Tag Archives: ISIS

ISIS Never Wanted Ransom to Free Foley

Did ISIS kill photojournalist James Foley because the United States refused to pay ransom to win his release?  I doubt it.

A 100 million euro ransom was not a serious demand.  ISIS knew the US was unlikely to violate its “no-ransom to terrorists” policy to free Foley and would view paying such an astronomical sum a dangerous and unacceptable precedent.

However, ISIS also knew the Obama administration has shown flexibility with its “no-ransom” and “never negotiate with terrorists” policies and might have agreed to a deal to free Foley through a third party with a smaller ransom.

For example, the Obama administration traded five Guantanamo inmates to free U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on May 31, 2014.  Oliver North claims a third country – possibly Qatar – also paid $5-6 million in ransom to free Bergdahl.  The Obama administration denied ransom was paid or that the prisoner swap constituted the U.S. negotiating with terrorists since Qatar did the negotiating and the United States has not designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization.  This was a distinction without a difference in the eyes of the world – the U.S. obviously negotiated a deal with terrorists to free Berghahl.

There was a similar situation in 2011 when Oman paid $1.5 million in bail to free three American hikers who had wandered into Iran.   The Obama administration made the dubious argument at the time that this didn’t amount to the US negotiating with a terrorist state because the US did not pay the bail.

ISIS knew the Obama administration would never agree to pay a 100 million euro ransom for one man, money that it would use for its campaign of terror.  To understand how outrageous this demand was, consider that according to the New York Times, about $125 million in ransom was paid by European states over the last 5 years to free 29 hostages held by al-Qaeda affiliated groups in the Middle East and north Africa.  The largest single ransom paid was $40 million to free four French nationals.

ISIS demanded a ransom it knew would never be paid because it never planned to release Foley and planned to use his execution to terrorize the region and encourage radicalized Islamists worldwide to join its fanatical cause.  Until President Obama approves a strategy of massive military force to destroy ISIS, it will continue to make gains on the ground, commit atrocities and is certain to attempt terrorist attacks against US interests worldwide, including against the US homeland.

Frank Gaffney on Hugh Hewitt

HUGH HEWITT:

Twenty-one minutes after the hour, America. If there were justice in the world and television time was allocated according to the accuracy of predictions about the rise of Islamic extremism, Frank Gaffney would not only be on every cable show, he would have his own cable network. Because he predicted IS (Islamic State) before IS was IS. Frank Gaffney joins me. President of the Center for Security Policy. He’ll be on this great station in Washington, DC on AM 1260 right after my show has concluded a little bit later. Frank, good news. The Mosul Dam retaken tonight. Or at least we think it’s been retaken. On the other hand, the band news is IS has got a lot more firepower and ambitions than anyone in the West seems to give them credit for and we’re focused on – obviously, it’s interesting what’s happening in Ferguson. It’s tragic the young boy is dead. And it’s a terrible lesson in race relations to me, but it’s not even close to being to the significance of IS and what their agenda is.

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Certainly right, Hugh, and I’m sorry to say I’m afraid unless these things get an awful lot worse, and they may well, we’re probably not going to be giving even a modicum of the attention to not just the Islamic State in this particular configuration, but to the movement, as you said, I’ve been warning about for some time, of which they’re just the latest manifestation. Namely, the Shariah adherent Islamists who, whichever banner they fly under, whichever strain of Islam they happen to be organised under, they are determined, with whatever means possible, ruthless, terrifying violence or stealthy subversion, to impose this doctrine of Shariah on the rest of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

Now, it’s interesting, Frank, that no one has to believe you. All they have to do is watch Imam Abu Bakr al Baghdadi from the balcony in Mosul, which I had posted at townhall.com and it’s handily translated, in which he calls for just that. That the polytheists must be killed and Shariah must be imposed.

