Osama bin Laden dead: what to do now?

Whither US policy now that OBL is dead

Now that Osama bin Laden has been declared killed by the U.S. what should be their next step?

Snouck's answer: this is a good time to declare a victory and get the hell out of the quicksands of the Middle East and Afghanistan.

However the attack Obama instigated NATO attack on Libya shows the American government has not learned that attacking Muslim countries is a bad idea. The West's greatest problem these days seems to be the inability to learn lessons, caused by the dogmatic belief in human equality.

Turkey leaves the Pro-Western alliance

Caroline Glick has a post up at the Jerusalem Post explaining that Turkey is not a Pro-Western country anymore:

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.

It isn't that Ankara's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Muslim democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the likes of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, al-Qaida and Hamas.

What made Turkey's behavior this week different from its behavior in recent months and years is that its attacks were concentrated, unequivocal and undeniable for everyone outside of Israel's scandalously imbecilic and flagellant media.

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In February 2006, when Erdogan became the first international figure to host Hamas leaders on an official state visit after the jihadist group won the Palestinian elections, Jerusalem sought to explain away his diplomatic aggression. Israeli leaders claimed that Erdogan's red carpet treatment for mass murderers who seek the physical destruction of Israel was not due to any inherent hostility on the part of the AKP regime toward Israel. Rather, it was argued that Ankara simply supported democracy and that the AKP, as a formerly outlawed Islamist party, felt an affinity toward Hamas as a Muslim underdog.

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But Turkey wasted no time in making fools of them. On Monday, 11 Turkish government ministers descended on Syria to sign a pile of cooperation agreements with Iran's Arab lackey. The Foreign Ministry didn't even have a chance to write apologetic talking points explaining that brazen move before Syria announced it was entering a military alliance with Turkey and would be holding a joint military exercise with the Turkish military. Speechless in the wake of Turkey's move to hold military maneuvers with its enemy just two days after it canceled joint training with Israel, Jerusalem could think of no mitigating explanation for the move.

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Erdogan's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic blows were followed on Tuesday evening by Turkey's government-controlled TRT1 television network's launch of a new prime-time series portraying IDF soldiers as baby- and little girl-killers who force Palestinian women to deliver stillborn babies at roadblocks and line up groups of Palestinians against walls to execute them by firing squad.

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TURKEY'S BREAK with the West; its decisive rupture with Israel and its opposition to the US in Iraq and Iran was predictable. Militant Islam of the AKP variety has been enjoying growing popularity and support throughout Turkey for many years. The endemic corruption of Turkey's traditional secular leaders increased the Islamists' popularity. Given this domestic Turkish reality, it is possible that Erdogan and his fellow Islamists' rise to power was simply a matter of time.

But even if the AKP's rise to power was eminently predictable, its ability to consolidate its control over just about every organ of governance in Turkey as well as what was once a thriving free press, and change completely Turkey's strategic posture in just seven years was far from inevitable. For these accomplishments the AKP owes a debt of gratitude to both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as to the EU.

The Bush administration ignored the warnings of secular Turkish leaders in the country's media, military and diplomatic corps that Erdogan was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Rather than pay attention to his past attempts to undermine Turkey's secular, pro-Western character and treat him with a modicum of suspicion, after the AKP electoral victory in 2002 the Bush administration upheld the AKP and Erdogan as paragons of Islamist moderation and proof positive that the US and the West have no problem with political Islam. Erdogan's softly peddled but remorselessly consolidated Islamism was embraced by senior American officials intent on reducing democracy to a synonym for elections rather than acknowledging that democracy is only meaningful as a system of laws and practices that engender liberal egalitarianism.

In a very real sense, the Bush administration's willingness to be taken in by Erdogan paved the way for its decision in 2005 to pressure Israel to allow Hamas to participate in the Palestinian elections and to coerce Egypt into allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in its parliamentary poll.

In Turkey itself, the administration's enthusiastic embrace of the AKP meant that Erdogan encountered no Western opposition to his moves to end press freedom in Turkey; purge the Turkish military of its secular leaders and end its constitutional mandate to preserve Turkey's secular character; intimidate and disenfranchise secular business leaders and diplomats; and stack the Turkish courts with Islamists. That is, in the name of its support for its water-downed definition of democracy, the US facilitated Erdogan's subversion of all the Turkish institutions that enabled liberal norms to be maintained and kept Turkey in the Western alliance.

