FDD

Walid Phares: “The West needs to isolate Jihadism by defining it”

At the Launch of his new book The Confrontation at the European Parliament

Brussels, European Parliament, EFD-FDD, March 12, 2008

At the invitation of European MP Jana Hybaskova, a launching event was organized at the European Parliament for Dr Walid Phares’s new book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. The breakfast lecture was attended by a number of legislators, including MEP Paulo Casaca, experts at the European institutions, US and Arab diplomats, NGOs representatives and the staff of the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD). Phares, is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a visiting scholar with EFD. 

A Reaganite’s Support for Incentivizing Fuel Compeition (CM)

Robert McFarlane, who served as President Reagan’s national security advisor supports the case that Robert Zubrin, Anne Korin, James Woolsey, I and others have been making:

We spend $500 billion each year on our military forces. One of their most vital missions is to protect the flow of Persian Gulf oil which fuels the global economy. The disruption of those oil flows -- such as by terrorists disabling a major Saudi processing terminal -- would bring down economies throughout the industrialized world.

Here again, one can conceive a strategy for neutralizing this threat. It involves moving urgently to introduce a profoundly different national energy policy designed to do the following:

• Provide market-based incentives to justify the essential re-tooling of our  automobile industry to enable it to produce flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks, using carbon composite materials (as Boeing is doing in the new 787 airliner);
• Accelerate the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol, butanol and other bio-fuels; and
• License new nuclear power plants.

He makes many other solid points in this WSJ op-ed.

The Vietnam Syndrome (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

This is another Vietnam legacy. Beyond the purely pragmatic argument that the war in Southeast Asia was unwinnable, there was also a sense among opponents of the war that defeat would, in some deep way, be balm for America's soul. "For all the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted?" asked antiwar writer James Carroll in 2006, explicitly making the connection between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Read more.

The Making of a Militant (CM)

Tawfik Hamid writes:

Salafi indoctrination operates through written words and careful coaching. It is enormously seductive. It rapidly changed me into a jihadi. Salafi sacred texts exert a powerful influence on millions of Muslim followers throughout the world, and terrorism is only one symptom of the Salafi disease. Salafi doctrine, which is at the root of the West's confrontation with Islamism, poses an existential threat to us all - including Muslims.

Indeed, Salafism robs young Muslims of their soul, it turns Western communities against them, and it can end in civil war as Muslims attempt to     implement shari'a in their host countries. A peaceful interpretation of Islam is possible, but the Salafi establishment is currently blocking moderate theological reform. The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

More here.

Fighting for Human Rights – Against the Human Rights Commissars (CM)

Ezra Levant told the so-called "Human Rights Commission" of Alberta:

When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. …

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. …

I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

More here.

The Life of Benazir Bhutto (RWC)

Speaking of corruption, as you know, the recently dead Benazir Bhutto, in effect, willed Pakistan to her 19 year old son, or at least she designated him as the leader of her political party, The Pakistan People’s Party. The boy’s name is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.  A corrupt Pakistani businessman, Asif Ali Zardari, is his father.  I’m surprised he hasn’t yet dropped the Zardari name in favor of Bhutto.  Give the boy time. 

Bilawal held a news conference in London last week. He is a college student there. He defended his mother’s handing her political party to a teenager who hasn’t been in Pakistan since he was a little boy.   

He said, in a moment of deep candor “I admit my experience to date is limited!” Well, Jeez, who would have known?   

The death of Benzir Bhutto brought back a strong memory for me.  I was in Pakistan a few weeks after the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11.  The U.S. retaliatory ground war against the Taliban - the search for Osama Laden and his running dogs, and then the bombings of the Taliban from the air, began on October 10, 2001. One night I had dinner at the home of a wealthy Pakistani couple, both of whom had held very high posts in their government, in his case one of the very highest,  in the foreign ministry.  I had known them both for years.  The wife was a smart and likeable woman who was a close friend of Benazir Bhutto and had played an important official role in Benazir's Pakistani administration. We talked that night about, among other things, the subjugated role of women in Muslim countries like Pakistan, where religious extremism and politics are intertwined and Muslim fanaticism runs very deep. Our hostess was an outspoken feminist like her friend Benazir Bhutto.   

In that context, I said, I had heard a reliable report that Benazir's husband Asif frequently beat Benazir, punching and kicking her. Do you know about this, I asked, is it true?  And if it is true how can Benazir, an icon to US liberals and feminists, reconcile her husbands behavior and her acceptance of it with her public postures. The diplomat's wife looked pained.   

2007: A Global Assessment of the Confrontation (WP)

From the World Defense Review

The conflict we call the War on Terror still continues at the end of 2007, and all indications are that its battlefields are expected to spread further, and escalate, in the upcoming year.

The following is a global assessment of the confrontation that has taken place since 2001, though the systematic war waged by Jihadi forces against democracies and the free world began at least a decade before 9/11. This evaluation isn’t comprehensive or definitive, but a collection of observations related to major benchmarks, directions and projections.

Global cohesion lacking

The main powers and allies involved in the War on Terror still lack global cohesion.  While the US, in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, integrates those efforts with its efforts globally to defeat al Qaeda and contain nuclear proliferation of rogue regimes like Iran, other powers and blocs of countries have different outlooks and plans. While Britain and other U.S partners in Europe espouse common views on a global scale, France, Germany, Spain and Italy agree on the Afghan theater but still are uninvolved in the Iraqi theater. All Atlantic partners, however, pursue al Qaeda and consider it – along with other Salafi networks - as the principal threat. Also, most Western partners perceive the Iranian threat as serious, although differ in the ways in which to respond.

Listen Up

Instapundit’s Glen Reynolds has an interview with Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning The War on Terror By Breaking Free of Oil. You can listen directly – no downloads necessary by going here.

Zubrin proposes that we make all cars sold in the U.S. Flex-Fuel Vehicles that can run not just on gasoline but also on ethanol, methanol — or any combination of the three.

