Consider five factors that had no effect on the very warm reception given by President Barack Obama to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
–While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama while being hosted by him that he is going to defy the United States.
This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama — and U.S. policy nowadays — and how little Obama will do about it.
The war in Afghanistan may be winding down. But the Pentagon’s chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world — a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate. …
… The Idaho indictment alleges in count one that between August 2012 and May 2013, Kurbanov knowingly conspired with unnamed co-conspirators to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The indictment alleges that the material support and resources included himself, computer software and money.
In count two, the indictment further alleges that the defendant conspired to provide material support and resources, including himself, to terrorists knowing that the material support was to be used in preparation for and in carrying out an offense involving the use of a weapon of mass destruction. …
American Middle East analysts often claim that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate organization, nothing like the more radical Salafis. If true, what do we make of the fact that the most intolerant, anti-American, hate-filled Salafis and jihadis also happen to be the greatest and staunchest supporters of Morsi? Doesn’t such unequivocal support indicate shared ideologies and goals?
Consider: A few weeks ago, while discussing the ongoing protests against Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi—himself a leader of the Brotherhood—Sheikh Abdullah Badr, an Al Azhar trained scholar and professor of Islamic exegesis, made the following assertion on live TV:
… opponents are gearing up to flood Congress with calls condemning any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to gain legal status or citizenship.
The same tactic helped defeat immigration reform the last time lawmakers considered passing bills in 2006 and especially 2007, when a flood of angry calls shut down the switchboard in Congress. …
Most of you are the descendents of immigrants who came to this great nation legally, who built decent lives by living according to decent values, and passed those values unto you. Your ancestors assimilated. Most of you were raised to believe that the American dream is the chance — the opportunity — to achieve your full potential by working hard, being honest, treating people as you would have them treat you, believing in the common sense law of the land (based on the Constitution), having core values, and having faith, all to build a better life for yourself, your family, your friends, your community, your nation, and even the whole world. Your conscientious legal citizenship — your patriotism — is about to be thrown in the trash.
How did scholars of the Middle East and those engaged in moonlighting (non-specialists who write about the region) react to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013? Before the smoke cleared, some were predicting that the perpetrators would be “right-wingers” who sought to “disrupt tax day,” “neo-Nazis,” or “lone wolves.” Given that Muslims constitute 30 of 32 of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of most wanted terrorists, this represents either wishful thinking or willful blindness.
David Wheaton: Perhaps you watched the Boston Marathon bombings that killed four people and injured more than 200 others and wondered, “Why would two young Muslim men, who were granted political asylum in America years ago, educated in our schools, and received financial aid from U.S. taxpayers, set off two bombs in order to murder and maim as many Americans as possible?”
It’s a very good question. It has been said that, “All Muslims are not terrorists … but almost all terrorist attacks against America are committed by Muslims.”
Why is this? What is it about Islam — or perhaps about America? — that leads two young Muslims to murder the people that have actually taken them in?
Some people seem to be perplexed as to why a gun owner would want a high-capacity magazine for his/her weapon. A “magazine” or “clip” is a cartridge that holds the bullets that a gun can fire. The gun know-nothings ask their capacity question as if only a lunatic would want to fire more than 5 bullets before reloading. These people have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re certainly not the type of person you’d want to have defending you during a home invasion. When push comes to shove, you’re defending your own life and/or that of family, friends, and compatriots, handling a gun is not like it seems on TV. Guns are not easy to aim, handle, or reload — especially when lives are at stake. It can take years of practicing, training, or both to become proficient with a self-defense weapon. It can be difficult to neutralize an opponent, especially if he/she is moving, has superior firepower, he/she has armed accomplices, and you’re all pumped up with adrenaline and emotion (fear). Instead of trying to write an explanation of why you’d want a high-capacity magazine, watch the following public service announcement created by MB Studio Productions. If you have brains, you’ll understand. If you don’t understand, there are explanations (“In a gunfight, being able to reload with new magazines is a real advantage, and this is why police officers and licensed civilians regularly carry spare magazines for their pistols.”). If you do not want to understand, then go join the the rest of sheep who are deluded into thinking that only mercenaries should be allowed to protect the common good of this nation:
BREAKING:NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG WANTS TO REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION CLAIMING “that recent attacks on the Second Amendment have left him confident that such re-interpretation is possible.”
President Obama and his lackeys in government still insist that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of “‘workplace violence,’ despite mountains of evidence [that] clearly proves the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror.” Is the Obama administration now taking the same course with the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? How did our national security apparatus allow these brothers to slip under the radar? Two men murdered three people and injured over 175 at an international event in a great American city, and “avoid[ed] capture for three days.” The daily activities of 1 million people were paralyzed in the midst of hundreds of law enforcement personnel.
Ample evidence already exists supporting the theory that the Tsarnaev brothers’ atrocity was motivated by Islamist ideology. Even CNN admitted:
Editors’ note: This article discusses many public figures in the context of the positions they held in December 2012 when the article was submitted. There has been much turnover in government and military posts since then, but the problems caused by political correctness remain despite the changes in personnel.
