RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to Roy Gutman, in an article published recently by the McClatchy Newspapers, the Kurds have delayed plans for a referendum on independence. The reasoning seems to be that it is better for the Kurds to first concentrate on defeating the existential threat to the Kurdish region from the brutish ravages of Islamic State (IS).

Massoud Barzani is the Kurdish leader of the largely autonomous Kurdish region but his chief of staff, Fuad Hussein, has said: “We now have a priority to clean the area of IS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). IS must not remain our neighbor. When you have this priority, some other priorities will be delayed.”

Once the Islamic State savages are finally defeated and Barack Obama no longer suspiciously delays and obstructs what any normal U.S. president would have undertaken long ago – namely the total eradication of the barbaric Muslim Islamic State thugs who have been allowed to befoul the world – it is hoped that at long last an independent, sovereign Kurdistan will arrive on the world stage.

The Kurds, like the Jews, unreservedly deserve their existing homelands, for both trace their ancestry in them back thousands of years. It is highly instructive to review the Kurds remarkable history in conjunction with that of the Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustice imposed upon both indigenous peoples over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.

Let us go back to the captivity of the Ten Tribes of Israel, who were taken from their land by the Assyrians in 721-715 BC. Biblical Israel was depopulated, its Jewish inhabitants deported to an area in the region of ancient Media and Assyria – a territory roughly corresponding to or near that of modern-day Kurdistan.

Assyria was, in turn, conquered by Babylonia, which led to the eventual destruction of the southern biblical Jewish kingdom of Judah in 586 BC. The remaining two Jewish tribes were sent to the same areas as their brethren from the northern kingdom.

When the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to their ancestral lands, some Jews remained (and continued to live) with their neighbors in Babylon – an area which, again, included modern-day Kurdistan.

It was only in 1948, upon the birth of the reconstituted Jewish State of Israel, that the 2,500 year old Jewish life in the region ended when the Arab regimes drove the Jews out of their ancient homes; most fleeing to safety in Israel.

Not money, power, territory or revenge. The Russian strongman is after bigger game.

Vladimir Putin aims to reconstitute the Russia of the czars. He wants to avenge the historic humiliation, as he sees it, that was the collapse of the Soviet Union. He’s got to do what he’s got to do to stay in power, probably for life, if necessary by whipping Russians into nationalist frenzy. And he wants to have a lot of fun while doing all of it.

To adapt Mel Brooks : It should be good to be king.

All true. But maybe Mr. Putin is after bigger game. And maybe our failure to think about how Mr. Putin thinks about himself explains our consistent failure to anticipate his moves and check his ambitions. “What a novel my life has been!” said Napoleon on St. Helena. It wasn’t an idle remark: Napoleon had been an aspiring writer as a young man. Suppose Mr. Putin is also living his life as a novel. How would he write the next chapter?

Here’s a guess: Not by quivering in fear that a fresh round of sanctions is going to spark the third Russian Revolution, or that NATO is going to stop him from another advance into Ukraine or some other tempting neighbor. There’s a reason men who are on a roll never take a break: a udentes fortuna iuvat. Fortune favors the daring.

Right now, fortune for Mr. Putin comes, first, in the shape of Barack Obama. The Russian was bound to see the American president as the classic self-infatuated liberal, half as clever and twice as weak as he imagines himself to be. As a former KGB agent working in East Germany, Mr. Putin would have had training, and perhaps experience, in reducing these types to human rubble.

U.S. air strikes in Syria are essential to defeating IS, but we should not cooperate with Iran or its militias.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that an international coalition is forming to confront the terrorists of the Islamic State. President Obama plans to address the nation Wednesday night, as he said over the weekend, to get “the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we’re going to deal with it.” His strategy is expected to involve an emphasis on a U.S.-led coalition and a reliance on airstrikes in a campaign that could take years, not months. Less clear is whether the president will commit to strikes inside Syria and substantially expanded special-forces deployments to Iraq and as soon as possible to Syria. We will not win unless he does.

