Terrorism
2006
2006-09-06-Scheuer
The Western Media's Misreading of al-Qaeda's Latest VideotapeBy Michael Scheuer
[In this outstanding post,
Scheuer reviews how the American MSM has (mis)interpreted
a recent al-Qaeda video,
then provides his own, well-informed interpretation.
Scheuer’s interpretation, while ominous for America, is manifestly plausible.]
2006-09-10-NYT
10 Ways to Avoid the Next 9/11New York Times Week in Review, 2006-09-10
[Fifth anniversery of 2001-09-11.]
If we are fortunate,
we will open our newspapers this morning knowing that
there have been no major terrorist attacks on American soil in nearly five years.
Did we just get lucky?
The Op-Ed page asked 10 people with experience in security and counterterrorism to answer the following question:
What is one major reason the United States
has not suffered a major attack since 2001, and
what is the one thing you would recommend the nation do
in order to avoid attacks in the future?
Giving Muslims Hope
By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
We Can't Kill an Ideology
By MELISSA BOYLE MAHLE
How War Can Bring Peace
By JACK L. GOLDSMITH and ADRIAN VERMEULE
Walking the Terror Beat
By MICHAEL A. SHEEHAN
The President's Plan
By FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND
Don't Forget Our Values
By JOSCHKA FISCHER
What Really Scares Us
By WILLIAM GIBSON
Less Political Correctness
By RAFI RON
Qaeda Set the Bar High
By CLARK KENT ERVIN
Keep American Muslims on Our Side
By JESSICA STERN
[Two things strike me about these choices:
First, Michael Scheuer, who
headed the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999,
is a real expert on Islamic terrorism and extremism
(note how prescient his views on Afghanistan were), and
has indicated his willingness and ability to make his expertise publicly available,
was not asked to participate.
This is unfortunate (for America) but not surprising;
the opposition to him among prominent Jews, for his “anti-Semitic” views,
has reduced his visibility in elite media,
always hypersensitive to Jewish concerns.
Second, and most important, none of these authors cited
the advice of Osama bin Laden on
“the ideal way [for America] to prevent another Manhattan.”]
2006-09-13-Raimondo
Terror in the LevantWho attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus – and why?
2006-09-26-NIE
Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate"Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States"
dated April 2006
by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2006-09-26
2006-11-09-MI5
MI5 DIRECTOR GENERAL WARNS OF TERRORIST THREATBy Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director General of MI5
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director General of the Security Service,
gave a speech at Queen Mary College, London on 9 November 2006
in which she warned of the continuing threat of terrorism
and described how the Security Service and others were combating it.
Pointing out that the current threat began well before 9/11,
Dame Eliza cited a range of factors that were motivating acts of terrorism,
such as
- perceived injustices against Muslims around the world,
- extreme interpretations of Islam and
- aspects of UK foreign policy.
Dame Eliza noted that the Security Service and the police
are aware of dozens of plots to kill people and damage the British economy,
with 200 networks and over 1,600 individuals currently under investigation.
[Some excerpts from her speech, with emphasis and my comments added:]
We now know that the first Al-Qaida-related plot against the UK
was the one we discovered and disrupted in November 2000 in Birmingham.
A British citizen is currently serving a long prison sentence
for plotting to detonate a large bomb in the UK.
Let there be no doubt about this:
the international terrorist threat to this country is not new.
It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan, and before 9/11.
...
[T]oday, my officers and the police
are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks,
totalling over 1600 identified individuals
(and there will be many we don't know)
who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts
here and overseas.
The extremists are motivated by
a sense of grievance and injustice
driven by their interpretation
of the history between the West and the Muslim world.
This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency.
If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005
are only broadly accurate,
over 100,000 of our citizens consider that
the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.
...
More and more people are moving
from passive sympathy towards active terrorism
through being radicalised or indoctrinated
by friends, families,
in organised training events here and overseas,
by images on television,
through chat rooms and websites on the Internet.