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, and they could hear the same thing from, you know, the Ayatollah Khomeini, they could say they heard the same things from Khalid Mashal, they could hear the same things from Mullah Omar. The trouble is, Hugh, it’s not that they’re not telling us what they have in mind. It’s that we’re not listening or we’re not crediting it and, you know, I spend a lot of time mulling, what was it like in the 1930s and what were people thinking when Adolf Hitler was making absolutely clear what his purposes were? Mein Kampf and the whole globe. And it’s exactly what we’re doing now. We’re pretending it’s not so. We’re denying reality. We’re hoping against hope that it will simply go away if we ignore it. And unfortunately, it won’t. And I’m afraid that the world is in for a world of hurt.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

Now, Frank, you’ve done a – you’ve done a lot of work at the Center for Security Policy on the vulnerability of the electrical grid. When last I saw you, you gave me a book on that. Not surprisingly, I thought of you then and when the story came up today that there’s a nuclear reactor in Belgium that has been sabotaged – and they suspect by Islamists – it’s over at Powerline blog, if anyone wants to go read it, Steve Hay, we’re breaking nuclear sabotage in Europe, and they’re dealing with it very, very carefully. They don’t want to alarm anyone, but, quote, Belgium anti-terrorism investigators are working on the case. In other words, the bad guys have got a clue about what you’ve been warning about, that the grid is the weak link.

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, this is just the latest, although a particularly scary example, of what is going on at the moment, Hugh. As you know, back in April of last year, somebody very nearly took out a critical substation in northern California. The folks in al-Qaeda have taken out the national grid of Yemen. It’s not much, but they did do it. Somebody took out Micheltod one of the Mexican state’s grids. The Knights Templar drug cartel took a whack, you know, people who were standing in their way. The enemies of this country, in other words, understand grid vulnerability. And they’re poised to take advantage of it whether, as in this case, perhaps, through cyber techniques, as in the case of that Metcalf substation up in northern California through physical attack. Or more efficiently and worrying perhaps through electromagnetic pulse attacks which, unfortunately, the Iranians are seemingly hell bent to acquire the capability to inflict upon it. Anyway you cut it, it’s a world without America. And that’s a scary proposition.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

The Belgians are warning today that there are possible blackouts this winter as a result of this which will come as a surprise to the average Belgian chocolate maker, I’ll bet you, and of no good for gaining leverage on Putin, but I want people to know how they can get a hold of your work on the grid. Cause they don’t run into Frank Gaffney at the Western Conservative Summit and get their copy hand delivered to them. How do they get their copy?

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

You can get it two ways. At the website for the Centre for Security Policy, which is securefreedom.org. It’s available for free as a download there. Go to books and you’ll find it right there. It’s called Guilty Knowledge, what the US government knows about the vulnerability of our electric grid, but refuses to fix. Another way, a great resource, is the Secure The Grid Coalition’s website and that’s securethegrid.com.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

Well, both of those are very important. And I want to finish by talking about the strategic choice in front of the United States. Iran wants a nuke. They’re fighting IS. IS wants to behead everyone who’s in their way, including all the Shias that they find. What do we do, Frank Gaffney, other than arm the Kurds to the teeth and hopefully make Kurdistan jaboody.

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, we’ve gotten into a hard task in Iraq. Principally, Hugh, because president Obama decided he was just going to pack it in and say, we’ve ended the war there. Hard choices result. One, I think, preventing the Mosul Dam from being blown by ISIS is a top priority at the moment. There are a lot of Shiites downstream of that dam who will be wiped out – and I think ISIS has every intention of pulling that off if they can. Sounds like a Hollywood movie at the moment with the booby trapping of that dam. I’m afraid that they will be able to defeat that attack. The, I think, call here is that we’ve got to stop ISIS and I think we should not, in any way, shape, or form, embolden, empower, or collaborate with Iran. They are both enemies of this country and I think they both have in mind, ultimately, as I’ve said earlier, our destruction through the imposition of shariah.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

Am I right, Frank, that Kurdistan, which is not Islamic, is – it borders both those regions and it borders both the IS front and the Shias in Baghdad and radical Iran. Shouldn’t we be building up our infrastructure there?

 

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, it is Islamic. It’s just not thus far been imbued with this taste for Shariah and the craziness that goes with it. I think, yes, Absolutely. You’ve sort of stipulated that that’s one of the things we should do, so I didn’t mention it. But I think certainly helping the Kurds protect themselves, protect the Christians in Iraq, protect probably a lot of our interests throughout the region by both having some infrastructure there and certainly arming them as much as we can.

