Category Archives: Military

The “vetted-moderate Syrians” myth exposed

Patrick Poole at PJ Media wrote an exhaustively documented two-page report:

CIA-Backed, ‘Vetted Moderate’ Syrians … Now Openly Working with Al-Qaeda

Read more: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/05/08/cia-backed-vetted-moderate-syrians-now-openly-working-with-al-qaeda/#ixzz3ZqrKJURc

Poole exposes the recurring lie being fed to us about President Obama’s plan of having the US  arm and train “vetted moderate Syrian rebels”.  With alarming frequency these rebel groups are receiving American weapons and training, then switching sides and fighting alongside radical jihadists.  At the end of the article is a listing of his previous research into the Syrian situation.

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Follow the money

Remember last summer when we had the whole hoopla about the poor children flooding into America from Central America and everyone from President Obama to Glenn Beck proclaimed we needed to help these poor children, but also found excuses for why they’re pouring in- terrible gang violence.   With the wave of a rhetorical flourish, they were no longer illegal immigrants, no they were now refugees, fleeing from violent gangs (as if we don’t have that problem here too).   It’s orchestrated to some degree (maybe a lot) and definitely abetted is my opinion, but during that hoopla it came to my attention that there are Christian charities involved with the federal government, receiving large sums of money to provide food and shelter for these illegal immigrant children (and the many adults with them).  I wrote about this here  here, and then here I wrote a post titled, “More border disorder” where I said:

“Pretending these illegal immigrants are going to assimilate and embrace American values seems a dangerous delusion and potentially a threat to our national security, as this mess escalates.   Of course, it’s easier to do the feel-good, “I care about the downtrodden” sound bites and not be accused of being a “hater”.”

So, fast forward and there have been recent reports about ISIS in Mexico near the TX border, which got poo-pooed as more Islamophobia, to quote Snopes, that oh so unbiased fact-checker (sarcasm intended), who fact-checked this in October 2014:

“None of them have found any evidence, credible or otherwise, that Isis is in Juárez.”
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/isismexico.asp#t0mFWhJBFM0XLtrF.99

Then there was the Garland, TX cartoon-drawing contest terrorist attack, which was foiled by a fast-acting lawman and the media started deflecting attention from the radical Muslim connection, by attacking the contest organizer for “inciting” the attack.  She’s a brassy, New York Jewish lady, so thankfully,  she isn’t backing down to intimidation!  So, our trusty , diligent reporters spend a week attacking Pamela Geller and reporting crap like this, which is a CNN story :

“(CNN) — Whatever spurred Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi to drive across two states to shoot up a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest is lost on their families, their neighbors and the place they had worshipped.

One was a described as “gentle person,” albeit one who had been convicted of a terror-related charge and supported an ISIS propagandist. (my emphasis not CNN’s)

The other was a father who had “put his son above everything” — until the day he and his roommate opened fire at the event in Garland, Texas, wounding a security guard before police shot and killed the gunmen.”

The article lists connections to terrorism, then includes this nonsense:

“He had ‘a good demeanor’

That’s according to the president of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, where both Simpson and Soofi worshiped.

Usama Shami said Simpson came regularly until around 2010 or 2011, about the time the FBI arrested him on the false statement charges. Soofi came less frequently.

Simpson “was a gentle person,” Shami said. “He always had a good attitude, a good demeanor.”

Like others at the mosque, Shami said he was stunned to hear about the attack Sunday night.

“They didn’t show any signs of radicalization or any signs of even thinking about those things in that manner,” he said. “So when that happens, it just shocks you. ‘How good did you know these people?’ That’s the question that people ask themselves.””