As for the Obama administration, since entering office in January it has abandoned US support for democracy activists throughout the world, in favor of a policy of pure appeasement of US adversaries at the expense of US allies. In keeping with this policy, President Barack Obama paid a preening visit to Ankara where he effectively endorsed the Islamization of Turkish foreign policy that has moved the NATO member into the arms of Teheran's mullahs. Taken together, the actions of the Bush and Obama White Houses have demoralized Westernized Turks, who now believe that their country is doomed to descend into the depths of Islamist extremism. As many see it, if they wish to remain in Turkey, their only recourse is to join the Islamist camp and add their voices to the rising chorus of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism sweeping the country.

Then there is the EU. For years Brussels has been stringing Turkey along, promising that if it enacts sufficient human rights reforms, the 80-million strong Muslim country will be permitted to join Europe. But far from inducing more liberal behavior on the part of Turkey, those supposedly enlightened reforms have paved the way for the Islamist ascendance in the country. By forcing Turkey to curb its military's role as the guarantor of Turkish secularism, the EU took away the secularists' last line of defense against the rising tide of the AKP. By forcing Turkey to treat its political prisoners humanely and cancel the death penalty, the EU eroded the secularists' moral claim to leadership and weakened their ability to effectively combat both Kurdish and Islamist terror.

At the same time, by consistently refusing to permit Turkey to join the EU, despite Ankara's moves to placate its political correctness, Brussels discredited still further Turkey's secularists. When after all their self-defeating and self-abasing reforms, Europe still rejected them, the Turks needed to find a way to restore their wounded honor. The most natural means of doing so was for the Turks writ large to simply turn their backs on Europe and move toward their Muslim brethren.

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Read more on Turkey joining Iran and its allies.

Snouck's Commentary: The fact that Turkey is now becoming an ally of Iran makes it obviously impossible for Turkey to stay in NATO or to join the EU. However, the treasonous leadership of NATO and the EU will allow Turkey to stay in those supra-national organisations.

German Army takes off Red Cross

(HT Politically Incorrect) Doctors and Medics take Red Cross insignia off their vehicles. The internationally recognized symbol, was created to separate life saving personnel from fighting personnel. To shield the former from attack. This symbol has become the preferred target of attacks by Muslims in Afghanistan.

US Forces withdraw from Urban Centres in Iraq

Operational redeployment

The US is withdrawing its troops from Iraq's urban centres. The troops are arrayed in "belts" around towns and cities. The question is whether this is a victory for the US or for its enemies. According to the NewYork Times:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken to calling the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq’s cities by next Tuesday a “great victory,” a repulsion of foreign occupiers he compares to the rebellion against British troops in 1920.

US political and military leadership is not challenging their supposed ally, Mr. Al-Maliki. (I wrote a post on November 24 2005 advising the strategy of withdrawing US Forces to locations outside the cities.)

The original strategy of the US

The strategy of the US after the attack by the Jihadists on 9-11 consisted of invading Iraq to turn it into a democratic model for the rest of the Middle East. A democratic Iraq would undermine autocratic Middle Eastern regimes and usher in an era of democracy. This democratic era would than take away the "root causes" of Middle Eastern discontent with the West.

Iraq becoming a newer, bigger Lebanon

Rather than becoming a haven for Freedom, Iraq became a violent tangle of sects and tribes. The US was never able to deal with it. After calming the country down after the surge the US military is now leaving the urban centres to the newly constituted Iraqi security forces under the control of Mr. Al-Maliki and the Shia.

Gaining legitimacy in the eyes of the majority sect

Mr. Al-Maliki and his government are now faced with a fight with the Sunni minority. The Sunnis allied themselves with the US during the surge in return for the US paying a tribute. On the other hand Mr. Al-Maliki faces competition for the hearts and minds of the Shia from even more radical elements. For PM Al-Maliki the alliance with the US is increasingly becoming a burden. He needs to divest from the US and strengthen other alliances with local powers. These will be shia Iran (never mind who wins the present power struggle there), the Kurds, Turkey, Jordan and if possible Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

The US is facing different set of problems now

Meanwhile in the US the state of California is so broke that it can not cover 25 percent of the budget. The Federal government is refusing to bail out the state. It the Federal government will not bail out California, will it be interested in continuing to pour treasure into Iraq?

