re: "September 11"

The DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired") speaks to some basic truths many are unwilling to face.

Money quote(s):

"We in the West refuse to understand that simple fact, to wit, when Islam says it seeks to conquer us, it means it."

&

"It seems from the  limited reporting on it, that we are successfully pursuing a policy of turning large numbers of AQ, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc., into bloody jelly. As we have always known, the Islamists are good at torturing and killing flight attendants and other unarmed civilians,  but they don't do well when confronted by Western military know-how employed as it's meant to be employed."

re: "Bolton: Biden's Statement that Taliban Not Our Enemy Was No Gaffe"

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs (" Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction. ") agreed with Amb. Bolton's characterization.

Money quote(s):

"The Taliban does not share Western values, goals, objectives. The Taliban's playbook is the qur'an and its stated aims.

The whole idea of a moderate Taliban or a moderate Islam is false"

Reasonable people can disagree whether or not there can be a moderate Islam.

(CAA believes in it on alternating days, himself.)

"Never mind their role in 9/11. Never mind their hosting al-Qaeda camps and working with al-Qaeda.

It amounts to surrender, to prostration before the jihadist enemy.

Now, we know old Joe is none too bright, but here Bolton explains: this was no gaffe."

And here's why:

"Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Tuesday that Joe Biden’s statement that the Taliban is not America's enemy in Afghanistan was not a gaffe, but instead the vice president was “articulating what the White House strategy is.” Biden made his remarks in a recent Newsweek interview, but the Obama administration is saying they were taken out of context

“I don’t think this is a gaffe by Joe Biden — I think he is articulating what the White House strategy is — I think they know exactly what they are trying to do,” Bolton told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “They are trying to redefine the terrorist threat to be a limited group of al-Qaida people along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

“They are going to redefine Taliban away from that — they are going to ignore Taliban in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Qaida in Iraq, and al-Qaida in North Africa,” Bolton said. “And they’re going to say it’s just that one little thing: We’ve killed Osama bin Laden — the war on terror is over.”"

Based upon my own sporadic observations regarding Vice Pres. Biden's tendency to "gaffe," I wouldn't urgently disagree with Amb. Bolton's assessment.

VP Biden sometimes says things that suggest he's regurgitating, in his own words, the substance of things about which he's been briefed. Specifically, I'm thinking about his remarks a few years ago about the H1N1 flu virus and air travel.

He seems to speak uncomfortable truths, as he understands them and based upon some frank and factual briefings (i.e., not for public distribution), and wholly without regard for the political, economic, or diplomatic fallout. Indeed, he says them without any apparent consciousness that there could be, even should be, such repercussions.

"Bolton said the Taliban treats anyone who does not agree with them horribly."

Word.

""It reminds me of Vietnam. Remember Sen. George Aiken, the Republican of Vermont? It was clear to him that we didn’t have the stamina to go on and actually win,” Bolton said. “So the George Aiken strategy: We’ll declare victory and get out — that is what the administration is going to do in the war on terror. Having redefined who the terrorists are and having said the Taliban is not our enemy, they’re going to say we have won and the war is over.""

And, if we'd put some of our HVT Taliban officials on the other side of a conference table, gotten them to publicly disavow Al Qaeda and UBL, and made it clear that if we ever had to come back to Afghanistan it would not be with gentle words and reconstruction budgets....

....all of that before we'd spent a decade nation-building and taking casualties, then this would have been a reasonable, if limited, outcome for our intervention there.

"The jihad against the U.S. will continue all over the world, not just in Afghanistan."

12/21

re: "Islam v. Islamism . again"

Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner ("The one and only.") posted a correction and clarification.

Money quote(s):

"I make a habit of using the term “Islamist” (or “Islamism”) to distinguish the aggressive and often violent sharia agenda of America’s enemies from “Islam” as it is practiced by millions of Muslims — in America and elsewhere — who are not Islamic supremacists and who do not seek to impose Islamic law on civil society. I added that Messrs. Horowitz and Spencer also draw this distinction."

&

"Robert (Spencer) emailed me over the weekend. While he seemed to agree with most of what I’d written, he offered this correction: He does not use the terms “Islamist” and “Islamism.” In his view, the “Islam/Islamism distinction is an artificial one imposed by the West, with no grounding in Islamic history, theology, or law.” "

There's a lot of quibbling over terminology on this and related issues involving "moderate Islam" (is there such a thing or are its practicioners merely Muslim apostates), "Islamists," "Islamicism," and of course the ever popular "Islam is a religion of peace" narrative.

Not to mention (but I will) the diversional Greater and Lesser Jihads.

