LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
August 13/15
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.august13.15.htm
Bible Quotation For Today/You
hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from
the manger, and lead it away to give it water?
Luke 13/10-17: "Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And
just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for
eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from
your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight
and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus
had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which
work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath
day.’ But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you
on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to
give it water?
And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen
long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’When he said this,
all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all
the wonderful things that he was doing."
Bible Quotation For Today/On
seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.
Acts of the Apostles 28/11-15: "Three months later we set sail on a ship that
had wintered at the island, an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers as its
figurehead. We put in at Syracuse and stayed there for three days; then we
weighed anchor and came to Rhegium. After one day there a south wind sprang up,
and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found believers and were
invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. The believers
from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three
Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage."
LCCC
Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on
August 12-13/15
Micheal Aoun, Is not qualified For Lebanon's Presidency Post/Elias
Bejjani/August 12/15
Netanyahu emulates Churchill in
Trying to Influence US Policy to Protect His People/By ALAN DERSHOWITZ/J.Post/August
12/15
The theory of terrorism and restraining moderates/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al
ArabiyaAugust
12/15
ISIS wages cultural warfare on Syria’s heritage/Dr. Halla Diyab/Al Arabiya/August
12/15
The Political Nature of Today's Middle East Studies/Andrew C. McCarthy/National
Review Online/August
12/15
The New Syrian Force: Down but Not Necessarily Out/Jeffrey White/Washington
Institute/August
12/15
Clarifying a 'No' Vote on the Iran Nuclear Agreement/Robert Satloff/Washington
Institute/August
12/15
The Saudi-UAE War Effort in Yemen (Part 2): The Air Campaign/Michael Knights and
Alexandre Mello/August
12/15
Will Britain Pass the Choudary Test?/Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/August
12/15
How Elections Messed Up Turkey's Plans/Burak Bekdil/Gateston Institute/August
12/15
Why Canada's Left Has Lost My Vote/Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/August
12/15
LCCC Bulletin titles for the
Lebanese Related News published on
August 12-13/15
Micheal Aoun,
Is not qualified For Lebanon's Presidency Post
Lebanon`s
Presidential Elections Adjourned Again
Salam in Amman for Improved Relations
Zarif Concludes Beirut Visit: Iran Does not Meddle in Lebanon's Internal Affairs
FPM Supporters Stage Motorized Protests, Hold Central Sit-in at Martyrs Square
Mashnouq on FPM Protests: Any Democratic Action is Acceptable as Long as it
Remains Peaceful
Syria Rebels, Hizbullah Observe 72-Hour Truce in Flashpoint Towns
Syrian Girl Dead in Nabaa Fire
Wahhab's Bodyguards Scuffle with General Security at al-Arida
Fugitive Held Trying to Smuggle 'Chemical Substances' to Arsal Outskirts
LCCC Bulletin Miscellaneous Reports And News published on
August 12-13/15
Syria Regime Air
Raids, Rebel Fire on Damascus Kill 50
Saudi Executes Syrian for Drug Trafficking
Iranian military official: 'We laugh' when US threatens to attack
We object to Israeli policies, not its existence,' Iranians tell US Jewish
journalist
ISIS affiliate in Egypt claims to behead Croatian hostage in Sinai
Iran proposes Syrian peace plan/Syria's Aleppo marked as international city
under Iran peace plan
Jeb Bush: Hillary Clinton shares blame for rise of ISIS
Links From Jihad Watch Web site For Today
The Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate says it has beheaded Croatian hostage
Raymond Ibrahim: Christians Burn While Pope Worries about ‘Worldly’ Matters
Spain: Muslim arrested for selling jihad beheading t-shirts
Obama’s failed Islam narrative
Russia: Muslim gets four years prison for calling for jihad
Robert Spencer in FP: Obama “willfully” supporting al-Qaeda
UK: Muslim teenager arrested twice in two months for alleged terror offenses
Islamic State posts Australian hit list after hacking addresses, mobile numbers
Mississippi Islamic State recruit praised Chattanooga jihad massacre
Where do the loyalties of two current Muslim members of Congress lie?”
Micheal Aoun, Is not
qualified For Lebanon's Presidency Post
Elias Bejjani/August 12/15
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2015/08/12/elias-bejjanimicheal-aoun-is-is-not-qualified-for-lebanons-presidency-post/
Micheal Aoun's sickening obsession, crazy fantasy, day dreaming, and grandiose
delusion with the Lebanese presidency post will never be fulfilled, no matter
what. The man is not fit at all for the presidency position for thousands and
thousands of tangible and well known reasons.
His frightening and derailed approaches, impulsiveness, demagogue, irresponsible
and psychopathic on going conduct, instability, tantrums of anger, affiliations,
detachment from reality, tones of deeply rooted complexes, and rhetoric tells
the whole story.
In reality not even one Lebanese political faction in Lebanon wants him in this
influential post including his fake and Trojan, pro Axis of evil allies who
merely use him as a cheap tool to serve their anti Lebanese schemes and to
divide the Christian community.
Hezbollah, Nabieh Berri, and Slieman Frangea in particular hate Aoun, never
respected or trusted him, and will never do, and definitely are not willing
under any given circumstances to see him as a president.
We are more than sure that all sane Lebanese citizens from all religious
denominations, who fear Almighty God and His Day Of Judgment, count for the
consequences, have taste, can differentiate between a narcissist and a genuine
politician, adopt a set of normal ethical and patriotic codes, love their
country and respect themselves would like in any way to see the unpredictable
Michael Aoun as a president, or even as a practising politician.
This man has belittled, degraded, prostituted and humiliated every thing that is
good in the Lebanese political life.
We strongly believe, that the majority of the sane Lebanese people from all
walks of life who are not sheep in their thinking , or puppets in their
political affiliations, and do really know and understand who and what is
Michael Aoun would even dare to see or envisage him as a president, even their
dreams.
The idea of seeing Aoun as a president is an actual nightmare, a horrible and
scary one.
Definitely Aoun will never ever be Lebanon's president, and in case, and against
all the human logic and heavenly odds he assumes the post, than it will be a
devastating disaster by all means and on all levels, inflicted on all the
Lebanese and on Lebanon.
In conclusion, Micheal Aoun is not a normal or mentally balanced individual, he
needs an urgent psychiatric assessment as soon as possible in accordance with
Mental Health Act.
By the end, this self-centred man is an actual and imminent threat to himself,
his sheep like followers and the country. The Psychiatric assessment is more an
emergency.
Lebanon`s Presidential Elections Adjourned Again
Naharnet/August 12/15/Speaker Nabih Berri postponed on Wednesday the
presidential elections to next month following a lack of quorum at parliament, a
sign that politicians were far from filling the prolonged vacuum in the
country's top Christian post. Berri postponed the session to September 2 after
only 34 MPs from the March 14 alliance and his Development and Liberation bloc
attended. Baabda Palace has fallen victim to the political deadlock rooted in
the rivalry of politicians on the presidential post. There are several
candidates but neither of them is willing to make compromises that would allow
lawmakers to attend a session aimed at electing a head of state. The
presidential seat, which became vacant after the term of President Michel
Suleiman ended in May last year, has hindered the government's ability to tackle
growing security, economic and social problems.
Salam in Amman for Improved Relations
Naharnet/August 12/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam was in Jordan on Wednesday on
a one-day official visit at a head of a large delegation that will attend the
meetings of the joint Lebanese-Jordanian Higher Committee. Jordan's Prime
Minister Abdullah Ensour and Salam jointly chaired the meetings. Salam said in
his opening statement that both countries are suffering from the Syrian crisis
and terrorism. He also hoped that his visit would set the stage for a new phase
of cooperation between Lebanon and Jordan. The prime minister is accompanied by
Ministers Akram Shehayyeb, Ramzi Jreij, Michel Pharaon, Rashid Derbas, Abdul
Motleb Hennawi, Nabil de Freij and Alain Hakim. The committee is scheduled to
discuss ways to consolidate bilateral ties and improve cooperation mainly in
trade. The conferees will also discuss the Syrian crisis that had a devastating
effect on Lebanon and Jordan, which together host more than 2 million refugees.
Salam is expected to hold talks with King Abdullah II and other top Jordanian
officials during his visit.
Zarif Concludes Beirut Visit: Iran Does not Meddle in
Lebanon's Internal Affairs
Naharnet/August 12/15/Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif highlighted on Wednesday the importance of dialogue in overcoming crises,
stressing that Tehran is prepared for “all forms of cooperation” with Lebanon to
help it achieve growth. He declared during the second day of his trip to Beirut:
“We do not meddle in internal Lebanese affairs and neither should other
countries.”He made his remarks during a press conference with Foreign Minister
Jebran Bassil at the end of his two-day trip to the country. “Iran extends its
hands to neighboring countries for cooperation,” added Zarif. He stated that the
nuclear deal that Tehran had signed with major powers in July underlines the
importance of dialogue in ending disputes. “We demonstrated that the use of
force and sanctions cannot resolve regional conflicts,” he remarked, while
noting that countries in the region now have the opportunity to adopt such an
approach. “Lebanon is a symbol of dialogue and constructive cooperation among
its diverse people,” said Zarif. For his part, Bassil stressed that Zarif brings
with him three victories during his Beirut trip, the first being “the victory of
Lebanon's resistance against Israel” during the July 2006 war. “He also brings
with him the victory of dialogue against international isolation,” he noted in
reference to the nuclear deal. “We have long spoken of the importance of
dialogue in bolstering openness,” he continued. “He brings with him the victory
against the takfiri threat,” he stated, while stressing that “we stand in a
single trench with Iran in confronting this challenge.”Earlier, Zarif had held
talks with Speaker Nabih Berri and Defense Minister Samir Moqbel. He had arrived
in Lebanon on Tuesday as part of a tour of the region. He kicked off his talks
by meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam and later Hizbullah Secretary General
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Discussions focused on bilateral relations, latest
local and regional developments, and cooperation between Lebanon and Iran. Zarif
is scheduled to travel to Syria on Wednesday after concluding his trip to
Beirut.
FPM Supporters Stage Motorized Protests, Hold Central Sit-in at Martyrs Square
Naharnet/August 12/15/Free Patriotic Movement supporters staged motorized
protests on Wednesday and organized a central sit-in at Beirut's Martyrs Square,
following a call by MP Michel Aoun to demonstrate against the extension of the
mandate of top military officers in an attempt to put pressure on the government
of Prime Minister Tammam Salam. “More than 200 cars from the FPM's youth
department took off in a convoy from the Mirna Chalouhi highway (in Sin el-Fil)
towards Martyrs Square in central Beirut,” state-run National News Agency
reported Wednesday evening. An FPM official on the ground stressed that “the
protests will be peaceful.”“No roads will be blocked,” the official told the
reporter of a TV network. Other starting points for the motorized protests
included Nahr el-Mot, Jounieh, Baabda, Batroun, Ashrafieh's Sassine Square, Nahr
Ibrahim and Koura. The protesters had started gathering at 4:00 pm and were
expected to tour various areas by car ahead of heading to Martyrs Square.
Demonstrators at the square were joined by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil and
Education Minister Elias Bou Saab. “We call for accepting each other and
achieving true partnership,” said Bou Saab from Martyrs Square. “We are
convinced of our demands and this government cannot function without real
partnership,” he added. Some reports said that the demonstrators would later
march towards the Grand Serail where they will stay there throughout the night.
But an FPM official denied such a plan in remarks to Voice of Lebanon radio
(93.3). Aoun on Tuesday urged his supporters to take to the streets following
the weekly meeting of his Change and Reform bloc. He said “there is a campaign
to push the Lebanese to despair and the issue is not personal, but rather the
cause of all Lebanese.” His supporters held a similar protest last month to call
for the restoration of Christian rights, claiming that the prime minister was
infringing on the authorities of the Christian president in his absence. A
recent decision by Defense Minister Samir Moqbel to extend the terms of three
top military officials angered Aoun, who has been for months campaigning for the
appointment of new army and security chiefs. Aoun wants his son-in-law Commando
Regiment commander Chamel Roukoz to become army commander. Wednesday's protests
will come a day before a session for the cabinet, which has been marred by
disputes over its working mechanism, the extensions and the waste problem.
