Tag Archives: Syria

Resetting US foreign policy

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

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

Around the globe, all bets were off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both of these goals are transformative.

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

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

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

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

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

It shares the Brotherhood’s basic ideology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US must not exchange strategic insanity with strategic inconsistency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US has done next to nothing to defend them.

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

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

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

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

Whose Chemical Attack?

We are told by unnamed “activists” that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad used chemical weapons recently to kill large numbers of Syrian civilians.

Responsibility for this crime has yet to be positively established but, at first blush, this charge seems implausible.  For one thing, Assad’s regime is winning at the moment and talk of a Western intervention against him has diminished markedly. Why use chemical weapons and possibly change those realities?

For another, UN inspectors are in Damascus to investigate previous alleged chemical attacks, raising the risk the perpetrator will get caught.

On the other hand, anti-Assad jihadists seeking outside help to topple him may have both motive and means to “martyr” large numbers of innocents. If they actually did so, America needs no further reason to reject, not embrace, such Islamic supremacists.

The Mosque: Center of Religion, Politics and Dominance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rep. McKeon: Let the NSA Continue Collecting Phone Data

“I have very little trust in the White House, but there’s lots of wonderful, patriotic, dedicated Americans that are foremost working to keep us safe. And the safeguards they have set in this program have been invaluable,” said Congressman Buck McKeon about the NSA data collection program on Wednesday’s Secure Freedom Radio program.

Rep. McKeon, who is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, explained that it was reasonable for the program to have been kept a secret, “because of the nature of the war that we’re fighting against, this Islamic terrorist threat, if we tell everything that we’re doing we give them an upper hand on their ability to kill us.”

McKeon also argued that it is necessary to allow the NSA program to continue, saying “I know there are people that are trying to frighten people and say that all kinds of bad things are happening—this is keeping us from having bad things. Is it totally foolproof, could we still have attacks? No, it’s just one of those means, but it is a very important mean and I hope the amendment is defeated.”

The amendment Rep. McKeon referred to was defeated in the House of Representatives Wednesday evening, permitting for now the NSA to continue collecting phone call data in its fight against terrorism.

McKeon also spoke with host Frank Gaffney about US intervention in the Syrian civil war and his misgivings about providing small arms to the rebels. “We know that [Syrians have] killed about 100,000 people there. What we’re going to do is up the ante a little bit, throw more arms into the area, which means more people are going to be killed,” he said.

“I don’t see a good option other than maybe a very high level meeting with Russia to lay out, ‘Look, if this goes much further this could spin out of any our control and become a much, much bigger thing,’” McKeon concluded.

Stay Out of the Syrian Quagmire

Congressional leaders are quietly clearing the way for President Obama to begin overtly arming the so-called Syrian “rebels.” Despite the very real dangers, this is happening with essentially no public debate.

Syria is the ultimate quagmire.  Its government is killing innocent civilians every day, but so are the Islamists who will inevitably get our lethal weapons – even if we are promised they’ll only go to the several hundred, ostensibly secular officers of the Free Syrian Army.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  Picking sides in this fight between Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists on the one hand and Iran and Hezbollah’s team will embroil us in a conflict whose winner will be our enemy, either way.  We need our representatives in Congress to debate this idea, not rubber-stamp it.

R2P in Syria

The White House says the Syrian government breached President Obama’s “redlines” after all by using chemical weapons.

So, having unilaterally abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of ending wars, Mr. Obama is unilaterally getting us into a new one – a civil war, no less – by providing “military assistance” to Syria’s al Qaeda-dominated “rebels.”

Welcome to the “responsibility to protect” – a notion embraced by some on Team Obama, like Samantha Power, the president’s controversial nominee to be our next UN ambassador.  She and other promoters of R2P, as it’s known, believe military force should be used, but only where we have no interests.

Tragically, applying it here will embroil us in a wider war doomed to make make Mr. Obama’s previous R2P debacle in Benghazi and elsewhere in Libya pale by comparison.

Rohrabacher: Don’t Intervene in Syria

Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, cautioned the United States in an interview Monday against hastily getting involved in Syria.

Despite the recent uproar that the Syrian government is using chemical weapons against its citizens, Rohrabacher argues on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio that such revelations should not lead to a knee-jerk response against the Assad regime.“They may have poison gas, they may not,” he said. “But the fact that they’re mass slaughtering each other, targeting civilians, both sides seem to be engaged in a brutal, no-holds barred war.”

“Each side has groups within it that we don’t want to have anything to do with. Fighting against Assad, we’d put in Al Qaeda and some of these radical Sunnis who’ve been murdering Americans, and on the other side you’ve got the Islamic mullah dictatorship from Iran playing a major role and propping Assad up.  And then complicating matters, Assad is one of the protectors of the Christian community and other minority communities in Syria.”

Because he sees no clear side that the United States should be supporting in Syria, Rohrabacher doesn’t believe that “we should worry as much about one of those groups getting poison gas as we should be worried about having America drawn into yet another conflict.”

Rohrabacher tells Gaffney that one area where US intervention is badly needed, however, is concerning the imprisonment of Dr. Shakil Afridi in Pakistan, the man who gave the US government the information it needed to verify the location of Osama bin Laden.

A leading voice in the US House of Representatives calling for decisive action to be taken in freeing Afridi, Rohrabacher decries the fact that the imprisonment of “one of the greatest heroes of our time” “has been going on for months and months. Six months and they haven’t done anything. He’s still languishing away… I’m having trouble even getting the resolution [to free Afridi] to the floor. But what does come to the floor is a foreign aid budget that includes hundreds of millions for Pakistan.”

Representative Rohrabacher is pushing for an amendment to the foreign aid bill that would make money to Pakistan contingent on the release of Dr. Afridi.

LISTEN to the interview on Secure Freedom Radio.

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U.S Now Leading Exporter of Islamist Heads of State

Well the Syrian rebel factions have settled down to decide on who should be their interim Prime Minister, and shockingly the winner is a Texan (but not Rick Perry.) No, it’s Ghassan Hitto, an information technology specialist from Texas, and former CAIR employee (h/t Jihad Watch):

Mr. Hitto and his wife, Suzanne, an American schoolteacher, have four children, all born in the United States, where Mr. Hitto advocated for Muslim Americans after 9/11 as a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Nor of course is Hitto alone within the Syrian rebels. Louay Safi, formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the International institute of Islamic Thought (among others) and a former advisor to the Pentagon, currently heads up the Syrian National Council’s political office. The SNC has long been understood to be one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s principle organs in Syria.

Add to that the fact that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood while attending the University of Southern California, and it looks like the United States is by far the biggest incubator for future Islamist  Heads of State.

One might also be tempted to ask how it is that individuals of little renown outside of being members of North American Muslim Brotherhood fronts so easily transition to leadership roles of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in other countries? After all, we are repeatedly (falsely) assured that there is no “Global Muslim Brotherhood”, with an international viewpoint and plan, only a disparate group of organizations under that banner, each with their on national view points and focuses.

Hamas in Syria and the Global Jihad

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

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

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

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

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

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