No, no, he was a gentle person, yada, yada, yada.  Now, here’s some information on the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix: “The Texas terrorists’ mosque in Phoenix is reportedly controlled by a Muslim Brotherhood front group.” from the Gateway Pundit.  For more information on Muslim Brotherhood front groups Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, has written scores of articles on this topic and several books too – he has meticulously researched and investigated this topic.  Here is a Clarion Project article to enlighten the President of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix: “Muslim Brotherhood Funded 50% of the Mosques in the West”  Oh my, how could that be?  Yeah, really, quite a mystery for the mainstream media to research and find the facts…

Between the hordes of  illegal immigrants, hordes of legal immigrants pouring in from Muslim countries, that are hotbeds of radical Islam, under the refugee guise, a porous border, and now this new addition to these terrorist attacks inside America committed by Americans, the government and the media go to great lengths to pretend none of these issues are connected in any way somehow seems peculiar to me.

In the most recent attack in Garland, TX the two terrorists were Americans who the press and government assure us they haven’t found any direct link between these two terrorists and ISIS.  We’ve been presented this “lone wolf” misdirection for years now and been told everything ranging from it’s recruitment from social media or in the largest terrorist attack on a US military installation in the United States, at Fort Hood, TX in 2009, our Homeland Security Director told us it was just “workplace violence”.  I have often wondered how closely our authorities have looked into searching, not just  for direct internet communication between these “lone wolf” terrorists and foreign terrorists, but have they looked at homegrown radical Islamist connections right here in America- both in mosques and in that unspoken large, dangerous radical Islamist element within black America.  No one wants to mention that.

In light of the racial tensions, our federal government and the media pretend all these race riots aren’t being fueled, in large part, by Marxist radicals, stalwart race hustlers like Al Sharpton, and MUSLIM black gangs and thugs – like the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panthers, Black Guerrilla nation and many more.   The media, by and large, tiptoes around acknowledging that radical black Muslim gangs serve as a home-grown terrorist training ground.

Malik Shabazz, formerly in the Nation of Islam, former  head of the New Black Panthers, a Muslim black supremacist, virulent anti-Semite and now the head of some nicer sounding National President of Black Lawyers for Justice, became a champion of the black people against the police in Baltimore and here’s the connection of the black Muslim gangs banding together for “justice”.  Really, the attempt to cover-up the Islamic connection among American academia, the Obama White House, and even the Southern Poverty Law Center is astounding.  You can check out the New Black Panthers at the SPLC website and no where in the first pargraph describing the group is the radical Islamic connection mentioned (way down the page you can find his connection to Nation of Islam):

“The New Black Panther Party is a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers. Founded in Dallas, the group today is especially active on the East Coast, from Boston to Jacksonville, Fla. The group portrays itself as a militant, modern-day expression of the black power movement (it frequently engages in armed protests of alleged police brutality and the like), but principals of the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s and 1970s— a militant, but non-racist, left-wing organization — have rejected the new Panthers as a “black racist hate group” and contested their hijacking of the Panther name and symbol.”

Here is a UK Daily Mail story “The rival gang members who stood against violence in Baltimore: Crips, Bloods, Black Guerrilla Family and Nation of Islam ‘united as black men’ to stand between police and rioters“, with a jolly good first sentence like this:

“In an extraordinary show of unity in Baltimore, rival gang members of the Bloods, Crips and Black Guerrilla Family, appeared to come together to ask protesters to stop the violence and help rebuild communities.”

Hint to the Daily Mail – these groups are CRIMINALS and ANARCISTS.  They incited the riot in Baltimore and then gave this stand down order to their gang members to set the stage for this political sideshow.  Wake up, America!  They’re the ones who caused the destruction and now they’re are going to unite against violence and help rebuild???  Many of these gangs are conduits to drug trafficking for Islamist terrorist entities abroad.

