Tag Archives: ISIS

Obama’s self-defeating fight

The United States has a problem with Islamic State. Its problem is that it refuses to acknowledge why Islamic State is a problem.

The problem with Islamic State is not that it is brutal. Plenty of regimes are brutal.

Islamic State poses two challenges for the US. First, unlike the Saudis and even the Iranians, IS actively recruits Americans and other Westerners to join its lines.

This is a problem because these Americans and other Westerners have embraced an ideology that is viciously hostile to every aspect of Western civilization.

Last Friday, Buzz Feed published a compilation of social media posts published by Western women who have left their homes in Chicago and London and other hometowns to join IS in Syria.

As these women’s social media posts demonstrate, the act of leaving the West and joining IS involves rejecting everything the West is and everything it represents and embracing a culture of violence, murder and degradation.

In the first instance, the women who leave the West to join IS have no qualms about entering a society in which they have no rights. They are happy covering themselves in black from head to toe. They have no problem casting their lot with a society that prohibits females from leaving their homes without male escorts.

They have no problem sharing their husband with other wives. They don’t mind because they believe that in doing so, they are advancing the cause of Islam and Allah.

As the women described it, the hardest part about joining the jihad is breaking the news to your parents back home. But, as one recruiter soothed, “As long as you are firm and you know that this is all for the sake of Allah then nothing can shake you inshalah.”

Firm in their belief that they are part of something holy, the British, American and European jihadistas are completely at ease with IS violence. In one post, a woman nonchalantly described seeing a Yazidi slave girl.

“Walked into a room, gave salam to everyone in the room to find out there was a yazidi slave girl there as well.. she replied to my salam.”

Other posts discussed walking past people getting their hands chopped off and seeing dead bodies on the street. Islamic State’s beheadings of American and British hostages are a cause for celebration.

Their pride at the beheadings of James Foley and others is part and parcel of their hatred for the US and the West. As they see it, destroying the US and the West is a central goal of IS.

As one of the women put it, “Know this Cameron/ Obama, you and your countries will be beneath our feet and your kufr will be destroyed, this is a promise from Allah that we have no doubt over…. This Islamic empire shall be known and feared world wide and we will follow none other than the law of the one and the only ilah!” These women do not feel at all isolated. And they have no reason to. They are surrounded by other Westerners who joined IS for the same reasons they did.

In one recruitment post, Western women were told that not knowing Arabic is no reason to stay home.

“You can still survive if you don’t speak Arabic. You can find almost every race and nationality here.”

The presence of Westerners in IS, indeed, IS’s aggressive efforts to recruit Westerners wouldn’t pose much of a problem for the US if it were willing to secure its borders and recognize the root of the problem.

But as US President Barack Obama made clear over the summer, and indeed since he first took office six years ago, he opposes any effort to secure the US border with Mexico. If these jihadists can get to Mexico, they will, in all likelihood, have no problem coming to America.

But even if the US were to secure its southern border, it would still be unable to prevent these jihadists from returning to attack. The policy of the US government is to deny the existence of a jihadist threat by, among other thing, denying the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad.

When President Barack Obama insisted last Wednesday that Islamic State is not Islamic, he told all the Westerners who are now proud mujihadin that they shouldn’t worry about coming home. They won’t be screened. As far as the US is concerned their Islamic jihad ideology doesn’t exist.

So whereas every passenger arriving in the US from Liberia can be screened for Ebola, no one will be screened for exposure to jihadist thought.

And this brings us to the second problem IS poses to the US.

As a rising force in the Middle East, IS threatens US allies and it threatens global trade. To prevent its allies from being overthrown and to prevent shocks to the international economy, at a minimum, the US needs to contain IS. And given the threat the Westerners joining the terror army constitute, and Washington’s unwillingness to stop them at the border, in all likelihood, the US needs to destroy IS where it stands.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the US is willing or able to either contain or defeat IS.

As US Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales wrote over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal, from a military perspective, IS is little different from all the guerrilla forces the US has faced in battle since the Korean War. Scales argues that in all previous such engagements, the outcomes have been discouraging because the US lacks the will to take the battle to the societies that feed them or use its firepower to its full potential out of fear of killing civilians.