 

HUGH HEWITT:

Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy, he’s been right longer than anybody else. Go and support the Center. Securefreedom.org. Go get the report on Securethegrid.com or just go to Center for Security Policy. www.securefreedom.org.  And of course, listen to Frank. If you’re on AM 1260, you can do so directly in DC. And if you’re somewhere else, go find him on the web and listen to Secure Freedom Radio. I’ll be right back, America, on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

Islam’s dilemma over the Islamic State

The jihadist forces of the Islamic State are strewing a path of atrocities, destruction and conquest across the heartland of the Middle East. They thrust down into Iraq from Syrian battlefields in June 2014, sweeping all before them, including thousands of Iraqi army troops who abandoned uniforms and top-of-the-line U.S. weaponry as they fled south to Baghdad.

Who stands between the Islamic State and its dream of a global caliphate? The Kurds are doing their best with a Peshmerga spirit but outdated weaponry. The United States and some European allies have begun to intervene militarily. Saudi King Abdullah gave a couple of speeches imploring his fellow Muslims to do something. Iran reportedly sent Gen. Qassem Suleimani and some Qods Force advisers to buck up its tottering puppet regime in Baghdad. The question is, where are the rest of the region’s Muslims, those supposedly so threatened by what the Islamic State represents? The silence from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been positively deafening. Above all, Gen. Suleimani and the Qods Force notwithstanding, what is Iran really doing to take the fight to the Islamic State and roll back its advances?

A directionless U.S. national security leadership helps explain why the United States can’t seem to figure out who’s the enemy (this week) or what to do about it all. As long as the Islamic State was still the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), fighting (at least occasionally) against the Iranian-backed regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, the U.S. along with assorted companions of dubious pedigree — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood — channeled aid, intelligence, training and weapons to Syrian rebels, some of whom were of likewise dubious pedigree. But now that ISIS has morphed into the far more ambitious and dangerous Islamic State (or simply, the Caliphate), it seems to be another story. In between rounds of golf, even President Obama has expressed something akin to alarm.

The problem, as Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy pointed out recently, is that the United States has no “overarching strategy.” What Mr. May and others term (the politically correct) “jihadism,” in fact is nothing other than the purest expression of Islamic doctrine, law and scripture that has been waging wars of conquest against the non-Muslim world for more than 1,300 years. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after all, earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from a Baghdad university. Like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and others before him, he cites with specificity Islamic law and scripture to underscore the justification of his jihad. However, thanks to massive penetration of the top levels of U.S. national security leadership, which collaborated with affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to effect a governmentwide purge of training materials about such topics, the American ability to name the enemy and take the offense to confront and defeat his threat doctrine has been neutralized. So we see the Obama administration jerking from response to response, sending Libyan weapons and training future ISIS recruits in Jordan one day, bombing the Islamic State positions inside Iraq the next, too tongue-tied to identify the Islamic ideology at the root of the whole mess.

Andrew Bostom nailed it in an Aug. 17 tweet in which he asked, “Whither the Muslim-led coalition to crush ‘un-Islamic [Islamic State] drawn from vast, modern-equipped militaries of Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, et al?” Yousef al-Qaradawi, senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, bleated something about how al-Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate was “void,” according to Islamic law. No call to arms here, though, and certainly nothing at the level of his thundering fatwas endorsing suicide bombings against American troops in Iraq or Israelis. Even when the Islamic State calls the Shia “rafidah,” meaning deviants (from the “true Islam”), and jihadis flock from all over the world to volunteer for suicide missions to blow up Shia shrines, the most Iran seems to be doing is helping defend the ones that are left and making sure the Islamic State doesn’t capture Baghdad.

That leads to the nagging concern at the back of all this: What if the reason neither the ostensibly petrified Arab Muslim regimes nor the supposedly directly targeted Shia have called an emergency session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to denounce the “un-Islamic” Islamic State is because it really isn’t all that “un-Islamic” to want to re-establish the caliphate or enforce Islamic law (Shariah)? None of them wants to lose his throne — or his head — to the bloodthirsty thugs, but how to condemn something that Muhammad and the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs who followed him did on a much grander scale?

Iran, for one, long ago made its own operational terrorist pact with the Sunni al Qaeda (which led to Sept. 11 and beyond) and has openly supported Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, for decades. It surely will be recalled that the closest sponsor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Shia-hating al Qaeda commander who tore Iraq’s mixed Sunni-Shiite communities apart in the mid-2000s, was none other than the Iranian Qods Force. In fact, when the Islamic State first emerged as ISIS is the Syrian war in 2012, it arrived out of Iraq as the direct descendant of al-Zarqawi’s savage fighters. Even then, as long as ISIS was slaughtering fellow anti-Assad rebels among the Free Syrian Army, Jabhat al-Nusra and other militias, Iran, Syria and its proxy terrorist group Hezbollah held back from going after it full force.

