 America needs a streamlined intelligence bureaucracy. What we’re getting from the president, argues 9/11 Commission member John Lehman, is a lot of legalisms and political correctness. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the impotence of our counterterrorism policy than the Pentagon report on why Army Major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.
It was issued quietly last Friday, only to be buried on Page 10 of Saturday’s New York Times, and illustrates the deadly fusion of mindless bureaucracy with obsessive political correctness. The report tells us of a bureaucratic system in which the Muslim major was continually promoted “…despite concerns from his superiors.” While Islamism is hardly mentioned, a full chapter is devoted to the psychological stress that afflicts all Army doctors.
We are told by the secretary of Defense that a major cause was that the military is burdened by “…attitudes mostly rooted in the Cold War.” We are told by the co-author of the report that the problem is not rooted in Islam. “Suppose it were fundamentalist Christian-inspired… Our concern is not with religion.” Oh, I see; we must be equally vigilant for Mennonite jihad. Any intelligence bureaucrat rash enough to act on experience and insight will soon find their careers going nowhere, dismissed as a “cowboy.” Just as with the undie bomber, there was ample intelligence about Major Hasan’s terrorist sympathies in the bureaucracy. But bureaucracy is about process not outcome, and here process was adhered to and, as before, the system did indeed work; but the 13 patients died. So, nothing here to look at, move along. To deal with the crippling problem of bureaucratic bloat in intelligence, the 9/11 Commission on which I served urgently recommended the creation of a Director of National Intelligence with power to break up the bureaucratic layers and stovepipes and radically reduce the bloat by controlling the budgets, hiring and firing, and personnel policies of the entire intelligence community.
Congress agreed and created the post, but it is deeply upsetting that both Bush and Obama have ignored the intent of the commission. First, Bush created yet another vast new bureaucracy in the DNI, and now Obama will not give his DNI power over budgets or people across the agencies. He is just one more voice. Mindless bureaucracy and irrational political correctness did not of course arrive in Washington with Obama. What he added to this devil’s brew was an obsession with legalism and law enforcement. As explained by the administration in congressional testimony in December, it is now official Obama policy that for information in the intelligence bureaucracy to be acted on (for instance, putting someone on a watch list because of a warning from that person’s father that he might be a terrorist, say, or proposing that a Muslim officer’s jihadist sympathies should be considered by Army promotion boards), such information first must meet the legal evidentiary standard set in the Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio. To wit: “Reasonable suspicion requires ‘articulable’ facts which… warrant a determination that an individual is… or has been engaged in … terrorist activities.” Thus any intelligence bureaucrat rash enough to act on experience and insight will soon find their careers going nowhere, dismissed as a “cowboy.” And if there comes yet another terrorist attack? Well, rest assured that the entire government will be focused on forensics—“we will bring these criminals to justice”—and making sure the terrorists are given the full rights of U.S. citizens so that the Muslim world and al Qaeda will be impressed by our fairness.
Oh, and be sure to remind them that we are pressing ahead with our top priority of prosecuting the CIA interrogators of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and court-martialing the three Navy SEALs who punched the murderer of four Americans in Iraq. John Lehman was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission. Daily Beast 
 A GROUP of influential religious leaders in Yemen have threatened to declare jihad - holy war - if foreign troops intervene to stem the spread of al-Qa'ida in the country. The edict is a clear warning to the United States as it plans to step up its military involvement in the country.
Gingrich: "Where In The Muslim World Have We Seen Any Battle Cry ... To Condemn? Where Is The Condemnation? At What Point Do You Have To Say 'Enough?" Everyone must watch this! I think this may be the best speech I have ever seen, by any politician, on the threat we face from Islam.
Former Republican congressional leader Newt Gingrich discusses the war on terror at the National Press Club. Still very much applicable.
 Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer, a controversial strategist and world traveler, and the author of 25 books, including the recent bestselling thriller, The War After Armageddon, and the forthcoming Endless War (March, 2010), which examines the history–and future–of conflict between Islam and the West. An opinion columnist for the New York Post and popular media commentator, he became Fox News Network’s first Strategic Analyst in 2009. FP: Ralph Peters, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Peters: Great to reconnect with you, Jamie. FP: What are your thoughts regarding the recent botched terrorist attack on Christmas Day on Flight 253? Peters: Well, I have to separate my thoughts and my feelings. First, the feelings: Outrage.
Not so much at the bomber, who was just fulfilling his duty to commit jihad against Christians on their most important holiday (with any dead Jews as a bonus), but at the stunning lack of interest or concern on the part of our partying president and his paladins. Hey, why interrupt your holiday just because an Islamist terrorist (well, they don’t exist, right?) tried to kill 300 innocents and almost pulled it off?
And, of course, we were all instantly reassured when Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (whose real interest seems to be harassing law-abiding citizens at airports, while preparing to push through citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants) told us that the system worked. I mean, God help us, you and I don’t live in the same universe as our “leaders.” On the thoughts side: President Obama, sooner or later, has to take responsibility for something. His call for yet another review in the wake of the failed attack had the primary purpose of deflecting blame from the administration.
