What the Obama Scandals Reveal About Progressive Ideology

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gty_barack_obama_irs_mad_speech_thg_130515_wblogBy Bruce Thornton:

The three scandals dominating the news this week all reveal the moral and intellectual corruption at the heart of progressive ideology. Whether are not these revelations gain enough traction to halt the country’s downward spiral is the more important question.

Benghazi

The moment it came into office the Obama administration bought into the delusional narrative that Islamic jihadist terror is a response to Western historical crimes against Muslims, rather than an expression of Islamic theology. The Israeli “occupation” of Palestine, the depredations of colonialism and imperialism, the resulting dysfunctional economies and oppressive governments in Muslim countries, the arrogant xenophobia and intolerance of American culture, the invasions of Muslim countries after 9/11––all were identified as the “root causes” of terrorism.

Obama’s foreign policy, based on the assumptions of American guilt and the malign consequences of George Bush’s arrogant, unilateralist foreign policy, thus was an attempt to correct the bad policies and behaviors that instigated terror. Thus Obama apologized in his Cairo speech, eagerly extended a diplomatic “hand” to the genocidal mullahs in Iraq, rushed for the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported the dubious “Arab Spring” uprisings and their Islamist prime movers like the Muslim Brothers, and distanced America from Israel.

The intervention in Libya seemed to be an easy way to validate these beliefs, at the same time avoiding the charge of retreat and withdrawal from America’s global responsibilities to advance human rights and protect the victims of tyranny. The overthrow of Gaddafi was sanctioned by the U.N. and engineered by NATO, thus confirming the progressive belief that unilaterally pursuing national interests was, like nationalism itself, immoral, and that only transnational collective action sanctioned by international institutions was legitimate.

For a while the optics were good. A creepy psychopath was eliminated, no casualties were suffered, and a seemingly secular democracy was aborning. The idealism of democracy promotion, one bungled by the unilateral, trigger-happy George Bush, was indulged at little political cost, while the “legitimate” war, against al Qaeda, was being pursued just as cheaply with out-of-sight, out-of-mind drone killings, proving that Obama was no crypto-pacifist squish. Hence the foreign policy narrative peddled during the presidential campaign that al Qaeda was on the ropes and democracy was on the march.

The attack on Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, eight weeks before the election, exploded that narrative. Al Qaeda and its affiliates were not on the ropes, but were growing and expanding, and could swiftly organize the sack of an embassy office and the murder of four Americans, including an ambassador, humiliating the infidel superpower. Libya was not a democracy-in-the-making, but a Darwinian tribal and sectarian jungle dominated by jihadists armed with the weapons we put in their hands when we destroyed the Gaddafi regime. The refusal to beef up security in Benghazi, which would have been an admission that things weren’t so rosy in the fledgling democracy, now looked like a political calculation that cost American lives. Worse yet, once more the idea that terrorism is a response to our bad behavior was exploded, as many of those Libyans we had liberated turned against us, just as thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have.

So of course the attack had to be spun into something closer to Obama’s foreign policy narrative: the attack was caused by a “spontaneous” protest against an Internet video insulting Mohammed. The administration knew this was a lie the day of the attack, but could not admit this repudiation of Obama’s foreign policy claims so close to the election, and so kept repeating the lie for two weeks, trusting the media spaniels to spin the attack and collude in the still on-going cover-up.

IRS Political Harassment

The IRS’s targeting of groups associated with conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status is a predictable consequence of the progressive narrative that conservatism is a form of neurosis, the lashing out of ignorant, violent “bitter clingers” against a changing world that challenges their racial privilege, economic power, and religious superstitions. The fondness of groups like the Tea Party for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution reflects this psychopathology, the desire to “turn back the clock” and restore their once exalted social and political position. As such, they are dangerous––and armed to boot––and so require monitoring by all right-thinking people who are progressing towards the utopia of “social justice.”