The idea is to break the transportation fuel monopoly by weaning ourselves off our dependence on a single commodity controlled by those waging war against us. Winning the global conflict between free nations and militant Islamists will be much more difficult — and maybe impossible — if we continue indefinitely funding both sides, as we are now. There also could be benefits for the environment, for the American economy, and for poor people in tropical third world nations. And all this can happen very quickly.

I’ve written two columns based on Bob's book, here and here, and we’ve just made him an FDD Fellow on energy and security.

The Most Useful and Idiotic?

Vanessa Redgrave has long been a woman of the far left. Like too many others of that ideological persuasion, she is now also sympathetic to militant Islamism.

More here.

The “Useful Idiots” of Hollywood

James Zumwalt writes:

As we struggle against an extremist mindset effectively using our Western freedoms against us to win an ideological war, Hollywood assists the enemy. …’

The world has witnessed the violent reaction of Muslims to any criticism of Islam -- a sensitivity observed by Hollywood in limiting its defamatory attacks to non-Islamic religions only. …

It is sad our Hollywood elites fail to see the harm their movies do to our country in the Muslim world today. … The ultimate role they play is of Vladimir Lenin’s “useful idiots” -- Westerners naively aiding an ideology opposed to the very freedoms they so freely exercise -- a role he came to greatly appreciate during his ideological struggle with the West.

More here.

Regional Conference on Terrorism

Walid Phares addressed more than 700 Law Enforcement officials and personnel as well as members of the US House of Representatives at a regional conference on Terrorism in Charlotte, NC.

More here.

Balance (CM)

Alan Dershowitz on interrogations:

What is needed is a recognition that government officials must strike an appropriate balance between the security of America and the rights of our enemies.

More here.

Bombing Europe (CM)

In World War II, America and its allies bombed German and Japanese cities, killing tens of thousands of people. Bret Stephens asks

How can this be justified? Does it not greatly diminish Allied claims to moral superiority?

Most people would argue that it does not, even though the horror of what was done to Hamburg and the other cities dwarfs in moral scale the worst U.S. abuses in the war on terror (real or alleged), which are so frequently cited as evidence that we have debased ourselves beyond recognition. Most people would also agree that the only compelling ethical defense that can be made for the bombing campaign is that it hastened Allied victory, spared at least as many lives (on both sides) as it cost, and created the conditions for a more peaceful postwar world. In other words, the question here isn't about the intrinsic morality of the bombing. It's about whether the good that flowed from the bombing outweighed the unmistakable evil of the act itself. …

[T]he important point is that the debate fundamentally is about results. Note the difference with the current debate over waterboarding, where opponents argue that the technique is unconscionable and inadmissible under any circumstances, even in hypothetical cases where the alternative to waterboarding is terrorist attacks resulting in mass casualties among innocent civilians. According to this view, it is possible to wage war yet avoid the classic "choice of evils" dilemmas that confronted past statesmen such as Churchill and Roosevelt. Or, to put the argument more precisely, it is possible to avoid this choice if one is also prepared to pay for it in blood -- if not in one's own, than in that of kith and kin and whoever else's life must be sacrificed to keep our consciences clear.

More here.

"What do we do when a juror refuses to vote?" (AM)

That, as the Dallas Morning News reports, was the note the judge in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-funding trial in Texas received from the jury on October 3.  And that was over a week ago — the jury has now been deliberating for almost a month — since September 19.

This is an extraordinarily important case, focused on the Hamas support network in the United States, that the mainstream press has ignored.  There is obviously real reason for concern that it will end in a mistrial. 

The law is delicate in this area.  Jury deliberations are close to sacrosanct, and we generally are not permitted to inquire into them.  A juror is not disqualified for disagreeing with fellow jurors.  But the law recognizes a difference between a juror who disagrees, on the one hand, and a juror who refuses to deliberate.  The latter can be removed on the theory that he or she is refusing to perform the function of a juror.  It's not always easy, however, to distinguish disagreement with other jurors from refusal to discuss the case with other jurors — especially since the law does not permit us to inquire into the substance of the deliberations.  (We usually learn about those only after the trial, when jurors agree to be interviewed and explain what happened.)

It'll be terrible if this jury hangs since the trial has been long and complex.

Blackwater (RWC)

The Sept. 16 failed ambush of a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad’s Mansour district that resulted in the death of some Iraqis has also resulted in a firestorm of politically inspired and one-sided attacks on one of the best of the world’s military contractors: Blackwater, a company run and staffed by former special operations warriors who have been so efficient and skilled, so reliable and professional and aggressive in their protection of American diplomats and contractors in Iraq that not one of those Americans has ever been kidnapped or killed.

US intelligence reports say that al-Qaeda in Iraq has targeted US diplomats and CIA officers for priority assassination because of their headline value.  Existing tensions between the State Department and the US military were exacerbated by last Sunday’s firefight.  Those tensions were fueled by the sometimes unreliable and deeply corrupt Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), more about which later.  The US Department of Defense is now complaining that State doesn’t sufficiently “control” their personal security details (PSD’s), though DOD also employs Blackwater on dangerous missions.

The incident last Sunday began around noon when Blackwater’s PSD Team 4 was protecting a US diplomat at the Izdihar financial compound.  A bomb planted in a nearby vehicle exploded.  None of the Americans was injured and the diplomat was hustled away with help from Blackwater Tactical Support Team 22 (TST).  A second force of Blackwater operatives (TST 23) raced from the nearby Green Zone to assist and, according to a “sensitive” report filed by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security that day, when they arrived nearby they came under fire from an “estimated 8-10 persons (who) fired from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi Police uniforms .” (My emphasis. The Iraqi police, and their uniforms, are under control of the MOI.)

The State Department report goes on: “The team returned defensive fire and attempted to drive out of the initial ambush site; however the team’s command Bearcat vehicle was disabled during the attack and could not continue.”  Enemy gunfire was so furious that bullets striking the engine block of the armored vehicle caused it to fail.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Iraqi MOI demanded that Blackwater be booted from the country and froze their activities without any investigation, immobilizing CIA officers and diplomats within the Green Zone.  According to the journalist Richard Minter, writing on Pajamas Media, the CIA station was “all but motionless –as meetings with informants and the Iraqi government” were hastily cancelled. Blackwater also protects US reconstruction efforts across Iraq, the building of clinics, schools, etc., and so according to Minter these too were all but shut down.