...
There has been much speculation about
what motivates young men and women to carry out acts of terrorism in the UK.
My Service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism
to succeed in countering it, as far as that is possible.
Al-Qaida has developed an ideology which claims that
Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended.
[See Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris,
e.g., excerpts on “Why They Hate Us” and “Jihad”,
for extensive justification for this point of view.]
This is a powerful narrative that weaves together conflicts from across the globe,
presenting the West's response to varied and complex issues,
from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and Kashmir
to more recent events
as evidence of an across-the-board determination
to undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide.
Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon
are regularly cited by those who advocate terrorist violence
as illustrating what they allege is Western hostility to Islam.
The video wills of British suicide bombers
[see, for example, that of Mohammad Sidique Khan]
make it clear that they are motivated
by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims;
an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam
promoted by some preachers and people of influence; and
their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy,
in particular the UK's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Killing oneself and others in response is an attractive option
for some citizens of this country and others around the world.
...
What else can others do?
That brings me on to my final point.
None of this can be tackled by my Service alone.
Others have to
address the causes,
counter the radicalisation,
assist in the rehabilitation of those affected, and
work to protect our way of life.
...
We also need to understand
some of the differences between non-Western and Western life-styles
and not treat people with suspicion because of their religion,
or indeed
to confuse fundamentalism with terrorism.
...
I have spoken as an intelligence professional,
describing the reality of terrorism and counter terrorism in the UK in 2006.
My messages are sober ones.
I do not speak in this way to alarm
(nor as the cynics might claim to enhance the reputation of my organisation)
but to give the most frank account I can of the Al-Qaida threat to the UK.
That threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe,
be with us for a generation.
It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents.
It aims to wear down our will to resist.
My Service is dedicated to tackling the deadly manifestations of terrorism.
Tackling its roots is the work of us all.
2006-11-15-MIA
The Militant Ideology Atlasa product of the Combating Terrorism Center, 2006-11
2006-11-15-NYT
Qaeda Leaders Losing Sway Over Militants, Study Findsby Mark Mazzetti
New York Times, 2006-11-15
As radical Islam spreads globally through online forums and chat rooms,
a group of obscure Arab religious thinkers
may come to exert more influence over the jihadist movement
than Osama bin Laden and other well-known leaders of Al Qaeda,
a research group at the United States Military Academy has concluded.
In a study, “The Militant Ideology Atlas”, billed as
the “first systematic mapping” of an ideology sometimes called jihadism,
the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
has found that Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri,
have had a relatively minor influence on the movement’s intellectual foundation.
Among the network’s ideologists,
they have come to be seen more as propagandists than strategic thinkers.
2007
2007-09-08-Scheuer
He's WinningFormer CIA Analyst [Michael Scheuer] Says
New [Bin Laden] Video Shows
West Is Losing Fight Against Al Qaeda,
Warns Of New Threat
CBS News, 2007-09-08
Bin Laden makes mention of [Michael] Scheuer’s writings,
saying in the tape,
“If you would like to get to know
what some of the reasons for your losing your war against us [are],
then read the book by Michael Scheuer.”
Scheuer said the referral makes the point that
the former CIA analyst communicates
what recent American presidents have not said
about the nation’s war against Islamic fundamentalism.
“The war is motivated on the enemy’s side by
the impact of our policies,”
he said.
“It’s not about democracy.
It’s not about women’s rights.
[Except to the extent that the American political system,
dominated as it is by feminists,
has chosen to make it so.
I can’t believe that we would have pursued this war in Afghanistan,
refusing to reach for a political solution that would involve the Taliban,
if it had not been for
feminist loathing of the Taliban’s policies towards women.
If you don’t believe that,
just ask a politically involved woman of your acquaintance
what they would think of a deal
that would eliminate the possibility of a terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan,
but would leave the Taliban in power.]
It’s not about freedom or elections.
It has everything to do with the impact of our foreign policy in the Muslim world.