So, there’s a black Muslim radical connection, that most of us have no idea just how radical or how closely aligned with jihadist ideology these groups are, then there’s the insidious influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has connections at the very highest levels of our government, for instance Hillary Clinton’s long-time aide, Huma Abedin.  Abedin and her parents are closely connected with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here’s an excerpt from 2005 Frontline piece, “The Salafist Movement”, by Bruce Livesey, which might help you understand that the Muslim Brotherhood is not some benign group to help Muslims in America avoid persecution from a cartoon-drawing contest or to fight Islamophobia:

“When Gilles Kepel was researching a book about the origins of the global jihad movement back in the 1980s, he recalls rarely coming across Muslim fundamentalists known as “Salafists” living in Europe. “The ones who were prevalent … were totally apolitical and they didn’t deliver theoretically or in terms of doctrine,” he says.

Salafism is an ideology that posits that Islam has strayed from its origins. The word “salaf” is Arabic for “ancient one” and refers to the companions of the Prophet Mohammed. Arguing that the faith has become decadent over the centuries, Salafists call for the restoration of authentic Islam as expressed by an adherence to its original teachings and texts. “Salafists originally are supposedly not violent,” Kepel explains. “They are not advocating the revolt against one who holds power, against the powers that be. They are calling for re-Islamization at the daily level.”

By the mid-’90s, Kepel saw an alarming change among Europe’s Muslims. Increasingly he was coming across Salafists who had embraced jihad — in other words, who felt violence and terrorism were justified to realize their political objectives. Kepel explains that when Salafists, who tend to be alienated from mainstream European society, meet and mingle with jihadists, it fuses into a volatile mixture. “When you’re in the state of such alienation you become easy prey to the jihadi guys who will feed you more savory propaganda than the old propaganda of the Salafists who tell you to pray, fast and who are not taking action,” he says. “And this is why the [Islamist terrorists] who had been arrested were often good Salafists in the beginning.”

Kepel labeled these Muslim fundamentalists “Salafist jihadists”, a term that he extends to include the followers of Al Qaeda. Salafist jihadists are now a burgeoning presence in Europe, having attempted more than 30 terrorist attacks among E.U. countries since 2001.

While European counterterrorism experts recognize that Salafist jihadism is an ideological movement with deep religious and historical roots, they feel that their counterparts at the FBI and American intelligence agencies don’t share this understanding. “I began using the word Salafi and Salafists in 1997 in meetings in Washington and nobody raised the word and asked what does it mean,” says says Xavier Raufer, a Paris-based expert on Islamic terrorism who has close ties to France’s intelligence community.

continuing on:

“The origins of Salafi jihadism can be traced to the Muslim Brotherhood, the seminal organization for Islamic terrorism. Founded in 1928 in Egypt with the goal of establishing an Islamic state, the Brotherhood had as its slogan “The Quran is our constitution.” The Brotherhood’s political agenda combined with its rigid version of Islam proved to be an explosive formula. “The Muslim Brotherhood is the mother of all these movements, ideologically,” says Dr. Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-born professor of politics and senior fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy. “Salafist jihadism and the activation of the views of the world of the house of Islam and the house of war are the ideas that emerged from the writings and the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood.””

Al Qaeda is an off-shoot of THE SALAFIST MOVEMENT!

Then we come to Arab money going to aid poor minority students rumors (haven’t found any proof), but this link was given to me on another blog when I asked about this Muslim/black America connection.  The article has footnotes at the bottom and it includes a syndicated 1979 column by none other than Vernon Jarrett, Valerie Jarrett’s former father-in-law.  Oh, the title of that  1979 Jarrett article, “Will Arabs Back Ties To Blacks With Cash?”  Here’s an intriguing excerpt from the Frank Miele article, “Does 1979 newspaper column shed light on 2008 campaign story?”:

“So far as I know, this 1979 column has not previously been brought to light, but it certainly should be because it broke some very interesting news about the “rumored billions of dollars the oil-rich Arab nations are supposed to unload on American black leaders and minority institutions.” The columnist quoted a black San Francisco lawyer who said, “It’s not just a rumor. Aid will come from some of the Arab states.”