Some Iraqi witnesses, a number of whom work for the Ministry of the Interior, told reporters that Blackwater began shooting civilians without provocation, a ludicrous scenario and one the Americans deny.  The Blackwater contractors and the U.S. diplomats are saying the same thing: that the Blackwater men reacted lawfully after being provoked by the bomb blast and then defended themselves from a coordinated attack by men, some wearing police uniforms, firing automatic weapons. After a few days of serious paralysis, Blackwater went back to work in Iraq but the drumbeat to make them leave the country continues,

The New York Times says Blackwater men fire their weapons more often than any other contractor in Iraq. (That bullet count includes warning shots).  It is true that the Blackwater operators are famously aggressive.  They were precisely trained for survival and they work daily in the most lethal areas of Iraq, protecting Americans the insurgents want to kill.

Nonetheless, critics on the Left in the US, some of them in Congress, have rushed to side of the Iraqi witnesses to condemn Blackwater, however contrived the Iraqi statements may appear. Some of them are calling for repeal of Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, the decree that, they claim, puts foreign security contractors beyond the reach of Iraqi law.

But Order 17 only excuses contractors from Iraqi laws when the action in question is required to fulfill a contract. In other words, despite several news articles stating otherwise, crimes like rape, murder, and theft can be tried under Iraqi law.  Private security contractors like Blackwater are bound by a number of U.S. statutes, international treaties, federal acquisition laws, and defense and trade controls regulations (the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, the War Crimes Act, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, the Anti-Torture Statute, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)  If the military contractor is working for the US Department of Defense, as some Blackwater men are, they are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice

Military contractors not in violation of any of the above are not bound by Iraqi law, nor are members of the US military. Iraq is still a mess and government corruption is as common as roadside bombs and starving dogs. Any decision to revoke Order 17 would effectively shut down private security companies, which is likely the real goal of many on the Left who have rushed this case to judgment, and another 50,000 or more US military troops would have to take their place.  Not good. Fact is, private security firms are essential to solving the long term problems of Iraq.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, held hearings this week whose purpose was as political as it was investigatory. Waxman is chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Waxman and some of his fellow Democrats are blaming the State Department for failing to “restrain” Blackwater in Iraq, though the evidence is that Blackwater has actually policed itself in what is a very tou9gh, unpredictable business.  Blackwater has about 1,000 employees highly trained employees in Iraq there and the company has fired or dismissed more than 100 for various infractions or misbehaviors under the State Department contract.

Blackwater is a company that has become strikingly successful over the past few years.  That success is infuriating to the organized Left which loathes everything about the company that others have thought was cool: its cryptic, dangerous-sounding name, its private air force, its huge North Carolina training base, its bear paw logo.  (In Paris, shops sell women’s panties and bras with Blackwater and its logo on them).  Blackwater’s lantern-jawed, close-cropped, sky-diving, special Ops patriotic American image makes the extreme Left even crazier. 

The Nation magazine crowd has worked themselves into a spitting fit over Blackwater, demonizing it through a media campaign that started about a year ago with a young, weasely, left-wing polemicist in the lead.  First came repeated personal attacks on Blackwater’s “right-wing Christian” founder, a decent, and honest ex-Navy SEAL named Erik Prince.  Even NPR, on a story about Blackwater referred to its founder as "a Christian”.

The polemical assaults were launched on anti-American blogs and Marxist/socialist websites (Workers World, for example,) and dumb, pompous, left-wing radio shows like “Democracy Now” and by the proselytizing of liberals of the Huffington Post/ Jon Stewart variety, who had succumbed to McCarthyite Bushophobia some time ago.  The left has successfully moved its corporate objectification from the evil of Haliburton to the evil of Blackwater.

German Terrorists (RWC)

A trio of homegrown terrorists arrested recently in Germany had gotten bomb detonators made in Syria from Operatives in Pakistan, the German government is saying.

The detonating devices were smuggled into Germany, from Syria through Turkey.

The Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the suspects had targeted Americans in Germany and were just a few days away from acting when they were arrested.

The men had been trained at a camp in Pakistan by a terrorist group from Uzbekistan.  Two of the men were native born Germans, converts to Islam.

Expand NATO (CM)

National Review editorializes:

[T]here is good reason to welcome the proposal from Rudy Giuliani, in his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Atlantic Bridge conference in London, that NATO be expanded to include India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. New Western institutions are needed — and existing ones should be updated — to meet the new and more diverse security challenges of the post–Cold War world. U.S. national security will rest in large part on getting reliable cooperation from alliances old and new.

Me: To give credit where it is due, such NATO expansion was first proposed more than a year ago by Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain and International Co-Chairman of the Committee for the Present Danger.

Toward Energy Independence (CM)

Jim Woolsey and Anne Korin write:

By moving toward utilizing the batteries that have been developed for modern electronics we can rather soon have “plug-in hybrids” that travel 20-40 miles on an inexpensive charge of night-time off-peak electricity at a small fraction of gasoline’s cost. (After driving that distance plug-ins keep going as ordinary hybrids.) Dozens of ordinary hybrids converted to plug-ins now on the road are getting in the range of 100 mpg of gasoline. And millions of flexible-fuel vehicles are also now in the fleet. Producing them adds costs well under $100 and they can use up to 85-percent ethanol (before long to be made from biomass rather than corn) — methanol, butanol, and other alternative fuels produced from grasses and even waste.

More here.

‘North Korea is a global threat’ (CM)

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton writes:.

Even if we "only" have evidence of continued North Korean ballistic missile cooperation with Syria, that alone should keep the North on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Syria -- and its senior partner, Iran -- are both long-time denizens of that same list of state sponsors of terrorism. Can we really delist North Korea when it partners with other terrorist states in the most destructive technologies?

Moreover, where are Syria's ballistic missiles -- and its weapons of mass destruction -- aimed? With American forces at risk in Iraq, no increase in the threats they face is acceptable, especially given Syria's record on Iraq to date. Syria remains at war with Israel and with Lebanon's Cedar Revolution. No one concerned about Israel's security or Lebanon's democracy should countenance giving North Korea a pass on the terrorism issue.