There is no time left to argue, dither and wonder what should be done about those who are butchering Americans— and anyone else they care to—across a growing portion of the Middle East.

The enemy has no such doubts. They are not going away. They are getting stronger. The war, ladies and gentlemen, is truly on. We’re just not a meaningful part of it yet.

A name can say a great deal about the intentions of our enemy today. The group on the march in the Middle East began calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Then it chose the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the latter term including Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as Syria. Now it’s simply the Islamic State, geography unspecified. They already are a state, in that they carry out government functions in occupied territory. You can bet that their aspirations include Saudi Arabia and its holy cities of Mecca and Medina. With their gains in Iraq, nothing but sand separates them from the Saudi border.

It is hard to overstate the threat that this organization poses. I call it al Qaeda Version 6.0. The Islamic State is far better organized, equipped and funded than the original. They are more experienced and more numerous. Several thousand carry Western passports, including American ones. All the terrorists have to do is get on a plane and head west. But perhaps the most important asset they possess is territory. For the first time since 9/11, a determined and capable enemy has the space and security to plan complex, longer-range operations. If we don’t think we are on that list, we are deluding ourselves.

Jerusalem doubts Indyk’s institute after Qatar funding reports

Brookings think tank is home to former Middle East envoy; Arab state’s four-year donation totals $14.8m.

Israeli government officials on Sunday questioned the impartiality of the prestigious Brookings Institution, the past and present employer of former US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk, following a New York Times report Sunday revealing that Qatar is a major contributor to that think tank.

“Qatar has been a major bankroller for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one government official said. “The fact that the same Qatari government is also a major provider of funds for a respectable Washington think tank raises a whole series of questions about that think tank’s relationships and impartiality.”

According to the Times report, Qatar – the single biggest foreign donor to Brookings, which gets 12 percent of its funds from foreign sources – agreed in 2013 to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to the institution.

Among the questions this has raised in Jerusalem is the degree to which the institute can impartially draw up papers relating to Qatar, such as its role in the Middle East and the financing of terror organizations.

Qatar is Hamas’s main financial backer.

According to the report, “more than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities.”

Despite constant media chatter about how the “Israel Lobby” dominates Washington, Israel was not among the 56 countries listed in a graphic as contributing funds to nine major think tanks, such as Brookings, the Atlantic Council, the Center for Global Development, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Middle East Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the US.

There were, however, nine other Middle East countries on that list of givers.

House Republicans should act, as Rep. Frank Wolf has begun to.
When President Obama sits down with congressional leaders this week to talk about fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — “ISIS” — they’ll probably not agree on anything, not even the proper name of the terrorist organization that now controls about one-third of Iraq and a larger part of Syria.

The president insists on calling it “ISIL”, for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” The “Levant” — an archaic term — refers to the area off the Eastern Mediterranean Sea stretching from what is now Anatolia in Turkey, through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. By insisting on calling the terrorist micro-caliphate “ISIL,” the president is giving them credit for being a lot bigger than they really are.

One thing that they certainly won’t discuss is the best idea to come out of the House of Representatives in quite a while. Actually, it hasn’t come out yet and it’s a good idea with one major defect.

The idea is a bill to be introduced this week by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) that would revise the Authorizations for Use of Military Force passed by Congress to authorize the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both of those measures — passed in 2001 and 2002 — do not give congressional consent to what we face now. The original AUMF authorized war against those people and networks that were behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and the 2002 version authorized war in Iraq.

Wolf’s bill would authorize the president to use military force:

… in close consultation, coordination and cooperation with NATO and regional allies, to use all necessary and appropriate force against those countries, organizations and persons associated with or supporting terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and its regional affiliates, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and any other emerging regional terrorist groups that share a common violent extremist ideology… in order to eliminate all such terrorist groups and prevent future acts of international terrorism against the United States or its allies by such terrorist groups, countries, organizations or persons.