It’s not to say that our policy is wrong,
it’s simply to try to understand the motivation of your enemy.”
[And that, my friends, is the number one job of intelligence:
To find out why the enemy is fighting,
what he is fighting for.
Bush, Cheney, the media, and the Zionists for which they front
are either idiots, liars, or desperately, desperately misled
concerning the causes of this insane war.
The sad fact, which cannot be said too often, nor stressed too much,
is that
the Zionist control of our elite, for whatever reason,
has in effect lobotomized the intelligence process.]
2007-09-10-Raimondo
The Mystery of al-QaedaBin Laden's latest video throws new light on a murky subject
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2007-09-10
2007-09-10-Scheuer
Antiwar Radio: Scott Horton Interviews Michael ScheuerAntiwar.com, 2007-09-10
“Well, you know, the only people taking ‘marching orders’ from Osama bin Laden, as far as I can tell, are every presidential candidate (Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush) except Mr. Paul. Mr. Paul has it very square about what the motivation of our enemy is, and it’s certainly exactly what he said it is, intervention. ...
“Really, it is the American political establishment that is marching to al Qaeda’s beat, not Mr. Paul.”
Michael Scheuer, former head analyst at the CIA’s bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris, discusses:
* His view of the legitimacy of the new bin Laden tape and the mention of his book
* His belief that current U.S. foreign policy is exactly what bin Laden wants and that Rep. Ron Paul M.D. has the best understanding of the enemy’s motivations and how to deal with them
* The sad fact that bin Laden wins whether America leaves Iraq now or later
* The “near” and “far” enemy
* The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and what he believes should be done there
* Why he believes that al Qaeda wants to detonate a nuke here
* His support for the conclusions of Robert A. Pape in his book Dying to Win that suicide bombing is caused by foreign occupation and view of the role religion plays in al Qaeda’s motivation (they believe they’re defending theirs)
* The role of the mujahedeen in the 1999 Kosovo War
* The lack of threat posed to America by Syria and Iran and of cooperative links between Iran and al Qaeda
* The expansion of the war to Africa
* The impossibility of an “al Qaeda in Iraq” takeover in the event of U.S. withdrawal
* The degree of the danger that AQI represents in the long term
* The review by he and his CIA colleagues of the evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda before the Iraq war and their report to George Tenet that there were none
* His view that the vast majority of post-9/11 domestic terrorism prosecutions have been bogus cases of entrapment
* Closed borders
[Two quick quotes from the audio:
The New York Sun
might as well be part of the propaganda bureau of Mossad.
When (not if) the next terrorist strike in America occurs,
the effective murderers will be
those in Congress who failed to take the measures to secure our borders.
[Of course, this assumes the plot was not home-grown.]
2007-09-11-Scheuer
Analysis of Osama bin Laden's September 7 Video Statementby Michael Scheuer
Jamestown Foundation, 2007-09-11
(Also available here.)
[An excerpt:]
[T]he West’s failure to analyze what [bin Laden] and his lieutenants
have been talking about for the past few years
was repeatedly displayed by such foreign policy experts as
a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and
New York Times journalist David Brooks,
both of whom suggested that
bin Laden sounded like a left-wing, 1960s Marxist blogger.
The Islamist expert Walid Phares even described him as “Trotskyite”
(Family Security Matters, September 10).
Speeches by bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders
are intended to have an accumulating impact; that is,
most of their major speeches and statements
build on those that have preceded them over the past decade.
Bin Laden and his associates assume, perhaps incorrectly,
that their Western foes will not treat each statement, speech and interview
as an isolated and unconnected event.
The commentators mentioned above and many other pundits—
both right and left on the political spectrum—
have described bin Laden’s speech as something new
and a blatant attempt to remain relevant in the contemporary world.
That is incorrect.
Bin Laden has talked previously on numerous occasions about
the negative factors of capitalism and
the inequities and fragility of the U.S. economy;
many of his post-9/11 speeches featured
his bleed-America-to-bankruptcy scheme,
as did several of his interviews before 9/11.