More here.

In the Crosshairs (CM)

John Podhoretz writes

President Bush's nominee to be his next attorney general will be the first senior official in the U.S. government with the experience of living with an Islamofascist target on his forehead.

[Michael] Mukasey presided over the two-year trial of the "Blind Sheik," Omar Abdel-Rahman, and his collaborators accused of plotting the 1993 strike on the World Trade Center. For his labors, which were extraordinarily complex, Mukasey was considered a possible target for violent reprisal by Rahman's followers.

More here.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq Threatens Sweden (CM)

Abu Omar al Baghdadi has offered a reward of $100,000 for the assassination of Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for drawing a picture of a dog with Mohammed’s head on it.  He also has offered $50,000 for the assassination of the editor of the newspaper that published the cartoon.

Can we now, finally, dismiss the notion that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has nothing to do with the global al-Qaeda movement and would not be a problem is American troops would just “redeploy” out of Iraq? Also can we recall that AQI was responsible for the hotel bombings in Jordan in November 2005 and, according to British intelligence, was behind the recent failed attacks against London and Glasgow?

And it would be nice if anyone in the MSM could bother to note that the most recent National Intelligence Estimate calls AQI the “most visible and capable [al-Qaeda] affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the [U.S] Homeland.”

Fred Kagan at AEI informs me that Abu Omar al Baghdadi is just a nom de guerre, or perhaps even a fictitious personage created by AQI to conceal the foreignness of their leadership. In reality, the head of AQI is Abu Ayyub al Masri, an Egyptian.

One more thing: Do you recall the Osama bin Laden tape in October 2004, the one in which he rebutted Bush’s claim that AQ hates freedom by saying: “Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden, for example?”

Perhaps this suggests that al-Qaeda in Iraq is actually more belligerent than al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

ABC coverage is here.

Remember Sept. 11th (CM)

Gary Bauer says it well:

Seeing that date – Tuesday, September 11th – certainly makes one stop for a moment. It brings back a rush of memories: about where you were when you first learned of the attacks; first saw the images on TV; of flags flying; of full churches and synagogues; and of members of Congress singing “G-d Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol. It is important that we remember September 11th. But how and why we remember is also important. That is the subject of an op-ed by Debra Burlingame -- the sister of Chic Burlingame, who was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon. I want to share part of her op-ed with you, because it is a powerful message that every citizen and every policymaker must understand and, more importantly, never forget.

“None of us wants this to happen again, but as time goes by, why can’t we all agree, as we did then, about what took place that day? There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts…

“Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup. The attacks were not a random act of violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act of war committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society.

“Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done. Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but ‘9/11’ is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman. We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that ‘only six lives were lost,’ we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. …

“Our fellow human beings were not ‘lost’ in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts. We must refuse to be fooled by their propaganda, which is meant to appeal to our own moral vanity -- the belief that we can appease them by responding to their outrageous demands for accommodation, their open threats and their hateful rhetoric with even more forbearance.

“…We should celebrate life rather than wallow in grief. But we should vigilantly guard against self-delusion and denial as a means of coping with the terrible reality that we all lived through six years ago. There was a reason that we felt unified then. The horror of what we experienced, individually and together, stripped away all the things that divide us today. We clung to each other, forgave each other, and were kind to each other, knowing that, in the end, we would only persevere together. …”

Burlingame’s point, that while we are a nation at war we will only succeed as a united people, is echoed today in a statement by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who reminds us:

“…all freedom-loving people throughout the world are engaged in a struggle against the barbarism of Islamist extremism. This is not a battle between civilizations, but rather a battle for civilization. The cause which we are fighting for is not a Republican cause or a Democratic cause. Our cause is the cause of defending liberty and freedom against a totalitarian movement that is the evil heir to the twin totalitarian threats of the 20th century. Islamist extremism, like fascism and communism, seeks to eliminate all of the ideals that free peoples cherish.

“Just as during the World War II and the Cold War, our challenge today, is not to relent in this fight for liberty. And the central front in this war today is Iraq. You cannot be serious and strong in defeating those who attacked us on 9/11 if you counsel retreat in Iraq. To pull the plug on progress in Iraq would hand our two most dangerous enemies in the world -- al Qaeda and Iran -- an extraordinary military and strategic victory. These are fateful days and critical decisions we are making about Iraq. We must make them with our eye on the safety of America’s next generation. …

“Will this be the moment in history when America gives up -- when al Qaeda breaks our will, when our enemies surge forward, when we turn our backs on our friends and begin a long retreat from our principles and promise as a nation? Or will this be the moment when America steps forward, when we pull together, when we hold fast to the courage of our convictions, when we begin to turn the tide toward victory in this long and difficult war? History tells us that appeasement of evil leads to disaster. Our cause is freedom’s cause. Together, we must prevail.”

* * * * *

Benazir Bhutto (RWC)

In Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf apparently will quit his army post so he can remain as president of the country.

He is presently also the head of the army and he has been wearing his soldier’s uniform over the eight years since he seized power in a coup. He has been in the army all his adult life and the Pakistani army has incredible power and status in that country.

Musharraf is facing parliamentary elections and threats from his own Supreme Court that could force him from office.

Musharraf has been in lengthy  talks with Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who heads the center-left Pakistan People’s Party. Bhutto is saying that Musharraf plans to quit the army in exchange for her support.

Like many politicians in Pakistan, the good looking, Harvard educated Mrs. Bhutto is a bit of a crook –more than a bit, actually. She and her husband were indefatigable in accumulating wealth through bribes and corrupt deals. She has allegedly sealed an agreement with Musharraf to drop all corruption charges against her so she can return from exile.

She would join forces with Musharraf so he could stay in office for another five years. 

Mrs. Bhutto has been in exile for years.  When I was in Pakistan right after 9/11, she was living in luxury in Dubai and the UK. She has many powerful friends in Washington among liberal policy makers.

