Entries Tagged 'treason' ↓
March 7th, 2008 — treason, Jenn Sierra (author), Google
In this post are copies of some WWII posters and literature from the 1940’s:
Apparently, Americans a few decades ago didn’t feel that getting our soldiers killed was part of their First Amendment rights. My, how things have changed, in our “progressive,” “liberated,” “internationalist” society today.
This information is on Mashable, today. Stan Schroeder is exposing Google for providing pics of Fort Sam Houston military base. Google says it was a mistake, and that they’ve corrected it, but as of the publishing of this article (3/7/08 at Noon CST) this much is still available. Apparantly what was showing earlier, that prompted the Pentagon to get involved, showed even more, including the location of the guards and other security information, including 360-degree footage of the insides of some buildings.
When did giving aid and comfort to our enemies become acceptable in America?
February 29th, 2008 — Blogburst: stop the Murdoch Flight 93 memorial, terrorism, September 11, 2001, enemy propaganda, treason, activism, Islam
Click thumbnail to view high-resolution flyer (300dpi) in PDF format. Fits letter size paper. Suitable for “flyering” your town or campus.
February 24th, 2008 — treason, al Qaeda, CzechRebel (author), Orthodox Christianity, September 11, 2001, U.S. Constitution, Islam, anti-Semitism, Clinton, Kosovo, 1389, Bush
From the Perspective of a Lifelong Republican
By CzechRebel
Well, if you want to consider the 21st century to have begun January 1, 2000, it would be a tough choice between Clinton and Bush, as Clinton’s last thirteen months in office were pretty hideous. More traditionally, though, we have considered the year ‘01 to be the actual beginning of each century. From that perspective, while Clinton’s last three weeks in office were no improvement over the rest of those eight years, the damage he managed to do in that time period was trivial by comparison.
But if any president in the next 92 years really wants to look worse than George W. Bush, he or she is going to have to work pretty hard at destroying the Republican Party; promoting the socialist agenda in the United States; aiding and abetting Islamic terrorism; planting “time bombs” in the economy that are set to go off after he or she leaves office; promoting tyranny against the American people; destroying our relationship with the one nation on the planet that has most in common with us and that has the strongest reasons to be our ally; and last, but certainly not least, supporting a criminal gang of Islamic terrorists in establishing a stronghold in the Balkans.
Destroying the Republican Party
In January of 2001, an historic event took place. Or so we thought. A supposedly conservative Republican became President with the backing of a conservative Republican Congress. What could have been better? Cut taxes, raise revenue, promote business growth, provide jobs, cut federal regulation, recognize States’ rights. But George W turned out to be no Ronald Reagan.
We got some temporary tax cuts, slow to take effect and all too quick to expire. Most notably, the draconian death tax, enacted right out of the Communist Manifesto, will spring back to life soon after Bush leaves office. And every Republican in Congress was told to be a “good Republican” and back the President’s plan rather than hold their ground and insist on something better - so such legislation passed.
George W let Ted Kennedy, one of the leading Senate Communists in all but name, write an education bill that firmly entrenched left-wing propaganda into our youth “re-education camps” - otherwise known as “public schools.” And every Republican in Congress was told to be a “good Republican” and back the President’s plan; so such legislation passed.
The list goes on and on. The end result is that Republicans looked more and more like socialists, and less and less like Conservatives, and - surprise! The party lost the Congressional majority that countless Conservatives had worked decades to achieve.
If George W does not get invited to speak at Democratic convention this summer, it will be a sign of the Democrats’ ungratefulness. After all, no one has done so much to bolster the Democratic Party since FDR!
Promoting a Socialist Agenda
You would think that allowing legislation that cuts taxes for a few years, only to bring them back with a vengeance, not to mention the “No Child Left to Grow Up Without Socialist Indoctrination” legislation, would be enough. But not for George W, he stood by passively and allowed a major frontal assault on freedom of political speech in the form of the McCain-Feingold Act. Yes, THAT McCain – he is an enemy of the freedoms that this blog seeks to protect. Under the new law, the leftist news media can say what they will, but all other will be under the gun of government-controlled censors. It’s ironic – and obviously no accident - that John McCain seems to be one of the three finalists to replace George W as America’s next dictator.
