Tag Archives: ISIS

The Key to Defeating ISIS: The Kurds

As the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate in the war against the Islamic State, one wonders how long our military can maintain its current air campaign, which has so far rendered ineffective in pushing back the jihadist’s advancements. It seems that the Obama administration is doing all it can to prolong and drag out the battle for Syria and Iraq. But this should not be the case.

When the Obama administration began looking for “moderate” Islamic rebels to back in the war, they overlooked a key, strong, pro-western ally in the region that could be a powerful ground force able of pushing back the ISIS blitzkrieg, the Kurds. The Kurds are the worlds largest ethnic group without a state to call their own, and reside in the large territory encompassing eastern and southern Turkey, northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.

The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) military force, called the peshmerga, are well trained and brutal warriors. The Kurds do not consider themselves to be Arab, but a majority of the population is Islamic, with Christian and Yezidi minorities. Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi Kurdistan has become increasingly autonomous allowing it to flourish economically, and be unaffected by the insurgency that plagues the rest of Iraq, with neighborhoods that resemble those in southern California.

The Kurds are pro-western, pro-democracy, moderate Islamic people who have the same security interests at heart as we do here in America. So why has Obama and his administration continued to ignore them, and opt for training and arming a flakey, mediocre at best Syrian rebel force? The administration to their credit has begun to give the Kurds some small arms and ammunition, but much more substantial support is needed if the Islamic State is to be defeated.

If Iraq and Syria continue to spiral further into civil war, the KGR may declare independence from Iraq, isolating themselves and shutting out the violence that surrounds them, leading to a chain reaction that will for certain tear the country apart. On the contrary, if the Kurds are fully supported by the U.S. and are able to destroy the Islamic State, bringing stability to the region, an independent Kurdistan would bring further stability to the region as well as a new Middle East ally to the United States.

So the question remains….what is President Obama waiting for? The Kurds are the key to defeating ISIS, and possibly finally having peace in the region.

The Clearing of the Pawns

It is now being reported that Al Qaeda’s Syrian group, the Al Nusra Front has accepted the surrender of the U.S.-Armed Harakat Hazm (HZM), and effectively neutralized the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) by seizing it’s remaining bases. As the UK Telegraph notes:

For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.
But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.
The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group’s leader Jamal Marouf. The attack caused the group, which had already lost its territory in Hama to al-Qaeda, to surrender.

According to reports, HZM surrendered its positions to Al Nusra and turned over its U.S.-provided arsenal without offering any resistance. Harakat Hazm has never been shy about fighting alongside Al Nusra, as one fighter proclaimed to the LA Times less than a month ago, “But Nusra doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusra.” This coziness with al Qaeda is something that investigative reporter Patrick Poole has repeatedly noted, and raises the question of whether these surrogates upon which President Obama’s Syria and anti-ISIS strategy depends were ever really “our surrogates” to begin with? The, admittedly pro-Assad, Beirut paper Al-Akbar has claimed that HZM was explicitly created by the Muslim Brotherhood, and with the support of Turkey and Qatar, in order to serve as a recipient of U.S. aid.

Whether HZM was a Muslim Brotherhood front designed to fool the West from day one, or whether they simply lack the strength to continue resisting Al Nusra, the result is the same.  SRF and HZM  have now being cleared from the board, rendering painfully obvious what should have been clear some time ago. There is no force of “moderation” capable of ruling an intact Syria. U.S. airstrikes cannot defeat ISIS alone, and could not, even were they not hamstrung by a gun shy Administration that insists on controlling every aspect of the air war from the White House. Further escalation, through “boots on the ground” is, as reporter Michael Totten has noted,  a political non-starter, and for very good reason.  The idea that a force of Syrians can be extracted from Syria, tabula rasa, and then reinserted a few years later once they’ve been adequately armed and trained, as some have proposed, is a flight of fancy.  The future of Syria is likely to be decided between Al Qaeda, ISIS and the Assad regime, backed by Iran and Hezbollah.

Recognizing our lack of pieces to move should be the first step in crafting a new strategy, one which takes into account not just Syria, but the whole rapidly changing face of the region.