Clearly this remains the case today.

Moreover, as Angelo Codevilla explained last month in The Federalist, to truly dry up the swamp feeding IS, it is necessary to take the war to its state sponsors – first and foremost Turkey and Qatar.

In his words, “The first strike against the IS must be aimed at its sources of material support. Turkey and Qatar are very much part of the global economy… If…

the United States decides to kill the IS, it can simply inform Turkey, Qatar, and the world it will have zero economic dealings with these countries and with any country that has any economic dealing with them, unless these countries cease any and all relations with the IS.”

Yet, as we saw on the ground this weekend with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed mission to secure Turkish support for the US campaign against IS, the administration has no intention of taking the war to IS’s state sponsors, without which it would be just another jihadi militia jockeying for power in Syria.

And this leaves us with the administration’s plan to assemble a coalition of the willing that will provide the foot soldiers for the US air war against Islamic State.

After a week of talks and shuttle diplomacy, aside from Australia, no one has committed forces. Germany, Britain and France have either refused to participate or have yet to make clear what they are willing to do.

The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan. The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will either cheer the US on from a distance, or in the best-case scenario, provide logistical support for its operations.

It isn’t just that these states have already been burned by Obama whether through his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. And it isn’t simply that they saw that the US left them hanging in Syria.

They see Obama’s “strategy” for fighting IS – ignoring the Islamic belief system that underpins every aspect of its existence, and expecting other armies to fight and die to accomplish the goal while the US turns a blind eye to Turkey’s and Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamic State. They see this strategy and they are convinced America is fighting to lose. Why should they go down with it? Islamic State is a challenging foe. To defeat it, the US must be willing to confront Islamism. And it must be willing to fight to win. In the absence of such determination, it will fight and lose, in the region and at home, with no allies at its side.

Belmokhtar: African Networks in the Global Jihad

In his September 10 address to the nation, President Obama highlighted his plan for managing the group he calls ISIL. Among the terror group’s acronyms, some might interpret the President’s choice of the one which includes Israel (the L is for the Levant) as ceding some legitimacy to the name. The Islamic State does pose an immediate threat to international security on a scale the world never saw with Al-Qaeda, and it must be destroyed. But defeating these groups in the Middle East will not solve the growing problem of radical Islam in Africa. Such groups – Boko Haram, AQIM, Al-Shabaab – are as dangerous as IS and greatly threaten stability within the African continent. One man in particular is of great concern, and has shown his ability to conduct attacks time and time again.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, until last year, was potentially unknown outside of the intelligence and national security communities. That changed when his group, “Signers in Blood Batallion,” attacked and commandeered an internationally run oil field in Algeria in January 2013. This action lasted for nearly four days and resulted in the deaths of nearly 40 individuals, three of whom were American. A few months later, Belmokhtar led two separate attacks in Niger: One was at the uranium production facility in Arlit. The other was on a French military base 150 miles away from the city of Agadez.

Belmokhtar is not a novice when it comes to these types of attacks. At the age of nineteen, he left Algeria (his birthland) to train with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and is considered to have been very close to Osama Bin Laden, even naming one of his sons after Bin Laden. Belmokhtar himself claims to have made contact with the likes of Jordanian Al-Qaeda supporters Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. He was a founding member of the Al-Qaeda affiliate in the Maghreb and one of its leaders until he split from the group to form his new group. Some believe he was forced out. Others claim he left due to differences on how the group should conduct activities. No matter the reason, Belmokhtar has stated time and time again his support for the imposition of Shariah Law in Northern Africa, primarily Mali. Any foreign intervention would be viewed as an attack against Muslim people, prompting a response.