This amounts to something bigger than the US defeat in Vietnam. It is like the USSR having to withdraw from its internationalist duty in Afghanistan.

Why did the strategy of democratization fail?

The US leaderhip are so in thrall of the equality dogma, that they failed to take into account that the Middle East belongs to a different Civilization than Eastern Europe, where democratization has proven more successful. The Islamic faith is extremely hostile to Western ideas of government. This makes it difficult to mobilize the population for an effort supporting a Western-led endeavor and easy to mobilize the population to those who are opposed to the West.

Eliminating the outposts

Built and strengthen alliances, weaken the alliances of the opponent

Militant movements in the Third World build strategic alliances with Anti-Western groups within the West.

Examples are:

- the Viet Mihn which allied with tha Anti-War movement in the U.S. to weaken the support of the American population for U.S. involvement in the War between North- and South-Vietnam.

- the struggle between Zimbabwean and South African Black Nationalists against the Afrikaner and Rhodesian White Minorities ruling those societies resulted in boycotts, economic collapse, demoralisation and the consequential toppling of the White Minority Governments in Southern Africa.

A new alliance on an old front

And now the Muslim Middle East, particularly the militant Palestinian movement is working on creating an alliance with the treasonous Left in the West. Together they form a new Anti-Western Lobby. Part of the great Treason Lobby. A typical organisation representing this Treason Lobby is the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanction) Movement.

The BDS is holding a congress in Geneva on 18 and 19 April. They are preparing the ground for the United Nations' Durban Review Conference, which is a successor to the 2001 Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Conference in Durban, South Africa. This conference is also organised by the UN.

The Muslim world has a lot of clout against Israel in the UN, because the number of Islamic Countries, each of which can vote in the UN General Assembly.

The Israeli - US alliance

Israel has long counted on the veto power of the USin the UN councils. The US announced yesterday that it will not attend the Anti-Racism and Discrimination Conference.

If the alliance between the US and Israel is undermined, Israel will become isolated, unless it finds new alliances. A boycott and desinvestment of Israel may demoralise the Israeli population and elite to such an extend that they merge Israel with the Palestinian entity into one state. This would be the end of a State that sees itself as the Jewish State, the main representation of the Jews on the international, security and political level.

The planned Endgame for Israel

The goal of the BDS is to deligitimize Israel as a separate and therefore racist and discriminatory entity. Israel would lose the support of the US public. Both gentile and the intensely liberal US Jews. There are already Jewish groups organised that are against the existence of a separate Jewish state, in the US, Europe and Israel itself. The latter is perhaps the starkest example of a Treason Lobby that we have. It might weaken the support of the ethnically Jewish population of Israel for the Jewish State.

The Muslim community in Europe flexes its muscle

Recently the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched an offensive against Hamas in the Gaza strip, with massive firepower and an armoured ground assault. To retaliate against the bombardments of Israeli towns with rockets. And for electoral reasons, by projecting a tough image for the Leftist (Kadima) parties.

The hamfisted Israeli action led to demonstrations in Western cities. The usual Leftist demonstrators saw their ranks swelled by large numbers of Muslims living in European Urban areas. The protestors managed to get the London police on the run. This causes great pressure for European governments to sever their links with Israel.

A Backlash

On the other hand the demonstrations caused dissatisfaction amongst the ethnic European citizen of European nations with large Muslim immigrant communities. Westerners instinctively identify with other Westerners and ethnic Europeans feel less secure in their homelands than during the struggle for Southern Africa.

Dutch Right-wing populist Geert Wilders and Vlaams Belang politicians supported the Israelis. This move was supported by their electoral bases.

Today the news came out that the Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr. Maxime Verhagen, declared that The Netherlands would not attend the Geneva Anti-Racism and Discrimination Conference. He was quoted; "these countries were planning to use the summit to put religion above human rights and rein in freedom of speech". Mr. Verhagen is a Christian Democrat and his party needs to have a strong profile against Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV). Freedom of Speech is a typical point where centrist parties such as the Christian Democrats are seen as weak by Dutch voters who are defecting from the Christian Democrats to the Freedom Party.

It is sure that Israel will remain a flash point for conflict in the struggle by Islam to dominate all societies in the world. Islam can not countenance that there is a formerly Muslim-ruled territory ruled by unsubmitting Infidels.

