On the Need to Recognize Islam as the New Cold War

Below are excerpts from a long article by Hugh Fitzgerald that appeared on the JihadWatch site. The entire post is here and well worth a read.

Fitzgerald: Jihadology: Unremarkable, and remarkable

The other day I was asked by an email correspondent to comment on a recent piece by David C. Engerman that appeared in "Foreign Policy." Engerman's piece is both unremarkable and remarkable at the same time. It may be called "unremarkable" though the word seems somehow churlish when used about it, because - as we shall see - the piece is also, in these great times, even more "remarkable" than it is "unremarkable."

But we can begin by noting that, looked at in one way, it is "unremarkable" because its gist is simple and, one might think, obvious: that the American government should do today, with the threat it currently is attempting to deal with, just as it did during the Cold War. And what did Americans do in the Cold War, daddy?, you may well ask. The answer is: just about everything. But in order to have the ability, and will, to do just about everything, the American government, which had treated Soviet Russia as an ally during World War II, had to put away that temporary (and justified) alliance, and begin to get a more reasonable idea of what the Soviet Union was all about. Two decades of warnings from Russian émigrés had done little. The Comintern had been most effective in blunting Western opposition, and then along came Mr. Hitler with his crazed invasion of the Soviet Union, his greatest error of tactics and timing, and the Soviet Union was, in the American view, off to the races as our ally.

But then came the peace, or the haggling over what the post-war settlement would look like. Franklin Roosevelt was not quite as suspicious as Churchill of the Soviets, and unfortunately it required acts of obvious aggression - the Red Army entering, and not leaving, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe - for the Americans to finally get the point. But once they got the point, there was no further wavering on this side of the Atlantic, among those who were in the government, being our leaders and not merely "taking a leadership role." During the 1930s there had been a series of defectors from the Soviet Union, given little attention, but after World War II new defectors, some even from the KGB, appeared in the West, and they were joined by large numbers of people who had, in the turmoil of the war and post-war periods, managed to escape from the new satellite nations or, in some cases, from the Soviet Union itself. And some of these people had even fled Europe just before the war, one step ahead of the Nazis and, as it turned out, two steps ahead of the Communists who would follow the Nazis. Such names as Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam, Czeslaw Milosz, Leopold Labedz, come to mind.

[...]


It's quite a story, and no doubt Engerman, who has written that history of that story, was struck by the contrast between what the Americans did then, and what they are so singularly failing to do now: to make use of similar refugees from the world of Islam, including those who, while not Muslim, have a native command of the relevant languages - Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and so on. These should be supplemented by the subsidized creation of a homegrown cadre of experts on Islam who, being well-prepared in the ideology of Islam, will be immune to personal charms radiating from individual Muslims (think of the effect of Ahmad Chalabi on various members of the Bush Administration).

Europe realized that it had to learn a good deal about Communism, and Russia, and the way the Soviet system worked. And so it did. For once the Soviet Union, and smiling Joseph Stalin, our World War II ally, had their measure taken. The government remained steadfast in its correct understanding that the Soviet Union was a mortal enemy of the West, that it would try, through every means at its disposal, to undermine the position of the West, not least through a worldwide propaganda effort, in which "Peace Festivals" and "Youth Congresses" would play their part, and Soviet agents would find many, especially in the Communist parties of the West, who would act as apologists and agents for the Soviet Union and its polices, foreign and domestic.

And thus, says Engerman, just as the history of Communism in theory and practice, and Russian history and literature and culture, and Soviet-Area studies (including all the member-republics back in the USSR), including relevant languages, were all subsidized and promoted by the American government. For all of them constituted aspects of the problem.

[...]

Engerman suggests that now the American government should go and do likewise, that is, imitate its former self. He suggests that this new field be called "Jihadology," a term that I think many will find so rebarbative, and comical, that they won't want to use it. And there really is no need to use it, for we can talk about "study of Jihad" or, if we are truly daring, create "experts on the ideology of Islam" or "experts on the doctrine of Islam" and other - or sometimes the same - "experts on the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslim peoples." Might such people not be called, simply, "students of Islam"? Apparently that will not do for some. Perhaps the proffered term "Jihadology" will at least focus attention on the word - on the duty - of Jihad, and that would be a good thing.

