RUTHFULLY YOURS

When a drone operator follows a strike order that kills 13 Afghans, he comes undone. Sounds like a plot from ‘Homeland’ or ’24.’

Since antiquity, storytellers have cautioned us about the hazards of men using technology to trespass into realms where only the gods are allowed. For giving man fire, Zeus condemned Prometheus to an eternity chained to a rock with an eagle pecking at his liver. Daedalus’s clever wings melted when his son Icarus flew too close to the sun.

Dan Fesperman’s excellent and timely ninth thriller, “Unmanned,” isn’t quite so archetypal, but it does explore the ethical conundrums of the most potent new weapon in the American arsenal: the unmanned aerial drone. Watching our enemy from the sky is one thing, but what if those same eyes are looking down at us? And who is watching the watchers? “Unmanned” is a smart and thoughtful exploration of the unintended consequences of waging war by remote control.

While the technical details of this exhaustively researched book certainly contribute to its authenticity—the author is a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun—it is his sharply drawn characters that make the novel tick. Capt. Darwin Cole’s transition from F-16 fighter jock to Predator drone operator is going smoothly: He conducts missions against terrorists thousands of miles away from behind a screen in the Nevada desert. “Each twitch of his hand,” Mr. Fesperman writes of Cole’s work, “flings a signal of war across the nation’s night owls as they make love, make a sandwich, make a mess of things, or click the remote.”

Everything changes when Cole receives a command via Internet chat from his mysterious J-TAC, or joint terminal attack controller, whom he has never met, to fire at a target in Afghanistan. The result is 13 civilian deaths, among them several children that he has become familiar with while monitoring the village of Sandar Khosh. Cole is especially haunted by the pixilated image of a young girl whose arm is severed at the shoulder yet who manages to survive the strike. She is, in the grim vernacular of drone warfare, a “squirter,” a person who has escaped the strike and is “so called because on infrared they display as squibs of light, streaming from the action like raindrops across a windshield.”

Islamic State militants have overrun parts of Iraq and Syrian provinces such as Raqqa, above, capturing munitions. The group, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL, raises money through extortion, oil pirating and kidnapping. Reuters

The Islamic State runs a self-sustaining economy across territory it controls in Syria and Iraq, pirating oil while exacting tribute from a population of at least eight million, Arab and Western officials said, making it one of the world’s richest terror groups and an unprecedented threat.

That illicit economy presents a new picture of Islamic State’s financial underpinnings. The group was once thought to depend on funding from Arab Gulf donors and donations from the broader Muslim world. Now, Islamic State—the former branch of al Qaeda that has swallowed parts of Iraq and Syria—is a largely self-financed organization.

Money from outside donors “pales in comparison to their self-funding through criminal and terrorist activities,” a U.S. State Department official said, adding that those activities generate millions of dollars a month.

For Western and Arab nations that are striving to stop Islamic State, the group’s local funding sources pose a conundrum: A clampdown on economic activity that helps fund the group, counterterrorism officials and experts said, could cause a humanitarian crisis in the already stressed areas it controls.

“Can you prevent ISIS from taking assets? Not really, because they’re sitting on a lot of assets already,” said a Western counterterrorism official. “So you must disrupt the network of trade. But if you disrupt trade in commodities like food, for example, then you risk starving thousands of civilians.”

The government of the United States is suing the town of St. Anthony, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb with a population a little over 8,000, to force the town to allow development of an Islamic center in an area reserved for industrial development. It is a minor news story, but one that sheds light on broader legal and cultural trends. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:

The federal government on Wednesday sued the small north-metro city of St. Anthony, contending that its City Council violated federal law in 2012 by rejecting a proposed Islamic center. …

“An injustice has been done,” U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said at a news conference in Minneapolis. “I will not stand by while any religious group is subject to unconstitutional treatment that violates federal civil rights laws.”

Actually, DOJ happily stood by when the city previously denied a Christian group the use of the same space. Mr. Luger didn’t mention that in his pretentious announcement.

The lawsuit alleges that the council’s decision to deny the Abu Huraira Islamic Center the right to establish a worship center in the basement of the St. Anthony Business Center violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act passed by Congress in 2000.