Mashnouq on FPM Protests: Any Democratic Action is
Acceptable as Long as it Remains Peaceful
Naharnet/August 12/15/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq stressed that
demonstrations and other forms of democratic expression are a right reserved by
the constitution, reported As Safir newspaper on Wednesday in anticipation of
scheduled protests by the supporters of the Free Patriotic Movement later in the
day. The minister told the daily: “Any lawful democratic action is allowed as
long as it does not cause any problem or security unrest.” FPM chief MP Michel
Aoun announced on Tuesday that his supporters will be holding protests against
the extension of the terms of top military officers. Security and military
forces have since reinforced their measures in downtown Beirut and at other
state institutions ahead of the demonstrations, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper
on Wednesday. Internal Security Forces chief Major General Ibrahim Basbous told
the daily: “The measures are very normal and they are the same ones taken during
any extraordinary development.”“They aim to preserve the institutions,” he
added. “Our measures are primarily aimed at protecting the demonstrators and we
therefore cannot separate our presence from that of the army,” he continued.
Military sources meanwhile told the daily that the army “will not stand as an
obstacle against any peaceful and democratic movement.”“It will not be lured
into a confrontation, but it will protect the protestors,” they emphasized. “It
is its duty to protect the demonstrators despite the assaults against it,” they
said in reference to scuffles that broke out between the army and FPM protestors
the last time they held a rally. They had rallied on July 9 demanding the
“restoration of Christian rights.” The demonstration was staged at the same time
as a cabinet session at the Grand Serail in downtown Beirut and the protesters
had scuffled with the soldiers protecting the building as they attempted to
approach it. On Thursday, Defense Minister Samir Moqbel extended the the terms
of the army commander, chief of staff and the head of the Higher Defense Council
despite months of objections by the FPM, which rejects the extension of the
tenures of high-ranking military and security officials. Wednesday's
demonstrations are expected to be held in the afternoon with motorized protests
reportedly kicking off at the Mirna Chalouhi Center on the Sin el-Fil-Jdeideh
boulevard, the public garden in Jbeil, La Cite in Jounieh, the FPM offices in
Baabda, Sassine Square in Ashrafieh, Batrouniyat restaurant in Batroun and the
North Metn bureau of the FPM in Nahr al-Mot.
Syria Rebels, Hizbullah Observe 72-Hour Truce in Flashpoint
Towns
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 12/15/A 72-hour ceasefire came into effect
Wednesday between Islamist groups and pro-regime forces, including Hizbullah, in
flashpoint towns in northwest Syria and along the border with Lebanon, a
resident and monitoring group said. "We really noticed that it was relatively
calm this morning," Mohammad, a resident of the flashpoint town of Zabadani near
Lebanon's border, told AFP. "We didn't hear sounds of shelling or clashes, and
we hope the situation stays like this."Pro-regime forces, including Hizbullah,
had been fighting rebel groups in a bid to seize the town since early July. Late
Tuesday, the two sides agreed to implement simultaneous 48-hour ceasefires in
Zabadani and two regime-controlled villages in northwest Syria, according to the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It was extended Wednesday afternoon for
another 24 hours, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. "No shots have been
fired since 6:00 am" local time (0300 GMT) in Zabadani as well as Fuaa and
Kafraya, said Abdel Rahman. Fuaa and Kafraya in northwest Idlib province are
under siege by a rebel alliance including al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front,
which regularly fires rockets into the two Shiite towns. Mohammed Abu Qassem,
secretary general of Syria's Tadamun (Solidarity) Party, told AFP he had
negotiated the ceasefire on behalf of fighting groups inside Zabadani. "Tadamun
was authorized to negotiate with the government to reach a new agreement, Abu
Qassem said. "Since the beginning of the military operation, we have been trying
to find a solution to the crisis in Zabadani," he said, adding that a local
administrative council, rebel groups and regime forces had signed off on the
ceasefire. He said intensifying rebel attacks on Fuaa and Kafraya had expedited
the agreement. "We accepted the ceasefire because we wanted to end the battle
with as few losses as possible," a security source told AFP. "But we won't
accept that the armed groups stay in Zabadani after today," he said. According
to the Observatory, negotiations are ongoing regarding the safe exit of rebel
fighters from Zabadani, as well as the provision of food and medical aid to
residents of Fuaa and Kafraya. Local ceasefires have been implemented
intermittently in parts of Syria, often to bring in humanitarian aid to besieged
populations. At least 240,000 people have been killed since Syria's bloody
conflict erupted in March 2011.
Syrian Girl Dead in Nabaa Fire
Naharnet/August 12/15/A Syrian girl died on Wednesday after a fire engulfed an
apartment in the area of al-Nabaa in the Metn district, the state-run National
News Agency reported. NNA said Civil Defense firefighters doused the blaze and
rescued five other Syrians. In June, a major fire broke at a Syrian refugee
encampment in the al-Jrahiyeh area near the Bekaa town of al-Marj, killing a
baby and injuring several people. The incident was not the first time that fires
have ripped through the often overcrowded and poorly constructed informal
housing in which many Syrian refugees in Lebanon live. Lebanon is hosting around
1.5 million registered Syrian refugees, though the total number in the country
may be even higher.
Wahhab's Bodyguards Scuffle with General Security at al-Arida
Naharnet/August 12/15/A scuffle erupted Tuesday between bodyguards of Arab
Tawhid Party chief ex-minister Wiam Wahhab and Lebanese General Security agents
at the al-Arida border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, state-run National
News Agency reported. “As Wahhab's convoy was entering Lebanon from Syria
through the al-Arida border crossing, a dispute and a scuffle broke out between
the guards who were in his convoy and members of the General Security,” NNA
said. It added that the convoy continued its journey after the border post's
chief “intervened and resolved the dispute.”Meanwhile, Wahhab's Arab Tawhid
Party issued a statement downplaying the incident as a “personal
misunderstanding between a General Security agent and a car that was leading the
convoy.” “The guards who were in the car made their identity clear to the
General Security member but he insisted on searching the car, which sparked a
minor clash that was addressed on the spot,” it said. The party noted that the
officer in charge and the other agents behaved in a “courteous manner.”“General
Security members at all border crossings act in line with what their duty
obliges them to do and according to the instructions of General Security chief
Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, whom we admire, appreciate and respect,” it added.
Fugitive Held Trying to Smuggle 'Chemical Substances' to
Arsal Outskirts
Naharnet/August 12/15/A Lebanese fugitive was arrested Wednesday as he was
trying to smuggle “chemical substances that could be used in bomb-making” to the
outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal. “Today, army forces in the
Arsal region arrested the fugitive Ahmed Khaled al-Hujeiri as he was trying to
smuggle chemical substances that could be used in bomb-making to the town's
outskirts,” the Army Command said in a statement. Arsal lies 12 kilometers from
the border with Syria and has been used as a conduit for weapons and rebels to
enter Syria, while also serving as a refuge for people fleeing the conflict.
Jihadists from the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front groups, who are entrenched
in the outskirts, stormed the town in August 2014 and engaged in deadly battles
with the army following the arrest of a top militant. They withdrew from Arsal
at the end of the fighting, but kidnapped a number of troops and policemen. A
few have since been released, four were executed, while the rest remain held.
Separately, the Army Command said in its statement on Wednesday that Syrian
national Abdul Rahman Sheikh Moussa was apprehended in the Bint Jbeil town of
Aytaroun on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist group.
Syria Regime Air Raids, Rebel Fire on Damascus Kill 50
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 12/15/At least 37 civilians were killed
Wednesday in Syrian government air strikes near Damascus, while at least 13
people died as rebels fired a barrage of rockets into the capital, a monitor
said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least four children were
among the dead in regime strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region, where
some 120 people were also injured. The death toll was likely to rise further, it
said. The air raids hit the towns of Douma, Saqba, Kafr Batna and Hammouriyeh in
the rebel stronghold region outside the capital. An AFP photographer in Douma
saw more than a dozen bodies in makeshift plastic shrouds in a field hospital
where medical workers struggled to aid the wounded. Elsewhere, he also saw two
plastic shrouds opened at the top to reveal the faces of two children, their
skin yellow and blood-speckled. Inside a clinic, a young boy wept and hugged his
legs -- one roughly bandaged -- as he sat on a blood-smeared floor next to other
injured residents. The strikes came as rebels fired dozens of rockets into
Damascus. The Observatory, without specifying whether the raids or attack on
Damascus came first, said at least 13 people, among them 10 civilians, were
killed as a barrage of more than 50 rockets slammed into Damascus. It said
another 60 people were wounded. Syria's state news agency SANA, citing a police
source, put the toll at five dead with 55 others injured "most of them children
and women."Rebels often fire into the Syrian capital from rear bases on the
outskirts of Damascus, including at times barrages of hundreds of missiles.
Rights groups have condemned indiscriminate rebel rocket fire into the capital
as amounting to war crimes. The government, for its part, regularly carries out
air strikes against rebel-held areas on the outskirts of Damascus, particularly
Eastern Ghouta which is also under regime siege. On Wednesday, Amnesty
International accused the government of war crimes against Eastern Ghouta
residents, saying heavy aerial bombardment was compounding misery created by the
blockade. More than 240,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict since it
broke out in March 2011, and millions have been forced to flee their homes.
Saudi Executes Syrian for Drug Trafficking
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 12/15/Saudi authorities on Wednesday
beheaded a Syrian for drug trafficking in the kingdom's northwestern region of
Jawf, the interior ministry announced. Omar al-Nasser was arrested while
smuggling a "large amount of amphetamines," the interior ministry said in a
statement on the official SPA news agency. His beheading brings to 116 the
number of executions this year in the kingdom, compared with 87 for the whole of
2014, according to AFP tallies. Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia is one
of the world's most prolific executioners, along with China, Iran, Iraq and the
United States. Under the conservative kingdom's strict Islamic sharia legal
code, drug trafficking, rape, murder, armed robbery and apostasy are all
punishable by death. The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for
carrying out the punishments. Rights experts have raised concerns about the
fairness of trials in the kingdom.
Iranian military official: 'We laugh' when US threatens
to attack
By JPOST.COM STAFF/08/12/2015 /The West's frequent use of military threats and
citing of their ability to attack Iran at will has become a joke among Iranian
commanders in the military, according to a high ranking military official in the
Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's semi-official Fars news
agency reported on Wednesday. Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Asoudi alluded to
the West's hesitancy to use military force and mocked its resolve while speaking
to troops in the North. "We should thank Obama for refreshing us by referring to
his 'options on the table', including the military one; we just relax and laugh
at such ridiculous words," Asoudi said. Other top commanders have also mocked
such rhetoric coming from western officials, especially President Barack Obama's
use of the common refrain of "all options on the table" while negotiations
between world powers and Iran were being discussed. In May, the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard's top commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari,
dismissed US officials' frequent military threats against Iran as ridiculous
remarks, according to Fars. "Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran's pride and
might has made the world's biggest materialistic and military powers kneel down
before the Islamic Republic's might," Jafari said. "The military option that the
westerners speak of constantly is ridiculous and they know that if the military
option could have produced any result, they would have already used it many
times, and today they have shifted their focus to other types of threats," he
added.
We object to Israeli policies, not its existence,' Iranians
tell US Jewish journalist
By JPOST.COM STAFF/08/12/2015 /Despite extremist rhetoric by Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian government officials and clerics object to
Israeli policies rather than its existence, according to an American Jewish
journalist who was granted a rare reporting visa to the Islamic Republic.In a
special dispatch from Iran, Larry Cohler-Esses, the assistant managing editor
for the Jewish Forward weekly newspaper, wrote that Iranians are far more
moderate and eager to engage with the world than outsiders think. Cohler-Esses,
who is believed to be the first American Jewish journalist from an overtly
pro-Israel newspaper to be granted permission to report from Iran since the 1979
Islamic Revolution, authored a 7,000-word article in which he quotes a number of
Iranians who aren't shy about expressing critical opinions about their
government. "During the course of my conversations with several senior
ayatollahs and prominent political and government officials, it became clear
that there is high-placed dissent to the official line against Israel,"
Cohler-Esses wrote. "No one had anything warm to say about the Jewish state."