Well, if anyone would know, it would have been this lawyer — Donald Warden, who had helped defend OPEC in an antitrust suit that year and had developed significant ties with the Saudi royal family since becoming a Muslim and taking the name Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour.

Al-Mansour told Jarrett that he had presented the “proposed special aid program to OPEC Secretary-General Rene Ortiz” in September 1979, and that “the first indications of Arab help to American blacks may be announced in December.” Maybe so, but I looked high and wide in newspapers in 1979 and 1980 for any other stories about this aid package funded by OPEC and never found it verified.

You would think that a program to spend “$20 million per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year, including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans” would be referred to somewhere other than one obscure 1979 column, but I haven’t found any other word of it.

Maybe the funding materialized, maybe it didn’t, but what’s particularly noteworthy is that this black Islamic lawyer who “for several years [had] urged the rich Arab kingdoms to cultivate stronger ties to America’s blacks by supporting black businesses and black colleges and giving financial help to disadvantaged students” was also the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.”

Yes, I know my inquiring mind is in overdrive today, but I will reblog a post from  Musings from a Middle Aged Man, after this post, but for those of who don’t know, that blog is written by an old (retired) New York cop and he comes up with some interesting pieces of information. So we have illegal immigrants pouring in, possibly Arab money being used to convert poor blacks, we’ve got “lone wolf” terrorists traveling by two in this Garland, TX case, yet the FBI is scouring the internet looking for a direct link to ISIS in Syria/Iraq, but no luck, even though both attended a local mosque in Phoenix, which would seem to be the place to start looking right here at home.

Oh, so who is ISIL,ISIS,IS?  Well if you listen to the media, they’re some evil Islamic genie, who popped out of some lamp straight from hell.  If you listen to the President, they’re the JV team.  Well, here’s who they are SALAFIST TERRORISTS, whose leader was head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.  There is radical Islamist recruiting going on, not only on social media and in mosques, but in poor black communities and in our prisons and it’s in academia being funded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, the Musings from a Middle-Aged Man blog posted a link that explains the assimilation dilemma and how we are being duped by our own government and many Christian charities about the threat from hordes of illegal immigrants and even legal immigration efforts to resettle large Muslim populations from radical Islamist hotbed countries. It’s the Refugee Resettlement Program and perhaps some of you can shed more light on this program.  The video and link on Musings blog states how the program is run and the connections between the UN, our federal government, the Islamic Supremacist groups, and even Christian charities, who receive millions of dollars from the federal government to provide social services to refugees.  So, when a Christian charity organization is receiving millions in federal tax dollars, there might be a willingness to sell the government propaganda about this immigration nightmare or perhaps just a willingness not to mention it. The Bible has so many warnings about money, I don’t know where to begin…   Maybe someone can shed more light on the Islamic Hijra, this video states is being promoted to spread Islam into other countries and promote Sharia law.  Is this true?  I don’t have the answer to that yet.

It’s hard to find honest reporting and facts that aren’t tainted.  I came across this January 2015 article: “Are All Terrorists Muslim?  It’s Not Even Close” at The Daily Beast and this article uses a Think Progress (yes, George Soros again) piece of research to conclude that less than 2% is Muslim terrorists.  Of course, when even a glaring case of a jihadist terrorist attack on our largest US Army post gets dubbed mere workplace violence by our own government and there is a concerted effort to deceive the public from all sorts of leftist groups and and our mainstream media can’t seem to do more than regurgitate White House narratives, shouldn’t we demand the truth?

Those who dare to question or challenge the lies are doubters, wild conspiracy theorists, Islamophobics, haters, and in the case of Pamela Geller, who is trying to tell America there’s an orchestrated totalitarian ideology spreading in America and those spreading it are determined to stamp out our FREEDOM and impose Sharia compliance in America, she is a pyromaniac, according to Juan Williams, and she should just shut-up and not say mean things that might offend SAVAGES (like the ones who share those lovely decapitation videos online) or the vast, SILENT, majority of MODERATE Muslims, whom a cartoon of their prophet might offend. I’m offended that in over a decade, they haven’t spoken up en masse to denounce the SAVAGES, but instead want to deflect blame and find excuses! The jihadist movement and these black radical groups, in collusion, are trying to create anarchy in predominantly black urban areas – the Van Jones plan. There’s still a lot of money trails along this jihadi magic carpet ride that need to be investigated.