“Call it Jihad: ‘Terrorism’ Just Doesn’t Define This Threat”

2014’s spate of Islamic terror attacks against Western targets leaves observers grasping for words to describe what’s happening. President Obama doesn’t want to deal with it at all, so after a Muslim convert beheaded a woman in Oklahoma, he thought it appropriate to send the beheader’s mosque (the Islamic Center of Greater Oklahoma City) warm greetings about “shared peace” and “a sense of justice.” (The occasion was the Muslim feast of Eid Ul-Adh, but the timing was awful.) U.S. national security agencies are no help either—under the tutelage of the Muslim Brotherhood, they were purged long ago of any vocabulary useful for dealing with jihad. “Lone wolf” gets a lot of play with the media, but as Michael Ledeen, Andrew McCarthy, and Patrick Poole (here, here, and here) have all pointed out, there’s nothing ‘lone’ about Muslim warriors, self-selected or otherwise, engaging in fard ‘ayn (individual jihad) in obedience to the doctrine of their shared faith.

Nor are these attacks simply “terrorism” in any way that is uniquely descriptive. As Ledeen noted, the Unabomber was a domestic terrorist. The FBI calls the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) terrorist. The Black Liberation Army was accused of murdering more than a dozen police officers in its day. But none of these operates today in obedience to a 1400-year-old ideology that claims a divine commandment to conquer the earth. Nor is any of these other ‘domestic terrorists’ the 21st century embodiment of a force that already has overrun many powerful civilizations, including the Buddhist, Byzantine, Middle East Christian, Hindu, and Persian ones.

It’s time to call this what it is: Jihad.

Jihad is a unique descriptor: it is motivated solely by one ideology—an Islamic one. It encompasses any and all tactics of war, be they the kinetic violence of terrorism, the stealthy influence operations of the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian intelligence agencies, or funding, speaking, teaching, and writing. Importantly, the term ‘jihad’ is the one used by its own practitioners—the clerics, scholars, and warriors of Islam. Arguably the most valid qualification of all is that Islamic Law (shariah) defines jihad as “warfare to spread the religion [Islam].” Warfare encompasses many things, though, and not all of them are violent.

Katharine Gorka, President of The Council on Global Security, has an astute new essay entitled “The Flawed Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy” in which she skewers the Obama administration’s misguided policy it calls “Countering Violent Extremism.” She explains how America’s counter-terrorism ‘experts’ have tried haplessly to apply Social Movement Theory to what actually is a totalitarian ideology cloaked loosely in a handful of religious practices. A decade or more of attempting to apply the language of grievance, poverty, and unemployment laid at the door of Western colonialism or secular modernity has achieved little but the neutering of America’s national security defenses. Yet, even this dead-on analysis doesn’t quite get us where we need to be.

Just as Obama’s bland “violent extremism,” deliberately devoid of meaning identifies neither the enemy nor the ideology that animates him, so in its way, ‘terrorism” likewise falls short. For if “terrorist” can and does mean anyone from a nut job like Ted Kaczynsky to assorted tree huggers, neo-Nazi skinheads, as well as Islamic warriors committing atrocities in the name of Allah, then its scope is just too broad to define precisely the paramount threat to global stability in the 21st century: jihad.

The magnitude of the jihad threat demands its own category. Neither Kaczynsky nor animal and environmental activists nor neo-Nazis could threaten the very existence of our Republic. Certain 20th century totalitarian ideologies arguably did, though, and that’s why the U.S. marshaled every resource at its disposal to fight them to defeat. Islamic totalitarianism is such an ideology, albeit one that has survived cyclical periods of defeat and resurgence for many centuries. We constrain ourselves both conceptually and legally, however, when the only way to label an act of violence ‘terrorism’ is when it is carried out against civilians for a political purpose and the perpetrator(s) can be tied to a designated terrorist organization, with no consideration for the ideology that so many of them—and others not on such lists—share.

Islamic terror attacks of recent decades typically involved identifiable Islamic terror groups such as al-Qa’eda, Ansar al-Shariah, HAMAS, Hizballah, and the PLO, but were often funded and supported by jihadist nation states such as Iran, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. As Katharine Gorka described in her white paper, though, the Obama administration’s willfully amorphous term, “violent extremism,” ensured that no enemy threat doctrine called ‘jihad’ that unifies these diverse yet similarly-motivated actors and that actually may threaten the Republic, was ever permitted to be articulated—or confronted.