Our Friends the Saudis: Keep Your Bibles, Crucifixes and Stars of David Home (AM)

From the Jerusalem Post:

Despite a series of initiatives aimed at generating foreign tourism, the Saudi Arabian government continues to bar Jews and Christians from bringing items such as Bibles, crucifixes and Stars of David into the country and is threatening to confiscate them on sight, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

"A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the kingdom due to religious reasons and local regulations," declares the Web site of Saudi Arabian Airlines, the country's national carrier.

After informing would-be visitors that items such as narcotics, firearms and pornography may not be transported into the country, the Web site adds: "Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are also prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David, and others."

Contacted by the Post, an employee of Saudi Arabian Airlines in New York, who would only give her name as Gladys, confirmed this rule was in force. "Yes, sir," she said, "that is what we have heard, that it is a problem to bring these things into Saudi Arabia, so you cannot do it."

An official at the Saudi Consulate in New York, who declined to give her name, told the Post that anyone bringing a Bible into the country or wearing a crucifix or Star of David around their neck would run into trouble with Saudi authorities. "You are not allowed to bring that stuff into the kingdom," the consular official said. "If you do, they will take it away," she warned, adding, "If it is really important to you, then you can try to bring it and just see what happens, but I don't recommend that you do so."

Asked to explain the policy, the official said, "Every country has rules about what can or cannot enter."

Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, which pointed me to the JPost story, also notes that the pertinent Saudi Customs regulations can be found here.

Had They Been Two White Kids, No One Would Have Cared ... about, y'know, those Pipe Bombs (AM)

But, alas, they were Muslims so everybody cares. Or, better yet, CAIRs.

Yes, that execrable organization and it's official Sami al-Arian-pom-pom-wavin' spokesman, Ahmed Bedier, are at it again. 

First, Bedier pronounced, before anything approaching an investigation could have been done, that the two Egyptian Muslims who were arrested over the weekend in South Carolina, were totally innocent: ust a couple of "really naive kids" (ages 21 and 26) who happened to have some "fireworks" in their car as they made their way on one of those crazy college kid field trips...one that just happened to take them by Goose Creek where the the U.S. Naval Weapons Station is located, many miles from Tampa, where they attend the University of South Florida's School of Engineering. 

And, here, well, let's just say we end up with one of those you-just-can't-make-it-up coincidences: That happens be the same USF School of Engineering that served as home base for former Professor Sami al-Arian while he was laboring for Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  And, whaddya know, Al-Arian's case was the last time we were hearing so regularly from Bedier. By the end, in spring 2006, he was boldly pronouncing that Sami would stick to his guns. He would not  under any circumstances plead guilty to any terrorism offenses because there was "no conspiracy to support terrorism." That turned out to be right before al-Arian pled guilty to conspiracy to provide services to a designated terrorist organization. He's since been deported.

Now Bedier is once again on the case for Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed and Yousef Samir Megahed, the really naive kids with the, er, fireworks. Of course, Bedier wants you to understand, he and CAIR are absolutely, positively, opposed to terrorism, without reservation. Why, he even made a point of saying, "If it's clearly a pipe bomb that's a different story. Then there is cause for concern." 

Well, guess what? Police say it was actually several pipe bombs and formally charged the men with possession of an explosive device (a felony under South Carolina law, punishable by up to 15 years' imprisonment).

So, then, it's a "different story," right Mr. Bedier? 

It sure is. Now — make sure you're sitting down for this, you'll never, ever guess — the story is...Islamophobic profiling!

Here's Bedier today in a story posted on CAIR's website: "'Had they been two white kids nobody would be asking any questions,' Ahmed Bedier, Executive Director of the Counsel For Islamic American Relations (CAIR), said." (For regular readers, you'll find it in the always dynamic "CAIR in the News" section — thanks to Greg Pollowitz for the heads-up). 

But of course!  We all know that white kids — other than my son, apparently — never get stopped for speeding. And on those rare occasions when they do, the police always let white kids off with a warning: "Look here, son, stop driving so fast. Last thing you need is to make those those pipe bombs rattle around in the trunk." 

Oh, the injustice! I'm ashamed to live in this country. No Justice No Peace, Insha Allah!

CAIR’s Assault on Free Speech (CM)

Joel Mowbray writes:

For years, CAIR has attempted to stifle debate and prevent inquiry into the domestic spread of radical Islam. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas was the latest target, when CAIR attempted to drum him out of his role as an official commentator at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. The group was almost certainly emboldened by its success in the same city two years earlier, when it got then-Disney-owned WMAL to can talk host Michael Graham. Similar such smear campaigns are legion.

If only CAIR could muster the same contempt—or any contempt, for that matter—for Islamic terrorists. …

Never has CAIR condemned by name Islamic terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. Given the opportunity to condemn Hamas by Newsweek last December, CAIR executive director and co-founder Nihad Awad refused, claiming that the question was “the game of the pro-Israel lobby.”

While CAIR incessantly hypes its 2005 fatwa against terrorism and extremism, the document intentionally avoided defining the two terms. Fundamentalist Muslims who wish harm upon the U.S. and Israel do not consider themselves “extreme.” Nor do Hezbollah and Hamas believe that they are terrorists.

This is CAIR's modus operandi: appearing to oppose terrorism, while simultaneously leading the charge against those who actually seek to thwart it.

More here.

"Future Jihad" on the House GOP summer reading list

House GOP summer reading is not exactly beach ready

July 31, 2007 The Hill

Reps. Zack Wamp (R-Tenn.) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) sent out a joint “dear colleague” letter to their caucus last week with a helpful summer reading list. We don’t want to give away the endings for the six tomes that made the list, but here’s a hint: Don’t expect them to lighten your mood.

The list is largely focused on the history of conflict in the Middle East, and includes Walid Phares’s “Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America” and Dore Gold’s “The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West and the Future of the Holy City.” Read the whole article

Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad? (WP)

Here is an article published in the American Thinker on "Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad."