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LB Revisits a Christmas past….

Amazing admissions by Mike Morrell in the Washington Post: “Former CIA official cites agency’s failure to see al-Qaeda’s rebound”

So ridiculous to blame the Arab Spring and rapidly changing events – I’m too disgusted with these way too late admissions to comment a great deal. Any analyst with a brain should have seen the Arab Spring, as a huge destabilization of several governments in rapid succession, with collapsing governments,  through time immemorial creates “POWER VACUUMS” and those who are organized and willing to use force rise to fill them. The American democracy experiment, where thoughtful men met in the aftermath of a revolution to discuss and reach a peaceful consensus on the new government and worried about the rights of individuals, is the exception in history, not the rule. There were some of us who predicted this was the biggest boon to Islamists, who were prepared to seize this opportunity. There was no viable democracy movement in these countries to produce the miracle the Obama administration, the media and starry-eyed analysts waxed on about.

Time for a LB repost from a Christmas past:

December 25, 2012 · 8:12 pm | Edit
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Thoughts on the Arab Spring

Yes, I know it’s Christmas and I’ve already got my Christmas dinner started, so between dashes back to the kitchen to keep dinner moving along I’m going to jot down a few thoughts on why just about everyone in punditry, left, right and in between, gets it wrong on the Arab Spring. The first mistake many people make is what I’ll call cultural relativism, a natural off-shoot of our moral relativism, where we try to replace moral absolutes (i.e. right or wrong) with some ever-shifting sliding scale of excuse-making and finger-pointing of causes.. Once we muddy the water on defining behavior as right or wrong, we quickly get sucked down by underwater currents , akin to swimming in water-filled old quarry holes that abounded where I grew up in rural PA. As years of this muddled thinking spread by that contagion, I’ll refer to as the loons of academia, well, now many people hesitate to take a moral stance on just about any behavior, or they try to rationalize away individual responsibility for bad behavior. That same type of brainwashing on evaluating cultures spread like kudzu took root here in the American South, leading to our present strategic failures. If we start with all cultures are of equal merit and no culture has a superior value system, to better the life of its citizenry, then we end up quickly drowning in this swimming hole of cultural relativism. If we survive, we end up flailing about looking for some sound underpinnings to our understanding of what is going on in the world, what the likely outcomes of unfolding events will be and what these events mean to American interests.

The petals of optimism about the Arab Spring faded quickly, spreading seeds of discontent, disillusion and disconnected reasoning blowing across the strategic plain. Americans like everything fast, not just their cars and food, no, we like fast solutions, even when dealing with conflicts and cultures, dating back two millennia. I’ve read so much about the Arab Spring written by supposed experts on the Middle East, yet sadly most of these pages would serve a more useful purpose lining the bottom of a birdcage to catch the droppings. I’m quickly going to run through a few common fallacies that weave an uneven magic carpet of Arab pipe-dreams. My Christmas ham is happily baking so lets start with Islam (okay, I apologize that wasn’t culturally sensitive). Islam does not mean peace, it means submission to the will of God and obedience to his law. So, in Islam, God’s law is defined by the prophet, Mohammad and every aspect of Islamic culture is defined by this. The concept of separation of church and state falls as an anathema to Islamic teachings. Holding “democratic” elections does not a free, democratic, pluralistic society make. Cultures still steeped in tribal forms can’t jump the arc of historical enlightenment and instantaneously fall at the end, finding Jeffersonian democratic pots of gold. . And a last point is Islam lends itself more easily to autocratic forms of government, because the overwhelming consensus in these countries is that they want sharia law, which sets the stage for a theocracy (hint, that can never be a free, pluralistic society). Even the Puritans who fled persecution in England initially set-up a theocratic form of government and while lots of historians tend to miss this fact, cherry-picking only American themes they like (like how they tried communal living and it failed – strike one against communism in America) , the truth is they weren’t a pluralistic, welcoming group initially. There’s an excellent five-volume set of “The Life of George Washington” written by John Marshall and Volume 1 deals with a very detailed history of America’s founding from the very beginning (long before Washington’s birth). Marshall explains how other Protestants were run out of some Puritan towns, because they didn’t allow free exercise of religion, except for their own. This changed over time, but Catholics faced persecution in other colonies, as did various Protestant sects. So, our religious tolerance wasn’t at the high-water mark at America’s founding. The Marshall series is available for free at amazon.com (here) or volume 1 is at gutenberg.org (here).