So it’s no surprise that IRS functionaries would create investigative rubrics like “Tea Party” or “patriot” that reflect these assumptions in order to guide them in their scrutiny of groups seeking tax-exempt status. These bureaucrats have absorbed the narrative from the mainstream media and popular culture, both of which are steeped in the two-bit pop psychologizing that passes for wisdom among those who fancy themselves the enlightened “anointed,” as Thomas Sowell calls them. Nor are they troubled at using the coercive power of the state to pursue these political agendas, for one of the most important progressive principles is that righteous ends can justify a whole range of brutal means.

Whether or not someone in the Obama administration directly ordered the IRS to pursue this partisan harassment is irrelevant. Like the Corleone family, the administration has a lot of “buffers.” No one had to be told, just as the progressives don’t have to tell anyone in Hollywood to make yet another movie or television show denigrating and demonizing corporations, conservatives, Christians, or the CIA. That is what’s so insidious about this ideology: it has permeated the minds of people to the point that unsavory actions advancing the cause are never questioned or doubted. In the progressive mind, dogma rules, not principle. Hence the righteous act to advance ideologically sanctioned political ends without bothering about coherent or consistent principle.

Read more at Front Page

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Obama Uses Terror-Finance Group to Push Gun Control

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islamic-society-of-north-america-isna-annual-convention-2012_315x256By :

The Obama Administration’s relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, has grown beyond strictly Muslim-related issues. On May 6, Vice President Biden met with about 20 interfaith leaders including ISNA President Mohamed Magid for two hours to rally religious support for gun control.

A FBI source identified ISNA as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identified ISNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends” for use in its “work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Federal prosecutors labeled ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Brotherhood “charity” housed within the ISNA building that was found to be financing Hamas. The U.S. government specifically called ISNA a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

The President of ISNA is Imam Mohamed Magid. In 2004, he reacted to the U.S. government’s investigations and prosecutions of groups like the Holy Land Foundation by claiming they were part of an anti-Muslim agenda. He said that parts of the U.S. government are “intent on dismantling Muslim organizations and bringing them down.”

He was among those that met with Vice President Biden to discuss the legislation mandating background checks for gun sales. Several more Obama Administration officials including Biden’s chief of staff were also there.

Other interfaith leaders at the meeting included Franklin Graham of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religion Action Center of Reform Judaism; Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; Pastor Michael McBride of PICO National Network and Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.

Gun control isn’t the only political issue that the Obama Administration seeks ISNA’s support on. On March 8, Magid met with President Obama and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett for 90 minutes about immigration reform. About 10 other interfaith leaders were there. Only three days later, Magid again met with President Obama to offer “recommendations” for his trip to the Middle East.

Magid also was a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group and the Faith-based Security and Communications Advisory Committee. His group also met with the FBI Director regarding the agency’s review of its counter-terrorism training materials.

The Obama Administration treats ISNA as the leader of the Muslim-American community, even though only 4% of Muslim-American males and 7% of females chose ISNA as the group that best represents them in a 2011 poll. In March, the Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement said ISNA is his top Muslim outreach partner.

Read more at Front Page

Must-See Video: Fort Hood Heroes (Part II)

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Shoebat Foundation:

Last October, a group called Fort Hood Heroes produced an awesome video that featured survivors of Nidal Malik Hasan’s Fort Hood Jihad attack. We have been eager to see Part II ever since and it is now available.

If you haven’t seen Part I yet, click here.

Also, be sure to visit thetruthaboutforthood.com

This is Part II, entitled Broken Promises:

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Obama and the “Official Truth”

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tea_party-thumb-470x313-3102By Caroline Glick:

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing.

But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole.

Nakoula was arrested for producing an anti- Islam film that the Obama administration was falsely blaming for the al-Qaida assault on the US Consulate in Benghazi and the brutal murder of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012. Obama and his associates falsely blamed Nakoula’s film – and scapegoated Nakoula – for inciting the al-Qaida attack in Benghazi because they needed a fall guy to pin their cover-up of the actual circumstances of the premeditated, eminently foreseeable attack, which took place at the height of the presidential election campaign.

With the flood of scandals now inundating the White House, many are wondering if there is a connection between the cover-up of Benghazi, the IRS’s prejudicial treatment of non-leftist nonprofit organizations and political donors, the Environmental Protection Agency’s prejudicial treatment of non-liberal organizations, and the Justice Department’s subpoenaing of phone records of up to a hundred reporters and editors from the Associated Press.

