"The termination of Stephen Coughlin on the Joint Staff is an act of intellectual cowardice"

The termination of Stephen Coughlin on the Joint Staff is an act of intellectual cowardice.

Intellectual cowardice is the end result of political correctness. It is a perfect description of the WOT. The refusal to call a spade a spade will do us in.

Whatever happened to the president who said: you're either with us or you're against us?

Methinks the firing of Mr. Coughlin was in actuality a breakdown of the separation of the Church and state in America. Militant Muslims have almost certainly infiltrated the ranks of the Pentagon (by stealth) and forced this (ghastly) decision upon us.

It appears now that separation of Church and state in America has mutated into separation of Church and State With Militant Islam Onboard.

As for the 'cowardice' thing involved, that is what most of us have come to expect from Bush and Company these days, sad to say.

"The termination of Stephen Coughlin on the Joint Staff is an act of intellectual cowardice"

Wrong ,it was trickle down policy from the top.

It's the leadership stupid !

"Here we are concerned about Obama when we already have a stealth Moslem in the White House caught holding hands with the Saudi Wahabbi King and complete with Ramadan dinners and stealing infidel's land in Israel and giving it gratis to the front line Islamic terrorist's, aka 'the Palestinian's'

Bush's visit to Israel is more than a photo op.
Olmert told Bush he could not begin the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homes and land in Judea and Samaria on his own .
He needed the smiling and sweet face of George to kick things off for his Road Map peace,death of Israel ,dar al Islam plan.
George is coming to kill you slowly with his smile and sincere efforts for Islam ,his new found religion.
The President is sure his smile will seduce you to leave your land for his islamic terrorist Palestinian state.
Gaza went to Hamastan without a fight and so Judea & Samaria are next

LTC Myers is on the mark. The military doesn't have the luxury of PC. The fact that Mr. Coughlin was right about a very politically touchy subject was no excuse for his dismissal. There was never an outreach program for the communists, why for the islamists, jihadists, or terrorists.(or whatever term you choose to use) From what I understand there has been a huge outcry by many officers such as LTC Myers. Hopefully someone will listen to them. But I'm not holding much hope with the current crop of generals overall. They seem to be more concerned with not rocking the boat, thus preserving their careers, than closing a massive hole in mililtary doctrine. Where are the Billy Mitchell's? The Claire Chenault's? The John Boyd's? These were just some of the men who were willing to sacrifice their careers to adjust the thinking of the top brass of their day.

Subject: Hooray for Michigan State

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical
engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to
the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the
students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet
Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were
"hate speech."

Enter Professor Wichman.

In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Muslim Association:

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to
protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more
mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on
public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the
latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of
Coptic Christians in Egypt , the imposition of Sharia law on
non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called
"whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and
the rioting and looting in Paris France.

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many,
many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal,
and uncivilized slave-trading Muslims to be very aware of this as you
proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West - see the First Amendment
-- you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose
that option.

Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up
yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't
like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded
and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty and
mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.

Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe
that the good professor had the right to express his opinion. For its
part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor
Wichman , saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to
publicly condemn his remarks.

Hooray for Professor Wichman!

I intend to e-mail him with my support for his courage, and also the President of MSU. Is this MSU in Kalamazoo? Well, I'll find out.

Don't confuse cowardliness with a willful surrender to Islam.

Kudos to the Pentagon for firing Coughlin. Christian extremists aren't any better than Muslim extremists. If we want to end Jihadi Terrorism, we need to stop doing the things that drive moderate Muslims towards Jihadi ideology.

And shame on LTC Meyers for contributing to the anti-Islam prejudice that is so counterproductive to the Long War. Thank God he's retired.

Kudos to the Pentagon for firing Coughlin. Christian extremists aren't any better than Muslim extremists. If we want to end Jihadi Terrorism, we need to stop doing the things that drive moderate Muslims towards Jihadi ideology.

And shame on LTC Meyers for contributing to the anti-Islam prejudice that is so counterproductive to the Long War. Thank God he's retired.

OT This was at LGF.

Interesting. Saudi visas

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=284342404135305

Jeffrey;
Just because a muslim accuses a person of being a christian extremist doesn't make him one. What information do you have that there was anything religious in the report that was so strenuously objected to.

If the pentagon brass have chosen to put up a protective shield for Islam then we are most assuredly in deep trouble.

The Pentagon apparently insists on staying with the ridiculous notion and myth that Islam is a "religon of peace".

And as Coughlin stated so well, "it is in fact a logical flaw under any professional research methodology...you have stated the conclusion before you have done the analysis."

Another analogy might be " would a police officer put his gun down before he has completely assessed and understood the threat?

What is it that continues to be part of our achilles tendon? We are afraid to confront the real source that drives the Islamists for fear of offending Muslims, foolishly making the tenants of the Qu'ran and the hadiths that promote warfare againt the unbelievers off limits under the umbrella of multiculturalism.It is pretty bad,if not pitifully disgusting that thousands of seemingly bright military heads fail to recognize the enemy within, let alone the enemy on the battlefield.

The saddest thing is that, even after 1,400 years of Islamic conquest, we are still busy as beavers writing books about it. Perhaps that is Islam's greatest triumph.

Because we refuse to strip Islam of its title of Religion, we can only endlessly argue against it while begrudgingly conceding to it transcendent qualities reserved and revered by our culture. Qualities that, by our cultural conditioning, protect Islam from cold examination. Islam, we have been told is a great monotheistic faith. We swallowed the lie and have been trying to puke it back up ever since.

Someday, I hope, we will examine this ancient foe in a less religious light.

The American MILITARY has gone PC! This is a big deal and a dangerous deal. How blind we are!

As is often true, the only voices of clarity are on the American right. Here's an entry from the Corner:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2QzNWYxZThlOTQ4YTBmYzYyNmUzOTQ4MmUzM2M5NDc=

Mr. Carr:

Perusing your blog, I find this exhortation to chase after the chimera of "moderate Muslims":

"We must enlist the aid of moderate Muslims to defeat the Jihadists, and to accomplish that, we must demonstrate that changes are being made. The firing of an ideological extremist like Stephen Coughlin sends the right kind of message to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan who are not our enemies, and simply want the same things that we do - the freedom to live and worship in peace."

But I fail to find a single reference to the elements of the Qur'an, ahadith, tasfir, or sira the jihadists have consistently cited to make their case and expand their ranks, from Hasan al-Banna and his original circle of six Egyptian laborers down to the present day. Moreover, sites such as this one, which do subject such Islamic texts to analysis and criticism and document their baleful effects, are anathematized as "rightwing blogs."

This seems to indicate that you, like the DoD as described in Bill Gertz's report, hold "analysis of Muslim religious tenets" to be "a politically taboo subject area" -- which, I submit, makes you not only part of the problem but an "ideological extremist" in your own right.

Attention Jeffrey Carr:

All Christians are bound to obey the 10 Commandments which include "thou shalt not kill."

"Extreme" or not.

Islam teaches quite the opposite: "Wneh the forbudden months have pased, slay the infidels everywhere they are found..."

Your "point" is worthless and bogus.

We have a Commander in Chief who doesn't know a wahabbi froma wabbit. I do not regret voting for that man; the alternatives were too unpalatable. I probably will not vote this time for the first time since the mid term election in 1970. I did not vote in 1968 for the same reason that I will avoid this one. I could not stand Nixon or Humphrey.

If I do manage to accidently find myself in a voting booth, I don't think I can muster the moxie to vote for a president.

You give a monkey a blog, and what do you get?

"Kudos to the Pentagon for firing Coughlin. Christian extremists aren't any better than Muslim extremists. If we want to end Jihadi Terrorism, we need to stop doing the things that drive moderate Muslims towards Jihadi ideology.

And shame on LTC Meyers for contributing to the anti-Islam prejudice that is so counterproductive to the Long War. Thank God he's retired." by Jeffrey Carr

Mr. Carr,

I'm trying to to understand the logic of that statement. Does that mean that in the 7th century, when Muhammad told his followers that Allah told them to slay the unbelievers where they found them, that it was Christians and Jews that were responsible for the jihad? And for pointing out the sources of the injunctions to jihad in the Qur'an and in Hadith and Sharia Law, Mr. Coughlin qualifies for the descriptor of "Christian extremist"?

Could you clarify and qualify your statements, or is it sufficient that you've done all you've intended to accomplish, by dropping in, making a statement, and then running away?

I think if you could demonstrate some grasp of the facts of this case, rather than content yourself with political invective, you might be taken seriously and contribute something the discussion.

We await your further response.

This sad episode bespeaks to a major problem and that is the extraordinary reluctance to consider that a major religion can be so flawed that it is a threat to freedom, the Constitution and our way of life. Most folks here in America still can't bring themselves to consider the possibility that Islam is as much a totalitarian ideology as is Marxism or fascism. It hides behind its religious veil very, very effectively.

All this must change as we move into the future. We will need leaders who, to begin with, say nothing good about Islam and then eventually, I am convinced, we will need leaders who condemn it. And we had better move to complete energy independence before such condemnation occurs or otherwise we will experience economic meltdown. Much remains to be done as America faces yet another totalitarian monster (yes, I think "monster" is the right word), one that is arguably the most menacing and deceptive of all time.

And again I must write what a burden to the entire world the Islamic faith is. How I wish it didn't exist. But it does and it is a mortal threat to democracy, truth, justice, freedom, tolerance and a whole host of other wonderful and good things. Damn Mohammed. Damn him for all time.

Jeffery Carr, are you blind too?
http://foehammer.net/zenphoto/war-posters-by-others/image/blind.jpg

You use the Christians are just as bad argument, prove it.
/no using McVeigh, no bombing abortion clinics

Hooray for Professor Wichman!

I intend to e-mail him with my support for his courage, and also the President of MSU. Is this MSU in Kalamazoo? Well, I'll find out.

Posted by: darcy at January 5, 2008 2:36 PM

It's MSU in East Lansing, and this Wichman thing is from February 2006! You can research it on the 'net, and also read a Frontpage Magazine article about it.

Someday, I hope, we will examine this ancient foe in a less religious light. mike trivisonno


Mr. Trivisonno: That is not possible because it's origin is a religious origin and not political, social or cultural.


The King James version of the Bible states clearly in Genesis chapters 16, 17, and 18 that Abraham was God's chosen one to be the father of many nations out of which came the Jewish people. Then, at the beginning of the dispensation of Grace, Christianity became God's chosen people as well. Abraham had a covenant with God (Gen. 17:2). Abraham was married to Sarah and they were, at first, childless. Sarah told him to go into her bondwoman, Hagar, so that he might father a child by her. When Hagar's baby was born he was named Ishmael. Ishmael was to be a wild man; his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren (Gen. 16). Then Abraham fathered a son by Sarah and called him Isaac. Genesis 17 very plainly states that God had an everlasting covenant with Isaac and not Ishmael. Hence, the enmity between the Jewish people/Christians and the Muslims (Ishmael's decendents).


I realize my comment is extremely abbreviated and will cause many questions. To explain this in more depth would require a substantial amount of time and space which is not available here.


I encourage people to search the scriptures and study them. The Bible is where we will learn how to deal with Islam in an appropriate manner.

"If we want to end Jihadi Terrorism, we need to stop doing the things that drive moderate Muslims towards Jihadi ideology." --posted by Jeffrey Carr

What? You cannot be serious! Oh, it's all our fault, eh? Which are you, 1. Brainwashed, 2. Stupid? Because it's one or the other.

darcy, he's an American Leftist. Just something different in their brains.

Jeffrey Carr: I would ask you the following: What if Thomas Jefferson, who referred to the Koran as "demonic," and Arthur Schopenhauer, who described Islam as "that despicable doctrine," and Bertrand Russell, who asserted that Islam was the one major faith that was totalitarian in structure, and Winston Churchill, who characterized Islam as the strongest retrograde force in the world, were all correct? Don't you see that you are proceeding on the major assumption that Islam itself is OK, it's just that some of its adherents are objectionable? What if all of Islam is rotten to the core in a way no other world religion is? Or are you so certain of your position that you can just dismiss the likes of those who post here at JW, along with the major historical personages I mentioned above?

All JW Readers,

I have contacted my senator -- the same senator to whom I mailed Robert's latest book and a related DVD -- about this issue.

I requested that he look into the matter.

I mentioned that allegedly, Mr. Couglin was called a Christian zealot (perhaps by Hasham Islam).

I went on to point out ... since when does name-calling trump honest debate in settling professional disagreements? (Just imagine if another party was referred to as a Muslim extremist.)

Please contact your senator, congressman/woman, an any and all elected officials you know. Let them understand how you feel about this issue.

Let's take a united stand before it's too late.

Thanks,

Wellington;
There is an excellent article in the latest Scientific American describing how we could be energy independent of foriegn oil. It would take a massive effort, but it is possible. If we even threaten to do it, the price of oil will come down. If we succeed, we take away the trillions of dollars that support them and they will sink to there level of incompetence. Look at Iraq. They have plenty of oil but after the west left, there was no maintainance of the fields. The entire projected cost is less than we have spent in Iraq an Afghanistan.

I honestly believe that Mr. Coughlin is a casualty of the wishes of people much higher up the food chain than Secretary England. That being the case, there is not a chance that this decision would be reversed, since it probably involves tremendous diplomatic pressure being put upon the Bush administration by the Arab nations. We see the fingerprints of this pressure all over how the State Department is solicitous of Arab/Muslim causes. I am absolutely certain that the things that the President says about Islam are fed to him by his State Department and NSC handlers, as this man does not typically utter much in the way of original and brave thoughts. By the way, I am not politically predisposed to this kind of criticism of the President. I voted for him in '04. The alternative was much worse.

I am convinced that the Saudis are engaging in a full court press to reverse the gains that have been made, meager though they be, in the general public learning about what Islam is really about. The money is flowing in to their political and academic whores, who will do this dirty work with zealous shamelessness, by people like John Esposito and Karen Hughes. But, there is only so much damage they can do, because the truth will win out eventually. And they don't have the truth on their side. Just lots and lots of money.

Jeffrey Carr

Prior to making feel good politically correct concessions to so called "moderate muslims" we must have a clear understanding of what constitutes islam so we can define with accuracy the term 'moderate'. The term 'moderate' is meaningless without context. Or perhaps "moderate" suicide is ok with you too.

Feh.

***********
Over at Dr. Bostoms blog, he covers this topic and adds in the comments section the following details:

Comment from a current Army LTC who has participated in one of Coughlin’s seminars:

MAJ (USAR) Stephen Coughlin is to my knowledge the only Islamic Law scholar on the Joint Staff…

The ONLY Islamic Law scholar in the Joint Staff?
Say it isn't so!

From the posted article above . . .LTC Joseph C. Myers also mentions he was once a Cadet at West Point, which reminds me of the discussion here at JW/DW regarding General Vines severely lacking reading list.

This deliberate ignorance saturating every level of security is beyond alarming.

One of the clearest, best, and most important statements ever posted up here -- or postedanywhere -- about the failure of the American government, and the Bush Administration, to begin to think and reason clearly about what it must do if it is to understand the world-wide, long-term, even permanent, threat of Jihad.

This statement by LTC Myers saddens, and stirs, and infuriates. One is saddened, stirred, infuriated, that such a piece had to be written, by an American military man, in order to denounce the stupid and cruel and dangerous decision to fire Stephen Coughlin (oh, sorry: not to fire, but "not to renew his contract), leaving us at the beginning of a very long, likely endless (but manageable, if we come to our senses in time) conflict, that one of the very few people who understands the matter, Stephen Coughlin, is shortly to be out of the Pentagon, while one Hasham Islam (and who knows how many others like him) sits contentedly in his office, just down the hall, no doubt, from his supposed boss and puppet, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England.

Meanwhile, the incoherence and the squandering of men, money, and materiel, the sheer stupidity about doctrine, the timidity about learning too much that in turn might require taking steps that people don't know how to articulate or explain (because they are ignorant, and mentally lazy, and have been for decades), the rigidity (not wishing to figure out how a situation -- for example Iraq -- can be made to work to our advantage if we only are willing to ruthlessly exploit the Camp of Islam's pre-existing divisions, rather than attempt naive and sentimental feelgood missions based on the assumption that "democracy" is transplantable, that the very word "freedom" means the same thing to "ordinary [Muslim] moms and dads" in the Middle East as it does, say, to those who attend caucuses in Iowa or New Hampshire or in any other of the remaining forty-eight, and that surely "prosperity" and "freedom" will somehow -- the "how" of that "somehow" is never stated, never explained -- lessen the threat that comes from the doctrine of Jihad, and from Muslims all over the world, some ruling the states of Iran and Saudi Arabia, some breeding rapidly in the historic heart of the West, and some simply content to say and do very little, but in the end they will go along, as they must, for so it is written, in Qur'an, and Hadith, and Sira.

I wrote above that the piece saddens, and stirs, and infuriates. Mostly, right now. It stirs. It stirs one to be implacable in one's disgust at those who have misunderstood so much, and been so lazy in their misuunderstanding, and have made other men pay, some like you and I mere taxpayers shelling out our share for that trillion-dollar continuing folly in Iraq, and some with their lives, like the two American soldiers killed by an Iraqi soldier supposedly fighting with them -- despite the official line, this is not the first time it has happened in Iraq -- for a goal that is unattainable and that in any case, from the Infidel point of view, makes no sense.

Rage and disgust should not get in the way of ice-cold analysis. But keep track of those whose stupidity, rigidity, timidity, and cupidity (all those who, of all parties, have been the recipients in ways direct and indirect, of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Emiratian, and other Muslim Arab largesse for so many years, as this country failed to come up with either a foreign policy, or an energy policy, over the past thirty years that might have made sense, because it would have been based on a clear-eyed understandinig of Islam.

We can't take much more of these fools. The army, losing its young officers, can't. The civilians, forced to spend hundreds of billions unnecessarily every year, can't. The country, forced to endure the continued in-migration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who are apparently flooding in without a single attempt to do the obvious: halt all Muslim migration, and help support those in Europe who wish to do the same thing, because Western Europe is even further along the road of decay and disarray, if such were possible, than such decisions as the firing of Stephen Coughlin demonstrate is the case here.

Rage however you wish. But rage.

Perhaps the yanks are thinking: If we close our eyes: Block our ears: Render Islam unmentionable: and genuinely know nothing about its ideology, it might all just go away!!!. My apologies, thats already the tried and tested European view. It seems the yanks are just sheep following!!!.

Perhaps the yanks are thinking: If we close our eyes: Block our ears: Render Islam unmentionable: and genuinely know nothing about its ideology, it might all just go away!!!. My apologies, thats already the tried and tested European view. It seems the yanks are just sheep following!!!.