The merits of Wolf’s bill are several. It would, in effect, declare war on the broader terrorist networks and the nations that support them. Going back to the original 9/11 attacks, at least some of us have understood that terrorist groups cannot be a significant threat to us without the support of nations. Saudi Arabia is still a major funding source for al-Qaeda and, thus, not an ally but an adversary. Qatar’s funding and providing sanctuary for the Muslim Brotherhood and its appendages, such as Hamas, make it our enemy, as does its covert support of ISIS. Iran is the principal terrorist-sponsoring nation in the world. Other nations that help fund ISIS are equally the enemy. Pseudo-allies, such as France, which help fund it by paying ransom for kidnapped citizens, have to be compelled to stop.

It has always been the moral case that when a civilized country determines that for the sake of self-protection and survival it must retaliate against aggression or embark on war, the primary goal of its military should be the destruction of that which targets and threatens the country, be it weapons or commandos. The foremost duty of that nation’s leader is to prioritize the lives and safety of those he has sent into combat.
This often forces an uncomfortable but necessary choice: minimizing the risk to one’s troops at the expense of the fighters and population of the enemy. This is not only a civic and military responsibility, but the moral one as well, for the first principle of morality is fulfilling a commitment to those for whom one has freely chosen to be responsible. A leader has a special obligation to the people who chose and trusted him, an obligation that must surpass his feelings for general mankind.

The same still holds true in today’s self-defense against Islamic terrorism, where terrorists purposely fight not in remote battlefields, but specifically in cities among civilian populations diabolically used as shields. In all circumstances, the war of self-defense and survival is a Just war.

The maxim of self-defense is not an abstract platitude, but a raw, real-life imperative. Self-defense means the right to kill a soldier or civilian coming at you before they kill you.
A self-defense that is conditioned on excessive caution not to harm those pursuing you is a rejection of the whole notion of self-defense. Is it possible that the rules of engagement for Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Israelis in Jenin and now Gaza – designed to spare harm to civilians – have led to greater death and injury among their warriors, resulting in a lapse in our obligation to those troops?

Once engaged in a just war, combat should fall within the parameters of moral combat. The primary moral combat standard is to not specifically target truly innocent civilians, to refrain from using civilians as shields, and to forswear torturing the enemy for the sake of cruel pleasure or revenge.

Guaranteeing that civilians not be killed in collateral damage has never been a requisite for moral combat. If such was the case regarding conventional warfare, then it is certainly so when confronted by Islamic terrorism that uses civilian human shields as a strategy to freeze its Western opponents. All agree that rape, looting and blood lust are anathema to moral standards, activities too often relished by jihadists. Proportionality in war is thoroughly doing that which needs to be done to permanently remove the source and scourge of aggression.

Mal Brough is a member of the Australian House of Representatives. On September 1, 2014, Brough posted to his Facebook a short video of a statement he made before Parliament expressing his views on what he calls “Islamic extremists,” but what we all know are merely devout Muslims following in the footsteps of Mohammad.

He began his statements by applauding the Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s statements on the developments in Iraq. He also is behind any humanitarian needs of the country as well.

However, he took the time to launch into blasting the Islamists in the region.

VIDEO:

VIDEO:

“I think that appeasement and containment is never going to be enough for people who have extremists views, who wish to dominate the world, to dominate what our Western values are,” Brough said.

“If we wish to protect Western values, I would ask the Australian government that I’m part of to use our position on the Security Council to advocate to the Western World that we will stay the course for as long as these extremists do,” he declared. “They have no intention to have a ‘holding pattern,’ to put people back into a box.”

He added, “They’re aim is to destroy everything that we stand for.”

“Unless we give an unequivocal demonstration that we’re not just about humanitarian relief, not that we’re just about containment, but are here to eliminate this threat, then we’ll continue to have Australians move to these places to be radicalized and in doing so, they can and will disrupt our life,” said Brough.

“The Western World stands at a crossroad,” he concluded. “Now is the time for us to act decisively, to act with strength, to act with commitment and to act together. That is the way we will protect our values. That is the way we will protect Australia, and nothing less will do.”

Mr. Brough is right, but he must realize that it is not a radicalizing that is the problem. It is conversion to Islam.