Well, the military maxim applies: A leader is responsible for everything his subordinates do, or fail to do. All his adult life, Obama wanted to be president. Now it’s time for him to actually be a president. That means taking responsibility. FP: How much confidence, exactly, do you have in this administration providing safety to Americans against our enemies? Peters: Unfortunately, I have no faith–none–in the administration’s seriousness, when it comes to protecting Americans. A president who insists, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that every next terrorist is just an “isolated extremist” with no connection to Islam isn’t interested in solving the problem. FP: How about our intelligence system in this case? Peters: It failed. But, to be fair, many things that seem obvious in retrospect weren’t necessarily obvious in advance.
Our intelligence system has two pertinent problems (among many others): It’s dealing with a literally unmanageable volume of data, and (according to my friends still inside the system), the post 9-11 “reforms,” such as creating a Director of National Intelligence and the National Counter Terrorism Center, simply created additional layers of bureaucracy.
We’re fighting a lean, mean, fast, ruthless enemy. Our response? Bring more of yesterday’s senior officials out of retirement and hire more lawyers. Maybe we should just sue al Qaeda and see how splendidly our civilian-justice approach to terror works. FP: Your view of Janet Napolitano? Why is she still heading Homeland Security? Peters: I’d rather not view Janet Napolitano at all. This woman is so far out of her depth that it can’t be measured with Newtonian metrics. She was a politically correct appointment, period. On the positive side, word is that she’ll be gone in the next few months–Obama’s too vain to fire her right now, while the administration’s under fire over the Christmas terror attempt, but he realizes what a political liability she’s become. There’s another, unfortunate, side to this. When representing our country, especially on security matters, appearance and physical presence matter. It would be great if that were not so, but facts are facts.
Even if Napolitano were a security genius, she doesn’t project a forceful, capable image to our deadly enemies (or to our allies). Again, every one of Obama’s cabinet-level appointments has been about domestic politics, not about their effectiveness on the world stage. Well, at least he can’t blame Bush for Napolitano. Read more at FPM
 by Stephen Brown When it comes to the scourge of Somali piracy, the latest incident leaves one wondering whether to laugh or cry. At the very least, it should cause heads to shake and have people asking how the West is ever going to win the War On Terror. The military news publication, Strategy Page, reports this week that the Dutch frigate, HNLMS Eversten, was ordered to release 13 Somali pirates it had captured earlier this month.
The pirates were attacking a merchant ship when the Dutch intervened and apprehended them and their vessel. However, instead of being clapped in irons to await trial, the Dutch captain was ordered to put the pirates back on their boat and release them. In addition, the Dutch sailors’ also had to provide the pirates, who not long ago would have been hung on the spot, with food and fuel to return to Somalia. (It is a wonder they were not sent on their way with apologies for any inconvenience.) The only consolation regarding this sad state of affairs concerned the pirates’ weapons: they were not returned. But the way things are going, Western naval crews may eventually have to do just that, or be required to supply a substitute, like cash or DVDs (The Pirates of the Caribbean might be a big hit) to keep their former captives entertained during their trip home. Once back at their bases, one can be assured such pillow-soft treatment will see the pirates not hesitate to return to terrorizing international shipping as soon as possible. They can easily obtain new weapons in war-torn Somalia. The International Maritime Bureau estimates the pirates’ number at about a thousand, organized in well-armed groups of 15 to 20. Last year, they earned about $50 million in ransom money from ships they had seized. In the past, al Qaeda and Islamists in Somalia have both praised Somali piracy as part of the “fight against the West.” A leader of a Somali Islamist group called the pirates “part of the mujahedeen. “They are waging war against Christian nations, who want to misuse the Somali coast,” he said. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the surge in pirate attacks in 2008. It called the campaign to seize ships and hold them for ransom a justifiable “new strategy”, since “fighters who aspire to establish the caliphate must control the seas and waterways.” Counterterrorism consultant Olivier Guitta revealed the importance of the Somali piracy campaign to al Qaeda. Guitta stated al Qaeda “intends to take control of the Gulf of Aden and the southern entrance of the Red Sea, calling the area “strategic” to the Islamic terrorist group. Al-Qaeda’s goal in seizing control of the vital waterways around the Horn of Africa leading to the Suez Canal is the removal of Western military bases from the Arabian Peninsula. It believes sea lanes weakened by “acts of piracy” and mujahedeen attacks will accomplish this. The Somali piracy campaign also fits in nicely with al Qaeda’s plan to disrupt the American and other Western economies. It knows Western countries derive their military and cultural strength from their economic power, hence al Qaeda’s attack on America’s World Trade Center. Al Qaeda wants to draw America and its allies into as many security sideshows as possible in order to further drain their treasuries. The New York Times reports that after 9/11, for example, the Department of Homeland Security spent $40 billion on the aviation security system alone. Tens of millions more can probably be added to that sum after the Northwest Airlines terrorist incident on Christmas Day, making it an al Qaeda victory in this respect despite the plot’s failure. On the high seas around Somalia, al Qaeda’s strategy of death by a thousand financial cuts sees Western and other countries facing, besides ransom payments and the huge expense of maintaining an anti-piracy naval presence, increased insurance costs. Ships that reroute around South Africa to avoid the Somalia region, while escaping the insurance penalty, incur higher operating bills due to the longer voyage. Considering the importance the Somali pirate campaign holds for al Qaeda in its long-term plans, it is a wonder that Western strategists have only come up with the harmless “catch and release” tactic as its main counter measure. Resembling a form of appeasement, it has not worked and instead has led to an increase in attacks. Statistics from the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau, as reported in New York Times this week, bear this out. Pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden and along the Somali coast have increased 200 per cent since 2007.