Now, after the overwhelming post-9/11 Western retaliatory offensives, both al-Qa’eda and more recently, the Islamic State, increasingly have called for acts of ‘individual jihad’ (fard ‘ayn, according to Islamic doctrine). Such attacks by Islamic true believers against armed service members, civilians, and law enforcement officers as well as ordinary citizens duly are proliferating across the West, but the U.S. national security establishment grasps for any term—lone wolf, violent extremist, workplace violence—to avoid saying either ‘terrorism’ or ‘jihadist.’ Granted, as Daniel Pipes noted in his 24 October 2014 essay, “Terrorism Defies Definition,” there are legal consequences under the U.S. Legal Code for “formally certifying an act of violence as terrorist.” But as we see, it’s more than that – and it’s why we need to use “jihad” more often and “terrorism” less.

To properly identify individual jihad attacks is to acknowledge that there is an established ideology behind them that derives its inspiration from Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture. To acknowledge that would mean the threat actually is existential, at a minimum in its objective: universal conquest and enforcement of shariah. Until and unless the entire American citizenry, federal bureaucracy, Intelligence Community, law enforcement, and the U.S. military understand that failing to acknowledge, confront, and defeat the forces of Islamic jihad and shariah indeed do endanger the very existence of our Republic as we know it, and mobilize to meet this challenge, the inexorable advance of shariah will continue. As Pipes notes with some understatement, the current “lack of clarity presents a significant public policy challenge.”

The term “terrorism” will continue to provide useful applications in security categories and lists. But it is much too inclusive and yet restrictive to offer a precise definition of the Islamic threat. The forces of Islamic jihad and shariah are mounting a whole of civilization assault against liberal, modern, representative, secular civil society. Nation states, sub-national terror organizations, transnational alliances, academics and scholars, media conglomerates, networks of mosques and Islamic Centers, so-called ‘charitable foundations’ and their donors, battlefield fighters, and too many individual Muslims are united in a jihad that is not only violent but insidious, inexorable, and sophisticated. Unless we learn to resist in the same way—a whole of civilization way—that list of subjugated civilizations may yet include one more: ours.

“Who have Eyes and See Not”

October 22nd’s terror attack by Michael (aka Abdullah) Zehaf-Bibeau brings into focus an important question for Western counterterrorism efforts, as reports are now indicating that Zehaf-Bibeau, reportedly a Muslim convert, or having recently become religious, had been under Canadian law enforcement scrutiny prior to the attack, over fears that he may head abroad to join the Islamic State. This exact same set of circumstances also existed for Martin Couture Rouleau, who killed one Canadian soldier, and wounded another, in a hit and run terror attack on October 21st.

Nor are the Canadians the only ones who have had all the proper intelligence on suspects, and literally surveilled them all the way up until the moment they began their deadly assault. A look at the past several years brings to mind multiple examples. The FBI was made aware of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev , and even interviewed him, well before he engaged in his jihad. British MI-5 had likewise been made aware of Michael Adebolajo, when he was arrested by Kenyan authorities allegedly for trying to join the jihad in Somalia. Adebolajo (together with a partner) would go on to engage in the beheading of British Army drummer Lee Rigby, in an attack very nearly copied by Rouleau.

Mohamed Merah, the French Muslim terrorist who attacked a Jewish school killing a Rabbi and three children as well as three French paratroopers in ambush attacks, was known to French intelligence and under surveillance for years. The Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hassan gave a briefing to his fellow Walter Reed psychiatrists about why sharia law obligated Muslims to engage in jihad against non-Muslims. Hassan’s email exchanges with Al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki were read by the FBI in 2008 before the attack.  The Underwear bomber, and the Glasgow Airport bomber were also known to law enforcement and intelligence, and yet in both cases only quick acting members of the public prevented tragedy.

The point of mentioning these cases (and there are others) is not to blame law enforcement or intelligence agencies for failure, but rather to highlight a key problem. Despite the ability to detect, surveil and identify jihadists, which has been largely successful, the ability to actually prevent their attacks remains woefully inadequate. And even less is being done about the networks which indoctrinated these men, most of whom were recent converts, or men from largely secular families who had recently been re-introduced to their faith with a renewed zeal. Instead the relevant agencies watched, and listened… and then when the attacks occur, they were left to clean up the mess.

