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

State Department adviser on “extremism” urges U.S. to “befriend” al Qaeda

Jan 30, 2014 8:12 am By Robert Spencer

DoranMcCantsWatts

Establishment “experts” on foreign policy and Islamic jihad terror generally suffer from willful ignorance about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and traffic in comforting politically correct fictions about Islam being a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists — a fiction that has led the U.S. into numerous disastrous, indeed catastrophic, foreign policy errors. This is one of the more egregious manifestations of the self-defeating, futile courses of action they advocate: three members of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations (Michael Doran, Will McCants, and Clint Watts, pictured above left to right in that order), including a former State Department Senior Adviser (McCants), advocate that we befriend an al Qaeda group that they think is “moderate” in order to wean it away from “extremism.”

This strategy has been followed again and again, and never accomplished anything but the loss of American lives and the waste of American money and materiel. For months now numerous people have claimed that if we didn’t aid the Syrian “moderates,” they would have nowhere to turn but to the “extremists.” We aided them, although not as much as some people would have liked (including Barack Obama and John Kerry), and they turned to the “extremists” anyway.

It is not surprising that the puerile and silly Will McCants is fronting this notion. He is one of the learned analysts who are essentially children in adult’s clothing, babbling on like fifth graders about “bad guys” and ideas that are “crazy pants.” McCants also harbors a Reza Aslan-like fondness for contemptuous Twitter abuse of those who dare to suggest that Islamic texts and teachings may sometimes incite believers to violence.

This is the kind of boy who sets State Department policy these days. No wonder we’re in the fix we’re in.

“State Department Adviser on Extremism Urges US to ‘Befriend’ Al Qaeda,” by Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage, January 29:

Officially there are no more terrorist attacks, just man-caused disasters brought about by offensive YouTube videos. Also there are no more terrorists. Just Violent Extremists. And there’s no more counter-terrorism, just experts on Countering Violent Extremism.

William McCants was a U.S. State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism and is a director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings liberal think tank.

At the CFR’s Foreign Affairs, McCants joined together with two others to argue that Ahrar al-Sham is, and I quote, “an al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending.”

With the collapse of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front is now the only game in town for the people who insist that we should counter Al Qaeda by supporting Al Qaeda.

The article begins by defending Obama’s stupid jayvee crack, denounces the “political rights” and argues that, “The al Qaeda of yesterday is gone. What is left is a collection of many different splinter organizations, some of which have their own — and profoundly local — agendas.”

That line is a bit misleading. The Al Qaeda of yesterday is not  gone, it’s overshadowed by local organizations, meaning that Al Qaeda has accomplished its goal of serving as a vanguard for a global movement of terrorist groups committed to its worldview.

The “jayvees” have overshadowed the Lakers because they have more people, more weapons and more territory. While the Lakers are content to sit and watch the expansion of new franchises around the world.

“Today, two different al Qaeda affiliates, the al-Nusra front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are battling each other in Syria’s Raqqa province. Perhaps Oliver North might argue that it is incumbent on the United States to take out both groups. But a more nuanced take would lead the president to ask key questions before taking precipitate action.”

The article conveniently avoids answering the question while taking the time to sneer at Oliver North. But as the experts know full well, the old Al Qaeda had its share of violent conflicts.

The outcome of such a conflict is responsible for Zawahiri’s current position.

Then the article argues that Ahrar al-Sham and the rest of the Islamic Front are the best hope for defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq. That may or may not be so, but the article fails to qualify why we should care which flavor of Al Qaeda emerges victorious in the battle to lose to Assad.

“Second, designating Ahrar al-Sham as a terrorist group would destroy what little chance the United States has of building relationships with the other militias in the Islamic Front. Those relationships will be important for ensuring that the Front treats Syrian civilians well during the war and after, should Assad ever be toppled. Making a direct enemy of Ahrar al-Sham would also make it extremely difficult for U.S. nongovernmental organizations to move aid through territory controlled by it and the Islamic Front, because U.S. law prohibits working with terrorist organizations.”

Which would be a good thing, because we could finally stop providing aid to terrorists.

Are we supposed to collaborate with Al Qaeda in the hopes that it will treat civilians and NGOs well when it takes over? Does that sound like the behavior of any Al Qaeda linked group?