...
[I]t would be unwise to believe that
our seemingly inevitable withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan
will be seen by Muslims or identified by al-Qaeda’s chief
as victories for Osama bin Laden.
Instead, they will be seen by Muslims and publicized by bin Laden—
as he did after the Afghans’ 1989 defeat of the Soviets—
as victories for Allah and Islam;
al-Qaeda will give the major portion of credit to Iraqi and Afghan mujahideen.
It is imperative, from bin Laden’s perspective,
that Muslims worldwide see U.S. disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan
as Allah-granted victories for Islam and faithful Muslims.
This perspective of “God’s victory”
will further erode defeatism in the Muslim world
and galvanize far more support for the jihad
than any bin Laden claim of glory for al-Qaeda’s efforts.
Indeed, such a claim
would undercut much of what bin Laden has accomplished,
and he knows it.
...
Note 4:
It seems fair to conclude that the American citizen Adam Gadahn
has contributed to broadening al-Qaeda commentary
vis-à-vis U.S. economic and social affairs.
Born and reared by parents
who propounded the beliefs of the U.S. “hippy generation”
that came of age in the 1960s,
Gadahn may well have imbibed an animus against capitalism
and a taste for analyzing U.S. history
via the purported conspiracies of capitalists.
These seem to have seeped into
bin Laden’s rather overdone criticism of capitalism.
That said, the critique of capitalism in bin Laden’s new message
and other statements by al-Zawahiri and Gadahn
have less to do with the traditional leftist-socialist description
of capitalism’s evils and inevitable demise,
and more to do with emphasizing the ability of Islam to
rectify societal evils, promote social and economic equality
and even lower taxes to a limit “totaling 2.5 percent.”
2008
2008-01-24-Porter-Argentina-Iran-Israel
US Officials Rejected Key Source on '94 Argentina Bombingby Gareth Porter
Antiwar.com, 2008-01-24
2008-02-15-Argentina-Hezbollah
Hezbollah Chief Warns Israel of Wide WarBy Anthony Shadid
Washington Post, 2008-02-15
[An excerpt; emphasis is added.]
Hezbollah was last accused of attacking Israeli interests abroad in the 1990s,
when Argentina implicated the group and its Iranian backers
in fatal bombings of
the Israeli Embassy [1992] and a Jewish community center [1994]
in Buenos Aires.
Many Lebanese believe the attacks were
in retaliation for
Israel’s 1992 assassination of Abbas Musawi, Nasrallah’s predecessor.
2008-05-29-Scheuer-al-Qaeda
Why Doesn't al-Qaeda Attack the US?by Michael Scheuer
Antiwar.com, 2008-05-29
2008-09-09-Giraldi-9-11
Feeding on Fearby Philip Giraldi
Antiwar.com, 2008-09-09
2008-11-24-Thompson
The Fallacies and the Facts about Terrorismby John Thompson
C2C: Canada's Journal of Ideas, 2008-11-24
2009
2009-06-02-Giraldi
Whence the Terror Hysteria?Follow the Money
By Philip Giraldi
Antiwar.com, 2009-06-02
I certainly agree with his concluding hope that
“America can stop getting involved willy-nilly
in other people’s quarrels overseas
and might even be able to return to being a normal country
with normal people aspiring to normal things.”
But my wish is that the money we save by ending
the roughly $100 billion per year now being spent on operations
be redirected within the defense budget to
resetting the force and
replacing and upgrading all those Cold War platforms
from the 1980s, 70s, and even 60s
that are about to wear out.
Amazingly, the Air Force is now flying 50-year-old airframes!
And planning on keeping F-15s flying almost as long into the future.
Who knows if this is even feasible, let alone how much the cost growth will be.
One wonders how many 1960-vintage airliners
(the same vintage as the KC-135s and many of the electronic warfare platforms)
are flying in passenger service,
and how many congressmen would be willing to fly on one if it were.
