Just wanted to piss off everyone!
====
===
The IRS is as corrupt an agency as exists among the federal bureaucracy and that is saying a lot because most of them are either failed institutions and/or corrupt.
Obama has lied time and again when it comes to how this agency operated. No scintilla of evidence is his operative fall back phrase while he stonewalls or instructs his surrogates to do so..
If Congress cannot rid itself of Koskinen then it will become one more blight on a Congress that has already lost the trust and respect of the American people. (See 2 below.)
===
Daniel Pipes, always thoughtful. (See 3 below.)
===
Obama and Kerry's defense of the Iran Deal can be likened to a person who allows gangrene to persist to the point that the doctor says he must amputate the toe.
The analogy is Obama took his foot (read sanctions) off Iran's economic neck and then said war was the only alternative to not signing the deal.
Had Obama continued with sanctions, and even tightened them further, as he could have, Iran's economy might have reached such a dire state that Iranians might have brought the regime down.
For whatever reason Obama chose to let Iran off the hook and now he argues that we have no choice but to accept the deal.
I suspect enough Demwits will support their president so the Iran Deal will stand notwithstanding the fact that the American people are opposed to it but then what matter does it make. We are governed by a king and who lies and contrives to have his way no matter what. (See 4 below.)
Whether the Iranian deal will increase Iran's support of terrorism.
The IRS is as corrupt an agency as exists among the federal bureaucracy and that is saying a lot because most of them are either failed institutions and/or corrupt.
Obama has lied time and again when it comes to how this agency operated. No scintilla of evidence is his operative fall back phrase while he stonewalls or instructs his surrogates to do so..
If Congress cannot rid itself of Koskinen then it will become one more blight on a Congress that has already lost the trust and respect of the American people. (See 2 below.)
===
Daniel Pipes, always thoughtful. (See 3 below.)
===
Obama and Kerry's defense of the Iran Deal can be likened to a person who allows gangrene to persist to the point that the doctor says he must amputate the toe.
The analogy is Obama took his foot (read sanctions) off Iran's economic neck and then said war was the only alternative to not signing the deal.
Had Obama continued with sanctions, and even tightened them further, as he could have, Iran's economy might have reached such a dire state that Iranians might have brought the regime down.
For whatever reason Obama chose to let Iran off the hook and now he argues that we have no choice but to accept the deal.
I suspect enough Demwits will support their president so the Iran Deal will stand notwithstanding the fact that the American people are opposed to it but then what matter does it make. We are governed by a king and who lies and contrives to have his way no matter what. (See 4 below.)
Whether the Iranian deal will increase Iran's support of terrorism.
How do you think he responded?
====.
Dick
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1) The Syria Sham and the Iran Deal
Syria cheated on its chemical commitments. Iran will cheat on its nuclear ones. Obama provides cover for both.
By Bret Stephens
Once upon a time Barack Obama chose multilateral diplomacy over military action for the sake of ridding a dangerous Middle Eastern regime of its weapons of mass destruction. The critics mocked and raged and muttered, but everything worked out well and now the only thing that’s missing is someone who will give the president credit.
Or so Mr. Obama would like you to believe.
“You’ll recall that that was the previous end of my presidency,” Mr. Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick of his September 2013 deal to get Syria’s Bashar Assad to hand over his WMD stockpile, “until it turned out that we are actually getting all the chemical weapons. And no one reports on that anymore.”
Nor were these the only hosannas the president and his advisers sang to themselves for the Syria deal. “With 92.5% of the declared chemical weapons out of the country,” said Susan Rice in May 2014, the U.S. had achieved more than any “number of airstrikes that might have been contemplated would have done.” John Kerry also boasted of his diplomatic prowess in a March 2015 speech: “We cut a deal and were able to get all the chemical weapons out of Syria in the middle of the conflict.”
And there was Mr. Obama again, at a Camp David press conference in May: “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.”
Note the certitude of these pronouncements, the lordly swagger. Now note the facts. “One year after the West celebrated the removal of Syria’s arsenal as a foreign policy success, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.”
So note the Journal’s Adam Entous and Naftali Bendavid in a deeply reported July 23, exposé that reveals as much about the sham disarmament process in Syria as it foretells about the sham we are getting with Iran.
Start with the formal terms under which inspectors were forced to operate. The deal specified that Syria would give inspectors access to its “declared” chemical-weapons sites, much as Iran is expected to give U.N. inspectors unfettered access to its own declared sites. As for any undeclared sites, inspectors could request access provided they furnish evidence of their suspicions, giving the regime plenty of time to move, hide and deceive—yet another similarity with the Iran deal.
The agreement meant that inspectors were always playing by the regime’s rules, even as Washington pretended to dictate terms. Practical considerations tilted the game even further. “Because the regime was responsible for providing security, it had an effective veto over inspectors’ movements,” the Journal reported. “The team decided it couldn’t afford to antagonize its hosts, explains one of the inspectors, or it ‘would lose all access to all sites.’ ”
In other words, the political need to get Mr. Assad to hand over his declared stockpile took precedence over keeping the regime honest. It helped Mr. Assad that he had an unwitting accomplice in the CIA, whose analysts certified that his chemical declaration “matched what they believed the regime had.” Intelligence analysts at the Pentagon were more skeptical. But their doubts were less congenial to a White House eager to claim a win, and hence not so widely advertised.
You can expect a similar pattern to emerge in the wake of the Iran deal. Western intelligence agencies will furnish policy makers with varying assessments; policy makers will choose which ones to believe according to their political preferences. Tehran will cheat in ambiguous and incremental ways; the administration will play down the violations for the sake of preserving the broader deal.
Over time, defending the deal will become a matter of rationalizing it. As in: At least we destroyed Syria’s declared chemical stockpile. Or: At least we’ve got eyes on Iran’s declared nuclear sites.
Perhaps the most interesting details in the Journal story concerned the sophistication of the Syrian program. Chemical weapons-production facilities were hidden in the trailers of 18-wheel trucks—exactly of the kind that were rumored to have been moved to Syria from Iraq in 2003. Inspectors were impressed by the quality of Syrian-made munitions. The regime was also able elaborately to disguise its chemical research facilities, even during site visits by inspectors.
The CIA now admits that Syria retains significant quantities of its deadliest chemical weapons. When Mr. Obama announced the Syria deal, he warned that he would use military force in the event that Mr. Assad failed to honor his promises. The threat was hollow then. It is laughable now. What ties the Syrian sham to the Iranian one is an American president bent on conjuring political illusions at home at the expense of strategic facts abroad, his weakness apparent to everyone but himself.
1a)
Iran: Nuke Deal Permits Cheating on Arms, Missiles
Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator in nuclear talks said that under the terms of the recently inked accord, the Islamic Republic is permitted to violate current embargoes on the shipment of arms and construction of missiles, according to recent comments made before Iran’s parliament.