"But pressed as to whether it was Israel’s policies or its very existence to
which they objected, several were adamant: It’s Israel’s policies. Others,
notwithstanding their ideological objection to a Jewish state, made it clear
they would accept a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the
Palestinians if the Palestinians were to negotiate one and approve it in a
referendum."The Forward journalist wrote that ordinary Iranians were far more
preoccupied with the high unemployment rate in their country and removing the
burden of international isolation than any thoughts of eliminating Israel. “The
people of Iran want in some way to show the world that what’s going on in the
last years is not the will of the Iranian people but of the Iranian government,”
the owner of a butcher shop in northern Tehran told Cohler-Esses. “We have no
hostility against Israel.” During his stay in Iran, the Forward reporter wrote
that young people were curious about the outside world despite efforts by the
regime to impose censorship on the Internet. The Forward is America's oldest
Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1897 by American Jewish socialists, it became a
mass circulation Yiddish-language daily that served the influx of immigrants
from Eastern Europe. Journalists at the Forward said that they had been trying
to obtain a visa to Iran for two years, according to the New York Times.
ISIS affiliate in Egypt claims to behead Croatian hostage
in Sinai
REUTERS/08/12/2015/CAIRO - Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate published a
photograph it said was of the beheaded body of a Croatian hostage it had
threatened to kill last week, the SITE monitoring service said on Wednesday.
Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the picture, which
carried a caption that said: "killing of the Croatian hostage, due to his
country's participation in the war against Islamic State, after the deadline
expired ... ". If confirmed, it would be the first beheading of a Western
hostage held by Sinai Province, the Egyptian group which changed its name from
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis after it pledged allegiance to Islamic State. A spokesman
at the Egyptian Interior Ministry's press office said: "We have seen this news
on line but are currently making our own checks. If we confirm that it is indeed
true, we will inform the media through a statement." The Croatian embassy said
it was not authorized to comment and referred all queries to the Croatian
foreign ministry. A spokeswoman for the ministry said she had no information.
Croation Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic announced an extraordinary news
conference for 5 p.m. (1500 GMT). The photograph, circulating on Twitter
accounts of supporters of Sinai Province, shows a man's severed head lying on
his body, with a knife driven into sand next to it and the black Islamic State
flag in the background. Next to the picture, there are screenshots of Arabic
language news articles with headlines saying: "Croatia confirms its support for
Egypt in efforts to fight terrorism and extremism" and "Croatia affirms its
continued support for the Kurdistan region." Last week, an online video
purportedly from Sinai Province showed a man who identified himself as Tomislav
Salopek who said the group would kill him in 48 hours if Muslim women in
Egyptian jails were not freed. Ardiseis Egypt, a unit of French oil and gas
geology company CGG, confirmed that the video showed one of its employees who
was kidnapped on July 22 while traveling to Cairo. No immediate comment could be
obtained from CGG.
Iran proposes Syrian peace
plan/Syria's Aleppo marked as international city under Iran peace plan
Roi Kais/Ynetnews/Published:
08.11.15/Israel News
Iranian foreign minister cancels trip to Turkey to discuss peace initiative to
keep Assad in power; Saudi peace plan demands Iranian withdrawal. Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's visit to Turkey was cancelled Tuesday,
when he had been expected to present the Islamic Republic's recently developed
initiative to reach a peace deal in Syria. According to reports Tuesday in al-Araby
al-Jadeed, the Iranian plan would divide control in Syria between the Assad
regime and rebel forces, each controlling the territories they currently hold,
while Aleppo would fall under international control since it is split between
the army and rebel forces.The deal also calls for cooperation between the regime
and rebel forces to fight Islamic State forces and other terrorist groups. The
fight against ISIS militants would be used as a tool to unite the the country's
warring factions, and the Iranian initiative calls on rebels and regime
officials to begin talks meant to result in a national unity government. While
the West has often called for the removal of current President Bashar Assad as
part of any peace deal, the Iranian initiative would leave the President in
place, but possibly vulnerable to elections that would be monitored by
international observers. The deal would also require an organized rebel
leadership - a characteristic that fractured groups in opposition to Assad have
struggled to form throughout the country's four-year Civil War. Another proxy
war? But Iran isn't the only regional player that's opened a new diplomatic
front in Syria. Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir travelled to
Moscow Tuesday to discuss the issues with Russian officials who have been
backing the Assad regime financially, strategically and militarily. According to
the Saudi peace initiative, a transitional government would be formed in Syria
and Assad would be barred from any future involvement in government. Iran and
Saudi Arabia are regional rivals and the two plans raise the potential for
proxy-style conflict in Syria as both sides deeper their involvement after the
resolution of Iran's nuclear deal with the West.
The Saudi plan calls on Iran to remove its forces from Syria, including
Hezbollah troops, saying, "Iran can't be part of the solution because they are
part of the problem."Reuters contributed to this report.
Jeb Bush: Hillary Clinton shares blame for rise of ISIS
REUTERS/08/12/2015
WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Tuesday attacked
Democrat Hillary Clinton for her handling of Iraq as secretary of state, saying
she must share the blame for the rise of Islamic State militants, in a prelude
to a potential general election matchup in 2016. Iraq is a tricky topic for
Bush, given the dismay many Americans still feel over the rationale for the
US-led invasion of Iraq ordered by his brother, former President George W. Bush,
in 2003. Mindful of those concerns, Jeb Bush used the bulk of a speech at the
Ronald Reagan presidential library not to dwell on the past but to sketch out a
future path for the United States in the region that is more muscular than what
he called President Barack Obama's "minimalist approach of incremental
escalation." He said he would deploy some US forces in Iraq as forward
"spotters" to help identify enemy targets, a step President Barack Obama has
resisted out of concern that it could deepen American involvement in Iraq and
Syria.
Bush said he would be willing to consider a small increase in US troops beyond
those already there and embed some US forces with Iraqi units as Canadian forces
are doing. "Right now, we have around 3,500 soldiers and marines in Iraq, and
more may well be needed. We do not need, and our friends do not ask for, a major
commitment of American combat forces," he said. He would provide more support to
anti-Islamic State Kurds, and work with regional allies to declare a no-fly zone
in Syria to counter Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces and Iranian
influence. Bush's criticism of Clinton's role in the events leading up to the
2011 withdrawal of US forces is in line with what other Republicans have
contended, that for all her travels around the world as Obama's first-term
secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she showed a disdain for going to Iraq.
"In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once," Bush
said. The attack comes after weeks in which the Republican race has been
dominated by Donald Trump's antics and taken the spotlight away from the serious
policy issues debated by Bush and his rivals for the Republican presidential
nomination. Bush is attempting to pierce what the Clinton camp feels is a major
selling point for her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, that she is a
foreign policy heavyweight. In doing so, he seeks to present himself to
Republican voters as a sturdy opponent for Clinton in 2016. Bush said a
President Bush-ordered US troop surge in 2007 brought stability that would have
been extended if Obama had negotiated a US residual force for Iraq. The Obama
administration was unable to negotiate a deal with then-Iraqi Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki and the last troops were brought home in 2011. "Where was
Secretary of State Clinton in all of this? Like the president himself, she had
opposed the surge, then joined in claiming credit for its success, then stood by
as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away," Bush
said. In response, the Clinton campaign held a conference call for reporters
with her foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan defended Clinton,
saying she had accomplished a successful transition from a US military footprint
in Iraq to a civilian one. "The key issue is not how many times does the plane
touch down at the airport. It's how intensive and effective is the engagement
that leads to progress," Sullivan said. He said Jeb Bush was attempting to
"rewrite history," and that George W. Bush had set the 2011 date for a US
withdrawal.
Netanyahu emulates Churchill in Trying to Influence US
Policy to Protect His People
By ALAN DERSHOWITZ/J.Post/08/12/2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is acting properly in lobbying against
the Iran deal. And President Obama is acting improperly in accusing him of
interfering in American foreign policy and suggesting that no other foreign
leader has ever tried to do so: “I do not recall a similar example.”President
Obama is as wrong about American history as he is about policy. Many foreign
leaders have tried to influence US foreign policy when their national interests
are involved. Lafayette tried to get the United States involved in the French
Revolution, as the early colonists sought support from France in their own
revolution. Winston Churchill appeared in front of Congress and lobbied heavily
to have America change its isolationist policy during the run up to the Second
World War. Nor can President Obama claim ignorance about recent events, when he
himself sent David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to lobby
Congress in favor of the Iran Deal. Recently, Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of
Japan, lobbied us with regard to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s nation has a far greater stake in the Iran Deal than
most of the countries that negotiated it. But Israel was excluded from the
negotiations. Any leader of Israel would and should try to exercise whatever
influence he might have in the ongoing debate over the deal. There can be no
question that Israel is the primary intended target of Iran’s quest for a
nuclear arsenal. Recall that Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Prime Minister of
Iran, has described Israel as a one bomb state that could be destroyed
instantaneously, and that even if Israel retaliated, it would not destroy Iran
or Islam. No similar threats have been made against Great Britain, France,
Germany, Russia or China. Although the United States is still regarded by Iran
as the “Great Satan”, it has less to fear from an Iranian nuclear arsenal than
does Israel.
Does President Obama really believe that Israeli leaders are required to remain
silent and simply accept the consequences of a deal that puts its population at
risk? As Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly said, Israel is not
Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia too was excluded from the negotiations that led
to its dismemberment, but it had no ability to influence the policies of the
negotiating nations. Nor did it have the ability to defend itself militarily, as
Israel does. The United States would surely not accept a deal negotiated by
other nations that put its citizens at risk. No American leader would remain
silent in the face of such a deal. Israel has every right to express its concern
about a deal that has crossed not only its own red lines but the red lines
originally proposed by President Obama.
President Obama’s attack on Prime Minister Netanyahu for doing exactly what he
would be doing if the shoe were on the other foot has encouraged Israel bashers
to accuse opponents of the deal of dual loyalty. Nothing could be further from
the truth. I and the deal’s other opponents are as loyal to our country as is
President Obama and the supporters of the deal. I am a liberal Democrat who
opposed the invasion of Iraq and who twice supported President Obama when he ran
for president. Many of the deal’s strongest opponents also cannot be accused of
being warmongers because we believe that the deal actually increases the
likelihood of war.
The President should stop attacking both the domestic and international critics
of the deal and engage us on the merits. That is why I have issued a challenge
to the Obama Administration to debate its critics on national television. This
is a wonderful occasion for Lincoln-Douglas type debates over this important
foreign policy issue. At this point in time the majority of Americans are
against the deal, as are the majority of both Houses of Congress. The President
has the burden of changing the public’s mind. This is, after all, a democracy.
And the President should not be empowered to impose his will on the American
public based on one-third plus one of one house of Congress, when a majority of
Americans have expressed opposition. So let the name calling stop and let the
debates begin.
**Alan Dershowitz is a lawyer, constitutional scholar, commentator and author.
His new book is The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran From
Getting Nukes? (Rosetta Books, August 11, 2015).
The theory of terrorism and restraining moderates
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/Wednesday, 12 August 2015
Those affiliated with religious groups have for long reiterated that the
emergence of extremist Islamic groups is due to the restraining of “moderate”
Islamic ones. Western governments were convinced of this for a while and thus
began to urge Arab governments to allow religious groups in politics and include
them in governance, either democratically or through partnership and quotas. It
may seem reasonable that including moderates leads to the expelling of
extremists, but this theory is not supported with evidence - at least in our
Arab arena. These concept of participation for these groups means a monopolizing
of authority. They are not like Turkey and Indonesia’s Islamic groups who work
and govern under a secular system and whose “Islamic liberalism” looks nothing
like the extremism of Islamist Arabs. The aim of politicized religious groups is
to attain power regardless of the rhetoric adopted and the means used in order
to later create a dominating regime and eliminate others! Based on experience,
it’s been proven that most Arab religious parties are exclusionary despite all
their talk about moderation and co-existence. There are many examples on the
case from our modern history and I will resort to four of them to elaborate my
point. The first experience was Iran. The masses who protested in the streets of
Tehran and called for toppling the Shah and received Ayatollah Khomeini at the
airport were a mixture of political parties who agreed on establishing a regime
that allows pluralism.
