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

Robert Spencer in FrontPage: Obama: “Ideologies Are Not Defeated with Guns”

Jul 9, 2015 5:21 am By Robert Spencer

obama-shhh1Or with words, or with anything, apparently. My latest in FrontPage:

Speaking at the Pentagon on Monday, Barack Obama once again proclaimed that victory over the Islamic State was just around the corner. He said that the Islamic State’s “recent losses in both Syria and Iraq prove that ISIL can and will be defeated. The more he talked, however, the more it became clear that he not only had no plan to defeat the Islamic State, but was sketching out a pathway to surrender.

“Ideologies,” Obama declared, “are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision.”

Ideologies are not defeated by guns? Really? Yet if National Socialism and Shinto militarism were not defeated by guns, what defeated them? Any serious and thoroughgoing effort to refute them as ideologies came after the guns had stopped firing, during the occupation of Germany and Japan, when the Allies worked to turn the hearts of the citizenry away from the beliefs in which they had been relentlessly indoctrinated for years.

What’s more, the United States is not trying to defeat the Islamic State, or the global jihad in general, with “a more attractive and more compelling vision.” Instead, we supervised the installations of constitutions that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Imposing Sharia is the goal of all jihad groups, including the Islamic State. The United States has never stood in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else, for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, equality of rights for women, etc. — all of which are denied in Sharia. In other words, we didn’t counter their ideas with a more attractive and compelling vision. We didn’t counter them at all, and still aren’t doing so, because to do so would be considered “Islamophobic.”

How is Obama going to counter their ideology when he won’t even acknowledge what it is? Three years ago, his administration banned the truth about Islam and jihad from counterterror training, bowing to the demands of Muslim, Arab and Pakistani organizations that wrote to John Brennan claiming that FBI and other agents were being imbued with “Islamophobia.” Since then, Obama, Brennan, John Kerry, Joe Biden and other Administration spokesmen have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that Islamic jihad has anything to do with Islam whatsoever – thus foreclosing upon any possibility that the United States will confront the jihad ideology in any serious or effective manner.

Obama doubled down on this willful ignorance when he said: “Our efforts to counter violent extremism must not target any one community because of their faith or background – including patriotic Muslim Americans who are keeping our country safe,” he said.

If he was referring to attacks on innocent Muslims, of course, no innocent Muslims should suffer any harm or injustice. He seemed to be saying more than that. The idea that it is wrong to fight Islamic jihad by paying attention to Muslim communities more than Baptist or Jewish or Hindu or Amish communities is absurd. Islamic jihad is committed by Muslims. Obama won’t even call it Islamic jihad or admit that it is a specifically Muslim phenomenon, and insofar as he diverts any resources to tracking “right-wing extremism” on the basis of bogus studies, he makes us all less safe.

Obama claimed at the Pentagon that the U.S. and its allies would ultimately defeat and destroy the Islamic State. But he said that couldn’t be done with guns, and as he consistently ignores and denies the ideology behind the Islamic State, he won’t do it with words. So what he was essentially saying was that he wasn’t going to fight the Islamic State at all. What he gave us at the Pentagon on Monday was the confident address of a victorious Commander-in-Chief only in the eyes of the most besotted mainstream media sycophants. All he really had to offer was a game plan for surrender.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), willful ignorance Tagged With: Pentagon


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Comments

  1. Infidel from Down Under says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 5:59 am

    And speaking on what experience? That of a community worker in Chicago!!

    • Phil says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 7:15 am

      Now, mate – you know you’re being unfair! It’s not as if we defeated Mussolini’s Fascists, the Third Reich or the Japanese Empire by fighting them! It was our multicultural tolerance and diversity that convinced them to lay down their arms and renounce their vicious supremacist ideologies….wasn’t it??

      • Lia Wissing says

        Jul 10, 2015 at 6:53 am

        It also worked for Pol Pot and in Rwanda, didn’t it?

    • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 1:44 pm

      Say mate, up here in the old school lingo we called them Communist Agitators, or Commie Agitators for short. Btw, did you know that Barack’s caucasian mother and grandfather arranged for him at age 13 to be mentored by Franklin Marshall Davis? Mentored in what, you may axe? Well, the reason Davis was in Honolulu was that he was put there by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who told Davis it was either go to the middle of nowhere or go to federal prison. Davis, by then in his golden years, was a card carrying communist who ran two papers, one in Chicago and one later in Detroit, both billed as communist publications thought to be funded by the Comintern out of the USSR, in which calls were published for the overthrow of the U.S. government and a new constitution based on Marxist principles.

      True. But for some reason that didn’t come up during the 2008 election.

  2. Tequila Not Taqiyya says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 6:45 am

    Exactly right Robert!

    He won’t fight them with guns, he won’t fight them with words (that would be Islamophobia!) and he hands over our rights to bolster theirs. Not only that he willfully lies (“ISIL has nothing to do with Islam”) in order to protect Islam (the enemy ideology).

    It is just total surrender.

    Islam is at war with the west whether we want to be at war with it or not.

    Another Obama lie: “We will never be at war with Islam”. How do you know? Are you psychic that you can know the future?

    We are at war with the Islamic State and Muslims from the USA and all over the West are flocking to Syria to Fight with ISIS against the west. That sure seems like them against us.

    Islam is an ideology. If we fight this ideology as you (Obama) suggest than we are at at war with it.

  3. PJG says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 7:30 am

    Yhe best rationale for surrender I’ve ever heard.
    My South Sudanese friend said today, “What are you worrying about? He only has six more months.”
    Well, his last six months were devastating.

    • Tiredofstupid says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 9:40 am

      Actually, He has about a year and a half left. Hillary (shudder) or Bobby J. don’t take over until 2017

  4. medaber_emet says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 8:10 am

    Dear Friends
    Obomba is a Muslim ans as one he doesn’t want to stop the islamization of USA and the world
    he is a servant of Islam and therefore he will do his best to advance the implementation of Sharia law in america and all over the globe
    as an Israeli who knows Islam i can tell you this Obomba is destroying america and he is laughing at you american as if you were a bunch of morons.
    I tell you unless you wake america and move your ass you will wake up to the sound of the muazin shouting alla hu akbar in your back yard
    believe me because i medaber emet

  5. duh_swami says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 8:11 am

    It’s too bad Rasool Obama was not alive in the 30’s and 40’s, he could have talked Hitler and Tojo out of their aggressive ways by giving them a better vision, avoiding WW2…If he really believes that, he should stop all attacks on ISIS, and his drone programs.
    Otherwise someone might think he is a hypocrite, preaching peace while waging war…

  6. Jack Holan says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 8:11 am

    I am sure everyone has noticed how Obama always finds it necessary to use props. If its ACA he is surrounded by Doctors and Nurses. If its education he is surrounded by teachers and students and yesterday amongst the General Staff. He feels it adds validity to what he is saying or you were interpret it this way.
    Before, I go to far Obama at the point when he said we have to counter they’re ideas with better ones, I thought my head would blow off. Doesn’t he think our Constitutional Democracy with a set of Bill of Rights creating a Republican form of government and Separation of Church and State meaning that the State does NOT endorse any ONE religion is a BETTER IDEA. Is he really searching for a better idea? What would that be Marxist/Leninist Communism that failed economically. It too had a class structure. Enough! We already have a better idea and even if he though he found the grandest of them is he going to Cairo or Damascus to debate them. They don’t care! You know Obama, with the smoking mirrors. If none of those military men/women resign and cite the reason; I have no respect for them too. There was a 4star Admiral who just retired and has called Obama a traitor and why and has asked that he be tried for treason. Will others join him no that he broke the ice?

  7. wtd says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 9:09 am

    Video: Irony abounds: President said that U.S. forces were “training ISIL.”
    Published on Jul 7, 2015
    The White House.gov website has corrected an embarrasing mistake made by President Obama during his press briefing yesterday about the Islamic State when the President said that U.S. forces were “training ISIL.”
    hat tip VladTepesblog

  8. Jaladhi says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 9:23 am

    Is this guy a Muslim or a Muslim in Christian garb?? Take your pick , it is one and the same!1

  9. Angemon says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 10:51 am

    The big irony in all of this is that the ideology of the islamic state is the most apt to be defeated with guns.

