We’re Losing the War Against Radical Islam : Newt Gingrich
We are losing to both the violent jihad and to the cultural jihad.
Congress
needs a strategy to defeat both violent and cultural jihad.
On Tuesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security, under
the leadership of Chairman Michael McCaul, held the first of
a series of very important hearings on the threat of radical
Islamism. As I told the committee in my testimony, it is
vital that the United States Congress undertake a thorough,
no-holds-barred review of the long, global war in which we
are now engaged with radical Islamists. This review will
require a number of committees to coordinate, since it will
have to include Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign
Affairs, Judiciary, and Homeland Security at a minimum.
There
are three key, sobering observations about where we are
today which should force this thorough, no-holds-barred
review of our situation. These three points — which are
backed up by the facts — suggest the United States is
drifting into a crisis that could challenge our very
survival. First, it is the case that after 35 years of
conflict dating back to the Iranian seizure of the American
embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage crisis, the United
States and its allies are losing the long, global war with
radical Islamists.
We
are losing to both the violent jihad and to the cultural
jihad. The violent jihad has shown itself recently in Paris,
Australia, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Gaza,
Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, to name just some
of the most prominent areas of violence.
Cultural
jihad is more insidious and in many ways more dangerous.
It strikes at our very ability to think and to have an
honest dialogue about the steps necessary for our survival.
Cultural jihad is winning when the Department of Defense
describes a terrorist attack at Fort Hood as “workplace
violence.” Cultural jihad is winning when the president
refers to “random” killings in Paris when they were clearly
the actions of Islamist terrorists and targeted against
specific groups. Cultural jihad is winning when the
administration censors training documents and lecturers
according to “sensitivity” so that they cannot describe
radical Islamists with any reference to the religious
ideology which is the primary bond that unites them.
In
the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, we have gone a long way
down the road of intellectually and morally disarming in
order to appease the cultural jihadists, who are
increasingly aggressive in asserting their right to define
how the rest of us think and talk.
Second,
it is the case that, in an extraordinarily dangerous
pattern, our intelligence system has been methodically
limited and manipulated to sustain false narratives while
suppressing or rejecting facts and analysis about those who
would kill us. For example, there is clear evidence the
American people have been given remarkably misleading
analysis about al-Qaeda based on a very limited translation
and publication of about 24 of the 1.5 million documents
captured in the Bin Laden raid. A number of outside analysts
have suggested that the selective release of a small number
of documents was designed to make the case that al-Qaeda was
weaker. These outside analysts assert that a broader reading
of more documents would indicate al-Qaeda was doubling in
size when our government claimed it was getting weaker — an
analysis also supported by obvious empirical facts on the
ground.
Furthermore,
there has been what could only be deliberate foot-dragging
in exploiting this extraordinary cache of material. Both
Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, the former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, and Colonel Derek Harvey, a
leading analyst of terrorism, have described the
deliberately misleading and restricted access to the Bin
Laden documents. A number of intelligence operatives have
described censorship from above designed to make sure that
intelligence which undermines the official narrative simply
does not see the light of day. Congress should explore
legislation which would make it illegal to instruct
intelligence personnel to falsify information or analysis.
Basing American security policy on politically defined
distortions of reality is a very dangerous habit which could
someday lead to a devastating defeat. Congress has an
obligation to ensure the American people are learning the
truth and have an opportunity to debate potential policies
in a fact-based environment.
Third,
it is the case that our political elites have refused to
define our enemies. Their willful ignorance has made it
impossible to develop an effective strategy to defeat those
who would destroy our civilization. For example, the
president’s own press secretary engages in verbal gymnastics
to avoid identifying the perpetrators of violence as radical
Islamists. Josh Earnest said that such labels do not
“accurately” describe our enemies and that to use such a
label “legitimizes” them. This is Orwellian double-speak.
The radical Islamists do not need to be delegitimized. They
need to be defeated. We cannot defeat what we cannot name.
There has been a desperate desire among our elites to focus
on the act of terrorism rather than the motivation behind
those acts.
There
has been a deep desire to avoid the cultural and religious
motivations behind the jihadists’ actions. There is an
amazing hostility to any effort to study or teach the
history of these patterns going back to the seventh century.
Because our elites refuse to look at the religious and
historic motivations and patterns which drive our opponents,
we are responding the same way to attack after attack on our
way of life without any regard for learning about what
really motivates our attackers. Only once we learn what
drives and informs our opponents will we not repeat the same
wrong response tactics, Groundhog Day–like, and finally
start to win this long war.