Brutal party
After the Islamists seized power, they issued laws which eliminated all parties
but themselves. Then, they got rid of their rivals through means more brutal
than the Shah’s regime had resorted to. Tens of thousands of supporters of
parties like the communist Tudeh party and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran were
murdered. Based on experience, it’s been proven that most Arab religious parties
are exclusionary despite all their talk about moderation and co-existence The
second experience was in Sudan. After toppling President Gaafar Nimeiry, the
Sudanese accepted a pluralistic political system and held elections in which the
Umma party won and the Democratic Unionist Party came in second. However since
the Islamic party came in third, its leader Hassan al-Turabi conspired with Omar
al-Bashir and staged a coup to assume power. For the past 26 years, they have
governed Sudan with an iron fist. The third experience was in the Gaza Strip
where the Palestinian Liberation Organization accepted to hold parliamentary
elections in 2006 – within the boundaries of the Oslo Agreement. On the basis of
the theory that including Islamists will make them friendly, the Americans
pressured the PLO to allow the Hamas Movement to participate in these elections.
The result was that Hamas won 76 seats out of 132, formed a government and a
year later eliminated its partner Fatah, took over Gaza and got rid of its
rivals - either by murdering them or expelling them. The most exciting
experience was the Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt. Although their brief time
controlling the presidency may have not long been enough to judge their
intentions, many of their practices violated their authority and the
constitution - as they controlled the judiciary and assigned a new attorney
general. Such violations are capable of toppling any government within a
democratic system.
Therefore, in the past half century we cannot find a single Arab case that shows
the eligibility of religious parties in co-existence and democracy. Tunisia’s
Ennahda Movement, who is referred to as a model of moderation, did not really
become moderate until the Brotherhood were toppled in Egypt by force. When
Ennahda participated in elections after the revolution and won 89 seats out of
217 and headed a government for two years, it actually tried to amend the
constitution to restrain its rivals; however it failed.
What’s worse than the immaturity of religious groups is that their seizure of
power did not prevent extremism at all. The Gaza Strip for example suffers from
extremist groups who accuse Hamas of infidelity and call for fighting it. Hamas
destroyed these groups’ mosque and killed some of their members. In Sudan,
similar takfirist groups emerged and Bashir’s government is still fighting them
until this day. Even during the one year when the Brotherhood governed Egypt,
extremist groups carried out attacks against the army in Sinai. Extremist groups
also surfaced during Ennahda’s term of governance, who assassinated two
opposition leaders and slaughtered soldiers on the borders. This leads us to two
results: religious groups are not less dictatorial and their presence in
government does not prevent the emergence of extremist groups. Therefore, the
statement that restraining “moderates” is a reason for the emergence of
extremists is a mere myth – that is if we accept the term “moderates!” What’s
certain is that the region suffers from a dangerous ideological disease that is
spreading but with very little done to confront it. However we must not reward
religious parties with governance in order to get rid of extremism.
ISIS wages cultural warfare on Syria’s heritage
Dr. Halla Diyab/Al Arabiya/Wednesday, 12 August 2015
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is not only achieving territorial
gains in Syria. The militants are also succeeding in obliterating the country’s
cultural existence - and replacing it with a new culture that serves their
extreme narrative. The culture being constructed by ISIS is an effort to
“revive,” or more appropriately, manufacture, a culture to which their fighters
can belong despite their distance and alienation from home. Most of these
jihadists have difficulty feeling a sense of belonging to or identifying with
the European culture of their home countries. ISIS offers them a new territorial
space in Syria to construct and participate in a new culture and society, one to
which they can easily belong. In order to create this society, ISIS are
strategically preying on the natural human inclination to belong. In the case of
the British jihadists, for example, some second-generation Muslims feel they are
“inbetweeners,” unable to fully relate to either their parents’ culture or
British culture. The evident danger is the appeal that ISIS’s culture, as
promoted in their propaganda, requires impressionable young people seeking a
wider sense of belonging. With ISIS allowing jihadism to transcend martyrdom, it
is now a different kind of destructive jihadist culture emerging that
predominantly thrives on the tactic of demolishing Syria’s heritage and cultural
sites, in order to author a new historical legacy in 40 to 50 years’ time from
now.
Culture catastrophe
As the bearers and transmitters of Syrian cultural heritage, the dispersal of
Syrians across the world, far from their homeland and their material cultural
and historical heritage, is a profound cultural catastrophe. Not only because
the displaced Syrians who unwillingly left their homeland suffer the loss of
cultural memory - to compound the humanitarian and psychological disasters have
they suffered - but also because their departure leaves a vacuum of culture in
Syria. The evident danger is the appeal that ISIS’s culture, as promoted in
their propaganda, requires impressionable young people seeking a wider sense of
belonging. As ISIS have demonstrated by their actions, they are intent on
demolishing Syrian cultural memory, wiping the slate clean and rewriting history
to support their extreme narrative of terror.
With this, ISIS are seeking to establish themselves, not only as the colonizers
of Syria, but as the “new Syrians.” ISIS recognises that it must exterminate all
symbols of the existing Syrian culture manifested by its heritage (e.g.
artefacts, historical sites and monuments), rip out the roots of the country’s
cultural memory leaving nothing left, in order for the new, forcibly-planted
culture to grow successfully. To justify these acts, the organization claims
that it is getting rid of all icons of heritage and religious monuments to leave
an unobstructed path to Islam. However, this pretence conceals the real reasons
behind ISIS’s policy of destruction. In the first place, this is the removal of
any and all any obstructions to their own control and narrative in order to
gradually become the living God.
Erased memories
By erasing the cultural memory of the Syrian people, demolishing moral codes and
severing cultural ties, they can create their own legacy as living icons for the
next generation in Syria.
ISIS are keenly aware of the danger of memories, civilizations and achievements
in art and beauty that existed in Syria that give Syrians their pride and
identity.
With Syrians deprived of historical memory and cultural expressions such as art
(apart from ISIS’s own art which promotes violence and their own narratives) or
self-expression to promote critical thinking, the militants are ultimately
creating a society of people who will be easily controlled and susceptible to
the narrative and ideology of their colonizers. Alongside this overarching aim,
the destruction of the cultural heritage of Syria is a policy that serves a
number of purposes for ISIS and these illustrate the group’s political and
mercenary cynicism rather than any true religious motivation. The publicity
their cultural destruction gains fuels their war of propaganda.
ISIS are aware of the power that their displays of brute vandalism exert through
the media attention they garner. They have realised that western countries are
more likely to pay attention to cultural heritage destruction, as after a
certain point people are unable to stomach images of human torture and
humanitarian disaster but will continue to look at media showing heritage
destruction, this plays into the ISIS propaganda machine and the expansion of
their psychological warfare. Parallel to this, the organization is generating
considerable income from illicit trade in looted artefacts (the majority of
which they do not actually destroy, but sell) which is in turn fuelling their
war of violent conquest. ISIS’ war is not only colonizing Syrian lands and
territories. It is also appropriating and distorting the Syrian existence by
erasing the land of indigenous Syrians. At the moment, this very real danger is
obscured by the fog of war, but it will have a considerable impact on Syrian
generations for decades to come. ISIS is conducting a mental and psychological
war of conquest to justify their war of extermination, classifying who is
religious and who is less religious, who is Muslim and who is not, who is Syrian
and who is not, who deserves to belong to Syria and who does not, and who
deserves to live and who does not.
The Political Nature of Today's Middle East Studies
Andrew C. McCarthy/National Review Online/August 11, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5433/middle-east-studies-political-nature
This article was commissioned by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East
Forum. Originally published under the title, "Modern Middle East Studies vs.
Scholarship."
Edward Said's lifelong journey from boarding school in Mount Hermon,
Massachusetts, to Columbia University takes about three-and-a-half hours,
depending on traffic. It would be a mistake to say Middle East studies have been
corrupted. For the program's very purpose has been to serve as a corrupting
agent. Specifically, it puts the essence of study — the objective pursuit of
knowledge — in disrepute.
Here, of course, I am referring to the modern incarnation of Middle East
studies: an amalgam of leftist and Islamist political dogma that masquerades as
an academic discipline. By contrast, the actual study of Middle Eastern history,
like the intimately related study of Islamic civilization, is a venerable and
vital pursuit — and is still pursued as such by, to take the best example, ASMEA,
the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. Alas, in our
hyper-politicized society, the traditional notion of study seems quaint: a
vestige of a bygone time when the designations "Orientalist" and "Islamist"
referred to subject-matter expertise, not political activism, much less
radicalism.
Caricature of real study as engine of colonialism paved the way for a
reconstruction of "study" as agitation to empower have-nots. Yet, for Edward
Said, the seminal figure in modern Middle East studies, the object of the game
was to slander knowledge itself. Joshua Muravchik nailed it in a 2013 profile of
the renowned academic. Said's animating theory held that "knowledge" was the key
that enabled the West to dominate Orientals: The point of pursuing knowledge
about "the languages, culture, history, and sociology of societies of the Middle
East and the Indian subcontinent," Said elaborated, was to gain more control
over the "subject races" by making "their management easy and profitable." With
real study caricatured as the engine of colonial exploitation, the way was paved
for a competing construction of "study" — political agitation to empower the
have-nots in the struggle against the haves.
Said was a fitting pioneer for such a fraud. To begin with, he was a professor
not of Middle East studies but of comparative literature. Moreover, the personal
history he touted to paper over his want of credentials was sheer fiction: Far
from what he purported to be (a Palestinian victim exiled by Jews from his
Jerusalem home at age twelve), Said was actually a child of privilege, raised in
Cairo and educated in top British and American schools. His Palestinian tie of
note was membership in the PLO's governing council. Like Rashid Khalidi — his
protégé, who was later awarded the chair in Modern Arab Studies that Columbia
University named in Said's honor — Said was long a reliable apologist of Yassir
Arafat, the indefatigable terrorist who infused Palestinian identity with a
Soviet-backed Arab nationalism.
To thrive in an Islamic culture, it was not only useful but necessary for
Palestinian militancy to accommodate the Islamist sense of divine injunction to
wage jihad. From its roots, then, modern Middle East studies is a political
movement aligning leftism and Islamism under the guise of an academic
discipline. It is not an objective quest for learning guided by a rich corpus of
history and culture; it is a project to impose its pieties as incontestable
truth — and to discredit dispassionate analysis in order to achieve that end.
Where the leftist frames Western reverence for reason as imperialism, the
Islamist attacks it on theological grounds. The embrace of Islamism usefully
advances this project because Islamist ideology similarly stigmatizes the
pursuit of knowledge. Where the leftist frames the West's reverence for reason
as imperialism, the Islamist attacks it on theological grounds.
Sharia, they maintain, is the complete and perfect societal framework and legal
code, the path to human life lived in conformity with Allah's design. Thus, what
the West calls "reason" or "the objective pursuit of knowledge" is merely a
rationalization for supplanting Allah's design with the corrupting preferences
of Western civilization.
We see how this teaching plays out in practice. Muslim countries that supplement
sharia with other legislation add the caveat that no man-made law may contradict
Islamic principles. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a group of Islamic
governments that form a large bloc in the United Nations — even found it
necessary in 1990 to promulgate a Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, because
Islamists could not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spearheaded
by non-Muslim governments after World War II.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamist organization,
refers to this enterprise as "the Islamicization of knowledge," the weaving of
historical events and cultural developments into Islamist narratives that
confirm sharia-supremacist tenets. The "Islamicization of knowledge" is the
express and unapologetic mandate of the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (IIIT), the Virginia-based think tank established by the Brotherhood in
1981.
There are two pertinent observations to be made about the IIIT. First, it has
provided an enthusiastic endorsement of Reliance of the Traveller, the English
translation of Umdat al-Salik, a classic Arabic sharia manual. The publisher
found this seal of approval sufficiently significant to be included in the
manual's preface, along with an endorsement from scholars at the ancient al-Azhar
University in Cairo.
The manual is an eye-opener. In addition to detailing sharia's gruesome hudud
penalties (e.g., scourging and death for such offenses as extramarital or
homosexual relations), it provides instruction on Islam's brutally enforced
proscriptions against blasphemy and apostasy. These are salient to our
consideration: They include prohibitions not only against renunciation and
ridicule of Islam but even against objectively true statements that contradict
sharia, promote other belief systems, or might otherwise sow discord in the
Islamic community.