Zarif, who spoke to the country’s parliament about the terms of the nuclear deal, also bragged that the finalization of the accord “puts the Zionist Regime in an irrecoverable danger,” according to an independent translation of his Persian language remarks provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
Zarif insisted that “violating the arms and missiles embargo” placed on Iran by the United Nations “does not violate the nuclear agreement.”
U.S. officials and analysts have become increasingly concerned about portions of the deal that will unilaterally lift current restrictions on Iran’s importation and exportation of weapons, as well as its missile construction programs.
While these restrictions still apply, they would be completely lifted in five to eight years under the agreement.
Zarif also took aim at Israel in his remarks, claiming that the deal has isolated Israel as it never has been before.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to kill himself if it helps to stop this nuclear agreement because this agreement puts the Zionist regime in an irrecoverable danger,” Zarif was reported as saying. “The abominable Zionist Regime has never been so isolated among its allies.”
The recent approval of the deal by the United Nations Security Council has solidified Iran’s right to enrich and operate a nuclear program, Zarif went on to say.
“Our biggest accomplishment is that the U.N. Security Council has endorsed our enrichment, this has never happened in the last 70 years,” Zarif said.
“Permit me not to mention the names, but many countries close to the U.S. have agreed to relinquish their enrichment rights, they all envy us today,” he added.
Adam Kredo is senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Formerly an award-winning political reporter for the Washington Jewish Week, where he frequently broke national news, Kredo’s work has been featured in outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and Politico, among others. He lives in Maryland with his comic books.
1b)
Into the Fray: The Iran deal – moronic, myopic, malevolent, mendacious
By Martin Sherman
US secretary of State John Kerry reacts as he delivers a statement on the Iran talks deal at the Vienna International Center in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2015(photo credit: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)
Our goal is to get Iran to recognize it needs to give up its nuclear program and abide by the UN resolutions that have been in place…the deal we’ll accept is: They end their nuclear program. It’s very straightforward.
– Barack Hussein Obama, October 2012, presidential election debate
– Barack Hussein Obama, October 2012, presidential election debate
I don’t think that any of us thought we were just imposing these sanctions for the sake of imposing them. We did it because we knew that it would hopefully help Iran dismantle its nuclear program. That was the whole point of the [sanctions] regime.
– John Kerry, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, December 2013
– John Kerry, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, December 2013
As details emerge on the deal concluded with Iran last week in Vienna, the full extent of its calamitous significance is coming to light. Indeed, it appears that when, shortly after the announcement of the agreement, Benjamin Netanyahu described it as a “stunning, historic mistake,” he was grossly understating the case.
(Forlorn) hope & (disastrous) change
(Forlorn) hope & (disastrous) change
What took place in the Austrian capital was nothing less than a catastrophic failure of strategic resolve on the part of the US-led West. It was a craven capitulation on a calamitous scale, which, as time passes, looks less like an unintended mistake and more like an act of deliberate design.
After all, there was an enormous disparity of power and wealth between the protagonists, between the economically emaciated Iran, on the one hand, and the wealthy industrial powers on the other. Yet the side that desperately needed the deal, Iran, prevailed over the side that didn’t, but which desperately wanted it, the P5+1.
The result was an appalling document without a single redeeming feature.
It will not accomplish any of the goals that it purports to achieve. Likewise, it will not preclude any of perils it purports to prevent.
As such it might be seen as grotesque perversion of the slogan “Hope and Change” that swept Obama to power: For while its success is predicated on forlorn hopes of Iranian compliance, it ushers in the virtual certainty of disastrous change in Iranian capabilities.
‘… you’re going to hear a lot of dishonest arguments’
During his July 18 address to the American nation, Obama extolled the alleged merits of the Iran deal, alerting viewers: “… still, you’re going to hear a lot of overheated and often dishonest arguments about it.”
He is, of course, quite right. However, many – if not most – the “dishonest arguments” come from him – and his sycophantic minions, who, with almost Pavlovian reflexes, endorse any claptrap the White House might happen to claim.
Indeed, Obama and his administration’s officials have violated virtually every principle that they laid out in the past as to the nature of any acceptable agreement, and have grossly misrepresented the “achievements” of the one eventually conceded.
As the opening excerpts demonstrate, barely a year-and-half ago, the unequivocal goal of the Obama administration was the termination of the Iranian nuclear program and the dismantling of its nuclear facilities – as specified in six preceding UN resolutions.
Yet today, these goals are dismissed by the very people who set them, as mere “fantasy.”
Thus, in his July 14 statement in Vienna to announce the deal, Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed the goals he himself stipulated before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in December 2013, as “not achievable outside a world of fantasy.”
More ‘…dishonest arguments’
Just how gravely the White House has misled the public is starkly reflected in Obama’s July 18 address. He proclaimed: “This week the United States and our international partners finally achieved what decades of animosity has not, a deal that will prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon.”
This is patently untrue. It will not prevent Tehran’s theocratic tyranny from attaining weaponized nuclear capability, even if it deigns to adhere to the unverifiable and unenforceable inspection agreement, which it is ideo-religiously sanctioned – even, mandated – to violate, because it was concluded with “infidels.”
Even by the administration’s own admission it will merely delay Iran. Thus in a April 7 PBS interview, Obama conceded that the deal, even if adhered to, will pave, rather than prevent, Iran’s way to weaponized nuclear capability, baldly admitting that in barely a decade “the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.”
Flying in the face of fact and reason, Obama, with breathtaking disregard for the truth, claimed that a deal, which provided up to $150 billion to the largest state sponsor of terrorism and sets an end to embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missile technology on it “will make America and the world safer and more secure…”
Yet more dishonesty…
Disturbingly, it was none other than Obama who in an April 2 White House statement pledged that, notwithstanding impending sanction relief on the nuclear issues, “other American sanctions on Iran [including] for its ballistic missile program will continue to be fully enforced…” But they weren’t.
On this very issue, immediately prior to the announcement of the deal, The New York Times reported that “Obama’s secretary of defense, Ashton B. Carter… told Congress that part of the ban, on technology for ballistic missiles, was critical to America’s own security.” (July 10) Testifying alongside Carter before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, expressed grave concern over the ballistic missile and conventional arms issue. He was adamant that “Under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking…”
Yet to cut a deal with Tehran, Obama backpedaled, and in blatant contradiction to his own pledge, and to the unequivocal positions of the most senior figures in his security establishment, set deadlines for ending the sanctions on both conventional arms and ballistic missiles – all in an endeavor to “make America and the world safer and more secure.”
Sanctions: So much for ‘snap’
In an effort to convince skeptics of the merits of his approach, Obama has frequently contended that “If Iran violates the deal sanctions can be snapped back into place.”
Yet he warned that “Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel, with little ability to reimpose them.”
Hmmm. The ease with which the administration’s claim that sanctions could be “snapped back” is difficult to reconcile with the claim that the very same sanctions could not be maintained if America held out for a more demanding agreement that was in fact consistent with the objectives for which the sanctions were initially imposed – i.e. termination of Iran’s nuclear program and dismantlement of its nuclear facilities.
