Friday, July 13, 2012

State Department Still Can’t Find The Enemy

Amid this week’s Congressional hearings on terrorism, the State Department again demonstrated why America remains in mortal danger from terrorists. You can’t destroy the enemy if you can’t identify the enemy. A war on terror or on terrorism may make a nice slogan, but then everybody gets to come up with his own definition of terrorism. Remember the slogan of the left: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

This kind of moral equivalence and philosophical musing is going to get us all killed. For now, it’s just getting a lot of people killed in foreign lands while America either fights battles with one hand tied behind its back or stays completely out of the fray. The current example is Nigeria. Our bumbling State Department stubbornly refuses to recognize the mass murder group Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. And why? Because it would require admitting who the real enemy is—Islamism.

Boko Haram has managed to kill thousands of Nigerian citizens using typical insurgent tactics and asymmetrical warfare. It murders innocent civilians, has no governmental authority, wears uniforms only for show but rarely during an attack, and recognizes no rules of civilized warfare. That makes it a terrorist organization by any sane person’s definition. But to say it is a terrorist organization requires one to ask what their goal is. And that would reveal the real enemy’s goal—total domination of Islam over the entire world.

The human side of this horror is that Boko Haram almost exclusively targets Christians and Christian sites. The picture accompanying this article was taken last week after another devastating bombing of a Christian church during Sunday services. The organization scarcely shows its head in the Muslim parts of the country, except to parade its successes in the shrinking Christian enclaves. The practical danger of this ongoing jihad is that Nigeria was a relatively stable state with alternating Muslim and Christian chief executives. It is becoming very unstable, and worst of all, it has been a major non-Middle East provider of petroleum to the West.

Our sophisticated and nuanced State Department is doing essentially nothing about the rapidly-growing problem. It has declared certain members of Boko Haram to be terrorists, but won’t even come close to declaring the entire organization terrorist. It’s a bit like declaring Hitler, Himmler and Goering to be international criminals, but leaving the Nazis pretty much alone. And likewise, it ignores the underlying beliefs which trigger the criminal/terrorist acts. Nazism in Germany, Islamism in Nigeria.

Instead of recognizing clear facts and an evolving catastrophe in a friendly nation, the State Department engages in sophistry. When cornered by questions from committee members, State Department spokesman Johnnie Carson (no, I didn’t make that up) rambled: “Before we prescribe actions, it is important that we understand what Boko Haram is and what it is not. The truth is that our understanding is limited at best. Boko Haram is composed of at least two organizations, a larger organization which is focused primarily on discrediting the Nigerian government, and a small more dangerous group that is increasingly sophisticated and increasingly leftist.” Aw, baloney.

To return to the Nazi analogy, that’s like failing to oppose Nazism because the SS and the SA didn’t share the exact same beliefs. If it looks like a skunk, and smells like a skunk, and is seen it the company of skunks—it’s a skunk. Every platoon of Boko Haram shares a common goal, if not a common belief in how to attain that goal. That goal is the destruction of Western civilization, and in Nigeria itself anything that isn’t fundamentalist Islam. Some groups may blow up Christian churches while others assassinate political rivals, but the goal remains the same. The triumph of Islam at any cost.

Boko Haram wants to replace constitutional government and Western-style governance in Nigeria with sharia law. They do so by terrorist means, but Boko Haram and sharia have one common parent—Islamism. Our cowardly and inept State Department refuses to use either term for these murderous thugs. When they start blowing up mosques and killing imams, I might be willing to call the bloodshed a civil war. But that isn’t going to happen. This is just another attempt to take over a diverse population and control a moderate nation in the name of Allah.

In my lifetime, civilization has faced the threat of Nazism and communism. But our nation rallied behind patriotic governments, Democrat and Republican which knew who the enemy was. Now, late in my life, we face an enemy that our State Department can’t identify and won’t fight. It waffles over whom to support as Islamism takes over the entire Middle East and Africa., arguing over whether the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Shabaab is preferable.