The Islamicization of knowledge is possible only if the objective pursuit of
knowledge is not permitted to compete. Obviously, the animating purpose of these
principles is to discourage severely the robust exchange of ideas, and even more
the scholarly examination of Islamic doctrine and culture. The Islamicization of
knowledge is possible only if the objective pursuit of knowledge is not
permitted to compete.
That brings us to the second noteworthy observation about the IIIT: It has
longstanding ties to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Several of
these were traced by Cinnamon Stillwell in a 2014 American Thinker essay.
This alliance, the sponsorship by the IIIT of Middle East studies programs
throughout North America, the collaborations between the IIIT and MESA scholars
— these are easy to understand. Modern Middle East studies is a
counter-scholarship enterprise that subverts truth to the ends of leftist and
Islamist politics. To be clear, it is not an alternative interpretation of
reality competing in the marketplace of ideas; it is an anti-Western program
that is oblivious to reality and seeks to shut down the marketplace.
We do ourselves and the search for truth great harm by indulging the fiction
that anti-American power politics is credible American scholarship.
** Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.
The New Syrian Force: Down but Not
Necessarily Out
Jeffrey White/Washington
Institute/August 11, 2015
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-new-syrian-force-down-but-not-necessarily-out
After the recent defeat, key questions must be
addressed regarding the size of U.S.-supported units deployed, the thoroughness
of battlefield knowledge, and the broader program's overall direction. In
mid-July, small elements of the New Syrian Force (NSF), the product of the U.S.
train-and-equip program, were deployed into Syria from Turkey. They quickly came
to grief in combat, not against their putative enemy, the Islamic State of Iraq
and al-Sham (ISIS), but against Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), an al-Qaeda affiliate.The
July 31 clash and follow-on events were a complex affair, shedding light on the
train-and-equip program for the NSF. Whereas the outcome is not necessarily a
final verdict on the NSF or the program, it raises questions once again about
the program's purpose and viability on Syria's dangerous battlefields. Namely,
while one defeat does not mean the program should be ended, it does mean the
serious challenge of fighting in Syria must be recognized and the program's
scope and purpose reexamined.
Key Questions About the Program
Even before the initial deployment of the NSF, major questions existed on
matters such as the feasibility and logic of the force's mission; its combat
capabilities; its size relative to the scope of its mission; its concept of
operations; and how it would be directed and supported in combat. (For an
assessment of these early concerns, see the Institute PolicyWatch "Train and
Equip Not Enough for U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebels.") These issues had not been
resolved prior to July, and they remain largely unresolved in the debacle's
wake.
What Happened
Clear portents of trouble for the NSF were visible well before the actual clash.
In late 2014, JN had already attacked and essentially defeated two U.S.-backed
groups, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm, active within
JN's area of operation in northern Syria. These groups, which had received
significant U.S. support but were not part of the train-and-equip program, were
thus effectively removed from the military equation.Beginning in September 2014,
the United States had also carried out airstrikes on JN-associated elements in
the so-called Khorasan group. Most recently, on July 8, strikes reportedly
killed a senior Khorasan leader, stirring animosity toward both the U.S. air
operations and what JN regarded as antagonistic U.S. surrogates and
collaborators.
Additionally, signs of problems within the train-and-equip program itself
included slow progress in recruiting and vetting personnel, a correspondingly
small number of actual program graduates, and departures due to various forms of
disillusionment. The rigorous vetting process and the requirement to formally
commit to fight only ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, appear to have been
the biggest reasons for the low personnel tally.
The Action and Its Outcome
The full details of the late July action are not yet known, and uncertainties
remain, but the basic elements appear clear. On July 12, a small NSF force,
variously reported as having fifty-four or sixty men, was sent into the
operational area of "Division 30," a U.S.-supported unit in northern Aleppo. On
July 30, JN moved against Division 30, capturing some of its leaders and then
attacking its forces on July 31, compelling the division's withdrawal from its
headquarters near Azaz, in northern Aleppo province. During the fighting, the
United States provided air support, striking JN forces and apparently preventing
what would have been a greater defeat for the NSF elements, which were caught up
in the action. The grim outcome for the NSF included at least one killed, five
or more captured, and the breakup and dispersal of its remaining members --
along with being a major embarrassment for the train-and-equip program.
Consequences for Division 30 included prisoners taken, the forced withdrawal
from its headquarters, and a humiliating public pledge not to fight JN.
What the Events Say About the U.S. Program
The major program weaknesses exposed by these events include the decision itself
to send such a small force into Syria. Given the heavily armed and capable
forces that could oppose the deployment, small NSF elements were undoubtedly at
high risk of being attacked and defeated. The deployment also suggests a poor
understanding of the complex situation on the ground. As for the employment
concept, it appears to have been to embed a small NSF element within a rebel
unit already supported by the United States. The seeming advantage of such an
approach was that the United States would have sufficient understanding of the
unit's capabilities, confidence in its leadership, and awareness of the
situation on the ground. But the concept held the weakness of depending on some
cooperation, or at least the absence of active resistance, from other armed
elements in the area. As it turned out, the optimistic scenario failed to play
out, revealing the employment concept's fundamental flaws in both design and
execution. Since the event, reporting has indicated that control of the NSF
group passed from U.S. personnel to Division 30 after the group entered Syria.
While integrating certain NSF elements into existing U.S.-supported rebel
formations is probably necessary, at least until large NSF units are available,
such an approach puts a premium on good knowledge of these existing formations.
Such knowledge appears to have been lacking here, given Division 30's easy
defeat by JN.
Moreover, some U.S. accounts indicate the NSF fought well, but the extent to
which the NSF, as opposed to Division 30, was involved in the actual combat is
not clear. And while JN forces reportedly suffered significant casualties, it is
unclear to what extent those were inflicted by the NSF as opposed to Division 30
or U.S. airstrikes. JN, for its part, claims most of its casualties were from
the U.S. attacks.U.S. air support for the NSF, most likely coordinated by
U.S.-trained NSF personnel, appears to have averted a larger disaster. The
United States has now stated it will provide defensive air support for the NSF
against all threats, in addition to offensive support against ISIS. While this
assertion needs to be tested, it does go some way toward resolving a key
question about the U.S. program.
Implications
Alongside being an embarrassment, the defeat of the nascent NSF in its first
Syrian sortie has practical implications. Indeed, the loss of personnel, the
almost certain loss of arms and equipment, and the scattering of the force
reflect -- short of outright annihilation or pell-mell flight -- about as bad a
military result as one can conceive. Likewise, the profound risks of deploying
small NSF forces on uncertain Syrian battlefields were exposed. Consequences
will likely include punctured morale for NSF elements in training and a
corresponding blow to recruitment. A further question raised by the debacle
includes who is responsible for decisionmaking on commitment of the NSF and how
this particular decision was made. Related questions involve the relationship
and syncing of the reported CIA clandestine-support program for select rebel
forces, presumably including Division 30, and the U.S. Department of Defense
train-and-equip program. As this episode shows, JN clearly will not accept a
significant U.S.-backed force in its area of operations in northern Syria. Its
previous actions to eliminate the SRF and Harakat Hazm, and now its strike
against Division 30 and collaterally the NSF, must be considered in any future
NSF deployments. More broadly, the NSF must be prepared to fight from the moment
it enters Syria against a spectrum of highly capable enemies: ISIS, other
Islamists, warlords, and regime fighters.
Likewise, establishing a very detailed picture of the situation on the ground is
essential before the entry of forces. The United States must have a means of
obtaining real-time, accurate information on what is happening to U.S.-supported
forces. Beyond receiving reports from U.S.-trained fighters, the United States
must develop its own means of collecting data and evaluating battlefield
developments, a requirement that likely means U.S. personnel on the ground.The
U.S. response to the blunder, unfortunately, appears so far to suggest business
as usual: difficulties are to be expected, lessons will be learned, challenges
will be met, operations are proceeding as planned. Inexperienced or newly formed
military units often do not fare well in their first combat test, so the
problems encountered by the NSF are not altogether surprising. Two more groups
of fighters are said to be in the pipeline, and they and their trainers should
gain from the first group's experience. Furthermore, the combination of the
reported JN withdrawal from the Turkish border area north of Aleppo and the
potential creation of a border security zone by Turkey and the United States
could reduce the immediate threat to NSF forces as they deploy into Syria. It is
therefore too early to write the program off as a total failure. Nevertheless,
the seriousness of what happened in the closing days of July suggests the
program needs to be more fundamentally rethought, repurposed, and reenergized.
*Jeffrey White is a defense fellow at The Washington Institute and a former
senior defense intelligence officer.
Clarifying a 'No' Vote on the Iran
Nuclear Agreement
Robert Satloff/Washington
Institute/August 11, 2015
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/clarifying-a-no-vote-on-the-iran-nuclear-agreement
A congressional vote of disapproval would not necessarily be a deal breaker; in
fact, it could give the administration time to improve the agreement or
implement other policy measures that more effectively secure U.S. interests.
What are the implications of voting against the Iran nuclear agreement?
Considerable hyperbole clouds the issue. Here is a guide for the perplexed.
What is the congressional review of the Iran accord all about?
The Iran nuclear accord -- formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA) -- sounds a lot like a treaty but isn't one. Technically, it's
not even an "executive agreement." It has no signatories. It is, rather, a
voluntary set of understandings entered into by eight parties: Iran, Britain,
France, Germany, Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union.
Although such an agreement itself has no status in law, Congress decided it
wanted to exert review authority over it, similar (though not identical) to the
authority the Senate has to "advise and consent" on treaties. The Iran Nuclear
Agreement Review Act of 2015 -- known informally as the Corker-Cardin
legislation -- is the statute governing this situation. This compromise bill,
signed into law by President Obama, provides for both houses of Congress to vote
for resolutions either approving or disapproving the agreement. The president
can veto these resolutions, however, and overriding the veto would require a
two-thirds vote in both houses.
For comparison purposes, it is important to note that the standard for
congressional support of the Iran agreement is much lower than would be the case
for a treaty. For the agreement to be considered approved, only one-third of one
house of Congress need vote against a resolution of disapproval; by contrast,
treaties require the support of two-thirds of the Senate.
What are the implications of a resolution of disapproval?
A resolution to disapprove the Iran agreement may have substantial political
reverberations but limited practical impact. It would not override President
Obama's authority to enter into the agreement. Nor would it restrict his
authority to participate in most aspects of enforcing the agreement. Indeed, the
sole practical implication would be to restrict his authority under law to waive
nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. And a resolution of disapproval would have no
authority to force him to vigorously enforce such sanctions. Were the president
to exercise the same "prosecutorial discretion" he has on some other
controversial issues where he disagreed with the law, the sanctions could become
dramatically less effective.
What would that mean in practice?
Here, it is important to remember the timetable of JCPOA implementation. The
first set of responsibilities under the deal are Iran's. Before anything else
happens, Iran needs to implement its "core requirements" under the deal. These
include satisfying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the question
of "possible military dimensions," mothballing thousands of centrifuges,
shrinking its massive stockpile of low-enriched uranium to 300 kilograms, and
gutting the core of its Arak plutonium reactor. Most experts believe this
process will take between six to nine months. Only once the IAEA certifies that
Iran has fulfilled those requirements does U.S. and international sanctions
relief become an operative issue.
So a vote of disapproval would have no practical impact until early-to-mid-2016?
Technically, that is correct.
What could happen in the meantime?
This is where analysis meets conjecture and hyperbole. Advocates of the
agreement have suggested that a successful congressional resolution of
disapproval would kill the deal. They have argued that Iran would lose faith in
America's commitment to the agreement, pull out, and ramp up its enrichment
program to new levels, and that the Europeans would cry foul at America's lack
of fair play and end sanctions of their own accord. Advocates of the accord also
suggest that without agreed limits on its nuclear program, Iran would sooner or
later trigger either American or Israeli military action, which would unleash
regional war.
There are strong arguments why each of these predictions is misplaced. First,
Iran is unlikely to respond to congressional disapproval by enriching uranium
with reckless abandon and thereby validating the skeptics who never trusted its
commitment to a solely peaceful nuclear program. After Tehran has painstakingly
worked for two decades both to advance a program that is on the verge of
attaining breathtaking international legitimacy and to end nuclear-related
sanctions, it would make little sense to chuck those achievements in a state of
pique. To the contrary, Iran is far more likely to fulfill its core requirements
so as to earn the termination of UN and EU sanctions that would come with IAEA
certification. Along the way, Tehran would note that America, not the Islamic
Republic, was isolated because of its intransigence.