But be that as it may, as numerous pundits have pointed out, this “snap back” claim is as deceptive as it is detached from the realities on the ground. Last week I cited former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, who warned of the dangers of being lulled into complacency by “theoretical models of inspection,” which take no account of the daunting difficulties entailed in “[e]nforcing compliance, week after week” over long periods and across vast tracts of territory; and of eliciting international agreement as to the significance of any act deemed to be an alleged violation.
Strongly corroborating the Kissinger-Shultz caveat is an article published days after the announcement of the Vienna deal by Olli Heinonen, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and former deputy director-general for safeguards at IAEA, and Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute.
Stridently titled, “There’s a huge problem with Obama’s claims about Iranian nuclear breakout under a final deal,” the article warns, “Even without hidden facilities, establishing most any Iranian violation of the agreement would likely take several months. First, the IAEA and respective agencies in Washington would have to come to that technical judgment; toward that end, inspectors would need timely access anywhere at any time to confirm such findings.
The next step would be to get the political leadership to accept that judgment, then sell the conclusion to the international community.”
So much for “snap.”
Distrust of allies, disdain of adversaries
Yet another ludicrous claim is made in Obama’s July 15 press conference: “Without [this] deal, we risk even more war in the Middle East, and other countries in the Middle East would feel compelled to develop their own nuclear weapons.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
For indeed, the deep distrust that this deal has fostered in US allies and the equally deep disdain it has fermented in US adversaries will virtually guarantee a spiraling arms race across the region – both conventional and unconventional.
After all, as manifest US flaccidity erodes the confidence of allies in American resolve to safeguard their security and emboldens adversaries to undertake aggression with relative impunity – or at least, at bearable cost – friend and foe will rush to arm themselves.
As countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf states see the US presenting the lenient Vienna deal, with its far-reaching concessions to Iran, as “the best possible alternative,” there will be little to deter them from embarking on the own quest for similar capabilities – and much to induce them to do so, especially in light of their dwindling confidence in the US.
Unless one believes that, on having its uncompromising stance vindicated by the US-led P5+1 abandoning one redline after another, the ayatollahs will suddenly embrace a softer more humane approach, there is only one plausible working assumption to adopt: By generously replenishing the coffers of the current regime, the deal will assure that much of these resources will be channeled to enhance Iran’s military capabilities and those of its violent anti- US proxies across the region, forcing their adversaries to respond in kind.
I can see how readers might have a tough time understanding just how all this will, as Obama claims, “make America and the world safer and more secure.”
The worst whopper: ‘No better alternative’
Obama’s alleged ace-in-the-hole is the baseless baloney that opponents of the deal have offered no better alternative. It is a claim that is, at once, infuriating and disingenuous.
It is disingenuous because it was none other than Obama who laid out the alternative to the current deal – which assures Iran’s weaponized nuclear capability, provides funds to propagate terrorism and to destabilize pro-US regimes. Indeed, it was Obama himself who proclaimed that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
So it is not that there was no alternative – it was merely that Obama was so eager to reach an agreement he was ready to accept almost any deal.
It is not that opponents of the deal did not offer cogent alternatives. It was that the proponents deemed that anything that Iran did not agree to was impractical/unfeasible.
Clearly, if the underlying assumption is that the only practical outcome is a consensual one rather that a coercive one – say of intensified sanctions, backed by a credible threat of military action – then the proponents might be right that there was no available alternative.
But they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. For if the US and its allies cannot confront Tehran with a credible specter of punitive, coercive action, there is no inducement for it to adhere to the deal – making its future abrogation inevitable.
Making regime change more remote
Of course if one wishes to see a durable, non-militarized solution to the Iranian crisis, perhaps the only conceivable avenue is regime change and installation of a more moderate, Western-oriented government.
But by greatly empowering and enriching the incumbent theocracy, the deal cut last week makes such a prospect incalculably more remote.
In the words of Saba Farzan, a German-Iranian journalist and director of a Berlin think tank, published in The Jerusalem Post: “The Vienna deal bears a very grave danger for Iran’s civil society. Not only won’t we see their economic situation improve, but the regime will also have an incentive to abuse human rights more severely. A flood of cash is going into the pockets of this leadership.
It will be used to tighten their grip [on power] and to further imprison, torture and kill innocent Iranians.”
She is, of course, right – and that is one of the greatest tragedies of the travesty concocted in Vienna last week.
Martin Sherman is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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2)
Introduction to "Nothing Abides"
New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, May 2015
For more on this book, please click here.
The English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) fortuitously captured two themes in his phrase that serves as my epigraph, "Nor peace within nor calm around."[1] To be sure, Shelley wrote of his inner turmoil in this poem, "Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples," and not his reflections on the Middle East and Islam; but he also succinctly made the two key points, about internal and external unrest, that recur throughout the following study and so might serve as this book's catchphrase.
My title, "nothing abides" derives from a lecture on the philosophy of history by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). He said of Muslim polities: "In its spread, Mohammedanism founded many kingdoms and dynasties. On this boundless sea there is a continual onward movement; nothing abides firm (nichts ist fest)."[2] Almost two centuries later, instability, volatility, and perpetual motion continue to characterize Muslim communities.
Samuel Huntington (1927–2008), the eminent political analyst, coined a phrase in 1996, "Islam's bloody borders,"[3] that captures the external dimension of this phenomenon, namely the ceaseless wars waged by Muslims against non-Muslims, from the Christians of Iberia to the Hindus of Bali. Together, these three phrases convey the topic of the following chapters published over the quarter century between 1989 and 2014.
My inquiry during this period has concentrated on the Middle East as understood from a historical point of view and on the role of Islam in politics. The book contains five sections.
The first chapter, "Peace Process or War Process?" argues for three points needed to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict: realizing "that past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have failed; that their failure resulted from an Israeli illusion about avoiding war; and that Washington should urge Jerusalem to forego negotiations and return instead to its earlier and more successful policy of fighting for victory." Victory is the key concept: only when one side wins a clear victory can the war end. And that side must be Israel. This approach dismisses the diplomacy that began with Kilometer 101 in 1973 as irrelevant at least and counterproductive at worst.
The Jewish claim to Jerusalem is well known, but what of the rival "Muslim Claim to Jerusalem"? A historical review suggests that Muslims value the city only when it has political significance to them and lose interest when it does not. "This pattern first emerged during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. Since then, it has been repeated on five occasions: in the late seventh century, in the twelfth-century Countercrusade, in the thirteenth-century Crusades, during the era of British rule (1917–48), and since Israel took the city in 1967." Such consistency over so many centuries and under so many diverse circumstances challenges assertions that Jerusalem has vital religious importance in Islam.