I'm afraid Islam is just too subtle for many people to grasp. In contrast, the ideology of racial superiority is is as clear as it is stupid and offensive and the ideology of goverment ownership of the means of production is as clear as it is undemocratic and unworkable. But the ideology of Jihad and Islamic supremacism is hidden in a welter of confusing and often self-contractictory mumbo-jumbo. Plus, it's a religion, not just a political agenda.
It really needs to be studied to be understood, and who has the time or patience for that? And even if they do, there's always enough wiggle room to give it the benefit of any doubt.
Luckily, the jihadis themselves seem to be doing a pretty good job at instructing the general public.

The effort to get the "truth" out will be like climbing Mt. Everest. With MSM continuing the Multi-Cultural, PC,Social Engineered Brainwashing that has been going on for the last 20 years or more.

This Jeffery Clown is a classic example of what the West is up against. For He will certainly believe he deserved his head being sawed off when they get around to him.

Just a little more dialog, a touch more understanding, a pinch more of consideration, an extra sensitivity class, If I had only fetched my Masters Boots.

My reason for commending the Pentagon for firing Coughlin is because his views are counterproductive. We cannot win the Long War as long as we do nothing about stemming or stopping the radicalization of moderate Muslims, and, more importantly, identifying how U.S. actions are contributing to that radicalization. This is no different than DOD efforts to devise an effective COIN strategy, which eventually General Petraeus did. Now we need to do the same for the Jihadi movement, and both the IC and the Pentagon appear to understand that.

I write about this in detail, fully referenced, here:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2008/01/how-to-defeat-1.html

My reason for commending the Pentagon for firing Coughlin is because his views are counterproductive. We cannot win the Long War as long as we do nothing about stemming or stopping the radicalization of moderate Muslims, and, more importantly, identifying how U.S. actions are contributing to that radicalization. This is no different than DOD efforts to devise an effective COIN strategy, which eventually General Petraeus did. Now we need to do the same for the Jihadi movement, and both the IC and the Pentagon appear to understand that.

I write about this in detail, fully referenced, here:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2008/01/how-to-defeat-1.html

My reason for commending the Pentagon for firing Coughlin is because his views are counterproductive. We cannot win the Long War as long as we do nothing about stemming or stopping the radicalization of moderate Muslims, and, more importantly, identifying how U.S. actions are contributing to that radicalization. This is no different than DOD efforts to devise an effective COIN strategy, which eventually General Petraeus did. Now we need to do the same for the Jihadi movement, and both the IC and the Pentagon appear to understand that.

I write about this in detail, fully referenced, here:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2008/01/how-to-defeat-1.html

Sorry for the multiple posts. My Firefox browser appears to be running amuck. Whoever has admin authority for this blog, please delete my duplicates ASAP.

What Jeffery Carr complacently, and ignorantly, and pie-in-the-skyly, thinks of as the "Jihadist movement" is merely orthodox Islam.

Here's an idea. Let's arrange a debate. On one side, the quite-absurdly-self-assured jeffery-carrs of this world. On the other, two kinds of people: non-Muslims, such as Coughlin and Spencer and Bostom who know the texts of Islam, and know them well, and ex-Muslims, such as Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who were born and raised within the world of Islam, and know exactly the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam, and are articulate enough, in English, to explain them.

Tape that marathon session. Show it to every officer and man in the American military, and to every member of Congress. For a start.

If Carr wishes to stop the "radicalization of the moderate Muslims" he should first tell us how he defines a "moderate Muslim." And before he does that, I insist that he read "Ten Things To Think When Thinking About Muslim Moderates." And takes it in.

Mr Carr, One has to be patient if there is a lot of traffic on a particular thread, I believe that the only time that a double posting can occur is if the commenter presses the POST button twice. Before I preview or post a comment, I highlight that comment and copy it to the clipboard, just in case it gets lost. If the screen takes too long to refresh automatically, I try the refresh button on the browser.

Thanks, Pelayo. I discovered that while waiting for my browser to complete the post, if I opened another window and checked - I could see that my reply had already posted. I'm confident that I'll be able to avoid multiple postings in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience.

By Scott Stearns
White House
05 January 2008

President Bush travels to the Middle East in the coming week in hopes of urging U.S. allies in the region to support Israeli-Palestinian peace talks...."

....To give the land of Israel to Israel's enemies.... to establish a Palestinian terrorist / jihadist state in the Holy Land.....

Gen 12:3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."......The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your descendants I will give this land."

Jeffrey Carr: I too am for working with moderate Muslims against radicals but that doesn't mean that Islam is a good religion just because of that. It might be (I sincerely doubt it to put it mildly), but what if Islam is indeed rotten to the core in a way no other religion is? Or do you not concede this possibility?

You see, I don't think there is such a thing as a good Islam, but only a watered-down version of the real thing, which demands, among other things, that Sharia replace all constitutions and legal systems of every country on earth and requires death for any Muslim who leaves Islam for another religion. What other faith has these features?

Let me put it another way. Unlike any other religious creed, Islam has been, is, and always will be a death cult for a certain percentage of Muslims when they don't get their way. Oh, and by the way, Islam is the only religion founded by a truly brutal human being, who ordered thousands killed, unlike, say, Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster or Lao-tzu, who ordered no one terminated. Islam, sir, is not just another religion and that is why I don't want to see mosque after mosque rise up across the American landscape. Or do you not care that such structures begin to appear everywhere in this nation?

From their website:

Air University
The Intellectual and Leadership Center of The Air Force
We make a difference...one student at a time!

Welcome to the Air Command and Staff College.
Our Mission:
Prepare Warriors to Lead Air, Space and Cyberspace Forces in Joint/Combined Operations.

This military 'university', is not just for officers, but for senior NCO's, too.

Now, just because the USAF has not incorporated academic study of Islam into it's curriculum, what about the university's library?

Checking the catalog, at:

https://catalog.au.af.mil/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First

one should note the books on Islam that are available for checkout:

https://catalog.au.af.mil/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=islam&Search_Code=FT*&PID=ax1akgOupid-mEf_hApQ3V6_myEEK&SEQ=20080105152052&CNT=20&HIST=1

which includes this title/author:

Onward Muslim soldiers : how jihad still threatens America and the West / Robert Spencer. Spencer, Robert, 1962- 2003
Location: Fairchild Bookstacks Call Number: 297.72 S745o Status: Not Checked Out

Similar books are undoubtedly available at U.S. military base/post exchange facilities around the world, and base/post libraries, too.

And let's be honest, one can even access the internet, and JW/DW, in ships at sea.

If military personnel really are ignorant about Islam, it's not because they don't have access to the facts.

Note: Here's a previous JW article about LTCOL Meyers: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011960.php

And, no Colonel, "Islam is a religion of peace" is not fine for public policy statements.

No amount of misinformation is fine.

Please Mr. Carr, let's get things in the right order:
1) Study and understand Islam thoroughly.
2) Step one should make it obvious that Islam is a violent, supremacist ideology and that therefore, moderate Muslims deviate from Islamic doctrine.
3) Establish a strategy for dealing with all Muslims based on the previous two steps.
The above process should make it clear that Islam itself is a much bigger problem than our response to it. Firing Mr. Coughlin shows that this process is not being followed.

Jeffrey Carr:

Point out those moderate Muslims that you keep talking about. The Muslims that are truly moderate have long ago disagreed with the Islamist movement, Do we not forget that it was American Muslims that incouraged our government to extracate Saddam Hussein from his despotic perch. as well as assisting in the Balkins against the Serbs in defense of Muslims --but what did it get us, after all we are still infidels,and unbelievers.

The left leaning, and liberal line that continuously worries that we our making more enemies in the Islamic world is a tired line and speaks from position of weakness of which the likes of Osama Bin Laden had hoped to count on.

Step forward Jeffrey Carr and debate others who have studied the make up of Islam for nearly 30 years such as Robert Spencer, come tell Ayaan Hirsi how we should respond, tell Wafi Sultan how we should respond, Come and have a dialogue with Ibn Warraq, and tell Bat Yeor she should have just Ignored what has happened to Europe over the last 35 years.

"Once again you cannot defeat your enemy if you cannot define him"

General Douglas MacArthur

And that is what Stephen Coughlin was doing.

Wellington, whether or not Islam is a "good" religion is not the issue that I'm addressing, nor is it relevant in evaluating an effective strategy to fight the Jihadi terror movement. If you feel strongly that Muslims should convert to a different religion, then by all means become a missionary to the Muslim people and speak of the benefits of conversion.

If, on the other hand, you want to defeat a distributed network of terror cells, fueled by a radical ideological position, you need a multi-faceted approach, and part of that approach must include cutting off their supply of recruits by enlisting the help of moderate Muslims to convince other Muslims who may be on the edge or already involved in one of the 4 stages of the radicalization process, that they have options other than joining the Jihad.

This has the best chance of success if it's done by Muslims to other Muslims, not by Christians to Muslims.

Previous article by LTC Joseph Myers to which a link is given in a posting above, is now posted in full here:

Regarding the National Defense University's recommendation that we all pretend that the global jihad is not a jihad, and hope that thereby it will go away, Greg Allen, on whose Right Balance radio show I have had the honor of appearing many, many times, has kindly passed on to me this memo from LTC Joseph C. Myers, Senior Army Advisor at Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB.

"I tend to disagree with this article [an article on why the American government should carefully avoid using the word "Jihad" and instead use the word "Hirabah"]:

I understand our desire to de-legitimize the "jihadist" as part of our CIST objectives; but we should not fall into the trap of failing to understand ourselves the exegesis of "jihad" in theory and practice. True, jihad does not translate to “Holy War” but that is also irrelevant and moot. War is either “just” or “unjust” in Islam and jihad to be “just” must be fought for the ends of God and Islam. Even Muslim texts do not accept this artificial debate, I suggest you find a copy of the Reliance of the Traveller, the first English translation of Sharia Law in print at your local library and go to the index, look up jihad -— re-indexed to “Holy War.”
Jihad does mean in the classic Islamic texts “striving;” striving in the context of war, not in the context of individual spiritual growth...that is a later adaptation brought by Shia and Sufi scholars, the influence of ascetics, around the turn of the last millennium as Islam struggled with schism and the Moghul invasion. Its original meaning was associated with warfare and that meaning has never been rejected or renounced as invalid, it was merely added upon with the concept of “greater jihad.”

...While that term itself, becoming more spiritually prepared as an individual Muslim is associated with spiritual growth and non-violence, it also has applicability with becoming more spiritually prepared for combat: “jihad” and “shahada.” Recall Mohammed Atta’s “Last Night” preparations...which was for him and the other 9-11 jihadis a lengthy process of spiritual preparation for their martyrdom.

The resurgent global “jihad” in all its forms [including the bust in Miami yesterday] is based on classical readings of the Quran with mujahids willing to take up the sword for “dawa,” the proclamation and propagation of Islam.

Finally, if the thesis below were accurate then these would, in fact, be the terms used by Muslim scholars themselves (over 1400 years of written texts) with respect to this “theme” in theory and practice including the term “jahidu” (combat), but that is not the case. The scholarly texts discuss war “in the path of Allah” as “jihad.”

One can appreciate these modern Muslim scholars attempting to discredit the ideology of groups like al-Qaida, but before we latch on to these modern “vernaculars” we must make sure we fully understand the terms of reference denotatively and connotatively and historically as Muslims have understood them; not as part of a Western Strategic Communication campaign.

...In my humble opinion we still have not done our homework.

We are dealing with “classicists,” not “extremists.”

[Posted by Robert at June 23, 2006]

Jeffrey Carr

You say Coughlin's views are counterproductive, but yet you want to stop the radicalization of moderate muslims. Coughlin's work emphasizes on the result of muslims that have already been radicalized. They've already gone way beyond the point your trying to make.

His work is also to bring into view the subversive activities by Islamic foreign agents who have radicalized muslim americans through religious teachings which all of us here are aware of happen every day at mosques here in the US and throughout the world.

The reason he was fired is because he knows the truth and the Islamics on staff at the
DOD can't handle the truth nor can they afford any one at the DOD to listen to Coughlin. The Pentagon should not be commended, they should be investigated.

Our damned alliance with the "moderate" Iraqi government, which is really an Iranian ally, is what is at the root of this whole mess. Instead of having a proper strategy of purging Islam and working with a secular government, or keeping out of things altogether, we have hinged everything on those nudniks in Baghdad. That's caused all this moderate Muslim nonsense to take on such exagerated significance. You know, if you marry a whore, you're not going to make her a lady.

This is the same US military that embraced bin Laden's right-hand man, Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian so-called "American", gave him top-secret clearance and had him lecture US Army Special Forces in Fort Bragg on Islam and "Middle-Eastern culture".
And the US Central Command at Fort MacDill in Tampa Florida, which is in charge of "war on terrorism", invited Ramadan Shallah, the top leader of the genocidal Islamic Jihad to lecture them!
No wonder the all-pervasive cowardice of our society now spreading throughout the top brass of the US military.
December 20, 1998: bin Laden is known to sleep several nights in a row at Tarnak farms near Kandahar. But the chief of Central Command, US Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni forcefully bans any bombing, expressing fear that some shrapnel might hit a nearby mosque, not even a "shrine", but a rather cheap structure built by the Afghan government a couple decades earlier!
What would be Anthony Zinni's Islamist name? Anal al-Ziyna? ("Ziyna" means "Whore").
Just a few short months earlier, there was no restraint in bombing Serbia. Neither Ziyna nor anybody else objected to the distruction of more than 100 magnificent ancient churches and monasteries monasteries that not only were holy shrines of Serb Christianity, but treasures of world culture, on UN's World Heritage Site list. And everybody thought the Taliban were barbaric when they blew up those 2 Buddha sculptures!
In Feb. 1999, bin Laden camped in luxury with his wealthy United Arab Emirates fans for 4 days and nights, hunting bustard. This time coward Clinton and his sidekick coward Berger banned bombing, lest the oil-rich Arab princes get hurt!
And in early May 1999, in the middle of the worst bombing of Serbia, with Serb civilians being incinerated by trainload, bin Laden slept for 5 nights in a row at the Kandahar governor's residential compound. Coward Clinton banned any bombing again, saying he does not cause "collateral damage"!
Baby Bush: another Coward-in-Chief. Another wasted 2-term presidency. Even 9/11 did not force him to shake the dhimmitude and wage real war on the jihadists!
Vote for Rudy and pray it is not too late.

Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.

Pelayo,

Please rethink your decision to vote in November. People are running for different offices. Your congressman, for one. Even if there is no good presidential choice between the Dems and the GOP there is bound to be an independent or third party candidate you can support. Whether or not that person has a chance of winning shouldn't factor into it.

Unless and until more people move away from the bad choices offered by the major parties, the parties have no reason to change their stripes. If people like us stay home rather than vote, the results can be misinterpreted and the winner might overestimate his "mandate" from the people.

I share your distaste for the choices we've been given, which is why I voted for the Constitution Party in 2004. I'm headed that way this year as well, barring a primary upset in one of the parties.

It all starts at the top and its all about the money.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/ramadan/islam.html

BACKGROUNDER: THE PRESIDENT'S QUOTES ON ISLAM

In the President’s Words: Respecting Islam

The United States is a nation dedicated to religious tolerance and freedom, and President Bush has acted to ensure that the world's Muslims know that America appreciates and celebrates the traditions of Islam.

Here in the United States our Muslim citizens are making many contributions in business, science and law, medicine and education, and in other fields. Muslim members of our Armed Forces and of my administration are serving their fellow Americans with distinction, upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace.
Remarks by the President on Eid Al-Fitr
The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.
December 5, 2002

Over the past month, Muslims have fasted, taking no food or water during daylight hours, in order to refocus their minds on faith and redirect their hearts to charity. Muslims worldwide have stretched out a hand of mercy to those in need. Charity tables at which the poor can break their fast line the streets of cities and towns. And gifts of food and clothing and money are distributed to ensure that all share in God's abundance. Muslims often invite members of other families to their evening iftar meals, demonstrating a spirit of tolerance."
Remarks by the President on Eid Al-Fitr
The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.
December 5, 2002

America treasures the relationship we have with our many Muslim friends, and we respect the vibrant faith of Islam which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. This year, may Eid also be a time in which we recognize the values of progress, pluralism, and acceptance that bind us together as a Nation and a global community. By working together to advance mutual understanding, we point the way to a brighter future for all."
Presidential Message Eid al-Fitr
December 5, 2002

Islam brings hope and comfort to millions of people in my country, and to more than a billion people worldwide. Ramadan is also an occasion to remember that Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind."
President's Eid al-Fitr Greeting to Muslims around the World
December 4, 2002

Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith. But ours is a war against individuals who absolutely hate what America stands for, and hate the freedom of the Czech Republic. And therefore, we must work together to defend ourselves. And by remaining strong and united and tough, we'll prevail."
Press Conference by President Bush and President Havel of Czech Republic
Prague Castle, Prague, Czech Republic
November 20, 2002

Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans. Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others. Ours is a country based upon tolerance and we welcome people of all faiths in America."
Remarks by President George W. Bush in a statement to reporters during a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
The Oval Office, Washington, DC
November 13, 2002

We see in Islam a religion that traces its origins back to God's call on Abraham. We share your belief in God's justice, and your insistence on man's moral responsibility. We thank the many Muslim nations who stand with us against terror. Nations that are often victims of terror, themselves."
President Hosts Iftaar Dinner
Remarks by the President at Iftaar Dinner
State Dining Room

Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion."
Remarks by President George W. Bush on U.S. Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan
Presidential Hall, Dwight David Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.
October 11, 2002

Islam is a faith that brings comfort to people. It inspires them to lead lives based on honesty, and justice, and compassion."
Remarks by President George W. Bush on U.S. Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan
Presidential Hall, Dwight David Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.
October 11, 2002

All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith -- face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It's a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It's a faith based upon love, not hate."
President George W. Bush Holds Roundtable with Arab and Muslim-American Leaders
Afghanistan Embassy, Washington, D.C.
September 10, 2002

If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government. I have a hope for the people of Muslim countries. Your commitments to morality, and learning, and tolerance led to great historical achievements. And those values are alive in the Islamic world today. You have a rich culture, and you share the aspirations of men and women in every culture. Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes, or Western hopes. They are universal, human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations."
President George W. Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership
The Rose Garden, Washington, D.C.
June 24, 2002

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes."
Remarks by the President George W. Bush at the 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy
West Point, New York
June 1, 2002

America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country."
President George W. Bush Promotes Compassionate Conservatism
Parkside Hall, San Jose, California
April 30, 2002

"We're taking action against evil people. Because this great nation of many religions understands, our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil. This is clearly a case of good versus evil, and make no mistake about it -- good will prevail."
Remarks by the President George W. Bush at a Town Hall Meeting with Citizens of Ontario
Ontario Convention Center, Ontario, California
January 5, 2002

Eid is a time of joy, after a season of fasting and prayer and reflection. Each year, the end of Ramadan means celebration and thanksgiving for millions of Americans. And your joy during this season enriches the life of our great country. This year, Eid is celebrated at the same time as Hanukkah and Advent. So it's a good time for people of these great faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, to remember how much we have in common: devotion to family, a commitment to care for those in need, a belief in God and His justice, and the hope for peace on earth."
Remarks by the President in Honor of Eid Al-Fitr
The Diplomatic Reception Room
December 17, 2001

The teachings of many faiths share much in common. And people of many faiths are united in our commitments to love our families, to protect our children, and to build a more peaceful world. In the coming year, let us resolve to seize opportunities to work together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation. Through our combined efforts, we can end terrorism and rid our civilization of the damaging effects of hatred and intolerance, ultimately achieving a brighter future for all."
President's Message for Eid al-Fitr
December 13, 2001

According to Muslim teachings, God first revealed His word in the Holy Qur'an to the prophet, Muhammad, during the month of Ramadan. That word has guided billions of believers across the centuries, and those believers built a culture of learning and literature and science. All the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements."
Remarks by the President George W. Bush At Iftaar Dinner
The State Dining Room, Washington, D.C.
November 19, 2001

The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace."
President George W. Bush's Message for Ramadan
November 15, 2001

This new enemy seeks to destroy our freedom and impose its views. We value life; the terrorists ruthlessly destroy it. We value education; the terrorists do not believe women should be educated or should have health care, or should leave their homes. We value the right to speak our minds; for the terrorists, free expression can be grounds for execution. We respect people of all faiths and welcome the free practice of religion; our enemy wants to dictate how to think and how to worship even to their fellow Muslims."
President George W. Bush Addresses the Nation
World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia
November 8, 2001

All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil."
Remarks by President George W. Bush to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism
November 6, 2001

I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know -- that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction."
Remarks by President George W. Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan
The Oval Office, Washington, D.C.
September 28, 2001

Americans understand we fight not a religion; ours is not a campaign against the Muslim faith. Ours is a campaign against evil."
President George W. Bush Remarks by the President to Airline Employees
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois
September 27, 2001
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them."