While 111 ships were attacked in this area in 2008, 214 have been attacked this year. Only last Monday, pirates seized a chemical tanker with a crew of 26 and a Greek bulk carrier. Strategy Page notes that although the number of attacks was higher this year, the international naval patrols established to thwart the pirates reduced the number of successful attacks from 40 per cent in 2008 to 25 per cent in 2009. The ransom demands, however, increased and the pirates are now operating off Somalia’s east coast and in the Gulf of Aden to avoid the anti-piracy patrols. Unfortunately, one can only expect the number of pirate attacks around Somalia to increase in the future. Somali pirates know Western countries seldom use force to free ships and pay large ransoms. According to Strategy Page, Western countries also refuse to attack the pirates’ bases for fear of causing civilian casualties and to avoid becoming bogged down in a land campaign in Somalia. The fact the pirates seldom face prosecution and are usually released make piracy in that region almost a risk-free crime that encourages attacks. More unsettling, however, is that these weak, ineffective policies on the part of Western countries indicate a moral bankruptcy that could decide the issue of this war. FPM
 If the passengers of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 survived their flight to return home to their families, like veterans returning home from war they are a reminder of all those who did not survive, and all those who will not survive in a more successful attack.The 9/11 hijackers, and Richard Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab all managed to bypass airline security, bring weapons on board passenger jets and execute their attacks. The passengers on American Airlines 63 and Northwest Airlines Flight 253 survived not because of the gargantuan infrastructures of airline security or law enforcement, but because ordinary passengers and staff became suspicious and acted, and because the latter two plots relied on tricky detonations that were unsuccessful. But their failures mean little in the bigger picture. Reid and Abdulmutallab are only two of the hundreds of thousands of Muslim men drawn from around the world to participate in one of its many Jihads against America, England, Russia, Israel or India. To devout Muslims the entire world is a battlefield, a map dotted in red and green. And for every Abdulmutallab who fails, there is a Nidal Malik Hasan who succeeds in killing his targets. Because as long as we keep fighting a holding action against the tide of Jihadis swarming from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the terrorists only need to be lucky once, we need to be lucky every time. And we know what we won't be. That not every flight will land safely on the airfield. Not every group of passengers will disembark shaking with relief. The terrorists only need to be lucky once. And while the TSA rushes to implement a new set of overreaching regulations that will accomplish nothing except to make passengers miserable, before quietly abolishing them after a month or two-- Abdulmutallab's success demonstrates the futility of airline security as we know it. The TSA, the CIA, the NSA did not stop Abdulmutallab even though his own father had given them advanced warning, and his profile should have tripped numerous switches. A passenger sitting next to him did that. Just as it was the passengers that saved the White House on 9/11. If the security apparatus can't even stop a terrorist traveling under his own name, whose own father turns him in, it can't stop anyone. And indeed it can't. A national security apparatus built to take on foreign intelligence agencies is ill matched against an international terrorist network based out of religious schools and universities, and funded by the oil Sheikh "best friends" of their own bosses. And airport security which can't stop its own employees from stealing passenger's luggage, has no real hope of stopping an actual terrorist. The very decentralization and creative planning of terrorist attacks means that the best hope of stopping them lies not in the bureaucracy, but in the ordinary citizen sitting next to the terrorist. The government has pretended to be omnipotent while in reality the War on Terror has turned into a waiting game at home and a proxy war abroad. That is because while airline passengers are being strip-searched and soldiers are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, money continues flowing from oil rich Gulf states into the coffers of terrorists, who in turn recruit young men from the Muslim world eager to fight and send them off to a Third World war zone or to carry off a terrorist attack in the First World. If the United States government really wanted to stop Islamic terrorism, it could better do so in Ridyah, Karachi and Dubai. Instead the religious, political and financial backers of the terrorist war against the West not only get a pass, but a bow from Obama, and we go on playing the waiting game, waiting until the terrorists get lucky, and a planet blows up in the air.While Abdulmutallab may have failed to kill the passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, he succeeded in becoming a front page story, in reminding Americans to be afraid of terrorists, in canceling flights and panicking the authorities into a response that is already producing a backlash from passengers. The whole snarl of chaos that Abdulmutallab and his higher ups have tied will drive donations and recruits from the Muslim world to Al Queda, while making the case for backing away from military tactics and toward diplomatic ones. While the Obama administration has not yet officially sat down at the negotiating table with Al Queda, attacks like Abdulmutallab's make it more likely that back channel negotiations will be used to avoid any terrorist attacks during the politically critical period before the 2012 election. And if that seems farfetched, remember that left wing Israeli Prime Minister Peres in his time cut just such a deal with Arafat, and the United States has traded arms for hostages before. We have recruited the murderers of US soldiers to fight side by side with us in Iraq, and we're hoping to do the same thing in Afghanistan. Abdulmutallab's attack demonstrates the ability of Islamic terrorists to spread terror, even when their actual attack fails. And there is no antidote to terror except an empowered citizenry. But an empowered citizenry is exactly what the government is afraid of. It is also exactly what the terrorists are afraid of. They know that they can get buy fake identifications, bypass airport security and get on board the plane. And if they can't, another one of them will. And another. What they are afraid of is that when they rise for their climactic moment of homicidal martyrdom, it will not be a US Marshall coming for them, but the passengers around them. The terrorists are not afraid of the United States government. They were never afraid of the United States government. And why should they, when the Saudi Lobby insures that