A striking contrast exists between the viciousness of most Palestinian discourse about Israel, such as, for example, comparing it to Nazi Germany, and the diametrically opposite, sober, and appreciative statements Palestinians make about Israel as an actual place to live. I focus on the latter in "The Hell of Israel Is Better than the Paradise of Arafat." Part one reviews the Palestinian preference to remain under Israeli rule and part two contains praise for Israel in contrast to Arab regimes. These outspoken statements friendly to Israel offer more than tactical ammunition for the Jewish state; they provide the potential basis for a resolution to the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. For if the Muslim Arabic speakers most affected by and knowledgeable of Israel understand and communicate its considerable virtues, the ear-piercing toxicity of their colleagues could one day find itself without a constituency.
I argue in "The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine" that, contrary to widespread belief, the idea of a Palestinian nation between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea does not reach back into hoary antiquity but rather "its origins can be traced with surprising precision to a single year—1920. In January 1920, Palestinian nationalism hardly existed; by December of that critical year, it had been born." This change in the space of one year nearly a century ago has had many implications for the Palestinian national movement, foreshadowing "some abiding themes, such as the potential for rapid change and the major role of the Western powers" and providing insight into "the most widely supported but possibly the least successful nationalist cause" of our time.
"Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism" follows the Palestinian career as Zionism's Doppelgãnger, a German word meaning, roughly, "evil twin." The Zionist movement was unique among national movements (notably, by establishing the Yishuv, a "state in the making," an informal government that prepared the way for the formal state in 1948). In many ways, the Palestinian movement mimicked these features (the PLO is its "state in the making"). For example, the Palestinian emphasis on the centrality of Jerusalem, the global status of Yasir Arafat, and the dependence on foreign backing. I argue that "the PLO can be understood only with reference to its Zionist inspiration. Indeed, imitation offers important insights into the PLO's future course."
"The Road to Damascus: What Netanyahu Almost Gave Away in 1998" contains a scoop about the Israeli-Syrian negotiations of August and September 1998. Completely secret, these talks were conducted by an unlikely pair of amateur Americans—the businessman and former ambassador Ronald Lauder and the editor of the journal Middle East Insight, George Nader. They approached an agreement but were thwarted in the end by the Israeli defense and foreign ministers, whose objections overrode Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's hopes for a deal. Given what has occurred in Syria since 2011, Israel is very fortunate those objections prevailed. This case study remains of interest for the insights it offers into Arab-Israeli diplomacy, Israeli politics, and the man who both then and now heads Israel's government.
I argue that ignoring the phenomenon of conspiracism, as Washington tends to do, neglects key aspects of the Middle East; therefore, government agencies should devote serious attention and generous resources to understanding this type of thinking. Beyond paying them heed, I suggest developing policies with a specific awareness of the region's conspiracist mindset. This, in turn, leads to an interesting question: should the US government take advantage of vulnerabilities presented by conspiracism, or work to diminish this dangerous attitude? The answer is not self-evident.
Before the Syrian civil war erupted, area specialists generally scoffed at seeing the rulers' Alawi identity as defining their place in Syria, preferring to emphasize their geographic or ideological features. I begged to differ and concentrated instead on Alawi tensions with Syria's majority Sunni community. The centerpiece of my argument appeared in a 1989 analysis, "The Alawi Capture of Power in Syria." I provided background on the Alawis and on their despised place in Syrian society until 1920, then traced their dramatic and unexpected ascent over the course of the next fifty years, culminating with Hafez al-Assad's seizure of power in 1970. The most striking aspect of this analysis is that Alawis are not Muslims, which in itself led to their consequently terrible relations with Sunnis over the centuries. Two mid-nineteenth-century observations about the Alawis capture their longstanding characteristics: "They are a wild and somewhat savage race, given to plunder, and even bloodshed, when their passions are excited or suspicion roused"; and Alawi society "is a perfect hell upon earth." Westerners remained largely oblivious to these tensions through forty-five years of Alawi rule, from 1966 to 2011, only to watch them erupt in the horrific conflagration of the most vicious civil war in the modern Middle East.
First presented as my testimony to the House Committee on Government Reform, "The Scandal of US-Saudi Relations" describes a pattern of American obsequiousness—both public and private—in the areas of energy, security, religion, and the treatment of Americans in the kingdom. Example after example demonstrate how weakly the American side behaves when confronted with Saudi will. Contrary to the usual logic, Riyadh sets the terms of this bilateral relationship; a change has taken place, "with both sides forgetting which of them is the great power and which the minor one." This chapter documents that claim, explains it, and offers a specific policy recommendation to correct the problem.
I wrote "Obituary for Nizar Hamdoon (1944–2003)" for two reasons. First, I've never met a diplomat quite like him when he served as Saddam Hussein's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Washington in 1984–87, just as full diplomatic relations between the two countries were reinstated, and as the Iraq-Iran war reached its apogee. Hamdoon took seriously his task to develop American support and did so most impressively, even as he worked for a monstrous tyrant. Second, he contacted me in May 2003, a few months after the fall of Saddam and just weeks before his own death. I did not manage to ask him the barrage of questions I had prepared but I did get some valuable information while sitting with him in a New York City Starbucks, some of which I record in this obituary.
The president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who took office in June 2014, remains a mystery; does he fundamentally differ from Husni Mubarak, or is he but a younger clone of the longtime dictator? I look at a student paper written by Sisi in 2006 when he spent a year in the United States, to determine the answer to "What Egypt's New President Really Thinks." He turns out to be "a work in progress, a fifty-nine-year-old still trying to discover who he is and what he thinks even as he rules a country of eighty-six million. On-the-job training is literal in his case." This means he can be influenced, which offers opportunities for foreign governments.
"Islam currently represents a backward, aggressive, and violent force. Must it remain this way, or can it be reformed and become moderate, modern, and good-neighborly?" Against the growing and vocal body of analysts who answer that the Muslim faith cannot advance because its features are immutable, I argue that change for the better is possible in "Can Islam Be Reformed?" In it, I contend that Islam does not have an essential and unchanging core; Muslims and non-Muslims alike should work toward the reformation of the religion by building on the "medieval synthesis" that made Islam a flexible faith until two hundred years ago.
A great debate exists between those who argue that becoming modern requires emulating the West and those who disagree, saying alternative routes to modernity exist. As its title "You Need Beethoven to Modernize" implies, I come down on the side of the importance of Westernizing. To be fully modern, I find, "means mastering Western music; competence at Western music, in fact, closely parallels a country's wealth and power." I establish this point by looking at two civilizations, Muslim and Japanese. "Muslim reluctance to accept Western music foreshadows a general difficulty with modernity; Japanese mastery of every style from classical to jazz help explain everything from a strong yen to institutional stability." Beethoven's music is not in itself functional, but unless you master it, you cannot enter the inner sanctum of modernity.
I delivered "Denying Islam's Role in Terrorism: Why?" at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. In it, I document and explain a curious pattern: the Establishment in the West (including politicians, the police, the press, and the professorate) routinely denies that Islamism represents the leading global cause of terrorism, even though it and everyone else knows otherwise. About five daily assaults in the name of Islam since 9/11 notwithstanding, Islamic motives are rarely noted. While euphemism, cowardice, political correctness, and appeasement all contribute to this pattern, I argue that two other, quite respectable reasons are paramount: not wanting to create even more trouble by offending Muslims and a widespread awareness that implicating Islam implies a major shift away from how secular Western societies are presently ordered. Unless the number of casualties of Islamist terrorism increases substantially, I predict no changes to the current state of denial.
Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 edict against Salman Rushdie stands out as one of the most original and consequential political developments of recent times. Ignoring international boundaries and established freedoms, the Iranian despot sentenced to death the author of a novel called The Satanic Verses "and all those [knowingly] involved in the publication." While Westerners offered respectable resistance to this Diktat, I argue in "The Rushdie Rules Ascendant" that the passage of time has weakened their will, and especially that of liberals. That's because, now, "defenders of Western civilization must fight not just Islamists but also the multiculturalists who enable them and the leftists who ally with them." This augurs badly for the continued maintenance of traditional freedoms in the West.
In contrast to the grand sweep of the last chapter, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," written with Sharon Chadha, examines in close detail the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the most aggressive and arguably the most effective of American Islamist groups. Our exposé reveals CAIR's connections to terrorism as well as its efforts to stymie counterterrorism, its ties to non-Muslim political extremists, the irregularities about its funding, its real goals, and its reliance on intimidation. Chadha and I conclude this 2006 analysis asking, "How long will it be until the Establishment finally recognizes CAIR for what it is and denies it mainstream legitimacy?" Nine years later, that recognition has yet to be conferred, so our data retains its pertinence.
In "Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood," I establish that Barack Hussein Obama was born and raised a Muslim, provide confirming evidence for this from recent years, survey the perceptions of him as a Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context of Obama's other autobiographical fictions. In brief, the record points to Obama being "child to a line of Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered as a Muslim in two Indonesian schools." Further, "he read Koran in religion class, still recites the Islamic declaration of faith, and speaks to Muslim audiences like a fellow believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim stepfather, and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen by others and saw himself as a Muslim." This deception points to a deep character flaw.
The press lavished praise on an Egyptian-born professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles as a moderate, but I sensed otherwise. In "Stealth Islamist: Khaled Abou El Fadl," I establish that the media's darling is in fact an Islamist, and all the more dangerously so for misleading potential critics. That he got away with this duplicity despite a long bibliography available in English, "points to the challenge of how to discern Islamists who present themselves as moderates" and the need to do serious background work before anointing anyone as a reformer. "Failing proper research, Islamists will push their way through Western institutions and ultimately subvert them." How many more individuals are like him, burrowing into the system?
"Waging Jihad through the American Courts: Iqbal Unus" tells how a nuclear physicist of Pakistani origin living in the Washington, DC, area with close links to many Islamist organizations thwarted counterterrorism work through his legal challenge to both the US government and a private counterterrorism researcher, Rita Katz. Although his legal case never had a chance of success and was, in fact, dismissed with prejudice by the presiding judge, it nonetheless brought a raft of benefits to Unus and his colleagues, from gumming up the works to gleaning information to winning public sympathy. In response, I call for changes in the legal system to prevent such predatory legal tactics.
My connection to the third individual began with a crudely written summons for me to appear in federal court in Texas. To make the crazed legal proceedings more endurable, I researched the plaintiff with the intent of publishing what I discovered about him. I held off, however, until a key ally of his switched sides, bearing important information. The result is "A Palestinian in Texas: Riad Hamad," a cautionary tale of "immigrants who bring with them the bad habits imbued by tyrannical politics and radical ideologies."
Finally, I look at an Islamist fellow traveler, an eight-term congressman from Cleveland, in "Lefty for Radical Islam: Dennis Kucinich." In his 2004 presidential effort, Kucinich set a number of precedents in his appeal for Muslim votes—claiming to keep a Koran in his office, rousing audiences to proclaim Allahu Akbar, and visiting Muslim organizations Introduction xvii during his campaign travels. Although "seeking the Islamist vote in 2004 was a sure way not to reach the White House," his tender treatment of Islamists offered innovative methods that other Democratic Party politicians will likely adopt.
© Transaction Publishers.
4)
OBAMA, THE GREAT NEGOTIATOR . . .
2)
The Stonewall at the Top of the IRS
If the president doesn’t tell Commissioner Koskinen to go, then we in Congress should impeach him.
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen on Capitol Hill, June 23, 2014. PHOTO: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen needs to go.
When it was revealed in 2013 that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for exercising their First Amendment rights, President Obama correctly called the policy “inexcusable” and pledged accountability. He even fired the then-acting IRS commissioner because he said it was necessary to have “new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward.”
Unfortunately, Commissioner Koskinen, who took over in the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, has failed the American people by frustrating Congress’s attempts to ascertain the truth. A taxpayer would never get away with treating an IRS audit the way that IRS officials have treated the congressional investigation. Civil officers like Mr. Koskinen have historically been held to a higher standard than private citizens because they have fiduciary obligations to the public. The IRS and Mr. Koskinen have breached these basic fiduciary duties:
• Destruction of evidence. Lois Lerner, at the time the director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations unit, invoked the Fifth Amendment on May 22, 2013, when appearing before Congress; her refusal to testify put a premium on obtaining and reviewing her email communications. On the same day the IRS’s chief technology officer issued a preservation order that instructed IRS employees “not to destroy/wipe/reuse any of the existing backup tapes for email, or archiving of other information from IRS personal computers.”
Opinion Journal Video
Foley & Lardner LLP Partner Cleta Mitchell on presidential evasions about the targeting of conservative groups, and the status of Congress’s investigation. Photo: Getty Images
Several weeks later, on Aug. 2, the House Oversight Committee issued its first subpoena for IRS documents, including all of Ms. Lerner’s emails. On Feb. 2, 2014, Kate Duval,the IRS commissioner’s counsel, identified a gap in the Lerner emails that were being collected. Days later, Ms. Duval learned that the gap had been caused in 2011 when the hard drive of Ms. Lerner’s computer crashed.
Despite all this—an internal IRS preservation order, a congressional subpoena, and knowledge about Ms. Lerner’s hard-drive and email problems—the Treasury inspector general for tax administration discovered that the agency on March 4, 2014, erased 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails. (Congress learned of the discovery only last month.)
Ms. Duval has since left the IRS and now works at the State Department, where she is responsible for vetting Hillary Clinton’s emails sought by congressional investigations of the Benghazi attacks.
• Failure to inform Congress. Mr. Koskinen was made aware of the problems associated with Ms. Lerner’s emails the same month Ms. Duval discovered the gap. Yet the IRS withheld the information from Congress for four months, until June 13, 2014, when the agency used a Friday news dump to admit—on page seven of the third attachment to a letter sent to the Senate Finance Committee—that it had lost many of Ms. Lerner’s emails.
During that four-month delay, Mr. Koskinen testified before Congress under oath four times. On March 26, 2014, he appeared before the Oversight Committee and pledged that the IRS would produce all of Ms. Lerner’s emails, not mentioning that the IRS already knew of the problems with her emails and hard drive. Mr. Koskinen deliberately kept Congress in the dark. Based on testimony received by the committee, we now know that the IRS appears to have spent the four months working with the Obama administration to fine-tune talking points to mitigate the fallout.