A Western Patriotic Alliance

But the Middle Eastern conflict has become linked to Europe through immigration and Muslim colonisation on Western land. A formal or informal alliance between certain European groups and Israel, could provide a counterweight to the Muslim-Leftist alliance.

Blackwater denied licence to operate in Iraq

Denied licence to operate

The U.S. Private Military Firm (PMF) Blackwater Worldwide was denied a licence for operating in Iraq forthwith. The Iraqi Ministry of Home Affairs oversees the licencing of PMFs in Iraq.

Blackwater history in Iraq

Blackwater has operated in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003. It was charged with protecting officials of the U.S. State Department which was initially responsible for overseeing the Civil administration of Iraq and later the transfer of authority to the Iraqi government. Former Governor of Iraq Bremer amended Iraqi law in such a way that employees of PMF could not be held accountable for their actions in order to ensure that U.S. State Department personel would receive maximum protection by the PMF bodyguards.

Securing the U.S. Governor of Iraq

Blackwater was the number one PMF contracted by the Americans for bodyguarding in Iraq. They were responsible for guarding the governor of Iraq with a security detail of three small helicopters and 24 bodyguards.

Popular discontent with presence of PMFs in Iraq

In 2007 Blackwater became the center of controversy when they massacred 17 civilians in Nisour square in central Bagdad. Since then the Iraqi public has been very hostile towards the presence of the firm in their country.

A cooldown in Iraq - U.S. relations

The fact that the Iraqi government is trying to get rid of the group that is guarding U.S. Diplomats may indicate that they are trying to distance themselves from the U.S. which coincides with new U.S. President Obama´s intention to decrease U.S. in Iraq while increasing efforts in Afghanistan.

US power is faltering

In the 1920ies and 1930ies world power moved from Europe (Great Britain) West accross the Atlantic. It was not until the 1950ies that everybody understood that European power had collapsed and that the USA was racing ahead. The 1956 Suez crisis caused the world to realise what the new power realities were. Exit Europe. All eyes on the USA and the new contender, Soviet Russia and world communism.

Right now we can see a similar power shift. In the stage of the 1920ies and 1930ies shift of power, when the UK needed US capital to develop the economies of its empire in the Middle East and Asia. The new global financial power is China. And it has started to openly flex its muscle: "Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies."

And a key US Policy maker is taking heed (HT Parapundit). David Walker, comptroller general of the US recently warned:

"The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon"

The fiscal imbalance meant the US was “on a path toward an explosion of debt”.

The recent waves made by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis only underscore the words of the US comptroller general. European and Asian banks are underwriting US consumption. The US saving rate is close to zero. The US does not have the capital to develop its own infrastructures, let alone the infrastructures of societies in the Middle East. Moreover unfettered Third World immigration is straining US education, transport, health and many other infrastructures. Its economy is strongly consumption driven and this consumption is fuelled by credit. Meanwhile China is sitting on a mountainous treasure, much like Fafnir, Sigurd's Dragon.

The US government and the Federal Reserve must make economies. But these cutbacks will cause a recession and unemployment. Together with a disastrious foreign war this will make US internal politics unstable and depressed in the next decade. Think of the post-Vietnam era, but then much worse.

After 1990, the US was the only power and we lived in uni-polar world. We are moving back into a bi-polar world and I would expect local powers to become restless as well. Similar to what happened in the 1920ies when Japan and Germany tried to fill the British power vacuum with military adventurism and warrior ideologies.

Countries that could play such a role are Iran, Turkey and Egypt, for the Middle East. Iran has already allied itself in the SCO with Russia and China for such a role.

Daniel Pipes does not understand "enemy"

Mr. L. Auster of Amnation has a commentary on an article on Islam authority Daniel Pipes:

The book that most shaped my understanding of modern Muslim life was Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957). To reduce Smith’s nuanced thesis to a few sentences, he argues that Muslim military, economic, and cultural success in the premodern period created an expectation that God’s people would be rewarded for their faith in mundane ways. That expectation left Muslims incapable of explaining what happened when, in modern times, they fell behind in those same arenas.

Pipes quotes Smith:

The fundamental malaise of modern Islam is a sense that something has gone wrong with Islamic history. The fundamental problem of modern Muslims is how to rehabilitate that history: to set it going again in full vigour, so that Islamic society may once again flourish as a divinely guided society should and must.