"The error does not alter my contention that CAP’s charge of “Islamophobia” is without merit. Again, there is nothing phobic about fearing the nexus between Islamic doctrine (as classically rendered in, for example, the sharia manual Reliance of the Traveller) and the threat Muslim terrorists and stealth jihadists pose to the West. Moreover, the fact that Robert sees the Islamic doctrine in question as Islam rather than as one credible interpretation of Islam (which I call Islamism) hardly makes his concerns irrational." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

10/24

re: "Ogabe Administration Makes it Official: Terror and Islam are Non-Related"

Emperor Misha at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") has no tolerance for those who would use political correctness as a weapon to disarm us.

Money quote(s):

"(I)t’s henceforth not permissible to use the words “muslim” and “islam” in anti-terror training (h/t Protein Wisdom)"

This sort of thing is going to lead to a seriously messed-up "The-Emperor-Has-No-Clothes" moment. Pres. Bush's "religion of peace" pronouncement has been renewed and expanded under his successor administration to the point where it's impermissible to even consider that perhaps, in just this one little thing, Pres. Bush may have been wrong.

(Pres. Bush may have even known he was wrong, but in CAA's opinion #43 was attempting to head off the Huntington-esque "clash of civilizations" that UBL so desperately wanted to spark.)*

"What “muslim groups” are offended that a “religion” closely tied to 99.99999999999% of terrorism attacks might be mentioned in materials used to train law enforcement to combat terrorism attacks? "

Can you guess?

"The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial."

CAIR. What a surprise. Which reminds me. I need to make sure the Holy Land Foundation documents are linked in my sidebar.

10/21

* It occurs to CAA that #43's understandable reluctance to make this an us-versus-them fight in the near-term with the entirety of the Islamic world, but at the risk of handicapping our efforts in the longer-term, somewhat parallels #41's decision, after 100 hours of combat in Gulf War I, to accept Saddam's ceasefire rather than take Baghdad and inherit the mess that was/is Iraq.

In other words, an understandable and justifiable decision in the short- and near-term timeframes which ends up costing the nation even more dearly over the long run.

re: "Raymond Ibrahim: The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests"

Raymond at Jihad Watch ("dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts") provided some historical context that contrasts with today's bland pronouncements.

Money quote(s):

"Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time.

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today’s Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema)."

&

"It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the “Muslim world.”

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed."

What is today called the "Muslim world" was once, variously, the Roman- and Byzantine Christian Mediterranean world and the Persian empire.

"The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or “dhimmis,” paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.

Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.

Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America’s classrooms, as many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion’s intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided—extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc.—by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued—and heavily taxed—subjects, not as Muslim equals."

Pillage, booty, slaves, and taxes. And all to the greater glory, &tc.

"The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook’s mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad—Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations—which portrays jihad as a “spiritual-struggle” against one’s vices."

And yet "jihad = inner spiritual struggle" is now the textbook answer throughout the military and the IC, and said with a straight fact to boot!

To aid in the disorientation, while Pres. Bush can not be seen by the current administration to have done anything right, ever, his pronouncing that "Islam is a religion of peace" is accepted without a twitch. Weird.

"(T)he Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam’s theological texts—the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures."

&

"In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in U.S. textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history—which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

3/1

re: "Punching Down"

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna (" At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war. ") provided examples of why free speech rights shouldn't be optional for governments to respect.

Money quote(s):

"Fear is in the air.

Fear of what Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff had to say about Islam prompted the Austrian authorities to prosecute her for “denigrating” the Religion of Peace."

There are crucial differences between the free speech rights of the Anglospheric tradition, enshrined in our Second Amendment, and those permitted under continental European constitutions. Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater is permitted, for instance, when the movie theater is actually on fire.

"Fearing the truths told by Geert Wilders, the Dutch government prosecuted the PVV leader, and when that failed, prosecuted him again.

In Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Australia, and Belgium, ordinary citizens and politicians alike have been harassed or prosecuted for speaking out against Islamization and mass immigration."

Some opinions are clearly too dangerous for citizens or even lawmakers to possess or express. Perhaps expressing the desire for Holland to remain a country inhabited by the Dutch is example of this.

"(W)hen the decent law-abiding people are thrust aside, driven into obscurity, and jailed, what sort of activists will remain?

The current system is nearing its endgame, and will not persist much longer. Who will take the reins of power when the dominant paradigm falls?"

Both Ralph Peters and Tom Kratman have explored this "what-if" and neither path is pretty.

"(B)y denying decent, honorable, law-abiding people the right to preserve themselves, their families, and their way of life — the Powers That Be have cleared the deck for the emergence of forces that are much darker, much more ruthless, and far beyond their ability to control.

Something wicked this way comes."

1/4

re: "Reclaiming State Department Clarity on Jihad and Sharia"

Andrew G. Bostom at American Thinker ("a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans") had harsh criticism for the State Department.

Money quote(s):

"Islam's defining doctrine of jihad war against non-Muslims, and resultant 14 centuries of sanguinary imperialism, and accompanying acts of terrorism, through the present, notwithstanding, ad nauseum contemporary State Department pronouncements re-affirm what Muslim propagandists insist--that the creed is an enlightened pacifism.

