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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Chairman of Joint Chiefs removes instructors, material that is offensive to Islam

May 11, 2012 5:19 am By Robert Spencer

Wired’s hard-Left pseudo-journalist Spencer Ackerman continues his series of “exposes” designed to render us complacent and ignorant in the face of the advancing jihad. The jihadis who mount the next successful large-scale civilian massacre in the U.S. should be sure to send Ackerman a thank-you card. “Top U.S. Officer: Stop This “˜Total War” on Islam Talk,” by Spencer Ackerman in Wired, May 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):

America’s top military officer condemned in the strongest possible terms a Defense Department course that taught troops to prep for a “total war” on Islam using “Hiroshima”-style tactics.

“It was totally objectionable, against our values and it wasn’t academically sound,” Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon press conference on Thursday. The instructor responsible for the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, is “no longer in a teaching status,” Dempsey added “” but he is still employed at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va.

Dempsey”s comments were prompted by a Danger Room report on Thursday that described Dooley”s course in detail. For at least a year, Dooley taught an optional course at the college for lieutenant colonels, colonels, commanders and Navy captains that proposed taking a war on Islam “to the civilian population wherever necessary,” which he likened to the bombardment of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Guest lecturers in the course encouraged those senior officers to think of themselves as a “resistance movement” to Islam.

I haven’t seen this material and don’t trust Spencer Ackerman to give an accurate report of it. I do not believe that we need to sacrifice our principles or values to defeat the global jihad. Dooley was probably sketching out a scenario in which Islamic jihadists continued to mount large-scale attacks against non-Muslim civilians, as on 9/11. Certainly many people believe that only a response in kind will end such massive attacks against civilians. In any case, it is noteworthy but not surprising that Ackerman gives us no context or background for Dooley’s statements.

Dempsey and his deputy for military education, Marine Lt. Gen. George Flynn, pulled the plug on the course last month. The general said he was “quite thankful” for an unnamed military officer who brought word of the anti-Islam material to his attention. Dempsey and his staff launched an investigation into “what motivated that elective to being part of the curriculum,” as he put it on Thursday, and the general also sent a letter to the heads of every military service and regional command instructing them to jettison any similar material, as per a White House directive issued last fall.

The inquiry, conducted by Army Maj. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim, is scheduled to conclude on May 24. Any disciplinary action against Dooley; the college’s commandant, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward; or any other officer is contingent on its findings.

“Final judgment should await General Rudesheim’s findings, but it’s not too early to say that these excerpts are offensive (though that word may be a bit mild here),” e-mails Douglas Ollivant, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Iraq veteran who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “Further, presentations like this do real harm to those trying to carefully distinguish extremism and support for it from otherwise admirable religious devotion.”

How well has the military distinguished “extremism and support for it” from “otherwise admirable religious devotion”? The routine murders of U.S. and NATO personnel by Afghan soldiers is one indication of their spectacular success in doing so.

The harm perpetuated on student officers “who accepted the implied authority of the instructor,” Ollivant added, “is obvious.”

Yes, clearly reeducation camps will be necessary. Spencer Ackerman can teach the inmates.

The military is hardly alone in dealing with anti-Islam instructional material passing itself off as responsible counterterrorism. Over the years, hundreds of documents claiming “mainstream” Muslims are “violent” have made their way into FBI curricula, alongside internal claims that agents working on counterterrorism cases could “bend or suspend the law.”

Of course “mainstream Muslims” are never violent. Ever. As soon as a “mainstream Muslim” like Nidal Malik Hasan or Naser Abdo becomes violent, he automatically also becomes a non-mainstream “extremist.” Thus no “mainstream Muslims” are ever violent.

“Plenty of U.S. military officers and troops were inspired by their service in either Iraq or Afghanistan to learn Arabic or Dari and study the peoples of the region. I left the Army in 2004, as a matter of fact, to pursue a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut,” says Andrew Exum, a retired Army captain who now serves as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “But plenty of other officers and troops began their own amateurish studies of Islam and now, like Lt. Col. Dooley, peddle claims to know the truth about the violence and hatred at the heart of Islam. Pope’s warning that a little learning can be a dangerous thing is certainly relevant here. These hucksters, like the Robert Spencers of the world, know just enough to make themselves sound credible to an uninformed audience and hide their prejudices under a thin layer of amateurish, ideologically motivated scholarship.”

I have never heard of Andrew Exum, the man behind this vicious little smear, or his Center for a New American Security. So I did a search and found that on their Board of Directors are Madeleine Albright and Richard Armitage. That explains it: Exum is a member of an organization that represents the same failed policies and incorrect analysis that led us on two foredoomed democracy projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still have our troops serving as a shooting gallery for Afghan jihadists in the Afghan army to this day. Their record is one of willful blindness, ignorance, and mistake after bloody mistake, such that they will one day be excoriated by all free people, if any survive. I will put my record and my scholarship up against Exum’s or anyone else there at any time.

Indeed, if Andrew Exum is willing to debate Islam and jihad with me (yes, I already know he isn’t, as all these smear artists are cowards who do not have the integrity to back up their statements), I will travel to any venue at my own expense for this debate. Exum, like so many others, claims my work is inaccurate without producing a single inaccuracy — while those who claim to find inaccuracies in it pump out windy tu quoques and ad hominem attacks that never actually refute anything I’ve said. In all this they serve the OIC/Muslim Brotherhood agenda of demonizing and marginalizing all those who dare to speak the truth about the jihad threat they have done so much to enable.

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