For starters, discussions of ideology, indoctrination, and recruitment have been forbidden, or at a minimum are utterly inadequate. While the RCMP wisely decided to reject an “anti-terror” handbook, which was put together in cooperation with Islamic groups in Canada, and which would have called for an end to the use of terms like “jihad” or “Islamist”, it shows that the same pressures exist in Canada as have been present in the United States. Ironically the U.S. State Department praised the same book rejected by Canadian law enforcement.

More efforts also need to be placed on disrupting the indoctrination and recruiting process, which requires understanding realistically where that indoctrination occurs. As noted by former Iraqi MP Ayad Jamal Al-Din (Transcript courtesy of Andy McCarthy):

As I have said, ISIS is a phenomenon with extensions all over the world, not just in Muslim countries. Even here in the U.S., there are many ISIS mosques.  There are thousands of mosques that are preparing people to join ISIS. Imagine: young people from Florida join the ranks of ISIS to fight, and so do young people from Britain, Australia, Russia, China, and elsewhere. How could a young university student leave Florida to fight for ISIS if not for a mosque that incited him to do so? I am not talking about a handful of mosques or about just a few people. No, we are talking about thousands of such mosques, or even more, in all countries of the world, from South America to North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. These mosques are calling, day in and day out, for the revival of the caliphate. There are school curricula that glorify the caliphate…

MP Al-Din said in that short segment on an Arabic television channel what most law enforcement officials and intelligence officers would be terrified to say, and are prohibited from investigating.

Another tool law enforcement has traditionally used to preempt terrorists with great effect has been the use informants and sting operations. By luring would-be terrorists into conducting their jihad harmlessly with fake explosives or the like, law enforcement can pounce without waiting for death and mayhem. But as has been repeatedly documented elsewhere, in the United States at least, that tool is under severe pressure. Sting operations are targeted for elimination by the Muslim Brotherhood, and their various allies through false claims of entrapment. While outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent guideline changes on profiling did not terminate the use of informants, it opened the door for continued efforts by MB groups to pursue their elimination.

The ability to gather intelligence, to surveil and identify potential threats is meaningless if there exists no way to take action before those threats become realized. This in turn plays a part in the public’s increased discomfort with surveillance, which does not seem to be accomplishing the one goal for which it was instituted, protecting the public. Quality intelligence work, and dramatic surveillance capabilities suggest that future Zehaf-Bibeaus, Rouleaus, Hassans, Abebolajos, and Tsarnaevs are unlikely to go “undetected.” However, thanks to the inability to get quality training on ideology, the impermissibility of addressing mosques as targets of investigations, and soon, the inability to utilize informants or sting operations, they are also unlikely to be stopped.

ISIS Draws Experienced Jihadists and Youth Alike From North Africa

A reporter for Mahgarebia, Mohamed Saadouni, pointed out last month how telling it was that a counter-gang unit in Morocco had busted a ring of pro-ISIS youth.  That is a counter-gang unit and not at counter-terrorism unit like the one which busted up a Moroccan ISIS recruiting cell the week prior.   The ISIS recruiting cell, led by a primary school teacher, had been sending fighters to Iraq and Syria in coordination with ground commanders there.

There’s a picture of a relationship here between seasoned and capable jihadis in the networks of North Africa and the numbers of disaffected youth they have to draw from for recruiting.  A recent number for Tunisia estimates that 3000 fighters have made it from there to the Syrian theater.  The new generation of young fighters are in great number in Morocco and North Africa and are easily accessible to former Al Qaeda, ISIS, Ansar al Sharia, and other splinter groups both socially and geographically.

Saadouni points out that while the ISIS recruiting cell was sending fighters to the Syrian theater, the younger and newly formed group, deterred by the air strike campaign, chose to spread both horror and Shariah law in their home kingdom.  Unlike homegrown terror in the West, the international and regional jihadi networks can manufacture fighters from ideological cultivation in their youth and plug them right into the neighboring ISIS Algerian branch.  From that point there are no good outcomes.  They may end up on the battle field in Iraq or Syria, wage violent jihad at home, or use their battle field experience at home when they return.