Glaring examples of this corrosive State Department apologetic on Islam have been provided by the two most recent Secretaries of State, Condoleeza Rice, and the current Secretary, Hillary Clinton." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Mr. Bostom provided some examples before continuing.

"(O)bsequious pandering to Islam--despite the daily confirmed, abject failure of these efforts to provide any strategic benefit to the US--was not always enshrined State Department "policy."

Edward A. Van Dyck, then US Consular Clerk at Cairo, Egypt, prepared a detailed report in August 1880 on the history of the treaty arrangements (so-called "capitulations") between the Muslim Ottoman Empire, European nations, and the much briefer US-Ottoman experience. Van Dyck's report--written specifically as a tool for State Department diplomats--opens with an informed, pellucid, and remarkably compendious explanation of jihad and Islamic law (Sharia):

In all the many works on Mohammedan law no teaching is met with that even hints at those principles of political intercourse between nations, that have been so long known to the peoples of Europe, and which are so universally recognized by them. "Fiqh," as the science of Moslem jurisprudence is called, knows only one category of relation between those who recognize the apostleship of Mohammed and all others who do not, namely Djehad [jihad[; that is to say, strife, or holy war. Inasmuch as the propagation of Islam was to be the aim of all Moslems, perpetual warfare against the unbelievers, in order to convert them, or subject them to the payment of tribute, came to be held by Moslem doctors [legists] as the most sacred duty of the believer. This right to wage war is the only principle of international law which is taught by Mohammedan jurists; ...with the Arabs the term harby [harbi] (warrior) expresses not only an unbeliever but also an enemy; and jehady [jihadi] (striver, warrior) means the believer-militant. From the Moslem point of view, the whole world is divided into two parts--"the House of Islam," and the House of War;" out of this division has arisen the other popular dictum of the Mohammednas (sic) that "all kinds of unbelievers from but one people." "

Jihad and Islam aren't something new, after all. Pres. Jefferson found it necessary to educate himself as to the facts due to the depredations of the Barbary pirates against U.S. shipping (and naval vessels).

"We are in desperate need of a strong new Secretary of State willing to purge the State Department of all those dogmatically inculcating such counterfactual, delusive Islamophilia. Diplomats possessed of--or at least receptive to learning--Van Dyck's unapologetic wisdom, must be recruited and installed if we are to survive the violent and non-violent jihad being waged against the US. America employed such informed, clear-eyed patriotic diplomats in the past; we need them now more than ever before."

Sec. Clinton has indicated at least once that she intends her tenure to last no longer than the current president's first term. So regardless of the electoral results this November, we can expect a new secstate sometime within the next 12 months, give or take.

5/12

re: "Willful Blindness"

Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings summed-up Andrew McCarthy's thinking (at National Review).

Money quote(s):

"You can't win a war when you pretend that you're not in one." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

But you can certainly lose one..

12/15

re: "How Will It End?"

Dymphna continued hosting Zenster's guest-posting, Part the Third, at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war.").

(Advisory to readers: The following excerpted passages incorporate several prime examples of "thinking-about-the-unthinkable." Old "Cold Warriors" will be familiar with the concept. Others may have difficulty wrapping their minds around the idea that not thinking about something may actually increase the likelihood of that "unthinkable" something actually coming to pass.)

Money quote(s):

"Islam has cozened its way into Western civilization and, parading under false colors as an alleged religion, it flies a counterfeit Liberal standard of interfaith Multiculturalism. Besotted with its own temporary successes and newfound “purity” ― through a recent reformation leaving it even more violent, intolerant, misogynistic and puritanical ― Islam is in the process of infiltrating Western civilization to an unprecedented degree."

More and more in the West the reality that Islam more than simply a religion, as we in the West have come to understand what a religion is.

"Islam imprudently brings itself into proximity with danger and eventually this will prove its own undoing. Suffused with delusions of adequacy, Muslims think nothing of constantly antagonizing Western powers who long ago perfected industrialized warfare to an extent that Islam can only dream of, despite its supremacist fantasies."

Writers and thinkers such as Ralph Peters ("Uncle Ralph" would smile to see himself so characterized.) have explored the possible consequences of an Islamic "misunderestimating" of Western ruthlessness in the scientific application of industrialized violence.

"Islam casts outsized shadows which too many in the West mistake for genuine military potency. The exact opposite is true and it is only by using the asymmetrical warfare of terrorism that Islam holds any sway."

Terrorism, like sarcasm, is the weapon of the weak.

"One glimpse of how Islam remains almost entirely reliant upon Political Correctness to drive its Western agenda reveals that this parasitic entity’s success wholly depends upon the frailty of a civilization debilitated by Multiculturalism and self-doubt. This is underscored both by the physical compulsion and violence that lies beneath so much of Islamic doctrine and the fact that no nation in history has ever voluntarily adopted Islam without an application of force being involved."