Pipes seems to think here that Muslims attack the West because of their urge to renew the glory of Islam. The idea that Islam attacks the West (and the rest) because it is the nature of Islam to attack Dar-al-Harb does not enter his mind.

Mr. Auster then comments:

Let’s get this straight. Pipes is telling us that when Islam was enjoying “military, economic, and cultural success in the premodern period,” that was good. But when Islam fell behind the rest of the world and remained that way,—externally powerless, beset by internal ills, unsure of its spiritual vocation, and emotionally traumatized by its multitudinous failures—that was bad.

Yes, that’s what Pipes is telling us. Therefore he is looking for ways to help Islam overcome its trauma. How? Well, since the trauma was caused by Islam’s becoming a military, economic, and cultural failure, evidently Islam can only heal the trauma by once again becoming a military, economic, and cultural success. Following his mentor Wildred Smith, Pipes wants Muslims to rehabilitate their history, to set it going again in full vigour, so that Islamic society may once again flourish as a divinely guided society.

Daniel Pipes just want to help those poor dears, the Muslims, who attack us Wsterners.

In other words he want to aid and abbet the enemy.

But in Mr. Pipes' world there is no room for the concept of "enemy". Non-Westerners are either friends or victims. Or both. Thus Mr. Pipes does not call for an end to immigration. He does not call for the expulsion of all Muslims from Western lands, in order to separate the West from its enemies and to safeguard our peoples from the vicious attacks of Muslims living in our lands.

Mr. Pipes is a liberal. His criticism of Islam is essentially liberalism bound. Just as the neo-cons who basically wanted to invade the Middle East in order to free the Muslims only to discover that voting Muslim populations are more radical and hostile to the West than Middle Eastern dictators. A neo-con is an reality-mugged, angry and armed liberal.

Right now the Americans Forces are training and arming Muslim fighters who will only turn their weapons and training on the West in due course, because their holy writ tells them so.

Unpopular Message

The number of visitors to this blog rose steadily by about 10 percent per week. Yesterday the number of visitors took a 25 percent dent however, especially in visits from the USA. I guess my message about the lost war in Iraq was not a popular one.

Still I stand by my endorsement of Van Creveld's assessment.

The war in Iraq is not going well. There is no victory in sight. I saw some horrible footage yesterday from a film made by Jihadi's. It was shot of American soldiers on the streets in Iraq in armoured vehicles and humvees. They were getting shot by Jihadi snipers. The footage was accompanied by religious chanting in Arabic. The footage of well-equipped US soldiers with million dollar Equipment and sensors standing around seeing nothing is an illustration of the warnings of Van Creveld.

What to do against the Jihad against the West? The democratisation of the Middle East is not working. I have always maintained that it is impossible. Because Iraqi and most other Middle Eastern societies are too fractured along religious (Sunni, Shia) and tribal and ethnic lines to be able to live in a democratic society. Francis Fukuyama wrote a book "Trust" about the necessity of trust and understanding between citizens in a society in order for people to co-operate vulontarily. This is a necessary precondition of democracy. Middle Easterners do not trust one another. High levels of trust are only found in Europe, European derived societies such as Australia and Japan. That is why they need dictators to run societies. That is why civil wars break out.

That is why democracy in Iraq won't work. So if we pursue a defence against Jihad we must shed our illusions about the possibility of democratisation of reshaping the enemy in our own image. The US Army is not an instrument of social reform. Conservatives should understand this. There will be new terror attacks on Western targets. Globally. And something needs to be done. Otherwise people in Europe and the US will lose confidence in their governments and we get instability in our homelands.

Long war

There is long war ahead of us. The election news coming out of Iraq is upbeat. Let us suppose that power in Iraq can be handed over to a democratic and reasonably pro-Western government in Bagdad. And that the government will be able to keep the Sunni Muslims happy and maintain peace and order.

Billions of dollars have been spend on defeating Saddam Hussain and on keeping the US Army in the field against small bands of Baathist and Islamist Insurgents. 2.100 US troops got killed as well as 98 Brits.