President George W. Bush's Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People
United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.
September 20, 2001

I've made it clear, Madam President, that the war against terrorism is not a war against Muslims, nor is it a war against Arabs. It's a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people."
Remarks by President George W. Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia
The Oval Office, Washington, D.C.
September 19, 2001

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war."
Remarks by the President at Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
September 17, 2001

This war is OVER! The American leadership has thrown in the towel and surrendered to the enemy beacause they have always supported the enemy:

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

There's more

http://clamormagazine.org/issues/14/feature3.php

Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact – that through Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II. It was first reported in 1994 by John Loftus and Mark Aarons in The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People.

"If, on the other hand, you want to defeat a distributed network of terror cells, fueled by a radical ideological position, you need a multi-faceted approach, and part of that approach must include cutting off their supply of recruits by enlisting the help of moderate Muslims to convince other Muslims who may be on the edge or already involved in one of the 4 stages of the radicalization process, that they have options other than joining the Jihad."

Oh god. Is he really as bad as all that?

That business about Muslims who are in "one of the 4 stagesof the radicalization process" -- the voice of the self-satsified social scientist, with a little dash of psychology, and a tad of social relations, and a bit of this and a bit of that, and of course -- bien sur -- some fat government contract to pay for his solemn "study" which results in that fatuous discovery and solemn listing of those "4 stages of the radicalizaion process." The dimwits of the worst academic and consultancy rackets are fixed on a the government teat, and see a good thing, and while normally they are simply comical, and can be treated, as they used to be by Sen. Proxmire when he would announce the most idiotic, useless, or utterly obvious government-funded studies, when it comes to a world-wide threat, the jeffery-carr level of thought and understanding simply cannot be permitted. Give him the dough, if you must, just to get rid of him, but for god's sake don't sake such a fool seriously. "The 4 stages of the radicalization process."

What does this creature think Islam is all about? What does he think Ataturk worked so hard to systematically constrain? What does he think there must be, about plain old Islam itself, for us to pin our hopes on those we like to call "moderate" Muslims -- meaning those who just don't take their Islam to heart, quite so seriously, are what for other faiths we sometimes describe as "unobservant" or "lapsed"? Yes, a "moderate" Muslim we favor is one who doesn't take the doctrine of Jihad, a deoctrine which is central, not tangential, to Islam, and if it fell into desuetude during the last two centuries, that was only because the forces of Islam, the Muslim peoples, were simply on the ropes, far too weak, which is why Afghani and Abduh sought to change (or some say "reform") Islam -- not to make it meek and mild, but because they thought it had to be modified in the face of Western power.

But three things have changed that, unnoticed apparently by the jeffrey-carrs of this world (they're all too busy making their pitches for government contracts, aren't they? Oh, they are making out like gangbusters, these boys, and they have their mountebank's patent medicine to protect, to keep assuring everybody -- come and get it, boys -- that it really truly is effective against those crazy Jihadists, the ones who, every man jack of them, first must pass through, according to Jeffrey Carr, the "4 stages of radicalization."

Those three things, the things which brought back Jihad as something to engage in, with fervor and hope, are the following:

1) The oil revenues. Inshallah-fatalism forever holds Muslims back economically. They are lazy, with the laziness of oriental fatalism. They are unimaginative, except in their imaginary grievances and imaginary conspiracy theories, for they are taught, in Islam, the habit of mental submission -- which militates against the entrepreneurial. That is why, despite being the recipients of themost fantastic transfer of wealth in human history -- some 10 trillion dollars since 1973 alone (in 2007 dollars), not a single Arab or Muslim state has created anyting like a modern economy, and the only ones that come close are those that have managed to suppress or constrain Islam (Turkey) or have experienced both the ferocious Soviet suppression of Islam (as of other faiths) and also have very large non-Muslim populations (Kazakhstan), or have had a history of colonial rule which encouraged a certain mental freedom and have large, entrepreneurial non-Muslim populations (Malaysia). But the Muslim Arab oil countries are hopelessly dependent for the running of their countries, on foreign workers (see Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E.), and those without oil depend, as Muslims did in the past, on Jizyah. In the past, it was the tribute demanded of local non-Muslims. At present, it is the tribute willingly paid, disguised as "foreign aid," that Western donors start, and then are fearful of ever diminishing, much less stopping, because of the attitude of the Muslim recipients, which is that the aid is indeed a kind of Jizyah, and is owed to them by the Infidels, is theirs -- the Muslims -- by right.

The second development is the mass migration of Muslims to the Bilad al-Kufr, the lands of the Infidels, where for the first time in history a people who carry in their mental baggage hostility to those into whose lands they do not enter with a sword, but to conquer in another way, through sheer numbers -- as Muslim after Muslim has said, has predicted with glee (see Boumeddienne at the U.N. in 1974, the speech about how we, the Muslims, will overwhelm you with the weapon of the overbreeding "wombs of our women." The European elites allowed millions of Muslims to enter, and to settle, without giving proper attention to the nature of Islam, and by ignoring the warnings given by some Western scholars of Islam, such as Charles-Emmanuel Bousquet -- too many of those scholars had died, or had retired, and the new generation of apologists, who carefully helped each other in their careers, supplied the pap that is so different from what Western scholars of Islam produced in the century before the Great Inhibition set in, and continues, to this day.

Look at Muslim threats, at Muslim demands, at Muslim demonstrations ("Down with France" they shouted right on the Champs-Elysees; "England will be Muslim" read the signs they hold up in the middle of London), and they constantly ask for special privileges or are given, even without asking, by those who are so eager to meet every conceivable Muslim demand, avoid any conceivable trouble with Muslims, all kinds of special concessions, from prayer rooms and wudu-washing rooms at schools and other public places, to being let out of work for five-times-a-day prayers, to discussions of whether Shari'a might not be allowed, or the rule against hijabs in French laic schools be relaxed, or really shouldn't that Danish publication be punished, and shouldn't Muslim sensibilities be allowed to modify Western rights of free speech (just this one exception, just for Islam, please, pretty please?)? Just look at the famously tolerant Netherlands,where such people as Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Geert Wilders were all threatened with death -- and the first two have been killed, the third has been forced into American exile, and only Wilders remains,under armed guard, moving every night from army post to army post, in order to stay alive in the country of which he is a member of the Parliament -- this in a country where the Muslim population has gone from 15,000 in 1970 to over one million today.

And the third development, that helps to make the world-wide Jihad possible, and has brought it back not from non-existence, but from temporary desuetude, has been that of technological advances, made by Infidels, and exploited by Muslims to destroy Infidels. Those audiocassettes that Ayatollah Khomeini registered his speeches on, from his French exile at Neauphle-le-Chateau, helped bring down the Shah and a semi-decent reimge, for the nightmare of Khomeini and his malignant and turbanned epigones. Similarly, videocassettes of Infidels being decapitated, and similar scenes, along with Qur'anic excerpts, and relevant Hadith, and details of the life of Muhammad, are to be found at Muslim websites on the Internet, and Muslim anti-"Zionist" and anti-"Crusader" propaganda can be found, with those highly tendentious pictures of supposed atrocities, and beamed by satellite television, that is Arab television that exploits Western satellite technology.

Jihad, or the "struggle" to remove every barrier to the spread, and then to the dominance, of Islma, everywhere in the world, and to ensure that Muslims rule everywhere to keep Islma on top -- that is not a fiction, not a fabrication from the perfervid brain of Stephen Coughlin, or from anyone at this website or anywhere else. It is standard Islam, and the greatest scholars of Jihad in the West have left ample written evidence of that -- and so have the Muslim scholars, those who are not writing or speaking for Western audiences, or advising the terminally creduolous, as Hasham Islam does Gordon England, and no doubt Jeffrey Carr has his "own sources" of information --don't expect him to read too much on his own, please, he's too busy coming up with those, not three, and not five, but exactly four -- count them, four -- "stages of radicalization."

The jeffrey-carrs of this world will never take the time to sit down and read, quietly, for several months, with commentaries and other guides to understanding, the texts of Islam, until they have thoroughly assimilated the material. They will continue to believe that the Total Belief-Systeem of Islam is really not taken all that seriously by Muslims, for in the end aren't they just fellow humans, and aren't all humans The Same The Whole World Over, with their dreams, and their schemes, and their loves, and their hates, and their disappointments, and their joys? Isn't the Whole Wide World just one big wonderful place where we are all diverse and yet also at the very same time we are all just exactly the same, and a can-do social-scientist like...oh, like Jeffrey Carr, come to think of it, doesn't have to worry about those fusty old books like the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira because he "understands" Muslims on a "deeper" and "universally human" level. You get the type, the dreary type? Dreary, and grasping for the easy money, the government money, for those "studies" of the "4 stages" -- the 4 goddam stages -- of "radicalization" of Muslims?

And don't expect the jeffrey-carrs of this world, cashing their checks for their latest "studies," to read about the 1350 years of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim lands, from Spain to the East Indies. Don't expect him to waste time studying the treatment of all the non-Muslims -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists -- in so many different lands, at so many different times -- a treatment that turns out to be remarkably similar, becaues the rules, that is the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a, and the texts (that Qur'an, those Hadith, that Sira that the jeffery-carrs of this world simply don't have the time or the inclination -- boring! -- to study.

Oh spare us these piranhas, swimming about and grabbing onto the ship of state, the S. S. Naufragium, under the impression that the underwater part of that ship is just one big fish that they can grab onto, and suck the blood from. What they are doing is helping to sink that ship, not that the current captain, and his crew, aren't doing a bang-up job of it themselves, and probably don't need the help of the jeffrey-carrs of this world.

One would love to know what government or other contracts Jeffery Carr, with his solemn study of how to stop the "radicalization" of Muslims who, I'm afraid, have only to have pointed out to them what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and have it pointed out again and again, with scenes of Infidel "atrocities" in Iraq or "Palestine" or for that matter anywhere -- and they can of course be exaggerated events, or events ripped out of context, or made up entirely by some imaginative Muslim propagandists, but it doesn't matter, the primitive masses will believe, and be inflamed. Look at the return of the Taliban, after more than six years of the American and NATO war-making, and distributed largesse, to Afghanistan.

Carr, all the Carrs -- they are invincible in one thing. Not in their arguments -- it's infant's play to take them apart. But in their ignorance. It keeps them going. It protects them. It prevents them from ever having doubts about their own little enterprises. Don't confuse them. Don't make them read. They want those contracts. They want that money. They want to come with those "4 stages of radicalization" and then offer all of their bright ideas as to what to do, to prevent Stage 1, or Stage 2, or Stage 3, or Stage 4.

This way more than madness lies.

I plan on emailing this article and the Gertz article to every news outlet, talk show host, etc I can think of along with my Senators and congressman.

I hope each of you will do the same for your areas.

Jeffrey Carr: I would respectfully submit to you that whether Islam is or is not a good religion is a very important and relevant matter indeed. If it is, then there's far more hope that things will work out well for America and the West. If it isn't, then thinking that it is could be lethal, and relying on so-called moderate Muslims would be at best a kind of strategy (one I endorse as part of a divide and conquer approach for the time being but with the conviction that Islam is deep bad news), at worst a fool's errand.

After all, Nixon went to China as a way of providing leverage between the two largest Communist powers. He was under no illusion that there was a good Marxism. And again, we sorta', kinda' aligned ourselves with Tito from time to time as a way of countering Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, but we never thought he had forged an enlightened Communism. Please reconsider your statement that Islam being or not being innocuous is an irrelevant matter. Nothing could be more relevant.

Hugh, the 4 Stages of Radicalization comes from a report written by the Intelligence division of the NYPD, which, in turn, is run by David Cohen, formerly Deputy Director for Operations at CIA. I'm certain that he'll be very interested in hearing your views on his department's report. Please do contact him, and then let me know how it goes.

For anyone who's interested, the full report can be read here: http://seawolfllc.com/Documents/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf

Mr. Carr

I would like to inform you of what you call a moderate muslim, relative to a radicalized muslim by redefining the words. Below is a simple word for word comparison;

Radicalized Muslim= Good & faithful Muslim

Moderate Muslim = Less Good & Faithful Muslim

Non Muslim = Infidel or Unbeliever

Now I realize that this is simplistic but that is just to explain the point. The good and faithful follow the teaching of the Koran to the letter . The less good are the vast majority who just want to live a life with no trouble. They cannot argue against the good follower because the Koran backs up the action of jihad. It is a popular conception in the west that the radicals have hijacked Islam. That is not true, they have not hijacked it, they are just doing what it tells them to do. If you don't believe what I have said prove me wrong by the teaching of Islam in the Koran and related literature. Have you studied or read what the Koran teaches. You will be saddened and surprised at the hate, deceit and murder in it.

That is why several have posted that Islam and its teachings are the problem. A man I know who was born into Islam and later left said that a good muslim will be a terrorist.

I want, just a you do, to have this threat to our culture and way of life eliminated but to do that you need to know the enemy first.

As I see it, the war ain't on terrorism. From my selfish viewpoint, I have more chance of being killed at any time by an asteroid than an Islamoloon.

Terrorism is just their way of getting attention. Er, Islamoloons, not asteroids.

What I direly do not want to see is a world increasingly dominated by Islamoloons, with their penchant for enforcing their bizarre fetishes by violence.

But terrorism? Gimme a break. I am NOT worried about terrorism. I just hate to see the hundreds of millions of women and children being victimized by proponents of this brutal and nonsensical ideology.

Mr Carr

Please share with us your depth of understanding of the intricacies of the jihadist psyche, and tell us exactly in which of the four stages of the "radicalization process" is this poor soul?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Suicide-bomber-baby01.jpg

Well Jeffrey, whoever is formerly Deputy Director for Operations at CIA just doesn't get it either. These are the guys that get sensitivity training from CAIR. Hugh spelled it out for you & the "real smart guys".
Do you not notice that islam is in ascendancy all over the world...even where we are NOT INVOLVED. The quran exhorts believers to:
Qur'an:8:39 "So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world)."
Qur'an:9:5 "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."

"I'm certain that he'll{David Cohen} be very interested in hearing your views on his department's report. Please do contact him, and then let me know how it goes."
-- from a posting by Jeffrey Carr

Well, then I will modify exactly one thing. If David Cohen is a full-time employee of the NYPD, then this "4 stages of radicalization" stuff is not being done by a consultant for a contract, but I don't take back my mockery of such things, nor of you, for apparently taking it all so seriously, and looking for hate in all the wrong places -- that is, for your dreamy belief that everything should be held up for inspection and analysis except Islam itself, for Islam itself simply cannot possibly be the source of the Jihad, or of the particular instrument that we are supposed to monomanically focus our attention on, videlicet, "terrorism."

This business of "3 stages" of this and "4 stages of that" is the kind of thing that I think Jacques Barzun made fun of in "The Culture We Deserve," and still more fun of this kind of thing is made of all that in "Social Sciences As Sorcery" by that very funny Polish exile, the one who wrote in The Spectator in the same years as Tibor Szamuely, what's his name...I forget now.
But I'll google, find it, and put it up here.

Everything else I said about your views I cheerfully reiterate.

"4 Stages of Radicalization comes from a report written by the Intelligence division of the NYPD"

4 stages, 5, or 20, who cares? It all comes from one source, Islam.

For apologists, remember we (the west / infidels) did not invent jihad or cause it. It's been around for 1400 years or so. We weren't even around then. It has not changed. Who exercises it? The radicals. Who permits it? The moderates. And we should take on guilt? BS.

All these reports out there. Have any of these geniuses taken the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, the source of all that is Islam and studied those?

Mr Carr,

Would you then be in favor of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan because:

U.S. troop presence angers Jihadis and helps create new ones.

U.S. efforts to transplant democracy are doomed to failure and this activity also angers Jihadis and creates new ones.

Your thoughts on this?

And the name dropping thing...
I voted for GWB twice, he's the POTUS (that's a pretty high position too)
He doesn't get it either.

The artificial aid to memory, Google (that's "Mister Google" to you) has come through one mo' time: Stanislav Andreski. "Social Sciences as Sorcery." Stanislav Andreski, now dead, but in the 1970s he taught -- or have I got Tibor Szamuely on the brain - at the University of Reading. Poland's loss, England's gain.

The "4 Stages Of Radicalization" and How To Prevent Them is, as noted by Jeffrey Carr with a note of quiet touche-satisfaction , is not by Jeffrey Carr. He's just terribly impressed with it all. As I've noted, David Cohen is on that fixed gothamite salary, and I presume is not in the consultancy fixing-Islam racket, as I assumed Jeffrey Carr likely was. That is, again as noted, the only thing I concede. So, Reader, kindly read my analysis-cum-invective about Carr, and simply excise the bits about his being a consultant no doubt peddling his wars on How To Deal With Islam. Apparently he isn't in it for the money; he's just misleading others (and himself) for free. I'm glad to hear it.

But what about David Cohen? Why don't I go and taunt him? Well, why should I? He hasn't posted jejune stuff here. I don't even know if he still believes that the one thing that doesn't explain the behavior of millions of (tens, hundreds of millions) of Muslims is Islam., but some "stages" theory of growth: Gael Greene's "Passages" meets Walt Rostow's "The Four Stages of Economic Growth." Good God, anything is possible nowadays. I'm not going to ruffle my wonted sweetness of temper over someone who wasn't looking for trouble. I'm fair.