The chaos in the Middle East plays out on several levels. At one level, the most easily seen, it is an intra-Islamic sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Such fitna dates to the death of Muhammad in 632, when his followers couldn’t agree on who should succeed him. However, as the obvious reluctance of the broader Muslim world to forge that pan-Islamic coalition allows Islamic State to advance and consolidate, committing unspeakable atrocities against Christians, Shiites, Yazidis and anyone else in its way, and Westerners once again step into the middle of an Islamic jihad on the march, it would be wise to look at the macro-level of these developments.

The very top level of what may be called “balanced opposition” plays out in Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” It is at this level that America’s leaders must remain alert. As five intelligence officials told Bloomberg News, elements of the Islamic State already are looking outward with the intention of organizing sleeper cells to carry out future terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. The Islamic State, pan-Islamic or “merely” Sunni, eventually will pose a direct national security threat to U.S. interests abroad as well as to the homeland. Bing West, writing in National Review Online on Aug. 14, urges a sober assessment of this jihadist army, now the richest and most capable Islamic force since the high point of the Ottoman Empire. He is right to declare that only a “warrior resolve” to physically destroy this jihad army will halt its inexorable advance.

Even more important in the long run, though, is the “warrior resolve” to name, confront and destroy the allure of the Shariah-based ideology that drives jihad. That’s the only way “we get to win this time.”

Too Brutal-The Death of James Wright Foley

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), which claims the mantle of Islamic caliphate, has recent released a video purporting to show the graphic beheading of American journalist James Wright Foley. His killer, a knife-wielding black masked jihadist speaks with a British accent while threatening the U.S., including threatening death to a man who is identified as American journalist Steven Sotloff.

Even while outrage courses through social media-and rightfully so- many have seemingly  forgetting that there is nothing new or unique about ISIS’ barbarism. American journalist  Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Al Qaeda #3 leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2002. KSM remains in Guantanamo Bay unpunished, despite having confessed. American businessman Nick Berg was beheaded on video tape by the head of AL Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in 2004.

Many are warning that ISIS’ horrifying jihad will eventually return home when the Western-raised, Western-educated Jihadists who fill its ranks return to their homelands to continue their religious war. But here too there is nothing unique. Terrorist beheading reached Western shores well before there was an ISIS.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston bombers is believed responsible for slitting the throats of three Boston men, Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman and Raphael Teken, in an apartment on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo beheaded British military drummer Lee Rigby in 2013.

The death of James Wright Foley is another horrifying tragedy in the long war directed at the West by self-declared jihadists. Whether they go by the name ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or Hamas, the end goal to impose shariah law -by force and terror if necessary- remains unchanged.

Until we approach the conflict in those terms, defining the enemy by the words he uses for himself, and not imposing our own false narratives upon his motivations, we will never be able to come to grips with the true depth of the threat.

It’s time for respectable journalists to stop saying that ISIS is “Too brutal for Al Qaeda.” It’s a false distinction. Instead start boning up on Shariah law, and  see for yourself  what our enemies actually believe about  jihad, the treatment of prisoners, sex slavery, and beheadings.

The fallout from foreign-policy malfeasance and nonfeasance

With the weakest national security team since World War II, it is no wonder that both our foreign- and national-security policies lack coherence and direction. The administration’s faculty-lounge logic that in the 21st century, “diplomacy” will substitute for military solutions to international crisis, overlooks or chooses to ignore a key factor: recognized military power that provides the essential underpinnings to successful diplomacy. It is called “peace through strength.”

How did we get to the rudderless position we are in today? Clearly, a series of policy mistakes have been made. It should be remembered that it was President Carter’s misguided policies that gave rise to Islamic resurgence by undercutting our key ally, the Shah of Iran, by fostering the return of the Islamic zealot Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini with his 7th-century mentality. Furthermore, much like President Obama today, he oversaw a deliberate drawdown of our military forces and capabilities.

Regrettably, each successive administration, be it Democrat or Republican, has also contributed to the chaotic situation we now face in the Middle East by essentially ignoring the 34 years of acts of war by Iran against the United States. These have included the takeover of our embassy in Iran; the bombing of our embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut without responding; and the material and training support to the Sept. 11 hijackers, as well as a host of other acts of war that have caused the loss of life of thousands of American military personnel and civilians.