“Finally, Ahrar al-Sham’s leader, Hassan Abboud, has never endorsed bin Laden’s vision of a global jihad. His struggle is limited to Syria. Designating his group as a terrorist organization might backfire by pushing it completely into al Qaeda’s camp.”

And this is where it gets truly stupid.

The vision of a global Jihad wasn’t something that Bin Laden came up with, it was something that Islam came up with. A group that believes in the primacy of Islamic law and rule in Syria also believes that this state of affairs should exist worldwide.

Furthermore Al’Suri was Al Qaeda’s representative in Syria all along and was a co-founder of Ahrar al-Sham. That means a direct Al Qaeda involvement in setting up this flavor of Al Qaeda.

The article clings to the idea that we shouldn’t push an Al Qaeda linked group all the way into Al Qaeda’s camp by designating it as a terrorist group.

How exactly is this appeasement supposed to turn back time?

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Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 8:33 am

    You can’t be a little bit pregnant or a little bit Muslim…it’s all or nothing.

  2. mortimer says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 8:36 am

    Gee!!!
    We wouldn’t want to push ‘moderate’ fascists, Nazis, Marxists, Maoists into the ‘extremist’ camp!

    Mr. Kerry, Listen up! Sharia law chops hands, heads, stones adulterers, murders critics of Islam, allows honor killing.
    Most Muslims don’t think of Sharia as ‘extreme’.

    • jimmi says

      Jan 30, 2014 at 10:20 am

      The evidence is overwhelming but I understand that if I was in the CFR with Muslims in it, I would watch my mouth and censor my thoughts.

      and if I was American… I would definitely escape from the United States.

      • bonnie loranger says

        Jan 31, 2014 at 9:08 am

        Jimmi,
        Where do you live? I would love to leave what was once a great country. I am 68 years old and do not recognize my country. I was thinking Iceland. But it is very expensive. I will see after the elections in2016.

        • Charlie Griffith says

          Jan 31, 2014 at 10:15 am

          Don’t leave.

          This octogenarian who has seen a bit of the World plans on staying right where I am in this deepest East Coast scenic atmosphere, and join the “Underground” if such an opportunity presents itself.

        • Jack Smally says

          Feb 7, 2014 at 5:43 pm

          Bonnie – Please leave now. We have enough intolerant people in the U.S. without importing them from Belgium.

  3. Copenshaw says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 8:40 am

    Next, we will ‘befriend’ rapists, murderers and cop-killers so that they do not commit more atrocities.

  4. pdxnag says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 8:55 am

    Is this embrace of violent jihadis any more dystopic than calling Saudi Arabia an ally?

    • Robert Spencer says

      Jan 30, 2014 at 9:09 am

      No, that is just as stupid and self-defeating.

  5. B Hall says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 9:17 am

    Just out of curiosity, is McCants a cousin of Andrea Mitchell?

  6. quovadis2014 says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 9:34 am

    “For months now numerous people have claimed that if we didn’t aid the Syrian “moderates,” they would have nowhere to turn but to the “extremists.” We aided them, although not as much as some people would have liked (including Barack Obama and John Kerry), and they turned to the “extremists” anyway.”

    The FSA we didn’t fund militarily ended up being attacked by Al-Qu’eda (ISIS). The FSA a did NOT “turn to” or join ISIS.

    The mere fact that the FSA and ISIS are fighting it out to the death in Syria is evidence that it’s moderates vs extremists.

    • LemonLime says

      Jan 30, 2014 at 5:36 pm

      Have we in “quovadis2014” a Jihadica expert? Might as well be. The notion that just because Muslim Group X is being attacked by Muslim Group Y, that automatically means Muslim Group X is moderate, is not only a silly formula, it would be downright reckless endangerment of our safety were it to influence our policy vis-a-vis Muslims.

      Oh wait, it already is influencing our policy vis-a-vis Muslims — which is why we’re in the disastrous pickle we’re in now, with no end in sight to the morosophs (“learned fools”) who advise and steer our ship of fools of state, the U.S.S. Titanic Redux, in and around tips of icebergs our gaggle of captains and their ensigns think are harmless flotsam and jetsam.