It is now reported that Belmokhatr has been recruiting and training Syrians in Libya and the Sahel region. Are terrorist groups in Syria sending them to him? Are these “recruits” to be members of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or his own group? Belmokhtar could be doing so to use the Sahara region as a launching pad for attacks against the United States, Europe, and inside Africa. But given his connections in the region, Belmokhtar could eventually link up with terrorist groups operating in Syria and the Middle East, ISIS included, with the likelihood to form a larger terrorist group that could span the African coasts, while also leading attacks on the West.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar has proven as of late to be a threat. His ability to traverse the poorly guarded borders of the African countries in the Sahara region is an immediate issue that must be addressed by these countries and the United States, especially as President Obama’s Security Governance Initiative begins to be implemented. Unstopped, Belmokhtar will likely carry out more attacks. Stopping Belmokhtar will not be the end-all solution to Islamic extremism in Africa, as greater initiatives are need to combat these groups in the continent. Rather, his existence is symptomatic of an ideology that can take form and spread with few limitations in Africa.

The Tevlin Murder: Another Sign of the President’s Denial of the Radical Islamist/Sharia Threat

The murder last month in South Orange, New Jersey of 19-year old Brendan Tevlin by Ali Muhammad Brown was clearly an act of homegrown Islamist terrorism.  Brown admitted to the killing and three others in Washington state and claimed they were acts of “vengeance” for U.S. military action that he claims took innocent lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.
Brown murdered Tevlin in cold blood while his car was stopped at an intersection on June 25.  He was shot eight times.
What has the Obama administration and the major news media said about this heinous killing?  Virtually nothing.  Unlike the killing of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri in August, the White House issued no statement.  No one from the White House attended his funeral.  The mainstream media has ignored this case.  It is only receiving some coverage now because New Jersey radio host Todd Pettengill began a campaign to publicize this attack.  Click HERE to listen to Pettengill discuss the Tevlin murder.
The Obama administration is refusing to classify Tevlin’s killing as an act of domestic terrorism.  That’s not surprising since it still calls the 2009 Fort Hood shooting an act of work place violence instead of domestic terrorism even though the shooter, Major Nidal Hassan, was in contact with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
The Obama administration also will not call Brown a home grown terrorist because it refuses to use this term.  At best, it may classify Brown as a “homegrown radical extremist,” a nebulous term which allows Obama officials to lump monsters like Brown and Hassan with anti-abortion activists and right-wing extremists.
The reason for this is that President Obama and his senior advisers are still in denial about the threat from radical Islam and Sharia.   Despite a mountain of evidence that al-Qaeda groups adopted new tactics after 9/11 to spread their message and attack the West – including by recruiting home grown terrorists behind Western borders via the Internet – the president repeatedly claimed during his reelection campaign that al-Qaeda was decimated and on the run.
The September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi proved this wasn’t true but the president and his senior officials refused to acknowledge this.  We now know after the Benghazi attacks that the U.S. intelligence community provided detailed intelligence to the president about the growing threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq.  Based on his January 2014 remark that ISIS was a ‘JV’ terrorist team, its clear Mr Obama ignored this intelligence.  The reason?  He was still in denial about the radical Islamist threat.
The Obama administration’s extreme reluctance to admit we are at war with ISIS demonstrates that despite the beheadings of two Americans and the threat ISIS is posing to the Middle East and the U.S., it still refuses to admit the threat from radical Islam and Sharia.  The president only announced a plan to confront ISIS last week because he was forced to by media coverage of the beheadings.  His plan was half-hearted and will need to be significantly expanded if the United States is to conduct a serious military effort to destroy ISIS.
The Tevlin killing and recent ISIS developments are linked, but not in the way that some experts have said.  Brown was not recently radicalized – he has been a radical Islamist since about 2004.  Brown was charged in a 2004 bank fraud case that reportedly involved sending funds to terrorists abroad.  This latter charge could not be proved.  While Brown was not radicalized by ISIS, I believe recent ISIS propaganda and publicity pushed Brown over the edge to conduct terrorist killings.   This could point to an unanticipated danger from ISIS’ skills in spreading its extremist propaganda through the Internet: it may be both radicalizing new followers and also convincing existing radicalized individuals to act on their extremist ideology by staging terrorist attacks.
ISIS, al-Qaeda, Benghazi, the Tevlin killing, and the Fort Hood killings are part of the same radical Islamist/Sharia terrorist continuum.  The president continues to propose weak and piecemeal policies in response to radical Islamist terrorism because he refused to acknowledge this continuum.  Until he does, U.S. security will continue to be at unnecessary risk.