Walid Phares

In the years that followed 9/11, two phenomena characterized the Western public's understanding of the terrorists' ideology. The first characteristic stemmed from the statements made by the jihadists themselves. More than ever, Islamist militants and jihadi cadres didn't waste any opportunity to declare, clarify, explain, and detail the meaning of their aqida (doctrine) and their intentions to apply Jihadism by all means possible. Unfortunately for them, though, those extremely violent means changed the international public opinion: the public now was convinced that there was an ideology of Jihadism, and that its adherents meant business worldwide.  Link to Article

Ehrenfeld v. Bin Mahfouz (CM)

Rober Spencer writes:

If Saudis or others who have indeed supported the global jihad are able cover their tracks using British libel laws to silence investigators, the only winners are the jihadists. "The British legal and political leadership's constant appeasement of the jihadists," says Miss Ehrenfeld, "facilitated the rise of terrorism." She sees consequences for both the United States and Britain in her legal struggle: "My fight against bin Mahfouz is not only to prevent the extension of that influence here — to defend our First Amendment from British laws. My success here would deter other jihadists from using the British courts to silence U.S. writers and publishers especially since it would — in similar situations — render U.K. court decisions useless."

This case has huge implications for freedom of speech. So why are the usual civil rights groups not stepping up to the plate?

More here.

Jon Kyl on Blaming America

There are those at home who are members of what was called the "blame America first" crowd, which is a  term coined by my good friend, the late ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick to say that the Islamists hate us because of what we do. They allegedly hate us because we don't do enough to fight poverty, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of Iraq, or because of the latest Danish cartoon or whatever.

Of course this is nonsense. The radical ideology that spawns this terrorism has nothing to do with such grievances or poverty. The perpetrators of the plots in Great Britain were doctors, not individuals radicalized by unemployment or poverty-stricken slums. …

Militant Islam seeks not to change our policies but to destroy our very way of life and replace it with a Taliban-like society ruled by Sharia Law and its enforcers.

Militant Islam has declared war on the West.  Be very clear about it. It is fundamentally at odds with freedom, with democracy, with the inherent humanity of the individual, with critical thinking, and rational decision-making, not to mention all other religious beliefs.  While it might be fueled by grievances, it is not caused by the West, but rather by the very backwardness and ideological rigidity that they would impose on others. …

We should be clear that militant Islam, though bound together by common ideology, comes in various stripes, including:

al Qaeda, responsible for 9/11, which may have inspired the recent terror plots in Great Britain;

Iran's radical regime whose leader vows to wipe Israel off the map and envisions a world without America and which is speeding toward the development of nuclear weapons;

Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia which is funding radical ideology and mosques and madrassas over the world, including here at home;

groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which cloaks its radical ideology in a new veneer of tolerance while its activities directly support terrorist groups like Hamas, and many others.

But state-sponsored testing of the United States and the West is also in full force.

Iran is testing our resolve in Iraq where it is using its Revolutionary Guard and also its terrorist client Hezbollah to train and arm those who are fighting our soldiers.

Iran is testing the resolve of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, where it is providing support to al Qaeda.

Syria is testing our resolve in Lebanon where it is assassinating anti-Syrian officeholders, all serving as a conduit for the weapons that are rearming Hezbollah.

Hamas and other terrorist client of Iran is testing our resolve in Gaza, where it launched a successful coup against the Palestinian authority of Mahmoud Abbas. …

[A] successful American response depends on resolve and support of the American people. We must understand the nature of our enemy and its ideology, confronting them head on with full confidence in the rightness of our cause. …

We must not reward evil with retreat from any of the battlefields where the fight is raging, including Iraq and Afghanistan. And we must be willing to support intelligence and enforcement activities, including incarcerating those who have plotted against or attacked us.

More here.

Sami al-Arian (RWC)

The Florida university professor convicted on a terrorism charge continues to refuse to testify about whether Islamic charities in Northern Virginia were aiding terrorists.

Sami al-Arian is serving federal prison time for contempt of court and has had his sentence extended to at least October by a federal judge in Alexandria Virginia.

In 2005, a jury in Tampa deadlocked on nine terrorism charges and al-Arian plead guilty to one.

He has been waiting for deportation after being released from prison.

Recently, he again refused to appear before a grand jury continuing to probe into whether group of Islamic charities in Herndon was funneling money to terrorist organizations.

Al-Arian went on a hunger strike for sixty days and was the darling of some Muslim organizations for it. He lost 55 pounds but none of his hubris.

His trial drew liberal political supporters and university faculty members (they seem generally to be one in the same) -but they dropped off after powerful evidence of a connection to terrorism was introduced in his trial.

The case originally swept up a prominent, politically active Muslim, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who later confessed to taking money from Libya to assist in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ruler.

Mrs. al-Arian told the Washington Post that her husband will never testify before any Grand Jury.  She said as a Palestinian it would be "shameful" and he would be considered an "informant".

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, would be my view . Maybe that’s yours.

Dunkirk in the Desert? (CM)

Frank Gaffney writes that 

the only way a truly rapid disengagement and redeployment from Iraq can be accomplished would be via a kind of Dunkirk in the desert: a pell-mell rush for the beachhead points of embarkation the object of which would be to extricate as many personnel as possible, probably without regard for their equipment and surely at the expense of their safety.

A report last week on, of all places, National Public Radio made clear why the alternative — an orderly, careful and proper redeployment of most, let alone all U.S. forces in Iraq simply cannot be done any time soon. Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s Morning Edition program featured a story by Pentagon correspondent, Tim Bowman, entitled, “Logistics Mean an Iraq Exit Can’t Happen Quickly.” Citing several unnamed current Defense Department officials and a retired officer who managed the last withdrawal from Iraq and Kuwait in 2001 after Operation Desert Storm, Bowman reported that it will take at least ten to fourteen months for the United States fully to withdraw from Iraq.