The new group formed in Morocco took the name, ‘Ansar Islamic State in the Maghreb Al-Aqsa.’  They give their allegiance to ISIS in Algeria whom are largely former Al Qaeda.  All of this should remind us that in many parts of the world it is not ‘terrorism’ per se.  It is kinetic war and it is ideological war.  Saadouni’s description of the behavior of the young Moroccan gangs may as well describe the Shariah gangs in London.  Such visions realized would look like Al Bashir’s regime in Khartoum which can force black Africans to take on Arab names and identities or force them into slavery all while eradicating those who don’t comply to Shariah law with weapons of conventional warfare on a mass scale.

Returning to Peace Through Strength

Less than three weeks from election day, the nation faces threats as dangerous and more diverse than September 11, 2001. This predicament can be directly traced to the misguided, reckless, and naive policies of the Obama administration.

The threat of ISIS arose from President Obama’s abandonment of Iraq. In the vacuum that his own military leadership warned him of, ISIS seized much of Iraq and moved into Syria. Americans are all too familiar now with ISIS’ barbarity in the form savage beheadings paraded over the internet. Compounded by gross negligence at the nation’s borders and immigration policies imposed by fiat from the administration that subvert the will of the people, Americans find themselves facing everything from the prospect of terrorists entering the nation illegally, to the spread of Ebola in the United States from foreign travelers.

American weakness has not gone unnoticed. Russia brazenly annexed Crimea from Ukraine earlier this year with no consequences other than superficial sanctions. China proceeds with a break-neck military build-up while denying free elections in Hong Kong and threatening its democratic neighbor Taiwan. North Korea brutally represses its people and conducts ballistic missile tests to taunt the US and its allies. And Iran, in the face of unenforced “red lines” (one drawn on Syria by Obama on the use of chemical weapons, the other by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu on the Iranian nuclear threat), continues its nuclear program and sponsorship of terrorists, unconcerned.

All the while, Obama and his lieutenant in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, relentlessly demoralize the US military. With the 2011 sequester, they have led the shrinking of our military to force levels not seen since before World War II. America must control spending, but doing so on the backs of servicemembers who have already borne more than half of the $2 trillion in cuts mandated by the sequester breaks faith with them and threatens our security. The All-Volunteer Force has been transformed into a social-engineering laboratory with the repeal of the law on gays in the military and a headlong rush to force women into combat positions. Obama trades away terror leaders in Guantanamo for a deserting soldier, but seems unmoved by the plight of a US Marine held by Mexico, ostensibly an ally. And most outrageously, he has yet to be held accountable for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on the anniversary of 9/11 two years ago. Personnel on the ground as well as other sources in the region that night have said assets were either left unmobilized or delayed in assisting Americans under siege. Intolerable.

The foregoing litany demands a return to the tried-and-true Reagan policy of peace through strength. And keeping faith with our troops and remaining a constant and true partner to our allies. As voters consider their choices for the House and Senate, the following is offered as an essential list of policy positions to judge them against:

  • A vote in Congress on the ongoing use of force against ISIS in Syria. America deserves a full explanation from the president on our strategy and what that will require from our military men and women and mean long-term for the United States.
  • An end to the sequester-levels of spending for the military, rebuilding it to project the strength that peace requires, and stemming the demoralization that years of cuts, misuse (“containing” Ebola), abuse (Benghazi and the Bergdahl trade) and false errands (the aborted Afghanistan surge/abandonment of Iraq; the ISIS airstrikes) have inflicted.
  • Defense of Israel, as the only free, democratic ally to the United States in the Middle East.
  • Toughened sanctions against Russia, in answer to its invasion of Ukraine and in deterrence of future advances on neighbors/former regions of the Soviet Union.
  • Re-establishing the plan for a missile defense site in Poland, to deter Russia more broadly in Eastern Europe, as well as to defend all of Europe AND Russia from rogue ballistic missile threats.
  • Halting travel into the United States from countries with high risks for Ebola or other potentially fatal and/or epidemic health threats. Maintaining a ban until the CDC has cleared such regions from being high-risk.
  • Securing the border. It is inexcusable that a sovereign nation cannot or does not control its own borders. This negligent and willful policy of the Obama administration not only inexcusably puts Americans at risk, but also those attempting to cross our border illegally by taking highly dangerous measures to do so.
  • Diligent oversight and action to end social engineering policies that weaken morale and readiness in the All-Volunteer Force.
  • Demanding accountability on Benghazi. Our military and overseas personnel deserve to know how their government failed them and see those responsible punished and/or brought to justice, as well as to maintain confidence that in times of danger, our government will not abandon them.

Endorsement of these prescriptions should represent a non-negotiable test for voters with growing concern about national security leading into this midterm election–no doubt driven by their extreme distaste for impotence on the world stage and the breaking of faith with our military. The dereliction of this administration will not stop unless confronted, and that will take leaders guided by American interests, not the failed policies of an unworthy Nobel Peace laureate. America can indeed achieve peace. Through strength.

The High Costs of Presidential Incompetence

Last January President Obama called ISIS a “JV” terrorist group.  Months later after it metastasized into a terrorist army, Mr. Obama said he did not have a plan to deal with it.

The strategy Mr. Obama finally announced last month to degrade and destroy ISIS has proved to be weak and ineffective.  ISIS has made gains on the ground in Kurdish areas over the last few weeks and is now threatening Baghdad.  This outcome was predictable: we know from history that a war can’t be won with airpower alone.  The paltry number of U.S. airstrikes against ISIS targets has no chance of proving otherwise.

Now we have the Obama administration’s mishandling of the ebola outbreak.  The president appears to view this issue as a dire threat to his presidency since contrary to his habit of ignoring crises by playing golf and attending glitzy political fundraisers, he actually cancelled fundraising trips to deal with it.  The disorganized response by U.S. government agencies that allowed ebola infections to occur in the United States and the president’s refusal to ban flights from West Africa has led to a major scandal.

While I support Mr. Obama’s decision to send U.S. troops to ebola stricken areas to fight the disease, this is not a burden the United States should be bearing alone.  Where is the UN?  Why did the United States not push for a UN resolution directing all states – including Russia and China – to send troops, doctors and other medial and support personnel to West Africa?

Meanwhile, Secretary John Kerry is putting the finishing touches on a nuclear agreement with Tehran that looks to be a complete sellout by the West and will do nothing to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.  This agreement is likely to be so bad that it may ensure a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Israeli airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

The foreign policy incompetence of the Obama administration was been evident since Mr. Obama’s first year in office after he went on an “apology tour” and reluctantly condemned the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown against demonstrators protesting the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Only now are we seeing the high costs of this incompetence for America and the world, costs that I fear will grow worse in the final months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

UPDATE: Last Friday, the White House announced President Obama had named Ron Klain, a Democratic political operative, to be the “Ebola czar.”   Klain, an attorney who served as chief of staff to Vice President Gore and Vice President Biden, has no experience working in the health care field.  Was there no Democrat who worked in the Department of Health and Human Services or the Surgeon General’s office available for this post?  Why was a Democratic doctor or health care expert not chosen for this important job?

The answer to these questions is simple: Klain will be an Ebola “Spin Czar.” His job will be “messaging.” This means Klain was not named to help combat this disease but to stop the political damage it is inflicting on the Obama presidency and to Democrats across the country.

By naming a political hack as Ebola Czar to spin this crisis away, President Obama’s craven incompetence has sunk to a new low.

ISIS May Not Need Manned Jets to Have Air Power

Fox News is reporting that former Iraqi air force pilots who have defected to the Islamic State are training the latter’s fighters to pilot three captured jets, according to some sources:

ISIS could be soon taking its terror fight to the sky, after a report that former Iraqi pilots are training Islamic militants to fly captured Syrian war planes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group says some ex-Iraqi air force pilots are training members of ISIS to fly three warplanes—believed to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets– captured from air bases in Syria.

U.S. Central Command, though, has indicated that it cannot confirm such reports:

“We don’t have any operational reporting of (ISIS) flying jets in support of ISIS activity on the ground and so I cannot confirm that. And to the degree that pilots may have defected and joined the ranks of ISIS, I don’t have any information on that either,” General Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command told a Pentagon news briefing Friday.

As concerning as this report may be if it turns out to be true, groups like the Islamic State are increasingly on their way to being able to attack targets by air, even without the use of manned jets. Dr. Daniel Gouré of the Lexington Institute observes in a recent must-read piece:

In the next insurgency, U.S. and coalition forces could find themselves facing a new equally dangerous and disruptive threat [similar to that of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs]: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), often called drones. I am not referring to the large, high-flying, long-range and sophisticated unpiloted aerial vehicles such as the U.S. Reaper or Global Hawk or the Israeli Heron. Rather, I am speaking of relatively small and very simple drones that would fly low, have limited range and carry a payload measured in pounds.