It’s Time for the Truth About Shariah

After a British citizen was beheaded by the Islamic State on Saturday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that, “Islam is a religion of peace.” President Obama made a similarly false claim last week, contending that the Islamic State is “not Islamic.”

Such statements are problematic for three reasons:

First, they demonstrate complete ignorance of the jihadist nature of Islam as practiced not by “extremists,” but by its authorities.

Second, downplaying this threat misleads Western populations about the growing danger posed by those – like the Islamic State – determined to impose globally through jihad the form of totalitarianism they call shariah.

And third, when our leaders lie about shariah, that ideology’s adherents perceive them as submitting to it. Which only further emboldens our enemies.

It’s time for the truth about Islam’s shariah.

Senior Fellow Fred Fleitz: Syrian Rebels ‘Thoroughly Infiltrated by Islamists’

(Video can be viewed at Breitbart TV)

Former CIA analyst and current Lignet.com Chief Analyst, Fred Fleitz argued that reports that Steven Sotloff was sold to ISIS by Syrian rebels “[reflect] the reality that the Syrian rebels have been thoroughly infiltrated by Islamists” on Wednesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.

Fleitz said that while he hoped the reports were untrue, there are problems with the Syrian rebels, reporting “some of them recently had collaborated with ISIS to attack against the Syrian government. They’re really a mixed lot and it’s very dangerous for us to get too close to them until we know who we’re dealing with.”

He further stated “he [Obama] is trying to sugar-coat his conclusion that we cannot defeat ISIS without helping Assad. In my opinion, the president wrote off the Syrian rebels, and conceded the civil war to Assad years ago. Now I think trying to prop up the Syrian rebels is a worthy endeavor, but this will take a long time, but the president’s decision in Syria against ISIS has nothing to do with the rebels. He is simply trying to cover himself for an unfortunate consequence…I also think the president is trying to side-step the reality that there will have to be special forces, American and British, probably, to go into Syria. The Syrian rebels are not going to actually do that job.”

Originally published at Breitbart News

Obama pledges additional support for Iranian puppet regimes

In a prime time address to the nation on the eve of 11 September 2014, President Obama pledged an expanded U.S. effort to destroy the Islamic State (IS), which he still calls “ISIL” (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). American air power, stepped-up training for anti-Assad Syrian jihadis (which he calls “moderate rebels”), an additional $25 million in financial aid to Baghdad, and partnership with “a broad coalition” (that currently consists of 9 countries) comprise the key elements of the new military campaign.

Given that the only territory IS currently threatens are the regimes of two Iranian puppets – one in Baghdad, one in Damascus – Obama’s announcement in effect amounts to a renewed U.S. commitment to support Tehran’s grip on regional hegemony. The nuclear talks about how quickly the U.S. will accede to the Iranian bomb resume in another week.

Remarkably, the president opened his remarks with the rather preposterous claim that “ISIL is not Islamic.” Now, Obama himself has admitted in his autobiography “Dreams From My Father” that he “made faces during Quranic studies.” Still, it might be expected that he retained something of those madrassa lessons—or at least that White House advisors (not the Muslim Brotherhood ones, though) would have steered him away from such an egregious misstatement.

As it is, one of the reasons that the Saudi regime is so shaken by the approach of IS forces toward its borders is precisely because Riyadh royals know full well their Islamic piety doesn’t begin to measure up to the purity of IS practice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS leader, not only boasts a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from a Baghdad university, but wears the black turban to signify descent from Muhammad. Whether entitled to claim the Islamic prophet’s bloodline or not, al-Baghdadi models his every action on the example Muslims believe set out for them centuries ago by the founder of their faith. For Muslim purists like al-Baghdadi, the Qur’anic verse 33:21 that tells them “Ye have indeed in the Apostle of Allah a beautiful pattern of conduct for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day…” is taken quite literally (amputations, beheading, crucifixions, flogging and all).

