Article by Walid Phares in La Razon of Spain on the US Democratic Party view of the Administration's new plans in Iraq. This is the second article in a two part series on "redirecting Iraq's campaign." The title of the article is "La predica anti-Irak de la Izquierda."Download pen.org_LRA20070129_Y6DMRex4ScWp7bwJK1eR6uIGs8Mjk3D_D028.pdf
At the invitation of the Department of Political Science and the Program of Middle East Studies at Fordham University in New York, Professor Walid Phares, author of the book Future Jihad presented a lecture on "Future Jihad: Can it be avoided?"
Dr Phares, a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a professor of Comparative Politics was introduced by Professor John Entelis, Fordham Middle East Studies director. The lecture was well attended by students and faculty on campus.
Phares introduced his new paperback Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West, published by Palgrave, which is being released this week in the United States. Phares said "the most challenging issue in the War on Terror today is to understand the global nature of the Jihadi movement and the strategic objectives of its adherents." Reviewing the historical development of the Jihadists, both Salafis and Khumeinsts in the 20th century, Phares described the movement as capable for long term thinking process. "The Jihadists are not a reaction to US Foreign policy as many in academic described them since the 1990s. These movements have survived WWII, the Cold War and the 1990s, so that they will have their own time in world politics."
Phares summarized his thesis on the "road to 9/11" and described his projection of Jihadism into the end of this decade. "In the international version of Future Jihad, I cover more areas of interests to the Jihadists such as Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. I try to show how global the ideology and main strategies are." Phares will be lecturing on campuses to introduce his new book and interact with students and faculty.
THE LONG WAR: An officer briefing FDD's Eleana Gordon and me at CENTCOM (Central Command) in Tampa the other day said: "It's important to understand: The Jihadis take a one-hundred year view. If it takes them a century to win this war, they are prepared for that. Very few people in the West think in such terms."
What he did not say but might have: Most politicians can't think or plan beyond the next election.
Read more Notes & Comments in this week's e-newsletter.
IRAN'S THREAT: Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed to wipe Israel "off the map." So now, there can be no doubt: The Islamist-Fascist dictators of Iran are intent on genocide.
Scholar Michael Ledeen notes that while this may be frightening it is hardly new. The father of the Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, made the same promise back in 1979 after he left France (where his hosts did their best to make him comfortable) and took power in Tehran. I was reporting from Iran at the time. I remember.
Read more Notes & Comments in this week's e-newsletter.
Read more on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of the democratic state of Israel here.
KA-CHING! KA-CHING! Bloomberg reports that Saudi Arabia is "likely to generate $163 billion of oil revenue this year, the most in more than two decades."
How much of this money do you think will go to fight poverty and AIDS in Africa?
How much will go to helping the residents of the West Bank have decent housing and build farms and factories that will provide jobs, goods and services?
How much will go to terrorists? How much will go to fund propaganda justifying and inciting terrorism?
There's more here. Hat tip: Anne Korin.
Read more Notes & Comments in this week's e-newsletter.
IRAQ THE VOTE: Here's what one Iraqi, the blogger Hammorabi, has to say: "This is the first time for the Iraqis to vote for their own constitution. It is indeed the first time in the Middle East especially the Arab countries. ...This is a historic day and the political process moving forward in spite of the efforts of all of the evils to disable or delay it. ...how nice it is to be free." More from him here.
Read more Notes & Comments in this week's e-newsletter.
CUTTING OFF HEADS IS ONE THING -- BUT NO HOLDING HANDS! From the London Times: "A vision of an Islamic society that bans mixed dancing and sternly disapproves of homosexuality has been given by Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior leader of Hamas in Gaza. After controversies when a Hamas-led council halted a dance festival and Islamist gunmen stopped a rap band performing in Gaza, Dr. Zahar defended the enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islam. 'A man holds a woman by the hand and dances with her in front of everyone. Does that serve the national interest?'"
You get it now? The problem with suicide bombing is that it can lead to dancing.
The rest of the London Times story is here.
Hat tip: Andrew Stuttaford.
Read more Notes & Comments in this week's e-newsletter.
FDD's Claudia Rosett and FOX News's George Russell have a new piece:
United Nations investigators scrambling to discover the extent of a bribery scandal spreading out from the organization's procurement department may soon be looking toward the building's 38th floor — the U.N's executive offices.
Read the full article here.
AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL: What will it take to end it? Start with Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs). The technology is already available and the additional cost only about $150 per car. Second, begin filling American cars with fuel made from Caribbean sugar and domestic garbage. That technology is already available, too.
To encourage the transition, why not get rid of all taxes and tariffs on the petroleum substitutes that can be used in FFVs? What -- or who -- is holding up this common sense solution? Read More.
CATASTROPHE: In recent days, a flood of almost biblical proportions eclipsed news of the global war against Militant Islamism. But battles continued to be fought.
The most dramatic was in northwestern Iraq where 5,000 American and Iraqi troops swept into Tall Afar -- the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November.
Tall Afar had been taken a year ago but after sweeping out foreign insurgents, U.S. troops withdrew. By so doing, they violated "the ink spot" strategy -- the idea that to defeat insurgent forces it is necessary to take and hold key areas and then spread out from those bases over time. [Read More]
IGNORING ABU GHRAIB: Film-maker Don North has produced two films about some of the most despicable abuses to take place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But PBS and other MSM (mainstream media) outlets refuse to air them. Why? Perhaps because the abuses he has focused on -- the amputations of the right hands of Iraqi merchants -- were carried out while Saddam Hussein was still in power. Such barbarity evidently fills the MSM with ennui.
Want to bet that if Don had made films about abuses at Abu Ghraib while U.S. forces were running the place -- even such lesser abuses as scaring prisoners with barking dogs -- there'd be plenty of film at 11? Read More.
DISENGAGEMENT: I paid a visit to Israel in the days leading up to the withdrawal from Gaza. Without question, Israelis are divided over an exodus that its enemies are celebrating as a victory for terrorism.
On the other hand, it was remarkable how life goes on in Israel: The streets of Israel's cities bustle with the Middle East's most diverse population -- Jews, Christians and Muslims, whites, browns and blacks. The restaurants and nightclubs are full. The economy is booming. The journalism and politics of this democratic nation are more than energetic.
This episode severely tested Israelis. Now it is the turn of the Palestinians. Are there a sufficient number of Gazans willing to do the hard work necessary to build a decent society in the territory that has been turned over to them? Or will Israel be blamed for every failure while terrorists take control and pursue their agenda of death and destruction? Read More.
Link: Clifford May: Notes & Comments.
STUPID INTELLIGENCE: Do you happen to recall the July 10th, 2001 New York Times op-ed by Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA and State Department counter-terrorism specialist (now one of those campaigning against Karl Rove)?
In it, Johnson wrote what many of his colleagues in the intelligence bureaucracy believed that "Americans have little to fear" from terrorism.
Fears about terrorism, he added, were only being stirred up by "24-hour broadcast news operations too eager to find a dramatic story," by "pundits who repeat myths while ignoring clear empirical data," as well as politicians who "warn constituents of dire threats and then appropriate money for redundant military installations and new government investigators and agents."
Well, it now turns out that, "Three weeks before the London bombings of July 7, Britain's Joint Terrorist Analysis Center advised policymakers that 'at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK.'"
Longtime terrorism scholar Walter Laqueur’s essay in today’s WSJ is well worth reading. To read more, see my post in NRO.