Currently
each new event, each new group, each new pattern is treated
as though it’s an isolated phenomenon — as if it’s not part
of a larger struggle with a long history and deep roots in
patterns that are 1,400 years old. There is a passion for
narrowing and localizing actions. The early focus was
al-Qaeda. Then it was the Taliban. Now it is the Islamic
State. It is beginning to be Boko Haram. As long as the
elites can keep treating each new eruption as a freestanding
phenomenon, they can avoid having to recognize that this is
a global, worldwide movement that is decentralized but not
disordered. There are ties between Minneapolis and
Mogadishu.
There
are ties between London, Paris, and the Islamic State.
Al-Qaeda exists in many forms and under many names. We are
confronted by worldwide recruiting on the Internet, with
Islamists reaching out to people we would never have
imagined were vulnerable to that kind of appeal. We have
been refusing to apply the insights and lessons of history,
but our enemies have been very willing to study, learn,
rethink, and evolve.
The
cultural jihadists have learned our language and our
principles — freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
tolerance — and they apply them to defeat us without
believing in them themselves. We blindly play their game on
their terms, and don’t even think about how absurd it is for
people who accept no church, no synagogue, no temple in
their heartland to come into our society and define
multicultural sensitivity totally to their advantage —
meaning, in essence, that we cannot criticize their ideas.
Our
elites have been morally and intellectually disarmed by
their own unwillingness to look at both the immediate
history of the first 35 years of the global war with radical
Islamists and then to look deeper into the roots of the
ideology and the military-political system our enemies draw
upon as their guide to waging both physical and cultural
warfare. One of the great threats to American independence
is the steady growth of foreign money pouring into our
intellectual and political systems to influence our thinking
and limit our options for action.
Congress
needs to adopt new laws to protect the United States from
the kind of foreign influences which are growing in size and
boldness. Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, written 500 years
before Christ, warned that “all warfare is based on
deception.” We are currently in a period where our enemies
are deceiving us and our elites are actively deceiving
themselves — and us. The deception and dishonesty of our
elites is not accidental or uninformed. It is deliberate and
willful. The flow of foreign money and foreign influence is
a significant part of that pattern of deception. We must
clearly define our enemies before we can begin to develop
strategies to defeat them. We have lost 35 years since this
war began. We are weaker and our enemies are stronger.
Congress has a duty to pursue the truth and to think through
the strategies needed and the structures which will be
needed to implement those strategies.
Newt
Gingrich was speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives from 1995 to 1999.
MARK
STEYN: BOWE JEST
Posted
By Ruth King
on March 26th, 2015
To
reprise my current line on “the leader of the free
world”: If he were working for the other side, what
exactly would he be doing differently?
Bowe
Bergdahl is to be charged with desertion. This is not
exactly a surprising development. As I said when he was
released, Bergdahl is “a deserter at best and at worst enemy
collaborator”. I incline to the latter view myself, but, be
that as it may, there are innumerable instances throughout
human history of soldiers who abandon their comrades and
attempt to aid the enemy.
What
makes this case unique is the behavior of Bergdahl’s
commander-in-chief. As I wrote on June 3rd last year:
Nevertheless,
Barack Obama decided to honor this man in the Rose Garden,
and to embrace his parents. In front of the President and
the world, Bergdahl’s father sent greetings to his son in
Arabic and Pashto, and began with the words, “In the name of
Allah the most gracious and most merciful…”
This
is, to put it at its mildest, odd and unsettling.
When
others objected, the White House dispatched the National
Security Advisor, Susan Rice, to tell the American people
that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and
distinction”. She surely knew, as did the President, that
that was a lie.
Given
the background checks an ordinary law-abiding citizen
requires these days merely to be permitted to be in the
presence of the President, the White House must also have
known that the man Obama embraced in the Rose Garden that
day – Bergdahl’s father – was a Taliban sympathizer. Here’s
me on June 6th last year:
The fact is [Bowe Bergdahl] walked out and he left America behind …and he did it, by the way, on the advice of his father. He wrote to his father saying, ‘I hate America, it’s a horror, I want to renounce my citizenship.’ And his father emails back, ‘Follow your conscience…’
The fact is [Bowe Bergdahl] walked out and he left America behind …and he did it, by the way, on the advice of his father. He wrote to his father saying, ‘I hate America, it’s a horror, I want to renounce my citizenship.’ And his father emails back, ‘Follow your conscience…’
I
don’t think this point has been emphasized enough. Yes, one
can argue that it’s appropriate to cut Bergdahl Jnr some
slack – thankless war, out on the front line, the strain of
it all beginning to tell… But what’s the father’s excuse? He
gets communications from his son indicating he’s about to
crack. He knows that out there, beyond their vulnerable
encampment, is a primitive tribal society where pretty much
everyone would either ransom his boy or cut to the chase and
saw his head off to make a blockbuster jihadist snuff video
for the bazaars of Jalalabad. Surely any responsible parent
would say, “Look, I know it can’t be easy for you out there.
