote in his 2010 essay entitled, “The Muslim Mosque: A State Within a State,” “[c]entral to the Koran’s political mandates is prohibition of religious freedom and religious tolerance, along with denouncements of religions such as Christianity and Judaism.”

Unfortunately for Egypt’s Copts, other minorities, and the genuinely pro-democracy liberals, the trend in Egypt as well as the rest of North Africa for well over the last 1300 years has been unswervingly in the direction of the forces leading the Arab Islamic conquest. The colonialist, nationalist period of experimentation with Western styles of political systems (whether communism, fascism, or democracy) slipped right back to the status quo ante in the post-Nasser era, in which the default position is autocracy punctuated by outbreaks of rebellion and revolution.

Even given the recent, serious setback dealt the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the likelihood that the Brotherhood will stay down, become quiescent, or abandon its jihadist roots and objectives, is virtually non-existent. This is, at least in part, because it is not so much Islam or even shariah law that have been discredited, but rather the Muslim Brotherhood, the Morsi administration, and their ability to govern according to the Brotherhood slogan, “Islam is the solution.”

Turning back to the mosque as a center of military — as well as political and religious — activity in intra-Islamic fitna [upheaval], as in the case of the Khalid Ibn al-Walid Mosque in Homs, Syria, it is worth concluding with some consideration of the role the mosque, or masjid in Arabic, traditionally has played in these periodic convulsions within the Islamic world. According to Sam Solomon, a former Islamic jurist who was born a Muslim and trained in shariah for fifteen years before converting to Christianity, “Islam is not simply a religion. Islam is a socio-political system. It is a socio-political, socio-religious, socio-economic, socio-educational, socio-judicial, legislatic, militaristic system cloaked in, garbed in religious terminology.”

The masjid (its Arabic root means to prostrate, as in worship) is the place where shariah, believed to be the immutable law of Allah, is upheld and implemented. As such, it is the central structure in an Islamic society: it is a gathering place, place of worship, and a place for teaching Islamic doctrine—but also a base of operations, military operations, the command and control hub for the commanders of the Islamic armies to plan their next offensives in the incessant wars of conquest. They declared jihad [war in the cause of Islam] from the mosques. Official delegations from the tribes met at Islam’s early mosques; pledges of loyalty were given and accepted, alliances formed, and treaties proposed and signed. In this way, affairs of state were conducted in such mosques, underlining the intrinsically political nature of Islam from its earliest inception.

As Solomon points out in his 2007 monograph, “The Mosque Exposed,” because all Muslims are obligated to emulate Muhammad, modern mosques must model themselves on the first mosque the Muslim community established in Medina (after the 622 CE hijra [journey] from Mecca). Inasmuch as that original mosque was above all a political center, and only secondarily became the place for Muslim prayers, so to this day mosques serve multiple purposes: as places of worship, certainly, but also as centers of jihad, public policy, and shariah justice. As Yousef al-Qaradawi, the senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, elaborated in a 2006 fatwa [answer to a question about religion],

“In the life of the prophet there was no distinction between what the people call sacred and secular, or religion and politics: he had no place other than the mosque for politics and other related issues. That established a precedent for his religion. The mosque at the time of the prophet was his propagation center and the headquarters of the state… From ancient times the mosque has had a role in urging jihad for the sake of Allah…”

Al-Qaradawi’s words echo those of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who, speaking in 1997, quoted the words of a 1912 poem, “The Soldier’s Prayer,” written by a Turkish poet: “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army.”

Obviously, the Syrian forces attacking the Khalid Ibn al-Walid Mosque in Homs understood its role as the rebels’ base of operations as well as the symbolic value it held for them because of the mausoleum inside. For the pro-Morsi Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in the Nasr City suburb of Cairo is the protest rally point. Both of these civil conflicts are, at their base, about the inseparability of mosque and state in Islam, and the burning zeal of those believers who have no tolerance for Arab and Muslim regimes they see as allowing the two to function apart. As Muhammad Badi accused in his 2010 declaration of jihad against unfaithful Arab and Muslim regimes, “…they are disregarding Allah’s commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah’s word will reign supreme…”

Syed Abul A’ala Maududi, another key theoretician of Islam, left no room for doubt about the nakedly political objectives of Islam:

“Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program.”

The Islamic mosque is the bricks and mortar institutionalization of those objectives.

Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s disastrous muslim outreach efforts and the impact on U.S. Middle East policy

The aftermath of the April 15, 2013 bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, has focused attention on the failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to carry out an adequate investigation of the suspected bombers despite warnings from Russian authorities. This failure has partially been attributed to a full scale campaign of political correctness waged inside the bureau and throughout the U.S. government under the Obama administration against any attempt to link jihadi terrorism with anything remotely connected to Islam of any variety (the most radical versions included).[1] This has extended into other segments of the government as well, particularly the Department of Defense.[2]

One of the primary contributors to this widespread political correctness campaign has been the U.S. government’s disastrous Muslim outreach policies extending back to the Clinton administration and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The U.S. government’s historical outreach program, regardless of whether it has been a Democrat or Republican in the White House, has been based on a schizophrenic policy: In many cases federal prosecutors have gone into federal court and identified American Islamic organizations and leaders as supporters of terrorism, and no sooner have left court before government officials openly embrace these same organizations and leaders as moderates and outreach partners. In several notable cases, the FBI’s outreach partners have been under active FBI criminal investigation and were later convicted on terrorism-related charges at the time the outreach occurred.

In the case of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, mosque attended by the suspected Boston marathon bombers, when the plethora of extremist ties to the Islamic Society of Boston were reported, a mosque spokesman replied that they could not be extremists since they regularly participated in outreach programs with the FBI, Department of Justice and Homeland Security.[3]

This exemplifies the chronic failure of the U.S. government’s outreach programs.

Continue Reading…

Obama’s Surrender Speech

The White House billed last week’s address by President Obama as a major foreign policy address.  Indeed, it was.  It was tantamount to a surrender speech in what is most accurately described, not as the War on Terrorism, but as the War for the Free World – for that is what is at stake if we lose.

Of course, Team Obama clearly meant the take-away from his remarks to be  about tactical adjustments, not strategic defeat.  Hence the focus on changes he was announcing to U.S. policy and practice with regard to drones and Guantanamo Bay.

With respect to the former, the President severely restricted the use of one of the few tools he has used offensively against what he calls “core al Qaeda” and the leadership of some of its affiliates.  Henceforth, under circumstances where a direct and imminent threat is posed to the United States and no collateral damage will be caused to innocent civilians, strikes from remotely piloted vehicles will be mostly conducted by the military.

This assumes that the chain of command can function in a sufficiently timely fashion to get the job done.  It also is predicated on the assumption that the government of the country in which the strike will occur is okay with having ties with the typically more overt Pentagon, rather than enjoying the plausible deniability of dealing with the inherently covert CIA.

That prospect is further dimmed by the new guidelines precluding use of armed drones if it might be helpful just to the host government and undefined “U.S. interests” – such as our preference for its survival.  Then, there is the further potential impediment created by Mr. Obama’s stated openness to having a new court rule on the appropriateness of each strike.

Mr. Obama is engaged in similar unilateral disarmament with respect to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He insists that his administration will close down Gitmo, the only secure facility in the world for detaining unlawful enemy combatants without affording them constitutional rights they do not deserve, and will likely use to our detriment.  He promises to exercise his authority to send home a number of Yemenis held there, even though there is every reason to believe many will return to wage jihad against us – either in their own anarchic country or elsewhere.  A new special White House envoy will redouble administration efforts to unload the rest of the detainees, as well.

Taken together, the President now seems determined neither to capture and incarcerate enemies – apart from inside the United States, where they can be swiftly Mirandized and lawyered-up – nor otherwise to eliminate the threat they represent by killing them remotely.

Ill-advised as these presidential actions are, even more ominous is the fact that they were but a part of Mr. Obama’s leitmotif of denial, disengagement and defeatism: Denial about the enemy, which is not al Qaeda (core or otherwise) but the global jihadist movement of which the late bin Laden and his successors are but one element.  Disengagement from waging war against that enemy by hollowing out and demoralizing the only military we have to fight it.  And defeatism captured in his statement that “this war, like all wars, must end.”

Many have noted since Mr. Obama spoke that there are only two ways that a nation can end a war unilaterally: by winning it or by surrendering.  Unfortunately, this President has effectively ruled out winning.  And every one of America’s enemies – actual or potential – knows that, by both his rhetoric and his actions, Obama is in the process of surrendering.