009-11-09-Raimondo-Hasan-Fort-Hood
The War at HomeJihad at Ft. Hood
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2009-11-09
It’s been grimly amusing to watch
the liberal mainstream media
spin the murder spree at Ft. Hood.
They are trying mightily to pretend
it was all about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s inner psychological turmoil,
given his job as an Army psychiatrist whose task it was
to counsel troubled veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars.
He is depicted as a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome,
even though he was never in combat.
His identification with his clients’ suffering,
his poor job evaluations,
even his lack of a wife are all blamed for his rampage,
which killed 13 (so far) and wounded dozens of others.
In order to give this narrative of victimization credibility,
the touchy-feely school of thought has to ignore
the mountains of evidence that – given his premises –
Hasan acted rationally
and there was nothing inexplicable about his deadly spasm of violence.
...
[T]here seems little doubt Hasan’s motive was ideological
or that he saw his murder spree as a religious duty:
as he mowed down his unarmed victims.
The touchy-feely explanation – that he was socially awkward,
didn’t have girlfriends, was lonely,
and was trying to fill the gap represented by the loss of his parents
with devotion to the Koran –
doesn’t begin to explain his actions.
The truth is that
Maj. Hasan saw the war he was about to be sent to as a religious conflict,
pitting the U.S. government against Islam –
and he chose to side with the enemy.
...
2009-11-10-WP-Priest-Hasan-Walter-Reed-talk
Fort Hood suspect warned of threats within the ranksCited stress facing Muslims Hasan spoke at Walter Reed in 2007
By Dana Priest
Washington Post, 2009-11-10
[At the risk of being considered unpatriotic by some,
I am going to say that I think the concerns imputed to Hasan
are entirely legitimate.
I can well understand how the Army Medical Corps
(or whatever branch of the Army he was in)
might not have known what to do with them.
Would Army Counterintelligence
(or whatever organization is performing that function these days)
or some other branch of the Army concerned with internal Army cohesion
might have been able to make better use of his abilities?
The Army of course, for good reason,
is bureaucratic and inflexible once they have you in a career track,
with an investment in you and expectations on you,
so that would not have been very feasible.
They have very real and very difficult requirements to fulfill,
and can't just change things to suit everyone's whims.
But it is a thought.]
2009-12-14-TNI-Pillar
The Al-Qaeda Fallacyby Paul R. Pillar
National Interest Online, 2009-12-14
[Its concluding paragraph:]
The principal lesson to draw from the recent cases is that terrorism,
either generally or specifically the Islamist variety,
is not solely or even primarily
a matter of states, sponsorship, havens, and well-known groups.
It is at least as much a matter of angry individuals,
angered primarily by certain salient conflicts.
It is more a matter of such individuals, already radicalized,
seeking out groups than of the groups being Pied Pipers luring the individuals.
The United States reduces the problem
to the extent that it can help to resolve the conflicts.
It exacerbates the problem,
and risks becoming more of a terrorist target itself,
to the extent that it escalates conflicts
and makes them even more salient.
cc-12.2.4.2.8-Western-intervention and
cc-12.3-three-rules.]
2010
2010-02-19-Greenwald-terrorism-most-meaningless-and-manipulated-word
Terrorism: the most meaningless and manipulated wordBy Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com, 2010-02-19
2016
2016-03-26-MFS-after-brussels-westerners-face-two-deadly-enemies-the-islamists-and-their-governments
After Brussels, Westerners face two deadly enemies —the Islamists and their governments
by Michael F. Scheuer
non-intervention.com, 2016-03-26
[1]
For twenty years now I have been arguing the obvious: namely, that as early as 1997, the Islamist problem was too big and too lethal for any U.S. intelligence service or law-enforcement agency to defeat.
At that time, I suggested to my superiors at CIA that we either get permission to kill Osama bin Laden immediately —
and thereby probably shatter or at least drastically weaken a still-developing al-Qaeda —
or inform the president that he was facing a quickly growing Islamist enemy that would soon not only would require conventional forces to eradicate,
but could not be defeated by any other force or combination of forces.