So, then we reach the conundrum of why do some countries make successful democratic breakthroughs and others don’t and why are there so few successful democratic breakthroughs. There’s no exact recipe for democratic success, but having the basic mix of vital ingredients (free enterprise, democratic institutions within the society, property rights to list a few) helps increase the odds for success. The Mid-East, except for Israel, has none of the ingredients on hand. Trying to wing it with rhetorical substitutions and pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking won’t produce the desired results. I kept noticing this entrenched belief system when that clamor arose about the Palestinians and all the Jimmy Carteresque blather about holding elections, which led not to joyous democracy, instead it led to the posthaste election of Hamas. Even western-style image makeovers can’t turn a sow’s ear (like Arafat) into a silk purse and we end up with the same old dictators and tyrants. Here’s the best analysis of why the road to free, pluralistic, democratic governance has more potholes and road construction signs than highways in PA. It’s a book (sorry the kindle version isn’t free and the formatting is lacking) titled, “America’s Inadvertent Empire” by the late GEN William Odom and Robert Dujarric. GEN Odom’s wisdom will be sadly missed and I greatly admired him, in fact, I long for generals of his stature (alas, we’ve sunk to the GEN Casey/Petraeus/ Clapper politico types) . As a starting point in getting back on rational strategic terrain, this book maps out an excellent route toward understanding the landmarks to look for along the difficult road toward democracy. These are a few of my thoughts on what’s wrong with our American foreign policy in the Arab world. I’m not an expert on much of anything except needlework and homemaking, so I welcome opinions and comments. Time for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas everyone!

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Suggested Reading

Here’s a timely, helpful short primer on your road to strategic-thinking :

“Thucydides Was Right: Defining the Future Threat” by Dr. Colin S. Gray

Another LB post from September 2014:

“Let’s not keep shooting elephants to avoid looking a fool”

Here’s an excellent read (it’s a book available for purchase) on America’s role in the world from the late General William E. Odom, which offers some wise counsel on our present convoluted foreign policy:

“America’s Inadvertent Empire”

Here’s a short thought-provoking piece from Cora Sol Goldstein that appeared in the 2012 Autumn Strategic Studies Institute edition:

“The Afghanistan Experience: Democratization By Force”

What you might ask am I going to read to be prepared – well, I’m going to get back to finishing reading General John J. Pershing’s two-volume, Pulitzer-prize winning,  autobiography on his experiences in World War I – like building a modern fighting force from pretty much the bottom up (might be timely as our military is being dismantled by social engineering from President Obama, feckless leadership at the top, and over a decade of futile missions in the ME):

“My Experiences in the World War”

Of course, Dr. Gray recommends reading Thucydides, so I’ve bookmarked that too:

“The History of the Peloponnesian War”

For a daily rundown and analysis of the world’s hotspots, I recommend John McCreary:

“Nightwatch”

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Calling for a time-out to regroup