Hugh, you have a wonderfully clinical way of lancing a Boil. Especially one on the Brain.

Dare I offer my 6 point plan?

No Water
No Immigration
No Sanitation
No Electricity
No Utilities
No Paycheck.

I must say, what amazes me is how so many blindly defend Islam as a 'religion of peace' and that the infidels are somehow responsible for all this jihad, yet at the same time these experts, somehow, do not seem to believe a true Muslim must believe in what his 'religion of peace' teaches,

as interestinconundrum quoted:

Qur'an:8:39 "So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world)."

Qur'an:9:5 "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."

I.m.a.h - As I've said before, I'm not interested in the relative merits of any religion, including Islam. I'm only interested in helping our government find a way to win the Long War. So rather than arguing with your definitions, I'll accept them as valid. Moving on ...

A major problem in Afghanistan is that in spite of military victories against al-Qa'ida targets, al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are still making gains by recruiting from your "less good and faithful" Muslim population. And THAT is happening because a percentage of that population is feeling hopeless, and the only alternative they that believe they have is to move towards what you've called the "good and faithful" Muslims - the Jihadists.

Coalition forces must stem that tide of recruitment, or for every Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighter that they kill, another 2 or 3 will join the fray. So how is that to be done? Organize a Muslim genocide? I hope that's not what you or anyone in this forum or elsewhere is suggesting. Convert every Muslim to Christianity? Perhaps that will work, if we want to wait another 1,000 years. The only solution that's both timely and practical, is to enlist the aid of "less good and faithful" Muslims to create other mechanisms by which they can express dissent, find work, live in more stable and safe neighborhoods, etc. That will dry up the recruiting pool, and when a Taliban or al-Qa'ida fighter is killed, their numbers will drop instead of increase.

It's just common sense, IMAH. Try to step out of the religious framework that you're accustomed to and view it from a purely practical COIN framework.

Hugh, the poor boy doesn't know what hit him. The evisceration was so complete, my mouth was more agape than Joe E. Brown's. Reading your words, I was struck by the feeling the Spanish call "verguenza ajena."

"Try to step out of the religious framework that you're accustomed to and view it from a purely practical COIN framework."

That's what you and millions don't get Mr. Carr. Muslims will not 'step out of the religious framework', despite our attempts to bring that sort of thing about, because Islam won't allow it. Islam, it's teachings, beliefs, practices IS the framework for everything.

"But terrorism? Gimme a break. I am NOT worried about terrorism...."
Posted by: Goob

Thats what a lot of those 10314 terrorist victims since 911 thought too.

Hugh, how do you imagine that what you write about Islam is helping U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as well as U.S. Armed Forces win the Long War?

Let's say, for example, that every single member of every agency involved in this struggle, and every single member of Congress and everyone serving in the White House including the President himself, believes exactly as you do. How does that change our current military strategy as well as our Intelligence and Law Enforcement efforts? Apply what you believe, and deliver it in a practical strategic plan, as I did in my paper, and as the NYPD did in their's.

I'll wait.

A gluten for punishment - Jeffrey Carr?

blockquote>A major problem in Afghanistan is that in spite of military victories against al-Qa'ida targets, al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are still making gains by recruiting from your "less good and faithful" Muslim population. And THAT is happening because a percentage of that population is feeling hopeless, and the only alternative they that believe they have is to move towards what you've called the "good and faithful" Muslims - the Jihadists.

snip

It's just common sense, IMAH. Try to step out of the religious framework that you're accustomed to and view it from a purely practical COIN framework.

Studies consistently refute your common sense sir.

The poverty/terror myth

A gluten for punishment - Jeffrey Carr?

blockquote>A major problem in Afghanistan is that in spite of military victories against al-Qa'ida targets, al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are still making gains by recruiting from your "less good and faithful" Muslim population. And THAT is happening because a percentage of that population is feeling hopeless, and the only alternative they that believe they have is to move towards what you've called the "good and faithful" Muslims - the Jihadists.

snip

It's just common sense, IMAH. Try to step out of the religious framework that you're accustomed to and view it from a purely practical COIN framework.

Studies consistently refute your common sense sir.

The poverty/terror myth

Jeffrey stated: "Christian extremists aren't any better than Muslim extremists."

In what respect?

That's a generalization that doesn't hold any water.

"Hugh, how do you imagine that what you write about Islam is helping U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as well as U.S. Armed Forces win the Long War?"

Jeffrey Carr, Hugh already answered your question, if you had read his post.

Attack these (root cause) problems:

1. The oil money (Jizyah)
2. Mass Migration (Immigration)
3. Technology

plus one more thing, foreign aid (more Jizyah)

Do that and Islam will collapse, jihad with it.

But, as we all agree, it's a long war.

heroyalwhyness - That study doesn't address the chaotic and miserable conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do you actually read other news sources, or is Hugh your primary information source?

Jeffery, if they are as dense as you, obviously it will do no good what so ever.

Islam has had 1400 years to morph into Rosie's ordinary Moms and Dads. It doesn't seem as though it has worked very well.

Like Children who are bad, you take away their toys and make them sit in a corner without Supper for awhile. Giving them time to think about what they have done wrong.

Forget about all this modern Parenting rubbish and just go back to the Basics. It has worked wonders for ages.

If you had any Children you would understand these things. Or, do you have problem child from trying to just be their friend?

This really is not Rocket Science requiring years of study.

heroyalwhyness - That study doesn't address the chaotic and miserable conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do you actually read other news sources, or is Hugh your primary information source?

Ahem . . .

If you read the link, Jeffrey Carr, you would note that the information was reporting an article by Cait Murphy, assistant managing editor at Fortune.

Damn, this is too easy.

To Jeffrey Carr:

“Coalition forces must stem that tide of recruitment, or for every Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighter that they kill, another 2 or 3 will join the fray.”

Most here agree with this.

“So how is that to be done? Organize a Muslim genocide? I hope that's not what you or anyone in this forum or elsewhere is suggesting.“

No-one here that I know of has ever advocated such a thing.

“Convert every Muslim to Christianity? Perhaps that will work, if we want to wait another 1,000 years.”

If this were possible, which pretty much all sane people agree it is not, it would save an awful lot of trouble.

“The only solution that's both timely and practical, is to enlist the aid of "less good and faithful" Muslims to create other mechanisms by which they can express dissent, find work, live in more stable and safe neighborhoods, etc.”

Great, how do we do this?

“I'm not interested in the relative merits of any religion, including Islam.”

I am not certain that Islam has any “relative merits,” but are you stating that the terrorist’s own oft stated recruitment raison de’tere is not important to understanding its successful appeal in the Islamic world? Since when, is not understanding the enemies philosophy-theology not important? And, why do think a complete rejection of the relevance of such knowledge will help to negate their recruitment?

You remind me of many that I have debated inside the beltway. You will be happy to know, that your views hold sway within the current administration.

I don't know any "Christian extremists" so Mr. Carr's blanket statement just does not hold water. But even more perplexing is how this is supposed to tie into the jihad doctrine, which was fairly well enunciated and practiced during the Prophet's career. The Qur'anic injunctions about "fighting in the way of Allah" and "slaying the unbelievers where you find them" are so numerous and so central to Islam that to argue that it is a relatively modern innovation caused by the "aggressions" of the infidels one fairly well establishes one's total ignorance of Islamic scripture, tradition, and jurisprudence. Mr. Carr clearly is deficient in this area. And he displays his very superficial grasp of Christian theology and scripture as well.

He still has not answered my question: What "Christian extremism" provoked jihad in the 7th century, since it was then that jihad was established as doctrine and praxis?

This is why I cannot take Mr. Carr seriously, as an intellectual. If you pry apart his logic and examine the assumptions, stated and unstated, built into that logic and his conclusions, it all comes apart - begging for serious critique.

Mssrs. Spencer, Fitzgerald, and Bostom are so deeply knowledgeable about Islamic scripture, tradition, and jurisprudence that their writings provoked me to read the Qur'an and any English translations of Hadith Muslim and Bukhari (the most authoritative traditions)that I could get my hands on. How anyone can interpose their uninformed opinion over theirs (and Mr. Coughlin's)as being somehow morally and intellectually superior beggars belief.

"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"?

Please, Big Pentagon Brother, tell me how this works.

Islam is tripartite with murdering jihadists at the top, a totalitarian Sharia-supporting legal and political system in the middle, and the average Muslim at the bottom. The Nazis of World War II were essentially no different with the Nazi military at the top, a totalitarian Nazi legal and political system in the middle and the average German at the bottom. The average German during WWII generally followed along with the political, legal and military leaders; not to do so would likely have been a death sentence. The average Muslim in Muslim countries are in the same predicament that the average German was in. The average Muslim in America must choose the values of our Founding Fathers or those of the Muslim religion; those values are mutually exclusive. The problem here is that a percentage of Americans have abandoned the values of our Founding Fathers, and they are either ambivalent or sympathetic to the enemy.

Carr wrote:
I'm not interested in the relative merits of any religion, including Islam.

IOW don't bother me with cultural/religious background or the ideological engine that drives Muslim terrorists.

Shoddy premises young man. Start in the dark and stay there.

..and THAT is happening because a percentage of that population is feeling hopeless

Really, why then have the Islamic terrorists who have attacked England and the U.S. been college educated, middle-class Arabs?

It's just common sense, IMAH. Try to step out of the religious framework that you're accustomed to and view it from a purely practical COIN framework.

Sparky you wouldn't know COIN if it bit you on your pasty white bottom. Understanding the cultural and religious background of your opponent is critical in COIN ops.

Its called know thy enemy. Go read Sun Tzu.

You can't achieve success by only working in the dark with only your assumptions of what motivates Muslims.

Next time do a little research and thinking before coming here and pretending to be some expert in Islamic terrorism and smearing a man like Maj. Coughlin.

It really makes you look stupid and venal.

"Social Science as Sorcery" by Andreski is one of the best books I've ever read. I read it several years ago; then I told my social science professor about it, and he was very offended.

I sent this letter to the FreedomFest 2008 organizers:

Tami,

I was horrified to hear of the termination of Stephen Coughlin, of the Joint Staff in the Defense Department. Could you contact him and see if he's available to speak on your topic of "Islam: Radical or Peaceful?" He is an American hero and truth-teller.

Thank you for helping put together this conference and especially for inviting Robert Spencer.

I have to say, though, that you could put up a stronger debater than D'Sousa against the brilliant Hitchens. There are minds more logical and with better debating rhetoric than D'Sousa.

Kindest regards,
xxxxxxxxxxx

Look at the nonsense our apparently clueless senior military personnel have allowed to happen:

Here's a Diana West article referred to in a 6-10-05 at D/W post:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/2005/06/006589print.html

As you read Ms. West's article try to comprehend the ignorance, the stupidity, and the arrogance of those who concocted this asinine policy.

And in response to my concern about this, Senator Feinstein makes clear that our elected officials are just as stupid:

"In order to respect the cultural and religious dignity of the Qu'ran, U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay avoid handling or touching a detainee's Qu'ran whenever possible. When military necessity requires a detainee's Qu'ran to be searched, a Chaplain or Muslim interpreter instructs the detainee to display the Qu'ran so it can be examined without being touched by military personnel. In the event that a detainee's Qu'ran must be touched by military personnel, clean gloves must be put on in front of the detainee and the Qu'ran must be handled in a manner signaling reverence and care. This procedure is followed because, in the judgement of DoD, disrespecting the Qu'ran could lead to a lack of cooperation or incite violence from detainees."

And lest one get the idea that such opinions are the spawn of left wing minds, here's Congressman Doolittle's response to the same query:

"It is Department of Defense (DOD) policy that all detainees shall be treated humanely and in accordance with U.S. law. As such, the DOD has issued guidelines for the treatment of copies of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. Under the DOD guidelines, members of the clergy and interpreters shall wear latex gloves when touching the Koran out of respect and reverence for religious material."

With so many of our elected officials and senior military 'leaders' working in such close harmony...

Mr. Carr I am heartened with your reply. I don't have all of the strategic and tactical answers on winning this war. I do realize that the vast majority of those in the government and the public don't get it.

Some days I think, like you, that we can win by starving off the enemy as you state. Other days I think it may be far worse with mass loss of life. Unfortunately that will not happen with the PC mindset that goes for policy today.

For the near term this country needs to understand who the enemy, Islam. It hides behind its religiosity, I would like the public to reject it like Nazism or the KKK. I would like to see it legally expunged from our society and not allowed to be practiced. That would be a good first step. I, frankly don't care if they care or how they feel about it. This includes the moderates and anyone in between. They are mad and hated us long before we knew of them. If these actions cause them to become jihad's that is their fault and they will die as well. I would propose, to win the hearts and minds of these middle of the ground Muslims is not appeasement but strength and determination. I honestly believe these people, with there arrogance, don't understand anything less. Look at the Crusades, not for tactics but for what they went to war for. Then Muslims were taking over the known world. Seems like that is what is happening to day in EU.

This country will and can marshal whatever is needed to defeat the enemy, but first they need to know who the enemy is. That IMO is what MAJ. Stephen Coughlin was doing. I also seriously question the circumstances of his termination. I would if I had access and authority, question the loyalty of this Mr. Islam. His statement "a Christian zealot or extremist 'with a pen,'" tells more of the accuser that the accused.

Waltc - If you'd like to debate COIN (or Sun Tzu) as it applies to the Long War, please feel free to join me at Small Wars Council, where I post regularly. All points of view are welcome, however participating members need to register with an introduction to the list. I'm sure that you'll find some supporters there, but you'll need to debate the facts. Unlike this blog, ad hominem arguments aren't tolerated.

Here's the URL: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/

PatagoniaPlato (& Waltc) - The fact that some terrorists are well-educated doesn't change the fact that many conditions are contributing to the radicalization of moderate Muslims. Do you believe that all Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters are engineers and doctors?

What? Do not lie to yourselves. Inherent-pacificity of Islam is bedrock policy of the US government and has been since Sept. 16, 2001, when Bush took Oval Office dictation from Wahabi, Deobandi, Jamaati and Ikhwani jihadis. The fact that he strayed a little bit from their control, belies the fact that he follows a dogma viz Abrahamic unity between real Muslims and anti secular vermin like himself.

Bush's ME democraticization scam - read: legitimation of Islamofascism - has destroyed secularism in the ME. Most regimes are only a sham election away from neo-talibanism.

Dating to late September 2001, whenever I heard "islam is peace" vulgarities, I would send the reporter a link to the "jihad" section of the Bukhari Hadith. Given that same reporters persisted in their ignorance, once assumes that political correctness dictates that it is racist to avoid non-deference to Muslim exegetes on interpretation of Islam, and its prescriptions to Muslims.

Will the following ever sink in? Muslims hate non-Muslims; Muslim hate for non-muslims is doctrinal. See for yourselves how they show the love:

http://static.scribd.com/docs/idzeefo6z6foz.pdf

PatagoniaPlato, I missed answering one of your questions earlier. When I posted that I'm not interested in debating the merits of any religion, I mean that debating whether Islam is good, evil, or a mix of the two adds nothing to winning the Long War.

This is my first time posting to Jihad Watch, and it's now quite clear that in this blog there's a lot of time spent discussing how Islam is an awful religion, and little to no time spent discussing how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism. If I'm wrong about that, please point me to a post by Robert Spencer or Hugh Fitzgerald that spells out their plan for winning this war and I'll gladly retract my statement.

Our Intelligence Community spends a great deal of time profiling who terrorists are, what motivates them, where they obtain support, and finding new ways to identify them. What we don't waste time doing is sitting around chatting about how much better Roman Catholicism is versus Southern Baptists, or how terrible it is that there are some Americans who don't know what Jihad TRULY means. We leave that to the comments section of blogs like this one.

[q]The fact that some terrorists are well-educated doesn't change the fact that many conditions are contributing to the radicalization of moderate Muslims. Do you believe that all Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters are engineers and doctors?[/q]

comment by Jeffrey Carr

This reasoning is stubbornly clung to by Mr. Carr: "many conditions contributing to..." As a former revisionist Marxist from three decades ago, I can attest that this line of logic is right out of the entire corpus of Marxist theory. This is how they justify revolution and revolt: objective conditions of oppression.

Thus, in the case of Islam, applying his (not our)logic to the genesis and development of jihad doctrine, we can then look at the "objective conditions" which caused Muhammad to formulate his religion and theology of liberation.

What if we can reasonably, via a reconstruction based upon the facts of his life, determine that Muhammad was nothing more than a narcissistic thief and murderer who conveniently found justification for what he wanted by conjuring the words and visions from al illah, the tribal moon god? Muhammad had only a handful of followers when he was exiled from Mecca. After he went to Medina he decided that the only way his fledgling movement was going to survive was robbing caravans - a long-standing practice among those people. He was successful at this and claimed that Allah told him it was good. It was at this point that he began to gather many, many more followers of Allah. Booty and the attraction for murder gathered in a criminal element.

Yeah, right, Mr. Carr. You can posit that jihad is a modern innovation within Islam, nurtured by the big, bad infidels who oppress the poor Muslims. I spent ten years of my life on the Left swilling the various theoretical justifications for revolution, class envy, subversion, lies, re-education, slander of Christianity and Judaism, and "necessary" murder of incorrigible counter-revolutionaries.

The Left stubbornly and consistently denies or discounts the "religious" motivation for jihad. And not just the Left, but also our policy, media, and educational elites do this because religious feelings, beliefs, and motivations are so primitive as to not merit serious consideration. It reveals the total penetration of our intellectual tradition by the Gramscians who undertook the long march through the institutions.

Jeffery...Thank you for your efforts to curb terrorism...Moderate muslims. Moderate muslims are hard to come by. The large number of peaceful muslims with one foot on a banana peel, and the
other in jihad, will take a large number of 'moderate' muslims to curb them.
I would be interested in how you would find this many moderate volunteers, and what they would be using as tools to convince Quranic addicts that they are in error. If these 'moderates' contradict the Quranic edicts, the 'moderates', themselves could be labeled apostates and killed. What 'moderate' is going to replace the influence of the Quran, aHadith, and Friday sermons by a firebrand and hateful cleric?
And what 'moderate' is going to stand up to Allah and say, 'I don't like some of the things you said in your book', so I am going to change them or ignore them, and furthermore, am going to encourage others to do the same? A very brave (or foolish) muslim to say the least. Allah don't allow that kind of talk.
This is going to take a lot of brave 'moderate' muslims.
How many do you have signed up so far?

Like Iman's, Cleric's, George Bush?

Jeff, we all would suppose that if we stopped confronting the Militant ones, we wouldn't create as many . Well, not as fast anyway. It did take them a few years to get around to 9/11. They only went radical from about 3% of the population to somewhere around 7-9% during the Clinton Administration. We all know he tried his level best not to annoy them at all, and even went so far as to help them out.