Don't believe that last part? Read history.

"Little do Liberals understand how they will be among the first who go to the wall should Islam prevail. Nor, in their haste to disarm the world, do they understand that such military ineptitude on their part will see them left with few responses other than nuclear Armageddon when confronted by WMD terrorist strikes. Through appeasement and facilitation, Liberals are Islam’s most dangerous “friends”."

Conventional warfare, particularly if waged on a global basis, is simply too expensive a proposition (for even a continental power with a population in the hundreds of millions) if it has the already developed and weaponized a nuclear capability.

The start-up, R&D, and production infrastructure costs are huge, but once they become sunken costs, the unit costs for nuclear weapons are, relative to mass conventional armies, smaller for a larger "bang."

"This inordinate cost of conventional war needed to obtain even a modicum of peace is, perhaps, the grimmest thing about Islam’s future. As the mask slips and “radical” or “fundamentalist” Islam are revealed to be mainstream and fully compatible with regularly accepted Islamic doctrine, Total War ― something Muslims continue to boast of declaring against the West ― looms evermore probable. However, the economic factors alone point directly away from conventional war.

Truth be told, in the absence of that $96 trillion dollars, there is only unconventional warfare left as a survival option. Nuclear weapons represent the sole existing and cost-effective way of managing hostilities with some 1.6 billion people. Like a proverbial trout in the milk pail, this one simple fact is difficult to ignore. Basic economics dooms perpetually hostile Islam to utter annihilation.

Any expectation of Islam pacifying, moderating or reforming itself must be dismissed out of hand. Islam has already undergone a recent reformation from which it emerged as an even more intolerant, more violent, more puritanical and more misogynistic creed. Those Muslims who do seek any pacification or sincere moderation of Islam’s violent doctrine are usually put to death by more devout believers." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

The figure of "$96 trillion dollars" is arrived at by Zenster through a calculation, based upon the costs of the conventional campaigns waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, if extended to the other fifty Islamic countries.

(CAA does not vouch for the math either way.)

Those hoping that Islam will, in a parallel with the history of Christianity in the West, undergo a moderating reformation have obviously missed how Islam's reformation had already taken place within the past two generations, and representated many awful steps backwards.

(CAA's knowledge of Orthodox Christianity is, alas, somewhat spotty and imperfect. Did the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches undergo anything paralleling the Western Reformation?)

"Recent events in Norway show that long before Muslims manage to demographically displace native Europeans there will begin a serious backlash against the Multiculturalists who have imposed this lethal burden upon the West. It is rather doubtful that American and European culture will go quietly into the Politically Correct Islamic night.

Ironically, as Muslims continue to financially drain the West ― through exorbitant military campaigns, increased security measures, petroleum sales and abuse of social benefits in host countries ― they only increase the eventual appeal of cost effective measures that will be required to subdue Islam. There will also come a time when Western nations begin to recoil at the prospect of sending any more soldiers to die for the sake of letting Muslims erect yet another shari’a government and terrorist production facility.

Complicating all of this is how the concept of military deterrence is essentially nonfunctional as regards Islam. A culture that glorifies and worships death is more than difficult to deter. For every bit that the West shrinks from waging Total War, the necessity of posing an existential threat to Islam only increases. When it comes to the ineffectuality of deterrence, no better example exists that of modern day Iran. The ramifications of Ahmadinejad’s tutelage under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pose some serious issues."

CAA does not fall into the analytic bias that suggests Iran (more precisely, Iran's governmental and non-governmental leadership) is an irrational actor.

Nonetheless, CAA holds that any deterrence analysis of Iran must consider that the rationality of Iran's leadership is not based upon the sort of academic and think-tankery games theory so-beloved in Western capitals.

Mirror-imaging is not your friend!

"(M)ost of his cabinet have little to no military experience. With their being so unlettered in war fighting doctrine, could it not be possible that these appeasers might abruptly discover ― after repeated military budget cuts ― that massive nuclear retaliation was their sole playing card? Again, pro-disarmament Liberals rate as the most dangerous kind of “friends” that Islam could have.

Repulsive in the extreme is how truly avoidable this looming Muslim holocaust really is. A far less costly program of “wetwork” style targeted assassinations directed at the top echelons of Islam’s clerical, political, scholastic and financial aristocracy could see global jihad quickly screech to a grinding halt." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Here you really see some more of that "thinking-the-unthinkable" about which CAA cautioned, over and above considering the nuclear possiblities.

Statecraft, and strategy, ain't beanbag.

The United States' proscriptions against assassinations are, essentially, self-imposed.

Furthermore, in light of the increasing popularity of "targeted killing" within the closed circles of our national decision- and policy-making elites, do not represent so much of a policy-reversal as a nearly-natural progression.