Obama rambled on, claiming next that “ISIL is certainly not a state.” Unfortunately for the Iranian proxies in Baghdad and Damascus that are his intended beneficiaries, it is their former states that no longer exist—because the Islamic State, the Caliphate, has dismantled them. Obama did seem to recognize the effective erasure of the 1916 Sykes-Picot borders at least in some measure, though, as he declared his intent to expand U.S. air strikes more evenly throughout the Caliphate (including into what used to be called Syria as well as the former Iraq).

Apparently in pursuit of a public relations coup that’s eluded him of late, Obama nevertheless offered up additional glimpses of his unenviable conundrum about which jihadis to support on the ground in the intra-Islamic sectarian struggle that’s torn the region apart since the Islamic Uprising began in 2011.

For example, he seems to have conveniently forgotten that the ranks of today’s IS are full of Syrian jihadis armed, funded, and trained by U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) in cooperation with the now-terrified Hashemites, NATO ally Turkey, Muslim Brotherhood sponsor Qatar, and the flailing Saudi monarchy. A monster has slipped the leash but the American president says he’s more than ready to provide even more support to more Syrian rebels, who, this time, definitely will be exclusively the ‘moderate’ ones.

But what about the threat to the homeland if IS is allowed to exist and consolidate? Well, the question somehow is never asked about how either individual jihadis or small jihadi cells that an IS enclave might direct to attack the homeland are in any way different than the jihadis the Iranian or the Saudi state have launched our way over the decades—to include the hijackers of September 11, 2001 or the uncounted numbers of Hizballah cells operating across the Americas today. But there’s never been a hint of a suggestion that those jihadist sponsoring states constitute a compelling national security threat to the U.S. that requires an international coalition to deal with them.

The real issue has to do with America’s failure to acknowledge that Jihad War has been declared against us and is being fought by an entire axis of Islamic forces ranging from individual jihadis (like Maj. Nidal Hassan), to sub-national terrorist organizations (like al-Qaeda), to Muslim nation states (like Iran)—and now the new Caliphate. IS even spells out in clear and simple language how it intends to draw the West back into the killing fields of the Middle East; but Obama’s studied refusal to acknowledge or confront the thoroughly Islamic character of the new Islamic State would seem to indicate either that he continues to miss his daily intelligence briefs—or possibly that no one has the temerity to explain al-Baghdadi’s End Times eschatology to him.

As described in the slick, English-language online magazine that IS calls “Dabiq,” the final battles (the Malahim) must take place against the “crusader” forces in and near the land of al-Sham (Greater Syria). For this to happen, there have to be “crusader” forces in al-Sham for the Caliphate to fight. The American president, even as he denies the Islamic spirit that animates and infuses the IS forces, is being prodded (in part by frightened public sentiment) into helping to fulfill the ultimate Islamic End Times scenario.

Talk about multitasking: at one and the same time, Obama will not admit that Islamic forces once again are on the march across the Middle East and North Africa – but yet he aids and abets their rise to power. The Shi’ite-dominated heartland of the Middle East has been designated for Iranian hegemony: this includes Iran itself, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (held by Hizballah, the Iranian terror proxy), and perhaps one day even the Shi’ite-populated east coast of Saudi Arabia.

Refusing to lift a finger to support the brave Iranian people who took to the streets in 2009 by the millions to demand their liberty, but springing to the attack against the Islamic State (because it threatens Baghdad and Damascus) is of a pattern for this president—who also was quick to ensure that al-Qaeda militias received all the weapons they needed to overthrow the ‘unfaithful Arab ruler’ (meaning non-shariah-adherent) Qaddafi in Libya in 2011 – because North Africa is for the Sunnis.

With his latest pledge of U.S. alliance and assistance to most anyone who will take on the IS threat to Iran’s sphere of influence, Obama has stepped onto a slippery slope. America has already lost over 4,000 of its bravest and finest with tens of thousands more injured in Iraq since 2003—many of those on the receiving end of an Iranian-made IED. Our national leadership has never held either Iran or Saudi Arabia to account for their roles in the attacks of 9/11.