You want to see revisionist history, just watch this 5:43 minute FOX News video of Senator John McCain bloviating on what we should do to “defeat” ISIS.  For every foreign crisis, McCain’s answer is to send arms or American troops/trainers.  McCain bashed the Obama administration for walking away from Libya after Qaddafi was executed, leaving a gaping power vacuum.  But the “coalition” air campaign in Libya was sold by McCain and Madame Secretary Clinton based on a pack of lies and half-truths – there was no imminent humanitarian crisis.  There also was no democratic political opposition waiting in the wings to turn Libya into some oasis of democracy.  What was in Libya were violent Al Qaeda affiliates, many of whom traveled to Iraq to fight Americans and whom Qaddafi was cooperating with America on fighting.  McCain met with Gadaffi ,a partner in the war on terror in 2009, but as soon as Secretary Clinton beat the war drums in 2011, he did an about face.

In Libya, as in every other American intervention since 9/11, we didn’t have any real follow-on plan, so John McCain is right there, but he skips the part that he was part and parcel of selling the air campaign to oust Gadaffi, which allowed these jihadists to capitalize on the power vacuum we  helped create.  He did not have any plan to offer for the aftermath – he never does!  He can be counted on to get on TV and do this saber-rattling routine, “arm them, send trainers,  we need boots on the ground, blah, blah, blah…”  You can expect Lindsey Graham to follow-up the charges of  President Obama doing nothing to defeat ISIS and angrily demand “action”.

Frankly, I’m sick of the misguided, reckless, foreign policy pontifications  coming from top leadership in both parties.  Secretary Clinton ratcheted up the Libya campaign based on a bunch of fear-mongering claptrap – not solid intelligence on the ground.  Senator McCain hired the lying piece of O’Bagy- age after she got sacked from the Institute for the Study of War.  Just who is Ms O’Bagy, former captain of the Egyptian women’s soccer team, self-professed Syrian expert, fake doctorate degree holder?  We don’t know her background, just like we don’t know the background of Clinton sidekick, Huma Abedin.  We now know Secretary Clinton had Sid Bluementhal providing her intelligence on her private email server, which raises question about the source of his intelligence, the vetting of that information and what role her private sources of intelligence played in her decisions.  Senator McCain has Elizabeth O’Bagy to decipher the forces on the ground in Syria for him (Lord, help us all).  In the White House, the President appears to have handed over the reins of power and the adult responsibility of making the tough decisions to Valerie Jarrett, while Ben Rhodes gets tossed talking points from which to concoct soap operatic “narratives”, which serve in the place of facts.

In Syria, Assad went from Hillary’s “reformer” and John Kerry’s  “friend” to some madman butcher in Damascus.  We’ve been regaled with demands to arm the “moderates” – ahem, in this brutal civil war, we’ve still got “experts” on that hunt for illusive moderates…  That said, shut-up already about sending more troops, training Iraqi troops (who would suggest this crap after we dismantled Saddam’s army and spent years unsuccessfully training Iraqi  security forces???), arming more rebel bands of who-the-hell knows whom they really are (let’s agree, it’s doubtful they’re moderates).

First let’s talk about what are the US interests in the region – make a list and explain why it’s a US interest – convince me, an average American citizen.  Next tell me who are America’s allies and adversaries in the region and then break down the remaining factions and players into some groups and define who they are.  Then give me a real intelligence assessment of the refugee crisis and how that will complicate security across the region for decades and be a destabilizing factor for the foreseeable future.  Tell me about the multitude of factions and who their enemies and allies are (be careful here, sides switch frequently, so by the time we arm and train a group, they might have switched sides, carting our weapons with them and willing to use those weapons against us).

What happens if we defeat ISIS – we’re back to the same thing – another power vacuum.  We need some end game plans before we aid, arm, bomb, “defeat” anymore “evil-doers” to help “freedom-fighters” .  A strategy based on reality, not pipe dreams and wishful thinking would be nice.