[...]

The word-wars can be fought later. But those who come to JW know just how obvious, how "unremarkable," Engerman's suggestion is. Think of how many dozens of times, at this website, the point has been made that unless Islam is studied, unless the texts of Islam - Qur'an, Hadith, Sira - are read and understood, unless the attitudes that arise naturally from the tenets of Islam, and the atmospherics of societies suffused with Islam analyzed, the flailing about, the endless gullibility in dealings with Muslims will continue. See those who rule Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, and how they intend to extract even more tens of billions from the Americans. We shall continue to have the squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, that has been such a dismal feature of the response, so far, to all that has happened since the attacks of 9/11/2001, which ought to have merited a response with a lot less baby-huey tromping around, and a lot more thought and cunning, exploiting every pre-existing fissure within the Camp of Islam, and attempting to create the conditions that will force at least the most advanced Muslims to recognize all the ways in which the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of their own societies are a result of Islam itself.

[...]


Why is Engerman's plumping for the encouragement of a field he calls "Jihadology," then, "remarkable"?

Because it is an achievement to state the obvious these days: to note that there is no discernible American effort to analyze the ideology of the enemy - an ideology which we will demurely pretend is limited to just a few, those who believe in "Jihad" and whose view of the world can, therefore, be understood by those well-versed in "Jihadology." And it is all the more "remarkable" to do this not on the web, but in the pages of one of the mainstream foreign-policy journals. It is a sign that things are moving. The ice is melting. Those who have for so long remained impervious to the idea that they have a responsibility to study, and to encourage others to study, the ideology of Islam (for that is what "Jihadology" means, what it synecdochically stands for), are losing out. They are having to recognize, at long last, that every other explanation or excuse has been held out and found wanting -- such as those various "root causes" which were initially identified with poverty or joblessness or Western foreign policy, all in order to delay the day when those who presume to protect us would have to grapple with the texts and tenets of Islam, not only a religion but a Total Belief-System, and one with a hold on the minds of its most brainwashed adherents akin to that of totalitarian political doctrines, Communism or Nazism.

The appearance of Engerman's piece in such an establishment setting indicates that not everyone can remain impervious to the obvious forever, even among those heretofore so willfully insistent on refusing to look into the ideology of Islam. Could it be that the days of the banana-peel slip-and-sliding up and down those corridors of power at long last coming to an end?

Gaubatz: US Troops Would Die for America But Not For Obama

Frontpage has an interview (or here if the link won't work) conducted by Jamie Glazov with Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian federal agent to arrive in Iraq in 2003, which sheds light on the "flip-flopping" behavior of Obama with regard to intelligence gathering, interrogation methods and releasing photos of "torture". As many of us suspected, those in our armed forces have come to question not only Obama's policies but the motives behind them, and their disapproval has been expressed to him in no uncertain terms, albeit behind closed doors. As Gaubatz states:

President Obama has made too many alleged mistakes for his actions to be anything but intentional. Americans at some point need to understand that, even by his own admissions, he went to a church for 20 years led by a leftwing extremist, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he was friends with terrorist Bill Ayers, and bowed to a Saudi Arabian leader who condones under Sharia law the marriage of 8 year old children to adult men, and still in 2009 distributes literature advocating Muslims to kill Christians, Jews, and even Muslims who do not adhere to the strict adherence of Sharia law.

[...]

I do not believe President Obama has the best interest of our country, our citizens, or the thousands of military and intelligence officers as his primary goal. If I were taking all of Obama’s actions and putting them into an “intelligence report” the following conclusion could be made:

[1] President Obama does not have the best interest of our country, our citizens, or the thousands of military and intelligence officers as his primary goal.

[2] The release of the ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ could be seen as an intentional signal to Al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters, that if you are ever captured, you should not release any information about your fellow ‘brothers and sisters’ who are involved in ‘Jihad’ because the worst that can happen is you may have to undergo inconveniences, but nothing life threatening.

[3] President Obama and his supporters are indeed sending a message to potential enemy combatants that could be interpreted as such: stay the course, it may be long and difficult, but patience and perseverance will ultimately lead to your victory.