By all accounts of Islamic History, they seemed to be quite content to leave the West alone when they realized they could no longer beat us in a stand up fight. Unfortunately, Islam being what it is, they just turned their attention towards those they felt their odds were better against.

Now we find ourselves, once again, the center of their attention. Thanks in large part, to individuals with a thought process like yours. A convoluted, Pretzel twisted view that we are the cause of all their troubles.

It is possible that many here could agree with you if we were to accept the premise that it is really our fault that Islam woke up one morning and found itself, say, 1000 years behind the times. Something tells me that is not likely to happen.

If you wish to suggest that a greater effort should be made to point out to them, that Radical Islam, and the way it is being implemented, is not contributing to the greater good of all. Then great, Have at it. Good luck in trying something they have not figured out for themselves over the last 1400 years.

Until then, we should stick to the wiseup, returning them to the Bedouin life they were once so content with.

Jeff Carr

I find little evidence to support your claim that you have been subject to ad hominen attack here. There has been a bit of sarcasm for sure, but personal attacks are not evident.

Many posters, particularly Hugh, have pointed out some very significant weaknesses to your arguments , yet you fail to refute, or even address those points. You do take the time and effort to accuse others of attacking you personally.

Suggest you make an effort to explain why the points made that contradict yours are incorrect, instead of hiding behind such a weak excuse for avoiding a debate.

NEFA has a large amount of data on DoD participation in the DoJ's "Holyland Foundation" trial, which was sandbagged by the Bush Crime Family.

http://www.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs.html

In one Exhibit, Coughlin sourced material reveals concern of subversive effects of "political islam."

Exhibit GX 3-85

"An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group" - Mohamed Akram - May 22, 1991

NEFA Senior Investigator Doug Farah has blogged extensively on this document. One key excerpt follows: "The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Akram also writes, "we are in a country which understands no language other than the language of the organizations, and one which does not respect or give weight to any group without effective, functional, and strong organizations." In this context, "the big challenge...is how to turn these seeds or 'scattered' elements into comprehensive, stable, 'settled' organizations that are connected with our Movement...and take orders from our guidance."

Note: NEFA Senior Investigator Doug Farah publicized a memo, written by Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin, analyzing this document. Introducing Coughlin's memo, Army Lt. Col. Joseph C. Myers, Senior Army Advisor and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency's South America division, writes, "This assessment makes the point that the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a threat organization and the affiliated US domestic Muslim NGOs and associations identified in the strategy document should likewise be considered part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, that these are 'front' functional organizations operating as links and nodes of the overall network." At the end of his memo, Coughlin assesses, "outreach strategies must be adjusted in the face of credible information that seeming Islamic humanitarian or professional non-governmental organizations may be part of the global jihad with potential for being part of the terrorist or insurgent support system."
---------------------------
How the hell can anyone deny that Bush's "Middle East Partnership Initiative," which included Islamofascist participation in a pseudo "democraticization" process was conducted in face of evidence that these moves would aid and abet the enemy? A couple of years ago, someone posted a photo of the current Egyptian Cabinet, with their wives fully veiled. That was presented beside a photo of the same subjects in the seventies; all of the women wore western hair styles, and makeup. Why? Bush wants Islamofascists to vote; Western Civilization needs those wild animals to die. Almost ALL of the 19,000 Muslim Brotherhood terrorists that Egypt held in prison on Sept 11, 2001, have been released to wage jihad, in the name of Bush "freedom."

This is my first time posting to Jihad Watch, and it's now quite clear that in this blog there's a lot of time spent discussing how Islam is an awful religion, and little to no time spent discussing how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism. If I'm wrong about that, please point me to a post by Robert Spencer or Hugh Fitzgerald that spells out their plan for winning this war and I'll gladly retract my statement. - Posted by: Jeffrey Carr

Fitzgerald: Countering the Jihad

Jeff Carr:

People like you who write that we are under obligation to wage "long war," make me puke. When future generations examine the 24-7-365 patrol practises of the Iraq wheel-spin, will recognize the depthless depravity of this generation.

On September 11, 2001, Muslims took war to a major American city. On Sept. 16, 2001, a US President exhonerated Muslims for the crime, then proceeded on 6 years of limited war and nation building madness. Point to the "surge" as a success; I point to the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis as the sole fruit of the surge, and lessening confrontation between the strong-as-ever jihadis and US troops.

The GWOT could and should have been over in a week, with a loss of no more than 5 million enemy dead in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, (tribal) Pakistan, Yemen and Iran.

The value of a fingernail clipping from anyone of the 3800 US dead in the current madness, is worth more than a million jihad vermin.

I don't want Islamofascists to vote; I want them to die. You want them to be empowered through sham "democracy," and indulged to wait until they can do future 9-11 damage.

Very lucid analysis.

The key for the persistence of Islamic terrorism are the support systems.

Political correctness and the preaching of tolerance are part of the support system of the enemy.

It is evident that a section of those Support Systems have deeply penetrated the American military with the purpose of neutralizing it.

TO Jeffrey Carr

First, I want to say thank-you for responding. I know that this is often not possible and so I do appreciate you taking the time. This is what polite debate is all about and, as much as I might debate and/or disagree with you, you are certainly polite.

In my post to you, I asked you three very specific questions.

“I am not certain that Islam has any “relative merits,” but are you stating that the terrorist’s own oft stated recruitment raison de’tere is not important to understanding its successful appeal in the Islamic world? Since when, is not understanding the enemies philosophy-theology not important? And, why do think a complete rejection of the relevance of such knowledge will help to negate their recruitment?”

In you posting at 10:30 you responded in part:

“Our Intelligence Community spends a great deal of time profiling who terrorists are, what motivates them, where they obtain support, and finding new ways to identify them. What we don't waste time doing is sitting around chatting about how much better Roman Catholicism is versus Southern Baptists, or how terrible it is that there are some Americans who don't know what Jihad TRULY means. We leave that to the comments section of blogs like this one.”

Speaking for myself, I agree with “some” of what you say. However, I have never personally engaged in any sort of Catholics or Baptists are better than . . . debate. You may well be correct to suggest that saying one is better than another does little to defeat the other.

In any case, you did not directly address my three questions in your response. I respectfully ask you for a specific response. As for what Hugh or Mr. Spencer might suggest, the archives here can easily address this question.

Thanks again for your consideration.

"This is my first time posting to Jihad Watch, and it's now quite clear that in this blog there's a lot of time spent discussing how Islam is an awful religion, and little to no time spent discussing how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism. If I'm wrong about that, please point me to a post by Robert Spencer or Hugh Fitzgerald that spells out their plan for winning this war and I'll gladly retract my statement."
- Posted by: Jeffrey Carr

In a posting above -- at 11:10 p.m. -- a link is given to one of many such discussions of exactly what you laim is never discussed, what you describe as "how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism." Go to "Articles by Hugh Fitzgerald," click on it, and start reading. Not one article or a dozen, but several hundred, discuss exactly what you call "how to win the Long War." I deplore the phrase "the Long War" and the assumptions that underlie the phrase "how to win the Long War," and I furtrher objecte to the notiion of "winning" that "Long War" against what you call "Jihadi terrorism" when that is only part of the problem (you say not a word about campaigns of Da'wa, not a word about the demographic conquest of Western
Europe -- why? You don't regtard those things as threatening? Why not?) but nonetheless, if you want discussions of how to handle the threat of those who conduct, or support, Jihad -- the struggle to spread Islam by removing all obstacles to it, human and institutional, until Islameverywhere dominates, and Muslims dominate everywhere.

The first thing is to disabuse oneself of the idiotic phrase "winning the war." This is not a war that has an end. It goes on forever. Islamic doctrine doesn't change, and won't change. Islam will not disappear. The power of those who wish to engage, or to support others who engage, in violent Jihad, can be limited. The power of those who wish to engage, or to support others who engage, in other forms of Jihad, which may be more effective and certainly less attention-getting than violence (i.e., terrorism, the current cynosure of all Infidel governments' eyes), can be limited.

In Iraq, I have suggested that resources are being squandered because of the failure to recognize that Jihad is the problem, and that, therefore, instead of attempting the false solutions of bringing "unity" and "prosperity" to Iraq -- with America serving as the I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can choo-choo determined to bring toys and good things to eat to boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, a correct analysis of the world-wide problem of Jihad would lead to a recognition that in Iraq two of the main fissures pre-existing (they do not require any manufacture on our part in Iraq -- only benign, or malign, neglect), that is the sectarian and the ethnic, are there, can be exploited, and can lead to greater divisions and demoralization within the Camp of Islam. Why? Well, because the Shi'a will never surrender their newly-acquired power, and the Sunnis will never acquiesce in the Shi'a (those "Persians" and "Rafidite dogs") possessing such power, in of all places the Land of the Two Rivers, and especially in Baghdad, for 400 years the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate (Samarra held that position for a century until the capital was transferred to Baghdad), the most important capital in history-haunted Islam.

I have written repeatedly about the effects of a persistent clash, low level, high level, I haven't any idea, in Iraq between Shi'a and Sunnis, on Shi'a-Sunni relations outside Iraq, in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (the miserably-treated Shi'a all live in the Eastern Province, al-Hasa, the place where, as it happens, all the oil is to be found, unless Totalfina and Elf have made some new discoveries in the Empty Quarter -- of oil or gas -- and are keeping it very quiet), Yemen, Lebanon, Pakistan. Not to be deplored, but to be watched, coolly, as the Arabs and Muslims are left in a weaker position than they were -- for otherwise the trillion dollars spent on Iraq really will be a total waste.

And then there is the ethnic fissure presented in Iraq, between the Arabs and the non-Arab Kurds.. We wish, or should wish, to appeal to the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arabs, to reconsider the nature of Islam, and of the Arab role in it. For Islam is a vehicle for Arab imperialism, linguistic, cultural, but also, in the end, economic and political imperialism. (For more on this just google "Islam is a vehicle for Arab imperialism."). There are stirrings of resentment, based on dim, through-a-glass-darkly, recognition, here and there, of how in Islam, despite its universalist pretensions, the Arabs are the superior people, and that Islam is "their gift" and everything about it -- the language one must ideally read the Qur'an in (it is the Holy Qur'an only if it is in Arabic), and ideally take an Arab name, just as one must bow toward the Arabian peninsula five times a day, and take as the model of conduct a seventh-century Arab, and so on. An independent Kurdistan could stand as an example of a non-Arab Muslim people who were capable not only of throwing off the Arab yoke (the same Arabs who have persecuted and murdered them, for that persecution and mass-murder was carried out not by Saddam Hussein himself, but by willing Arabs, and not a syllable of protest arrived during or after the fact from the Arab League, or a single Arab leader, or a single Arab so-called "intellectual" -- save for Kanan Makiya, who still puzzles over it, and does not allow himself to recognize that Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, because he remains, amazingly, still incapable, even he, of recognizing the role of Islam in the outcome in Iraq, where he was disappoinited, but also puzzled). We want, or should want, the Berbers to be stirred by the Kurdish example, and to then bestir themselves, in Algeria and even further to the west. We want the Berbers in France to come to regard the Arabs not with a feeling of Muslim solidarity but with a feeling of distate and resentment, of the kind that the celebrated Berber writer (who wrote in French, refusing to write in Arabic) Kateb Yacine, expressed. We want the Muslims of the East Indies to recognize that they are not, and never will be, and should not wish to be, little Arabs, but to begin to look sympathetically on their own forebears, those Hindus and Buddhists who converted to Islam either because a ruler in Java or Sumatra did, and his people had to follow, or because they wished to avoid the treatment meted out, under Islamic rule, to non-Muslims and, as so many people in the long history of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim lands, converted to Islam in order to avoid the onerousness of the dhimmi condition. And even in Pakistan, benighted Pakistan, "land of the pure," and in Bangladesh, and especially in India, one wishes that more of the Muslims began to resent the Arabs, and began to view Islam, correctly, as that vehicle for Arab supremacism that I insist on calling it, ad nauseam.

And then I have made suggestions as to what a few thousand American troops could mean in the southern Sudan and Darfur, remaining until a referendum on independence could be held. And what could the Arab League do? Demand the right of genocide against the black Africans, including not only the Christians and animists in the south, whose oil is being stolen by the Arabs who wish them dead, but also the black African Muslims of Darfur, being subjected to the same treatment.

And there is much more, but it is based essentially on the idea that Infidels need to be surer of the superiority of their own civilizational legacy, and should be willing to defend that legacy, no matter how unattractive and undeserving so many of those now inhabiting that West seem to be, and that part of defending that legacy, of artistic expression, free and skeptical inquiry, solicitousness for individual rights, and all the rest of what makes the West the West, is to learn about Islam, and not learn about it from the armstrongs and espositos or the MESA-Nostrans (google "MESA Nostra") who have crept into positions in all kinds of colleges and universities, where they are careful to hire and promote each other.

Essentially, the Camp of Islam must be weakened, and since the main source of its strength are the revenues from oil and gas, anything that diminishes the value of that oil and gas is a good thing, and common cause should be made with those who, for quite different reasons, have made the campaign to limit the use of fossil fuels the center of their political activity.

There's much more, including working to ending the disguised Jizyah of foreign aid, from Infidels -- an absurdity when Saudi Arabia alone has some $900 billion in reserves to use to further the building of mosques and madrasas, and to finance campaigns of Da'wa in the West, not to mention all the members of Western political and media elites who have been bought up, over the past thirty or forty years, by Saudi, Kuwaiti, and other Arab money. The recipients should be investigated, exposed, mocked, held up for public disgust, and made such a fuss over that others who may be tempted to be on the same take will have to think twice, or thrice, before so doing. Why there has not been a Congressional investigation of all kinds of former ambassadors and intelligence agents can possibly be explained by the fact that so many people, including so many ex-presidents, have been the recipients of Saudi and other Arab largesse, but this is the election year when this ought to be pushed out into the public discussion and interrogation of the candidates. We need to know.

And finally, there is this: Infidels who have properly informed themselves about the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam, and about the 1350--year history of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim lands, and of the subsequent subjugation of all kinds of non-Muslims, will be able, by showing they cannot be fooled, cannot be distracted, cannot be mislead by displays of taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, will force Muslims, if they openly and resolutely demonstrate that understanding, that knowledge, to confront, in the end, what we all know, if we think for a bit, to be true: that the sources of the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim peoples and states can be located not in the behavior of Infidels, but in what Islam itself inculcates, beginning, but not ending, with the habit of mental submission.

And that's an introduction to those hundreds of articles and thousands of postings which have apparently escaped you, Mr. Carr, a "first-time poseter" and, I presume, a very recent visitor to this site who has hardly read around in the Archives. What presumption. What laziness.

Do much more reading than you have could possibly have done, for nothing else can explain the astonishing nonsense you offer in the excerpt that I use to begin this particular reply. Others should not have to point out to you what you can easily discover, by clicking above, or by starting to google, by yourself. This is not a course in remedial research. Things are not going to be handewd to you on a goddam platter. Hold back if you can't be bothered to do the most elementary kind of work.

So far, you have a failing grade. Try harder.

Get to work. Without any more help from us. We have , many of us have collectively, helped you quite enough.'

Fai da te.

This is why I despair. Hugh pummels someone in debate and said person sloughs it off like it was a mere sprinkle of rain. Hugh's obvious elucidation and knowledge of the debate is self evident. Yet, it finds no traction in that intractable mind. There was an urgency to Hugh's response that I have never seen before. I detected a subtle tone of exasperation. That such a brilliant retort could be ignored as the rantings of an unyielding...lets say...islamophobe.

Is there hope? I wonder?

Mr. Carr said...

[...] When I posted that I'm not interested in debating the merits of any religion, I mean that debating whether Islam is good, evil, or a mix of the two adds nothing to winning the Long War.

I've got some bad news for you... if you believe this, you've already lost.

[...] Our Intelligence Community spends a great deal of time profiling who terrorists are, what motivates them, where they obtain support, and finding new ways to identify them. What we don't waste time doing is sitting around chatting about how much better Roman Catholicism is versus Southern Baptists, or how terrible it is that there are some Americans who don't know what Jihad TRULY means. We leave that to the comments section of blogs like this one.

We? If you are actually a member of our intelligence community, and your attitude is widespread, then the West is truly screwed.

Understand something... the goal of the Jihadists and their support community is simple... it is the Islamification of the world, They win by simply getting their "faith" accepted by the West as an equal to Christianity or Judaism. Once that occurs, the road to supremacy is wide open; it is a vector that Islam has taken since its inception, and it is quite good at it. Sorting through the Muslim world looking for "good" or "moderate" Muslims to fight the "bad" Muslim extremists is pointless... even if you could reliably separate the two [you can't], Islam would still win; only through immigration and dawah instead of violence. Different routes to the same destination -- think Lebanon, India, or the Balkans. Permanent seething, perpetual violence against infidels, and the loss of every value we hold dear.

Wise up. Study the enemy. Learn his goals, his methods, and his motivations or you will continue to lose. Go where the facts take you, no matter how enormous the undertaking becomes.

We are not in a Long War Against Extremism, we are in a War Between Civilizations. Sorry if that isn't what you want... but its what you've got.

JOKE OF THE DAY.

What do you call a muslim locked up in Guantanamo Bay (Country Club) Prison?

A "moderate" muslim.

Hungarian Crusader-1453

PatagoniaPlato, thanks for your polite, yet tenacious, approach to this discussion. I appreciate it, and so here is the answer that I missed providing to you earlier. First, your questions:

1. “I am not certain that Islam has any “relative merits,” but are you stating that the terrorist’s own oft stated recruitment raison de’tere is not important to understanding its successful appeal in the Islamic world?

--- No, I'm not stating that. As I touched on in my earlier reply, their religious beliefs are part of an overall profile that allows us to understand who they are, what they have in common, what distinguishes them, what motivates them, how their cells are structured, what their roles are, how they train, how they recruit, how they are financed, and so on. We believe that the appeal is not very high, actually. In the NYPD study, the number of people that are initially attracted to the Jihadist message actually drops off dramatically as they move through the 4 stages. Think of Catholics and the Opus Dei. How many Catholics are members? A very small minority.

In guerilla warfare, which is what the Jihadists engage in, force ratios of 25:1 or greater are not uncommon (meaning that a very small force can be effective against a much larger force).

2. "Since when, is not understanding the enemies philosophy-theology not important?"

It's a matter of degree. Our military forces fighting them in Afghanistan do not need to accept the view that Islam is evil. They only need to engage and overcome the enemy, and to collect intelligence. The intelligence analyst doesn't need to beleive that all Muslims are their enemy to examine trends and interpret data captured from the Taliban.

3. "And, why do think a complete rejection of the relevance of such knowledge will help to negate their recruitment?”

In 2006, the National Intelligence Estimate recommended that the Administration take advantage of the following vulnerabilities of Jihadi Terrorists:

# The jihadist greatest vulnerability is that their ultimate political solution- an ultra-conservative interpretation of shari’a-based governance spanning the Muslim world – is unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims. Exposing the religious and political straitjacket that is implied by the jihadists’ propaganda would help to divide them from the audiences they seek to persuade.