"It is more than safe to say that an industrially and militarily unlettered Islam is not going to take over the world using such a feeble tool as terrorism. As was also noted in Part II, Islam is assembling too many enemies too fast and that pace far outstrips any ability of theirs to perfect the mass production of intricate nuclear weapons nor muster fighting forces of even marginal proficiency. Chronic overreach is a hallmark of Islam and its habit of poking at the Western nuclear dragon with its terrorist pointed wooden stick bodes especially unwell for Muslims everywhere." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Like those who see declining fertility rates in North African (and other majority-Muslim countries) as signs that the Western demographic collapse need not mean replacement by an Islamic majority within the next several decades, this estimate may be overly optimistic.

"Remember that for eight long years, Iran and Iraq fought to a bloody stalemate using chemical weapons and even ten year-old boys as human minesweepers. Less conservative estimates cite up to a million Muslim fatalities with both nations sending the flower of their youth into an insatiable meat grinder. Now, consider how America rolled up Iraq’s sidewalks in two weeks. This is the “reality gap” confronting Islam and its delusory vision of world domination. No such thing will ever happen.

Given that the global caliphate is forever out of reach, whither Islam? What of its obsessive quest for global supremacy? Handily, Israel provides us with a micro synopsis of the macro global problem. Imagine a tiny nation like Costa Rica routinely beating America’s military posterior like a cheap dime store drum. That is the equivalent of Israel defeating the combined military might of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Please remember that, in Arab culture, humiliation is worse than death. Abandoning conventional warfare in favor of terrorism, the Arab nations intentionally selected a strategy of low-intensity conflict whose upper limit would not trigger direct intervention by the global community." (Emphasis in the original text. - CAA.)

CAA would quibble about that "upper limit." A repeat attack against U.S. targets on par with the death tolls from 9/11 seems to me to be as likely to invite a devastating and disproportionate response as one whose casualties were orders of magnitude higher.

CAA suspects that the American public's reaction, even in the face of presidential pronouncements about Islam's inherent peacefulness, would be more on the order of "fool-me-twice, shame-on-me."

"Few people understand that any sort of “negotiated peace” with Israel would serve to unravel the entire Islamic Arab consciousness. Reaching even the least sort of peace agreement would be a frank admission that jihad had failed. Furthermore, any recognition of a Jewish state would contravene the genocidal doctrine that is a cornerstone of Islam. Acceptance of Israel’s continued existence contradicts Islamic canon on so many levels that any such thing is unimaginable.

Piled on top of this is Israel’s continuous string of military victories against often overwhelming Arab forces. How then to explain that away without an indisputable annihilation of Israel tucked under their Islamic belt? Deprived of any concrete proof that Islam actually can prevail against the eternally hated Jew, please do not begin to imagine that there will be any near term cessation of hostilities, if ever.

Thus we are presented with the micro model of global terrorism. Withdrawal, surrender, in fact, peace of any sort with Islam is simply out of the question. In reality, Islam offers nothing that remotely resembles an actual “peace treaty”. Instead, there is only hudna, a temporarily cessation of hostilities that is specifically designed to permit Muslims the rearming needed to then break that “truce” at their convenience. Whither Israel … whither the global community where Islam is concerned.

So long as the West does not pose an existential threat to Islam’s continued presence on earth, there will be no accommodation of any sort. This is the bottom line. That degree of political will is sorely lacking in the West and, even if it existed, there is little likelihood that anyone involved would appreciate how any such pact with the unbelievers would be broken at the first instant of advantage for Islam."

9/21

re: "When Will It End?"

Zenster guest-posted at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.We are in a new phase of a very old war."), courtesy of Dymphna, with Part one of an essay series.

Money quote(s):

"When Will it End?

Short answer ― It will end when the tipping point is reached.

This tipping point can be defined as follows:

When living with Islam becomes more trouble than living without Islam." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Zenster goes on to develop this idea through a cost analysis.

"If it was possible to set aside terrorism-related loss of life ― and it most certainly is not ― the financial cost alone of combating it is absurd. Let us examine just one single factor; increased waiting times at airports. An extra hour or three doesn’t seem like much until you start doing the math.

Some 1.5 million passengers per day originate from American airports. Domestic flights have a one hour minimum wait time and international travel requires an early check in of at least three hours. We will split the difference and use an average of two hours wait. Even though a majority of domestic flights are not international, please rest assured that this slightly top-heavy coefficient will barely compensate for many other downstream factors.

Two hours of wait time multiplied by 1.5 million passengers equals 3 million working hours lost due to increased airport waiting periods. Airport WiFi services do not begin to counteract these losses in productivity because of how fax machines and other appurtenances of regular business life are usually inaccessible near the tarmac. That represents 3 million hours of lost productivity each and every day just in America alone." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Zenster continued totaling up this cost estimate for a worldwide expense of over a trillion dollars.