In Nigeria, there’s no such lack of easily-discernible opponents. It is militant Islam versus civilization, and the State Department isn’t sure who should win. During the committee hearing, the State Department spokesman rigidly refused to admit that the State Department should declare Boko Haram a terrorist organization, then proceeded on three separate occasions to refer to it as a terrorist organization. With clarity of thought like that, can there be any question who will ultimately rule Nigeria?

49 comments:

Joel Farnham said...

I trace this problem back to George Bush Jr. He is the one who failed to identify the exact cause of terrorism.

Just think for a second though, if the NAZIs could get people to believe Nazism is a religion, our current liberals would fall all over themselves to get behind and trash anyone who so much as raised an eyebrow.

BTW Nazism and Islamics were close buddies during WWII. It is NOT a well known fact. Something to think about.

Tennessee Jed said...

I agree this struggle is with Islamic jihadists. Just as their are (sadly) far to many Americans who have gone over to the dark side of the left, far too many people of Islamic faith have either become jihadists themselves or at minimum, sympathetic to that cause. One of the biggest problems (at least in my view) is the fact so many of these nations are theocracies, and the governments have badly abused the governed. Disagreement is an offense punishable by death.

T-Rav said...

Okay, fine. We want to call them "freedom fighters" instead of terrorists? Fine. Then let's kill as many freedom fighters as possible. Or whatever you want to call them.

AndrewPrice said...

I think the whole list of branding groups/countries terrorists is a joke. It's so politicized that it's meaningless at this point.

tryanmax said...

Tom, this administration is sophistic AND sophomoric. Why, it's a soph tyranny! LOL!

Here's a clue for the lefties: if someone is fighting on behalf of an oppressive and dogmatic regime and/or ideology, then they are not fighting for freedom, ergo, they cannot be freedom fighters.

Anonymous said...

Joel: Just as they can't blame everything that goes wrong on Bush, we can't blame everything on Obama. Obama is very solicitous of Muslims and Middle East monarchs, but it was indeed Bush who declared war on the nebulous "terror." He did actually use the word "crusade" very early after 9-11, and got roundly attacked by the forces of political-correctness all the way around. That was as close to telling the truth as either administration ever got.

The Nazi-Islamic connection is well-known to those of us who study history, and to all Jews outside of America, particularly and obviously the Israelis. It is slowly becoming known here, but the forces of political-correctness have kept that juicy tidbit of historical fact rather quiet here in the States. Hitler's original "final solution" always involved obliterating the Jews, but before the Wannsee Conference, the plan was to export many of them to Palestine and let his Muslim friends do the job for him. After suffering the loss of North Africa and following big reverses in Eastern Europe, Hitler had to do his dirty work himself. Until the end of the war, Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem remained friends and co-conspirators.

T-Rav said...

LawHawk, very true. And of course, let's not forget who the Jew-hating Grand Mufti of Jerusalem mentored.

Yasser Arafat said...

My ears are burning....

Anonymous said...

Tennessee: I think the problem is very deep and nearly insoluble so long as Islam itself retains all of its Sixth Century stubbornness and refusal to separate theology from politics. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam itself makes no provision for recognizing those things in their holy writing which applied only to the times and those which are "eternal truths." Exegesis allows for separating those things which are "now" and physical, and those things which are eternal and spiritual. Islam's very nature does not allow for exegesis. So not all Muslims are jihadists, but all jihadists are Muslims, and the Koran and the hadiths support the jihadists. Until that changes, there can be no real peace between the West and Islam.

Anonymous said...

T-Rav: The left did exactly the same thing during the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam. Only then it was communists, now it's Islamists. Same s--t, different package. I'm with you. Who cares what we call them, we need to kill them before they kill us. Or at least we need to kill enough of them that the rest get the message. A grudging armistice is better than a phony war.

rlaWTX said...

The State Department rank & file has been a bunch of dumkoffs for many, many years. This admin has just encouraged and enabled them in their idiocy.
How many State Depts in the world actually actively work against an admin's stated goals (like during W's admin)????

Anonymous said...

