| Terror Networks |
| Fatal flaws could doom West's War on Terror |
| 2007-01-21 |
| by Daniel Pipes After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists? On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag? Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it's not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That's because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them - pacifism, self-hatred, complacency - deserve attention. Pacifism: Among the educated, the conviction has widely taken hold that "there is no military solution" to current problems, a mantra applied in every Middle East problem - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the Kurds, terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this pragmatic pacifism overlooks the fact that modern history abounds with military solutions. What were the defeats of the Axis, the United States in Vietnam, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, if not military solutions? Self-hatred: Significant elements in several Western countries - especially the United States, Great Britain and Israel - believe their own governments to be repositories of evil and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This "we have met the enemy and he is us" attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions and the arts. They serve as the Islamists' auxiliary mujahideen. Complacency: The absence of an impressive Islamist military machine imbues many Westerners, especially on the left, with a feeling of disdain. Whereas conventional war - with its men in uniform, its ships, tanks and planes, and its bloody battles for land and resources - is simple to comprehend, the asymmetric war with radical Islam is elusive. Box cutters and suicide belts make it difficult to perceive this enemy as a worthy opponent. With John Kerry, too many dismiss terrorism as a meRe: "nuisance." Islamists deploy formidable capabilities, however, that go far beyond small-scale terrorism: A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life. A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism. An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success. An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians. The movement almost defies sociological definition. A nonviolent approach - what I call "lawful Islamism" - that pursues Islamification through educational, political and religious means, without recourse to illegality or terrorism. Lawful Islamism is proving successful in Muslim-majority countries like Algeria and Muslim-minority ones like the United Kingdom. A huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived. Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been. Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, nonviolent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them. Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures." He is currently teaching at Pepperdine University. |
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| Fifth Column |
| "ex-CIA Analyst" Revealed To Be Serious Moonbat, No Mention By AP |
| 2006-05-05 |
| (via LGF) The Associated Press reports that Donald Rumsfeld was verbally assaulted by several moonbats yesterday, but the AP doesnt think you need to know anything more about them: Hostile War Critics Confront Rumsfeld. The gloss they put on radical leftist, Jew-hating creep Ray McGovern is especially shiny. ATLANTA - Already under fire from some retired military brass who want him to resign, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was greeted at a speech in Atlanta by unusually hostile anti-war protesters. Here are some previous LGF entries about this noted critic of the war in Iraq, to provide the context AP doesnt want you to know: lgf: Dems Stage Mock Impeachment. The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration neocons so the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world. He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This little display of Bush Derangement Syndrome went so far over the line that even Howard Dean was forced to condemn it: lgf: Not Quite a Flying Pig. We disavow the anti-Semitic literature, and the Democratic National Committee stands in absolute disagreement with and condemns the allegations, Dean said in a statement posted on the DNC Web site. ... And then there are the radical left groups that McGovern is often seen partying with: lgf: The Feeble Thrashing of the Marginal Moonbat. An all-star moonbat tribunal composed of retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, authors William Blum and Larry Everest, Code Pink, Mike Hersh (Progressive Democrats of America/After Downing Street), Kevin Zeese (Director, Democracy Rising; candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland), Travis Morales (World Cant Wait Drive Out the Bush Regime) and others TBA, has announced an indictment of President Bush. The Associated Press: giving you just as much information as they want you to have. |
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| Fifth Column |
| Binny cites anti-US author in rant |
| 2006-01-21 |
| Osama bin Laden has a book recommendation for you. In the audiotape released Thursday, the al Qaeda leader said: "If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if (President) Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State.'" That would be "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," published in May 2000 with a new edition in November 2005. Its author is William Blum of Washington, D.C. But bin Laden was mistaken about a quote he read that he attributed to the Introduction of "Rogue State." He actually read an excerpt from another of Blum's books, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire." "He made a mistake, he got them mixed up," Blum said. Blum has been speaking out against American foreign policy for nearly 40 years. He said he left a U.S. State Department job in 1967 because he opposed the Vietnam War, and has been writing and lecturing since then. "'Rogue State' was inspired by the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999," Blum said in a telephone interview from his Connecticut Avenue apartment. "We were told it was an 'act of humanitarianism,' but I didn't believe that for a moment." NATO conducted bombing raids in an attempt to halt ethnic cleansing in that region. America has repeatedly used "bombings, invasions, torture and weapons of mass destruction," Blum said. "It's what we do." Blum said he sees the 320-page "Rogue State" as "a mini-encyclopedia of the many kinds of unhumanitarian actions of U.S. foreign policy." He heard about bin Laden's comments late Thursday afternoon, when transcripts started hitting the Internet. "I was amazed and amused," Blum said. "It's good publicity for the book." Blum described his view of bin Laden's war on America -- although, he added, "I've not been following him as an individual" through the years. "He sees anti-American terrorist attacks as under the category of retaliation," Blum said. "In previous tapes he's used that word -- retaliation. I don't like what they do, but it's understandable intellectually." If Americans read his book, "they would learn what bin Laden is talking about -- our whole sordid record of foreign policy," Blum said. "I think the book would help them understand why we are being attacked." His other books include "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Superpower Principals: U.S. Terrorism Against Cuba." Blum and several other writers shared a Project Censored award in 1999 for writing articles about materials supplied by the U.S. to Iraq in the 1980s that enabled the country to develop chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Project Censored, founded in 1976 at Sonoma State University in California, says it honors "stories of social significance that have been overlooked, underreported or self-censored by the country's major national news media." Bin Laden quoted Blum as writing: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks against the United States. First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all." Blum said he used those phrases in "Freeing the World to Death" and in other writings and speeches, but not in "Rogue State." |
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| Fifth Column |
| Chapel Hill clods call for international cops |
| 2001-09-21 |
A CONGREGATION of faithful left-wing fundamentalists descended en masse at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Monday night, to practice one of their most sacred rituals: spewing hatred for America. "If I were the President, I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished, and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then . . . I would announce that America's global interventions had come to an end," preached William Blum, author of Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. "I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and I would use the savings to pay the reparations to our victims and to increase social services. . ." Nod, nod, nod clap, clap, clap responded the 700 faculty, students and community members in attendance. "If one [of the perpetrators] is Osama bin Laden, send the international police for him and pick up Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet on the way home," declared Catherine Lutz, professor of Anthropology. |
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