Recently, we have witnessed the Obama administration’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has clearly facilitated the advance of the Islamic global agenda. Mr. Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech was the catalyst for the Arab Spring movement, which evolved under the political direction of the Muslim Brotherhood.

We all know how that has turned out. In the current Israeli-Hamas conflict, it should not be forgotten that Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose creed is to eliminate Israel’s very existence. Clearly, no peace can be achieved as long Hamas remains in control, and the Palestinians continue letting themselves be used to further the agenda of these merchants of hate. There are some indications that Hamas maybe losing some of its luster. Many hold Hamas responsible for the current Gaza humanitarian crisis. It must be made clear that the only way the Israeli and Egyptian blockade will be lifted and border crossings opened is with the removal of Hamas. There can be no reward for terrorism.

It appears no matter where you look, we have serious global instability. The Middle East essentially is in a total meltdown. Russia continues its aggressive move into Ukraine’s eastern provinces. With China continuing to press its illegal claims in both the South China Sea and East China Sea, the impotence of American leadership is clearly evident. As a result, our allies don’t trust us, and worse, our enemies don’t fear us.

Russia has embarked on an accelerated modernization of both its strategic and conventional forces, while China continues with an unprecedented military expansion of both its strategic and conventional forces. The Obama administration’s response has been to continue with the unilateral disarmament of our military forces This will leave us with the smallest Army since prior to World War II, and the smallest Navy since prior to World War I. Furthermore, our strategic forces have been allowed to atrophy over the past two decades. Our national leadership is deliberately jeopardizing our national security.

The draconian budget cuts to our military under the Obama administration’s sequestration mandate must not only cease immediately, but be reversed to meet these new and dangerous challenges. Such an announcement by the administration would provide a much-needed morale boost to our allies, as well as sending an unmistakable message to our enemies.

Aside from Ukraine, which should be provided the necessary requested military equipment to protect its sovereignty, the most pressing problem facing the Obama administration is the Islamic State’s threat to Kurdistan and what remains of Iraq. This threat must be destroyed before it expands into surrounding countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The half measures we have taken so far are clearly inadequate. To protect and support Kurdistan, the only viable ally we have in the region (besides Israel), will require a sustained comprehensive air campaign. To complement the current naval airstrikes and sustain such a campaign, we should establish a forward operating base alert element of F-16 fighters and A-10 close air-support aircraft in Kurdistan, which has one of the longest runways in the world at Irbil International Airport. Further, we should fly in the heavy military equipment that the Kurds have requested, as well as additional anti-tank weapons and ammunition.

The Obama administration’s position that they would only provide support through an all-inclusive Iraqi government was nonsense. Even with widespread support for his former lieutenant, Haider al-Abadi, current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has refused to accept him as a successor. However, this should be short-lived. While they have endorsed the new prime minister, Iran’s leadership most likely wants to see an inclusive Baghdad government so that Iraqi and U.S. forces will prevent the Islamic State from threatening Iran.

The Islamic State is a barbaric, murderous, evil terrorist group, which must be crushed. However, our involvement should not be as a protector for Iran. Will the Obama administration change its strategy? Whatever plan the administration implements, it must remember that the objectives of the Islamic State, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Iranian regime are all the same — destroy Israel and the United States. The administration must decide which side it is on.

It’s Not Just ISIS That’s a Threat

The Obama administration is warning that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham poses a serious threat to this country. Presumably, it feels the need to explain why we are now dropping bombs on ISIS forces as much as to anticipate future attacks on us by their operatives.

So does the Islamic State menace Americans? You bet it does. Even before President Obama launched air strikes against the group’s combatants, ISIS murderers of Christians, children and fellow Muslims were explicitly threatening us. That’s because the doctrine that guides ISIS – the supremacist Islamic code of shariah – mandates jihad to force the entire world to submit.

Unfortunately, a lot of other people adhere to shariah and also seek to impose it globally. Like ISIS, they cannot be appeased, and must be defeated.

Obama Can’t Escape His Responsibility for the Iraq Crisis

President Obama over the weekend said he could have done more to stop the violence in Iraq if it were not for the Iraqi government’s refusal to let some U.S. troops stay after 2011 and the failure of the U.S. intelligence community to forecast the severity of the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorist group.
 