# “Recent condemnations of violence and extremist religious interpretations by a few notable Muslim clerics signal a trend that could facilitate the growth of a construct alternative to jihadist ideology: peaceful political activism. This also could lead to the consistent and dynamic participation of broader Muslim communities in rejecting violence, reducing the ability of radicals to capitalize on passive community support. In this way, the Muslim mainstream emerges as the most powerful weapon in the war on terror.

# “Countering the spread of the jihadist movement will require coordinated multilateral efforts that go well beyond operations to capture or kill terrorist leaders.

You will note that none of these recommendations are based on the premise that Islam is evil or that all Muslims are not to be trusted. In fact, if such a belief were held, it would be completely counterproductive to devising this type of strategy.

So I've done my best to answer your questions, PatagoniaPlato. I hope it helps.

Jeff

From pages 16-17 of the NYPD’s, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,”

”Radicalization in the West is, first and foremost, driven by:

Jihadi-Salafi Ideology. What motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out “autonomous jihad” via acts of terrorism against their host countries? The answer is IDEOLOGY. [emphasis added]

Ideology is the bedrock and catalyst for radicalization. It defines the conflict, guides movements, identifies the issues, drives recruitment, and is the basis for action. In many cases, ideology also determines target selection and informs what will be done and how it will be carried out.”

[And of course this ideology is formed directly from THE KORAN AND HADITHS!]

“The Religious Dimension. Jihadi-Salafi ideology is but one stream of the broader Salafi movement. The general goal of this Sunni revivalist interpretation of Islam, is to create a “pure” society that applies a literal reading of the Quran and adheres to the social practices that prevailed at the time of 7th century Arabia.

Implementation of sharia law and replacement of the system of nation states with a worldwide Caliphate are the ultimate political aims. While other Salafi currents encourage non-violent missionary or political activities to achieve these religious/political goals, jihadi-Salafis utilize endorsements of respected scholars of Islam to show that their aims and violent means are religiously justified.

Contemporary Saudi (Wahhabi) scholars have provided the religious legitimacy for many of the arguments promoted by the jihadists.1

Extreme intolerance and hostility towards unbelievers, including Jews, Christians, Hindus and Shiites, is a core doctrine provided by Wahhabi religious thought. It provides the primary theological foundation for jihadi-Salafi causes and reduces the barriers to violence.”

As Robert and Jihad Watch frequently state, until these elusive “moderates” come up with an authoritative reinterpretation of the “endorsements of respected scholars of Islam to show that their aims and violent means are religiously justified,” the jihadists will not change their ideology but will continue to murder innocent people in the name of their “god” and their religion. My gosh, what heathen, backwards, barbaric savages these 7th century re-enactors are!

I wonder if the Pentagon’s Hasham Islam either secretly believes in sharia law, or is at least sympathetic to the same “endorsements” mentioned above?

These irresponsible and ignorant statements of people like Jeff is another reason why I dont read or post here too often.
Some reports just boils my blood and literally sickens me.

Hey, Jeff, did you ever hear the statement "If all muslims are not terrorists, than why are all dead and captured terrorists turn out to be muslims?"

Put that in your little report.

Please, said person, think for yourself. Just don't quote what you have read and have taken as truth. Mull it over. Dissect it. Swirl it around in your little mind. See what you come up with...Perhaps, follow it up with further study, It won't hurt "the long war" now will it?

"Hugh pummels someone in debate and said person sloughs it off like it was a mere sprinkle of rain."

Posted by: breezy55 at January 6, 2008 12:19 AM

I agree, breezy, but you cannot the change the mind of those predisposd otherwise.

It is nice to see Hugh, "on point", for it is far too infrequent for my liking.

Mr Carr, as intellectually and factually challenged as he may be, at least made an attempt at repsectful discourse.

His position was lost from his first utterance, albeit besides the "point" given credence here by my comment.

Protecting the sanctity of this pedagogical site is a full time job.

I just thank God that we have Hugh.

And that is with a capital "G".

Hugh, the 4 Stages of Radicalization comes from a report written by the Intelligence division of the NYPD, which, in turn, is run by David Cohen, formerly Deputy Director for Operations at CIA. I'm certain that he'll be very interested in hearing your views on his department's report. Please do contact him, and then let me know how it goes.

For anyone who's interested, the full report can be read here: http://seawolfllc.com/Documents/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf

I took a quick glance at the report. It's limited in scope but doesn't seem too far off the mark in its statements about the ideological roots of this war--certainly a step up from most analysis out there today.

Here are a few excerpts:

Jihadist or jihadi-Salafi ideology is the driver that motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out “autonomous jihad” via acts of terrorism against their host countries. It guides movements, identifies the issues, drives recruitment and is the basis for action.

We could argue about whether the "or jihadi-Salafi" qualifier is necessary or accurate, but otherwise...

Al-Qaeda has provided the inspiration for homegrown radicalization terrorism; direct command and control by al-Qaeda has been the exception, rather than the rule among the case studies reviewed in this study.

A nice way of pointing out the phenomenon of Sudden-Jihad-Syndrome as Robert has written numerous times here.

The transnational phenomenon of radicalization in the West is largely a function of the people and the environment in which they live. Much different from the Israeli-Palestinian equation, the transformation of a Western-based individual a terrorist is not triggered by oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation...Rather, it is a phenomenon that occurs because the individual is looking for an identity and a cause and unfortunately, often finds them in the extremist Islam.

Right. Again, something Robert Spencer has pointed out numerous times.

There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course begin as “unremarkable” from various walks of life.

Doesn't Robert point this out almost daily?

Despite the economic opportunities in the United States, the powerful gravitational pull of individuals’ religious roots and identity sometimes supersedes the assimilating nature of American society which includes pursuit of a professional career, financial stability and material comforts.

Yup.

The Internet is a driver and enabler for the process of radicalization o In the Self-Identification phase, the Internet provides the wandering mind of the conflicted young Muslim or potential convert with direct access to unfiltered radical and extremist ideology.

Again, pointed out almost daily here.

Radicalization in the West is, first and foremost, driven by... Jihadi-Salafi Ideology. What motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to carry out “autonomous jihad” via acts of terrorism against their host countries? The answer is ideology. Ideology is the bedrock and catalyst for radicalization. It defines the conflict, guides movements, identifies the issues, drives recruitment, and is the basis for action.

One more:

The Religious Dimension. Jihadi-Salafi ideology is but one stream of the broader Salafi movement. The general goal of this Sunni revivalist interpretation of Islam, is to create a “pure” society that applies a literal reading of the Quran and adheres to the social practices that prevailed at the time of 7th century Arabia. Implementation of sharia law and replacement of the system of nation states with a worldwide Caliphate are the ultimate political aims. While other Salafi currents encourage non-violent missionary or political activities to achieve these religious/political goals, jihadi-Salafis utilize endorsements of respected scholars of Islam to show that their aims and violent means are religiously justified... Contemporary Saudi (Wahhabi) scholars have provided the religious legitimacy for many of the arguments promoted by the jihadists... Extreme intolerance and hostility towards unbelievers, including Jews, Christians, Hindus and Shiites, is a core doctrine provided by Wahhabi religious thought. It provides the primary theological foundation for jihadi-Salafi causes and reduces the barriers to violence.

Again, we could point out that it isn't just "contemporary Saudi (Wahhabi) scholars" that are providing the religious legitimacy, but at least the authors are acknowledging this much.

And finally:

The Appeal. For many Muslims in the West, especially those of the second and third generation who are seeking to learn about their Muslim heritage, the Salafi interpretation is the version of Islam they are most widely exposed to. It has become more mainstream and is proliferated within diaspora communities. This interpretation of Islam is not the cultural Islam of their parents or their home countries.

So I must say I'm confused about the relevance of this report to the debate at hand. Mr. Carr, nothing in this report gives credence to your apparent obsession with ignoring the orthodox, traditional roots of Islamic Jihad (and Islamic supremacism). And nowhere does the report even remotely suggest that "Christian extremists" are driving moderate Muslims to embrace the Jihadist ideology--in fact, the report does quite the opposite, showing that it's an interest in learning more about one's roots that is driving Muslims to embrace the "more mainstream" Jihadist interpretation of Islam.

Indeed, if one really wants to convince "moderate Muslims" not to follow the Jihadi path, shouldn't one be well equipped to proactively preempt and counter all the theological arguments they're hearing from the Jihadists (as the report describes above)? And doesn't doing so require understanding why the Jihadists are so successful in making the case for the legitimacy of their message--understanding that they're simply advocating a well-established, orthodox, "pure" interpretation of Islam?

First, Heroyalwhyness, thanks for the link. I'll read it and if it contains a plan for winning this war, I'll happily retract my statement.

Hugh - while you claim to have written several hundred articles that fit my request, I cannot confirm that from your titles. I actually did look before posting my earlier challenge (which Heroyalwhyness responded to) and didn't see any relevant titles. After reading your reply, I re-checked and discovered one title 30 articles in, and then nothing. I quit looking in August, 2007. I don't have that kind of time to devote to you. "What presumption! What laziness" indeed. On the other hand, you might consider re-focusing and tightening up your writing style. I shouldn't have to spend hours slogging through your run-on sentences to try to find a salient point or plan.

However, since you have agreed that the article that Heroyalwhyness linked to is one that meets my request, then I'll not only read it, but post it with my critique at IntelFusion tomorrow.

Inshallah Salaam!

Why would a nonbeliever say Inshallah Salaam!

Jeffery Carr,
In fact, if such a belief were held, it would be completely counterproductive to devising this type of strategy.

Exactly. That's the point.

People are making this far too complicated. Its all so simple and doesn't require exhaustive analyzation.

Peaceful people who are willing live under non-Islamic Government rule, who claim to be Muslims, do not control the religion and are always subject to the fundamentalists...willingly or unwillingly.

Face it, pure Islam is violent jihad...and terrorism is it's fruit.

It will not stop until Islam itself is destroyed.

"Why would a nonbeliever say Inshallah Salaam!"

Posted by: breezy55

He is probably a Muslim playing games with people here?

I tend to try to simplify things, and that seems to be the simplest explanation. lol...

Please click on Mr. Carr's screen name link and read his blog. It will provide all the clarity you need regarding his perspective, presuppositions, and prejudices.

He's already labelled Coughlin and JihadWatch as extemitists and clearly visited this site simply to pick a fight without the intellectual honesty to do it straight up.

Jeffrey Carr: I've now read through virtually all of the posts above and I am intrigued and perplexed by your inability (refusal?) to see the forest for the trees. To wit, if Islam is possessed of a theological blueprint which is inimical to freedom, democracy and tolerance, that is of enormous importance. If Islam is possessed of a theological blueprint which is not inimical to freedom, democracy and tolerance, that too is of enormous importance (and though not religious myself, I would strongly argue that Christianity and Judaism and all other major religions except Islam have demonstrated an overwhelming capacity to embrace freedom, democracy and tolerance). I don't understand why you can't get this and go on about Baptists versus Catholics, etc., as though mankind is in as much danger from a portion of the Christian community as it is from the umma. After all, if Islam is rotten, then any progress by Western standards in Islamic nations will be in spite of, not because of, Islam. If Islam is innocuous, then such progress mentioned in the previous sentence will occur most assuredly with the blessings of Islam. Huge difference between these two scenarios. And correct knowledge about Islam could impact decisively on the demographic element in all of this, specifically relating to Muslim immigration and growth of Muslim populations in Western nations, including America.

Let me put it another way. Replace Islam with Nazism or Marxism. Would you then assert your indifference again respecting whether either one of these ideologies were good or bad? Or are you one who consciously or subconsciously refuses to accept the notion that any religion could be as awful as fascism or Communism? Step back and take a look at the entire forest, Mr. Carr.

Please click on Mr. Carr's screen name link and read his blog. It will provide all the clarity you need regarding his perspective, presuppositions, and prejudices.

He's already labelled Coughlin and JihadWatch as extemitists and clearly visited this site simply to pick a fight without the intellectual honesty to do it straight up.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen

Here is the link directly to his post about Coughlin.

Start by naming the problem.

Islam.

And don't have the followers of islam teach you why it isn't the problem. Have the ex-followers teach you why it IS the problem.

It's a transnational problem. And not all followers are fighters. But still offer support.

When understanding the cold war, did the intelligence analysts base their thoughts on what the diplomats said to them? Or what was said to other Russians when out of earshot.

When the imams talk to their followers, if you would only listen you would know what the followers know. Not what the imams are telling the non-muslim newspapers when they explain themselves.

The sharia law, though not implemented everywhere currently, is the worldwide goal. They all say it.

Why doesn't anyone listen?

The destruction of democracy is the goal. An islamic world is the goal.

The leaders all say it.

And it's in print. In the koran.

Why doesn't it get acknowledged?

Too simple?

I admire Jefferson and Churchill. They understood.

Listen to the ex-jihadi's. They understand it.

A good start - stop muslim immigration now.

A fine post, very telling. And was good to see him understand the issue as well as he did.

Reading along , I came to this..

"Islam is a religion of peace" is fine for public policy statements, but is not and cannot be the point of departure for competent military or intelligence analysis."

From what high minded ( non national security) tower did this fall from? When did misleading the people of this great country become O.K. within even the military leadership?

If the people are told the truth, and really get it, the questions would start, and with it a shift in policy would need to happen.

The military , hearing and knowing the truth, would find itself in conflict with it's leaders, and the President, and the clearing of the issue could only lead to steps that would better use the human, and military budget to fight a enemy in ways only talked about at this time.

His statement was much needed, and still shows we have a way to go.

It is so amazing that the most dangerous enemies of America and the western nations exist inside and behind our borders.
We seem to have a bulging surplus of halfwits, nitwits, twits, and dhimmis who work full-time on behalf of jihadists and sharia law lovers.
Tell me who and where are all the moderate muslims working inside islamic nations arguing on OUR behalf as non-muslims who wish to remain free and non-islamic?
There are none.
There is no debate, no argument, no discussion amongst muslims on how the non-believers should be accomodated and treated in islamic culture.
The reality is they are ALL working together furthering the cause of spreading islam in the free world.
Here in the west, we have millions of idiots bending over (FOR FREE) to help and propagate islam and attack our Christian culture in the US that has been around since the 1500's.
The founding fathers would be so disgusted and disappointed to see the dhimmis we have operating now in the USA attempting to undermine all our efforts to fight and even defend ourselves from jihad.
There has to be a change very soon to save this nation.
I am ill from always reading of 1 islamic victory after another here in the US courts, media, political arenas, military, and even altering our eating habits. (ie. The Oak Lawn School District in suburban Chicago that removed all pork products from the school menu last month as it offended muslim students)
Who the crap pays all the taxes for the school district to operate anyway?
Its not those Public Aid-Medicaid, SS number stealing, credit card fraud abusing jihadists.
I cant write anymore.
Yuck to islam.

Assalamau Laikum all,

It seems that the Amerike has now finally joined the rest of the world...they never knew what existed away from it....holidays ...well they had to be in Florida and that's it.

Now though your administration has ventured out, they have sees how the rest of the world behaves and concluded they need to be a part of it and sacking Stephen....well that's part of the process.

You see the Amerike has been steadily losing power, politcol clout, steadly becoming bankrupt, over half of it's shares owned by the Saud, educational institution "pocketed" by the Saud, the cream of your new generation will alreday know that they owe their "education" to Prince Bandar's money...and Islam.

Manufacturing capability has eroded, standards steadily dropping, two thirds of the population being obese, peoples like John Bolton out of the picture, Mayor Juliani out of the picture ....

can you see the trend here...know that the Amerike is part of the rest, who already know that religion will the glue for the 21st centuary...and Islam is that glue.

The Pentagon can handle weapons, develop warfare strategies...but has no answer to religion.

Like I said yesterday....to know Islam ...you need to get a muslim...and Stephen will be replaced by a warm, moderate muslim who knows that Islam is a religion of Peace come what may.

Come now peoples, give it up, you know the ISA is to be upon you soon....accept, convert, sleep, pray and have Friday afternoons off....what have you got to lose?

Well said Wellington.

But...

Inshallah.

Sorry, Dude! The way of the world it seems. You too Hugh. Well said, but you are not of consequence, apparently.

Inshallah.

Not!!!!!!!!

Just to be clear, I was referring to the greatly enlightened and highly eduMACTED Jeff Carr who is 1 shining example of a dhimmi working on behalf of muslim-jihadists everywhere.
He is typical of Americans who view muslims via rose colored glasses and tells us "There is no fire here."
He needs to take his dog (which they would not allow in an islamic nation) and write on OUR behalf to make muslims understand Americans, Christianity, freedom of religion, and a host of other items that they are trying to destroy.

I nominate Jeff Carr as dhimmi of January, 2008.

Yo Naseem. How they hanging bro? Excuse me while I take drag of my cig, shove another Ho-Ho in my mouth, and down some of JD's finest Tennessee.

Naseem, I have this to say to you.

Reviewing all of our alleged problems right now, America at its worst times is still appm. 800 years ahead of the entire islamic world at its best times.

Come on Naseem, accept the reality we will have Rudy Giuliani soon as a president (who will treat you lice as you need to be treated via 7th century military methods), no more waffling president, upcoming mass deportations of muslims, and the outlawing of islam.

Start packing now, what do you have to lose?

PS. You sickos need to stop marrying your cousins.
That is why so many of your kind have multiple physical and mental defects.

Glorious mohammedthemadman, my toilet seat be upon his image in my basement bathroom.

Perhaps, inshallah is the new catch phrase of the enlightened left. I can't wait till hilary and obama say it. Who will be first to spew forth their new catch phrase? Any bets?

PS I know it's going to be Edwards. He is so on top of things.

Dark Times may lie ahead,but the light of inquiry,generated by free human souls, which are endowed by the creator,shall ultimately prevail by filling the inevitable and predicable void in Islam's encroaching elephant and this beasts "trainers" and "handlers."

Mr. Carr,
I have read your posts with interest and sense you frustration at not receiving a simple answer to your question ”How do we win this war?”.

I am not a scholar, nor intellectual, nor general of this war. I am just another “trooper”. Here then is a trooper’s point of view:

HOW TO WIN THE WAR ON ISLAM

1 Recognize that the enemy is Islam

2 Study Islam and Muhammad in great detail – this only makes sense, they are the enemy

3 Reveal the truth about Muhammad’s life as written in the Sirat, Hadith and Qur’an to the world. Tirelessly and relentlessly, employ all forms of media to get this knowledge out.

No religion or ideology can withstand a full frontal assault on the character and morals of its founder. Falsification and deception will not be necessary and in fact will hurt this effort.

The clear and complete truth, when used as a weapon, will destroy this enemy.