George W let pork-barrel spending run wild, and in doing so, he has betrayed the legacy of his party, and he has betrayed the principles of limited government embodied in the Constitution he swore to uphold. Thirty years ago, everyone knew that the Republicans were fiscally conservative and many leftists feared their rise to power would finally doom socialism in America. Would that it were so!
Twenty years ago, we had already seen some hypocrisy from a Republican-controlled Senate. Even so, Ronald Reagan’s veto pen had pretty much kept the GOP’s image intact, no matter who was in control of Congress. However, in this decade, little boy Bush did not even have the guts to veto his own Republican party’s pork-barrel spending. Now, there is no longer any major party in America that Eugene Debs would have hesitated to embrace. Thanks, George W!
Of course, if George W had ever bothered to read the Constitution, and the Articles of Confederation that preceded it, he would have known that the primary task of the federal government is, and has always been, to secure the homeland. No, like a true socialist, this Georgie Porgie el presidente created a new bureaucracy to do the job that he had already taken an oath to do. Now we have a Department of Homeland Security, multiplying layers of bureaucracy, providing another arena for turf battles, and putting even more roadblocks in the channels of communications. Just try getting rid of that outsized and pointless boondoggle. No matter how well, or indeed how poorly, the DHS does its job – that department will remain in power. So we have more bureaucrats, more spending, more taxes to support it and more socialism, thanks to the present US dictator.
Aiding and Abetting Islamic Terrorism
On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists flew four kamikaze missions against US targets. George W was either too stupid to notice that fact that the terrorists were Mohammedans, or he simply wanted to aid and abet their cause. But then, his family is in the oil business. If he forgets for an instant which side his bread is buttered on, they’ll remind him.
So George W sidestepped the issue. He declared war on “terrorism” rather than on the terrorists themselves and their hate organization, which we allow to masquerade as a religion. Make no mistake about it, Islam and religion, as the rest of the world defines religion, have nothing in common. You don’t see Baptists hijacking planes and flying them into buildings. You don’t see Jains strapping on suicide belts and walking into places were they can kill innocent civilians. You don’t see Hindus killing people for having left their faith. You don’t see Buddhists blowing up trains in Spain. You don’t see Jews getting all bent out of whack because someone makes a political cartoon that includes Moses.
But you do see followers of Mohammad doing all these things, and other heinous things besides. And it happens often. George W. had a golden opportunity to expose Islam for the hate organization that it is now, and has been for 1400 years.
Yet, he praised Islam after 9-11. Instead of interning the enemy, as FDR had the courage to do during World War II, he invited one of them to pray with us right after the horrible event. It should surprise no one that the imam he invited, Hamza Yusuf, turned out to be no moderate at all, but a radical Wahhabist convert who played George W for all he’s worth. And then there’s George W’s other friend, Imam Hassan Qazwini, closely linked to various Islamist organizations in the US.
He even aided and abetted the relatives of Osama bin Laden in their efforts to leave the US, post 9-11. We must agree with our liberal friends on one thing they often say – though not for the reasons they claim. George W. is, in fact, a terrorist, because he aids and abets terrorists.
Economic Time Bombs
1389, the primary admin of this blog, has a degree in economics, and she would not allow the following data to be posted on this blog if she were not 100% certain that it is true. High taxes discourage economic activity. It’s the working poor, those of modest income, those who are in debt, and most of the middle class, who really suffer when taxes are high. When taxes are low, economic activity is stimulated and those at the bottom benefit the most from those opportunities. (Politicians like to talk about “soaking the rich” – but when was the last time a poor person hired anybody? And anyway, rich people will never pay that much in taxes, no matter what you do. They are comparatively few in number. Moreover, they are mostly smart people and that is why they are rich!)
Bush could have insisted that his tax cuts, especially the estate tax cuts, must remain permanent. He did not. After all, “we can always do that later.” Well, later came and no one has been in a tax cutting mood. Income taxes will increase. Estate taxes will revert to what they had been, back in the day when you could still get something for a dollar or so. Tax shelters and estate planning will prevent the rich from losing anything. Middle class families, especially small businesses and family farms, will suffer, as they always do when taxes go up.
Historians don’t always understand economics, so they may even make George W look as though he was a “good president” for the economy. But unless someone steps to the plate, which seems mighty unlikely, economic woes are soon to follow.