That, it turns out, is the best case. …

[U]nder the approach to withdrawal advocated by virtually all Democratic leaders and several prominent Republicans, Americans will surely be retreating under fire. As Tom Bowman put it, Americans “would likely have to fight insurgents overland, all the way to Kuwait.” This endeavor, according to one officer quoted by NPR, would require “attack helicopters [and] recon helicopters in the air, possibly tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and, of course, armored Humvees [on the ground]” providing protection for the disengaging forces. …

If the prospect of leaving behind chaos and genocide on an unimaginable scale in Iraq is not enough to dissuade our leaders from cutting and running from the fight there, perhaps that of a calamitous and bloody retreat under fire for U.S. forces will do the trick. After all, it will be utterly untenable for any to profess that they “support the troops” if the predictable consequence of their actions will be to subject those troops to a devastating — and strategically catastrophic — Dunkirk in the desert.

More here.

Undergraduate Fellow on "The Tank"

A letter written by 2007-2008 FDD Undergraduate Fellow Richard Fairbanks was recently featured on "The Tank," a blog hosted by National Review Online that concentrates on security policy, strategic debates, and military hardware.

Peter Pham Launches Biweekly Column

FDD Adjunct Fellow Peter Pham this week launched a biweekly column on National Interest Online, the web edition of the foreign affairs journal The National Interest. In his first article — available here — Dr. Pham discusses increased cooperation between the United States and Vietnam.

Terror Stats Inflated or Not Inflated? It All Depends on What the Left Wants to Argue (AM)

I just debated an official from Human Rights Watch on the NPR program To the Point. I was astounded to hear her argue that the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted "hundreds of terrorist suspects" since 9/11.

Usually, the Left's position is that the terrorism problem is grossly overstated. The Justice Department, it is claimed, has vastly inflated its terrorism prosecution numbers both to heighten our sense of fear and to appear to be doing something meaningful to protect us. 

The Justice Department, of course, does not claim to have prosecuted "hundreds" of people for terrorism offenses; it has investigated hundreds (hopefully, thousands) of people based on rationally grounded fears of terrorist activity or sympathy; but few people are actually charged with terrorism crimes. Many, instead, are deported or prosecuted for less serious offenses uncovered in the course of the investigations. This allows the government to neutralize them without having to compromise intelligence that it may not be able to use in court — because using it would reveal vital sources and methods of intelligence gathering, or would induce foreign intelligence services to stop telling us things, which would make us significantly less safe.

So why now, all of a sudden, is one of the leading "progressive" organizations, HRW, suggesting that Justice has actually racked up "hundreds" of successful prosecutions?  Because of yesterday's Fourth Circuit decision in the al-Marri enemy-combatant case (which I write about, here). By a 2-1 ruling, the court held that an alien terrorist who is lawfully in the United States may not be held without trial as an enemy combatant. He must, the court said, be handed over to the civilian courts for trial, deported or released — which, of course, means either giving jihadists lavish discovery of our intelligence while the war is going on, or letting them go to rejoin the jihad.

You see? Yesterday, the Left wanted to argue that terrorism prosecutions almost never happen, so DOJ's numbers were inflated and there is no real threat to national security.  Today, to defend the al-Marri decision, they want to argue that terrorism trials in the civilian courts happen all the time with no harm to national security, so DOJ's doing a bang-up job and its numbers are just outstanding.

You gotta hand it to these guys. There's always an answer for everything when every day is a new day that wipes the slate clean.

Undermining Arab Feminism? (CM)

Nonie Darwish says too many American women “unknowingly undermine the cause of Arab feminism and can even be seen as lending tacit support to radicals.”

More here.

Terrorists on the Internet (RWC)

A report presented to Congress a couple of days ago says that Islamic radicals now value the internet as much as a Kalashnikov rifle.

Terrorists are using the Internet more and more because it is cheap and fast and you can make it secure.

They use it for training, for fund-raising, for recruitment, for research, for classic “dead drop” messaging, for training information –and obviously they use it for propaganda.

This view came from a panel of experts assembled by George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and the University of Virginia’s Critical Analysis Group and was delivered to Congress.

Interesting quote from the report:

The 'killer application' of the Internet is not so much its use as a broadcast tool but its function as a communications channel that links people in cyberspace, who then meet and can take action in the physical world.

The AP’s account of the report lists examples of Internet-driven Islamic radicalization.

One example is Paul Hall, a US sailor who changed his name to Hassan Abujihaad.

He was arrested in last month and charged with delivering classified information about the location of US Navy vessels to terror groups.

Prosecutors said he had been in contact with radical Islamists he met on-line. 

Using the Internet, Hall had ordered videos promoting violent jihad.

Another example from the report: The train bombings in Madrid of March 2004.

They were committed by terrorists from North Africa. They were not directly linked to al-Qaeda though they shared its ideology which they seemed to have garnered through the Internet.

The report says the Internet has speeded the Islamic radicalization of young people.  They offered as an example the disrupted plot last summer to bomb airliners bound for the United States from the UK.

The men involved devolved in a short time from what appeared to be ordinary lives to a willingness to kill thousands of people, and themselves,  much as had the group of six men –three of them of them illegal aliens from Albania, who wanted to murder US soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey for which they were recently arrested.

Notes & Comments

I'm writing this edition of Notes and Comments from Istanbul. FDD COO Mark Dubowitz and I have both been speaking at the Bahcesehir University Global Leadership Forum. Also here: Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum and Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council. Among the topics under discussion: Conflict and peace in the Middle East, Islam and Europe, Turkish-American relations.

Continue reading Clifford May's most recent Notes & Comments.

Can You Give Me Sanctuary...(AM)

More news on the Fort Dix Six. The three Duka brothers, all illegal aliens, not only should not have been in the United States; they should have been deported from the United States before they had the chance to plot jihad against our troops.  Except...local law enforcement (a) frequently does not check the immigration status of arrestees, and (b) often does not notify the immigration authorities even if upon learning that an arrestee is in the U.S. illegally. WNBC News in New York reports:

Suspect Dritan Duka has past arrests on charges of disorderly conduct and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. He also has six separate speeding and driving with a suspended license infractions, records show.

Shain Duka has past arrests on charges of obstruction of justice, hindering apprehension and making physical threats. He also has five separate traffic infractions. Eljvir Duka has past drug counts and at least two motor vehicle infractions.

The three brothers are accused of helping lead the plot to shoot soldiers at Fort Dix. They are being held without bail. The fact that at least three of the suspects had past run-ins with the law and are in the United States illegally was brought up on Capitol Hill Thursday.