So how much closer is the US and the West to security? How does a safe and pro - Western Iraq prevent Islam from taking over Western countries through Immigration, superior birth rates in combination with terror attacks? This is not only a danger for Europe but for the US as well. Especially in the cities around the great lakes Muslim communities are growing. Assimilation is prevented by defenses like the Mosque, halal food, special clothing items prescribed by the religion, circumcition and restrictions on mixed marriages. These are the defenses that allowed the Jewish communities to survive in Europe and the Middle East for 2.000 years.

The difference is that the Muslims are more of a demographic and ideological threat than the Jews. The Jews were always a small minority, without a spectacular birthrate and their religion does not order them to bring the societies they live in under Islamic control.

The Pentagon is now struggling with this problem. Fighting the insurgents in Iraq have brought greater understanding of the force that is motivating them: the Qoran and the vision of the Caliphate.

The following are exerpts of an article that was posted on frontpage magazine a few days ago:

The enemy appears indefatigable, even more active now than before 9/11.Are the terrorists really driven by self-serving politics and personal demons? Or are they driven by religion? And if it's religion, are they following a manual of war contained in their scripture?Answers are hard to come by. Four years into the war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials tell me there are no baseline studies of the Muslim prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.

So the Pentagon reacted to the 9/11 armed with the best weapons money can buy, but had not stocked up well it's Armoury of Knowledge. However this is being rectified as the conflict continues.

But that is slowly starting to change as the Pentagon develops a new strategy to deal with the threat from Islamic terrorists through its little-known intelligence agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA, which staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at home and abroad. CIFA also supports Northern Command in Colorado, which was established after 9/11 to help military forces react to terrorist threats in the continental United States.

CIFA is the new name given to the former polygraphic institute of the US Department of Defence. "Its mission is to produce a common Defense Department counterintelligence operational picture, and deliver unique and actionable information to key decision makers in federal, state and local governments". Polygraphs are used to interrogate captured suspects and prisoners of war. A service that exist to extract useful information from prisoners, must have a library of concepts that its enemies use to shape their ideologies. In order to interpret answers or cues the interrogator must know the full range of ideologies that the enemies of the West use to motivate themselves. Just as a good interrogator of captured North Vietnamese Communist troops had to have a good idea of Communism and Vietnamese Nationalism in order to understand what a captured North Vietnamese soldier or officer was telling him during the American involvement in the Vietnam war (1962 - 1972). So has the modern day interrogator develop the meta data to interpret the data that prisoners are "sweating out". And the meta data has to be passed up to the decision makers for them to be able to understand the facts that be passed on later. So they can act upon the data.

Dealing with the threat on a tactical and operational level through counterstrikes and capture has proven only marginally successful. Now military leaders want to combat it from a strategic standpoint, using informational warfare, among other things. A critical part of that strategy involves studying Islam, including the Quran and the hadiths, or traditions of Muhammad."Today we are confronted with a stateless threat that does not have at the strategic level targetable entities: no capitals, no economic base, no military formations or installations," "Yet political Islam wages an ideological battle against the non-Islamic world at the tactical, operational and strategic level. The West's response is focused at the tactical and operation level, leaving the strategic level -- Islam -- unaddressed.

Any war has next to a Military level also Political, Religious and Cultural spheres in which battle has to be joined in order for victory or even just survival to be attained. Military dominance is worthless without concious striving towards Political, Religious and Cultural dominance.

So far the conclusions of intelligence analysts assigned to the project, who include both private contractors and career military officials, contradict the commonly held notion that Islam is a peaceful religion hijacked or distorted by terrorists. They've found that the terrorists for the most part are following a war-fighting doctrine articulated through Muhammad in the Quran, elaborated on in the hadiths, codified in Islamic or sharia law, and reinforced by recent interpretations or fatwahs."Islam is an ideological engine of war (Jihad)," concludes the sensitive Pentagon briefing paper. And "no one is looking for its off switch.

According to CIFA "Islam is an ideological engine of war". And this is the message it is bringing to the higher ups in the American governement and the Defense Bureaucracy. But is it a welcome message? What is keeping the message back from being transmitted upward?

the briefing states, ... government-wide "indecision [over] whether Islam is radical or being radicalized

We know the evil force that is keeping those who rule our societies, our elites from seeing the truth. Their vision is shackled by the same legal and cultural powers that they use for thought control over the masses. Need I whisper its name?