But there are people who wish to do you harm beyond the
fence. Stick with it, talk to your platoon leader… You’re
serving honorably in a worthy cause…” You don’t encourage
him to take a one-way ticket into the badlands of
Afghanistan.
And
just to underline that: the justification for Bergdahl Snr’s
wacky behavior – the Taliban beard, the invocations of
Allah, the Arabic and Pushtu, the pledge that the death of
every Afghan child will be avenged – the justification for
all this is that, well, he’s also been under a lot of
strain. He hasn’t seen his kid for half-a-decade. That could
unhinge anyone. Give the guy a break…
But
the point is he was pulling this strange stuff before his
son was kidnapped.
Which
makes that Rose Garden ceremony even more bizarre in its
weird optics – the President of the United States embracing
a Taliban sympathizer at the White House. There was no need
to hold such an intimate photo-op. Yet Obama chose to do it.
Why?
That’s
still the most important question of l’affaire Bergdahl.
Obama didn’t just trade five high-value Taliban
leaders-cum-war criminals for one American deserter, but he
chose to honor that deserter as an American hero. And, in so
honoring him, dishonored all the comrades he deserted.
As
for those five Taliban A-listers, as of June 1st they’ll out
of their nominal emirate-probation in Qatar and free to roam
the world killing infidels once more. Me on June 9th last
year:
That’s the point to remember about this debacle: There is no deal. None. Washington gave away five war criminals who are already pledging to get back to killing – and the superpower got nothing in return. The deserter and his kooky dad are merely the cover for the fact that the United States entered into an end-of-war prisoner exchange without ending the war.
That’s the point to remember about this debacle: There is no deal. None. Washington gave away five war criminals who are already pledging to get back to killing – and the superpower got nothing in return. The deserter and his kooky dad are merely the cover for the fact that the United States entered into an end-of-war prisoner exchange without ending the war.
The
annals of war are littered with chumps like Bergdahl. His
case is only significant because of the patronage he enjoyed
from the man charged with winning this war. A final quote
from me – June 3rd last year:
Here’s the history of America’s longest war in two anti-American losers, John Walker Lindh and Bowe Bergdahl, confused young men with a gaping hole at the heart of where their sense of identity should be, stumbling through the Hindu Kush trying to “find themselves”.
Here’s the history of America’s longest war in two anti-American losers, John Walker Lindh and Bowe Bergdahl, confused young men with a gaping hole at the heart of where their sense of identity should be, stumbling through the Hindu Kush trying to “find themselves”.
In
the fall of 2001, the first confused anti-American loser
trying to find himself, John Walker Lindh was on the enemy’s
side – and was tried, convicted and jailed for life
[CORRECTION: 20 years].
By
the spring of 2014, the last confused anti-American loser of
the Afghan war, Bowe Bergdahl, was on our side – and was
honored by the President with a family photo-op in the Rose
Garden and declared by the laughably misnamed “National
Security Advisor” to have “served the United States with
honor and distinction”.
To
reprise my current line on “the leader of the free world”:
If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?
If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?
Obama’s
Israel Tantrum
The
Leader of the Free World Takes Revenge on an Ally.
Posted
By Ruth King
on March 25th, 2015
You’ll
have to forgive President Obama. The leader of the free
world is still having difficulty accepting that the Israeli
people get to choose their own prime minister, never mind
his preferences.
The
latest White House tantrum in the wake of Benjamin
Netanyahu’s re-election last week took the form of a speech
delivered Monday by Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, in which
he declared that “an occupation that has lasted for almost
50 years must end.”
When
a chief of staff speaks in public, especially as the keynote
speaker at a scheduled event, the President has signed off.
In this case the audience was also carefully chosen: the
annual conference of J Street, a left-leaning Jewish
lobbying group that has never met an Israeli concession it
didn’t like. Which makes it all the more distressing that
Mr. McDonough would talk about Israel in language usually
associated with Palestinian terror groups.
Mr.
McDonough’s remarks come amid other expressions of
presidential pique—including last week’s unprecedented
threat that Mr. Netanyahu’s re-election may mean an end to
U.S. backing for Israel at the United Nations, and this
week’s report in the Journal that the Israelis have been
spying on the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. (Israel denies it,
and we don’t condone such spying, but the U.S. also
shouldn’t be keeping its allies and Congress in the dark.)