This isn’t just an issue for Australia either. It’s an issue for all of the West, including the United States.

In a recent article by Bryan Fischer, in which he says Islam is the Ebola virus of culture, he writes:

Quarantine is the only approach to Islam that will protect America. It has to be contained where it is, in Muslim lands, and we must stop the importation of this Islamic virus at our border.

At least with Ebola there is a decisive measure to actually quarantine for sure. I would prefer Brough’s method of elimination.

Fischer goes on to point out that about 7 million Muslims live in the US today. According to number from 2012, the American population was at 313.9 million people. So the Muslim population is roughly 2 percent in the US. He then informs us:

According to a Pew Research Poll from 2011, 19% of American Muslims think homicide bombings are okay.

If you do the math, that means 1,330,000 Muslims living right here among us right now are perfectly okay with the use of explosives to exterminate us with extreme prejudice.

The percentage of Muslims who support homicide bombings jumps to 31% among Muslim millennials. This, of course, is the cohort we have most to fear. Bluntly, this means that 1/3 of all the young Muslim men you meet would be happy to see you blown up. Think the Tsarnaev brothers here.

But America, it isn’t just the male Islamists we need to be concerned with. We have seenAustralian beauty named Amira Karroum convert to Islam, engage in jihad and be killed in Syria. Or how about Oksana Aslanova, another convert to Islam, who bombed the Volgograd Railway Station in Russia? Or this 19 year old girl from Minnesota who wants to travel to Syria to take care of wounded jihadists, and there are countless other western women travelling abroad to advance the caliphate and join ISIS.

The following essay is adapted from Mark’s book A Song For The Season:

In the weeks after September 11th, several commentators wanted to know why everyone was singing “God Bless America” rather than the national anthem. The song was everywhere in those early days, and various musicologists were called upon to speculate learnedly on why this song had caught the public mood: Perhaps “The Star-Spangled Banner” requires too great a range, perhaps its complex use of melismas demands a professional vocalist, etc, etc.

All irrelevant. The reason the nation sang “God Bless America” is its first seven words. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is about a historic event; “America The Beautiful” is (principally) about the topography; but when it comes to the nation, Irving Berlin said it simplest and said it best:

God Bless America
Land that I love.

Berlin was a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, but, unlike those sophisticated rhymesters, only he could have written those words without embarrassment. As Jule Styne, the composer of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” once said to me about Berlin, “It’s easy to be clever. The really clever thing is to be simple” – to say it directly, unaffectedly, unashamedly:

God Bless America
Land that I love.

It was the song which members of Congress broke into spontaneously, and charmingly raggedly, on the steps of the Capitol. Sung on Federal property in normal circumstances, Berlin’s words would be considered religious enough to attract a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union:

Stand beside her
And guide her
Through the night
With a light from above…

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/irans-dhimmi-conference-in-washington-dc?f=puball
John Hajjar is a member of the Executive Committee of the Middle East Christian Committee MECHRIC a coalition of Assyrian, Syriac, Chaldean, Maronite, Coptic, Melkite and other Middle East Christian NGOs www.Mechric.org

How Iran, Assad and Hezbollah are using Christian persecution by ISIS to hijack the minorities

On September 9, 2014, a conference organized by the newly formed group “In Defense of Christians” (IDC), will be addressing the issue of “persecution of Christians in the Middle East at the hands of ISIS.” The event is very well funded and a sophisticated outreach has been mobilizing Mideast Christian churches in the United States over the past few months to participate in great numbers. The board of IDC includes prominent citizens, former government officials, and experts in the field of international religious freedom. The context of the conference, with one day in Congress and another day at a DC hotel is very appealing to the public. Christians in northern Iraq were ethnically cleansed from Mosul back in June and from the Nineveh plain–the last geographical enclave for Christian Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs in Iraq–in July. More than 400,000 Christians are refugees in Kurdistan with no immediate hope for a return home. Scores of Christians have been killed, raped, and kidnapped by the Jihadists of ISIS, as were Yazidis and other Iraqis. Christians of Iraq and Syria–and before there, in Egypt–have been under persecution and submitted to violence for the past few years. In short, the cause is a good one, and most of the official workers for such a conference are well intentioned. However, the American public must be informed: while the narrative of IDC is directed at ISIS violence, the conference is intentionally or not, profiting the Iranian and Syrian regimes and Hezbollah.