For its part, Europe is unlikely to respond to a vote of disapproval by
unilaterally terminating its sanctions. More likely, it would to want to see its
negotiating position validated by following the agreement's terms -- that is,
waiting until Iran fulfills its core requirements before rewarding it with
sanctions relief.
European leaders -- and certainly European businesses -- would chafe under the
continued application of U.S. nuclear-related sanctions. In the 1990s, faced
with Iran sanctions that affected European business, EU governments complained
about extraterritorial application of U.S. law and successfully pressured the
Clinton administration to suspend the application of such sanctions. Soon after
President Clinton signed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) into law, his
administration reached a formal agreement with the EU not to enforce it against
European companies. Over the next decade, much to Congress's frustration,
neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration determined that a single EU firm
violated ILSA, claiming they had to investigate further on matters openly
proclaimed by the companies involved. Despite increasingly tough congressional
requirements about reporting on the progress of those investigations, including
provisions adopted 100-0 by the Senate, both administrations simply stalled.
Today, the Europeans are likely to pursue a similar approach, so the outcome
will rest on the Obama administration's response. If the administration
maintains effective enforcement of its nuclear-related sanctions, along with
enforcement of the primary and secondary aspects of the nonnuclear sanctions
that will be unaffected by the Iran deal, European business leaders are
ultimately unlikely to value the Iranian market more than the U.S. market, and
much of the existing sanctions regime would stay in place.
In that scenario, the outcome would probably be murky -- the global sanctions
regime would be less effective than it is today but would still have significant
bite. It would collapse only if the United States failed to enforce its own
sanctions. Yet it is difficult to see a scenario in which the threat of war
would be substantially higher than it is today.
Is "murky" really the best outcome?
No -- and it isn't necessarily the most likely. There is no reason why a
successful vote of disapproval has to end the internal U.S. debate over the Iran
deal. There are numerous ways in which the president could improve the deal --
either directly by reopening negotiations with the other parties, or indirectly
through unilateral or multilateral action with U.S. allies. (For details, see
the extended list of suggestions proposed by members of The Washington
Institute's Iran Study Group.) At any point, the president could return to
Congress, work out a new formula for review, and seek congressional approval.
There is considerable incentive for the president to complete this process
before Iran fulfills its core requirements under the deal. Should that happen,
the United States would be on schedule to waive its sanctions, as called for
under the agreement, at the same time as the EU and UN terminate theirs.
Could members of Congress condition a "yes" vote on changes in U.S. policy?
Should the administration fear that it may lose an override vote, it may try to
turn some nays to yeas with offers to improve the agreement. Its antipathy to
reopening the deal to renegotiation means these improvements would likely take
the form of either unilateral U.S. policy moves (e.g., declarations of U.S.
commitment to use "all necessary means" to prevent Iran's accumulation of
high-enriched uranium after limitations on enrichment are lifted fifteen years
into the agreement) or U.S.-European coordination on Iran (e.g., defining a
matrix of agreed penalties for Iranian infractions of the agreement now so as to
limit the potential for allied tensions on the reimposition of sanctions later).
Such changes could improve the agreement in many ways.
Most important, the administration could articulate and implement a strategy for
deterring the aggressive Iranian behavior that so disturbs Washington's Middle
East allies and creates the impression that the United States is retreating from
the region. Concrete actions to check Iran would have much greater impact than
any declaratory statements, since this administration -- justly or not -- faces
a serious credibility deficit in the eyes of its critics at home and in the
region.
Yet the Nuclear Review Act itself does not accommodate "conditional yes" votes,
only approval or disapproval. Barring new legislation, then, conditionality
would be a matter of trust between the administration and Congress.
Does the president have other options?
If Congress disapproved the deal and overrode the president's veto, he could
still try to circumvent the legislature. For example, he could reject the
disapproval as an unwarranted intrusion into executive authority, proceed with
the sanctions waiver, and wait for Congress to bring the question to the Supreme
Court. Alternatively, as cited earlier, he could waive sanctions in effect if
not in name by invoking his discretion about how much effort to devote to
enforcing them.
How does the UN Security Council resolution endorsing the deal change the
situation?
This too is murky. The administration's decision to seek Security Council
endorsement before Congress completed its review did not violate the letter of
the Nuclear Review Act because Resolution 2231 does not come into effect until
after the congressional review period concludes. However, there is a strong
argument -- made by both Democrats and Republicans -- that it violated the
spirit of the legislation. In any case, a vote of disapproval by Congress would
neither negate UNSCR 2231 nor compel the president to rescind his support for
the resolution. Again, the only operative aspect of congressional disapproval
would be to restrict the president's authority to waive unilateral
nuclear-related sanctions.
If the United States does not waive those sanctions once the IAEA certifies
Iran's completion of its core requirements, the agreement does not automatically
collapse. The agreement contains its own mechanism to adjudicate violations --
the eight-member Joint Commission -- and Iran would likely bring the United
States before that body to press its case. This, however, would be a political
dispute, not a technical matter. At that point, all of the parties would have to
weigh their interests -- are they better off or worse off sticking to the
agreement? There are simply too many variables at play to make a definitive
judgment on what happens next. War, however, is a low probability.
So what's the bottom line?
A vote of disapproval is both more and less than meets the eye. It is, on the
one hand, the only way the American system allows for elected representatives to
express opposition to the agreement and compel the administration to take those
views into account. On the other hand, it would not kill the Iran deal unless
the other parties to the agreement wanted it dead.
While a vote of disapproval would restrict the president's authority to fulfill
one U.S. obligation under the accord -- waiving sanctions -- this most likely
would not become a live issue until early-to-mid-2016. Until then, much could
happen to change the situation, ranging from improvements in the deal that merit
subsequent congressional support to new revelations of secret Iranian nuclear
activity that would validate congressional skepticism.
In other words, a vote of disapproval would not necessarily be a "deal breaker."
In fact, under certain circumstances it could pave the way for an improved
agreement that more effectively achieves U.S. goals than the current one.
**Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute.
Iran's media posts names of US Generals who
supports the "deal"
US generals, admirals sign letter in support of Iran agreement
Press TV/Tue Aug 11, 2015 1
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/08/11/424329/us-iran-army-jcpoa-nuclear-congress-obama
General James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is
one of the signatories of the letter to back Iran agreement.
The United States retired generals and admirals have signed a letter to back a
nuclear agreement between Iran and the global powers.
The retired brass said there existed “no better option” than the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached between Tehran and P5+1 and backed
by the UN Security Council in July, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The letter was the latest expression of support to the administration of
President Barack Obama, engaged in nuclear negotiations with the Islamic
Republic, amid opposition by the Republican-weighted Congress in the backdrop of
a row between US dominant parties.
“And if the deal is rejected by America, the Iranians could have a nuclear
weapon within a year. The choice is that stark,” read the letter.
Iran has time and again said that it pursues solely civilian purposes in its
nuclear energy program.
The letter was signed by senior generals and flag officers, including four-star
Marine Gens. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and Joseph P. Hoar, former head of the US Central Command; and Gens.
Merrill McPeak and Lloyd W. Newton of the US Air Force.
Last weekend, 29 leading American scientists wrote a letter to Obama, calling
the agreement, reached in Vienna on July 14, “technically sound” and
“innovative.”
JCPOA will “provide the necessary assurance in the coming decade and more that
Iran is not developing nuclear weapons,” it read, adding, the historic agreement
“will advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East and can serve
as a guidepost for future non-proliferation agreements.”
The Obama administration has to retain enough Democratic votes in support of the
agreement as pro-Israelis are busy campaigning against final approval of any
accord with Tehran by the Congress.
The "Iran Deal" is funding a Khomeinist version of a Third
Reich, says European NGOs...
After nuke deal, European companies rush into Iran to sell tools of oppression
By Benjamin Weinthal/Published August 11, 2015/FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/08/11/after-nuke-deal-european-companies-rush-into-iran-to-sell-tools-oppression/?intcmp=hpbt2
The lifting of international sanctions on Iran has triggered a stampede of
European companies beating a path to Tehran to secure contracts, but some of the
equipment being offered has dark, dual purposes in the hands of the Islamic
Republic’s oppressive government.
The cranes made by Austrian manufacturer Palfinger could be used to transform
Tehran’s skyline, but also have played a starring role in Iran’s infamous public
executions, where convicted criminals are often hanged from the giant booms high
above public squares. German company Herrenknecht, whose senior officials
visited the Iranian capital last month, makes industrial drilling rigs critics
say could be used to nestle nuclear facilities deep inside mountains. Other
companies lining up to do business with the mullahs make equipment that also
could be used against Iran’s enemies – or its populace.
“It reminds me of the economy and the industry of the Third Reich,” said Ariel
Muzicant, vice president of Europe’s Jewish Congress.
“I am glad to help you with my tunnel boring machines.”
- Martin Herrenknecht, founder of German company, to Iranian mayor
Palfinger gained widespread notoriety after one of its cranes, identifiable by
the company name and logo, was shown in a widely-distributed photo by
award-winning photographer Ebrahim Noroozi hoisting the lifeless body of a
condemned man. The graphic picture, coupled with company CEO Herbert Ortner’s
remark to the Austria Press Agency that Iran is a “promising market,” with
strong demand for cranes and no domestic competition, generated debate in
Europe.
”Palfinger is one example, which clearly shows, that Austrian companies do not
care at all about the disastrous human rights situation when it comes to doing
business in Iran,” Stefan Schaden, spokesman for the Vienna-based activist group
Stop the Bomb, told FoxNews.com. “In fact they support the regime and its
inhuman policies as long as it serves their profit interests.”
Stop the Bomb, an organization devoted to preventing an Iranian nuclear program
and improving human rights in its Islamic Sharia law controlled-society,
launched a campaign to bar Palfinger from re-entering the market.
Palfinger spokesman Hannes Roither told FoxNews.com that despite Ortner’s
comment, the company is not seeking to do business in Iran. He said the crane in
the infamous picture was built 27 years ago in Iran under a since-canceled
licensing deal.
“We don’t have any plans to sell cranes in Iran,” Roither said, adding, “if the
human rights situation changes in Iran, there will be new considerations.”
Even if Palfinger has no interest in tapping the Iranian market, others
certainly do. Austrian President Heinz Fischer is slated to visit Iran next
month, with a delegation that will include foreign minister Sebastian Kurz,
economy minister Reinhold Mitterlehner,and the head of the Austrian chamber of
commerce, Christoph Leitl.
Martin Herrenknecht, founder of the German firm which boasts its “state
of-the-art deep drilling rigs drill down to a depth of 6,000 meters,” was in
Iran last month to generate business.
“I am glad to help you with my tunnel boring machines,” Herrenknecht told the
mayor of Isfahan, according to a German news report.
Heavy-earth moving equipment could be used by Iran for nefarious purposes, such
as Iran’s infamously hidden illegal nuclear site Fordow, buried deep inside a
mountain near the holy city of Qom.
But Iran’s misuse of European technology is not limited to heavy construction
machines. In 2008, the then-joint Finnish-Germany venture Nokia-Siemens sold
Iran’s regime sophisticated surveillance equipment. After Iranian protesters
flooded the streets in the 2009 “Green Revolution” to denounce the country’s
fraudulent presidential election, Iran’s regime used the monitoring technology
to disrupt Internet, Twitter and mobile communications among demonstrators.
In response to the Nokia-Siemens deal with Iran, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,
along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced in 2009 legislation to punish
foreign companies that sell high-tech goods to Iran by shutting them out of U.S
government contracts. Both senators oppose President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
Siemens was represented last month during a business delegation trip with
Germany’s economic minister and vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel in Tehran.
According to a Tuesday Persian-language report in Iran’s state-controlled Mehr
news, an Iranian information technology official announced a joint-project with
an unnamed “foreign company” to start phase two of a “targeted filtering”
program that is designed “towards [censoring] websites and networks that have
social harm.”
Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human
Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told FoxNews.com he welcomed the
“implications posed by sanctions relief and Iran’s economic reintegration into
the global financial system.”