The extent of that surrender is evident in The Jihadist Plot, a riveting account by John Rosenthal of how the Obama administration “switched sides in the War on Terror.”  Drawing from a variety of open and formerly classified sources, the author makes plain that we are now aligned in Libya (among other places) with not just Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood’s opportunistic jihadi stripe, but those committed exclusively to violent jihad, like al Qaeda.

In the face of such appalling unilateral disarmament and defeatism, where is the Loyal Opposition in this country?  Alas, the man the press construes to be the preeminent Republican on national security issues, Senator John McCain of Arizona, has just demonstrated afresh his own poor judgment on these matters.

With a trip over the weekend to hobnob with jihadists among the “Syrian opposition” about the United States’ obligation to provide more arms to them, establish a no-fly zone and otherwise help them overthrow Bashar Assad, McCain has followed the same trajectory the Obama administration previously traced in Libya: embracing the autocratic despot one day, demanding he be replaced by “rebels” the next – the preponderance of whom seek our destruction.

We must reject and repudiate the surrender Messrs. Obama and McCain are engineering.  We must also understand factors contributing to such behavior.  To that end, an enormously important contribution has just been made by syndicated columnist Diana West in her brand new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.

Ms. West brings to the subject her characteristic clarity of thought, engaging writing style and exacting attention to – and documentation of – the evidence of penetration and subversion of our country and government by successive waves of ideologically driven totalitarian collectivists.  If you want to understand the wellspring of our present surrender, you must read American Betrayal.  Then, please, take to heart its author’s clarion call for avenging the betrayal of liberty that has taken place since FDR’s time and that is reaching dangerous new heights today.

The Boston Attack and Doctrines of “Individual Jihad”

In this video lecture, Center for Security Policy senior fellow Stephen Coughlin explains doctrinal and historical background for the recent jihadist attack in Boston. Beginning with media reports willfully confused about the motivations of the Chechen Mulsim Tsarnaev brothers, Coughlin deconstructs the lineage of the ‘individual jihad’ vs ‘jihad by bands’ or secret, foreign-controlled cells.

Key Points:

1. The government and media’s ‘reality dislocation’ in false narratives for Boston jihadists’ motivations.

Political or ideological considerations are promoted ahead of actual analysis. Placing motivation on idiosyncratic psychological factors constitutes a lack of understanding that, at some point, could be understood as a campaign of  disinformation.

2. In one of the final pronouncements of the Ottoman Caliphate during WWI, the concept of “individual jihad” was outlined alongside other types of jihad.

The statement included a  Koranic proof putting “individual jihad” into context. The major schools of Islamic law agree that a “call to jihad” is binding, especially when issued from the seat of the Caliph. Another type of jihad described by the statement is “jihad by bands” (also known as brigands); “the most profitable of [jihad by bands] is that which makes the use of ‘secret formations'”– otherwise known today as terrorist cells.

3. Any analysis of the Boston bombing– especially considering the use of pressure cooker bombs– should have began with an awareness of al Qaeda’s 2010 change in strategy.

In it’s first edition of the English-language Inspire Magazine, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula outlined its change of strategy in its conflict with the West: it would move from an emphasis on ‘secret formations/organizations’ and ‘overt fronts and open confrontation’ to “individual jihad,” known as “lone-wolf terrorism.”

4. “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

Inspire Magazine included a recipe for pressure cooker bombs in its first edition and, crucially, reprised that article in its most recent edition on “the Lone Mujahid” (the individual jihadist). Interestingly, the issue– which was released in Spring 2013, just in advance of the Boston attack– featured a photograph of Times Square on its cover. Note the next target of the Tsarnaev brothers was reported to be Times Square.

5. Convergence of al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood stages.

The inaugural edition of Inspire Magazine included a notice to da’wah-oriented Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood; the message was that events on the ground in the Muslim world were primed for proceeding from ‘Mecca’ stage to the ‘Media’ stage, as according to the Milestones Process and the concept of Abrogation in Islamic law. Essentially, it is a call to go to war. In late 2010, the Muslim Brotherhood reoriented itself under new leadership and seemed to embrace the transition to the more militant phase, also putting emphasis on “individual acts of sacrifice” or jihad/martyrdom operations.[For more analysis of the Islamist convergence, see ‘Part 4: The Muslim Brotherhood, Arab Spring & the Milestones Process‘]

6. The winter 2012 issue of Inspire Magazine outlines what is meant by ‘Individual jihad’– with consideration to attacking large sporting events, of which the Boston Marathon was certainly one.