Readers may be stunned by this assertion, but here are the facts and some of the evidence:

Iranian Christians Absent
The conference is surely condemning the Jihadists of ISIS, but it is ignoring the oppression by the Iranian regime against its own Christian community, particularly the Iranian Persian Christians. Many Americans are aware of the horrific jailing in Iran of Pastor Saeed Abidini whose only crime was his conversion to Christianity. With countless other pastors and activists assassinated, tortured, and jailed for years, an “In Defense of Christians” conference in Washington should at a minimum invite Iranian Christian dissidents and victims to testify about the Ayatollahs regime’s brutality against the community. Obviously, there are Christians who work with the Khomeinist regime inasmuch as there were French collaborating with the Nazis in WWII or “official churches” under the Soviet Bloc. Free Iranian Christians have not been seen at the IDC meetings.

Assad’s War on Christians Ignored
The Assad regime’s massive brutality against Lebanon’s Christian community during the war of 1975-1990 has nowhere been cited at the conference. Neither is the torture, jailing and assassinations of hundreds of Christian citizens, politicians and journalists under Syrian occupation between 1990 and 2005 included. Two Christian presidents, many Christian ministers, members of parliament, and students were killed by the Assad regime, but the conference has ignored this tragedy and no speaker is slated to address the issue. In addition, the Christians who are opposing Bashar Assad were not invited while those who claim he protects them are omnipresent.

Hezbollah Terror Deleted
Hezbollah, a violent pro-Iranian organization on the US terror list that has eliminated, kidnapped and threatened Lebanese Christians (as well as members from other communities) will not be condemned. Victims of its violence and terror are not scheduled to speak.

Barrack Hussein Obama is the example of what happens when the mightiest nation on earth elects a politician whose worldview is to naively make the world a level playing field.

America goes into reverse and “leads from behind.” He goes on An apology tour to the Muslim folk and tell them America is out of there, and they are free to conduct their own business, free of American interference. No more good side or bad side. Let’s push the “reset” button with Russia. Assad is “a reformer” and the world is “a global village” according to his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. “Bin Laden is dead, General Motors is alive, and Al-Qaida is on the run.” There is no such thing as Islamic terror. Let’s throw Mubarak under the bus to give Egyptians democracy and, just to show our good intentions, let’s invite the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House. Let’s set red lines in Syria and if they use their chemical weapons again our response will be, according to John Kerry, “incredibly small.”

Always the charmer, Obama has been out-charmed by a smiling Rouhani face that disguises an Iranian on-going pursuit of nuclear missiles. Replacing Ahmadinajad abusive rhetoric with a Tehran grin has lulled the Obama Administration as the Iranians run down the clock to breakout time.

America has a president that has been shackled by an early presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize which was given more as a warning than an award for peacemaking. Received gladly, it now weighs heavy on the thin chest of a lightweight president.

So when Russia invades Ukraine, Obama manages a verbal bluster and nothing of substance. Releasing some of the worst Islamic terrorists from Guantanamo to plan and wreak havoc on the West was a kind-hearted gesture that the world will live to regret.

We are already regretting the Obama insistence of pulling US troops out of Iraq. Leading from behind in Libya and Syria, and putting a misplaced faith in a Shiite Maliki government in Iraq, has left a vacuum that has been gruesomely filled by an Islamic horror the world has never known since the brutal days of Mohammad, who slaughtered his way across the Arabian and Jewish worlds.

Let’s be honest, the brand of terrorism we are witnessing was unleashed by the wealthy fat cats of today’s Islamic world from Iran to Qatar, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia who set Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, and ISIS on their path of mayhem and murder in the name of Allah and Mohammed.