• False testimony before Congress. Mr. Koskinen made statements to Congress that were categorically false. Of the more than 1,000 computer backup tapes discovered by the IRS inspector general, approximately 700 hadn’t been erased and contained relevant information. But Mr. Koskinen testified he had “confirmed” that all of the tapes were unrecoverable.
He also said: “We’ve gone to great lengths, spent a significant amount of money trying to make sure that there is no email that is required that has not been produced.” In reality, the inspector general found that Mr. Koskinen’s team failed to search several potential sources for Ms. Lerner’s emails, including the email server, her BlackBerry and the Martinsburg, W.Va., storage facility that housed the backup tapes.
The 700 intact backup tapes the inspector general recovered were found within 15 days of the IRS’s informing Congress that they were not recoverable. Employees from the inspector general’s office simply drove to Martinsburg and asked for the tapes. It turns out that the IRS had never even asked whether the tapes existed.
Three weeks after the 422 other backup tapes were destroyed by the IRS, Mr. Koskinen told the committee that he would produce “all” Lerner documents. This statement was clearly false—you can’t give Congress “all” of the material if you know that you have already destroyed some of it.
• Failure to correct the record. After his false statements to Congress under oath, Mr. Koskinen refused to amend them when given the opportunity at a public hearing earlier this year. If a lawyer makes a false statement to a court, he has a duty to correct it. Civil officers like Commissioner Koskinen have a duty to the American people to revise their testimony when it contains inaccuracies.
• Failure to reform the IRS to protect First Amendment rights. Mr. Koskinen hasn’t acted on the president’s May 2013 promise to “put in place new safeguards to make sure this kind of behavior cannot happen again.” A Government Accountability Office report released last week found that the IRS continues to lack the controls necessary to prevent unfair treatment of nonprofit groups on the basis of an “organization’s religious, educational, political, or other views.” In other words, the targeting of conservative groups may very well continue.
If the president doesn’t remove Mr. Koskinen from his post, then Congress should remove him through impeachment. The impeachment power is a political check that, asAlexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65 in 1788, protects the public against “the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story echoed Hamilton in 1833 when he distinguished impeachable offenses from criminal offenses, noting that they “are aptly termed political offenses, growing out of personal misconduct or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard for the public interests . . . They must be examined upon very broad and comprehensive principles of public policy and duty.”
John Koskinen has violated the public trust, breached his fiduciary obligations and demonstrated his unfitness to serve. Mr. President, it’s time for Commissioner Koskinen to go. If you don’t act, we will.
Mr. DeSantis (R., Fla.) is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security. Mr. Jordan (R., Ohio) is chairman of the Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules.
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3)
Introduction to "Nothing Abides"
Perspectives on the Middle East and Islam
by Daniel Pipes
New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, May 2015
For more on this book, please click here.
Islam "founded many kingdoms and dynasties," observed German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but "on this boundless sea ... nothing abides firm."
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The English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) fortuitously captured two themes in his phrase that serves as my epigraph, "Nor peace within nor calm around."[1] To be sure, Shelley wrote of his inner turmoil in this poem, "Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples," and not his reflections on the Middle East and Islam; but he also succinctly made the two key points, about internal and external unrest, that recur throughout the following study and so might serve as this book's catchphrase.
My title, "nothing abides" derives from a lecture on the philosophy of history by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). He said of Muslim polities: "In its spread, Mohammedanism founded many kingdoms and dynasties. On this boundless sea there is a continual onward movement; nothing abides firm (nichts ist fest)."[2] Almost two centuries later, instability, volatility, and perpetual motion continue to characterize Muslim communities.
Samuel Huntington (1927–2008), the eminent political analyst, coined a phrase in 1996, "Islam's bloody borders,"[3] that captures the external dimension of this phenomenon, namely the ceaseless wars waged by Muslims against non-Muslims, from the Christians of Iberia to the Hindus of Bali. Together, these three phrases convey the topic of the following chapters published over the quarter century between 1989 and 2014.
My inquiry during this period has concentrated on the Middle East as understood from a historical point of view and on the role of Islam in politics. The book contains five sections.
I. The Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Arab-Israeli conflict is the single most enduring as well as the most intensely scrutinized topic of Middle Eastern politics in the past century. Diplomatically, it compares to the Eastern Question concerning the future of the Ottoman Empire that earlier haunted European statecraft: both endured for more than a century, engaged a large cast of regional and international players, and consumed a disproportionate amount of attention. I consider my ideas about resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict as one of my two most significant contributions to American foreign policy (the other being how to deal with Islamism).
Past Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations failed due to Israeli illusions about avoiding war.
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The first chapter, "Peace Process or War Process?" argues for three points needed to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict: realizing "that past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have failed; that their failure resulted from an Israeli illusion about avoiding war; and that Washington should urge Jerusalem to forego negotiations and return instead to its earlier and more successful policy of fighting for victory." Victory is the key concept: only when one side wins a clear victory can the war end. And that side must be Israel. This approach dismisses the diplomacy that began with Kilometer 101 in 1973 as irrelevant at least and counterproductive at worst.
The Jewish claim to Jerusalem is well known, but what of the rival "Muslim Claim to Jerusalem"? A historical review suggests that Muslims value the city only when it has political significance to them and lose interest when it does not. "This pattern first emerged during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. Since then, it has been repeated on five occasions: in the late seventh century, in the twelfth-century Countercrusade, in the thirteenth-century Crusades, during the era of British rule (1917–48), and since Israel took the city in 1967." Such consistency over so many centuries and under so many diverse circumstances challenges assertions that Jerusalem has vital religious importance in Islam.
Muslims most knowledgeable of Israel often understand and communicate its considerable virtues.
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I argue in "The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine" that, contrary to widespread belief, the idea of a Palestinian nation between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea does not reach back into hoary antiquity but rather "its origins can be traced with surprising precision to a single year—1920. In January 1920, Palestinian nationalism hardly existed; by December of that critical year, it had been born." This change in the space of one year nearly a century ago has had many implications for the Palestinian national movement, foreshadowing "some abiding themes, such as the potential for rapid change and the major role of the Western powers" and providing insight into "the most widely supported but possibly the least successful nationalist cause" of our time.
The idea of a Palestinian nation can be traced with surprising precision to a single year—1920.
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"Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism" follows the Palestinian career as Zionism's Doppelgãnger, a German word meaning, roughly, "evil twin." The Zionist movement was unique among national movements (notably, by establishing the Yishuv, a "state in the making," an informal government that prepared the way for the formal state in 1948). In many ways, the Palestinian movement mimicked these features (the PLO is its "state in the making"). For example, the Palestinian emphasis on the centrality of Jerusalem, the global status of Yasir Arafat, and the dependence on foreign backing. I argue that "the PLO can be understood only with reference to its Zionist inspiration. Indeed, imitation offers important insights into the PLO's future course."