It also ties Muslim charity to war. Zakat, the alms-giving pillar of Islam, is described in the briefing as "an asymmetrical war-fighting funding mechanism." Which in English translates to: combat support under the guise of tithing. Of the eight obligatory categories of disbursement of Muslim charitable donations, it notes that two are for funding jihad, or holy war. Indeed, authorities have traced millions of dollars received by major jihadi terror groups like Hamas and al-Qaida back to Saudi and other foreign Isamic charities and also U.S. Muslim charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation.According to the Quran, jihad is not something a Muslim can opt out of. It demands able-bodied believers join the fight. Those unable -- women and the elderly -- are not exempt; they must give "asylum and aid" (Surah 8:74) to those who do fight the unbelievers in the cause of Allah.

The productive classes of the West are worn down by the costs associated with mass immigration. Such as providing services and transfer income to the third world masses, often Muslims, that invade our nations, while the right to speak out against it is taken away by the power hungry state. Meanwhile the enemy strengthens itself with funds, technology provided by other civilisations. Do we drive Syrian cars or carry Egyptian watches? Run Libian Software on our computers?

In analyzing the threat on the domestic front, the Pentagon briefing draws perhaps its most disturbing conclusions. It argues the U.S. has not suffered from scattered insurgent attacks -- as opposed to the concentrated and catastrophic attack by al-Qaida on 9-11 -- in large part because it has a relatively small Muslim population. But that could change as the Muslim minority grows and gains more influence.

CIFA is saying what has been argued by Immigration reformers for decades. Mass third world immigration is a threat to the core populations of the West.

The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a "three-phase attack strategy" for gaining control of lands for Allah. The first phase is the "Meccan," or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs -- such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America.

They new immigrant communities initially speak softly and deferentially, which comes naturally when you are small and marginal. This we saw in Europe in the 60 to 80ties.

In the second "preparation" phase, a "reasonably influential" Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples.

During this phase Islamic communities use the Qoran to create pockets of influence in the urban centres, the government bureaucracy and in the political system made invisible by the wizardry of the High Priests of Political Correctness.

And in the final jihad period, or "Medina Stage," a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.

Second and Third generation Muslims rise against the Infidels all over the Western world. But they seem to be impatient and make mistakes with their timing. Too much exposure to the time scale of the hectic West?

It also notes that unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam advocates expansion by force. The final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. The defense briefing adds that Islam is also unique in classifying unbelievers as "standing enemies against whom it is legitimate to wage war.

Muslims are ordered to get on top in the societies they live in at the expense of the present power elite.

Right now political leaders don't understand the true nature of the threat, it says, because the intelligence community has yet to educate them. They still think Muslim terrorists, even suicide bombers, are mindless "criminals" motivated by "hatred of our freedoms," rather than religious zealots motivated by their faith. And as a result, we have no real strategic plan for winning a war against jihadists.

Without a strategy to gain the commanding heights and the Stronghold of the enemy, Western forces are stumbling in the valleys and swamps, sinking in the crud with the heavy weapons and technology, without really hitting the enemy. New fearless fighters keep challenging our soldiers. Where do they come from? Where is their secret hideaway?

Even many intelligence analysts and investigators working in the field with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces have a shallow understanding of Islam."I don't like to criticize our intelligence services, because we did win the Cold War," says a Northern Command intelligence official. "However, all of these organizations have made only limited progress adjusting to the current threat or the sharing of information."Why? "All suffer heavily from political correctness," he explains.PC still infects the Pentagon, four years after jihadists hit the nation's military headquarters."A lot of folks here have a very pedestrian understanding of Islam and the Islamic threat," a Pentagon intelligence analyst working on the project told me. "We're getting Islam 101, and we need Islam 404."The hardest part of formulating a strategic response to the threat is defining Islam as a political and military enemy. Once that psychological barrier has been crossed, defense sources tell me, the development of countermeasures -- such as educating the public about the militant nature of Islam and exploiting "critical vulnerabilities" or rifts within the Muslim faith and community -- can begin."Most Americans don't realize we are in a war of survival -- a war that is going to continue for decades," the Northcom official warns.It remains to be seen, however, whether our PC-addled political leaders would ever adopt such controversial measures.

There it is again. PC is blinding us. PC is cloaking our enemy. We will never find his Stronghold even less destroy it if we allow bad thinking to cloud our minds.