Not to mention the more or less constant snubs and insults
directed at the Israeli prime minister by unnamed Obama
officials, with one calling him a “coward.”
Mr.
Obama was counting on Mr. Netanyahu to be defeated in last
week’s election, and the President did what he could to help
that defeat along. But Mr. Obama’s overt hostility
backfired. In the normal course of things, this would be the
time for the White House to soften the rhetoric and seek to
restore relationships.
Instead,
the President and his team seem out for revenge. So while
Mr. Netanyahu has clarified his comment about his opposition
to a Palestinian state (he says he supports a two-state
solution but now is not the time) and apologized to Arab
Israelis for his remarks about their votes during the waning
hours of the election, the President and his team have been
escalating.
Perhaps
this is a sign that the nuclear negotiations with Iran
aren’t going as well as the President had planned,
notwithstanding his willingness to let Iran preserve much of
its nuclear infrastructure. So desperate is the U.S. for an
Iran deal, the French look like hard-liners, hardly a
consoling thought.
But
these latest anti-Israel conniptions from the White House
could well mean something else. Namely, that President Obama
believes what he and his team are saying: that the Israelis
are unjust occupiers, an obstacle to peace in the region and
no longer worthy of the full support they have historically
counted on from Uncle Sam.
Yet
even if you believe the main challenge in the region is
getting Israel to cede more territory to the Palestinians,
that day won’t happen until Israelis feel secure. But
Israelis can be forgiven for feeling the opposite with a
raging civil war in Syria, Islamic State and an offshoot of
al Qaeda operating near the Golan Heights, Iranian General
Qasem Soleimani leading Shiite militias in Iraq, and a U.S.
Administration sounding and acting as if Iran can be a more
constructive partner for peace than Israel.
The
main threat to Middle Eastern peace today—even beyond
Islamic State—is the rise of an imperial Iran using its own
troops or proxies effectively to colonize Arab capitals. The
prospect of an imperial Iran on the cusp of becoming a
nuclear power has all of America’s traditional Arab friends
in the region now closer to Mr. Netanyahu’s position on the
Middle East than to Mr. Obama’s.
“We
cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made.”
These were the words Mr. McDonough used in his speech about
Mr. Netanyahu’s election comments.
But
Mr. McDonough’s words might be easily turned around. In a
day when the President’s chief of staff invokes the lexicon
of Palestinian terrorists to describe Israel’s democracy,
Americans and the world are left to wonder whose side the
leader of the free world is on.
Now,
anyone still doubts Obama’s deep seated hatred of Israel?!…
US
Declassifies Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program
Obama
revenge for Netanyahu's Congress talk? 1987 report on
Israel's top secret nuclear program released in
unprecedented move.
By
Ari Yashar, Matt Wanderman
First Publish: 3/25/2015,
First Publish: 3/25/2015,
Dimona nuclear reactor circa 1960s
National Security Archive/Flash 90
In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel's nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.
But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel's nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.
The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu's March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran's nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.
Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel's sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.
The 386-page report entitled "Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations" gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s.
Israel is "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level," reveals the report, stating that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.
The revelation marks a first in which the US published in a document a description of how Israel attained hydrogen bombs.
The report also notes research laboratories in Israel "are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories," the key labs in developing America's nuclear arsenal.
Israel's nuclear infrastructure is "an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories," it adds.
"As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960," the report reveals, noting a time frame just after America tested its first hydrogen bomb.
Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded agency operating under the Pentagon, penned the report back in 1987.
Aside from nuclear capabilities, the report revealed Israel at the time had "a totally integrated effort in systems development throughout the nation," with electronic combat all in one "integrated system, not separated systems for the Army, Navy and Air Force." It even acknowledged that in some cases, Israeli military technology "is more advanced than in the U.S."
Declassifying the report comes at a sensitive timing as noted above, and given that the process to have it published was started three years ago, that timing is seen as having been the choice of the American government.
US journalist Grant Smith petitioned to have the report published based on the Freedom of Information Act. Initially the Pentagon took its time answering, leading Smith to sue, and a District Court judge to order the Pentagon to respond to the request.
Smith, who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, reportedly said he thinks this is the first time the US government has officially confirmed that Israel is a nuclear power, a status that Israel has long been widely known to have despite being undeclared.