In its recent conflicts, the U.S. military deployed several highly effective small UAVs that were built out of plastic parts, employed commercially available sensor systems and avionics and whose launch and recovery systems were constructed from parts available at Home Depot.

To date, there have been relatively few cases of other countries and, more importantly, non-state actors, employing drones. But they are coming. All the relevant technologies are proliferated around the world. The airframe can be made from cheap materials. They can be powered by battery-driven electric motors found in gardening implements. They need no better guidance system than the GPS that can be found in the average cell phone. But if you want command guidance you can get a small video camera almost anywhere and route the feed through that same cell phone connected to the local communications network. They can be built in a garage and launched from the driveway.

Gouré concludes ominously:

Make no mistake, this threat is coming. The recent conflict in Gaza taught the world’s terrorists and insurgents about the limited utility of even massive arsenals of unguided rockets and missiles. They will be looking for an alternative weapon. All the components needed to build a small, precision-guided, weaponized drone are available at ISIS’s equivalent of Radio Shack.

Pinpointing Why?

In a press conference discussing the threat facing the Kurds of Kobanî, on the border with Turkey, Pentagon Spokesman Rear Admiral Kirby said yesterday that U.S. strategy “is not about pinpointing a particular place on the map” according to a tweet from Kristin Wong of The Hill.

Which led me to respond with what seemed like a rather obvious question.

Kirby did ultimately address this issue, telling reporters, “”What makes Kobani significant is the fact that ISIL wants it.”

Yes but WHY do they want it?

The why of things matter. While seemingly a little thing, the question gets to the heart of our current difficulty in the jihadist war against us. The enemy has a strategy, and not just a short to intermediate-term strategy as it is being exercised by ISIS in Kobanî but a grand strategy against the West. But knowing the enemy’s strategy requires understanding his doctrine, Shariah, which our leadership refuses to do, and increasingly, is prohibited from doing. As a result they insist our enemies are mere mindless killers. Rebels without a cause, whose long-term strategy is irrelevant. What their objectives are, or how they wish to accomplish them seemingly do not matter.

Following an extended public outcry in the past several days (a twitter campaign yesterday by American Activists in support of arming Kurdish forces topped out at 800 tweets/hour ), U.S. forces have intensified the bombing against ISIS targets near Kobanî. According to Reuters this has played a role in helping reverse Kurdish fortunes, as the ISIS advance has now stalled. While obviously good news in the short run, military strategy can’t afford to be dictated by public opinion either, although it would seem that the instincts of the American public on this issue are appropriate.

What must occur is a detailed analysis of the enemy threat doctrine, Shariah, and an examination of how that doctrine is informing the objectives of its adherents (including ISIS) in the present campaign. It is then a matter of developing a strategy of our own which prevents the enemy from accomplishing its objectives while at the same time advancing our own. Until that is done however, we effectively do not have a strategy,  only “pinpoints on a map.”

al Qaeda, al Shabaab, and ISIS: Recruiting and Taking Ground

The recent interplay between al Shabaab and the African Union military mission in Somalia offers new data on the role of ground troops, the holding of territory, and Islamist recruiting.   After conventional ground forces deprived the al Qaeda linked group of its last stronghold in Baraawe, al Shabaab retaliated with a failed assassination attempt on the Somali president in Baraawe.  To a more tragic effect, they succeeded in killing thirteen innocent civilians in Mogadishu with a car bomb yesterday.  The loss of Baraawe was a big loss for al Shabaab.  They once enjoyed control of two major port cities where they could earn money in exports and bring in weapons and new recruits unchecked.

It is important to keep in mind that as far back as 2007, the FBI was mobilizing to counter al Shabaab’s successful recruiting of Americans among the Somali refugee community.  In 2010, fourteen people were indicted for trying to support al Shabaab.  Individuals among them came from California, Alabama, and Minnesota.  One of the attackers at Westgate Mall in Kenya last year was believed to be from Kansas City, Missouri.