How much more will the U.S. sacrifice to defend shariah and jihad?

Americans Fighting for ISIS: Keeping Them Out vs. Luring Them In

As several Members of Congress have begun calling for the revocation of passports of US citizens fighting for ISIS in order to keep American jihadists who have trained overseas from returning to the United States and carrying out attacks here, Washington Free Beacon reports that American intelligence is cautious about a similar proposal being offered with respect to  British citizens by Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom:

While such [passport revocation] measures serve as an appropriate response to the alarming trend of Western recruits joining terror groups such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and al Qaeda, members of the American intelligence community have warned that the policy could result in an overall loss of valuable intelligence.

The U.S. counterterrorism strategy has been to “lure in” militants returning from Iraq or Syria with the hopes of extracting detailed information about ground operations, recruitment, and designs for attacks on the homeland. Cameron’s strategy, on the other hand, imposes strict no-fly restrictions on travelers returning from Iraq and Syria with the goal of ‘excluding’ British citizens from the U.K.

Although it is unclear which “members of the American intelligence community” are expressing these concerns, and whether they are outliers or are representing a consensus view, there are two problems with the “lure in” objection to passport revocation with respect to US citizens:

1)  The fact that they’re here doesn’t mean we’ll be able to track them.  Recent revelations that the Department of Homeland Security has lost contact with 58,000 expired student visa holders – 6,000 of which are subjects “heightened concern” that may pose threats to national security – do not inspire confidence that our resource-constrained intelligence bureaucracy will be able to successfully track jihadist operatives that we’ve “lured in”.

Such an approach would seem especially risky when the subjects are themselves the would-be attackers, as opposed to support components like recruiters or financiers.  We may indeed (on a case-by-case basis) want to lure in the latter to uncover terrorist plots, but when the individual in question is himself the plot — the trigger-puller, the bomb-detonator, the virus-carrier – preventing entry ought to be the priority.  If these guys disappear into the crowd, it could be too late to prevent anything.

2)  Even if we can track them, that doesn’t mean we’ll be able to extract intelligence from them.  The Obama administration has shown that it’s more inclined to let jihadists on US soil lawyer up and remain silent, such as in the case of the Christmas Day underwear bomber of 2009 and the Boston Marathon bomber of 2013.  The military might have success in “extracting detailed information” from such individuals if allowed to detain them as enemy combatants before turning them over to law enforcement (even if as US citizens they are ineligible for trial by military commissions), but that appears unlikely under this administration.

Think Tank Close to Obama Misses Mark on ISIS Strategy

The Center for American Progress, a think tank close to the Obama Administration, recently released a strategy proposal on how to defeat ISIS which contains numerous flaws that make it unworkable and ineffective in combating the threat from, and spread of, the Islamist terrorist organization. Not surprisingly, many of the themes addressed in the proposal meet the broad guidelines sketched out by President Obama in his ISIS policy speech yesterday.

The CAP strategy repeatedly emphasizes the goal being to “contain and degrade” ISIS. This is a rather ambiguous formulation that in the end frankly means nothing.

How can you “contain” an entity that is able to cull ideologically committed recruits from all parts of the world via the Internet? These recruits, after doing their “tours of duty” in either Iraq or Syria – having entered those countries through third-party states which sometimes leaves their trail untraceable – will also return to their home countries, having undergone further ideological indoctrination and military training.

They are capable of forming sleeper cells in their home countries and striking at strategically opportune times. This is not a problem that can be “contained.” Degrade is also a very ambiguous term. Does it mean to wear down ISIS until it is back at its former strength when it was only Al-Qaeda in Iraq?