  10. zulu says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 11:49 am

    Compare Obama’s words to those of Winston Churchill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4FdMTdR40w

  11. jewdog says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 11:53 am

    Anyone who has grown up the US and graduated from grammar school should be able to compose a vision of society in about 60 minutes in 500 words or less. The fact that Obama, and so many like him, are unable to articulate a clear vision of what our values are, as opposed to the jihadist vision, shows just how benighted they are.

    • jewdog says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 11:58 am

      Ooops – he grew up in Kenya, I forgot.

      • jewdog says

        Jul 9, 2015 at 11:59 am

        or was it Indonesia…

        • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

          Jul 9, 2015 at 2:18 pm

          He attended madrasas school as a boy in Jakarta, and moved to Honolulu at about the age of 9 or 10 is my guess. For some reason the exact details of his youth are foggy, but that’s ok because his academic record at Columbia is sealed, so at least his background is consistent if murky.

          If you ever need a good knee slapper guffaw laugh session, research the birth certificate finally extracted from him a few years after he took office. The funny part is not the document itself, which is clearly a forgery, it’s the way news entertainment superstars like Bill O’Reilly point to it as an object lesson on how stupid right wing nut conspiracy theorists are. Some guy on Fox RINO the other night actually called The Donald a “liar” for questioning Barack Hussein’s “certificate” of birth.

  12. Dan says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 11:59 am

    If evil ideologies are defeated with good ones, please explain to me why roughly 95% of the countries in the world, and 95% of the entire population, are mostly corrupt dictatorships, smattered with a few semi socialist nations.

    The reason the U.S. isn’t is, or at least wasn’t, is because its individual citizens had the wherewithal to FORCE their leaders to follow the Constitution.

    At least they used to.

    • mortimer says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 12:57 pm

      Americans have a love-hate relationship with freedom of expression.

      Obama’s cultural Marxists believe in freedom of expression when they aren’t in power.

      • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

        Jul 9, 2015 at 2:44 pm

        *Cultural* Marxist?! I look at federal spending, wealth transfers and regulations and don’t see nothing cultural about it. It’s real. Prez Barack Hussein and Hillary are no more cultural Marixsts than Caliph Ibrahim is a cultural Moslem. Karl must be giving him himself high fives in his coffin as he looks at the mess in Europe and now here. Give credit to Argentina and Greece, for they made good on their Marxist imperative for free money, something for nothing, the non-working worker’s paradise. Two words here: Margaret Thatcher. No, make that four words: Margaret Thatcher Keith Joseph.

  13. mortimer says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    “We cannot destroy ISIS, so we will have to learn to live with it.” – Richard Barrett, former Head of Counter Terrorism at MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service

    • Mirren10 says

      Jul 9, 2015 at 3:20 pm

      Do you have a link for that, mortimer ?

  14. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Jul 9, 2015 at 1:48 pm

    So if ISIS is an ideology, what is it? Is it the ideology of Islam, or some high growth ideology to pervert Islam’s teachings of peace? If it can’t be defeated with guns, then their ideology must surely prevail, because the ideology of Islam is allowed in the homeland and even promoted by U.S. taxpayer money and the cultural droppings of the millions of socialists who run our federal and state gubmints.

    Heads, Islam wins; tails, freedom loses.

    • Colin Spencer says

      Jul 10, 2015 at 6:17 am

      I am not a Muslimand know only roughly what a Muslim way of life is. A non observant Muslim might accidentlally or intentionally break Muslim rules, e.g. if he lived at the North Pole he’d find it impossible to observe Ramadan. An observant – shall I say good – Muslim tries to keep all the rules. What rules? The rules in the Koran. It seems that I’ve defined an ISIS man – one who keeps all the rules – as a good Muslim. Can anyone here make nonsense of what I’ve just written.

  15. ich says

    Jul 10, 2015 at 7:27 am

    WOW – what a crappy President.

    No balls whatsoever.

    He cant wait to be out of office to hang with his Hollywood buds.

    I thought he was going to change things.

    Hes just a coward.

  16. Antonio Gutierrez says

    Jul 10, 2015 at 7:46 pm

    With ideology only you said?
    ….can you beat them with your gay ideology then?..

    Show us the way…
    ..

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