On the surface, they seem like unrelated events.

But they are not. They expose the modus operandi of the Obama administration: To establish an “official truth” about all issues and events, and use the powers of the federal government to punish all those who question or expose the fraudulence of that “official truth.”

From the outset of Obama’s tenure in office, his signature foreign policy has been his strategy of appeasing jihadist groups and regimes like the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran at the expense of US allies, including Israel, the Egyptian military, and longtime leaders like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.

The administration defended its strategy in various ways. It presented the assassination of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs as the denouement of the US war on terror. By killing the al-Qaida chief, the administration claimed, it had effectively ended the problem of jihad, which it reduced to al-Qaida generally and its founder specifically.

Just as important, it has tried to hide the very existence of the jihadist threat. To this end, the administration purged all terms relevant to the discussion of jihadist Islam from the federal lexicon and fired officials who defied the language and subject ban.

It has hidden the jihadist motive of terrorists and information relating to known jihadists from relevant governmental bodies. The Benghazi cover-up is the most blatant example of this policy of obfuscating and denying the truth. But it is far from a unique occurrence.

For instance, the administration has stubbornly denied that Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan’s massacre of his fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood in Texas was a jihadist attack. And in the months preceding the Tsarnaev brother’s bombing of the Boston Marathon, and in its immediate aftermath, the FBI did not share its long-held information about the older brother’s jihadist activities with local law enforcement agencies.

To advance its “official truth,” the administration leaked information to the media about top secret operations that advanced its official narrative. For instance, top administration officials leaked the story of the Stuxnet computer virus that compromised Iranian computers used by Iran’s nuclear weapons program. These stories compromised ongoing US and Israeli intelligence operations. But they advanced the administration’s foreign policy narrative.

Conversely, as the AP scandal shows, the administration went on fishing expeditions to root out those who leaked stories that harmed the administration’s narrative that al-Qaida is a spent force. In May 2012, AP reported that the CIA had scuttled an al-Qaida plot in Yemen to bomb a US airliner. The story damaged the credibility of Obama’s claim that al-Qaida was defeated, and challenged the wisdom of Obama’s support for the al-Qaida-aligned antiregime protesters in Yemen that ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh in November 2011.

Finally, the administration has promoted its policy by demonizing as extremists and bigoted every significant voice that called that policy into question.

For example, in his satirical speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner last month, Obama snidely – and libelously – accused Rep. Michele Bachmann of “book burning.”

Bachmann is an outspoken critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing Islamists at the expense of America’s allies.

Bachmann is also the chairwoman of the House of Representative’s Tea Party caucus. And demonizing her is just one instance of what has emerged as the administration’s tool of choice in its bid to marginalize its opponents. This practice arguably began during Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign when then-senator Obama referred to his opponents as “bitter” souls who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to those who aren’t like them.”

In the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections, Obama and his supportive media characterized the grassroots Tea Party movement for limited government as racist, selfish, extremist and uncaring.

And now we have learned that beginning in March 2010, the Internal Revenue Service instituted what can only be considered a systemic policy of discriminating against nonprofit groups dedicated to fighting Obama’s domestic agenda. The IRS demanded information about the groups’ donors, worldviews, reading materials and social networking accounts, and personal information about its membership and leaders that it had no right to receive. And according to USA Today, it held up approval of nonprofit status for 27 months for all groups related to the Tea Party movement. Some 500 organizations were victimized by this abuse of power.

 

Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists

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By Charles C. Johnson:

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.

In a checklist obtained by The Daily Caller entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Dos and Don’ts” the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.

This policy stands in stark contrast to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ 2009 memo “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” [pdf], which warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.

The advice of the Dos and Don’ts list is far more conciliatory. “Don’t use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally-protected activity, including disliking the U.S. government without being violent,” the manual’s authors write in a section on training being “sensitive to constitutional values.”

The manual, which was produced by an inter-agency working group from DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, advises, “Trainers who equate the desire for Sharia law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.”

The checklist also advised against using moderate Muslim “trainers who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’” because they “may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted, unbiased information.”