However, he also warned that “the human rights situation in Iran is deeply
concerning and it is integral that all stakeholders, including investors and
businesses, work to avoid contributing to human rights harm in this difficult
context.”
Some European leaders and activists believe companies should self-impose a
boycott of deals with the hard line Tehran government.
“Germany should not sell security technology to dictatorships like Iran, Saudi
Arabia or Russia,” said Volker Beck, a Green Party leader from Germany. “And
goods should not be exported which can be used there for torture or the
implementation of the death penalty.”
From the view of Iranian dissidents, the revival of commercial deals with Iran’s
regime is a setback for democracy.
"Conducting business with the Iranian regime is a stab in the back of the
Iranian opposition,” said Hiwa Bahrami, who represents the Democratic Party of
Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in Austria and Germany. “The terror against the Iranian
population will not decrease, but increase.”
He noted that hopes the 2013 election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani would
usher in a more moderate era than that of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
have gone unrealized, as executions have soared in the last two years.
Still, European business and political delegations continue to flock to Iran.
Last week, Italy’s foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni was in Tehran on Wednesday.
He sai
“In addition to political co-operation, our two countries can work together in
the fields of trade, commerce and economy," Italian Foreign Minister Paolo
Gentiloni said last week while in Tehran, where he announced that Italy provided
Iran a $3 billion line of credit.
An Iranian regime spokesman, Mohammad-Bagher Nobakht, said a result of French
foreign minister Laurent Fabius’ recent visit could lead to France selling
French-made Mirage warplanes to Iran. A French business delegation of nearly 100
French company executives will visit Tehran next month.
After robust sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2011-2012, trade plummeted to
under $10 billion. Given the European gold rush into Iran, bi-lateral trade
between Europe and Iran could rapidly reach levels approaching $30 billion,
according to analysts.
Benjamin Weinthal reports on the Middle East and is a fellow at the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter@BenWeinthal
Benjamin Weinthal reports on human rights in the Middle East and is a fellow at
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @BenWeinthal
The Saudi-UAE War Effort in Yemen
(Part 2): The Air Campaign
Michael Knights and Alexandre Mello/August 11, 2015
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-saudi-uae-war-effort-in-yemen-part-2-the-air-campaign
Saudi-led air operations in Yemen have badly lost their
way, neither achieving their objectives nor respecting international norms.
Part 1 of this PolicyWatch discussed the recapture of Aden, highlighting a key
success of the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition against Houthi rebels and armed
supporters of former president Ali Saleh. Yet other aspects of the coalition
effort have been far less satisfactory, particularly the level of collateral
damage being inflicted by the air campaign. If steps are not taken to correct
these flaws, many more civilians might be killed, and the Houthis and their
patron Iran could reap considerable propaganda benefits.
OPERATION DECISIVE STORM
Saudi-led air operations against the Houthis began after Yemeni president Abdu
Rabu Mansour Hadi's March 24 request for military intervention "based on the
principle of self-defense in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations,"
as well as "the Charter of the Arab League and the treaty of joint Arab defense."
On March 26, the air forces of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan,
Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar launched Operation Decisive Storm. Since then, around
170 strike aircraft have participated in the campaign, including 100 from Saudi
Arabia (mostly F-15S and Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft), 30 from the UAE (F-16s
and Mirage 2000s), and several F-16s from Bahrain (15), Jordan (6), and Morocco
(6).
This first phase of the operation lasted twenty-nine days and saw coalition air
forces work their way through military, political, and infrastructure targets
with little apparent connection to an overall war strategy. Air bases and air
defense complexes were prioritized to gain air supremacy and freedom to
undertake aerial refueling and reconnaissance missions in or near Yemeni
airspace. The country's fleet of long-range surface-to-surface missile (SSM)
systems were targeted at their bases and known launch sites. Efforts were also
made to isolate Houthi-controlled areas from Iranian resupply by disabling
airports and Red Sea ports such as Hodeida and Mokha. Other strikes focused on
Houthi troop concentrations and leadership locations in the north, close air
support along the Saudi-Yemeni border, and Houthi-aligned military camps and
arms depots.
By early April, the coalition was trying (and largely failing) to stem the
southward flow of Houthi forces by hitting roads, bridges, and gas stations.
Fixed targets of real military value were largely exhausted, with new attacks
either restriking known targets or hitting suspected gathering places for Houthi
and pro-Saleh forces. On April 22, coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri
announced the end of Operation Decisive Storm, stating that it "had completed
its objectives in Yemen by destroying the ballistic missile capabilities of the
Houthi movement and Houthi-allied military units."
FOLLOW-ON AIR OPERATIONS
Despite that pronouncement, the coalition never really ceased air operations.
Instead, the campaign escalated and became more brutal from late April onward,
becoming a tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation. Aside from border clashes and
restrikes on military camps, many of which appeared to be empty, three new
themes have become dominant in air targeting:
Coercive strikes. The coalition has struck a range of Saleh-associated
leadership and military locations in an effort to pressure the former
president's Afaash clan to detach from the Houthis -- a strategy that may be
registering partial success. Military bases have often been struck immediately
after their personnel defected to the Houthis; for instance, on July 7, al-Abr
Base was struck and thirty soldiers from the army's 23rd Brigade were killed as
soon as they declared for the Houthis.
Retaliatory operations. One of the more problematic aspects of the air campaign
has been apparent targeting of civilian areas and infrastructure in Saada, the
Houthi home province. This accelerated in tandem with Houthi attacks on border
forts in Saudi Arabia's Jizan and Najran provinces from early May onward. On May
7, the coalition began warning Saada residents by leaflet to leave the area. By
May 17, UN satellite analysis indicated that a total of 1,171 structures in
Saada city had been damaged or destroyed by airstrikes (for more on the civilian
toll, see the next section). The Houthis have matched the coalition blow for
blow: their long-range rocket artillery strikes and cross-border raids into
Saudi Arabia have grown more powerful since late May, utilizing BM-21 and BM-27
multiple rocket launchers and advanced Iranian-supplied antitank systems such as
the Metis-M, Kornet-E, and RPG-29.
Scud hunting. The initial phase of Operation Decisive Storm clearly did not
eliminate all Yemeni SSMs. On June 6, at least one Scud C variant (a
North-Korean Hwasong-6 delivered to Yemen in 2002) was fired at the Saudi
military city in Khamis Mushait. Yemen originally had twenty-five Hwasong-6s and
many shorter-range FROG rockets; in all, anywhere from four to twenty of these
SSMs have been fired into the kingdom. The Hwasong-6 can reach up to 500
kilometers inside Saudi territory and carry a 770 kg high-explosive warhead; it
can also be made mobile via transporter erector launchers (TELs). As the
U.S.-led coalition learned in 1991 during its famous Scud hunt in Iraq, mobile
TELs are very difficult to find. No Yemeni SSMs have been confirmed destroyed
prior to launch; coalition airstrikes have only hit fixed sites associated with
these missiles.
HEAVY COLLATERAL DAMAGE
To Western eyes accustomed to modern air campaigns aimed at minimizing civilian
deaths, the level of collateral damage in the Yemen campaign is staggering. To
date, collated figures from daily press reporting suggest that between 4,200 and
5,500 civilians have been killed by air attacks. And the tallies from generally
reputable observers such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the
UN suggest an average of forty civilian deaths per day, or around 4,000 total
since late April. The highest reported death toll in a single day was 176 on
July 6.
Although the coalition has used a large number of precision-guided munitions, a
May 3 Human Rights Watch report indicated that it is also using unguided bombs
and cluster munitions, even within urban areas. Similarly, Amnesty International
has documented the use of 2,000-pound bombs in dense urban areas to strike the
unoccupied houses of senior Saleh clan members, causing untold civilian deaths.
Other targeting choices have drawn criticism as well. According to Human Rights
Watch, sixty-five civilians were killed at worker housing near the Mokha Steam
Power Plant on July 24, when a coalition airstrike hit the Red Sea port town
with no apparent military rationale -- the monitoring group claimed that no
armed forces were present at the plant nor even at an abandoned air defense site
800 meters away. In addition, mounting evidence appears to show that power
stations and factories have been deliberately targeted to degrade civilian
living standards in Houthi areas.
Yemen's cultural heritage is also under fire as coalition air forces strike at
military and civilian targets near historic locations. UNESCO World Heritage
sites such as the Old City of Zabid, al-Qahira Castle, and historic central
Saada have been hit repeatedly, as have the old quarters of Sana, al-Mukalla,
and Taizz. Elsewhere, the National Museum in Dhamar and the Yemen Heritage
Centre in Aden have been destroyed, along with large numbers of artifacts from
the region.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
The coalition air campaign is a disturbing throwback to the types of operations
many countries undertook before the more precision-oriented 1991 Gulf War. Some
targeting choices are legitimate efforts at coercion, such as striking pro-Houthi
units and the property of Saleh-aligned leaders. Yet collective punishment of
civilians also seems to be a conscious focus of the campaign, especially in
retaliatory operations following cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia. The
lethal targeting of civilians may not be intentional, but it is the inevitable
result of using excessively large munitions or indiscriminate weapons in
populated areas. The coalition apparently cannot find the critical targets that
actually need to be hit -- enemy leaders, missiles, troop convoys, and mobile
artillery systems. As a result, the air campaign spends a lot of time hitting
what it can find, not finding what it needs to hit.
The United States has been through these issues in its own air operations over
the past few years, moving toward more refined targeting and collateral damage
mitigation processes. As the closest partner of the coalition air forces
operating over Yemen, the U.S. Air Force should give some tough advice to the
campaign planners: namely, that the air war is making the coalition look like
the bad guys, giving the Houthis and Tehran a propaganda coup and threatening to
besmirch any positive precedent that defeating Iranian-backed forces would
generate.
Moreover, the "strategic air campaign" against Saada needs to be much more
selective, tied to overall war aims rather than tit-for-tat retaliation. Saudi
Arabia may not be able to deter the Houthis by establishing escalation dominance
via strikes on their home province; it may instead need assistance with
counter-infiltration, counter-artillery, and counter-SSM strikes near the
border. The United States might also be able to help pro-government Yemeni
forces use airstrikes to push elements of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
out of bases they have seized. More broadly, Washington can help the coalition
cope with the demanding next phase of the air campaign: providing discriminate,
effective air support to mobile offensive columns of Yemeni and UAE forces as
they push north.
To be sure, the United States hardly has realtime airstrike adjudicators or
surveillance assets to spare -- both are in high demand in Iraq, Syria, and
Afghanistan. Yet the U.S. Air Force and intelligence community might have
U.S.-based target system analysts who could help redesign the joint integrated
prioritized target list for the Yemen air war and influence target and weapon
selection to minimize collateral damage. Washington will receive at least some
of the blame for whatever the Saudi-led coalition does in this war, so the
Pentagon may as well be involved in shaping the outcome.
**Michael Knights is a Lafer Fellow with The Washington Institute. Alexandre
Mello is lead security analyst at energy advisory service Horizon Client Access.
Will Britain Pass the Choudary Test?
Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/August 12, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6324/anjem-choudary-extremism
The long-term consequences of allowing Choudary to be free constitute a terrible
mistake: the main impact of Choudary on the wider public has been colossally to
exacerbate suspicions of Muslims as a whole.
Broadcasters have for years introduced him as a "sheikh" or a "cleric," without
often casting doubt on his qualifications to such titles, or noting the
comparative paucity of his following.
It is perfectly possible that Anjem Choudary will slip between the UK's
terrorism laws once again. Or perhaps now it is he that has slipped up, and the
most visible chink in the UK's counter-extremism policy has finally resolved
itself.
If there was a single flaw in the British Prime Minister's recent speech on
countering extremism in the UK, it might be encapsulated in the name "Anjem
Choudary." His speech went into terrific detail on the significance of tacking
radicalism through the education system, the Charity Commission, the
broadcasting license authority and numerous other means. But it failed the
Choudary test.
That test is: What do you do about a British-born man who is qualified to work
but appears never to have done so, and who instead spends his time taking his
"dole" money and using it to fund a lifestyle devoted solely to preaching
against the state?