"In a sense, it is as if Islam has found a cunning way of forestalling its own dismantling at the hands of increasingly vexed Western powers. Those one trillion dollars in annual airline security-related waiting times could finance the overturning of yet one more Muslim majority nation per year. Recall, how this is just the global expense of increased airport waiting times that is being discussed." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

There are many other costs, including those of opportunities lost.

"The overall cost burden of Islam’s culture upon Western social benefit structures, law enforcement apparatus and ― via incessant and frequently frivolous Islamic “lawfare” ― its judicial system, is orders of magnitude higher; as will be shown in the subsequent parts of this article. Taken together, these otherwise unnecessary monetary outlays could finance punitive military campaigns against Islam or, as a less bellicose alternative, sponsor all of the needed scientific research into alternative fuels that could render MME (Muslim Middle East), control of oil production moot and unprofitable."

These are all "hidden costs." That is, except for the occasional statistical report from one of a few Western European countries that notes how much of their crimes are committed by, or other prisons inhabited by, those of an Islamic "immigrant background," the increased costs get overlooked. But they are not insignificant.

"Not even the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ― both of which were directed at proven sources of international terrorism ― can be counted as truly effective responses to Islam’s assault upon the West. These so-called “liberations” have gone on to see each country cheerfully adopt shari’a-based constitutions which guarantee they will once again revert to being terrorist manufactories the instant that Western troops depart."

Afghanistan and Iraq are/were only individual theatres or campaigns in the larger war against the enemy only identified as "Terror." We will continue to see the fruits of our reluctance to properly identify and name our adversaries.

"Islamic terrorism will end. It is both unsustainable and an intolerable burden upon the civilized world. Ending it is a matter of obtaining sufficient political willpower and an educated electorate that will no longer put up with ineffectual Politically Correct politicians who continue to ignore, obfuscate or simply deny the need to eliminate such a monstrous drag on global progress."

9/21

re: "Islam Is Islam, And That Is That"

Federale ("That Is The Sound Of Inevitability") remarked on willful blindness and those who promote it.

Money quote(s):

"Words of wisdom from Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of Turkey. Spencer Ackerman and Joe Lieberman seem to disagree. They think there are peaceful manifestations of Islam. Well, there are Muslims who don't practice their religion to varying degrees, but Islam is Islam; vile, warlike, dangerous, hateful, and bigoted against whites, Christians and Western Civilization.

However there has been much ado about recent FBI training that exposes Islam for what it is, Islam. The Danger Blog in particular is waging jihad against some who agree with Islamic scholars and political leaders like Erdogan who accept Islam for what it is; A warlike religion opposed to Christendom. And doing so violently.

Unlike DHS which views the threat to America as coming from white, Christian, heterosexual, gun owning veterans, the FBI has been ignoring PC and providing accurate information about Islam to its agents. That, of course, is unacceptable to the left, as Islam is a religion of peace."

Good for the FBI. You've got to get fairly well into the IC before you'll find folks (analysts and others) who'll call a spade a spade, there being since 9/11 the declaration from the White House on down that "Islam is a religion of peace."

Frankly, CAIR needs to be thought of as being the post-9/11 equivalent of the old German American Bund.

"(T)he FBI does not use Mafia attorneys to vet its organized crime training either. And wisely so, because just as so-called Italian-American groups denied the existence of the Mafia, and communist front groups denied that there was Soviet subversion in the U.S., Islamists deny that there is any radicalization problem among American Muslims, but Major Nidal Hassan, the Times Square Bomber, Najibullah Zazi, and the Arkansas Recruiter Shooter are just a few of the local Muslims that became radicalized by becoming more devout. The FBI training is not as Ackerman claims playing into the hand of Al Queda, but accurately describing the process of radicalization and its connection to the very nature of Islam. The more Muslim a Muslim, the more danger that Muslim presents to America."

CAA recently read a statistic (can't remember where, somewhere online) that at 80 percent of American mosques, visitors can get radical materials and propaganda. This should surprise no one except to note that 20 percent of may not be centers of Islamist radicalization.

9/18

re: "Civilizational War 10 Years After 9-11: Can the West Recover?"

Glen Tschirgi at Captain's Journal ("dedicated to the dissemination of conservative views, based on a solidly and consistently conservative world view, on matters political and military") put things into historical context.

(Not enough of this going around, IMHO.)

Money quote(s):


"I would differ with Rubin that Al Qaeda did not succeed in becoming the leader in worldwide jihad. Clearly, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Al Qaeda was easily the most visible terror group and most heralded in the Islamist world. The fact that Al Qaeda has suffered a disproportionate number of decapitation operations by the U.S. does not mean that it did not accomplish its goal of jihadi leadership. In fact, it could be argued that Al Qaeda has succeeded brilliantly in this regard to the extent that the U.S. has been distracted from fighting other no-less dangerous groups which share the wider goals of Islamist domination of the West." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

In some cases, not only do we not fight them, we actively negotiate with and reward them. Smart diplomacy? Mebbe; but more like lack of clarity with the whole aims/goals part of Grand Strategy.