I also said that to believe that the Islamist movement was either limited in its capacity to grow in numbers and spread geographically or was unrelated to the faith of Islam could not be substantiated by fact or logic, and that to tell the American people that was so would be a knowing, and its own right, a lethal lie.
This, I hasten to add, took no brilliance to see.
It was clear as day in 1997; it is — I think — just as clear today.
[2]
Let me say here very directly that whatever the Belgian police and intelligence services are doing in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels, and whatever assistance is being rendered to them by the United States and their EU partners,
will not have the slightest impact whatsoever on the security of Belgium, the EU, the United States, Canada — or farther afield — Australia or New Zealand.
Now, the Belgian authorities may well apprehend, indict, try, and convict each and every one of the still living mujahedin who were involved in the Brussels operation.
And good for them if they do.
But it will do nothing to lessen the Islamists’ military capabilities,
destroy their abundant, migrant-expanded networks in the West,
or significantly attrit their manpower.
Although Western governments have acted — and spoken — for the past twenty years
as if killing or capturing the Islamists one at a time was emblematic of pushing the mujahedin ever closer to defeat,
it never did and never will make any strategic difference.
As I have said many times before,
trying to destroy the Islamist movement by killing or incarcerating its members one by one — whether in 1997 or 2016 —
would be the same as if the Americans, British, and Soviets had tried to annihilate the Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS and Hirohito’s Imperial Army and Navy
by killing one of their personnel at a time.
Only a madman — or a deliberate, dastardly [liar] — would tell the public that it could.
[3]
What the aftermath of the Brussels attack requires is popular recognition that the Belgian and Western intelligence and police services — no matter how successful they are —
will have not the slightest impact on the strategic reality that the West, is now, and for at least a decade past, being beaten to death by the Islamists.
They have defeated our armies in two wars, they have spread worldwide, they have — despite the lying if condescendingly soothing words of Obama, Biden, McCain, Cameron, Hollande, Clinton, Cruz, the treason that calls itself Neo-Conservative, etc. —
very successfully changed the way we live, whether in regard to worrying about where children go for social events, where vacations should be taken, or the all too obvious reality that
the civil liberties of Westerners are being incrementally abrogated by their rulers in the name of security; that is, by elected men and women who know that the West is bleeding to death at the hands of Islamist fighters and, even more, by their own voluntary pacts with the six horses of the West’s coming apocalypse: diversity, multiculturalism, political correctness, interventionism, irreligion, and open borders.
[4]
Since Brussels, Americans and Europeans have been buffeted by the media’s usual race to distract their audiences from the death sentence their leaders have signed for them.
Reporters have been doing their usual breathless pieces on the tracking and capturing of the mujahedin involved in the attack, as if successful cops-and-robbers procedures have even the remotest chance of winning the West’s war with Islam.
Expert guests have appeared declaring that almost all Muslims are peaceful followers of the religion of peace, and adding that anyone who questions this increasingly questionable position is a racist, a xenophobe, or an ignoramus. Assorted retired generals and admirals have crawled out of their corporate boardrooms and smugly asserted that if only we would deliver more airstrikes, arm more Kurds, train more of the famous moderate Islamist insurgents, or deploy more Special Forces the war would be won lickety split. And, as always, there has been the usual crowd of greedy academics who arrogantly guaranteed that, with their own great brains and a few hundred million dollars in taxpayer money, they would deradicalize the entire Muslim world and instruct them on how to interpret the Koran. If this sounds familiar, it is because the media have presented the same package of rank nonsense after nearly very post-9/11 Islamist attack.