The problem is not quite as straightforward as some commentators make out. The
fact that Choudary is British-born and a British citizen makes it legally
impossible for Britain to withdraw his citizenship or otherwise render him
"stateless." He has a young family who cannot be allowed to starve on the
streets, even if he could. These are admittedly late liberalism problems, but
they are problems nonetheless.
On the other hand, what the state has allowed from Choudary in recent years
looks more like a late Weimar problem. Choudary is not merely a blowhard
pseudo-cleric with perhaps never more than a hundred followers at any one time
-- although this is certainly the part of his persona that has garnered most
attention. Indeed, his attention-seeking is perhaps the only first-rate skill he
has. For instance, there was the time he claimed he was planning a "March for
Sharia" through the centre of London, culminating at the gates of Buckingham
Palace with a demand that the Queen submit to Islam. Having garnered the
publicity he desired, Choudary cancelled his march not because there was a
fairly measly counter-demo (of which this author was a part) but because his
"March for Sharia" would have been unlikely to gather more than a few dozen
attendees, and would most likely have descended into a "stroll inviting
ridicule," at best.
The reason Choudary is more than just an attention-seeker is that over many
years he has been involved with innumerable people who have shown themselves to
be more than blowhards. They have attempted to bring serious sectarian conflict
-- as well as murder -- to the streets of Britain. A number of Choudary's
associates, for instance, were imprisoned a few years back for attempting a
Mumbai-style attack on London landmarks, including the London Stock Exchange.
Other of his associates have been to prison for incitement and countless
terrorist-recruitment offenses; and since the beginning of the Syrian civil war,
a number of his followers have gone to Syria and Iraq to join and fight with
ISIS.
Choudary himself is a trained lawyer and has a sufficiently adept mind to know
on just which side of the law to keep his remarks. The last Labour government's
creation of a new offense of "glorifying terror" ought to have caught Choudary
within it, but it appeared not to have done. He has remained a frustratingly
free man.
That said, there are other possible explanations for this. One theory -- not
beyond the realm of possibility -- is that Choudary has been, to some extent
(knowingly or unknowingly), used as a "fly-trap" by the police or intelligence
services. He is well known enough to have anyone seriously interested in the
most radical forms of Islamic extremism come to him. And despite the paranoia of
his group, thinking that they are being infiltrated (described not least by the
former radical Morten Storm in his excellent memoir, "Agent Storm"), it is
possible that this is what has been going on all along. It would mean that there
was some agreement to allow Choudary to get away with what he does because it is
better for such extremism to have an observable and open meeting-point than to
be more clandestine.
There are certainly many defences of such a policy -- if such a policy there has
been. In the short term, it might have stopped several significant attacks. But
the long-term consequences of allowing Choudary to be free constitute a terrible
mistake: the main impact of Choudary on the wider public has been colossally to
exacerbate suspicions of Muslims as a whole. Broadcasters have for years
introduced him as a "sheikh" or a "cleric," without often casting doubt on his
qualifications to such titles, or noting the comparative paucity of his
following. The police failure to stop one Choudary demonstration in particular
(and indeed to protect his followers) also led to the creation of the English
Defence League -- an extraordinary negative double-whammy for one person to
achieve.
But last week Anjem Choudary was arrested, detained and charged with terror
offenses relating to attempts to persuade Muslims in Britain to join ISIS; he
now finally faces trial. So far, there has been a muted response in the British
media. Part of that is the simple and rightful caution due to reporting
restrictions of an upcoming trial. But part of it may also be an "I'll believe
it when I see it" cynicism. It is worth recalling that just last year Choudary
was arrested and detained for terror offenses, only to walk free before the
bunting was even half up. There are unlikely to be any premature celebrations
this time. Perhaps reporters and commentators also have in mind the murky
dropping of all terrorism charges before the opening of the trial of former
Guantanamo inmate Moazzem Begg last autumn.
It is perfectly possible that Anjem Choudary will slip between the UK's
terrorism laws once again. Or perhaps now it is he that has slipped up, and the
most visible chink in the UK's counter-extremism policy has finally resolved
itself.
How Elections Messed Up Turkey's Plans
Burak Bekdil/Gateston Institute/August 12, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6332/turkey-interim-government
The AKP is going through difficult times. It has been politically weakened, and
there are no credible indications that it may comfortably win a majority to form
a government in a repeat election any time soon.
Turkey, over the past two months or so, has been run by an interim government.
The Turkish voters' decision to deprive the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) of its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 has not only
altered the center of power in Turkish politics, it has also has forced the AKP
into a compromised foreign policy.
The AKP's leadership, in theory, is in coalition negotiations with the main
opposition. A historic deal is not altogether impossible, but unlikely. In his
unconstitutional campaign before the June 7 parliamentary elections, the AKP's
unofficial boss, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asked for "400 deputies" who
would amend the constitution to introduce an executive presidential system for
him. He did not specify for which party he wanted 400 seats in parliament, but
everyone knew he explicitly supported the AKP, which he had founded in 2001.
(According to the Turkish constitution, the head of government is the prime
minister, not the president. The president has symbolic duties in addition to
his powers to appoint high-ranking officials. He must remain non-partisan.)
Instead, Turks gave the AKP 258 seats -- not enough even to form a single-party
government, let alone to amend the constitution. Knowing that he has nothing to
lose, Erdogan wants repeat elections in autumn.
The prospect of another possibly inconclusive election in the autumn, and two
months of interim governance, has been sufficient to prune the AKP's assertive
foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.
Boo hoo: Poor results in the June 7 elections have forced Turkey's Islamist AKP
party into a compromised foreign policy. Pictured: Turkey's President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan (left) and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
After several months of reluctance, Turkey eventually agreed to join a Western
coalition, led by the U.S., which fights the radical Islamic State (IS), which
controls large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, both neighboring Turkey. For
the first time since the jihadist group's emergence in the Levant, Turkey bombed
its strongholds in July and agreed to allow the U.S. military to use the
critical Incirlik air base in southern Turkey for strikes against IS. The U.S.
has already used the base for strikes with its armed drones, and six U.S. F-16
fighters have been stationed at the Turkish base for further strikes that were
expected to start this week.
There are other signs that a weakened AKP may be good news for every other
nation in the Middle East. After several years of a cold-to-less-cold war with
Israel, the Turks are now keeping back-channels open for a possible
normalization of diplomatic relations, which Ankara downgraded in 2010 in the
aftermath of the Mavi Marmara crisis. On May 31, the Israeli naval commandos
boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara off the Gazan coast, killing nine
pro-Palestinian activists aboard. The ship was leading a flotilla, bound for the
Gaza coast in order to break the Israeli naval blockade. A U.N. report later
found Israel's blockade legal.
Apparently encouraged by the AKP government, the relatives of those killed on
the Mavi Marmara launched a criminal case against four high-ranking Israeli
officers, whom they accused of planning and carrying out the raid on the Mavi
Marmara. On May 26, 2014, a criminal court in Istanbul issued arrest warrants
for the Israeli officers. It was clearly a government-orchestrated move to
squeeze Israel internationally. But surprisingly, at a court hearing on August
3, 2015, Turks watched the relatives of the victims protesting against the AKP.
They accused the government of blocking, "deliberately or not" the arrest
warrants from being forwarded to Interpol. They even filed an official complaint
against the Turkish foreign and justice ministries for negligence of duty by not
having forwarded the warrants to Interpol. Apparently, Ankara does not want to
make a move that would kill any potential rapprochement with Jerusalem.
This author's prediction here after the June 7 elections was:
"... When more than 55 million Turks voted on June 7, they did not only vote to
deprive President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the worse-than-Putinesque powers he
had long been campaigning for; they also said a democratic "No" to his Islamist
foreign policy ambitions ... A weakened Erdogan, [Prime Minister Ahmet]
Davutoglu & Co. is bad news for the jihadists fighting Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad's regime. It is bad news for Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their
ideological next of kin in neighboring countries. It is, generally speaking, bad
news for political Islam and its followers. It is bad news, also, for Hamas."
Yes, Hamas... there are now [unconfirmed] press reports that the weakened AKP
may be forced to turn on its Hamas brothers in a diplomatic way. Israeli press
has claimed that the Turkish government has ordered Salah Aruri, a top Hamas
official it had been hosting, to leave the country. Israel accuses Aruri of
organizing terror attacks in the West Bank. He was released from an Israeli
prison and was reportedly in charge of rebuilding the Hamas infrastructure in
the West Bank. In recent years he was in "exile" in the friendly arms of the AKP
government.
The AKP is going through difficult times. It has been politically weakened, and
there are no credible indications that it would comfortably win a majority to
form a government in repeat elections any time soon. The AKP is fighting an
existential war in domestic politics, and a parallel fight to rebuild the Middle
East along the lines of a Sunni Turkish leadership would be both a luxury and
distraction.
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily
and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Why Canada's Left Has Lost My Vote
Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/August 12, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5435/canada-left
Originally published under the title, "Why Mulcair Has Lost My Vote."
New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Thomas Mulcair says the war against ISIS "is
not our fight."
The Western world's flaccid response to threats posed by the forces of Islamism
is best described by the British author Theodore Dalrymple in his book, The New
Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.
Referring to the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005-2006, Dalrymple writes, we
are "virtually giving in to demands that certain important subjects (like
Islamism) henceforth be placed, de facto, off limits for discussion." Dalrymple
writes it was obvious that for the West, "the quiet life was clearly preferred
to the costs of securing a free one; if only we appeased enough, there would be
peace in our time."
This political cowardice within the Left, camouflaged in a burka of anti-war
rhetoric, is visible right here in Canada as well. Both New Democratic Party (NDP)
Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau have demonstrated the
symptoms of appeasement
In an interview with Maclean's, Mulcair recently criticized Canada's role in the
coalition now fighting Islamic State (ISIS), claiming, "This is not our fight."
Political cowardice within the Canadian Left is camouflaged in a burka of
anti-war rhetoric.
That may be true for Mulcair, but other Canadians have a more global view of our
tiny planet. We feel for the families of bloggers beheaded in Bangladesh and the
Kurds slaughtered in Kobani. Imagine telling the parents of the girls kidnapped
by Nigeria's Boko Haram jihadis that their fight "is not our fight."
For someone like myself who has been on the Left all my life, spent time in
prison as a socialist, fought for gay rights in hostile Islamic communities, and
who lives under death threats, Mulcair's words were a betrayal.
At one time, internationalism was the hallmark of democratic socialists. Today,
many on the Left have become Sharia Bolsheviks.
It wasn't just Mulcair's Maclean's remark that was offensive to many of us who
have suffered the indignities of Islamism.
During the leaders' debate, the NDP leader quipped, "(W)e know that a lot of the
horrors that we are seeing are the direct result of the last misguided war (U.S
invasion of Iraq)."
Mulcair thinks it is America's fault that ISIS beheads fellow Muslims, pushes
homosexuals off roofs, and enslaves women.
I was stunned. Here was a man vying to be Prime Minister of Canada reading a
script whose logic could have been taken straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood
hymnbook. In effect, Mulcair was saying it was the fault of America that ISIS
was beheading fellow Muslims, pushing homosexuals off the roofs of buildings and
making sex slaves out of captured, non-Muslim female prisoners.
Nonsense. Jihadis have been doing this since the dawn of Islam.
I doubt that Mulcair knows the recent bloodbath by ISIS in an Iraqi city was not
the first such action by jihadis. On April 21, 1802, 200 years before the United
States invaded Iraq, jihadis from the first Saudi state ravaged the Iraqi city
of Karbala, killing 5,000 fellow Muslims, plundering the city and destroying the
1,000-year-old tomb of the grandson of Prophet Mohammed.
As for that other man seeking to replace Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Justin
Trudeau's positions on Canada's and the West's national security reflect his
fear of offending Islamofacists.
When CBC's Terry Milewski asked Trudeau, "If you don't want to bomb a group as
ghastly as ISIS, when would you ever support real military action?" Trudeau's
response was shocking. "That's a nonsensical question," he retorted.
In 1988, I put up my federal NDP sign, "This time it's Ed" on my front lawn and
voted for Ed Broadbent and his party.
This time, I will not vote NDP.
**Tarek Fatah, a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum,
is a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a columnist at the Toronto Sun,
and the author of the award-winning books Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion
of an Islamic State and The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel
Muslim Anti-Semitism.