Inspire point out, also, that the lone jihadist should avoid killing foreigners from countries with which the Islamic ummah is not at war. In line with that guidance, the Tsarnaev brothers waited until most foreign nationals had finished the race and set off the bombs during the time when average Americans, for the most part, were in the blast radius.

7. What al Qaeda Really Wants, circa 2005.

Investigative reporting in Der Spiegel with remarkable access to and insight from al Qaeda strategists points to AQ goals and– surprisingly– how closely their milestones have been met. The “Fourth Phase” predicts the collapse of the relatively secular Arabic governments (in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, etc), to be followed by the overthrow of the kingdoms. The Fifth Phase describes the rise of the Caliphate and the Sixth is “total confrontation” with the west. For a group that the Obama administration calls, “on the ropes,” they are well into their multi-phase plan.

8. “Against them Make Ready” and Convergence.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto as a da’wah organization, taken from the first words of Koran 8:60, is “Against them make ready.” The following phrase– “…and prepare against them to the utmost of your power” appears on the cover of the Spring 2013 Inspire Magazine special Lone Mujahid Pocketbook. Also in the same issue, al Qaeda re-published the pressure cooker bomb recipe. (Did they have any operational awareness?)

9. The Explanatory Memorandum’s “Process of Settlement.”

Analyzing the Muslim Brotherhood in America’s strategic document, as entered into evidence in America’s largest terrorism funding trial, US vs. Holy Land Foundation. From the Memorandum: “The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ihkwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood defines “settlement” as “a jihadist process.”

10. “Islamic Center of…” / Islamic Society of…”

Both phrases can be seen as “brands” indicating involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood at the leadership or foundational level. The Explanatory Memorandum goes on to describe how “The Islamic Center in every city… achieves the goal of the Process of Settlement” [defined earlier as a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’]: “The Islamic Center [is] in action not in words.. a seed ‘for a small Islamic society’ which is a reflection and a mirror to our central organizations.” In other words, Muslim Brotherhood-established and administered mosques in the United States should be assessed according to this mission. This is especially true for mosques with strong ties to MB entities like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), both unindicted co-consprirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

11. The Islamic Centers’ mission is to “supply our battalions.”

The Explanatory Memorandum further defines the goals and strategic uses for its Islamic Centers: it “should be the same as the mosque’s role during the time of God’s prophet… when he marched to ‘settle’ the Da’wah in its first generation in Medina, from the mosque…” This makes clear the Muslim Brotherhood’s future vision; in the first generation of Islam, Mohammed used mosques in the Medina period as staging areas for attacks on non-Muslim tribes in Arabia. The military implications of this phrase are clear and important to understand.

12. “Islamic Society of…” Boston.

Founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, a long-time Muslim Brother who was convicted of attempted murder of a foreign dignitary with al Qaeda involvement. Similarly, Anwar al Awlaki was a popular and powerful voice of “moderate Islam” before revealing himself as the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The lesson is, when dealing with Muslim Brotherhood, there are no sharp dividing lines between the that and more well-known “militant jihadist” groups.

13. The Purge of Counterterror Training.

 

About Stephen Coughlin

Over more than a decade following 9/11, MAJ Stephen Coughlin was one of the US government’s most astute and objective analysts, and an expert in the connections between Islamic law, terrorism and the jihadist movement around the globe. Through knowledge of published Islamic law, MAJ Coughlin had an demonstrated ability to forecast events both in the Middle East and domestically and to accurately assess the future threat posture of jihadist entities before they happen. He has briefed at the Pentagon, for national and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress. With this series of presentations, the general public has access to a professional standard of intelligence training in order to better understand the jihadist threat.

Stephen Coughlin’s lectures for the Center for Security Policy Counterterror Training Education and Analysis (CTEA) program on YouTube:

(1) Lectures on National Security & Counterterror Analysis (Introduction)

(2) Understanding the War on Terror Through Islamic Law

(3) Abrogation and the ‘Milestones’ Process

(4) The Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Spring & the ‘Milestones’ Process

(5) The Role of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Enforcing Islamic Law

(6) “Individual Jihad” in Boston

Playlist

Hamas in Syria and the Global Jihad

An important story from Long War Journal about Palestinians, including former Hamas operatives, who are playing a leading role in Syria. This quote,  from an Al Monitor piece about Salafis in Gaza cited by LWJ caught my eye:

A source close to the family told me that Qunayta was openly affiliated with al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. However, his membership was suspended during the last period of his life, because he traveled to Syria and joined the ranks of jihadists. Still, the movement handled his funeral service, out of respect for his history.