[5]
Accompanying this parade of quackery was yet another iteration of the “Princess Diana Death Festival”, which — in the case of Islamist victories — is a slobberingly repulsive exercise of “showing” that you care when you really will never do anything to tell the truth or support a leader who tries to win the war. The steps in meeting this festival’s requirements include: reporters, experts, politicians, and generals thoroughly salting their statements with the terms “carnage”, “horrendous”, “cowardly attack”, “shocking tragedy”, and that all-time favorite “horrific”; well-scripted politicians calling for “more intelligence sharing”, a “cooperative anti-radicalism effort by the International Community”, and asserting that “this is not a war” and “most Muslims support the West”; candlelight vigils by the seemingly endless number of selfie-taking, drug-addled, and clearly brain-dead millennials; and the construction of soon-to-be garbage piles consisting of candles, flowers, hand-written messages, photographs, and a few people taking shifts to stand or kneel around this refuse and appear to be grieving mightily for people they did not know and only care about because their corpses allow for this mawkishly inane, media-covered ritual.
[6]
All of the foregoing is very civilized, moderate, and nauseating, and none if it is worth a horse’s ass. The Islamists started this war in 1996 and on Labor Day this year we will have just begun its third decade. Their motivation to start the war lay in three factors: (a) oppressive rule by Arab tyrants supported, protected, and kept in power by the United States and Europe; (b) repeated, U.S.-led Western military and economic interventions in the Muslim word; and (c) U.S., European, and — implicitly –Arab tyrant support, protection, and coddling of Israel. Today, the Islamists continue to be motivated by the same factors, as well as by the additional U.S.-EU political/social interventionism in the form of democracy mongering and attempts at feminization in the Muslim world that have flourished, deepened, and spread the war under Obama and Hillary Clinton. As a result of the West’s daft and self-defeating interventionist consistency, the Islamists continue to be motivated by the same factors and have continued expanding and winning the war they started. And with a touch of splendid tit-for-tat irony, they are seeing how the U.S. and the EU like military intervention, trying out their own hand at it in places like London, Madrid, Paris, Fort Hood, Washington, DC, San Bernardino, New York, and, now, Brussels.
[7]
Obviously, nothing the West has done against the Islamists has done more than deal them a few tactical defeats and provide us with a body count. Nothing currently being discussed by Western governments in public seems to hold a chance for any greater success, although they certainly will drive the West deeper into debt, further shred the social cohesion of its societies, kill many more of its civilians and soldier-children, and inevitably further constrict civil liberties and open the door wider to more tyrannical government.
[8]
The West’s lethal Islamist problem has been wrought by two factors. The first is the war the Islamist started and are waging and winning against the United States and Europe. The second is the multiple generations of clearly ill-educated theorists who have ruled the United States and Europe. These men and women have emasculated their societies, hollowed out their militaries by cutting funding, never pursuing victory, and making them a testing ground for institutionalizing sexual deviancy, and showing a vast preference for building authoritarian and so liberty-killing central governments rather than either halting their war-causing interventionism or killing the millions of Islamists and their supporters who need to be killed if they continue intervening.
[9]
For American and European citizens, then, it is increasingly difficult to identify the greater enemy, the Islamists who kill them or the self-centered, arrogant elite that rules them and allows the Islamists to kill them. How this predicament will resolve itself is hard to tell. For the most part — I have read — Europe’s citizens are unarmed and so it seems they will have to watch their societies, traditions, and history be consumed by a combination of the urban guerrilla war the Islamists have already started and the feckless policies of their unmanly governments which both fuel that war and lack the ruthlessness to win it. They will be unable to defend themselves by killing either enemy. In America, however, the 2nd Amendment — and the vastly better armed citizenry it has allowed to grow in response to Obama’s tyranny — still ensures that the citizenry can, if they so choose, defend themselves against the Islamists, the national government, or perhaps both.
2017
2017-03-22-Westminister-terror-attack
Westminster terror attack: First picture of suspect being treatedSky news, 2017-03-22
[Incidents such as this make me absolutely despise those unable to recognize the relevance of the religious identification of the perpetrator.]
Labels: terrorism
posted by KHarbaugh at 12:00
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