The manual advises trainees not to assume Muslim Americans are “using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.”

Read more at Daily Caller

 

 

The Islam I Knew

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islam_title1By M. Kamal:

In my work revealing the destructive menace of Islam, I receive messages from Muslims everywhere accusing me of, and calling me, everything imaginable and unimaginable .

I have been accused of being a hate monger bent on deforming the image of Islam. I am called a Zionist, a liar, and every insulting name a woman can be called.  Although I was raised in Egypt and educated in a Muslim school system and indoctrinated on the “glories” of Islam since birth, I am also accused of being ignorant about Islam itself. In their critiques against me, many of them are practicing what is called “Taqqiya”.

Taqqiya or the holy lie, is permissible in Islam in order to deceive non Muslims about the true Islamic agenda; complete domination, by force if necessary.

Many Muslims are actually ignorant of the biggest part of their own Islamic doctrine: Jihad, derived from the Arabic root-word mujahada, meaningwarfare to establish the religion. While jihad is physical, there are other forms of jihad that are practised as well: funding terrorism, making propaganda, converting non-Muslims to Islam (even by force like in the case of Egypt and Pakistan), suing those who dare to criticize islam or to reveal its truth, islamic immigration to non-muslim lands, breeding so much, electronic jihad etc……

Many Muslims instead compel themselves to live with one perspective about Islam; that it is being hijacked by terrorists and extremists and that Islam teaches peace and love toward all of humanity, friend or enemy, Muslim or infidel.

Amazingly these relatively peaceful people think they are the “True” Muslims and the representatives of Islam’s real image… And some naive non-Muslims swallow this bait, failing to detect the hook and fire that waits behind it.

It is easier and mentally more secure for them to accept at face value that Islam contains no evil. Ironically, many of the same people believe that guns, not the people who pull their triggers, bear the destruction, injury, and death they deliver. As such, non-Muslim defenders of relieve themselves of inquiry and accept the Muslim apologist defence that Islam is innocent of all charges of evil.

As a former Muslim, who is not ignorant of its worldview, requirements, and laws, I want to attract your attention to one very important fact: You may meet or know some relatively peaceful Muslims around you, but that does not mean that Islam itself is peaceful, which will be their claim. It must be. They are not permitted by their own law to portray Islam in a negative light, particularly to non-believers, even if they are discussing Qur’anic or legal elements (those that outside observers find unsavoury).

Most Muslims have ever read very little of the Qur’an, let alone read, or understand, most of it . Lot of them learned to recite some verses from the Qur’an without understanding its meanings . Most Muslims in non-Arabic speaking countries (which comprises most of the world’s Muslims) who memorize the Qur’an in Arabic do so only phonetically, not understanding a word they are reciting.

They have been taught that the poetic rhythm of the Qur’an alone, is sanctifying and will reward them with favour in the hereafter. Most Muslims know only of the Qur’an what is read to them on Friday prayers.

Read more at No Compulsion

Afghanistan’s Benghazi: Grieving Families Want Answers

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CH-47_Chinook_flying_night_visionBy Diana West:

Grief and politics don’t mix. When raw, aching grief and the dirtiest kind of politics meet, a hot volcano of pain and outrage erupts that is unstoppable. But it is necessary. It is the only way things might ever be clean again.

I am thinking of recent casket transfer ceremonies that have taken place at Dover Air Force Base, where senior administration officials have used the solemn occasions – Benghazi, the shoot-down of Extortion 17 – less to comfort grieving families than to lay blame, to establish a narrative, to lie.

Think of Sean Smith’s mother. Think of Tyrone Woods’ father. After the Obama administration’s hugs came the Obama administration’s stonewalling. They still don’t have answers about what happened in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

We don’t either.

We still don’t know who in the U.S. government gave the order not to rescue Americans under fire for eight and a half hours, and how and why such an unconscionable order was given. We still don’t know who convinced senior White House officials to tell grieving parents meeting their children’s caskets that a video-maker, not jihad against the West, was to blame for the assault that took four American lives – or what the political motivation was.

This is a national disgrace.