I also spoke with Hamas’ spokesperson, Sami Abou Zahri, over the phone. Zahri emphasized that Hamas does not interfere in any Arab or Islamic affairs. Although it stands by the Syrian people in fulfilling their will, it does not consider itself part of the conflict.

It makes me think. If a U.S. Special Forces operator were killed in action after having left the army and going to work as a “contractor”,  many would suspect (not unreasonably) that he’d been working on behalf of the CIA. In other words same goal, just a different (deniable) outfit. There’d be no definitive evidence, of course, but that’d be the suspicion.

Yet some how translated into an Islamic context, and this scenario is likely to be read by the State Department and in many mainstream media outlets as Hamas being more “moderate” than their counterparts like the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

I suppose this is the difference between actually understanding the concept of a “Global Jihadist Movement”, and using it in your Worldwide Threat Assessment as a snazzy synonym for Al Qaeda.

Obama Avoiding Intelligence Gathering Opportunities

It would seem that the Obama administration will do whatever it takes to avoid gathering intelligence from enemy combatants these days.

Immediately following the recent transfer of senior al-Qaeda leader Sulaiman Abu Ghaith into U.S. custody, the Department of Justice indicted him in federal court in New York, where he will be represented by three court-appointed attorneys.  In this setting, Abu Ghaith will have the benefit of a range of constitutional protections that would not be available to him in military custody in Guantanamo, meaning we are less likely to get valuable intelligence from him that could assist us in our counter-terrorism efforts.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Obama administration has simultaneously escalated the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) overseas to target al-Qaeda operatives.  While UAV strikes are a valuable component of the war against al-Qaeda, and should remain part of our arsenal, one cannot talk to a vaporized terrorist to find out what he knows.

Either way, President Obama is closing off intelligence-gathering opportunities.  As I wrote not long ago in The American Spectator:

“…[T]here is something amiss about a President who sees his options as either drone strikes or criminal trials when it comes to going after terrorists. At every turn, President Obama has sought to avoid the sensible and militarily valuable middle-ground of military detention, which would maximize intelligence-gathering opportunities while minimizing the legal and security risks that go with criminal trials.”

In between criminal trials and drone strikes lies military detention — a critical tool to the war effort, but one that President Obama continues to avoid for political purposes.

For an insightful read on how this indictment affects the future of military commissions, specifically with respect to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, check out this recent piece from Andy McCarthy, an indispensable resource on all things lawfare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Al-Qaeda takes the initiative on Israel’s doorstep

Last night, the Times of Israel newspaper highlighted a riveting but chilling YouTube video of al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters on the Golan Heights border between Syria and Israel.  The al-Furqan jihadists, depicted in front of a heavily-armed vehicle, are seen patrolling and speaking confidently just feet from a barbed-wire fence and an apparent Israeli border structure.

Elsewhere on the Golan Heights this morning, Syrian rebels seized vehicles from a UN convoy and kidnapped 20 Filipino personnel.  They were part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), a contingent of about 1,000 tasked with implementing the ceasefire between Israel and Syria since 1974.  But, like the UNIFIL troops in Lebanon, they are at best impotent and at worst enabling Israel’s enemies.  The Syrian front has been quieter than the Lebanese front, but only because Israel’s massive firepower advantage is more effective against a nationalist regime with a lot to lose (Assad) than a wily and flexible Islamist militia with no state-level responsibilities (Hezbollah).

Now, with al-Qaeda literally peering over the fence from Syria, that calculus has changed.  The Israeli leadership should be preparing for the jihadists in the Golan to join their fellow non-state actors, Hezbollah and Hamas, in creating a third border with Israel where the enemy is exceedingly difficult to deter.   And by now the Israeli leadership should have learned the lesson that no international force, especially from the UN, will be there to protect them from the vanguard of jihad.

In the face of incontrovertible evidence that enabling the jihadist opposition in Syria will create a new nest for international terror, will the western powers change their tacit (and occasionally overt) support for the Syrian opposition?

Not likely.  The UK government announced the same day that it would be sending armored vehicles to the rebels.