Senator McCain is right about President Obama “leading from behind”, but to lead from the front requires us to first define our American interests and our long term goals in the region.  To reach some consensus on our American interests, it would behoove our political leaders to pick up some books on the history of the region and get to understand the complex political dynamics there.  Then, America, as a wanna-be world leader, if I were in charge, well, I’d put on my big girl panties, and open direct, frank talks with the leaders in the region and with other world leaders – heck pick the 4 other permanent members of the UN security council for starters.  To date, we’ve seen John Kerry choking in his own swirling Syrian sandspout of overblown rhetoric and the Russians rescued him by intervening with Assad.  Lately Kerry’s been bowing to the mullahs in Iran so much he’ll need a top-notch chiropractor to straighten his spine, but perhaps growing some backbone is a futile effort.

What we have not seen is America offer anything in the region that has improved regional stability since 9/11.   Our policies (well-meaning in intent) have resulted in catastrophic regional instability and everywhere we’ve added more fuel (military aid, both weapons and/or troops) is more unstable, more factionalized  than before we got involved.   Perhaps it’s time to take a deep breath and do some deep soul-searching on what it is we are really trying to do in this region, define what our American interests are, what we can feasibly do to help stabilize the region, and find ways to put a damper on this raging inferno rather than tossing more fuel onto it.

Here are some of my ideas on the big picture strategic objectives for America, maybe, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other American leaders could start explaining how they see America’s role in the world:

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/06/18/global-zero-another-nothing-burger-plan/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/05/29/the-mom-world-peace-solution/

https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/06/20/paving-the-path-to-peace/

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A real discussion on ISIS

JK sent me a link to a War On The Rocks podcast, that’s worth listening to:

PODCAST: The Islamic State’s War in Iraq and Syria

It’s a round table kind of discussion on the debacle that is Iraq and Syria between a group of experts, who really offer a lot of interesting insights into the factions, politics, religious strife, policy approaches, history and also some opinions on ways forward at untangling this Gordian knot.  It’s a breath of fresh air to hear differing opinions and some discussion that is calm and filled with more than propaganda promoting an agenda.

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Hail to the chief….

More “hope and change” news:   “Army morale low despite 6-year, $287M optimism program”

About the optimism program:  Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness

Not enough cheery news,  how about  “Amid chaos, Al-Qaida consolidates hold of Yemen province” and “Dempsey: US Focusing Airstrikes to Protect Beiji Refinery”]

You can place about as much faith in the Obama not-quite-a-strategy as you did in his 2011 statement:

” Referring to the threat from al-Qaeda operatives, he said: “We have cut off their head and we will ultimately defeat them.””

or how about:

Sadly, some say, while others do and the JV team keeps demonstrating that when they say, “heads will roll”, ahem, they do….

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What happened to the Ebola crisis?

The paper of record reports: “Empty Ebola Clinics in Liberia Are Seen as Misstep in U.S. Relief Effort”

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All in for “moderates”

Here’s a piece, “State Department Wanted to Engage ‘Moderate Jihadists’ in Libya“, by Patrick Poole over at PJMedia worth reading.  It’s from a few days ago – still timely though.  Poole always includes many links to back up his points, so check out those too.  The Obama administration far surpasses the Bush administration on willful ignorance about America’s enemies in the Muslim world, but this determined delusion persists that, “if” only we engage and recruit “moderates” among the rat nests of Islamist zealots, then this will provide the indigenous force multiplier we need to defeat the more violent practitioners of the religion of Peace.  Yep, our “experts” remain as indoctrinated as the enemy…

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Russ Vaughn: “Grounding Bergdahl’s escape turkey”

Now that Bowe Bergdahl is facing the prospect of prosecution by the Army for deserting his post and for misbehavior, his liberal defenders, those who swallowed whole Susan Rice’s assertion that he served with honor and distinction, will be rais….

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