Let's say, for example, that every single member of every agency involved in this struggle, and every single member of Congress and everyone serving in the White House including the President himself, believes exactly as you do. How does that change our current military strategy as well as our Intelligence and Law Enforcement efforts? Apply what you believe, and deliver it in a practical strategic plan, as I did in my paper, and as the NYPD did in their's.
it's now quite clear that in this blog there's a lot of time spent discussing how Islam is an awful religion, and little to no time spent discussing how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism. If I'm wrong about that, please point me to a post by Robert Spencer or Hugh Fitzgerald that spells out their plan for winning this war and I'll gladly retract my statement.

First, Heroyalwhyness, thanks for the link. I'll read it and if it contains a plan for winning this war, I'll happily retract my statement.

"This is my first time posting to Jihad Watch, and it's now quite clear that in this blog there's a lot of time spent discussing how Islam is an awful religion, and little to no time spent discussing how to win the Long War against Jihadi terrorism. If I'm wrong about that, please point me to a post by Robert Spencer or Hugh Fitzgerald that spells out their plan for winning this war and I'll gladly retract my statement."
- Posted by: Jeffrey Carr

Mr. Carr

This is Moorthy Muthuswamy.

I have published a book recently titled "The Art of War on Terror" in which I have outlined ideas on winning this war.

In my course of scientific analysis of the origin and the thrust of Islam, I have come to the conclusion that it is, by and far, a political ideology of conquest.

Just because some followers call an ideology, a religion of peace, doesn't mean it is. It is legitimate to investigate this claim scientifically and make appropriate conclusions.

As I have pointed out in Frontpage Magazine interview, between 1947-1972, from every Muslim majority area of South Asia, without exception, non-Muslims have been en masse driven out to India. This was for Wahhabism was getting exported to this region on a massive scale. This shows the underlying Islamic (political) ideology at play here.

If you interested in winning this war, understanding the dynamics of jihadi terrorism in South Asia directed at non-Muslims will help. These non-Muslims are poor, non-white and non-Christian, yet they have been systematically annihilated in the last 60 years!

Here is my full interview: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=33adcaa3-1e36-4665-881d-8e6c4f6c8d7b

As someone who has followed the writings, especially of Mr. Robert Spencer, let me say that he is an exceptionally good analyst when it comes to Islamic affairs.

Please discard the last three paragraphs of the post above.

MR. Carr,

I have read your posts with interest and sense you frustration at not receiving a simple answer to your question ”how do we win this war?”.

I am not a scholar nor intellectual nor general of this war. I am just another “trooper”. Here then is a trooper’s point of view:

HOW TO WIN THE WAR ON ISLAM

1 Recognize that the enemy is Islam

2 Study Islam and Muhammad in great detail – this only makes sense, they are the enemy

3 Reveal the truth about Muhammad’s life as written in the Sirat, Hadith and Qur’an to the world. Tirelessly and relentlessly, employ all forms of media to get this knowledge out.

No religion or ideology can withstand a full frontal assault on the character and morals of its founder. Falsification and deception will not be necessary and in fact will hurt this effort.

The clear and complete truth, when used as a weapon, will destroy this enemy.

Assalamau Laikum Hungarian,

You say "America at its worst times is still appm. 800 years ahead of the entire islamic world at its best times".

And there in lies why the Amerike has already lost.

You see you have grown too quickly....you have introspected your version of Jesus, took out the quirks for all to see ....and peoples moved away from him in droves and even your archbishop Bill Rowan has apologised for the crusades and you have lost your focus.

Islam on the otherhand has virtually no flaws (to the people that matter) and free from introspection....which means only one thing...growth and girth...aided by Jizya & F16s from you (thanks for this).

This strategy will see the formation of Eurabia and the ISA soon after.

Hungarian, ultimately I feel what really pisses you off is that deep inside your soul...you KNOW (like the Byzantines KNEW) that despite being "800 years ahead"...7th century believers will intermarry your granddaughters and bring them into the fold of Islam ...just like the Byzantine beauties in Turkey.

That Mr. Hungarian...is what your future holds....taking little pot shots at me is only going to give you a collection of peas for your thanksgiving dinner.

My review of Hugh Fitzgerald's post "Countering the Jihad" is available for reading here:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2008/01/the-fitzgeralds.html

How convenient that the only Islamic Law scholar on the Joint Staff happens to be a 'Christian extremist'- what an insane statement in itself, as if 'Christian extremists' have a doctrine of world domination at the cost of sacrificing themselves for 72 houris in what, a Christian bordello?

The first thing in war is to learn about the enemy, to identify the enemy and the ideology of the enemy, to ignore that is deadly. That is the plan, that has to be the plan because it you don't do that, everything else you do is shadowboxing and self-defeating. Fact is: there are no 'moderates'- if you find one, Jeffrey Carr, bring him/her around, we've been searching this elusive species of Moslem like bigfoot and the yeti.

There might be non-believing, secular Moslems, but those who go to the mosque, follow the imam and slaughter their lamb for eid are a lethal danger to us.

Salami to you, Mr. Carr! Be careful not to hurt your head on the prayer rug when you visit your mosque next time...

Just read myself through the pathetic drivel this Jeffrey Carr posts on his blob:

'JihadWatch - Don't be a hater'

My head hurts!Spit! What a f*kcwit: How many times did we have wankers like this guy accuse us of being haters while Muhammedans saw off heads of hostages, blow up trains and buses for Allah and burn churches in the name of Islam? Carr: all you need to do is watch MEMRI where you can see Pali child abuse and hatred pure: andhttp://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28408_Video-_Hamas_Killer_Bee_Child_Abuse&only

But Hugh is right: your type excels in ignorance and deliberate stupidity. Thanx for putting your picture on your blob, it confirms everything....

Always helps to have a pack of TUMS near the computer whenever I read Jihad Watch...

One thing that western apologists and people like Jeffery Carr, don't understand, so they don't take it into consideration, is an individual muslims personal relationship with Allah. Muslims know Allah from two sources The Quran and ahadith, but most especially the Quran. The Quran, the immutable word of Allah, not written by man, preserved for all generations as a 'living' word. When a muslim reads the Quran, they are not just reading words on paper, Allah is speaking to them in real time. The Quran is forever. Allahs word and directions do not dilute over time. When Allah says in his book, fight them until all worship Allah, he is not saying that 1400 years ago, he is saying that now, in real time.
A muslim's greatest ambition and fear have to do with getting into Allah's heaven. According to Allah's real time statements, not every good muslim will get into heaven. Some, perfectly good muslims, will be thrown into the fire with us infidels. Mohammad made the statement that only 70,000 muslims would get into heaven. This is not encouraging news for the 1.5 billion or so muslims. So what is a good muslim to do but to tow the mark, try to be as perfect as possible, and maybe Allah will pick him. Maybe. This means following Allah's directions, that can't be interpreted and reinterpreted. This is why I ask, which muslim will stand up and face down Allah when his own soul is in mortal danger, not from
Jews or Christians, but from Allah. This is also why a 'moderate' who is also a 'good' muslim, are hard to come by and in short supply. It's very close to an oxymoron. Blind acceptance of the living word of Allah, plus the fear of not getting heaven, but the reverse, is the tap root of jihad.
Jihad according to Allah and Mohammad is not an elective, but an obligation, and a muslim must answer to Allah for willful refusal. This probably means the fire, and no sweet berth in Paradise.
No good muslim who is also smart is going to do this. No good muslim is going to seriously challenge Allah. Will the 'good', 'moderate', muslim who 'will' challenge the word of Allah, please step forward.............We are waiting...and waiting...and waiting.....

Oh my dear Naseem, I hit too close to the truth of muslims and the reality of their sordid history.
Well, I am only speaking reality.
Regarding the Byzantines, very few of them married off their daughters in their long history and you speak as if they did it for every royal family.....that is not history or remotely true.
I think you can count the marriages on several fingers as you can verify yourself by researching.
Your are wrong........again.
You speak of Bill Rowan, that guy speaks for HIMSELF and nobody else so please dont make that midget represent me, my culture, my history, or my people.
That dhimmi (that I am sure you love and want to marry)speaks for himself and not the Church of England. Understand, here in the west we can say what we want unlike your system where is head is lopped off if someone is offended.
The crusades were a RESPONSE to centuries of islamic attacks, enslavement, kidnappings, and murders of Christian pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem to pay respect and worship in the birthland of Jesus Christ.
The crusades was not invasion or attempts to convert you muslims to Christianity. Did not your mufti tell you this tiny detail or was it conveniently left out in his message?
If the crusades were for invasion than why did they only travel to Israel and not attack Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Arabia, Egypt, or Iran?
Now consider the invasions and attacks upon Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary.
Do you see the difference of light and day between the crusades and JIHAD INTO MAINLAND EUROPE?!?!
That moron in England has NO RIGHT OR AUTHORITY to apologize for King Richard, France, Germany, or anyone elese in those bloody days whose intent was to only protect Christians from murder in the desert and to also restore Jerusalem to Christian hands.
It took centuries for Europe to respond, but when they did it was over for you people.
Dont try and tell me history Naseem, I skipped out on the islamic version as it is only pure propaganda.
People for decades have been predicting the demise of the US and simultaneously we only continue to grow richer and stronger.
Really, you should bless and pray America continues its greatness for who would feed, protect, treat, and finance the worlds needy, underfed, and unprotected if we evaporated?
Who would buy all that crap from China?
Who would uphold NATO, the United Nothing, and send billions every year in cash and foodstuffs to islamic nations as Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, Turkey, etc, etc?
It is regretful you are offended by some comments of mine, but what lies did I say to you?
I know my writings can be abrasive, but marriage among cousins in the islamic culture is prevelant as trees in the forest.
It is called INCEST and illegal in the civilized world.
You can keep denying the truth, but the picture is still the same.
Your denials just remind me of how correct I am when discussing islam and its adherents.
Would you like some of my peas for your Ramadan dinner?
Lets do some kouskous.

I forget again to say something else here.

Naseem,

WHO, in the islamic world will apologize, cry, and lament the 700 years OCCUPATION of Europe and the murders-rape of millions of Christians in Western and Southern Europe?

Who is shedding tears today for the butchering of Constantinople that you still need to give back to the Greeks?

What about the millions of Hindus and other minorities in India?

Who and where are your apologists in the muslim world?

Yes, the silence of the islamic world is truly deafening Naseem.

Your lack of knowledge in history is pathetic.

I studied history in Hungary and America, go find yourself an idiot to deceive.

Another fact Naseem, Catholic churches world wide today ring their bells at noon everyday to celebrate and mark the military defeat of the Ottoman Turks by the Hungarian John Hunyadi.

It was another failed attempt to subjugate free peoples that chose to live free or die trying than accept your islamic slavery.

Prepare for more defeats Naseem, the election is coming soon.

Has everyone seen this?

Welcome to 2008.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

For those tempted to view Jeff Carr's "review" , don't bother.

There is nothing substantive to his "review". He attempts to smear Hugh but is frustrated by Hugh's ability to maintain his privacy.

Then he mis-characterizes Robert's and Hugh's work to set up a weak straw man argument. You have seen all his Jihadwatch "hatemongering" accusations before.

He has nothing of substance to say, all general and vague counterpoints, not providing a single articulate response to any specific point Hugh or any other poster in this thread makes.

Aunt Bea, very interesting.
Idiots are all around us.

That Jeff Carr character is a joke. I'd love to see him eplain his "moderate moslem" idea to the people in saudi arabia, iran or pakistan. Aparently a "moderate moslem" is somebody who is a moslem and do not want to live under sharia law or paricapate in jihad (either directly, or indirectly). You know, that law that came from allah - the only law moslems will live under, and that jihad that every molsim is OBLIGATED to do. Oh, except "moderate moslems" of course. What do moslems call those moslems who doesn't want to live under sharia law or conduct jihad? Oh, yeah - APOSTATES. Apostates carry a nice little death sentence around with them.

Come on Jeff Carr, lets hear you tell the pakistanis, suadi arabia and iran all about those "moderate moslems". Maybe if you don't get lynched, you can come back here and tell us how it went.

I just checked out "Jeffrey Carr"'s blog and was interested to see his post on all of us bigots here at JW:

http://idolator.typepad.com/intelfusion/2008/01/the-fitzgeralds.html

And who does he appeal to for diagnoses of our bigotry? The "Rev" Jim Sutter. Yes, that "Rev" Jim Sutter:

http://www.phonyrev.com/

Mail-order reverend. Convicted felon. Pathological liar.

Carr is such a typical denier, a plant from the left single subject crowd, who drops in here, gets corrected, can't argue or defend, so he slithers away to his blog to write an attack on Hugh and JW, call the site hateful, the very mission he was on when he came here. So predictable. Sutter likely sent him.

I love the picture of Jeffery and his Girl. If he is going to make the claim that we picked on him, there should at least have something truthful to point to.

Jeffery does make one point that is true. It is a long war. 1400 years and counting.

To think, after all this time there is still no tried and true formula for determining a "Moderate Muslim" from a "Radical" one.

We should all sleep better knowing Jeff and his Mate are hot on the trail sniffing one out.

JEFFERY CARR!

When are you moving to Saudi Arabia? They'd love you and we don't need people like you in this country!

Mr. Carr,

If your intent of your "Jihad Watch -- Don't be a hater" post was to convince open-minded readers about the merits if your approach to dealing with Jihad, by debating the specific proposals offered by Mr. Fitzgerald, you failed miserably.

You provided a 4th-grade-level book report summary of Hugh's article, and then provided 5 words of pointed, scholarly analysis as your response: "Its insanity speaks for itself."

And then you proceed to proudly cite a "comprehensive" "file" on Spencer put together by none other than Jim Sutter, a libelous, two-time felon of a kook who even CAIR realized they shouldn't cite as a source critical of Spencer--and that's saying something. (http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017862.php,
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017862.php, http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2007/09/018246print.html)

I for one, have no choice but to discount you completely.

To Enragedsince1999 - I realize I'm a little late to the fray, but I notice that in many postings you endorse Rudy as the one candidate who can save us. Did you happen to watch the debate last night? For those who missed it, here is a comment from Rudy on Islam:

***************************************************

GIULIANI: Charlie, you wanted a free-for-all.

It is important to make this point. Just the opposite, Ron. I have great respect for the Islamic religion. I have great respect for the Arab world, for the Middle East.

I think we should be closer to them. I think we should trade more with them. I think we should have cultural exchanges with them.

The overwhelming majority of the Islamic world...

PAUL: Why do we support their dictators, then? Why do we prop up all their dictators?

GIBSON: (inaudible)

GIULIANI: ... and on the evening of September 11, 2001, the day my city was attacked, I got on television, and I said to the people of my city, "We're not going to engage in group blame. This is a small group of people. This does not typify a great religion and a great people."

***************************************************

Sounds like more of the same to me.

The relationship of Gordon England to Hisham Islam, the relationship of Hisham Islam to various Muslim groups, have to be examined. There is something most peculiar here. And it may not be limited, inside or outside the Pentagon, to one or two feckless fellows, dangerously misplaced in their current positions, such as Gordon England.

From a comment above:

Kudos to the Pentagon for firing Coughlin. Christian extremists aren't any better than Muslim extremists.

Funny (that Mr. Carr thought this hyperbolic approach would be productive) and pathetic (that one who purports to be so analytical could get it so wrong).

Et tu Rudy?!

It all should be so simple – study your enemy. Yet all of our “leaders” steadfastly refuse. How did they all come to be so WILLFULLY blind?

How depressing.

Davegreybeard,

I don't know why Rudy's comment would surprise you. No matter what a person might feel and believe, once in politics PC takes over. And that is a sad reality at this point in our nation's history. But don't be too discouraged. I keep hearing that he told the muslim money lenders "No thanks." So on that issue there is hope. Now personally I don't support Rudy for two main reasons. One is he is weak on the immigration issue. He is more in-line with McCain. Two he is also weak on the gun control issue. He has to much social liberalism for my tastes. So don't concern yourself with this statement. His actions to date regarding muslims have shown that he is not their champion. Just hope it has remained so.

Naseem sez: Islam on the otherhand has virtually no flaws (to the people that matter) and free from introspection".

Islam has no flaws. That's a laugh. How about the flat Earth? And that's an easy one. And the fact that it is free from introspection, by muslins, not infidels, is the reason the flaws exist and why they remain. You know there are flaws but you taqiyya dance your way around them. Islam has no flaws?
How about the 10318 flaws counted on the Religion ofPeace.com meter that is at the top of the main page, right under the pictures of Amina and Sarah, who were #10317, and #10318...Those are some pretty massive flaws...don't you think???

"This [the 9/11/2001 attack] does not typify a great religion and a great people."
- from Rudy Giuliani, last night, in New Hampshire, quoting himself on 9/11/2001

What did he mean when he first said this? What does he mean, in repeating it verbatim in 2008? Does he think this gives the right impression? He need not have quoted this. Why is Islam a "great religion"? Would he not have done better, if he insisted on some such sentiment, to phrase it thus: "This attack is not characteristic of one of the world's major [N.B.: avoid use of the word "great"] religions."

Even that is a compromise with the truth.

As to the phrase "a great people" -- who constitute that "great people"? The Muslims? The Arabs? Who? And what kind of a sentiment is that, anyway? Are the French, the Italians, the Russians, the English, the Americans a "great people"? This kind of statement makes no sense.

He shouldn't be demoted, he should be promoted to Secretary of Defense.

"This kind of statement makes no sense." ... Posted by Hugh

No sense. Yep. He's probably surrounded himself with 'well informed' advisers like the Pentagon has.

Hugh,

Though Mr. Carr's profile links through to his intelfusion site, the link he provides for the NYPD report is more telling. If you take off the rest of the url, and leave the root, you go to www dot seawolfllc dot com. This is Mr. Wolf's profession.

You nailed it early on, and do not have to retract or apologize for believing Mr. Carr has a material interest in his analyses. He is the very government consultant you describe. His firm's work seems to lie more in financial markets' tracking than analysis of any tactical kind. Kind of a teeny little portfolio of work, but everyone has to start somewhere. I commend his entrepreneurial spirit, even if it is not declared on his intelfusion website as having a financial stake in analysis.

I have no idea of any link to the NYPD tract; his firm is not cited as any source. Probably none, but as you mention, it's simply that the report impresses him that he has it in his documents list. The link he gives is not accessible from typing in the company's primary url. And although seawolfllc indicates that is powered/sponsored by intelfusion blog, intelfusion does not mention seawolfllc.

I am always happy to see new blood here at JW to dialog and debate. The door seems closed, no?, with the assertion of religious bigotry on the part of the, you know, Christian extremists here. That's an excellent tool, as Prager says, to stifle all further debate on a subject. If you can be labeled as a racist, hater, islamophobe, etc. then your debate points do not merit discussion.

Mr. Carr is fixated on methodology. Methodology will be important. But my five year old could ask me sometime, "Mama, what's a communist?". If I can't explain why someone would want to be a communist, and what they believe, how will my son know with what vigor to fight them? After all, how bad could they be?