Anti-Semitism
We’re tired of hearing the widespread myth that “the Jews” control the media and American thought, and that, because of their influence, US policy is highly pro-Israel. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The US is no ally of Israel, not by any stretch of the imagination. Israel had no problem caring for itself before America supposedly became its “ally”. Witness the way Israel defended itself in 1948, 1967 and 1973. American became its “ally” and convinced it to give back territory. (Note that Israel never asks the US to give Texas or California back to Mexico.) Anybody with normal powers of observation can figure out that, ever since the Carter Administration, it’s petrodollars that have been doing the talking.
Israel is a tiny strip of land surround by Islamic states. Only 7/24 vigilance and sheer determination to survive secures this Jewish homeland. The Arabs have many countries in which to live. Yet, a number of these Arabs have been camping out in Israel – mostly in the hopes of a better economic future than what was available in Muslim-controlled lands – and calling themselves “Palestinians.” Well, the Romans did start calling Judaea “Palestine” and anyone living there when it was called that – including Christians and Jews, had they thought in those terms – would have had every right to call themselves “Palestinians.” But that cannot make “Palestinian” an ethnic identity any more than living in New York City could create an ethnic identity of New Yorkers.
Yet, George W still insists on squandering tax dollars on financial aid to the Palestinian terrorists, who are our enemies. He even supports providing them a terrorist base so they have a safe haven from which to kill more Jews. Calling it a “homeland for the Palestinians” is like calling the area around Auschwitz a homeland for the caretakers of a concentration camp.
Make no mistake about it, support for a Palestinian “homeland” is vile anti-Semitism, and serves as proof that George W is every bit as anti-Semitic as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Anti-Patriot Acts
It is clear to anyone who has at least half a brain, or who has any reading comprehension ability at all, that radical Islam has declared war on the US. Osama bin Laden’s fatwa against the US was in the news well before 9-11. And there was no question about what he meant – none at all. He meant to destroy us, and his followers still mean to do exactly that. And the only way to change their minds is to defeat them.
In World War II, after the Empire of Japan perpetrated an act of war on the US, Japanese-Americans who remained loyal to the Emperor of Japan, and other Japanese-Americans who wished to remain on the West Coast, were watched very carefully. Many were interned. Those who were decidedly in support of the Japanese war efforts were even held as foreign enemies. We won the war and very few of them bothered to complain. They knew what was at stake and they were willing to help the US war effort in that fashion.
FDR never even thought of stripping all Americans of their basic rights and their financial privacy. But George W has done exactly that. Much as I detest FDR, I have to say he was a better man than George W in this regard.
The Holy Land of Kosovo
George W promised to remove US troops from the Balkans, and to honor the treaty with the Serbian people that ended the 1999 Kosovo War (a/k/a the Kumanovo treaty or UN Security Council Resolution 1244). Did he keep his promise? No way! Camp Bondsteel is still alive and well. The Serbs should have known better than to trust the US to honor a treaty. Ask any American Indian. Once you disarm, withdraw, or abandon your struggle in any way, the tendency is for the US to keep whatever the other side gave, and to keep on doing whatever it had been doing. We had expected George W to be a man of character and to keep the agreement with the Serbs. But clearly, little boy Bush has no character.
According to the Kumanovo treaty that ended the 1999 Kosovo War, the Serbs had the right to move their forces back into Kosovo to protect their church property and to protect their people who had been abandoned when the KFOR peacekeeping troops took over that war-torn Serbian province. The Serbs were willing to fight to the finish, perhaps to the last living person, to keep Kosovo as part of their homeland.
When the Clinton Administration had so depleted the American conventional arsenal that the security of US interests elsewhere had been severely compromised, Clinton and company finally agreed to Slobodan Milosevic’s original terms of peace. For some reason, the same wonder weapons that allowed the US to devastate Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1991 Gulf War were making little, if any, dent in Serbia’s commitment to keep Kosovo as part of Serbia. Yet, the dumb-dumb son of the earlier President Bush, who claimed to be a Christian himself, never could understand that Christian people of Serbia were very committed to keeping the most important part of Serbia as part of Serbia.
Well, yes, it may be hard for anyone who is not a Serb to understand the importance of Kosovo to the Serbian people. Kosovo is the place where the Serbian people pledged themselves and one another to serve the Lord. That is not a familiar concept these days! It may even be impossible for anyone who is not an Orthodox Christian to understand it fully. However, it would be liking telling any Christian—be he Roman Catholic, Protestant or anyone else who adheres to the traditional definition of the faith, as agreed upon in the Seven Councils—to preach the Gospel, but to leave out the part about God walking on Earth as a mortal man and the part about Jesus Christ rising from the dead. There simply would be nothing left.