Like me, you probably have never heard of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. I haven’t studied it, but, according to the DOJ’s web site, it prohibits zoning laws that “treat churches or other religious assemblies or institutions on less than equal terms with nonreligious institutions.” So it may actually apply here. Although, of course, no one worried about that when a Christian group was being turned down.

Apparently the Religious Land Use statute is being used by the federal government around the country to force acceptance of Islamic centers, contrary to local zoning regulations:

It marks the first time federal prosecutors have sued a Minnesota city citing the law, although the Justice Department has filed similar suits elsewhere in the country on behalf of Islamic centers, according to a U.S. attorney’s office spokesman.

It is important to note that these cease-fire demands are not part of Hamas’s or Islamic Jihad’s overall strategy, namely to have Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

Many foreign journalists who came to cover the war in the Gaza trip were under the false impression that it was all about improving living conditions for the Palestinians by opening border crossings and building an airport and seaport. These journalists really believed that once the demands of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are accepted, this would pave the way for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

To understand the true intention of Hamas and its allies, it is sufficient to follow the statements made by their leaders after the cease-fire announcement this week. To his credit, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader, has never concealed Hamas’s desire to destroy Israel.

Hamas and its allies see the war in the Gaza Strip as part of there strategy to destroy Israel. What Hamas and its allies are actually saying is, “Give us open borders and an airport and seaport so we can use them to prepare for the next was against Israel.”

Statements made by Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders and spokesmen following the announcement of the long-term cease-fire agreement with Israel this week serve as a reminder of their true intentions and strategy.

Over the past two months, the two groups, together with several armed factions in the Gaza Strip, repeatedly announced that their main goal was to end the “siege” on the Gaza Strip and build their own airport and seaport.

During the cease-fire talks in Cairo, the Palestinian groups repeatedly and stubbornly insisted that complying with these demands, along with opening all the border crossings with the Gaza Strip, was the only way to end the violence and achieve a long-term cease-fire with Israel.

However, it is important to note that these cease-fire demands are not part of Hamas’s or Islamic Jihad’s overall strategy, namely to have Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip are not only fighting for an airport and seaport. Nor are they fighting only for the reopening of all border crossings with Israel and Egypt.

Mark Twain has often been appropriately recognized as a friend, admirer and defender of the Jewish people. However, commonly overlooked has been his understanding of values and perspectives that are deeply ingrained in Jewish thought. This is a subject I will deal with here and which I believe will reveal some remarkable insights by Twain in his well acclaimed historical essay in Harpers, “Concerning the Jew.”

In the essay Twain delineates a number of characteristics of Jews reflective of their cultural heritage that he extols most highly. These include citizenship, family cohesion, honesty in business and an overall intelligence in business and life. One trait, however, that he doesn’t mention and which ironically is exhibited through his own life is a capacity for human or spiritual growth. In Judaism this is powered by “oral Torah” or the ongoing effort to interpret the Torah in expanded ways in light of continuing experiences. In his own life Twain experienced enormous growth through his life experiences which although infinitesimal compared to the cultural experiences of the Jews throughout time are nonetheless in the same direction. This is well reflected in his “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” where the character spiritually matures through his experiences.Upon considering the first of these characteristics “citizenship” Twain in his essay remarks on the low crime and high sense of order within the Jewish community. Here we may observe that the Torah itself warns that one should not place a stumbling block in the path of the blind, which becomes a metaphorical model against exploiting the vulnerable of helpless.

In yet another demonstration of contempt for the Constitution, President Obama and his administration are pursuing what the New York Times characterizes as a “sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions” — absent any input from Congress.

The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority approval by the Senate to ratify any legally binding treaty. The Obama administration plans to sidestep that requirement by calling the agreement a “politically binding” deal that would substitute for an actual treaty. It would consist of voluntary pledges, combined with obligations from a 1992 U.N. treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control. That 22-year-old agreement was reached at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement on October 7, 1992, and President Bush Sr. signed it six days later, making it legally binding.