The second flawed assumption is that U.S. military might alone could not defeat ISIS. ISIS is not a conventional terrorist organization any more. It has crossed the threshold from an elusive terrorist group that can successfully wage a guerilla war against the United States into having a standing, visible and recognizable force and institutions of state. As an aside, this emphatically does not mean that ISIS is a legitimate state or that it is no longer a terrorist organization. But it is a terrorist organization that has adopted the vestiges of statehood. Unlike Hezbollah, which has created a “state within a state” in Lebanon, making them harder to defeat at the hands of conventional military forces, ISIS is not secretive about its membership, and it does not coexist along with another state entity as Hezbollah does. Where ISIS rules, it is the State and the State is ISIS. States can be destroyed. Given that ISIS is engaging in conventional warfare tactics, it has made itself more vulnerable to far-superior U.S. military might.

The third flaw is the series of alliances this strategy proposes in defeating ISIS. It advocates cooperation with Turkey on defeating ISIS, yet Turkey has shifted its interests to align with Islamist terrorist groups. Turkey’s support for Hamas has drawn attention from the U.S. Congress. Turkey has even credibly been accused of facilitating, or at least permitting, the flow of ISIS fighters into Syria. Even if, viewed from Washington, Turkey’s security interests would be served by an alliance to eliminate ISIS, Turkey’s Islamist President Erdogan appears to have judged differently.

Moreover, the strategy proposes aiding and funding “Third-way Syrian opposition” groups like Harakat Hazzm and the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front (SRF). The problem is that these “third-way” opposition groups, like Harakat Hazzm and the SRF, are Islamist groups themselves, or are at minimum, willing to ally with Islamist groups, including Jubhat al Nusra.

Another flaw the proposal makes is to advocate militarily supporting the Kurds via the Iraqi government. Supporting the Pesh Merga militarily and financially is sound policy which would go a long way to stopping ISIS in their tracks and rolling them back, and would obviate the need for U.S. ground troops to be deployed in Iraq.

However, if the assistance is made via the Iraqi government, it is unlikely that any of the assistance would be transferred to the Kurds. The Iraqi government, in coordination with Iran, continues to rely on Shi’a militias to fight ISIS. These militias maintain their own animosity towards Sunni and Kurdish forces.

Also importantly, the strategy does not consider to whom ISIS will lose ground once it is “contained and degraded,” and makes no contingencies for ensuring that such ground is not lost to state actors or non-state actors that are harmful to U.S. regional interests, like Iran and its Shi’a proxies operating in Iraq and Syria who are actually far more harmful to U.S. regional interests than ISIS, in the long run.

Is Obama’s ISIS Strategy to Make It Someone Else’s Problem?

The New York Times is previewing what they say will be President Obama’s strategy for deal with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), and its newly established “caliphate” during his speech to the nation Wednesday. According to the report, which cites unnamed senior administration officials, the strategy involves a series of air strikes aimed at degrading ISIS’ capabilities, followed by arming and training the Iraqi military, Kurdish fighters, and possibly Sunni tribal forces, before utilizing those forces to conduct an armed incursion into ISIS’ Syrian stronghold, in a campaign which the New York Times notes will have “no obvious precedent”, and which the administration forecasts to take approximately three years:

The final, toughest and most politically controversial phase of the operation — destroying the terrorist army in its sanctuary inside Syria — might not be completed until the next administration. Indeed, some Pentagon planners envision a military campaign lasting at least 36 months. Mr. Obama will use a speech to the nation on Wednesday to make his case for launching a United States-led offensive against Sunni militants gaining ground in the Middle East, seeking to rally support for a broad military mission while reassuring the public that he is not plunging American forces into another Iraq war.

If the New York Times piece does indeed reflect the Obama Administration view (and there is no reason to suggest that it does not), it suffers from a number of potential problems.