When asked by Glazov why President Obama reversed his position about releasing photographs of prisoners allegedly tortured by American personnel and why Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is lying about what she knew of interrogation methods prior to 2003, Gaubatz states that he believes

President Obama has been tactfully informed by U.S. military leaders that our brave troops on the ground are risking their lives everyday for America and are beginning to ask who their ‘Commander in Chief’ is and what ideology he truly supports. These troops have young sons and daughters at home, and although they are willing to give their lives for America, they are second guessing themselves about dying for a Commander in Chief who is aiding and providing comfort to our enemies.

What this indicates for the future is that Obama may now be aware that he will not be able to depend on the US military to carry out any orders of his which violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens. The Obamassiah has been put on notice. Gaubatz goes on to praise former VP Dick Cheney for speaking out:

Cheney is essentially saying Americans will not allow our country to be destroyed and there are millions of people to include our troops, LE, and our intelligence officers that will not allow it to happen. I could be wrong, but I do not believe so.

I have watched the ‘homemade’ videos made from Islamic terrorists when they beat our soldiers, had their snipers shoot them, and slowly cut their throats to enhance their suffering and subsequently beheaded them. My fellow Americans, this is torture. Don’t believe me; ask innocent Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan who have
witnessed this and worse.

Recently I put together a one hour long video of what ‘torture’ actually is. The video is from various Islamic Jihadist sites I have monitored for several years and will never be seen in the MSM. The DVD is titled, “Torture in the Name of Islam”. If readers truly want to see what torture is and what Islamic scholars operating in America advocate, then they should watch.

"But we must renounce torture to protect our own troops if they are captured" has been a catchphrase of those defending Obama's policies. As Gaubatz points out, it will do no such thing because they are already subject to torture if captured. It is difficult to recommend to anyone that they view footage of real torture and sadistic killings, but at this point it may be the only thing that will jolt some people out of their complacency.

There's lots more to this interview, and it is obvious that Teh One will have to revise his evaluation as to with whom the US military will stand should he attempt to deliver this country to the Islamists.

NIN Source States "The Game is Rigged" Against Israel

A "highly placed U.S. Intelligence official" wishing to remain anonymous warns of an "increasing probability of abandonment of Israel by the U.S. and other Western countries" based on "malicious intelligence", says Northeast Intelligence Network Director Douglas Hagmann in a report dated 12/31/08. The official confirmed that a larger extended ground operation is likely in Gaza, adding that as Israel exercises her right to protect herself from her enemies, she is in grave danger of losing the support of the United States.

“I have every reason to believe, based on what I’ve seen at my level of [security] clearance especially over the last several years, that Israel will soon be completely on their own… or worse.” 

When asked what could be worse than losing the support of the United States, he stated: “when our administration provides more support to Arab countries [with] financial and military aid, undercutting Israel’s defense efforts all while pushing Israel to succumb to the pressure of unreasonable demands designed to end with their political annihilation as a nation.”

According to this official, the U.S. has been slowly proceeding down this road. He cited the 2005 surrender of Gush Katif to the Palestinian Authority as one critical example of the slow dismantlement of Israel as a viable nation. “Despite critical intelligence outlining in every possible manner imaginable that this would be a disastrous move leading to the events we are seeing today, it was done anyway,” he stated.

“We are seeing the very scenario play out today that was outlined in intelligence briefs three and four years ago. Knowing that, there is something very wrong with this picture,” he stated.

He added that Western media is also playing a very big role in the current war in the Middle East, thanks, in part, to carefully worded statements prepared by political officials in Washington. Officials in the current administration, like some previous administrations, submit carefully crafted informational releases to a media that is controlled by those having special interests that are contrary to a legitimate peace in the Middle East.
“The game is rigged. At the highest levels of power in the U.S. and even by some in power in Israel, the game is rigged,” he emphasized.

Vetted intelligence reports twisted to fit the agenda of those in government whose special agenda is hostile to Israel, fed to the biased MSM which serves up this poison to an American public unaware that not only Israel's security but our own is being systematically undermined from within. Read the rest and try not to lose your lunch. Hagmann plans to post the remainder of this report in the near future.