Islamist groups have free run of the country, and the little man in the White House bows before the Saudi king. When Rules of Engagement favor the Taliban, and captured Al Queda terrorists are released into the wild, where they plot and carry out more terrorist attacks. Why in the world should they be afraid of a US government that bends over backward to reassure the Muslim world of its love for Islam? Islamic terrorists are afraid of US soldiers, but not of the generals and politicians who give them their orders. And they are afraid of the ordinary Americans and Europeans they are surrounded by every day when they infiltrate their country. They are not afraid of governments, because a government is only as strong as its weakest politician, as its most terrorist sympathizing diplomat, as its most brown nosing general. When the artillery comes down they can hide. When the bombs fall they can escape and wait. Because sooner or later governments get tired and go away. But people never go away. And the people can only be defeated through their government. The purpose of terrorist attacks is to terrorize a population through its government, to destroy morale in order to force political concessions. Targeting airplanes disrupts travel and isolates countries making them easier targets for the Ummah to carve apart. Targeting planes, buses, bridges and all means of transportation teaches people to be afraid whenever they go anywhere... which in turn teaches them to be helpless in the face of government security measures and random violence, to detach themselves emotionally and submit. To be Muslims. This plan depends on the government to behave exactly the way the terrorists expect it to. To be incompetent, to talk a good game and do nothing, to be too afraid to call out Islamic terrorism for what it is, to repress its own citizens rather than profile actual terrorists, and finally to cut a deal when it has gotten tired of fighting. What the terrorists are truly afraid of is that they will not be dealing with the weak spines of politicians, but with a public that has finally had enough. That will do unto the terrorists as the terrorists themselves have done. That will stand up and strike them down, without benefit of lawyers or human rights activists. What the terrorists are most afraid of is that the free people whom they would enslave will stand up against them and fight back.
 For six years the burning cause of the American left was the fate of the captured terrorists being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Civil rights lawyers, pundits and Democratic congressmen joined voices to denounce military tribunals, detention of captured terrorists without access to their ACLU lawyers and of course that unholy terror of MSNBC commentators, waterboarding. And they got their way. The Bush Administration, that for all its faults that had at least cared about protecting Americans against Islamic terrorism, under pressure from the courts gave in, and when the official candidate of Islamic terrorists, MSNBC commentators and ACLU lawyers took office, it was all over but the suicide bombings. Barry Hussein signed the order closing Guantánamo Bay, released many of its residents, and gave civilian trials to others. And thus far of the terrorists who have been released, one in seven has returned to terrorist activity. And that number likely underestimates the true picture by quite a lot. In 2006 Thomas Wilner, the lawyer for a number of the terrorists, penned an emotional article for the Los Angeles Times calling Gitmo, an American Gulag and a living nightmare. Naturally of course all his Kuwaiti clients were innocent little lambs who just happened to be hanging around Afghanistan before being snatched up into the cruel and unfeeling maw of the US military industrial complex, inhumanly tortured and deprived of their humanity. Two years later after his release, one of Wilner's innocent lambs, Abdallah al-Ajmi, hailed as the "Lion of Guantanamo" murdered 13 Iraqi policemen in a suicide bombing. Naturally instead of admitting that he had worked tirelessly to release a Jihadi terrorist from Gitmo, leaving him free to kill, Wilner instead blamed the US government for turning his formerly lamb-like client who had been picking flowers in the valley of Kandahar into a violent terrorist by imprisoning him in Guantánamo Bay. This of course is the usual sort of thing that defense attorneys claim when their completely innocent clients who had previously torched an orphanage and bombed a bus full of nuns, are released and unsurprisingly go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. "It's the prison life that did it, your honor," the lawyers argue. "If only my client hadn't been caught and sent to the hole, he'd still be a lamb." In 1980 many of the same liberals who fell in love with the Gitmo killers embraced a murderer and bank robber named Jack Abbott. They praised his literary skills and fought for his release. Norman Mailer helped publish his book. Susan Sarandon named her son after him. Less than two months after his release Abbott demanded to use a restaurant restroom. He was refused by the night manager. In turn Abbott stabbed the man to death. His defense was that his dehumanizing treatment in prison had made him incapable of acting in any other way. But what had become a laughable defense to most Americans, was brushed off not just for Abdallah al-Ajmi or the other innocent lamb/terrorists of Guantanamo Bay who went back to their old profession once they were shipped back to Yemen, Kuwait or Russia-- but for Islamic terrorism in general. It is the most common defense used on behalf of Palestinian Arab terrorism, when every charge is met with, "But what choice do they have. Israel built a wall and imprisoned them. They're only responding to the dehumanization inflicted on them." The presumption behind this defense is that the terrorists are always innocent victims and their terrorism is the consequence of oppression by their targets. An argument often accompanied by the W.H. Auden citation from his poem September 1, 1939; "I and the public know, What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return." Often those quoting the stanza remain unaware of the poem they are quoting from, and its awful relevance. September 1, 1939 was the date of Hitler's invasion of Poland. The previous line that is generally left out by the bleeding hearts who cite Auden, "What huge imago made, A psychopathic god" is of course a reference to Hitler. Even with German troops marching into Poland, Auden still hid Nazi Germany behind the rhetoric of victimology, painting the Nazi forces as much victims as oppressors. But it might be just as well to draw from W.H. Auden's poem, Spain, written in support of the Soviet Union's work in the Spanish Civil War. "To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder." The necessary murder of course is that murder which must be committed in the name of a cause, as differentiated from imperialist murders which are committed to stop the people who are committing murders in the name of a cause.
The suicide bombings of Muslim terrorists today, like the Red Terror, are one of those necessary murders being committed by the Jack Abbotts with beards and keffiyahs running around the world today. After 13 dead in Mosul whose families he has never visited, his lawyer of course has no regrets. "Guantanamo took a kid -- a kid who wasn't all that bad -- and it turned him into a hostile, hardened individual," Wilner said. The kid in question being Abdallah al-Ajmi, a Jihadist who had tried to fight in Chechnya and then Afghanistan, threatened his own lawyer and on release, went to fight in Iraq and murdered 13 Iraqi police officers. The real story of course as always is behind the scenes. Thomas Wilner and his prestigious law firm, Shearman & Sterling, are not some gang of bearded radicals huddling in an East Village basement office. They're a prestigious law firm whose bill was footed by the Kuwaiti government. Shearman & Sterling did not simply have managing partners like Wilner represent captured terrorists, they launched a massive lobbying campaign on their behalf.
 by Daniel Greenfield The seeming suddenness with which Islamic terrorism went from a problem happening “out there” in the hinterlands to a problem happening across the street can be credited as much to the Islamists themselves, as to their enablers.
What the backwardness of the Muslim world and the collapse of its empires of conquered regions into colonies themselves, ruled over by European powers achieved to break down Pan-Islamism, seemingly for good, was swiftly undone.
And it was undone by the fact that virtually every major power in the 20th century fostered Pan-Islamism as a tool against its enemies. Certainly the worst example of this phenomenon was the Cold War during which the US and the USSR helped create modern Islamic terrorism, by alternately training, arming and turning Muslim guerrillas and terrorists into weapons against each other.
While the USSR helped create the modern Middle Eastern terrorist, the US helped create the Asian Muslim terrorist.
And together, from the PLO to the Mujadeen, from Al Queda to the PFLP, from the Madrassas to the Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University, the beast grew and swelled to fill a vacuum that the end of the Cold War created. And as the modern Muslim terrorist was created out of the Cold War, so were the two major arguments used by conservative and liberal Westerners for supporting or tolerating Islamic terrorism.
The Soviet Union crafted the core argument used by liberals who defend the sort of headchopping Islamist barbarians who would be happy enough to nail them to a wall simply for not having a beard, when it differentiated between “ancient” Pan-Islamism as a tool of religious repression and “modern” Pan-Islamism as a means by which oppressed people revolt against imperialist tyranny. To understand just how far back this goes, consider this defense of Pan-Islamism by the Chairman of the Communist Party of Indonesia in 1922. But now one must first understand what the word Pan-Islamism really means. Once, it had a historical significance and meant that Islam must conquer the whole world, sword in hand, and that this must take place under the leadership of the Caliph, and the Caliph must be of Arabian origin. About 400 years after the death of Mohammed the Muslims split into three great states and thus the Holy War lost its significance for the entire Muslim world… So Pan-Islamism no longer has its original meaning, but now has in practice an entirely different meaning.
Today, Pan-Islamism signifies the national liberation struggle, because for the Muslims Islam is everything: not only religion, but also the state, the economy, food, and everything else. And so Pan-Islamism now means the brotherhood of all Muslim peoples, and the liberation struggle not only of the Arab but also of the Indian, the Javanese and all the oppressed Muslim peoples.
This brotherhood means the practical liberation struggle not only against Dutch but also against English, French and Italian capitalism, therefore against world capitalism as a whole. That is what Pan-Islamism now means in Indonesia among the oppressed colonial peoples, according to their secret propaganda – the liberation struggle against the different imperialist powers of the world. This is a new task for us. Just as we want to support the national struggle, we also want to support the liberation struggle of the very combative, very active 250 million Muslims living under the imperialist powers. Therefore I ask once again: Should we support Pan-Islamism, in this sense?
The speech in question may date back to 1922 but its sentiments are very modern and commonplace among liberals in the West today. Their view is that Islamism is a people’s liberation struggle against Western imperialism and capitalism because it serves as a common bridge between Islam and the Left today in 2009, just as it did then in 1922.
This reinterpretation of Islamism as an expression of economic and political discontent today tends to be described under labels such as resistance to Globalization or to corrupt Western “puppet regimes”, but it is in fact a carbon copy of the Soviet approach to Pan-Islamism.
This ideological approach enables the left to co-opt Islam in the struggle against Western hegemony. Meanwhile Islamists have long since learned to put forward economic and political grievances in order to make common cause with the left. Meanwhile on the right, the American approach to Islam, as exemplified by the Green Belt strategy or the current War on Terror (but not on Islam) is that Muslims were potentially valuable allies whose religion would help create common ground against Communism and other evils. Disastrous incarnations of this approach included Carter’s backing for the Ayatollah Khomeni that resulted in the totalitarian Shiite Iran we know today and America’s longstanding with the Saudi royal family, which has exported Sunni terrorism almost as assiduously as its oil. More at CFP
 Obama's Nobel "lecture" offers critics the usual cornucopia of opportunities for criticism but I shall focus on just two statements: "I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars."
And here I thought there were three wars. Obama's two are Iraq and Afghanistan; missing is what George W. Bush termed the "war on terror" and I call the "war on radical Islam." Obama apparently reduces that third one to Al-Qaeda and counts it as just part of the Afghan war. His mistake has real consequences; long after American troops have left Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamists will be attacking and subverting us. If we don't see their efforts as a war, we lose. "Religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam."
Here, Obama follows his predecessor in presenting himself as an interpreter of Islam.
I ridiculed "Imam Bush" for telling Muslims about true Islam and its distortion, and now I must ridicule "Sheikh Obama" for the same. He's a politician, not a theologian. He's now a Christian, not a Muslim.
He should steer completely clear from the topic of who are good or bad Muslims. Daniel Pipes
 Trying suspected 9/11 terrorists in civilian court is wrong on several levels.I get where President Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. are coming from. They think that if we change our way of life, the terrorists will have won.And in principle, I agree. If upholding our values makes fighting the war on terror harder, then it should be harder.
That's why I don't care very much that it will cost more money to try suspected terrorists in the Big Apple than it would in the state-of-the-art facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Similarly, while I think the security concerns stemming from a trial in New York are real, I think we can handle them. And, again, just because something is harder, or even more dangerous, that doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't do it. That's the whole point behind "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute." Some things just aren't for sale.
Nonetheless, I think the decision to send Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his buddies to a civilian trial is a travesty.
Ultimately, the disagreement is one of first principles. If we are at war, then the rules of war apply. The fact that this is a war unlike others we've fought should not mean that it isn't a war at all.
Don't tell that to Obama. He's made it clear that he doesn't see the threat as an unconventional war but as a conventional law enforcement problem. The attorney general insists that 9/11 is a matter for civilian courts.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says attacks such as 9/11 should be thought of as "man-caused disasters." Her "No. 1" priority after the Ft. Hood shootings was to bring Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to justice -- a fine answer for a law enforcement official but not from someone charged with protecting the homeland. The war on terror itself has morphed into "overseas contingency operations."
Just as telling, Obama insists that the decision to move Mohammed to civilian court was entirely Holder's. This is deceptive nonsense. Even if technically true, the choice to let the attorney general make the decision was the real decision. The commander in chief opted to hand off jurisdiction over enemy combatants to the cops. He can't duck that responsibility by saying it wasn't his call.
But there's a more immediate problem. This won't be a show trial, strictly speaking. But it will be a trial for show.
Prominent defenders of the decision, in and out of the administration, insist that this trial is at least partly to benefit America's image around the world. That's a laudable goal -- and another example of why this is not strictly speaking a mere law enforcement issue. But I'm dubious that will be the result.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) defended the administration on Fox News on Sunday, and echoed suggestions from the White House that even if the accused are acquitted on a technicality, they won't be released. They would go back to the legal purgatory known as "preventive detention." That is the right policy; these are dangerous men, after all. But it is an affront to civilian jurisprudence. Under military law, preventive detention is a well-established norm. Under civilian law, it's an affront.
Throw into the equation that these men weren't read their rights, were interrogated in a manner that is illegal in civilian courts, are being tried with little if any possibility of an impartial jury -- and the fact that Holder all but insists they'll be convicted -- and it all adds up to a farce.
Moreover, the administration has not abolished military tribunals. Holder is sending the Al Qaeda suspects in the attack on the destroyer Cole to one. Hence, enemies who attack us abroad are treated like enemy combatants with fewer rights, while terrorists who managed to kill civilians here at home are treated like American citizens. That is perverse.
If history is a guide, this trial will unavoidably come at a cost in terms of leaked intelligence and propaganda victories for our enemies.
Obama's defenders don't believe it. "Does anyone think," asks Joshua Micah Marshall, a prominent liberal blogger, that the "Nuremberg trials ... advanced [the defendants'] causes?"
Obama himself invoked the Nuremberg trials during the presidential campaign. "Part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities," he explained, "we still gave them a day in court, and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law."
Such arguments are revealing on at least two counts. First, the Nuremberg trials were military tribunals -- it was understood that the Nazis were not mere criminals.
Second, they took place after we had won the war against Nazi Germany. We could afford such a spectacle because the Nazi cause was dead.
Meanwhile, the war on terror lives. Just don't tell that to Barack Obama.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com LATimes
 What a surprise it must have been when Major Nidal Malik Hasan woke up from his coma to find himself not in paradise but in Brooke Army Medical Center, deep in the heart of Texas, under security so tight that there were armed guards patrolling both the intensive-care unit and checkpoints at the nearest freeway off-ramp. This was not the finalé he had scripted when he gave away all his earthly goods — his desk lamp and air mattress, his frozen broccoli and spinach, his copies of the Koran. He had told his imam he was planning to visit his parents before deploying to Afghanistan. He did not mention that his parents had been dead for nearly 10 years. For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant.
The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can't be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic's head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood.
In their first response, officials betrayed an eagerness to assume it was the first; the more we learn, the more we have cause to fear it was the second, a new battlefield where our old weapons don't work very well and our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share. Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can't recognize, much less understand.
 In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes. Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Convention, nor are they among those covered by it. But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents. The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense-- information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it. This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime-- something for which people have been executed, as they should have been. Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code. "Loose lips sink ships" was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions. Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war.
The very phrase "war on terrorism" is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us. The mindset of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way-- the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law." Read it all at Townhall
 The second they heard about the Fort Hood massacre, millions of thinking Americans wondered in their gut: "Oh God, is this another crazy Muslim terrorist carrying out a one-man jihad, as has happened so many times before?" Then, when the alleged perpetrator's name and religion were made public (Nidal Malik Hasan, a lifelong Muslim) along with eyewitness reports he had shouted the obligatory pre-terror-attack proclamation, "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is greatest") before commencing his orgy of slaughter, their suspicions were confirmed: This was surely a major attack on the American homeland by a Muslim terrorist. Further evidence quickly rolled in: Hasan had reportedly refused to fight fellow Muslims, called the war on terror a "war on Islam," told a co-worker Muslims had a right to rise up and attack Americans, and reportedly had posted online his astoundingly twisted belief that an Islamic suicide bomber was morally equivalent to a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades. In other words, although the Army had many warnings Hasan was a certifiable, America-hating, jihadist "ticking time bomb" waiting to go off, it did nothing to avert last week's terror attack. Why? And why, after the truth about Hasan became undeniable following his mass slaughter, does the government, as well as its mouthpiece the establishment press, agonize in their usual pathetic manner over what could possibly have motivated the Army psychiatrist to coldly, methodically murder 13 and wound 38 others? Why, after a Muslim commits a terrorist act, do authorities always announce almost instantaneously – before they could possibly know – that the attack was not terror-related?
Why do the news media always torture themselves and their readers with the most wildly improbable explanations in their attempts to avoid the obvious truth?
Before we answer these questions, lest you think I overstate the case, take a quick trip with me down jihad memory lane. - Remember the beltway snipers? In October 2002, Muslim convert John Muhammad along with 17-year-old Lee Boyd "John" Malvo paralyzed the Washington metropolitan area for three bloody weeks, killing 10 and critically injuring three others. But after their capture, most in the media were loath to focus seriously on Islamic jihad as a motive, despite the fact that Muhammad had praised the Sept. 11 hijackers and had threatened to commit major terrorist acts within the U.S.
Like alcoholics uncomfortable with facing the painful truth, the media retreated into comfortable denial. Their standard analysis of what made Muhammad tick included anything and everything except jihad. Thus, the Los Angeles Times offered up no less than six possible motives for Muhammad's killing spree, according to Daniel Pipes, an expert on militant Islam. They included "his 'stormy relationship' with his family, his 'stark realization' of loss and regret, his perceived sense of abuse as an American Muslim post-9/11, his desire to 'exert control' over others, his relationship with Malvo, and his trying to make a quick buck," said Pipes – "but did not mention jihad." -
"Likewise," he adds, "a Boston Globe article found 'there must have been something in his social interaction – in his marriage or his military career – that pulled the trigger.'" -
Read more,,,, -
Source: WND
 At least 22,128 people have reportedly been killed in terror-related incidents across Pakistan in the past six years, an official report reveals, Press TV reported. According to a late Wednesday report, in the past six years, since Islamabad joined Washington in the so-called war on terror, 7004 civilians and 2637 security officials lost their lives, while 12487 terrorists were killed in security forces' retaliatory assaults, a Press TV correspondent reported. In 2003, 189 people, including 140 civilians, were killed in suicide attacks. At least 24 security officials and 25 terrorists were killed in other terror-related incidents. In 2009, 1780 citizen and 780 security officials have been killed, while the number of the terrorists claimed to be killed in counter-terrorism operations has reached to 5972. The report further revealed that from January to November this year, 58 suicide attacks took place across the country, marking 2009 the deadliest year in Pakistan as it witnessed over 56 suicide attacks in 2007, four in 2006 and seven in 2005. Most of the attacks happened in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and tribal areas while Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh had the second highest number of attacks. In the latest act of violence, a landmine blast and a militant ambush in Pakistan killed 10 Pakistani troops in Mohmand tribal area near the Afghan border. Eight soldiers were killed and two wounded in the town of Safi when their vehicle hit a landmine. In a separate incident in the same region, militants attacked an army convoy, killing two paramilitary personnel.
 When an American-born radical Islamist cleric chose to praise last week's Fort Hood shooting spree by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, part of the rationale was that no Muslim could faithfully serve the U.S. armed forces. To Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, that's because "The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam." A 2005 Canadian study of radicalism concluded that this theme is a potent tool in recruiting Muslims and turning them into violent extremists. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report was on youth radicalism and Hasan is a 39-year old with advanced college degrees. Associates are stepping forward with accounts showing that Hasan was frustrated by what he saw as an American war against his faith. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Hasan's June 2007 presentation at as part of his residency program at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Among the statements that disturbed his colleagues, Hasan declared that "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims." A student who took an environmental health class with Hasan at Uniformed Services of the Health Sciences in Bethesda describes him as someone who believed the United States was waging war against Islam. At the end of the class, all of the students had to give a presentation. Many wrote about course-related topics such as dry-cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, Lt. Col. Val Finnell said. But Hasan (who told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second,") chose instead to write about the wrongness of the war on terror. A former classmate told the New York Times that Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation approximately one year ago entitled "Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam." Hasan has not been charged in the shootings which left 13 people dead. Sources have indicated he will face a military court martial for murder charges that could bring the death penalty. According to the CSIS report, "the perception that Islam is under attack from the West" is the most important factor in persuading would-be jihadists that they must preemptively and violently defend Islam from these perceived enemies. According to a summary of the report's findings: "A few will act on these events and support or carry out terrorism in an attempt to change Western foreign or military policy. These individuals take the violent defense of Islam as a personal goal and religious obligation." The idea that the United States is fighting a war against Islam has been advanced by Osama bin Laden, who has cited Western efforts to isolate Hamas and support for a peacekeeping force as evidence of a "Zionist-crusaders war on Islam." Awlaki, a former spiritual leader at Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, works to encourage jihadist activity with online lectures from his home base in Yemen. Awlaki, may have crossed paths with Hasan, who attended Dar al-Hijrah in 2001. U.S. officials knew Hasan sent 10 to 20 messages to Awlaki last year and this year, but counterterrorism officials said these were consistent with a research project Hasan was conducting on post-traumatic stress disorder. Read more here,,,, Source: IPT
 Thomas L. Friedman He didn’t want to wear earplugs. Apparently, he wanted to enjoy the blast.That is what The Dallas Morning News reported about Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, the 19-year-old Jordanian accused of trying to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper.
He was caught by an F.B.I. sting operation that culminated in his arrest nearly two weeks ago — after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the F.B.I., in the garage of a Dallas office tower. “Inside the S.U.V. was a fake bomb, designed to appear similar to one used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,” The News wrote. “Authorities say Smadi thought he could detonate it with a cellphone.
After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents, and they drove several blocks away. An agent offered Smadi earplugs, but he declined, ‘indicating that he wanted to hear the blast,’ authorities said. He then dialed the phone, thinking it would trigger the bomb. ... Instead, the agents took him into custody.” If that doesn’t send a little shiver down your spine, how about this one? BBC.com reported that “it has emerged that an Al Qaeda bomber who died last month while trying to blow up a Saudi prince in Jeddah had hidden the explosives inside his body.” He reportedly inserted the bomb and detonator in his rectum to elude metal detectors. My God. Or how about this? Two weeks ago in Denver, the F.B.I. arrested Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan immigrant, and indicted him on charges of planning to set off a bomb made of the same home-brewed explosives used in the 2005 London transit bombings. He allegedly learned how to do so on a training visit to Pakistan.
The Times reported that Zazi “had bought some bomb ingredients in beauty supply stores, the authorities said, after viewing instructions on his laptop on how to build such a bomb. When an employee of the Beauty Supply Warehouse asked about the volume of materials he was buying, he remembered Mr. Zazi answering, ‘I have a lot of girlfriends.’ ” These incidents are worth reflecting on. They tell us some important things. First, we may be tired of this “war on terrorism,” but the bad guys are not. They are getting even more “creative.” Read more here,,,, Source: NYT
 By Vijay Kumar On September 11, 2001, a war was brought to our shores by a band of men, bound by a militant ideology, in an act of mass murder. The response by the United States was a so-called “War on Terror,” a reflex that has proved to be as ineffective as it has been costly. We have spent more than a trillion dollars on invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 5,000 American soldiers have died in the last eight years, and tens of thousands of American soldiers have been wounded. What has this flood of blood and money bought us? There has been no sustainable victory for the United States. There is no strategic victory; there is no political victory; there is no moral victory. And there is no peace. Islamic terrorism continues around the globe unabated. The Obama administration lately wants to avoid any taint by the phrase “War on Terror,” papering it over with even more ambiguity, calling it now an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” It’s still the same losing war, just as costly, just as ineffective. The Bush and Obama administrations’ “War on Terror”-by any name-has failed for a simple reason. It is because there is no such a thing as war on terror. Terrorism is a technique, a method, a weapon, a means to an end. Terrorism is not an enemy that can be named or identified, much less fought effectively. A “War on Terror” is a war on shadows, a war on nothing and on no one. It is a fool’s errand. Yet there is a war raging. It is a war that already had raged for 1,400 years before it was brought to our shores, a war that has laid waste to entire nations, cultures, and civilizations. The war is Universal Jihad: the eternal worldwide war on all infidel nations. Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt were Christian nations before Christianity was supplanted by Political Islam. Afghanistan was Buddhist, Iran was Zoroastrian, and Pakistan was Hindu before Radical Islam consumed their civilizations and cultures. The long-running Israeli and Palestinian conflict is not some unique standalone dispute over real estate or factionalism or any of the other wrong reasons given for it. It is simply another front in Universal Jihad’s imperialistic war for the minds and souls of man. There has never been a lasting peace there because Political Islam has no interest in making peace with infidels-and every man, woman, or child anywhere in the world who is not Muslim is branded as infidel. The crisis in the Middle East never ends because Political Islam never yields to another ideology. It does not believe in or permit of peaceful co-existence. The problem is not Jews or Israel. The only thing keeping the conflict in endless, irresolvable foment is a universal supremacist ideology that demands the conquest of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Chinese, the West and sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of Universal Jihad, its mandate, its raison d’etre is conquest of the infidels and their nations-all of them-whether by conversion, domination, or death. In Political Islam, there is no fourth choice. It does not countenance any form of permanent peace with infidels.
Read more here,,,,
Source: Western Front America H/T: DF
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