Andrew: And the problem is compounded with groups/countries which are both "allies" of ours and at the same time tacitly support mass murder of non-Islamics. Life was simpler and much easier to survive when we used the word "enemy." "Enemy" being anyone who tries to kill us, has an agenda and an organization, and can be identified in place and time. The word "terrorist" can be useful shorthand, but it's not very helpful in identifying the enemy.

Anonymous said...

tryanmax: But they can be enemies. All "freedom fighters" as defined by the left have in fact been enemies of America, civilization, and freedom.

Anonymous said...

T-Rav: That is a lesser-known but nevertheless simple fact.

Anonymous said...

Yasser: Yes, we were talking about you, may you continue to rot in hell.

Anonymous said...

rlaWTX: That is an ongoing problem that I certainly don't have a solution for. Career State Department employees tend to be very "internationalist." Even those who are not actively opposed to a given administration such as Reagan's or Bush's still tend to be roadblocks in the way of sensible foreign policy. It takes a strong Secretary with excellent management skills to get these bureaucrats moving in the right direction.

T-Rav said...

rla, there's a reason why the people McCarthy accused of being secret Communists back in the '50s were disproportionally State Department employees. It has had a problem with myopic outlooks for some time.

BevfromNYC said...

Oh, and Yassar, I dearly hope that it is not just your ears that are burning...

Anonymous said...

T-Rav: The highest official in any administration to have direct ties to the Communist Party was Alger Hiss. He was in, you called it, the State Department under both Roosevelt and Truman. He wasn't outed until after the statute of limitations had run out on espionage, but he was convicted of perjury. Though the evidence was extremely strong against him, his State Department and liberal buddies refused to admit his guilt. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Venona Transcripts revealed that Hiss had conclusively worked with Soviet spies. The left still denies it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Alger Hiss was a major mover and shaker in getting the United Nations formed and ultimately located in New York.

Anonymous said...

Bev: I think pretty much every part of good old Yasser is burning.

Anonymous said...

T-Rav: I think I've probably heard and read about all I can take of Alger Hiss. What you're guessing about what the new version is is probably correct, and just another in a long list of liberal revisionism. Polishing a turd, as it were.

Individualist said...

To be a freedom fighter one has to fight for freedom.

Islamists fight to end Freedom.

See the difference......

Anonymous said...

Indi: Aw, that's too easy. You must have missed a subtlety or nuance. LOL

BevfromNYC said...

And speaking of Yasser Arafat burning in hell...did you read that the PA has agreed to allow his wife to dig up his body and do testing because she has proof (years later) that Yassar was poisoned. The proof is from his clothing that have been under her care for years. What do you want to guess that the "poison" they have "found" will be directly related to Israel.

Of course they did all of the post mortem testing at the time and found no poison on his clothing or in his system, and ruled that he died of a effects of a stroke. The wife is saying that he was poisoned BEFORE and it caused the stroke that killed him. Lots of money for her is involved...

tryanmax said...

I want to get a pet snake and name it Alger Hiss.

Anonymous said...

Bev: It's a poison concocted using Jewish chemistry. I learned about that from the publications of the Al Azhar University while I was reading about how the universe revolves around the earth.

Anonymous said...

tryanmax: Why didn't I think of that? I'm renaming my emotional assistance anaconda Alger Hiss for when I next need to get the snake aboard a plane.

rlaWTX said...

I'm pretty sure that Alger Hiss the snake would bite the hand that feeds it (and have mesmerizing eyes like Kaa!)...

Anonymous said...

rlaTWX: "Oh shut up, silly woman, you knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in." I'd almost forgotten that 1968 Al Wilson song.

BTW: Do you suppose Alger Hiss and Monty Python would like to travel together?

BevfromNYC said...

Hey, Hugo Chi-vez wants to go too!!

Anonymous said...

Bev: No problem. Hugo can be the midflight snack.

BevfromNYC said...

So that's -

Alger Hiss & Monty Python = "Snakes on a Plane"

Hugo Chi-vez = "Snacks on a Plane"

Boo! Sorry, it's Friday...

Anonymous said...