But before Benghazi, there was Extortion 17, the call sign of a Special Operations mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011. Three months after the strike on Osama bin Laden, 30 Americans – including 15 from the bin Laden strike-team unit, Navy SEAL Team 6, and two other SEALs – were killed in the costliest single-day loss for the U.S. military in the Afghanistan war, and the largest SEAL loss ever. A “lucky shot” in the dark brought down the old CH-47 Chinook helicopter attempting to land them in the middle of an ongoing battle in Wardak Province. Or so the U.S. military claims. The families are not so sure.

Then again, they’re not sure about anything. The runaround, the lies, the callous disregard they have received at the hands of the government and military is similar to Benghazi, maybe worse.

“We go to Dover to see bodies, and we’re all in the hangar down there,” Charles Strange, father of slain SEAL Michael Strange, recalled last week before a rapt audience at the National Press Club, where several Extortion 17 families gathered to call on Congress to investigate. “And President Obama comes up to me and he says, ‘Mr. Strange’ – and he grabs me by the shoulders – ‘Michael changed the way America lives.’ I grabbed Mr. President by the shoulders and I said: ‘I don’t need to know about my son, I need to know what happened, Mr. President.’

Strange continued. “The Secret Service guys grabbed me. I’m crying. He went to give me a hug. I whispered in his ear: ‘Mr. President, Is there going to be a congressional inquiry?’ And Mr. President whispered in my ear – and I could feel his lips touch – and he said, ‘Mr. Strange, we’re going to look into this very, very, very deep.’ Well, I haven’t heard nothing.”

Nothing that makes sense, anyway. A military investigation led by then-Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Colt (since promoted to major general) tells us there was no “eye in the sky” that night. Why not? No forces had been sent in to prepare the area. Why not?

More sickening was the fact that rules of engagement prevented suppressive fire from being aimed at the tower firing on the Chinook. Billy Vaughn, father of slain SEAL Aaron Vaughn, recalled how a three-star admiral explained this breach to the grieving families: U.S. forces couldn’t fire back, the admiral said, because “we want to win hearts and minds.” As Mr. Strange later put it: “What about my heart? What about my mind?”

American hearts and minds don’t count with this U.S. government – and that is our national tragedy until we change the government.

What commander is responsible for assembling so many SEALs in one inadequate aircraft, for this particular landing site, for a mission many believe was in fact unnecessary? Extortion 17 took off three months after the strike on bin Laden, three months after the Obama administration blew SEAL Team 6′s cover in the bin Laden raid, three months after intelligence indicated the Taliban were out for revenge. “The chain of command” was responsible, the families were told. Who were they? No answer.

Why was there no gunship escort that night? What happened in the final minutes of Extortion 17? The black box was never recovered, the military insists. Really? What about the seven Afghan soldiers who joined the mission at the last minute, replacing Afghans previously scheduled to fly? No one knows the identities of this last-minute group, or why they flew that day. More troubling still, military investigators didn’t interview Afghan commanders to find out.

Why not? To win their “hearts and minds,” too? The word for that is “submission.” Such submission also explains the appalling inclusion of an imam at the casket transfer ceremony in Afghanistan – a ceremony preceding the transport of the dead bodies, American and Afghan, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they would finally be identified. (This makes families wonder whether American sons lay in caskets draped with the Afghan flag.) There, in the midst of an otherwise ecumenical ceremony (devoid of any mention of Jesus Christ), the imam invoked Allah, while establishing that Muslims reside in heaven and non-Muslims reside in hell.

Standard Islamic fare, to be sure, but this is the same supremacist basis of the jihad that killed the men of Extortion 17. No wonder the families are doubly outraged.

As should we all be. Congress must investigate Extortion 17 and find out exactly what happened, and who bears responsibility. It is the very least we can do for our people.

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Tell Me Again Why U.S. Used Jihadists to Guard Benghazi?

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20130503_benghazi_libya_clinton_obama_LARGEBy Diana West:

“I want to ask a couple of questions about the February 17 Martyrs Brigade,” said Rep. Blake Farenthold.

The Texas Republican was addressing the three State Department “whistleblowers” who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The three witnesses were Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for counterterrorism; Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya.