      Please, in this tiny, beleaguered outpost of Canaries in a Coalmine, candles flickering in the wind, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers in the Counter-Jihad, let us come up with something different than the mainstream, rather than the SOSO of the TMOE meme that is killing us (Same Old Same Old of the Tiny Minority of Extremists).

  7. Paleologos says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 10:42 am

    Robert,

    The State Department is essentially a gang of idiots, with the chief idiot, Hillary Clinton, a “queen of the U.S. to be”, waiting in exile for her 2016 coronation. Moron Kerry, carries the baton in her place

    Again, I will repeat my prediction.

    barry hussein, the phony, Kenyan born islamic manchurian candidate, who never played a day of baseball in his life, because they don’t play baseball in Kenya …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcSIwBWiPoU

    … who thinks there are 57 states in the Union, again Kenyan born, understandable …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws

    for all his political finesse, is an absolute moron on economics, and will sink the islamo democrats with obamacare.

    Remember how the drive by media jumped all over Trump for pointing out there don’t seem to be many (any?) Hawaiians coming forward saying things like, “Oh yeah, I remember little Hawaiian barry hussein when he was knee high to a grasshopper.” Birthers … yeah baby!

    No Hillary presidency; she is already defending Benghazi. May she sink like the political excrement that she is.

    obama hates Jews because he is a god damned muslim.

    Our only real ally, Israel, has been throw under the bus by our muslim president.

    May God get our once great country back on the right path.

    R/

    Paleologos

    • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

      Jan 30, 2014 at 12:56 pm

      barry hussein, the phony, Kenyan born islamic manchurian candidate…

      I must object here. The dude was born in Indonesia, and grew up there until his white mommy moved him to Honolulu.

  8. EYESOPEN says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 10:42 am

    And these so-called “gifted”/sponsored idiots of the CFR is where so much of our foreign policy has been, and continues to be, coming from – and the United States citizens have no say in the matter. The same is true for Great Britain’s “Round Table Groups”.

    We’re in deep doodoo. The problem is that the American public has no notion of just how deep.

  9. Jay Boo says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 10:44 am

    Reference to:
    The vision of a global Jihad wasn’t something that Bin Laden came up with, it was something that Islam came up with.
    ————-

    ‘Oh what a tangled web they weave’
    They enter their cave and observe their PC world view from the passing shadows.
    The only thing that could illuminate this darkness is the thing the refuse to see.
    Islam is the problem.

  10. GWhizz says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 11:28 am

    Moderate Democrats are like moderate Muslims. They don’t care enough about the direction their leaders are taking to unite and stop the madness. They either give tacit approval or they are complicit silently. Both of them must be stopped.

  11. Wellington says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 12:23 pm

    Proving once again that even a great deal of education if it is not accompanied by common sense, sound ideas and moral intelligence is no guarantee against foolishness.

    • James Foard says

      Jan 30, 2014 at 3:49 pm

      I would like to keep that quote and use it in the future if you don’t mind.

      • Wellington says

        Jan 30, 2014 at 4:27 pm

        I don’t mind in the least, James Foard. Use it as you see fit.

    • Kepha says

      Feb 1, 2014 at 11:49 pm

      As a teacher, I recognize there’s a difference between education and schooling. Our leaders are schooled, not educated.

  12. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 12:42 pm

    Overpower them with love and everything will be OK. Reading this article brought the putrid stench of Ivy League Moron stupidity, and sure enough, it turns out that McCants went through Princeton, the world capital of very bad foreign policy and the alumni of most key officials at State.

    Don’t check the indisputable facts, don’t look for the causes of the problem, or its broad patterns and endless repetitions. Work on an easy to accept (and fund) policy theory. But it doesn’t hurt to make good money and going to meetings with important prestigious people.

    There is no accounting for the facts. And I mean that literally. You may not.

  13. Mohammad says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 12:43 pm

    Didn’t we already befriend them in Syria and Libya, as well as Egypt? I also find it kind of funny that the head of the NSA calls the muslim brotherhood a secular organization. Why are we spending tens of billions to spy on people if they can’t even get that right?

  14. Thomas wells says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 1:52 pm

    Inbreed idiots, the syphilitic insane, and blathering imbeciles have infested Washington D.C. like a biblical plague. Most of the other inhabitants of the palaces on the Potomac worship their Swiss bank accounts. Know your enemies.

  15. James Foard says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 3:41 pm

    The friend of my enemy is my friend. Insanity at the highest levels.

  16. Leith Wood says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 5:47 pm

    The U.S. State Department is filled with tassel-toed twits, who spout nonsense and know nothing about Islam and terrorist groups trying to take down America. Kerry is a shining example.

  17. gravenimage says

    Jan 30, 2014 at 11:43 pm

    State Department adviser on “extremism” urges U.S. to “befriend” al Qaeda
    …………………………….

    Well, why the hell not—after all, our own president is saying that the Taliban is “not our enemy”.

    Madness. If these high-ranking stooges can’t even recall that the *Taliban and al Qaeda* are our sworn enemies, then things have come to a pretty sad pass.

    More:

    …a former State Department Senior Adviser (McCants), advocate that we befriend an al Qaeda group that they think is “moderate” in order to wean it away from “extremism.”
    …………………………….

    Sure—there are not only “moderate Muslims”, but “moderate” Taliban and “moderate” al Qaeda…

    …can’t these tools understand that this has now become totally meaningless, if it wasn’t to begin with?

    More:

    This strategy has been followed again and again, and never accomplished anything but the loss of American lives and the waste of American money and materiel. For months now numerous people have claimed that if we didn’t aid the Syrian “moderates,” they would have nowhere to turn but to the “extremists.” We aided them, although not as much as some people would have liked (including Barack Obama and John Kerry), and they turned to the “extremists” anyway.
    …………………………….

    Yup—if you’re a Jihadist, you are *already* an “extremist”.

    More:

    At the CFR’s Foreign Affairs, McCants joined together with two others to argue that Ahrar al-Sham is, and I quote, “an al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending.”

    With the collapse of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front is now the only game in town for the people who insist that we should counter Al Qaeda by supporting Al Qaeda.
    …………………………….

    Perhaps a sane person would come to the conclusion that the “only game in town” at this point would be supporting Jihadists.

    This would be like urging us to support the Brown Shirts vs the Black Shirts in Nazi Germany—or perhaps the other way round? Not that it would matter…

    Actually, in the years leading up to WWII, we engaged in very similar idiocy—fools at the state department were always identifying supposed influential “moderates” in the Nazi party, who would either embarrassingly prove to be barbarians themselves, or else end up liquidated—or both…

    More:

    “Today, two different al Qaeda affiliates, the al-Nusra front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are battling each other in Syria’s Raqqa province. Perhaps Oliver North might argue that it is incumbent on the United States to take out both groups. But a more nuanced take would lead the president to ask key questions before taking precipitate action.”

    The article conveniently avoids answering the question while taking the time to sneer at Oliver North.
    …………………………….

    Of course, this is meaningless. Since power in Islam is based on dominance and brutality, seeing power struggles like this one should surprise no one.

    It *certainly* doesn’t mean that the two groups have different ideologies—even less does it prove that one of these groups is as a result “moderate”.

    More:

    “Second, designating Ahrar al-Sham as a terrorist group would destroy what little chance the United States has of building relationships with the other militias in the Islamic Front. Those relationships will be important for ensuring that the Front treats Syrian civilians well during the war and after, should Assad ever be toppled.
    …………………………….

    Jihadists *don’t* treat civilians well—they are not doing so now. That will not change whether we refer to them as “terrorists” or not.

    Here’s what Islam Alloush, one of the leaders of the Islamic Front, has said:

    “If they [Obama and the U.S.} are going to supply the Islamic Front with help, then OK. But we will not succumb to the agendas of the West.”

    And that includes blunting Shari’ah barbarism against vulnerable minorities.

    More

    Making a direct enemy of Ahrar al-Sham would also make it extremely difficult for U.S. nongovernmental organizations to move aid through territory controlled by it and the Islamic Front, because U.S. law prohibits working with terrorist organizations.”
    …………………………….

    So—it doesn’t matter if we are *actually* working with a terrorist organization, just so long as we don’t designate them as such…

    Frightening “logic”…

    More:

    The vision of a global Jihad wasn’t something that Bin Laden came up with, it was something that Islam came up with. A group that believes in the primacy of Islamic law and rule in Syria also believes that this state of affairs should exist worldwide.
    …………………………….

    Exactly—Jihadists are the epitome of “think globally, act locally”. Right now, this branch of al Qaeda has its hands full waging violent Jihad in Syria—that doesn’t mean they won’t start dreaming of the Caliphate as soon as they gain power there.

  18. Islofob IS-1 says

    Jan 31, 2014 at 1:34 am

    CFR , one part of the triad that has control of nearly everything, is not based on the policy it sets out in public. If it is given out, you can be assured the real policy is quite something else, in that it has other options, or direction underway .

    This group, along with The U.N. and the T.L.C. do not really make a habit of telling the world its true agenda. For sure, these people have goals and world wide reach, it is just not for us to know what they are really doing.

    If it looks wrong, or off , it is made to look that way , they have their reasons.

    These groups control , and nobody knows the real agenda they are following, and they are not about to come clean to the public,. To place them in a position of being only ” high-ranking stooges” is missing the point. They are not, they have a vision, and are on the path to a goal, and that goal is hidden from the masses .

    To see, do some CFR membership reading, along with some study of its known agenda.

  19. EYESOPEN says

    Jan 31, 2014 at 6:51 am

    I have mentioned this before; but it doesn’t hurt to mention it again – particularly seeing how the CFR-recruited boys are openly having a whack at formulating U.S. foreign policy – especially in this most dangerous of situations.

    I believe there is something more sinister going on here than meets the eye, not just for the Brits, but for ALL of what we would still like to think of as the “Free World”. NO leaders could possibly be as obtuse as those in Great Britain, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the E.U., than to constantly proclaim (more stridently than ever, it seems) after each successive atrocity perpetrated by muslim jihadis that: “This has nothing to do with Islam!” despite constant and repeated proof to the contrary, even from the mouths of the jihadis themselves. No, this is willful blindness; and it seems to me that it has a purpose – one that does not bode well for the overwhelming majority of us.

    I believe the muzzies are being used by a handful of very powerful individuals, just as the Bolsheviks were used back in 1917; and just as the Nazis were used back in the late 1930s – just to name 2 examples. This handful of super ambitious men have used people – even masses of people – as catalysts to achieve certain “states of conflict”, if you will. That makes it easier to manipulate other masses of people in conflict against them.

    I keep thinking of that damned “Hegelian Dialectic” in these situations: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Remember, like Marx and Engels, these would-be “Rulers of the World” have an “absolute ideal” that they wish to bring about. Whether some want to call it “Socialism”, others “Communism”, others “Islamism”, and still others a “New World Order”. (And before you tell me to take out stock in tinfoil, just bear with me a while longer.)

    Hegel states that “Because every ‘synthesis’ is the ‘thesis’ of a new dialectic, social change is guaranteed. He also maintains that this process will continue, allowing history to unfold and to “progress” until the “ABSOLUTE IDEAL” – the ultimate “synthesis” – so “perfect” that it gives rise to no “antithesis”, is achieved. “Absolute ideal”??? In whose mind? “The ultimate synthesis”??? By whose standards?
    Very good questions.

    If we might let our minds entertain the idea that a few super-ambitious, very intelligent, extremely rich, and very powerful men very much want this “New World Order” to be ruled over by them – the handful of elite – with a larger gang of “tools” who have made themselves useful to this elite to help control the peons (that’s us, by the way – the peons), then this whole idea doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

    History has shown that there have always been those who have wanted to “rule” the world. Superior ability breeds superior ambition. However, they have never been able to pull off the “planetary bargain” by the usual means – that is, by aggression and war. Many have tried, and they have all failed. Since then, some few have figured it out – that the usual means [war], by itself, will never work. That the only way to pull off this “planetary bargain” is to control the world’s monetary systems – preferably to merge these systems into one “world-wide” system. (Think IMF and the World Bank as interim phases.)

    And just to shine a light on the type of individual Georg Hegel was, let me give you a quote: “…the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.'” This was Author/historian William Shirer, (quoting Georg Hegel) in Shirer’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144).

    That certainly doesn’t sound like the thoughts of the “everyday” sort of people – you and me, for instance – that make up the bulk of the world’s population, does it? In fact, that line of thought is anathema to those of us who value freedom. That sort of thought seems to come from a megalo-maniacal, uber-narcissistic personality. (Islam’s so-called “prophet”, mohammed, instantly comes to mind.) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were of the same mind as Hegel; and in fact relied upon Hegel’s theory to back up their economic theory of communism.

    Remember, communism was never about “share the wealth”. That was the con-job served up to the masses to make socialism/communism sound appealing to them. It was always about control the wealth; and, by extension, the people. And that is why socialism/communism always seemed to attract the strangest bedfellows, like the Rockefellers and George Soros types for instance.

    Bottom line, this is all about POWER – something that some people desire above all things. What I call “normal” minds (that’s us peons) cannot really understand this lust for power. I certainly can’t. Most of us have all we can do to live our own lives without wanting to control others’ lives.

    The ultimate purpose of this “New World Order” Conspiracy (for want of a better, less maligned, word) is power. There are some who desire this even more than material goods, although the two frequently go together.

    “Rose Kennedy (the wife of Joseph Kennedy) knew that the man she loved loved a power beyond the power of money. He wanted the power of government, and he would have it.” Pearl Buck author of The Kennedy Women.

    The Conspiracy, then, needs conspirators, and it is logical to ask why illustrious men of wealth and fortune would join such an enterprise.

    “The answer is quite the reverse of the question: These men (involved with the Conspiracy) became illustrious primarily because they were part of the Conspiracy.” Blair Coan, author of The Red Web.

    So those involved do not become rich and/or illustrious and then join the Conspiracy; they become rich and illustrious because they are members of the Conspiracy.

    But what is their motive? What prompts men to seek wealth and position?

    “When a person has all the money he needs, his goal becomes power.” Former Congressman John Schmitz.

    (This type of power is addictive, like a powerful drug – crack cocaine. The more one has, the more one needs. And the more one needs and lusts after power, the more one’s conscience is deadened – if it is not already dead – and the more twisted and perverted one’s psyche and behavior become. It is an evil “feedback loop”, and the results have been apparent throughout human history.)

    “There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are… love of power and love of money…. When united… they have the most violent effects.” Benjamin Franklin

    However, power itself has a corrupting influence on those who seek it. In an oft-quoted truth, Lord Acton explained power thus: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

    The obsession and lust for power, like the obsession with money, like the obsession with material possessions, like the obsession with sex, like the obsession with drugs or booze, like the obsession with what your neighbor might have that you do not, are all false idols. So it comes as no surprise that those who seek power will be corrupted by it. They will be willing to intentionally cause depressions, revolutions, and wars in order to further their desire for more power. This corrupting nature of the very pursuit of power explains why the moral mind of the individual who neither desires power over others, or understands the desire for such power, cannot fathom why power-seekers would want to create human misery through wars, depressions, and revolutions.

    In other words, the conspirators (those few ultra-rich, ultra-ambitious men – and sometimes women) are successful because the moral citizen (you and I) cannot accept the conclusion that other individuals would actually wish to commit incredibly destructive acts against their fellow citizens.

    Another power seeker, the Russian anarchist Bakunin, explained that this process of corruption even affected those dedicated to freedom, who were given power to protect the powerless. He wrote that: “… the possession of power transformed into a tyrant even the most devoted friend of liberty.”

    “Power is the end. What other delight is there but to enjoy the sheer sense of control? Let me see any other motive in the people who command.” Richard J. Whalen, author of The Founding Father, speaking of Joseph Kennedy.

    So the motive of the Conspirators has been identified: It is Power!

    (With thanks to Ralph Epperson, author of The Unseen Hand, An Introduction to the Conspiratorial View of History for some of the above.)

    • somehistory says

      Jan 31, 2014 at 12:48 pm

      Well said and thanks for saying it.

      • EYESOPEN says

        Jan 31, 2014 at 8:02 pm

        You’re very welcome.

  20. Gamaliel says

    Jan 31, 2014 at 7:18 am

    We did befriend Al Qaeda. We supported them against the Russians in Afghanistan.

  21. herkey says

    Jan 31, 2014 at 8:51 am

    will mcants welcome to the nut of the year club!

  22. Charlie Griffith says

    Jan 31, 2014 at 9:30 am

    This gives me another opportunity to remind readers that the local District of Columbia nickname for the area of formerly malarial reclaimed land where the present State Department Building sits is “Foggy Bottom”, have fun with word play with “….Bottom”.

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