The Obama administration contends that simply adding the additional voluntary pledges to the agreement obviates the need for another ratification process. “There’s some legal and political magic to this,” said Jake Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leftist advocacy group. “They’re trying to move this as far as possible without having to reach the 67-vote threshold.”

Not magic. Just another attempt by the Obama administration to kick Congress to the curb in pursuit of an agenda that has absolutely no chance of getting majority approval in Congress, much less a two-thirds vote of approval in the Senate. In 1997, the Kyoto climate control treaty was rocketed into oblivion with a 96-0 bipartisan vote. Another effort was undertaken in Copenhagen in 2009, but once again the attempt to forge a legally binding agreement failed. Obama attended that conference, hoping to put America in alignment with the global community, but he did so with no support whatsoever from Republicans, along with opposition from several Democrats representing states that rely heavily on coal power for energy and jobs. Democrats made it clear they wouldn’t accept any treaty or agreement threatening that status quo. In 2010, “cap and trade” legislation failed in the Senate for the same reason.

The Obama administration is undeterred by such inconvenient realities. In June, once again absent any input from Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed regulations aimed at cutting existing greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants 30 percent by 2030. The move has engendered lawsuits in the in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia from at least a dozen coal-reliant states. It has also engendered a warning from North Dakota Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, whose state relies on coal-generated electricity for a whopping 80 percent of its power needs. “When that is done, and the stake is through the heart of coal, they will come for you next,” Heitkamp told representatives from the natural gas industry. She also added a dose of reality to the mix. “In my lifetime we will not transition away from coal,” she contended.

In March Frontpage profiled Californian Nicholas Michael Teausant, indicted for attempting to support ISIS, a foreign terrorist organization. Teausant remains in custody but recently granted an enlightening interview to Sam Stanton and Denny Walsh of the Sacramento Bee.

In March Teausant was en route to Canada and near the border texted a friend who told him “if I get myself out of the country everything will be taken care of, they’ll pay for me to go over there, they’ll give me a gun.” He had been in the National Guard but had not brought along a weapon. His friend also told him “They’ll give me everything I could possibly want. They’ll take care of my family, and that I can always come back to America when this is over.” The friend turned out to be an FBI informer, and that led to his arrest.

“I’m not going to say that I’m completely innocent and I have no fault in this,” Teausant told the reporters. “Some of it is my fault, yes. But then again I also feel that if the informant hadn’t come along I would have just been making idle boasts and I wouldn’t have done anything.” But there’s more to the story.

Teausant told the reporters that while living in Montana he met a beautiful Muslim woman who would speak only to Muslim men. That spurred his interest in Islam, but it wasn’t only romantic. The zealous convert came to believe his daughter’s day care center was “Zionist.” He wanted to blow it up but claims he told the informant he would only bomb the place when nobody was there. Teausant doesn’t recall discussing any bomb attacks in Los Angeles but on fighting overseas he showed good recall. The newly minted Muslim soon became convinced that the government of Syria needed to be taken down.

“I wanted to go help fight for these people because the New Hampshire slogan is ‘Live Free or Die,’” he told the Bee reporters. “In 1775, we rebelled against Britain because we felt we were being tyrannized and conquered, so we wanted our own freedom. So I felt like I could try and help with that, and give the people freedom that they were fighting for.”

When it comes to Iraq, Obama lectures the Sunnis and the Shiites on getting along and forming a government that won’t exist for the sole benefit of a single group at the expense of the other.

But in America he runs exactly that type of government.

Iraqis are not stupid. They look at the news and they see Ferguson and Al Sharpton screaming at angry mobs and know that Obama is not practicing what he preaches to them. Obama may have forced out Maliki, but his own tribal politics are hard to distinguish from those of Maliki.

Obama rules not by inspiring people, but, like Maliki and ISIS, he divides and conquers, setting people against each other. Obama’s America is as spitefully tribal as Maliki’s Iraq. Its bosses, like Eric Holder, hold a divisive worldview that excludes much of the country.

Al Sharpton, Obama’s close political ally, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his mentor, are familiar types in Iraq. You can find a thousand Jeremiah Wrights on any given Friday screaming about killing the Shiites or the Sunnis. You can find a million Al Sharptons community organizing local hatreds until they explode.