Official:
White House was part of bid to oust Netanyahu
Avi Issacharoff
March 24, 2015,
Senior
Jerusalem source says administration wanted ‘revenge’ over
Congress speech; declares there’ll be no Palestinian state
‘in our generation’,
The
White House was directly involved in an attempt to
unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last week’s
general election, during a nadir in ties between the Israeli
leader and US President Barack Obama, a senior Jerusalem
official said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times of Israel that “it’s no secret” that the Obama administration had attempted to influence the outcome of the election, having been partially motivated by a desire for revenge over Netanyahu’s polarizing speech before Congress earlier this month, which sought to undermine the president’s key foreign policy initiative – a nuclear deal with Iran.
“The White House is driven by three main motives,” the senior official said. “The first is revenge [over the Congress speech]. The second is frustration: It’s no secret that they were involved in an attempt to bring down the Netanyahu government – something that we have clear knowledge of – and failed. The third [motive] is the administration’s attempt to divert attention from the negotiations with Iran to the Palestinian issue.”
Netanyahu’s latest term in office has seen an unprecedented, unmasked animus seep into the relationship between the administration and his government, much of it over the emerging deal with Iran. On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had spied on the talks, an accusation firmly denied by senior Israeli ministers and that Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman attributed to efforts to undermine ties between Jerusalem and Washington.
A series of tit-for-tat exchanges between the two allies in recent months culminated with Obama sternly rebuking Netanyahu last weekend over comments he had made in the lead-up to the vote. Netanyahu was widely panned for an Election Day rallying call in which he claimed that Israeli Arab voters were being bused to polling booths “in droves” by local political groups supported and funded by a “concerted” international campaign to dislodge him.
One
of those groups was allegedly V15, whose sources of funding
are unclear and whose reputed improprieties are the focus of
a Republican-initiated US Senate probe.
Obama slammed Netanyahu’s comments as evidence of the “erosion” of Israeli democracy. The president also vowed to “reevaluate” bilateral ties between the two countries in the wake of the prime minister’s pre-vote rejection of Palestinian statehood — a stance he subsequently walked back.
Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren called Obama’s response “damaging” to bilateral ties and to Israel’s image.
Obama slammed Netanyahu’s comments as evidence of the “erosion” of Israeli democracy. The president also vowed to “reevaluate” bilateral ties between the two countries in the wake of the prime minister’s pre-vote rejection of Palestinian statehood — a stance he subsequently walked back.
Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren called Obama’s response “damaging” to bilateral ties and to Israel’s image.
The White House will attempt to “punish” Israel at the UN or the Security Council, the senior Israeli official said Tuesday, alluding to intimations by US officials to the effect that Washington could change its policy of vetoing anti-Israel measures and even pursue a unilateral Palestinian statehood initiative.
“Congress is currently our only means of preventing a series of harmful initiatives, on both the Iranian and the Palestinian front,” the official said. “If the US government will permit the recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN, then Congress will brandish its knives and defund the UN.” On Sunday, Republic Senator John McCain threatened to do just that.
Criticism of Netanyahu in Washington has also focused on his short-lived repudiation of support for a two-state solution with the Palestinians. In an evident effort to appeal to hard-line voters, the prime minister said on March 16 that there would be no Palestinian state during his next term in office; he subsequently attempted to walk back the comments. On Monday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told lobbying group J Street that Israel’s “50-year occupation must end,” doubling down on the Obama administration’s criticism of the prime minister.
The
Jerusalem official actually took Netanyahu’s initial
disavowal of Palestinian statehood further, claiming that a
two state-solution would be out of reach “in our
generation,” due to Palestinian rejection of Israeli
proposals and US-led agreements.
“[Obama]
continuously warns of a deteriorating state of chaos in the
[Palestinian] territories, when he knows that the only place
that truly manages to maintain stability in the Middle East
right now is [Israel],” the official said.
“Netanyahu
said there will no agreement [with the Palestinians] during
his term in office.” A Palestinian state “won’t even happen
in our generation,” the official added.” Everyone knows it.”
“They
come and accuse us of torpedoing negotiations even though
they know that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
himself said no [to a deal], twice — once to then-secretary
of state Hillary Clinton in 2011, and once to Secretary of
State John Kerry last year.”
The
official went on to refer to two “framework documents,
designed to jump-start the process” that were accepted by
Israel and rejected by the Palestinians, and accused the
administration of devoting too much energy to the
Palestinian issue, to the detriment of other, more pertinent
regional challenges.
“Look
at what we did about settlement construction. We took upon
ourselves all the restrictions laid forth during the
Sharon-Bush era, which allowed for building to accommodate
natural population growth, but not for building new
settlements,” the official continued, referring to an
arrangement in the last decade between then-prime minister
Ariel Sharon and president George Bush. “But the [current]
administration does not recognize the Sharon-Bush
understandings. They’re working according to a ‘no-brick’
policy and it doesn’t make any sense.”
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