It also helps to keep in mind that al Shabaab was started by lieutenants of Osama Bin Laden.  Now, ISIS internet recruiting strategies are being compared to Al Qaeda’s as next-generation in technical innovation.   Why? The giant terrorist recruiting boon has long since begun.  That fact overshadows the differences between the groups and highlights their overarching unity of purpose.

Harken back to when the pillar of our now president’s foreign policy debate was that Gitmo caused terrorist recruiting.  If only we could close down Gitmo, we could stem terrorist recruiting world wide.  Another re-hashing of counter recruiting strategy also emerges.  Namely, did invading Iraq serve the cause of terrorist recruitment on a grand scale?  Would another boots on the ground campaign amplify recruiting once again in Syria?

Consider the basic elements at work: 1. Globalized social media with a propaganda capability 2. Freedom and ease of individual travel  3. Porous borders and poorly governed territory

Now apply those elements to each case regarding Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and al Shabaab in Somalia.  These categories clearly do not represent the complexity or all of the scenarios involved in the current threat matrix but do serve for an acceptable base line comparison.

In Afghanistan al Qaeda has good propaganda instincts but it is first generation stuff and there is physical distance between terrorist strongholds and a communications infrastructure.  Freedom and ease of individual travel is made difficult by remoteness and lack of transportation infrastructure.  The low level of governance, however, falls in the plus column.

In Iraq and Syria, ISIS is not only the benefactor of al Qaeda and former al Qaeda, they have more travel infrastructure and communications infrastructure.  It is much easier for Americans and Europeans to travel in and out, gain battle experience, and receive training before they return home.  Add to their globalized propaganda capability a free microphone from HBO’s Vice.  Their ability to take territory and govern speaks for itself.  But here is the twist.  Upon return, their media capability extrapolates as it already had been doing among the Somali jihadists.

Al Shabaab in Somalia had success early on with recruiting and importing foreign fighters due to the absence of an opposing force on the ground and control of vital seaports.  The freedom of individual travel beget effective globalized social media even without great communications infrastructure.   The FBI remains deeply concerned about those who have joined the jihad in Somalia carrying out attacks in the U.S. after returning.

What does all of this say to the debate about putting boots on the ground?  Does military intervention not play right in to Islamist strategy?  To be fair, let us quickly paraphrase the Iraq invasion strategy.  The idea was that it is better to fight terrorists with voluntary soldiers on foreign soil than to leave them unchecked and able to mobilize over seas to then launch attacks on U.S. soil.

It may sound simplistic but the ground force operations in Iraq and Afghanistan gave us an intelligence capability and a special forces capability we would have never had otherwise.  Without it, we would have never gotten Bin Laden and a lot of other bad guys.  That capability is no where near what it was since before the Iraq withdrawal.   Further, the U.S. had the un-articulated strategic advantage of new strike capabilities in a theater where we needed more geo-strategic leverage.  That’s gone too.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s say that the Iraq invasion did bring more terrorists out of the woodwork then would have ever otherwise confronted the U.S. unprovoked.   As Sam Harris has recently highlighted, the same ideas animate the overarching actions of all three groups; al Qaeda, al Shabaab, and ISIS.  It is a strategy for global dominance.  In Somalia, early al Shabaab had an ideological enemy, the Siad Barre military regime, long before U.S. foreign policy provided the foil.   His rise had to do with the Soviets whose foreign policy also provided the foil for Bin Laden’s early propaganda successes.

It will  help Islamist propaganda generally when they can use a Western or secular foreign policy or ideology as a foil.  Letting them determine when and where to fight is to concede that jihadists will name the tune that the West will dance to.  As the list of no-good options grows, there is healthy debate and a lot of good reasons why we should not invade  Iraq for a third time.  But a recruiting coup is not one of them.  The factors listed above can account for a robust propaganda and recruiting capability for ISIS, al Shabaab, and al Qaeda.  Further, thanks to social media, the viral effect is in effect.  That ship has sailed and Western leaders are in more dissarray than ever as to what to do about it.

Baraawe reminds us that taking territory away from Islamist terrorist groups can deprive them of money, weapons, and new recruits in the short term.  Iraq teaches us that if we don’t hold the ground taken from Islamist groups, they will take it back.  Neither case addresses the blood lust or sense of righteousness for their cause in the long run.  Yet their ideas can draw fighters to their banner with or without a U.S. presence on the ground.  A counter ideology capability for the West will not likely emerge in the American political climate.