These statements are just the latest examples of this president’s incompetence on foreign policy and boundless mendacity. 
 
Most experts believe there is a good chance Prime Minister Maliki could have been dissuaded from crackdowns by his security forces against Iraqi Sunnis which caused sectarian tensions to explode since early 2012  and contributed to the rise of ISIS if the United States had left behind a small contingent of troops to perform training and limited counter-terrorism operations after the formal withdrawal of U.S. forces in late 2011.
 
The President is claiming he wanted to leave some U.S. troops behind in Iraq after 2011 but was prevented from doing so by the Iraqi government because a status of forces agreement could not be reached due to Baghdad’s refusal to grant legal immunity to U.S. troops.
 
The truth is that the Obama administration didn’t try very hard to resolve this issue and used it as an excuse to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2011.  The Obama administration dragged its feet on talks with the Iraqi government to ensure a status of forces agreement would not be reached before the December 2011 withdrawal deadline.  President Obama also insisted that if an agreement was reached it would have to be approved by the Iraqi Parliament and not just with Prime Minister Maliki.  This created an obstacle that probably could not have been overcome before the withdrawal deadline. 
 
Republican Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) believe the Obama administration sabotaged negotiations to leave some U.S. troops behind in Iraq after 2011 by intentionally refusing to provide the Iraqi government with a solid number of how many U.S. forces would remain.  Senator Graham told Fox News Radio on July 15 that the Obama administration’s claim that it diligently tried and failed to get a status of forces agreement with Iraq “falls into the category of ‘if you like your healthcare you can keep it,” saying it was a “complete rewriting of history.”
 
The President is also repeating claims his administration made in June that he was caught off guard by the rapid advances in Iraq by ISIS because of a failure by U.S. intelligence agencies to provide adequate warning about the ISIS threat.
 
Congressman Mike Rogers, (R-MI), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, disagrees. He says the Iraq crisis is a policy and not an intelligence failure.
 
Rogers says the signs were there about the ISIS threat and the deteriorating situation in Iraq but Obama officials ignored them. He contends that “It was very clear to me years ago that ISIS was pooling up in a dangerous way — building training camps, drawing in jihadists from around the world. We saw all of that happening.”
 
I agree with Chairman Rogers. There was a wealth of information in the news media over the last year that a sectarian war was brewing in Iraq and ISIS was gaining strength in both Iraq and Syria. I am certain U.S. intelligence agencies provided similar assessments to U.S. officials based on classified information.  
 
The event that should have caused Obama officials to shift their approach to Iraq occurred last December when ISIS seized control of Fallujah and parts of the city of Ramadi. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn issued a public warning about the significance of this development in February when he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that ISIS “will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014, as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah, and the group’s ability to concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria.”
 
Despite the president’s denials, history will show that Mr Obama’s rush to withdraw all American troops from Iraq and his administration’s neglect of that country after the U.S troop withdrawal contributed significantly to the deterioration of security in Iraq since 2011 and the rise of ISIS.  Given the president’s other foreign policy missteps and his failure to recognize his mistakes, I worry how much more damage he will do to global security in his remaining 29 months in office.

Of Pallywood and Human Drama

Two stories from yesterday, which highlight the moral, and policy confusion currently affecting the United States under the current administration.

The first was a story from the website Truth Revolt, which showed how the claim that Israel had “shelled a UN school” may very well be false, and that Hamas operatives appear to have moved the bodies of terrorists killed by an Israeli missile into school, and then placed the corpses of young children beside them in order to create the impression that a civilian target was hit by Israel. Despite that the history of Palestinian terror groups creating false narratives like this one is so common they coined  word for it (“Pallywood”), that didn’t stop the Obama Administration’s rush to judgement, calling the attack “disgraceful.” As ex-Naval Intelligence analyst J.E. Dyer noted:

It’s not actually funny that hardly a word of this communication is valid or pertinent. It’s horrifying, because it came from the government of the United States.
There was no shelling; the number of displaced persons housed at the school is irrelevant (and seems to have been included for rhetorical effect), given that the school was not hit, nor was it likely to be; the exceptional care taken by the IDF is what ensured that the school would not be hit, even though Hamas was putting the area around the school in danger; and the suspicion (in this case, the knowledge) that “militants” are operating nearby does, precisely and emphatically, justify strikes, which is why it is a war crime to hide military activities behind civilians and/or protected sites.