Kosovo is Serbia. Those words are embedded in the heart of every Serb I have ever met, and trust me, I have met many of them. To a Serb, Serbia is Kosovo – just as, to a Serb or any other Christian, the Gospel message is our Lord coming to Earth as a mortal man and Jesus Christ having risen from the dead.
Yet, because of George W’s love for the pseudo-religion, or rather, the expansionist totalitarian ideology, of Islam, George W recognized the claim of radical Mohammedans that Kosovo should be torn away from Serbia and placed under the rule of a criminal gang of thugs who were nothing less than the local branch of al Qaeda.
The Friend of Terrorists
Clearly, George W. Bush prefers Islam over Christianity. He prefers helping al Qaeda to honoring his oath of office and his pledge to uphold the Constitution. He is obviously working on behalf of al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, both in the Israel and in the Balkans. In siding with terrorists, he has become one himself.
So, we must agree with our liberal friends on this one point – though our reasons are, of course, very different. We at 1389 Blog consider George W. Bush to be every bit as much a terrorist as those nineteen quasi-human wastes of protoplasm who flew hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
Links:
February 5th, 2008 — treason, terrorism, Islam, counterjihad, security, fraud, military
It pays to visit Atlas Shrugs regularly!
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?
Andy Bostom has it all here.
Major Coughlin will now be retained by the DOD, and the Rest of Congresswoman Sue Myrick’s Statement on the Coughlin Affair, 2/5/08
I received this press release by North Carolina Congresswoman Sue Myrick, (included i Bostom’s post in its entirety) from Fred Lucas of Cybercast News Service.
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:
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.
Read all of Bostom.
February 4th, 2008 — injustice, treason, terrorism, Islam, counterjihad, security, fraud, military
Update:
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.
# #
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jeff Breinholt is a Senior Fellow and Director of National Security Law at the International Assessment and Strategy Center (www.strategycenter.net.) Jeff blogs on the Counterterrorism Blog.
February 2nd, 2008 — treason, Winds of Jihad, crime, smiley, Islam, security, fraud, military
Update:
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.
From the “Only in America” department:
* 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.
More from World Net Daily
Sheik Yer’mami reported earlier that Hesham Islam is -and always was- a lobbyist on behalf of rabid jihadists to provide mosques, Koran’s and halal food for the Koranimals in Gitmo and also organized the Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam who catered to al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo and fought to establish the first mosque in Marine Corps history.
But now the story got into the MSM, thanks to the bloggers:
By Bill Gertz - Islam probed
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.
Diana West: A defining moment
Analyzing the GWB befuddlement:
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?
December 17th, 2007 — MSM corruption, treason, enemy propaganda, communism, Bush, history, liberal, military
Mainstream media corruption is nothing new!
Leftists, leading America’s foreign policy astray for over 45 years and counting…
…Lately, however, thanks to a growing body of evidence and careful work by scholars aided by first-hand accounts from former North Vietnamese and Vietcong participants, a much more comprehensive picture has begun to emerge, one that challenges the conventional wisdom from start to finish.
Among the new generation of historians of the Vietnam war, important debates and differences still remain - for example, over the efficacy of American tactics of counterinsurgency and pacification. But they overwhelmingly agree on one point: the old account is a myth, and no longer stands up to scrutiny. It is worthwhile reviewing some of the main findings of the new scholarship before returning to the question of their relevance, if any, to our present struggle in Iraq and to the President’s warning on August 23.
(H/T to Cecil and The Belmont Club)
Also, please visit the other links at The Belmont Club:
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December 13th, 2007 — political correctness, littlegreenfootballs, treason, activism, leftist-jihadist convergence, MSM corruption, Gates of Vienna, moblog, fraud, counterjihad, flame war, blogging
(Image from Free Speech in the Face of Inhumanity. Be sure to stop by and visit!)
Gates of Vienna explains it all:
The decline and fall of Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. Sadly ironic, in a way…
Even so, his motives for launching these attacks on so many of us were clearly negative, self-serving, and harmful to the Counterjihad.
His ugly behavior and his constant lying could not have been motivated by any positive principles. Either he has allowed himself to become enslaved to his ego, or he tried to sell us out in return for some real or expected material advantage.
Posted by mobile phone
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