Those waiting for a unified Iraqi central government which is more inclusive and alleviates the concerns of Iraq’s Sunni minority may be waiting forever. The degree of influence exerted over the Iraqi government by Iran, and Iran’s need to rely  on Shia militia fighters to bolster defenses of both Baghdad, and importantly, Damascus will make inclusion difficult. The same Iranian IRGC commander Qassem Sulemani, responsible for propping up Assad, was reported to have also personally overseen the retaking the town of Amerli, Iraq from ISIS. Allowing the U.S. to arm Kurdish and Sunni forces, who, having beaten ISIS may go on to finally finish off Assad is not in Tehran’s best interest. And making an inclusive government a requirement means that Iran is given the ability to play spoiler on the plan. I’ve expressed support in the past for arming and training Kurdish troops, but we shouldn’t wait for the Iraqi central government to meet some “inclusiveness” standard before we do so. That can be done now. The Kurds reportedly offered to serve as ground forces against ISIS even before Mosul fell to the jihadists.

Secondly, the assumption by the administration, that Sunni tribes will prefer an Iraqi government under Iranian tutelage to what the New York Times called the “the harsh Shariah law[ISIS] has imposed” may underestimate both the popularity of shariah law, as well as the antipathy towards the Shia militants used by Baghdad to repress the Sunnis. While ISIS’s declaration of a caliphate has been widely rejected in the Islamic world, the Sunni uprising ISIS has led against Baghdad has not. Consider this statement against ISIS’s caliphate, from Muslim Brotherhood shariah jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS):

The IUMS has followed the statements issued by the organization called the “Islamic State” which sprang forth from Iraq, with other Iraqi forces, defending Iraqi Sunnis, and others who were oppressed in that country. We rejoiced over them and we welcomed their mobilization to reject oppression and tyranny in the Earth.”

It may be the case that Sunni forces choose ISIS over an Iranian puppet regardless.

Finally, given the projected timeline of “years” to defeat ISIS, with a 36-month campaign  in Syria commencing only after the arming and training has taken place, and one wonders if the Obama Administration isn’t aware of these flaws in their logic.

Perhaps the real plan is to delay until ISIS is someone else’s problem?  

 

The Wages of Outreach…

The New York Post’s Paul Sperry  reported Sunday that the media director of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) maybe a former Boston resident named Ahmad Abousamra. Abousamra was an attendee at the same infamous Boston-area mosque that played host to Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  Not only that but Abousamra’s father, was a board member at the mosque, according to Sperry.

The Islamic Society of Boston, founded by self-identified Muslim Brother and convicted Al Qaeda financier Abdulrahman Alamoudi featured Muslim Brotherhood chief jurist Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, famous for authorizing the use of Hamas suicide bombings and the killing of American civilians in Iraq, as a trustee. Other terrorist alum from ISB include Tarek Mehenna, a long time friend of Abousamra, and “Lady Al Qaeda” Aafia Siddiqui, whose release ISIS demanded as part of their negotiations over the fate of executed American journalist James Foley.

The ISB mosque was the same one that U.S. Representative from Texas Louie Gohmert questioned then FBI director Robert Mueller over in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, which led Mueller to admit that while he was unaware that the elder Tsarnaev attended the mosque, the FBI had done “outreach” there.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_YLXFZJ3kc]

This preference for outreach to, rather than investigation of,  groups (and mosques) associated with the Muslim Brotherhood will only worsen if efforts to hamper U.S. government’s use of informants in and around mosques are successful. This campaign, called the Safe Spaces Initiative, is led by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, but has received assistance from a wide variety of Islamic and left-wing organizations, including Human Right’s Watch (HRW). HRW recently launched a major campaign to prohibit the use of informants in tandem to the MPAC effort. The HRW’s poster boy for that campaign was convicted terrorist James Cromitie, who was the center of a terrorist plot given a recent whitewashing by the HBO documentary “The Newburgh Sting.” As CSP has documented elsewhere, Cromitie was a man committed to the doctrine of shariah, who desired to engage in jihad. The fact that defense allegations of entrapment were demolished by a court has not stopped HRW from attempting to re-characterize the case as one of FBI malfeasance. Like the false allegations of illegal surveillance of Muslim suspects, these campaigns seek to use public opinion to force law enforcement and national security officials from engaging in the necessary, and legally authorized, work of protecting the country.

How many Abousamaras, Mehennas, Tsarnaevs, and Siddiquis are out there, who will not be uncovered until it is to late because the hands of law enforcement have been tied to a failed strategy of outreach?