Meanwhile in Northern Iraq between 10,000 and 40,000 members of the ancient  religious community known as the Yazidis are trapped on an isolated mountain top, suffering from famine and dehydration.  Those who have not fled to the mountains face being hunted down and execute by ISIS jihadists.  Those not killed face being sold into slavery.

Yazidi Iraqi Parliamentarian Vian Dakhil issued a heart-rending cry for intervention which is spreading rapidly through social media. Yet the same administration which rushed to condemn U.S. ally Israel over an incident which may not have happened at all, is completely absent as Jihadists perpetuate genocide. Are the Yazidis, and the Iraqi Christians, who are likewise facing extermination at the hands of ISIS, not worth so much as a hashtag from this administration?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdIEm1s6yhY]

It may be the case that there are few “good” options remaining for U.S. action in Iraq, thanks largely to the Obama administration policy of retreat and the terrible vacuum that policy has created. But consider, that had a Kurdish Peshmerga counteroffensive not been rebuffed by ISIS, due reportedly to Kurdish forces running out of ammunition, this current slaughter may have been prevented. As noted by Bloomberg News:

When asked about arming the Kurds, U.S. officials talk instead of their efforts to “coordinate” between Kurdish leaders and the government in Baghdad. They rely on legalisms to explain why they still prevent the Kurds from financing the war effort by selling oil on the world market. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refuses to share weapons with the Kurds. And tankers carrying Kurdish oil are stranded from the Gulf of Mexico to Singapore because the government in Baghdad insists on its right to sell all of Iraq’s oil.

Perpetuating the false narratives of “Israeli war crimes” constructed by Hamas and their supporters abroad carries with it a moral consequence greater then just the spreading of falsehoods and the hamstringing of U.S. ally Israel.

It also distracts from the genuinely monumental and historical crimes of Hamas’ ideological compatriots, ISIS.

Caliph Ibrahim’s brutal moment

After an absence of 90 years, the ancient institution of the caliphate roared back into existence on the first day of Ramadan in the year 1435 of the Hegira, equivalent to June 29, 2014. This astonishing revival symbolically culminates the Islamist surge that began 40 years ago. A Western analogy might be declaring the restoration of the Hapsburg Empire, which traced its legitimacy to ancient Rome.

Whence comes this audacious move? Can the caliphate last? What will its impact be?

For starters, a quick review of the caliphate (from the Arabic “khilafa,” meaning “succession”): According to canonical Muslim history, it originated in the year 632, on the death of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, then spontaneously developed, filling the nascent Muslim community’s need for a temporal leader. The caliph became Muhammad’s nonprophetic heir. After the first four caliphs, the office became dynastic.

From the start, followers disagreed whether the caliph should be the most able and pious Muslim or the closest relative of Muhammad. The resulting division came to define the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, respectively, causing the profound schism that still endures.

A single caliphate ruled all the Muslim lands until 750, but then two processes combined to diminish its power. First, remote provinces began to break away, with some — such as Spain — even creating rival caliphates. Second, the institution itself decayed and was taken over by slave soldiers and tribal conquerors, so that the original line of caliphs effectively ruled only until about 940. Other dynasties then adopted the title as a perquisite of political power.

The institution continued in an enfeebled form for a millennium until, in a dramatic act of repudiation, modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, terminated its last vestiges in 1924. Despite several subsequent attempts to restore it, the institution became defunct, a symbol of the disarray in Muslim-majority countries and a yearned-for goal among Islamists.

Matters remained for 90 years, until the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) issued a declaration in five languages (English version: “This Is the Promise of Allah”) proclaiming the founding of a new caliphate under “Caliph” Ibrahim. Caliph Ibrahim (aka Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim), about 40, hailing from Samarra, Iraq, fought in Afghanistan and then Iraq. He now claims to be leader of “Muslims everywhere” and demands their oath of allegiance. All other Muslim governments have lost legitimacy, he claims. Further, Muslims must throw out “democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the West.”

Reviving the universal caliphate means, announces “The Promise of Allah,” that the “long slumber in the darkness of neglect” has ended. “The sun of jihad has risen. The glad tidings of good are shining. Triumph looms on the horizon.” Infidels are justifiably terrified for, as both “east and west” submit, Muslims will “own the earth.”