The Sharptons and Wrights of Iraq have guns because the machinery of law and order there has collapsed even more comprehensively than it has in Detroit. In a country divided by ethnic and sectarian politics, a multicultural military and police are incapable of enforcing the law and uninterested in standing up to violence from their own people.

Those are the ugly tribal politics that Obama has brought to America. Instead of repairing the economy, he focused on wealth redistribution. Instead of bringing Americans together as one nation, he calculatedly tore them apart around manufactured crises of race, gender, class and religion. He pitted blacks against whites, liberal Protestants against Catholics, the poor against the middle class and the cities against the suburbs.

The truth is hanging by a thread. Beheaded journalist’s father: “I didn’t know how brutal they were.”

This is what I wrote a month ago, in the first dispatch in this series:

“Western media fervently defend the fighting forces of a jihad movement that would just as easily behead them as enslave them but would never ever allow them to report freely as they are doing today. Even though they abuse that freedom, they enjoy it.”

This week we were treated to the stark beheading video of American reporter James Foley. It is normal that the bereaved family would pay tribute to Foley’s courage maintained “up to the last minute.” He was on his knees. His last words were an indictment of his native land for conducting offensive air strikes against the Caliphate. It is fair to assume that if he had stood tall and faced the man who was preparing to saw off his head the video would not have been broadcast. If he had tried to wrest the knife out of the hands of his executioner we would never have known. Only videos of submissive victims are offered for the world’s contemplation.

That’s Da’esh [I don’t use ISIS or IS, I call them what they call themselves]. In another frame, in Gaza, we have surly black-hooded Hamas executioners pushing around some pathetic men accused of collaborating with the Israelis and shot on the spot. The condemned have what looks like paper bags on their heads.

The truth hangs by a thread from Da’esh to Hamas. But the journalists, who could find themselves one day on their knees, mouthing accusations, ready for beheading, won’t make the connection. They are already parroting the words of their eventual captors. Western journalists in Gaza, submissive to Hamas, report on the summary executions with eerie approval. For example, Ian Lee for CNN. Yup! Collaborating in wartime is serious business. Some of the executions were public. Hmph! It’s a warning to anyone that might think of giving information to the Israelis.

Determinism is the number one thief of one’s identity as an autonomous individual.
Is anyone “born” anything, except tabula rasa? Is one “born” a Jew, or a Catholic, or a Muslim, or Buddhist, or even an atheist?
Recently, I writer I esteem for his consistently perspicuous and insightful observations on foreign affairs, domestic policies, and modern culture, writing about being Jewish, made this startling statement:
“Jewish is a group identity. There is no such thing as an individual Jew. No man is an island and certainly no Jew is. Someone who is not part of the Jewish people is not a Jew.”
Yes, being Jewish might be a “group identity.” But Jews are individuals first, Jewish second. People can choose to be part of a “group,” but they’re still individuals making individual choices. An individual has no innate collective identity, unless he chooses one, and then it is not “innate.” There is nothing in any person’s genes or physical makeup that determines the content of his mind. Groups or collectives don’t think. One can choose to join a mob or a political party or a fraternity and the like, but this is making an individual choice. No one is destined to be drawn inexorably or helplessly into an imaginary gestalt, however benign or malevolent it might be.
Regardless of one’s circumstances, the element of volition and choice is ever present in any individual, regardless of the circumstances of his birth. One can be born into a Jewish family, a Muslim family, a Catholic one, even an atheist one, a Zulu tribe, and so on, and be raised in strict accordance with the dogma or tenets, traditions, or beliefs shared by that group. At any point in one’s life, one still has the capability of questioning whether what one is taught is true or false. If one has the courage, or the curiosity, one can step outside of one’s “group,” and observe it from the outside. Groups are not necessarily unbreakable chains or boast of “force fields” that prevent one from leaving them.
Tabula rasa, a Roman Latin term for “clean slate,” is an all- important ingredient in this issue. One can write one’s own slate, or let others write it. One can form one’s own independent mind, or allow others to determine what is in it and therefore make one dependent. It’s that simple.