As U.S. service members risk their lives to combat violent jihadists abroad, military leaders, both uniformed and civilian, capitulate to stealth jihadists at home. By bending to Islamists’ appeals for religious sensitivity, these leaders ignore the most crucial lesson of the Fort Hood massacre: Political correctness can kill.
The War on Training
A key battleground in the war of ideas between Islamists and the West is military training because Islamists seek to suppress knowledge of their beliefs and goals.[1] This campaign hit high gear in 2011 when journalist Spencer Ackerman of Wired launched a series of articles documenting “offensive” training employed by various government agencies. He highlighted, among others, FBI materials stating that Islamic doctrine calls for war against non-Muslims and equating greater religious devotion with the potential for violence.[2]
Secretary of State John Kerry has in his head every what-should-be-discredited cliché about the Middle East firmly ensconced in his head. Of course, he is not alone. I just briefed a European diplomat who came up with the exact formulation I’m going to deal with in a moment. What is disconcerting — though long familiar — is that Western policy makers hold so many ideas that are totally out of touch with reality.
They do not allow these assumptions to be questioned. On the contrary, it is astonishing to find how often individuals in elite positions have never heard counter-arguments to these beliefs. It is easy to prove that many of these ideas simply don’t make sense, but it is nearly impossible to get elite intellectuals, officials, and politicians to open their minds to these explanations.
More than a decade after the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, the U.S. administration seems no closer to identifying let alone repelling Islamist terrorists in the homeland. The 9/11 committee used the term “failure of imagination” to explain why the U.S. government was unable to prevent the catastrophic events of that day.[1] But although the enemy was identified at that time, the Federal government and one of its most important branches, the FBI, have adopted a policy of scrubbing Islamism from public consciousness[2] though since bin Laden’s 2011 demise, “at least nine publicly known Islamist-inspired terror plots against the United States have been foiled, bringing the total number of foiled plots as of April 2012, to 50.”[3]
The Obama administration’s response to the 2009 Fort Hood terror attack by U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan offers a vivid illustration of this practice. In August 2012, an independent commission charged with reviewing the FBI’s failure to prevent the attack issued its report, recommending eighteen changes in policies and operations. However, the commission, headed by Judge William H. Webster, upheld the government’s policy of excluding Islamism from the findings, concluding that despite the intelligence failure, FBI personnel had faithfully followed protocols and procedure, and there occurred “no misconduct that would warrant administrative or disciplinary action.”[4]
There appeared to be little appetite for finding the attack’s root causes and its failed detection. Nor was corrective action an apparent priority. Instead, the directive focused on exploring “whether there are other policy or procedural steps the FBI should consider … while still respecting privacy and civil-liberty interests” and “whether any administrative action should be taken against any employee.”[5]
Note to the reader: This is the first article in a three-part survey of “Denying Islam’s Role in Terror.” The other two parts, by Teri Blumenfeld and David Rusin, look at the specific phenomenon of denial in the FBI and the U.S. military, respectively.
Over three years after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas, in November 2009, the classification of his crime remains in dispute. In its wisdom, the Department of Defense, supported by law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and academics, deems the killing of thirteen and wounding of forty-three to be “workplace violence.” For example, the 86-page study on preventing a repeat episode, Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood, mentions “workplace violence” sixteen times.[1]
Last night, National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre gave a speech “in defense of our individual freedom,” which you can watch below. He was calm and eloquent, explaining why all the the new proposed gun laws would only hurt “good, law-abiding people like you and me” and actually help criminals and crazies who won’t register their guns, who won’t participate in background checks, and who will most likely obtain weapons on the black market. The NRA has defended the basis for our democracy — the Constitution, especially the Second Amendment. It has done so very effectively. It is the NRA’s effectiveness that causes it to be the target of vitriolic defamation. The preface to LaPierre’s speech documents the slanderous hostility directed at the NRA, presenting terms/phrases used to describe the advocacy group like “paranoid,” “utterly tone deaf,” “evil,” “lunatics,” “the NRA headquarters is populated by crazy people,” “lobbyist for mass murderers,” and “desperate cornered rat.” Do these words from LaPierre sound evil?
… The Second Amendment is not just words on parchment. It’s not some frivolous suggestion from our Founding Fathers to be interpreted by whim. It lies at the heart of what this country was founded upon. Our Founding Fathers knew that without Second Amendment freedom, all of our freedoms could be in jeopardy.
Our individual liberty is the very essence of America. It is what makes America unique. If you aren’t free to protect yourself — when government puts its thumb on that freedom — then you aren’t free at all. …
Read the transcript to LaPierre’s speech and watch it below. Then decide if the NRA is “evil” and if the organization is made up of “lobbyists for mass murderers.”
On the basis of easily obtainable evidence, it is possible to ask the following questions:
Why has there never been any government investigation that yielded changed policies into Pakistani complicity in protecting Usama bin Ladin and the Taliban at a time that these forces were killing hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan and elsewhere?
How has large-scale U.S. aid to Pakistan continued without change and without this question being answered?
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