Grandiloquent words, to be sure, but also ones with zero chance of success. ISIS has enjoyed backing from states such as Turkey and Qatar — but to fight in Syria, not to establish a global hegemony. Nearby powers — the Kurds, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel (and eventually maybe Turkey, too) — regard the Islamic State as an unmitigated enemy, as do nearly all rival Islamic movements, including al Qaeda. (The only exceptions: Boko Haram, scattered Gazans, and a new Pakistani organization.) The caliphate already faces difficulty governing the Great Britain-sized territories it conquered, troubles that will increase as its subject populations experience the full misery of Islamist rule. (Its apparent capture of the Mosul Dam on Aug. 3 portends unspeakable crimes, including the denial of electricity and water, or even unleashing catastrophic floods.)

I predict that the Islamic State, confronted with hostility both from neighbors and its subject population, will not last long.

It will leave a legacy, though. No matter how calamitous the fate of Caliph Ibrahim and his grim crew, they have successfully resurrected a central institution of Islam, making the caliphate again a vibrant reality. Islamists around the world will treasure its moment of brutal glory and be inspired by it.

For non-Muslims, this development has complex and double-edged implications. On the negative side, violent Islamists will be more encouraged to achieve their hideous goals, leaving a wake of carnage. On the positive side, the caliphate’s barbaric zealotry will have the salutary effect of awakening many of those who still sleep to the horrors of the Islamist agenda.

Flynn is Right, Ideology is The Problem

LT. General Michael Flynn, outgoing head of the Defense Intelligence Agency recently told an audience at the Aspen Institute that the ideology of Al Qaeda was “expanding,” and that Al Qaeda was not “on the run” as the Obama Administration had repeatedly insisted during the 2012 election. Flynn said, “It’s not on the run, and that ideology is actually, it’s sadly, it feels like it’s exponentially growing,”

Flynn went on to point out that “the core” of Al Qaeda was not in fact a geographic designation, but instead a belief, “We use the term ‘core al Qaeda,’ and I have been going against these guys for a long time,” The Free Beacon reports Flynn as saying, “The core is the core belief that these individuals have.”

While Flynn does not go so far as to name the ideology which Al Qaeda acts in furtherance of (namely Shariah), he is clear that one can not solely counter an ideological threat kinetically.

Under Flynn, the DIA has been one of the few intelligence agencies to hold the line against the Obama Administration’s popular, if delusional, reimagining of the threat.  As Eli Lake noted in a Daily Beast article discussing the connections between Al Qaeda and Boko Haram:

The dispute inside the intelligence community falls along familiar lines about al Qaeda. The White House has emphasized the distinctions between al Qaeda’s core and its affiliates and other aspiring jihadists, who the White House sees as operating almost entirely independent of the central group.

However, another faction inside the U.S. intelligence community—one that comprises the current leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency and others working in the military—see al Qaeda as a flatter organization that coordinates between nodes and operates through consensus in the model of an Islamic Shura council.

The idea that DIA should need to wage an rearguard action around a concept as basic as the fact that Al Qaeda is organized along shariah-prescribed lines, is itself an example of how badly we have failed to understand the enemy’s stated threat doctrine.

While Flynn does not say so, the reason the ideology of Al Qaeda has expanded is we have failed to directly combat it. We have failed in combating the ideology, as the direct result of influence operations waged against U.S. policy making by affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in the purge of U.S. trainers who understood the enemy doctrine, leaving U.S policymakers, and law enforcement and intelligence officials unprepared.

One quibble however. LTG Flynn warns that Hamas ought not to be destroyed, as there is a risk that the Islamist groups that would replace it would some how be “worse.” There is not any substantial difference in ideological doctrine between the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. they are all based upon the Shariah. Saying that Hamas must survive because ISIS is worse is the same kind of mistaken thinking that permitted some to argue that we could work with the Muslim Brotherhood to serve as a bulwark against Al Qaeda. There is no major doctrinal disagreement between Hamas and Al Qaeda, or ISIS. Hamas hailed Osama bin Laden as a “holy warrior” when he was killed by U.S. forces. The Muslim Brotherhood also recognized Bin Laden’s role as a legitimate jihadist.   The godfather of both Al Qaeda and Hamas was Muslim Brother and Islamic Jurist named  Abdullah Azzam.

But even this mistaken view of Hamas is itself evidence thats proves Flynn’s point. Without understanding the nature of the enemy’s threat doctrine and its primary thinkers (Like Azzam), we will not be successful in defeating it.