Bev: Actually, that was pretty good. But then I'm easily amused. LOL

tryanmax said...

Bev, didn't you mean to say, "Boo! Hiss!"?

Yasser Arafat said...

>>a question I have for Yasser: Just your ears? >>

At the moment, yes. The Mossad-issued poison dulled all my other senses, don'tcha know.

Muammar al-Gaddafi said...

My ears are fine....

but everything else feels like it is on fire. And what is that Brimstone smell.....

Anonymous said...

tryanmax: How about "snap, crackle, pop?"

Anonymous said...

Yasser: That probably comes as a comfort to the boys and young men in hell with you.

Anonymous said...

Muammar: Would you like some cool water? Sorry, no can do. Ask that guy near you--I think his name is Tantalus.

Koshcat said...

I think some of my liberal friends are somewhat conflicted on the whole Islam issue. Many come from the position that they don't believe religion should be factored into government policy. One of the reasons many of them hated Bush is he was open with his beliefs. Personally, I think his beliefs just provided the moral background where his final decisions came from. That is he wasn't interested in forming a theocracy but tried to make decisions he felt were moral and agreed with his beliefs.

The problem is that they seem so myopic to what the Islamists fundamentally believe in. Many are so quick to critically judge Mormons, and I have had issues with some, but seem to forgot that they are a very family-centered religion. They will complain about how sexually repressed conservatives are and then seem to be blind to genital mutilation, child brides, head scarves, rape, and murder of women. Europeans are even worse. They are so worried about the secret Jewish committee controlling the world but cannot see the young Islamic militant blowing up a train.

In a nutshell, it's baffling.

Anonymous said...

Koshcat: There's a lot of ignorance out there, and where there isn't ignorance, there's a lot of willful blindness. The important distinction between Islam and modern Judeo-Christian thinking is that in Islam the religion cannot be separated from the political/secular. To be a true Muslim, the Koran demands that the believer work toward an Islamic state (eventually an Islamic worldwide caliphate) with sharia as the only law. Believing that sharia is handed down directly from Allah to Mohammed, a Muslim must believe that all other law is an abomination created by infidels. A believing Muslim cannot swear allegiance to the US Constitution and actually mean it. That's why we're getting incidents like the Ft. Hood massacre. It takes a fanatic to carry out a massacre like that, but the underlying belief is the same for all believing Muslims, not just radicals.

Anonymous said...

Koshcat: Likewise, the concept of the free exercise of any religion save Islam is totally alien and incomprehensible to the true Muslim believer. In a Muslim caliphate, worship of any God other than Allah (or failure to acknowledge the existence of God entirely) is either punishable as a crime or allowed only if the infidel accepts subhuman second-class treatment commonly known as dhimmitude.

Koshcat said...

Makes me almost want to adopt Ann Culter's idea of sending another crusade into the region and force conversion.

Still too crazy, but becoming less so...

Anonymous said...

Koshcat: Since you mentioned the Europeans (and their fellow-travelers here in the US), here's an excellent new article from my old ally and former left wing radical David Horowitz's blog. It addresses the mess created by political-correctness in England alone: Britain Ruled by Political Correctness.

Anonymous said...

Koshcat: I have a tee-shirt with Coulter's idea on it, complete with a bluish outline of her. I give up--my grandkids didn't read the words, but thought the silhouette was some female pop star they knew of. I used to buy those tee-shirts just to annoy my fellow San Franciscans. I also have one that says: "Freedom of Choice" with the names and illustrations of twelve different types of handguns.

Anonymous said...

As long as I mentioned the Political Correctness article at FrontPage Magazine, here's another one you might or might not want to read. If you choose to read it, I suggest you don't do so right after or during a meal: Sodomy for the Sake of Islam.

tryanmax said...

Ugh, no wonder leftists love Islams so much. They basically subscribe to the same morality. Everything is permissible so long as you mean well.

Anonymous said...

tryanmax: That is very much the common factor. Nothing is impermissible so long as it serves Marx or Allah. I'm guessing you read the sodomy article.

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