Mr. Carr, there are many points you avoid debating, and I respect that this is an early visit on your part. If a midnight visit inspires a six a.m. review, then I do not have much faith in the depth of analysis you purport to provide. Many of us have spent a number of years here, reading articles, links, bouncing ideas off one another, asking questions, feeding trolls (), learning the Q'uran, watching the cycles of propaganda ebb and flow. Your dismissal of JW as a "hate site" based on the disgust of posters with an ideology that is itself hateful is shallow and reactionary.

JW is an open, not registered and vetted, forum, like yours, and there is a lot to sift through. But it is also instructive to not quibble in the ivory tower, and to in fact, read and absorb what Everyman may have to say on the topic.

You begin from the premise that our misguided leadership publically espouses: there is a religion that is just fine except for the extremists of that faith. You don't answer, though, what they are trying to do? Why make Islam prevail, of course. Fighting the "how" has never been as important as fighting the "why".

The results of revolutions have always resulted in new doctrines. Americans didn't create a new parliamentary monarchy, they understood its premise and rejected it, creating a new paradigm.

Your phantom moderates don't want a new paradigm or they would be working themselves to do it. I've heard of one brave soul in the ME somewhere writing his own Q'uran. I've heard of a Muslim doctor in Arizona working to extol peace and tolerance and coexistence. There are more, but all too few. There are no large organizations or "denominations" looking for a "way out" of extremism. The best they can do is move to the West, breed, and hope to stay under the radar.

Moves to manipulate moderates to win the "long war" are just a puppet show, at best. Stating that it's a long war, by the way, is a tacit admission that it is indeed ideology we fight, rather than a handful of really mean people. If it were, we would defeat them in several battles and be done with it. That you both acknowledge it and then refuse to make subjective judgments is just strange and backward.

Please do not dismiss Robert and Hugh. Their logic is perfect. Humans are not perfect, but their rhetoric is logical, supported, and can rarely be refuted using proper debate. I feel you have a lot to offer this community, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty. But this 12 hour drive by stuff is just juvenile and that Reverend Sutter stuff is just funny.

If an analyst says he can't be bothered to slog through posts, what wikipedia summary does one hope to read to get "answers" from?

Oh, and never mind naseem. We let everyone in.

Oh, by the way, that NIE hopeful wishfest that a few clerics are helping Muslims move toward peaceful political activism? That's nice. Sounds so much better than violence.

To what end?

Oh yes, the submission of all mankind to Allah.

American communists also participate in peaceful political activism (most of the time). It doesn't make their ends desirable.

Talk about a hydra. Stop chopping off jihadist "heads", so to speak, and get to the trunk of the snake.

Naseem,
How do you propose to bring about the Islamic States of America? If it is through war, then you, and any with you, are the enemy of America. If it is through rescinding our Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights, then you, and any with you, are the enemy of America.

The British Empire tested us, Nazi Germany tested us, and the Communist Soviet Union tested us - now it is your turn, and those with you.

I'll leave you with a thought from Patrick Henry - He speaks for me and hundreds of millions of Americans:

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

The US is starting to make the same mistakes as the UK and EU. If the US goes much further down that path then the West has dug its own grave.

We Armenians didn't survive by turning the other cheek (although we did plenty of that), but by fighting Islam, up front and personal, for centuries.

The very words of Mr Carr and others of his ilk betray a death wish.

This idea that by calling Islam what it is will cause there to be more Jihadists is self destructive.

Kudos and dittos, Storm-Rider! And if I may add:

“Is life so dear, or [the false] peace [of islam] so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of [the jizya], chains and slavery [as a dhimmi under islamic sharia law]?

Forbid it, Almighty God! [Jehovah]

I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

To any already-a-dhimmi or mohammedan who happens to read this site, listen, learn, and it will enlighten you (unless your slave-like minds are too closed to any ideas different from your current brainwashing):

WE FREE AMERICANS WILL NEVER GIVE UP OUR LIBERTY!

WE WILL NEVER SUBMIT TO ISLAM OR BOW DOWN IN SUBJUGATION TO ANY MOHAMMEDAN!

It’s worth repeating (and yes, shouting): WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP OUR LIBERTY!

“This idea that by calling Islam what it is will cause there to be more Jihadists is self destructive.”

How very, very true. It is ONLY by naming and defining this enemy that we have any chance of prevailing.

It is obvious that the “Mr. Carrs” in our bureaucracy, left to themselves will work industriously to insure our defeat. They are immune to logic or reason and are part of the problem that must be dealt with.

Had I not read it for myself, I would not have believed that a seemingly intelligent and knowledgeable person, such as Mr. Carr could persist in the beliefs he holds. Persist despite his own reference and admiration for Sun Tzu, “know your enemy”, yet refuse, at every turn, to “know our enemy”. How is such dichotomy possible in one head?

Breathtaking to behold!

Carr is not the disease, but a symptom of the disease.

Mr. Carr is probably just another rabid leftwing secularist and materialist given his comments.

He did it by linking to Sutter as well as repeating various leftist nostrums about those who criticise Islam.

People like him are why the Left will always be enemies of the west and especially those who defend it.

Good for LTC Joseph C. Myers, for writing an open letter to make his concerns known. Shame on the Carrs and the pentagon political types who are so enmeshed in PC that they would forego having a knowledge of the enemy instead relying on their failed wishful thinking to inform their actions.

I reject that it is a left/right dichotomy, our policy makers should hear the best views on any issue, that means a person should only be let go when his views stray from facts into the sort of moderate muslim fantasy that the globalists are so enamored with.

he gets beat up regularly on Black Five as well. Very liberal positions; no mystery.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/deaththreat-woman-has-advice-for-ireland-1230131.html

To Ayaan, Holland was a paradise, and she was horrified to see immigrants who had fled their failed Islamic states comparing Holland to its disadvantage with the home they didn't want to go back to. To Shaheed Satardien, Ireland was a refuge from those in South Africa who would murder him because his brand of Islam was enlightened. Both those grateful refugees want to help their adopted countries.

Ed Husain -- who came to his senses as he plotted the destruction of the country in which he'd been born and brought up -- is similarly evangelical.

The three may differ in their attitudes to Islam, but they all unite in their belief that Muslims must stand up against their lunatic fringe and the West must assert itself and fight the forces of reaction that see reason, learning and liberty as evil.

Any advice about how the Irish should deal with Islam, I asked. We didn't have much time, but here are a few of Ayaan's comments.

First, most of the most miserable countries in the world are Muslim and therefore it is Muslims who most want to leave their homes and go to rich countries.

So face the fact that there will be millions of Muslims who would like to move to Ireland.

Second, expect the numbers to grow quickly through birth as well as immigration.

Third, make their obligations very clear to immigrants. Muslims are imbued with the belief that religion and politics are intertwined in the manner laid down in the Koran. Make it clear that in Ireland church and State are separate and democracy is non-negotiable: if immigrants don't like that, they should find somewhere else to live.

Fourth, Islamic schools stifle critical thought and cre-

ativity, encourage gender segregation and are opposed to liberal values. Worse, if they teach the Koran as the unquestioned authority, they are teaching a political philosophy. Would you tolerate schools attached to political parties, she asked? Why then tolerate and even fund schools that teach the politics of Islam?

Fifth, she said, get over white guilt, ignore those who play the race card, and rejoice in such Western values as freedom of speech and personal liberty.

Sixth, the argument about multiculturalism is over. It's been a disaster. Get those immigrants integrating.

Seventh, and most important, encourage relentless, honest debate among and with Muslims. Get stuck into the theological arguments.

[-]

'Essentially, the Camp of Islam must be weakened, and since the main source of its strength are the revenues from oil and gas, anything that diminishes the value of that oil and gas is a good thing, and common cause should be made with those who, for quite different reasons, have made the campaign to limit the use of fossil fuels the center of their political activity'

IN this equation to diminish the strength must be included the huge flow of Arab petrodollar cash in the form of contracts to western international industrial companies. untold billions that enrich the multinationals and the elites of the west.
The oil ich arabs dangle these carrots knowing full well that like oil. these lucrative contracts are as addictive as the oil itself.
Those who talk righlty of developing our own resources such as the vast deposits of Shale oil,wave power etc, seem to not undertand that the relationship with middle eastern oil is about far,far more than just the oil.
whilst the price of oil surges to astronomical heights , the increased revenues to the oil rich gulf states mean even more contracts to be handed out to western arms manufacturers, Aircraft manufacturers, Shopping complex building firms ... the list is endless. In the end all these contracts are paid for by Joe Public at the petrol pumps and elsewhere were he consumes it.
How would all these multinationals benefit if we used our own resources to generate our own power needs? where would those contracts come from?
So we are told that the only resources are in the Gulf states and Iraq of course, which will need to be rebuilt from scratch by western multinationals when the time is right in exchange for oil supplies.
In effect this means that we can only buy oil from countries which are living in the stone age, so we can generate billions in "modernising them" to 21st century standards.
Is this not why Russia has not become a major supplier

About Jeffery Carr.
He came here because he is lonely in his "I wannabee a spy world".

Check out his 'published articles', they are all self-published on the internet. I can do that.

He doesn't really write anything in his articles just uses everyone the work of others.

Look at his postings, go back to last year, the only time he has comments has been since he came here, with the exception of a few times where someone with no name (possibly himself?) posts a comment and then he answers their praise to up the numbers.

Then instead of the normal number counter, he has a tracking devise that tells his potential readers that he has people from all kinds of other countries. Reality check, according to this device, I am Europe and without my passport!

He also alludes to being involved in internet trackback software.
Could that be his motive for coming here?
Maybe trying find out who we are?

One last thing, that bit about the Coast Guard is little vague. Anyone know how to check military records?

What a shocker.......I was actually surprised that such a man even existed in such a high position that Mr. Coughlin held. I was surprised because I thought they purged all of the Mr. Coughlins from these kind of positions already.

Now what surprises me, is what took them so long to get rid of this "christian extremist with a pen"?

Hasham Islam must be feeling pretty good right about now.

Putting your faith in moderate Muslims is just a mistake and a dangerous one.

Mohammad was a warlord. The first Muslims were mercenaries. They terrorized merchants, out of shape businessmen, working hard. The first Muslims were pirates, robbing caravans (during holy months) and killing and taunting their victims. Mercenaries dont' work for free, and the first Muslims were not robbing caravans for Islam, they were doing it for money, where stealing became a pious act.

A "moderate" muslim, must reject the perfect example of Mohammad to be a true moderate. How many would denounce their Prophet and the first Muslims? How many of these "moderates" know more of Islam than Mohammad and the first Muslims?

If they're truly moderate, then they aren't Muslims, and if they're not Muslims, then they aren't going to have any influence over the good Muslims.

Robert it seems it may be time for another discussion on Martin Kramer's work "Ivory Towers on Sand: The failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America"

You would think in a post 9/11 world scholarship of the Middle East might have come full circle, with a revival of "Orientalism" as one of the results...

Sadly for us in the West, some of the posters on this site, as well as many of our policy makers still seem to be under the spell of Edward Said...

The man resposible for 2 generation of students studying the Middle East without ever actually studying Islam...

After all it was Said himself who said
in his Afterward of the 1994 Edition of Orientalism...
"I say explicitly in (Orientalism) that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient & Islam really are"

Westen non-Muslims need to ask ourselves why not???

Happy New Year to you & yours Robert

Bob Grant

Robert it seems it may be time for another discussion on Martin Kramer's work "Ivory Towers on Sand: The failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America"

You would think in a post 9/11 world scholarship of the Middle East might have come full circle, with a revival of "Orientalism" as one of the results...

Sadly for us in the West, some of the posters on this site, as well as many of our policy makers still seem to be under the spell of Edward Said...

The man resposible for 2 generation of students studying the Middle East without ever actually studying Islam...

After all it was Said himself who said
in his Afterward of the 1994 Edition of Orientalism...
"I say explicitly in (Orientalism) that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient & Islam really are"

Westen non-Muslims need to ask ourselves why not???

Happy New Year to you & yours Robert

Bob Grant

Robert it seems it may be time for another discussion on Martin Kramer's work "Ivory Towers on Sand: The failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America"

You would think in a post 9/11 world scholarship of the Middle East might have come full circle, with a revival of "Orientalism" as one of the results...

Sadly for us in the West, some of the posters on this site, as well as many of our policy makers still seem to be under the spell of Edward Said...

The man resposible for 2 generation of students studying the Middle East without ever actually studying Islam...

After all it was Said himself who said
in his Afterward of the 1994 Edition of Orientalism...
"I say explicitly in (Orientalism) that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient & Islam really are"

Westen non-Muslims need to ask ourselves why not???

Happy New Year to you & yours Robert

Bob Grant

Robert it seems it may be time for another discussion on Martin Kramer's work "Ivory Towers on Sand: The failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America"

You would think in a post 9/11 world scholarship of the Middle East might have come full circle, with a revival of "Orientalism" as one of the results...

Sadly for us in the West, some of the posters on this site, as well as many of our policy makers still seem to be under the spell of Edward Said...

The man resposible for 2 generation of students studying the Middle East without ever actually studying Islam...

After all it was Said himself who said
in his Afterward of the 1994 Edition of Orientalism...
"I say explicitly in (Orientalism) that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient & Islam really are"

Westen non-Muslims need to ask ourselves why not???

Happy New Year to you & yours Robert

Bob Grant

Site administrator I had trouble with my posts... Could U please remove duplicate posts??

NASEEM:

Your 30 seconds have elapsed again. And we all know what that means.

Yeah, it's time yet again to run off and go team yourself up with some Islamic jihad cohorts and KO some more poor slob "unbelievers" in the name of al-lah!

For those of you who insist that moderate Islam and/or moderate Muslims cannot exist, and have been asking me to define such a thing, I have made available two papers - one from RAND and one from Foreign Affairs, at IntelFusion.net in the post"Moderate Islam? Yes!".

And "Aunt Bea", your research on me is shoddy. Some of my articles have appeared at ThreatsWatch and various online journals of Jupiter Media, including eSecurityPlanet. A few of the essays have been posted at my blog and at Small Wars Council. As you say, you could do that, too. Have you?

Of course there are moderate Muslims possibly by the hundreds of millions. The problems is that they are under the heel of the murdering jihadists - tip of the spear - and the totalitarian Sharia-supporting clerical, legal and political class. The moderate Muslim is caught in the same predicament as that the average German during World War II. At the end of the day it is irrelevant whether or not there are moderate Muslims, just as the average German citizen was irrelevant. They are not in charge, and they are watched by murders with weapons.

Of course there are moderate Muslims possibly by the hundreds of millions. The problems is that they are under the heel of the murdering jihadists - tip of the spear - and the totalitarian Sharia-supporting clerical, legal and political class. The moderate Muslim is caught in the same predicament as that the average German during World War II. At the end of the day it is irrelevant whether or not there are moderate Muslims, just as the average German citizen was irrelevant. They are not in charge, and they are watched by murderers with weapons.

How are you gonna fight terrorism without being discriminatory? All the world's intelligence services personnel have one language, one religion, one language. Here we have 50+ of each.

And SAIC have a job opening, Islamic affairs analyst....

memo to Jeffrey Carr:

In the words of Wafa Sultan: "if you reform Islam, you break it."

Changes in the teachings of the Kuran are rarely if ever tolerated by Islamic leaders for long. Islamic history has illustrated that over and over again.

PENTAGON INFILTRATED BY MOSLEM ACTIVISTS!

Deputy Defense Secretary England personally promoted a Muslim Navy chaplain who, according to the WorldNetDaily report reprinted below, is a “Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain.” Wahhabism is a very radical strain of Islam that emanates principally from Saudi Arabia.

It would seem reasonable for all of us to ask: “What’s going on at the Pentagon?”

ACT for America

More at Islamic Danger to Americans

Well written article. In essence, the Army (I don't presume to speak for the other uniformed services, including the Coast Guard and the Public Health Service)is an anti-intellectual organization. GEN Petreaus is the exception that proves the rule -- a great leader, great commander and a Ph.D. The general officers who preceeded him in Iraq were of the typical get-along-to-get ahead school, although some were pretty good. Challenged by an unanticipated insurgency on the ground and a hostile, arrogant and micromanaging SecDef above, they had no answer but to do the best they could under the circumstances without challenging the organizational culture or threatening their own retirement pension. The result was lost years, lost opportunities, and a wasting of that precious and nebulous but critical resource, political support at home for the war effort. For years the Army officer corps has had a success track based on conventional operations and conventional unit command. Consequently the officer training system has focused on inculcating a self-defined "art of war" that largely excludes and grossly denegrates everything outside of the desired and defined paradigm of conventional operations. What we have been doing, in essence, is create "masters of the art of war" -- where the operative term "war" is conveniently reduced -- when we should have been producing "masters of the art of conflict", including various shades of asymetric confrontations. I am alsways amazed by the ability of Army officers to discuss in detail current sports events and play a decent round of golf, but demonstrate a glaring ignorance of geopolitics and an incapability of speaking more than their own native language. In addition, our vaunted higher-level training courses, as good as they are, are largely non-academic. The proof is the non-accreditation by civilian educational organizations on an hour-per-credit basis. If CGSC was really academic, it would award a masters degree at the end of the normal 10 month regular course. As it is, it can only award a masters degree for additional research and thesis writing that is more rigorously controlled. This is but one example. In general, the Army dislikes officers with Ph.D.s and tends to not promote them to general officer, and in many cases, denies them elevation to full colonel. Despite proffered excuses that "they lost time in school when they should have been with troops", the real story is that officers have precious few years in command but many in courses and staff positions, and that the Army could accomodate better-educated senior officers if it wanted to, but it doesn't want to. Even those who stay at Leavenworth an extra year for the post-CGSC SAMS course are cutting their chances for promotion for reasons of internal personnel management policies which may deny them an opportunity for a promotion-qualifying assignment at the Major level. It is no wonder then that we (1) did not see the inevitable rising of the Iraqis against us before the Big McIraq Attack of '03, (2) were not organizationally, tactically, logistically or intellectually prepared for this inevitable eventuality as we did not visualize it in advance (3) we denied that it was significant until well after the level of continuing violence made it impossible to pretend and to posture any more (4) we did not adapt tactically until after there was a political reversal in Washington (the administration losing the bi-election and sacking the SecDef as an act of contrition and conciliation with the new hostile Congress), (4) we did not get it right until a truely competent, experienced and intellectually capable general came to the fore. We need to make damned sure that this does not happen again -- we need to completely redo the Army officer training system to make it a real educational system (the two are NOT synonimous) that has the hope of routinely producing really smart, intellectual officers capable of the kind of analysis and organizational adaptation that GEN Petraeus has skillfully carried out in a short time. And we need to ditch, destroy and bury the crutch of training for conventional war. We need to start creating masters of the art of conflict, not producing masters of the art of abbreviated, bureacratized definitions of war. Stakes are high people! Our enemies are committed, they are adaptable, and they have a time horizon that greatly exceeds our infamously short attention span!