(Oh, and an inability to talk about or name ones self-proclaimed enemies.)

"While it is true that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, those attacks were merely a manifestation of what has been a perpetual civilizational conflict between Islam and the West since the militant spread of Islam after 632 A.D. The militant strain of Islam has always sought to expand and dominate non-muslim peoples and it always will."

It's not a bug (in the Koran and in Sharia), it's a feature. The whole expansionist scheme constitutes an interlocking and reinforcing web of a reality-tunnel.

"We seem to be making a fundamental mistake in the West when we fail to see the broader context of the struggle. September 11, 2001 was not a “tragedy” but an act of war. A tactical strike by militant Islam at the financial, military and (it was hoped) political heart of the West. And it was not the first such strike. Militant Islam has been on the march in modern times since at least 1979 with the founding of the theocratic state of Iran."

The Iranian Revolution marked definitively the turning point from a century or so of Islamist decline; I suppose you could mark that as having, definitively, begun with Napoleon invading Egypt, but both those points are semi-arbitrary.

"(T)he muslim world is quickly turning (or, more exactly, re-turning) to militant Islam as a means of forcing an expansion of power, in the Middle East in the short term and in Europe and even North America in the long term. This is not some new phenomenon to any student of history but a continuation of a struggle between two civilizations: one based upon Greek and Roman thoughts of law and liberty with Christian overlays (Western democracy) and one based upon the all-encompassing rule of the Koran which sublimates the individual in every aspect of life. The two cultures are thoroughly incompatible and the history of the world has shown that peace has only, ever reigned between the two when Islam was too weak to force its will upon the West.

This, then, should be the take-away from 9-11: we are in a desperate struggle for civilizational survival that is being fought on the battlefield, certainly, but also in the courtroom, in the media, in politically correct driven government policy and think tanks, and in the very essence of our culture— how we view our basic freedoms and the means we are willing to employ to cherish and defend them."

Fortunately, our civilization's strategic thinkers do have an understanding that national power, and warfare, is multidimensional, even if our media and our politicians often do not. Do you suppose there's some way to get these people to talk to one another?

"It is too frightening. The risk of being called xenophobic, or Islamophobic or chauvinistic is too intimidating. So we will fight where we find it convenient to fight. Drone attacks that take out an Al Qaeda leader but leave in peace Iranian leaders who have killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda or the Taliban. We will look for the first opportunity to declare victory, as when Osama Bin Laden was killed, but ignore the mortal threats to peace and economic security posed by a nuclear Iran or a growing Hezbollah or Hamas. We will sacrifice precious blood and treasure gaining great victories in Iraq and Afghanistan only to throw it away in hasty withdrawals under the smokescreen of “transition.” "

Fighting where it's convenient isn't always a bad thing. Picking your battles is often a good thing. Still, declarations that victory has been won should be as quickly ridiculed as those which declared "Mission Accomplished!"

9/11

re: "Ten Years After"

Francis W. Porretto at Eternity Road aims to influence your opinions.

Money quote(s):

"I've received a fair amount of email this past week, inquiring about whether I planned to write something on the tenth anniversary of Black Tuesday: September 11, 2001, when Islam openly declared war on the United States. Yes, I said Islam, not "terrorists," "extremists," or "fundamentalists." We have it on the authority of a head of state -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey -- that there is no "moderate Islam;" there is only Islam. Any number of imams, mullahs, ayatollahs and so forth have said the same -- and have proceeded to justify the atrocities of Black Tuesday as a response to the "humiliation" Muslims have endured at America's hands.

What humiliation? Daring to rise and progress out of the seventh century. Proclaiming a doctrine of individual rights beyond what their scriptures allow. Treating persons of all races, sexes, and faiths as possessing a perfect right to be as they are and believe as they do. Letting women read, drive, and go about in attractive clothing, unaccompanied by a male chaperone.
We "humiliate" Muslims and Islam by being Americans: believers in freedom, a secular state, and an objective rule of law and justice." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

There're what, a billion muslims in the world? That's almost as many muslims as there are Catholics! Surely all of them aren't at war with the United States?

"If you're a person of wholesome values and rational mind, you were as outraged about Black Tuesday as I was -- and you remain so, as I do. If we differ at all, it's in what would constitute the appropriate responses, short and long-term, and the enduring stance America ought to take toward the perpetrators, their enablers, their apologists, and their co-religionists.

Needless to say, even among men of good will, that's a wide spectrum of opinion. What I'm here to do, today and every day, on this and every subject of public import, is to pull your opinions toward mine. Anyone who writes op-ed is trying to do the same. " (Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA.)

I know it's supposed to be a bad thing to hold onto anger all this time, but frankly I've come to doubt whether the veracity itself of that bit of modern-day folk wisdom. Anger isn't always a bad thing, it seems to me. It can help keep you focused on whatever, presumably important, thing that has angered you. After all, if the thing is still making you angry, maybe the fault isn't you after all.

Not to rule that out, you understand. Let's not rule anything out, let's keep an open mind to all the possibilities and then start to rule them out, based on facts and observations.

Regarding the bolded portion of the excerpt above, I have no quibble with Mr. Porretto's wording except the final three (including one compound-) words: "and their co-religionists." And I'll tell you why:

My issue, my anger, my "eternal hostility" remains with "the perpetrators, their enablers, (and) their apologists." And while I certainly don't limit that hostility to "their co-religionists," nor do I intend to categorically sweep them into the "eternal hostility" category unless, by their perpetration, their enablement, and their apologetics, they place themselves therein.

Frankly, those who are in essence accessories, before and after the facts of 9/11, constitute a sufficiently broad category within both the non-Muslim and Muslim worlds as to provide no end of enemies.

But, as we are in a war, not a criminal court, the object is not conviction of the guilty (including the accessories) but their defeat. So let not your heart be troubled.

"We are at war with Islam, and have been since Iranian "students" stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, took 52 Americans hostage, and kept them for 444 days.

Don't bother to argue with me about this. Either we are or we aren't. If we aren't, the evidence for the proposition demands a better explanation than any I've heard. Worse, there's no objective evidence that we aren't, and no Islamic apologist has dared to present any.

But we're not fighting that war. We're acting, in large measure, as if some other force were responsible for the crimes and atrocities committed in Islam's name. We're acting, in other words, as if Islam and Muslims generally are the victims rather than the cause and the perpetrators."

A couple of points:

First, while certain Islamic actors (including entire governments) have been at war with the U.S., indeed with Western civilization, for at least since the Tehran embassy takeover, we have not ourselves been at war back. At least not until 9/11 when the war which had been being waged against us abroad for all these years came crashing into the home front. No pun intended.

Second, the first (and last) victims of the Sharia-based ideology of militant, fundamentalist (and occasionally socialist) Islam are always muslims themselves. Muslims who disagree, muslims to aren't fundamentalist, aren't militant, aren't murderous enough; they are always the ultimate victims of our Islamist enemies.

This is not to minimize our role as an obstacle to a Sharia-controlled world where muslims may be terrorized and murdered without hindrance, since there won't be anyone else left to terrorize and murder; we're the Great Satan, after all. And with that greatness comes great responsibility.

"In part, it's because of the barrage of propagandization we've received about Islam, about American "imperialism," and about our duty to "tolerate" this totalitarian creed. Like it or not, people's attitudes and unconscious assumptions are shaped by the Legacy Media even today. They see, hear, or read a "news report" and accept it as undiluted, unpolluted fact. They read a bit of op-ed from some eloquent columnist with whom they agree on less weighty matters, and they accept his rendition rather than performing their own. They hear persons whom they admire, and whose good opinion they crave, declaim in this or that fashion, and they accept it and parrot it back to him for no better reason than their need for his approval.

And in part, it's because we've become uncomfortable with the concept of evil. We simply dislike the idea that there are persons in the world whose ultimate aim is our subjugation or destruction. And since it's an abstraction, not represented by any individual we have close at hand, we scowl and shrug it away.

Got a hot flash for you, sports fans: There is evil in the world. Now and then it's codified into a creed and set down between book covers. The Communist Manifesto. Mein Kampf. The Koran. Those who embrace such a creed are embracing evil.

Yes, it's a Christian's part to hate the sin but forgive the sinner and pray for his repentance. But it's a free man's part to fight the evildoer with all his power -- especially when at the end of the contest, one of you will be dead, and the other free to go on as he's done.

We are at war with Islam. We've been at war with Islam for forty-one years." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

See my remarks above. Islamic terrorists (including entire governments) have been at war with us for each of those forty-one years, but for much of that time we brushed aside the insults, the murders, the treachery, and the attacks against our military, our diplomats, and our civilians, as mere nuisances to be ignored or somehow bought off. Actual warfare, at least since the Jefferson administration, against Islamic terrorists, bandits, and pirates (but I repeat myself) has been quite rare, and more the occasional skirmish indicental to various rescue or other reactive and defensive missions.

"Try reading this concise report on Muslims' behavior in Western countries to which they've been admitted. Try rationalizing its evidence against any other conclusion than that Islam is an aggressive program of totalitarian conquest of the world, with a few theological trimmings as protective coloration.

Try imagining how "tolerance" for such a creed could eventuate any other way than in mass slaughter of the "tolerant" and the subjugation of the survivors."

Those with eyes to see need only observe developments in the erstwhile "Arab Spring" nations for a sneak-preview of what may be in store, Ralph Peters notwithstanding, for Western Europe.

9/11/11