When Farenthold introduced this crucial subject into the hearings, he also opened a window into Benghazi that shone light not only on disastrous Western support for “Arab Spring,” but also on the core crisis in U.S. foreign policy.

Farenthold: “Mr. Nordstrom, can you tell me the role of February 17 Martyrs Brigade in protecting the consulate in Benghazi?”

Nordstrom: “Certainly. That was the unit, for lack of a better term, that was provided to us by the Libyan government.”

This already was news to me: The Libyan government provided known jihadists to guard U.S. interests?

On second thought, there is nothing fantastic about this when – or, rather, if – we consider that the U.S. government supported an army of known jihadists in its revolution against Libya’s anti-jihadist former leader Moammar Gadhafi. I say “if” because I don’t expect even the members of the committee to see the “Arab Spring” this way. Uncle Sam’s open support for jihad is an epic scandal that is never even acknowledged.

Farenthold: “Were you aware of any ties by that militia to Islamic extremists?”

Nordstrom: “Absolutely. Yeah, we had that discussion on a number of occasions, the last of which was when there was a Facebook posting of a threat that named Ambassador Stevens and Sen. (John) McCain, who was coming out for the elections. That was in the July (2012) time frame. I met with some of my agents and also some (CIA) annex personnel, and we discussed that.”

More news: Nordstrom seems to be saying that the February 17 Martyrs Brigade actually threatened both the U.S. ambassador and a U.S. senator – and still served as U.S. security guards. This is shocking to read in black and white, although, again, when it becomes clear that Uncle Sam supported the same, exact jihad in Libya that al-Qaida supported, it makes, if not sense exactly, then certainly a pattern.

Farenthold: “Mr. Hicks, you were in Libya on the night of the attack. Do you believe the February 17 militia played a role in those attacks, was complicit in those attacks?”

Hicks: “Certainly, elements of that militia were complicit in the attacks. The attackers had to make a long approach march through multiple checkpoints that were manned by February 17 militia.”

More news: Most media accounts identified al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia (“Supporters of Shariah”) as the militia manning the checkpoints around the compound that horrible night. Of course, Libya militias seem to be loose organizations with overlapping membership. More important, though, as John Rosenthal, author of “The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion,” puts it, virtually all of them “sympathize” with Ansar al-Sharia. “In fact,” Rosenthal said in a recent interview with me, “in the literal sense of the term, virtually all of the Eastern Libyan militias are ‘Ansar al-Sharia’ – that is to say ‘supporters of the Shariah.’”

Read more: Family Security Matters 

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Mitigating Islam

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Screen shot 2012-02-10 at 12.13.47 PM

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.-
Winston Churchill

Arutz Sheva,  By Jason James Butler:

Countries all over the world have taken hold of the idea of ‘appeasement’ from the 1930’s and made it their policy regarding radical Islam. Western nations are the anthill and Islam the magnifying glass in the sun; where they cast their glance, people cower in fear.

This embarrassing fear has led to such ideas as: the presentation of a global ban on insults to Muhammad at the UN General Assembly as recently as September, 2012, the blame and subsequent incarceration of an American citizen because he insulted Islam in a movie which was used as an excuse for riots in the Middle East and the murder of a US diplomat in Benghazi, and the UN and Obama’s belief that the answer to the constant rocket attacks, threats of destruction, murder of Israeli civilians, and possible third Arab Intifada in Judea and Samaria is to simply give them what they want: more Israeli land, a Palestinian state, and other concessions which will lead to the eventual destruction of all Western nations.

Twenty years ago these ideas would have been laughed at by the media and the general populace, not thought of as great ideas to achieve peace. Would al-Qaeda have stopped after 9/11 if in response America had given them a portion of California to create their own state?

It seems that the world’s policy is to merely mitigate the destructive nature that is Islamic extremism, rather than cure the world of this infectious disease. We celebrated when a report shows that less Israelis were murdered this year than at the same time last year or when only one act of terrorism occurred during the entire month of January.

When did murder and destruction become the status quo in the Middle East? Why is the world more focused on the poor Palestinian refugees that never were and less on the families that are being slain in their beds by extremists?

The countries of the world seem content with slowing the rate of death and destruction caused by Muslim extremists and show no concern over a future where Islamic ideas have spread so far and have become so deeply rooted that it is too late to act. This is the reality that we face today.

Too long have the Western countries shown fear in the face of the enemy, too long has the only peaceful Western-friendly country in the Middle East been told it cannot defend itself, and too long has there been the attempted appeasement of an enemy that needs to be destroyed rather than given concessions.

Appeasement does not work. This was shown when Hitler understood the policy of appeasement to be a weakness and continued on his path of murder and destruction until it was almost too late for the entire world. This is where the world is headed again. Islamic extremists have rooted themselves in communities across the globe. Soon the riots will spread from the Middle East to all over Europe and the US, as they already have, yet this time there will not be any way to stop them.

The extremists have learned a very valuable lesson: kill a few Americans, kill a few Israelis, and the world will do nothing but bend its knee and beg for you to stop. The extremists attack and murder innocent civilians, yet there is no response due to the fear that the extremists will retaliate. The world’s response has been weak, if not nonexistent.

Islamic extremism is the weed that needs to be plucked from the garden before it spreads and destroys all that is held dear. The Western nations have a decision to make: strike back at the heart of the beast that bares it’s fangs to the world, or continue to fruitlessly appease and risk becoming an Islamic nation themselves.

A Risky Alliance: The Danger of Arming Syrian Rebels

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830_largeby Frank Spano:

Time and time again, the United States has set itself up for long-term failure in the interest of preserving short-term face. American forces fighting in Afghanistan have faced threats from training and munitions provided to the Afghan fighters in the 1980s that led to the Taliban’s rise to power. In that instance, the United States chose to arm a rebel force in an effort to defeat a Soviet invasion of a country with limited strategic importance, in order to maintain its position in the “cause du jour” of stamping out communism wherever it may exist.

Today, though the cause has changed slightly, we find ourselves ready to jump headlong into supporting the underdog in a fight to establish “a just and democratic state” in Syria. Though the long-term negative ramifications of arming the Afghan Mujahedeen were not immediately apparent, the present-day question of dumping arms into the Syrian civil war could pose immediate negative results for the United States and its interests abroad.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced the Syria Stabilization Act of 2013 last week, calling for sanctions against supporters of the al-Assad regime, humanitarian relief for refugees, and the arming of Syrian rebel forces. Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the steps were necessary amid indications Assad used chemical weapons and because “[t]he greatest humanitarian crisis is unfolding in and around Syria.”

Assad’s forces have killed 80,000 people and displaced nearly 3 million more during the two-year-old uprising. There is growing concern he might lose control of his chemical weapons stockpiles. Those weapons likely were used against Syrian civilians. Meanwhile, the “security vacuum” within Syria has provided an unobstructed operating environment for Shia and Sunni extremists who “could in the future threaten the security of the United States and its partners.”

One group, Jhabat al-Nusra, is an immediate threat. The group, otherwise known as the Al-Nusra Front, is a primarily Sunni terrorist group with sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. A Quilliam Foundation report on Al-Nusra indicates the group’s main objectives were decided during meetings in later 2011 and include:

1. “to establish a group including many existing jihadists, linking them together into one coherent entity,

2. To reinforce and strengthen the consciousness of the Islamist nature of the conflict,

3. To build military capacity for the group, seizing opportunities to collect weapons and train recruits, and to create safe havens by controlling physical places upon which to exercise their power,

4. To create an Islamist state in Syria, and
5. To establish a ‘Caliphate’ in Bilad al-Sham (the Levant).”

While Menendez’s proposed legislation limits American support only to opposition forces which “have been properly vetted and share common values and interests with the United States” senior members of the somewhat more conventional Free Syrian Army (FSA) describe al-Nusra as “[t]he strongest military force in the area.” Younger FSA members look to the group with reverence due to its efficiency and prowess in battle against the Syrian Army, while some even called the group “the special forces of Aleppo.” From the FSA’s perspective, al-Nusra is well-positioned to influence any successive government. Most assuredly, if al-Nusra has its way, such a government will be dominated by Shariah law and far from the democracy the United States and its allies hope to establish.

Read more at IPT