California congressman Elton Gallegly pointed out Mohammed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was stopped by police for a traffic violation weeks before the attacks. Atta was also in the United States illegally, having overstayed his visa. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the panel that many local law enforcement agencies do not check the immigration status of a driver during traffic stops....

A traffic stop is one thing, but an arrest is quite another.  A judge can't set bail responsbily without being advised of a person's immigration status since it is relevant to assessing the risk of flight (i.e., the likelihood that the person will return to court as directed until charges are resolved).  If these guys were arrested multiple times, it would be hard to believe that the authorities did not know they were illegal aliens.

Book Review

In the March/April issue of The New Leader, Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee reviewed FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares' recent book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy.

Download newleaderpdf.PDF

What Motivates Terrorists (CM)

Ed Husain writes:

I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way -- my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading  for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all  human life.

Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly  guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.

More here. 

Larry Haas on "The Democratic Moment"

From a Democrat, Larry Haas, currently Vice President for Policy at the non-partisan Committee on the Present Danger; previously, Communications Director to Vice President Al Gore and, before that, an aide to President Clinton:

The next successful Democratic presidential candidate will be one who neither suffers nor enunciates moral confusion about America. He or she will hold, and articulate, a firm belief in the superiority of U.S.-style freedom and democracy over the authoritarian systems of our enemies. Like Harry Truman at the outset of the Cold War or Kennedy at its most precarious moments, the next Democratic president will lay America and its enemies side by side, explain the superiority of American ideals, and outline a vision to guarantee America's long-term security.

More here.

Meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood (ML)

Ken Silverstein has a feature in the March issue of Harper's Magazine that is worth reading. He paints an annoyingly rosy picture of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, but makes an argument that merits consideration — and a solid response. The rise of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as “ballot-box” political forces poses a serious challenge to Bush’s doctrine of spreading democracy as an ultimate strategy in the war on terror.

The war on terror has come increasingly to rely on despotic regimes that use the fight against terrorism as an excuse to stifle democracy. Silverstein thinks that Hezbollah and the Brotherhood are no longer important sources of terrorism – and that they are in a way as much enemies of Al Qaeda as we are, because they legitimize democratic political systems simply by participating. I still think that all these groups are dangerous — and they sympathize with terrorism when they do not actually engage in it. But it will be increasingly important to understand them — what they think and what they do — if only because they may be ruling governments one day.

Importance of the Ulamas in Iraq

Mainstream Sunni Muslim clerics in Iraq have formed a body to issue edicts aimed at curbing the influence of al Qaeda militants. FDD's Walid Phares today explained what this latest development means for the future of Iraq:

The reasons behind the rise of the council are multiple: Under Saddam, there were two types of Sunni clerics: First, those who served his regime and were appointed with his consent, even though his regime was Socialist. They were the 'official' Ulamas and used to getting the financial and political backing [they needed]. In return they provided him with religious legitimacy, especially when he was at war with Iran. Second, and in deeper layers; the more Salafi clerics, in the 1970s and early 1980s, were still contained and marginalized. They represented the more conservative, almost Wahabi type of clerics.

But in the mid 1990s, and as he needed more Islamic approval, Saddam included more Salafists in the Sunni religious circles. This allowed the infiltration by Salafists (close to al Qaeda) within the 'clergy.'

When Saddam was removed from power, the Sunni arena was wide open for all types of clerics. The most radical ones rose first, and joined the ranks of the foreign Jihadis.

A Real Moderate Takes a Stand Against CAIR and the Flying Imams (AM)

Three cheers — no, three million cheers — for Zuhdi Jasser, a practicing doctor and retired Navy Lieutenant Commander, who is trying to catalyze fellow moderate Muslims into standing up against the jihadists and their cheerleaders.  He has written this important article at FamilySecurityMatters.org denouncing CAIR and the lawsuit it is pushing on behalf of the infamous Flying Imams against US Airways and the "John Doe" passengers who had the temerity to be frightened and speak out.

Read it all. Here is one excerpt of the words we've been longing to hear from Muslim moderates:

Make no mistake. This lawsuit forces our courts and our community to firmly clarify our rules of engagement and the tools we can and cannot use to stay safe and maintain our freedoms. If this case is not thrown out early by the courts it stands to chill civilian reporting of suspicious behavior which will further embolden those who target our American citizenry — Muslim and non-Muslim. Frankly, it will also create a deeper wedge and greater fear whether based on reality or ignorance between the Muslim and non-Muslim community. Contrary to the CAIR spin machine and their sympathizers, this case is about much more than a few Muslim imams from Phoenix who felt their rights (to fly) were infringed by U.S. Airways and some passengers (John Does) who passed notes to the crew.  It is about much more than such a simplistic view of the known facts.

As a nation, our collective response to this will be a defining moment in the articulation of our values, while also defining our priorities in defense of civilian America against the threat of militant Islamism and all those enemies who target us.

We are seeing at play in this case elements that illustrate the pathology of political Islam and how it blindly drives many Muslims who believe in it, whether or not their means are wise or their ends are understood. The longer we avoid the deeper discussion of the machinations of political Islam (Islamism) in America, the longer we allow it to take cover and thrive under the guise of political correctness within our pluralistic democracy. The longer we continue to disengage from the real aims and overriding denial of Islamist organizations that wage public battle through their toxic mixture of religion and politics, the further we fall behind in this war of ideas. Without engagement, Islamism, Salafism, and radicalism will continue to flourish within the very construct of our Constitutional government and protection of our Bill of Rights - including its establishment clause – and all the while Islamists strive to create a society which honors neither.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Joins Foundation for Defense of Democracies as Senior Fellow

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, author of the book My Year Inside Radical Islam, has joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a senior fellow and will lead its Project on Religion, Politics and Radicalism. Read More.

Phares on the War of Ideas

FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares discussed his book, Future Jihad, with Frontpage Magazine in an interview published yesterday.

Phares on C-SPAN 2

On Saturday, March 17, C-SPAN 2 aired the pre-launch of FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares' new book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy.