Flight 93 is the symbol of our woken vigilance. We are supposed to be alert now, to jihadist enemies that hide amongst us, pretending to be trustworthy friends.
Those charged with the memorialization of Flight 93 have instead embraced an anti-spirit of Flight 93, regarding vigilance as somehow beyond the pale even of contemplation.
Listen to the words of Clay Mankamyer, one of the founders of the Flight 93 Memorial Project, describing the Project’s reaction to warnings of Islamic symbolism in the Crescent of Embrace design. They asked the accused architect Paul Murdoch about it. They agreed with him that it was "too big a stretch" to think that he had conspired to intentionally include Islamic symbolism, and so they decided that: "we’re just not going to address the issue." They made an up-front decision NOT to look at the facts.
Here is the audio (50 seconds) followed by a transcript:
The controversy then arose. When I first heard it, it was a street preacher who had drawn attention to the similarities to the red crescent, and when you heard what he had to say about it, and looked at the design, there were without a doubt some striking similarities. He went to, I went to, Paul Murdoch and expressed some concern and wondered what they were going to do about it. Their decision was that, well, certainly everybody is going to see that any similarity is going to be just coincidental and it’s too big a stretch to think that anybody conspired to create anything but a memorial to the heroes who WON the battle that fateful morning, and so they decided that, ‘we’re just not going to address the issue.’
Mankamyer is not ideologically disposed to be politically correct. He is a conservative Christian patriot, speaking in this instance to a Christian Coalition meeting (recorded by Bill Steiner, with the knowledge and permission of those in attendance, 9-18-2007, Greensburg PA). What seems to be operating here is a generous spirit of goodwill, unwilling to believe anything bad about this architect they had all worked with and put their trust in.
Goodwill only towards the man accused of an enemy plot
The problem is that Mankamyer et al. failed to similarly give the benefit of the doubt to those who were issuing warnings about the design. If they had treated the critics as credible people too, they would have let the facts decide, and Murdoch’s dishonesty would have been quickly exposed.
When the controversy over the crescent name and shape first erupted, Murdoch denied that his giant crescent had the same shape as an Islamic crescent:
Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn’t based on that.
Oh yeah? Zombie posted a "throbbing crescent" animation (no longer active) that showed otherwise, and Michelle Malkin broadcast it to the online masses. Here is a three panel re-creation:
"Throb on" shows the Tunisian crescent, matching the geometry of the Crescent of Embrace almost exactly: about 2/3rds of a circle of arc, with a circular inner arc. (Most definitely NOT a lunar crescent, which covers half a circle of arc and has an elliptical inner arc.) "Throb off" shows bare crescent site plan. (Click pic for larger image.)
All that people like Mankamyer had to do was actually look at what people were telling them and they would have known immediately that Murdoch was deceiving them. Instead, they explicitly decided that they were NOT going to look at the facts. They extended good will only to the man who was accused of perpetrating an enemy plot, while extending nothing but ill will towards his accusers.
"A shrine to Micky Mouse"
Mankamyer’s presentation includes some wrenching examples of just how willfully blind he and others have become as they continued down their chosen fact-free path. Listen to the crazy excuse he comes up with for not being concerned about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent (ten seconds):
You see what we are up against though. I could come in here and say… I could draw a point from this window to that window, and it goes right to Orlando Florida and this is a shrine to Micky Mouse. [laughter]
This is clever? A Mecca-oriented crescent or arch shape is the central feature around which every mosque is built. A line across two windows does not orient anything, and the scumbags who hijacked Flight 93 did not pray to Micky Mouse five times a day.
Of course Mankamyer was intentionally offering the stupidest example he could concoct as a way of suggesting that it is just as stupid to be concerned about planting a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site. If he had said that directly everyone in the room would have been disgusted, so instead he made the most disingenuous comparison he could come up with.
This is what their spirit of goodwill has degenerated into: pure malignant bias.
They all know about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent
Notice that Mankamyer does not deny the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. This squares with what Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird told Alec Rawls in July 2007: that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware that the giant crescent does in fact point within two degrees of Mecca. They all just have excuses for why they are not concerned about it.
"I won’t be concerned unless you can prove intent," Baird said, "and it is impossible to prove intent." i.e. Baird does not care what the facts are. There is absolutely nothing that could ever wake him up from his anti-vigilant slumber.
They all know that the public would never accept a giant Mecca oriented crescent on the crash site, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, so they lie about it. One project spokesman after another keeps declaring that factual claims like the Mecca orientation of the crescent are false and "preposterous."
How long before one of these fine upstanding citizens recognizes that it is wrong to keep lying to the public about explosive information that they all know to be true?
Mankamyer says that he would like to see a Congressional investigation
The scenes are quite astounding. Clay Mankamyer, a conservative Christian, manages to get a Christian Coalition meeting laughing about the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. How do you ever live that down?
You start by trying. In the question and answer part of the meeting, Bill Steiner asked for an independent investigation, and Mankmyer said he would join Bill in that (10 seconds):
Bill Steiner: "The only concerns we have is that this design be fully vetted by a Congressional investigation before it goes any further."
Bill talks over Mankamyer’s reply, but Mankamyer repeats himself enough to be heard: "And I would like … I would join you in that."
If Mr. Mankamyer would insist publicly on a Congressional investigation, it would go a long ways. So would admitting to the public that he and others in the Project are aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca-orientation claim.
Tom Burnett Sr. is asking everyone to help him get state and Congressional investigations started. It would certainly help if at least a few people from inside the Memorial Project would start telling the truth.
"I came into this world to be a witness for truth"
The heroes of Flight 93 did not obfuscate. They faced the harsh truth of their situation and acted as love required. Mankamyer understands that. He is a genuine patriot, who dedicated himself to the memorialization of Flight 93.
Somehow–apparently at the urging of architect Paul Murdoch–he let himself be guided by presumption, finding excuses to avoid unpleasant truths. (It was in talking to Murdoch that Mankamyer and others decided it was "too big a stretch to think anyone conspired" and they should therefore "not … address the issue.")
Facing threat of death, Jesus told Pilate that he "came into the world to be a witness for truth" (Jn 18:37). This is his most fundamental instruction to his followers: trust in truth. Never EVER put presumption ahead of witness. For those who make this mistake, it is never to late to undo it.
To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.
Thanx to the despicable Willie Cl*tman, who bombed the Christan Serbs in order to curry favor with Arab-Muhammedans, the Balkan-Mujaheddin will now move towards the final solutionFor now, we run these articles again:
Why are the Serbs - whom apart from the Jews were the major victims of the Holocaust during World War 2 - being cast as the perpetrators of genocide while the real perpetrators of genocide - the Islamofascists loyal to Alija Izetbegovic - are being cast by the corporate media, the US, NATO and EU governments as “the victims”?
Why was Naser Oric - the Islamofascist commander of Srebrenica and perpetrator of a massive genocide against Serbian men, women and children in Srebrenica from 1992 to 1995 - given only a 2 year sentence for this monumental crime against humanity and allowed to walk free from NATO’s Scheveningen ICTY prison: the former Nazi SS dungeon for patriotic Dutch resistance fighters against the Germans during World War 2 in The Hague, Holland?
‘I’m not sure whose side to root for in the ethnic Albanian, Kosovo-Serbia morass—there are killers on all sides—and today’s news from Kosovo leaves me with mixed feelings: Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.’
May as well join the Koz Kidz, Charles, what’s the difference?
If the Lizard King doesn’t know which way to root that means the Lizard Army is rooted, no?
A Lizard comment:
‘They seem to be very pro-America.’
America enabled them. Just because they wave American flags means exactly nothing. Now just go there and wave some Muhammad cartoons, and watch them love you…
Strong American support for the independence of Kosovo is detrimental to Israeli interests. The US position is based on the view that a solution to long-standing conflict can and should be imposed on the parties by outside powers. In addition, the new state’s creation seeks to award part of a nation’s territory to a violent ethno-religious minority; futilely hopes to curry favor with the Islamic world through appeasement; effectively gives a fresh impetus to the ongoing growth of Islamic influence in Europe; and denies the fact that the putative state’s leaders are tainted by terrorism, criminality, and well-documented links with global jihad. Most importantly, it betrays a cynically postmodern contempt for all claims based on the historical rights and spiritual significance of a land to a nation. (More…)
WARNING: This video contains some strong language and graphic elements. It is intended for a mature audience.
Each day, I see events unfolding around the globe that cause me concern. Yet most of the people I encounter seem to be oblivious, or at best, only peripherally aware of the grave threats facing our nation - and civilization as a whole.
Our enemies are counting on our short attention spans, our over-confidence and our stubborn complacency to keep the blinders on our eyes until it’s too late.
Each day, the future of freedom and democracy in Europe seems bleaker… and the United States is already taking steps down the same path.
1389 Blog has posted this video because it makes many vital points - especially about the failure of the US and other western nations to acknowledge, investigate, and respond to suspicious incidents.
That said, we vehemently disagree with George W’s handling of foreign policy - though not for the same reasons as the liberals disagree with it. We claim - and we have repeatedly provided the facts to back up this claim - that GWB has, all too often, appeased jihadists when he should have stood against them.
Hesham Islam, if you recall, is the Islamist mole who maneuvered his patron and mentor, Gordon England, into firing Steve Coughlin, the Pentagon’s only expert on Islamic law.
In a stunning turn of events, a high-level Muslim military aide blamed for costing an intelligence contractor his job will step down from his own Pentagon post, WND has learned.
Meanwhile, his rival, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a leading authority on Islamic war doctrine, may stay in the Pentagon, moving from the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the office of the secretary of defense. However, sources say a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey is trying to block his new contract.
The top Pentagon aide, Egyptian-born Hesham H. Islam, came under a cloud of suspicion after reports raised doubt about his resume and contacts he had made with radical Muslims. He is expected to leave the government next month, officials say.
Islam and Coughlin recently quarreled over intelligence briefings Coughlin presented showing a close connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism. Coughlin’s contract with the Joint Chiefs, which ends in March, was not renewed.
The Power of the Bloggers:
But as a result of the ensuing firestorm that played out in the conservative press – led by Washington Times Pentagon reporter Bill Gertz – Islam was put under a microscope, and questions were raised regarding his background…
Hesham Islam has been in the new recently. Well, not really. He has been covered by conservative news sites like World Net Daily, NRO and The Washington Times but there’s been precious little MSM coverage outside of that. Bloggers have also covered the news.
Hesham is a close friend, confidant and advisor to Gordon England. England is the #2 man at the Department of Defense. The problem is that Hesham is also something of a mystery. Despite a DoD published biographical profile which described his early life as akin to a Hollywood thriller, there was more to Islam than met the eye. It all came to light after Hesham Islam used his influence to punish Stephen Coughlin, possibly the best Islamic analyst at the Pentagon. Coughlin’s contract was not renewed after Islam described him as a “Christian zealot with a poison pen”. That statement came after Coughlin’s Pentagon reports became increasingly alarmist with respect to Islamic activity which precipitated an ideological conflict with Hesham Islam…
Blogosphere Victory for Ezra Levant
Ezra Levant has been prosecuted by the Alberta Human Rights Commission for having published the Muhammad cartoons.
Excellent! Chalk one up for freedom of speech. Also, Ezra Levant says he is going to sue Syed Soharwardy for the thousands of dollars in legal fees! Go get ‘em, Ezra!!!
Muslim leader drops Ezra Levant cartoon complaint
Western Standard publisher plans to launch a civil lawsuit
Graeme Morton, Canwest News Service February 12, 2008
National Post —CALGARY — Calgary Muslim leader Syed Soharwardy says he is withdrawing his Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant.
The complaint was launched in February 2006, after the Western Standard and the Jewish Free Press reprinted cartoons from a Danish newspaper that many in the Muslim world felt insulted the prophet Muhammad. The cartoons sparked violent protests in a number of countries…
Today Syed Soharwardy told the Calgary Herald editorial board that he is withdrawing his human rights complaint against me that he filed two years ago when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. (Seriously, if you haven’t done so, you’ve really got to look at his hand-scrawled complaint here. I know dyslexic ten-year-olds with ADD who are more coherent.)
If he’s really withdrawing the complaint, this is the first I’ve heard about it; and when I spoke with my lawyer this afternoon, the complaint was still proceeding against me.
It might be a lie — it wouldn’t be Soharwardy’s first, but then again, lying to an infidel newspaper isn’t immoral to someone like Soharwardy. It’s called taqqiyah.
But even if Soharwardy withdraws his complaint against me, an identical complaint filed by the Edmonton Muslim Council still proceeds.
So why would Soharwardy do this — and why now?
The answer lies in another Arabic word: hudna. A hudna isn’t a peace treaty. It’s a temporary truce called by a Muslim warrior who’s losing in battle. It’s pretty easy to understand how hudnas work by watching Israel fight Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two terrorist groups lob rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel for months; then, every once in a while, Israel deploys its military and flattens Hamas and Hezbollah, who then call for a hudna. The UN intervenes, saving Hamas and Hezbollah to fight another day. That’s a hudna: a tactical truce for a strategic advantage.
Soharwardy wants a hudna because he’s osing badly. Not financially: he hasn’t spent a penny to further the complaint against me — that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach’s government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I’d guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission — Alberta government employees do that for him. It’s because over the past two years — and the past month in particular — Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who’s trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I’m being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he’s being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn’t expect it, and he hates it.
He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque - from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women.
By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor February 11, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - The death penalty given to an Afghan journalist accused of insulting Islam has more to do with judges’ interpretation of the country’s laws than with a constitutional provision entrenching Islamic primacy, according to a leading scholar in Islamic law.
The Afghan government has reiterated its assurance that President Hamid Karzai will “find a just solution” to the case of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh. A statement released by the Afghan Embassy in Washington said that this would be done “in accordance with Afghan law and our nation’s international obligations.”
A three-judge court in northern Afghanistan on January 22 sentenced the 23-year-old to death, after he was accused of distributing to students an online article questioning why Muslim men may have more than one spouse while women may not…
Mapleton LLC is the group that bought these stations from Citadel Broadcasting. A key factor in this sale was the termination of the Mark Fuhrman Show.
Not available on the Net yet but from the today’s S-R’s Business
Section:
S-R to broadcast on Mapleton Stations
The Spokesman-Review will begin producing radio news reports that will be broadcast over stations owned by Mapleton Communications LLC in
Spokane under an agreement announced Tuesday.
At least four daily
newscasts, plus a weekend talk show and a week-in-review program, will be broadcast from the Spokesman-Review building . . .
Isn’t it enough that it is estimated the Cowles Co control 80% of the local media in our market? As I write in a reply (draft form) to the new Spokesman-Review Ombudsman:
Because of the significant amount of property that the Cowles Co owns or controls in Downtown Spokane and along the Spokane River to the Idaho border, there inherently is a conflict of interest regarding its involvement in development projects and reporting by the S-R. A close analogy is the period genre movie Chinatown. River Park Square is only one of several projects where there is a similar pattern and practice in quasi public/private developments where the public was defrauded.
Friends of Mark Fuhrman Radio Show
The unofficial fan site of Mark Fuhrman Radio Show that was squelched in my opinion by the "usual suspects." This list is dedicated to pursuing among other things the River Park Square fraud et al in Spokane, WA and other related topics that you will never read about in the Spokesman-Review. Read regular updates from Fuhrman Show regulars, Larry Shook, Tim Conner, Cherie Rodgers, former Spokane Mayor John Talbott, Dick Adams, "Ron the Cop" and others.
A complaint for the new S-R Ombudsman To the Citizens of Spokane - Time to take a stand! An Army of Davids Strikes - Spokane, WA
"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"
As many of you now know the Mark Fuhrman Radio Show was axed by KGA1510 AM (Citadel Broadcasting) in Spokane, WA. . . . I have information from a reliable source that the Fuhrman Show was in play from the very first contact by Mapleton representatives with Citadel about purchasing KGA. IMHO this was a "hit" plain and simple by a criminal enterprise to cover its ongoing robbery of the citizens of Spokane. This criminal enterprise has so thoroughly and systemically corrupted the political and governmental bodies in Spokane to a level I’ve never witnessed before in my entire thirty-five year law enforcement career. . .
Dr. Daniel Griffith (”anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round“) is still trying to convince the press that the Flight 93 crescent does not point to Mecca. In an email to the Park Service and the press this week, he tried to make it sound as if Alec Rawls is calculating the orientation of the crescent by using techniques that can be manipulated to achieve any desired result:
Based on Alec’s arguments, one could claim that the memorial is oriented toward the Vatican.
The Flight 93 crescent can indeed be seen as pointing to the Vatican, for the simple reason that the Vatican sits on the great circle line between the crash site and Mecca.
This is what Griffith represents as some concocted method for calculating the orientation of the crescent: the great circle method!
This “shortest distance” or “straight line” direction to Mecca (curving only in the over the horizon direction) is the relevant direction because this is the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca. (There was a debate about it in the 1980’s and 90’s, largely settled by this nondescript looking analysis.)
Here is the great circle line from the Flight 93 crash-site to Mecca:
(Click-pic for larger image. Great circle calculator here.)
Here is the great circle line from the crash-site to the Vatican:
This calculator rounds to the nearest degree, so Mecca and the Vatican both are presented as lying on the great circle line that, from the crash site, proceeds 55° clockwise from north.
Of course a person who faces Mecca is also facing everything else that happens to lie in the direction of Mecca. When Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Vatican, he is not debunking of the Mecca-orientation of the Flight 93 crescent, but confirming it.
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Griffith pulled the same trick last July, telling reporter Kirk Swauger of the Johnstown Tribune Democrat that the crescent can be seen as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want:
Griffith said Rawls suggested memorial organizers would be outraged if the crescent pointed to a Nazi concentration camp instead, the professor said it actually could be done.
Of course Rawls never suggested that anyone should care if the crescent pointed at a concentration camp. Is there a worldwide religion of facing Nazi concentration camps for prayer? Was Flight 93 hijacked by people who face Nazi concentration camps for prayer?
An unpublished report that Griffith wrote for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review in 2006 clarifies his concentration camp reference. It notes that there was a Nazi concentration camp (Drancy) located just outside of Paris, which as you can see on the maps above is also (like the Vatican) on the great circle line between the Flight 93 crash-site and Mecca. In his 2006 report, Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Drancy camp, yet is still unwilling to acknowledge that it points to Mecca. Somehow, the crescent points to everything on the line to Mecca except Mecca.
When Griffith told Swauger that you can see the crescent as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want, he was clearly trying to mislead Swauger into thinking that you can see the crescent as pointing wherever you want. This dishonest intention was made clear by another statement that Griffith made to Swauger (not reported by Swauger, but related by Swauger to Alec Rawls at the time). Griffith told Swauger that: “You can face anywhere to face Mecca.”
He is doing the same thing when he tells the Park Service now that the crescent can be seen as pointing to the Vatican, without being clear that this is because the Vatican sits on great circle line to Mecca.
Pecksniff
In his email, Griffith complains that Rawls has been trying to bully him into changing his analysis. Nobody is trying to bully Griffith into changing anything. We are trying to expose him as a fraud.
Griffith is practically in tears about being called a Pecksniff (a character from Martin Chuzzlewit “who lies and cants whether he is drunk or sober”). It is the perfect epithet. Look in the dictionary under Pecksniff and you will see Daniel Griffith’s picture.
Not that anyone should bother to read Griffith’s email, but if anyone wants to, it puts front and center another astounding example of Griffith’s free-form dishonesty.
Griffith quotes Rawls’s January 2006 report to the Memorial Project as saying that:
…the orientation to Mecca “take[s] a short cut over the North Pole … even though Mecca is south of Shanksville.”
From this supposed quote, Griffith goes on to construct an elaborate fantasy about how, since the great circle line between the crash-site and Mecca does not actually go over the North Pole, it was really Rawls, not he, who started this idea that you can face different directions to face Mecca.
But Rawls’s report to the Memorial Project did not say that a person facing the north pole from the crash site is facing Mecca. Rather, it includes an aside explaining why the shortest-distance line to Mecca “points in a northeasterly direction” (not due north), even though Mecca is south of Shanksville. The reason is because both are in the northern hemisphere. To illustrate, the report includes the simplest possible example: “The shortest distance between points on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere will take a short cut over the North Pole.”
Griffith quotes only the second half of this sentence, omitting the part about connecting points “on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere.” That allows him to pretend that the points referred to are the crash-site and Mecca. Of course Shanksville and Mecca are not on opposite sides of the hemisphere. Mecca is about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere from the crash-site.
Having misrepresented Rawls as saying, not just that a person facing into the giant crescent is facing Mecca, but also that a person facing due north from the crash site is facing Mecca, Griffith then writes:
I fail to be convinced that only 2, rather than the infinity of possible, arcs are acceptable to Muslims.
Bwahahahaha! Griffith just finished saying how wrong it is to think that a person facing north from Shanksville is facing Mecca. Then he turns around and uses this face-north-to-face-Mecca claim (misattributed to Rawls) as justification for saying that a person facing any direction is facing Mecca. Just how much peck has this idiot been sniffing?
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Maj. Steve Coughlin, the expert on terrorism who was fired from the Pentagon at the behest of a jihadist mole, is back to work, and with a well-deserved promotion. Great news!
But we still have some work to do - we need to hold our officials’ feet to the fire, so that they do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon to remove Hesham Islam and other jihadist moles, along with those who aid and abet their careers.
I love good news and this is a very good news story. Coughlin was not only saved, he was promoted. Score one for the free world. By the way, where’s Heshie?
The Congresswoman has been investigating the reported firing (see here, here, here) of Major Stephen Coughlin (USAR) by the Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Staff.
First and foremost, Rep. Myrick confirms that Major Coughlin will now be retained by the DOD, and “…associated with another office program within the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he will continue to spread his message.”
The Congresswoman, one of the handful of stalwart individuals on jihadism in either the House or Senate, also highlights in her statement, the seriousness of what she terms, “…the nature of the radical Islamist enemy that we face today and how they are seeking to infiltrate all elements of our society.”
Rep. Myrick further lavishes deserving praise upon Major Coughlin’s thesis, “Major Coughlin’s
thesis must be read by everyone responsible for ensuring the safety of America,” for which we now learn he has been retained, and arguably even promoted, within the DOD.
But Congresswoman Myrick’s statement also evidences a curious if not disturbing cognitive dissonance about her expressed concern over jihadist “infiltration,” when it comes to Hesham Islam. Specifically, the Congresswoman:
without adducing any hard evidence to contradict Bill Gertz’s steadfast, repeated allegations blithely dismisses Hesham Islam’s putative role in Coughlin’s reported travails,
including the failure torenew Coughlin’s original contract, i.e., his reported firing
and ignores Mr. Islam’s intellectually shoddy, unhinged 1992 thesis which epitomizes the bigoted and paranoid jihadist tendency to frame any efforts to counter jihad encroachments in the Middle East, in particular, as the machinations of a nefarious Jewish cabal
Sadly, Rep. Myrick apparently chooses to ignore a man who seems to embody the very process of “infiltration” about which she claims to be so concerned.
Maj. Steve Coughlin, the expert on terrorism who was fired from the Pentagon at the behest of a jihadist mole, is back to work, and with a well-deserved promotion. Great news!
But we still have some work to do - we need to hold our officials’ feet to the fire, so that they do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon to remove Hesham Islam and other jihadist moles, along with those who aid and abet their careers.
The firing of Maj. Steve Coughlin was an act of treason.
“Isn’t that a strong word to use?”
Yes, treason is a strong word, but it is also an accurate word to use in this context. His firing - officially, the nonrenewal of his contract - took place at the behest of Hesham Islam, who is both a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and a jihadist mole. For more on that, see Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?
“Why is it treason to fire Maj. Coughlin?”
Because the firing of Maj. Coughlin deprives the U.S. military of vital information about enemy motives and intentions that it is getting from nowhere else. Firing Maj. Coughlin gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the U.S. by crippling the ability of the U.S. military to make sense out of the evidence it gathers of enemy activities.
“What was Maj. Coughlin trying to tell the U.S. government that was so important?”
His most important point is that the U.S. government is unwise to take Muslims at their word with regard to whether Islamic law and doctrine represent a danger to non-Muslim societies. Nor can we safely assume that terrorism and aggression committed in the name of Islam proceeds merely from a small minority of extremists who have hijacked and misinterpreted Islam, rather than from something inherent in Islamic law and doctrine that gives rise to such aggression.
Here I defer to columnist Jeffrey Breinholt to explain the details. Emphasis is mine.
Maj. Steve Coughlin has been in the news lately. Little of the attention has focused on his ideas – rather, it’s the intrigue surrounding the non-renewal of his contact as a briefer for the Joint Chiefs of Staffs that has been the focus, supposedly because he violated the sensibilities of the current climate. Meanwhile, his 300-page master’s thesis is posted on the website of the International Strategy and Assessment Center, where Maj. Coughlin and I are fellows. What does his thesis say?
My goal here is to summarize Coughlin’s main ideas. As in my “Muslim Brotherhood for Beginners” article from a few months ago, I am going to fight the temptation here to offer my own opinions, and instead just offer the facts, free of analysis, except on one issue. Coughlin has been characterized by some as a “Christian zealot with a pen.” I know Steve Coughlin. I occasionally have a drink with him. I know Christian zealots. H—, I was born in Provo, Utah. He is not one.
Maj. Couglin’s thesis, “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad” was written in partial satisfaction for the requirements of his master’s degree. Coughlin is also a lawyer, though the thesis was written in the language of military strategy. To understand his argument, I find it helpful to view it through an American legal analogy.
Let’s say someone in the U.S. is accused of a serious crime. In addition to being innocent of the charges, the defendant also believes the crime itself is unconstitutional. This would raise the prospect of a two-pronged defense, and – because American law is so specialized – perhaps two types of lawyers on the defense team: (1) a trial lawyer who can mount a good defense on the factual allegations, and (2) a constitutional lawyer, who could prepare the appropriate motion to dismiss based on the theory that the crime violates the U.S. Constitution.
Each lawyer will focus on a different thing. Success by either could emancipate their client. Nothing stops the defendant from using both skill sets. If the defendant cares about his freedom and has adequate financial means, he would be remiss not to try both strategies.
Let’s now assume that the prosecutor, at the arraignment, assures defendant that the crime he is charged with is indeed constitutional. Should the defendant neglect to hire the constitutional lawyer? Clearly, the defendant should not take the prosecutor’s word for it. Instead, he would find someone more credible who understands the U.S. Constitution – not just what it says, but how it has been interpreted, to determine whether he has a constitutional defense.
Coughlin’s thesis makes a similar argument about Islamic doctrine, as it relates to how the U.S. military should fight the War on Terror. It is based on the notion that we must understand what motivates Islamic terrorists, in doctrinal terms. He describes this need through what is known as the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB): the systematic, continuous process of analyzing the threat and environment in a specific geographic area. The IPB is designed to support the military staff estimates and decision-making.
The key step in the IPB is to align the enemy’s courses of action (COA) to its doctrine – that is, what motivates the enemy. Knowing the enemy’s doctrine is not the entire answer, because enemy COAs can be constrained by environmental factors. To predict how the enemy will act sufficiently for proper military planning, its pure doctrine needs to be “templated” (evaluated in light of constraining environmental factors). It is only through this IPB process of sizing up the enemy, and discerning between its pure doctrine and what is likely to do through “templating” to account for environmental factors, can proper military action – a collection of “friendly COAs” – be undertaken. It all starts, however, will knowledge of the enemy’s doctrine.
To Coughlin, the IPB in the War on Terror is being thrown off by what he describes as the “Current Approach”: the view that Islamic-based extremism is aberrant and that Islam has become a “religion hijacked.” To Coughlin, this view is pernicious in part because it is being pushed by those who claim that Westerners should rely solely on Muslims to tell us what Islam is, much like how the late Professor Edward Said attacked the notion that Westerners could ever understand what people in the “Orient” thought and how they behaved. Coughlin argues that the Current Approach represents an outsourcing of the information requirements that the IPB process is not structured to answer, much like a defendant taking the prosecutor’s word that the statute is constitutional. In American litigation, the resulting strategy will be based on input from people not aligned with the interests of the defendant. Applying this problem to the military challenge and the IPB, “Inputs into the decision-making process from the Current Approach are the product of borrowed knowledge from individuals and entities that may be either unknown or unbeholden to American national security interests.”
The consequences of uncritically accepting the Current Approach is the unstated corollary that because extremists do not represent “true” Islam, Islamic law itself should be excluded from analytical processes that support threat development. This tendency is culturally enticing to us, for we come from a tradition where arguments over the merits of particular religions are considered impolite (and impolitic) dinner party conversation. This tradition undoubtedly reinforces our inability to look closely at Islamic religious doctrine, and to look elsewhere for help. To add to this, we have Muslim intellectuals like Tariq Ramadan telling us (as he wrote a few weeks ago in the New York Times Book Review) that one cannot truly understand the Koran unless one goes at it with faith (“the language of the heart”). For this task, we must trust people like him. No wonder Ramadan is in such high demand.
Coughlin uses the IPB methodology to ask why we are not bothering to ask, “What if?” It is a powerful argument, if one accepts the IPB process itself, since there is no harm in asking the question – just as there is no harm in the criminal defendant considering the constitutionality of the crime while simultaneously planning a full defense on the factual merits. If, in planning military action, intelligence analysts limit their focus to factors that contribute to understanding the enemy’s doctrine, then the result of a rigorous inquiry that supports the Current Approach would ultimately be neutral to the threat assessment. If, on the other hand, the result is a finding against the Current Approach, we ignore the result at our peril since the IPB-driven process will not based on the proper inputs.
Coughlin’s thesis would be powerful if he just ended there, but he it does not. Instead, he searches through the prevailing views of all major schools of Islamic thought to argue “true” Islam – the type taught in the U.S. to 7th grade Muslim-Americans – requires its adherents to engage in violent struggle for worldwide domination, a state of affairs that cannot be adequately explained by the Current Approach. To get there, Coughlin considers the most definitive sources of Islamic law, including what they say about how Islamic doctrine is to be interpreted. It seems that much is settled in Islam, including what the faithful are required to do in the face of non-Muslims with whom they interact. He concludes that the purveyors of the Current Approach are selling us a bill of goods.
No wonder Maj. Coughlin found himself a disliked character in the halls of the Pentagon among the Muslim advisors who have the monopoly on telling us what Islam represents. He threatens their authority, as well as their livelihood.
Coughlin’s arguments about Islamic mandates make up the bulk of his thesis, but are ultimately unnecessary if one accepts his premise – that we owe it to the system to question whether the Current Approach is supported in Islamic law. What are the stakes? Even if the “true” Islam is a religion of peace, we would still need to know the doctrinal basis for the actions of those who have hijacked it, as long as they in fact exist and are able to motivate fellow Muslims to act at their direction. Consider this argument:
For the “extremist” argument to succeed, it simply has to assert a claim that has some doctrinal basis that survives the ideological screen because any surviving portion of the claim still leaves the “extremist” with a validated argument in support of the jihadis’ agenda. Hence, exclusivity is not an essential requirement for the “extremists.” The Current Approach, however, must be able to demonstrate exclusive correctness to the exclusion of the “extremist” position because the success of their argument can only be measured by the extent to which it constrains the “extremist” doctrine.
The problem, as Coughlin describes it, is that when the purveyors of the Current Approach respond to inconvenient Islamic law doctrines by claiming that there are “thousands of different interpretations to Islamic law,” they are saying there is no point to looking to Islamic law for solutions. In their oft-repeated claims that “Islam does not stand for this,” they are necessarily agreeing with Coughlin that there exists such a thing as Islamic doctrine, which necessitates our rigorous examination of it. For Current Approach arguments to succeed at neutralizing “extremist” positions, they must establish that “Islam does not stand for this” in every situation ranging through all interpretations. What are the prospects of that?
So in the end, it does not matter whether Coughlin is right about Islamic doctrine, as much as that the questions are being asked by people who are practicing the appropriate professional standards (another one of Coughlin’s key points). The U.S. government needs to ask these questions, rather than blithely concluding that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by al Qaeda. Even if Coughlin is wrong about the big issues of Islam, he is certainly correct that military planners should be asking about the religious basis for al Qaeda’s actions, so we can better predict how the adherents of “radical Islam” can be expected to act. That is really what matters.
The consequences are failing to do so is illustrated by my legal analogy. The prosecutor has assured the defendant that the crime he is charged with violating is constitutional, presumably because he wants to focus on the facts of the case. For the defendant to not suffer a lost opportunity by taking the prosecutor’s word for it, the prosecutor must be legally correct about what the constitution says. Just as many prosecutors are not constitutional law experts, many Muslims are not experts in Islamic law. Even if the prosecutor is fortuitously correct on this particular constitutional question, few people would argue that the defendant should not hire someone to undertake the necessary research for him, since that is the essence of the adversarial process.
By the same token, for the IPB to deny the need for close examination of the religious doctrinal basis for al Qaeda’s actions is to throw the process itself off. The cost of this decision likely exceeds the benefits of claiming that Islam has been hijacked to win over those who may be susceptible to embracing a more extreme version of the religion. Even by articulating this benefit of the Current Approach, we acknowledge the existence of a radical strain of Islam that can get a hold of people and cause them to act in ways that threaten innocent lives. For us not to then consider the doctrinal basis for this view of Islamic law, and to take it on faith that Islam does not drive their actions, would be malpractice.
Maj. Steve Coughlin, the expert on terrorism who was fired from the Pentagon at the behest of a jihadist mole, is back to work, and with a well-deserved promotion. Great news!
But we still have some work to do - we need to hold our officials’ feet to the fire, so that they do a thorough housecleaning at the Pentagon to remove Hesham Islam and other jihadist moles, along with those who aid and abet their careers.
* Hesham Islam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, with his ridiculously cooked CV, should have never been given a security clearance. Hesham Islam is your picture book mole:
Hesham Islam is responsible, according to earlier reports, for the firing of Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s only expert on Islamic law. But now the questions about Islam himself, and what his intentions really are, are increasing.
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an “influence operation” on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to deputy Defense secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military’s leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism.
After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin’s contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Islam, who was born and raised in Egypt, is heavily involved with one of the groups – the Islamic Society of North America, which U.S. prosecutors last year named as a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror-funding case.
Islam has persuaded his boss, England, to conduct various outreach with ISNA, including hosting the group’s leaders in the Pentagon and speaking at its annual convention.
The Pentagon is looking into conflicting statements about the background of Hesham Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England who was the focus of a dispute with a Joint Staff counterterrorism analyst.
Mr. Islam faced tough questions about his background posed by veteran journalist Claudia Rosett, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the United Nations oil-for-food scandal with Iraq. Last week, Miss Rosett took the Pentagon to task by uncovering serious discrepancies about the Egyptian-born Islam that no one at the Pentagon seems willing to answer.
Writing in National Review Online, Miss Rosett revealed that certain claims about Mr. Islam’s background don’t fit.
Shortly after she wrote about the discrepancies contained in a Pentagon-written article on Mr. Islam’s background, the Pentagon removed the biography from its Web site, DefenseLink.mil.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said “that piece was taken down in an attempt to reduce the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding this issue while we try to determine the facts.”
The Pentagon does not comment on such personnel matters, he noted. “That said, we are looking into the matter and trying to reconcile conflicting statements.”
Mr. Morrell called later to clarify that the conflicting statements being probed relate to whether or not Mr. Islam used the term “Christian zealot with a pen” in describing Mr. Coughlin, and not about discrepancies in Mr. Islam’s background.
Mr. Islam has come under fire from supporters of Stephen Coughlin, the Joint Staff analyst on counterterrorism whose contract was not renewed. The action followed a meeting between Mr. Coughlin and Mr. Islam several weeks ago when the two clashed over Mr. Coughlin’s views on the Islamic law roots of terrorism.
After refusing comment to Inside the Ring, Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for Mr. Islam, now says that reports in this space that Mr. Islam called Mr. Coughlin a “Christian zealot with a pen” did not take place during the meeting.
Queries to other Pentagon officials familiar with the issue said the phrase was used by Mr. Islam after the meeting, not during it.
No action was taken against Mr. Islam, a Muslim adviser and confidant of Mr. England, for the anti-Christian comments.
Mr. Islam could not be reached for comment.
Miss Rosett tried — and failed — to get straight answers from Mr. Wensing about why Mr. Islam claimed that when he was 7 his family was bombed by Israeli jets at his home in Cairo, when there is no evidence the Israelis bombed the Egyptian capital during the 1967 war.
Also, Mr. Wensing could not explain why Mr. Islam said in his biography that he was on a freighter sunk by an Iranian torpedo in the Persian Gulf when there is no record of the ship being sunk.
According to his 1992 master’s thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Mr. Islam is highly critical of Israel and the influence of American Jews on U.S. politics, noting that U.S. ties to Israel have harmed relations to other states in the Middle East.
In 2007 Mr. Bush highlighted the aggression of “Sunni extremists” and “Shia extremists.” In 2006, he warned against “radical Islam.” In 2008, the president merely decried “assassins,” “bombs,” “extremists” and “terrorists.” Why the fuzzy focus? Why declare a “defining ideological struggle” without defining the ideologies involved?