"The Road to Damascus: What Netanyahu Almost Gave Away in 1998" contains a scoop about the Israeli-Syrian negotiations of August and September 1998. Completely secret, these talks were conducted by an unlikely pair of amateur Americans—the businessman and former ambassador Ronald Lauder and the editor of the journal Middle East Insight, George Nader. They approached an agreement but were thwarted in the end by the Israeli defense and foreign ministers, whose objections overrode Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's hopes for a deal. Given what has occurred in Syria since 2011, Israel is very fortunate those objections prevailed. This case study remains of interest for the insights it offers into Arab-Israeli diplomacy, Israeli politics, and the man who both then and now heads Israel's government.
II. Middle Eastern Politics
"Understanding Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories" introduces an extensive subject by examining the nature of the conspiracy mentality, the gullibility of the people who hold them, and their leaders, concluding with a case study of Iraq and Iran. This chapter provides the context for the next one, which asks how governments should respond to the irrational world of conspiracy theories. The Central Intelligence Agency commissioned me to explain how these operate, which I later published as "Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories."
Should the US take advantage of Middle Eastern conspiracism, or work to diminish this dangerous attitude?
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Before the Syrian civil war erupted, area specialists generally scoffed at seeing the rulers' Alawi identity as defining their place in Syria, preferring to emphasize their geographic or ideological features. I begged to differ and concentrated instead on Alawi tensions with Syria's majority Sunni community. The centerpiece of my argument appeared in a 1989 analysis, "The Alawi Capture of Power in Syria." I provided background on the Alawis and on their despised place in Syrian society until 1920, then traced their dramatic and unexpected ascent over the course of the next fifty years, culminating with Hafez al-Assad's seizure of power in 1970. The most striking aspect of this analysis is that Alawis are not Muslims, which in itself led to their consequently terrible relations with Sunnis over the centuries. Two mid-nineteenth-century observations about the Alawis capture their longstanding characteristics: "They are a wild and somewhat savage race, given to plunder, and even bloodshed, when their passions are excited or suspicion roused"; and Alawi society "is a perfect hell upon earth." Westerners remained largely oblivious to these tensions through forty-five years of Alawi rule, from 1966 to 2011, only to watch them erupt in the horrific conflagration of the most vicious civil war in the modern Middle East.
Contrary to the usual logic, Riyadh sets the terms of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
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First presented as my testimony to the House Committee on Government Reform, "The Scandal of US-Saudi Relations" describes a pattern of American obsequiousness—both public and private—in the areas of energy, security, religion, and the treatment of Americans in the kingdom. Example after example demonstrate how weakly the American side behaves when confronted with Saudi will. Contrary to the usual logic, Riyadh sets the terms of this bilateral relationship; a change has taken place, "with both sides forgetting which of them is the great power and which the minor one." This chapter documents that claim, explains it, and offers a specific policy recommendation to correct the problem.
I wrote "Obituary for Nizar Hamdoon (1944–2003)" for two reasons. First, I've never met a diplomat quite like him when he served as Saddam Hussein's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Washington in 1984–87, just as full diplomatic relations between the two countries were reinstated, and as the Iraq-Iran war reached its apogee. Hamdoon took seriously his task to develop American support and did so most impressively, even as he worked for a monstrous tyrant. Second, he contacted me in May 2003, a few months after the fall of Saddam and just weeks before his own death. I did not manage to ask him the barrage of questions I had prepared but I did get some valuable information while sitting with him in a New York City Starbucks, some of which I record in this obituary.
The president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who took office in June 2014, remains a mystery; does he fundamentally differ from Husni Mubarak, or is he but a younger clone of the longtime dictator? I look at a student paper written by Sisi in 2006 when he spent a year in the United States, to determine the answer to "What Egypt's New President Really Thinks." He turns out to be "a work in progress, a fifty-nine-year-old still trying to discover who he is and what he thinks even as he rules a country of eighty-six million. On-the-job training is literal in his case." This means he can be influenced, which offers opportunities for foreign governments.
III. Islam in Modern Life
The final three sections take up my other central interest, the role of Islam in public life. Two themes recur here: a recognition that the dream of applying Islamic law looms over Muslim life, giving it similar rhythms regardless of time and place; and the need to take Muslim experience into account, which means noting changes over time, rather than simply assuming the static authority of scripture."Islam currently represents a backward, aggressive, and violent force. Must it remain this way, or can it be reformed and become moderate, modern, and good-neighborly?" Against the growing and vocal body of analysts who answer that the Muslim faith cannot advance because its features are immutable, I argue that change for the better is possible in "Can Islam Be Reformed?" In it, I contend that Islam does not have an essential and unchanging core; Muslims and non-Muslims alike should work toward the reformation of the religion by building on the "medieval synthesis" that made Islam a flexible faith until two hundred years ago.
You need Ludwig to modernize.
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A great debate exists between those who argue that becoming modern requires emulating the West and those who disagree, saying alternative routes to modernity exist. As its title "You Need Beethoven to Modernize" implies, I come down on the side of the importance of Westernizing. To be fully modern, I find, "means mastering Western music; competence at Western music, in fact, closely parallels a country's wealth and power." I establish this point by looking at two civilizations, Muslim and Japanese. "Muslim reluctance to accept Western music foreshadows a general difficulty with modernity; Japanese mastery of every style from classical to jazz help explain everything from a strong yen to institutional stability." Beethoven's music is not in itself functional, but unless you master it, you cannot enter the inner sanctum of modernity.
I delivered "Denying Islam's Role in Terrorism: Why?" at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. In it, I document and explain a curious pattern: the Establishment in the West (including politicians, the police, the press, and the professorate) routinely denies that Islamism represents the leading global cause of terrorism, even though it and everyone else knows otherwise. About five daily assaults in the name of Islam since 9/11 notwithstanding, Islamic motives are rarely noted. While euphemism, cowardice, political correctness, and appeasement all contribute to this pattern, I argue that two other, quite respectable reasons are paramount: not wanting to create even more trouble by offending Muslims and a widespread awareness that implicating Islam implies a major shift away from how secular Western societies are presently ordered. Unless the number of casualties of Islamist terrorism increases substantially, I predict no changes to the current state of denial.
Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 edict against Salman Rushdie stands out as one of the most original and consequential political developments of recent times. Ignoring international boundaries and established freedoms, the Iranian despot sentenced to death the author of a novel called The Satanic Verses "and all those [knowingly] involved in the publication." While Westerners offered respectable resistance to this Diktat, I argue in "The Rushdie Rules Ascendant" that the passage of time has weakened their will, and especially that of liberals. That's because, now, "defenders of Western civilization must fight not just Islamists but also the multiculturalists who enable them and the leftists who ally with them." This augurs badly for the continued maintenance of traditional freedoms in the West.
IV. Islam in the United States
In a sociological survey, "Faces of American Islam: Muslim Immigrants," the late Khalid Durán and I cover a range of topics: demography, geography, history, motives, religion, socioeconomics, children, sex, and institutions. We conclude that immigrants, not converts, are the key Muslim protagonists in the United States; that developing a distinctly American form of Islam will be a great challenge; and that "both the United States and Islam are likely to be deeply affected by their mutual encounter." These being two of the most powerful cultural forces in the world (along with the Chinese civilization), the result of their interaction is not only unpredictable but also very consequential.In contrast to the grand sweep of the last chapter, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," written with Sharon Chadha, examines in close detail the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the most aggressive and arguably the most effective of American Islamist groups. Our exposé reveals CAIR's connections to terrorism as well as its efforts to stymie counterterrorism, its ties to non-Muslim political extremists, the irregularities about its funding, its real goals, and its reliance on intimidation. Chadha and I conclude this 2006 analysis asking, "How long will it be until the Establishment finally recognizes CAIR for what it is and denies it mainstream legitimacy?" Nine years later, that recognition has yet to be conferred, so our data retains its pertinence.
In "Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood," I establish that Barack Hussein Obama was born and raised a Muslim, provide confirming evidence for this from recent years, survey the perceptions of him as a Muslim, and place this deception in the larger context of Obama's other autobiographical fictions. In brief, the record points to Obama being "child to a line of Muslim males, given a Muslim name, registered as a Muslim in two Indonesian schools." Further, "he read Koran in religion class, still recites the Islamic declaration of faith, and speaks to Muslim audiences like a fellow believer. Between his non-practicing Muslim father, his Muslim stepfather, and his four years of living in a Muslim milieu, he was both seen by others and saw himself as a Muslim." This deception points to a deep character flaw.
V. Individuals and American Islam
US promoters of Islamism, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have great importance shaping the future of American Islam. Will they manage to keep radical interpretations dominant, or will they lose ground as other Muslims reclaim their faith?
Will US promoters of Islamism keep radical interpretations dominant or lose ground as other Muslims reclaim their faith?
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The press lavished praise on an Egyptian-born professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles as a moderate, but I sensed otherwise. In "Stealth Islamist: Khaled Abou El Fadl," I establish that the media's darling is in fact an Islamist, and all the more dangerously so for misleading potential critics. That he got away with this duplicity despite a long bibliography available in English, "points to the challenge of how to discern Islamists who present themselves as moderates" and the need to do serious background work before anointing anyone as a reformer. "Failing proper research, Islamists will push their way through Western institutions and ultimately subvert them." How many more individuals are like him, burrowing into the system?
"Waging Jihad through the American Courts: Iqbal Unus" tells how a nuclear physicist of Pakistani origin living in the Washington, DC, area with close links to many Islamist organizations thwarted counterterrorism work through his legal challenge to both the US government and a private counterterrorism researcher, Rita Katz. Although his legal case never had a chance of success and was, in fact, dismissed with prejudice by the presiding judge, it nonetheless brought a raft of benefits to Unus and his colleagues, from gumming up the works to gleaning information to winning public sympathy. In response, I call for changes in the legal system to prevent such predatory legal tactics.
My connection to the third individual began with a crudely written summons for me to appear in federal court in Texas. To make the crazed legal proceedings more endurable, I researched the plaintiff with the intent of publishing what I discovered about him. I held off, however, until a key ally of his switched sides, bearing important information. The result is "A Palestinian in Texas: Riad Hamad," a cautionary tale of "immigrants who bring with them the bad habits imbued by tyrannical politics and radical ideologies."
Finally, I look at an Islamist fellow traveler, an eight-term congressman from Cleveland, in "Lefty for Radical Islam: Dennis Kucinich." In his 2004 presidential effort, Kucinich set a number of precedents in his appeal for Muslim votes—claiming to keep a Koran in his office, rousing audiences to proclaim Allahu Akbar, and visiting Muslim organizations Introduction xvii during his campaign travels. Although "seeking the Islamist vote in 2004 was a sure way not to reach the White House," his tender treatment of Islamists offered innovative methods that other Democratic Party politicians will likely adopt.
© Transaction Publishers.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)
OBAMA, THE GREAT NEGOTIATOR . . .
Retired US Lieutenant General David Deptula said recently, “The ultimate guidance (regarding air strikes in Iraq) rests with the black guy with his feet on the desk. Over three quarters of pilots leaving Gulf carriers are returning without dropping anything due to delays in decision-making up the chain of command in Obama's War council.”
Sources involved in the air war against ISIS said that, “Strike missions take on average just under an hour from a pilot requesting permission to strike an ISIS target to a weapon leaving the wing so by that time the insurgents have either vanished or we are out of fuel”.
After Obama had changed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Afghanistan in 2011, immediately US combat troop deaths tripled.Marines complained that they needed to watch through their night-vision goggles as shadowy green figures dug holes in the roadway. “On several occasions we opened fire but at some point, the order came down to ‘Stop shooting at night unless you can positively identify an insurgent’. We knew what they were doing ... burying IEDs for sure, but command instructed us that, ‘You can't be positive. They might be farmers.' It’s ridiculous”, they said.
Also under orders from the Obama Administration, a new military handbook was published for all U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East which contained a list of “taboo conversation topics”. It included:• “Making derogatory comments about the Taliban.”
• “Advocating women’s rights.”
• “Any criticism of paedophilia.”
• “Mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct,” or
• “Anything related to Islam itself.”Furthermore, Obama had noted in his handbook that, “The tripling in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against US forces was due to Western ignorance of Afghan culture”. Hmmm.Obama’s revised ROE in Iraq has meant airstrike missions have dropped from a planned 800 per day to 14, through pilots’ inability to engage targets.
The pilot must first determine that no more than 10 per cent of any target would involve civilians and in no case no more than 30 civilians must be at risk at any time. If in any doubt, permission must be sought from higher up the line of command.Combat troops must be accompanied by Iraqi soldiers and must not enter mosques at any time nor should they enter homes unless fired upon first.Only women can search women, even when a male is suspected of wearing a burkah. No night or surprise searches are allowed. Households have to be warned prior to searches. U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first.U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present.
If Iraqi soldiers are present US troops can fire at an insurgent if they see him planting an IED during the day, but not at night and not if insurgents are merely, “walking away from the area where the explosives have been laid”.
The recent fall of Ramadi was anticipated 12 months ago when US intelligence first detected a slow build-up of ISIS forces on the western perimeter, yet targeting of those forces using air strikes was not given clearance by US command.
The ISIS can peruse the revised Obama ROEs on the internet at any time, courtesy of Wikileaks, yet no changes appear to have been made to the rules. So mosques have become weapons caches, male suicide bombers dress in burkahs, ISIS militia will not open fire on US troops unless surrounded by civilians and, as long as they are not shooting at things, convoys of ISIS artillery can move freely on open roadways without fear of being shot at.Fair dinkum can America sustain 18 more months of the Obama/Kerry twins, with the corrupt Clintons in the wings?And more importantly, WTF are we doing there?
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