Michael Scheuer | Non-Intervention

Because public discussion about Afghanistan is heated in the wake of another corrupt Afghan parliamentary election, as well as because of rising U.S.-NATO casualties and the start of General Petreaus’s long-delayed Kandahar “offensive,” I have posted below a talk that I recently delivered. The talk deals with how al-Qaeda’s role in the Taliban’s war against the U.S.-led coalition has shifted from mostly combat to mostly support since 2006-2007. It argues that the smaller role al-Qaeda now plays is as vital as the larger role it played earlier, and that it is, indeed, more dangerous to the United States and its European allies both inside Afghanistan and externally.

This article is much longer than most of the pieces I post here, but I hope readers will find it informative.

I was asked this afternoon to discuss al-Qaeda’s [AQ] current role in Afghanistan. As it happens, AQ’s Deputy Chief Ayman al-Zawahiri recently issued a statement concisely showing that he, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda are operating on the belief that AQ’s heavy lifting in Afghanistan, at least in a military sense, is over, and that the bulk of the combat against the U.S.-NATO forces is in the capable hands of Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the organizations of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and others.

Speaking in a taped audio statement to the Muslim ummah, al-Zawahiri opened by saying:

“What I want to point out here in this talk of mine isn’t the imminent victory — Allah permitting — of the mujahideen under the banner of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan led by the Amir of the Believers, Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahid, may Allah protect him, for this is something which the enemy and the friend have agreed about, by the grace of Allah, and no one doubts it will happen, not even the American-led Crusader coalition itself. Rather the argument is about ‘when’ and ‘how.’”

While the Western media and the White House have described al-Zawahiri’s words as “more ranting and raving,” and one senior U.S. official rebutted al-Qaeda’s deputy leader with the astounding claim that “the United States is winning in Afghanistan,” there is no reason to believe al-Zawahiri presented anything other than AQ’s perception of reality on the ground in Afghanistan. And there is even less reason to think his claim is inaccurate.

Since at least early 2007, al-Qaeda has been reducing the presence of its fighters in Afghanistan. The reduction is due not to excessive loses or military failure, but from a simple recognition that the Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups have more than enough well-trained manpower to force an end to both the occupation and Karzai’s regime.

This reality was welcomed by bin Laden and his lieutenants as it allowed them to return to al-Qaeda’s traditional modus operandi, which is to support Islamist insurgencies not to lead them.

And given the temporarily disastrous impact Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s attempt to lead Iraq’s Sunni resistance had on al-Qaeda’s fortunes, the group’s senior leaders could only have been relieved when the Afghan mujahideen proved they had recovered enough to retake leadership of the insurgency in late 2006 and early 2007.

The shifting of AQ’s role from playing a major combat-and-leadership role to playing its traditional support role can be dated from bin Laden’s 2007 appointment of the recently killed Egyptian insurgent, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, also known as Shaykh Said.

Abu al-Yazid was a founding member of al-Qaeda and perhaps its most respected administrator, financial manager, and logistician. Al-Yazid had had some combat training and experience during the anti-Soviet jihad but he was not a skilled field commander.

Abu al-Yazid‘s appointment was a clear signal, as noted above, that AQ’s role in Afghanistan was henceforth to be marked with less combat activity and more support activities. I must say it has never been clear to me that Bush and Obama Administration officials picked up on the importance of this shift, notwithstanding the fact that al-Yazid himself explained his role in support of the Afghan mujahideen in several lengthy interviews with al-Jazirah and al-Sahab, the latter is al-Qaeda’s media organization.

Indeed, the recent statement by CIA Chief Panetta that there are only about 50 or 100 al-Qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan — if it is accurate — clearly underscores the vital but much less manpower intensive role al-Qaeda is now serving in Afghanistan.

So what, then, are the most important activities al-Qaeda is now performing in Afghanistan? While to my knowledge we have not yet heard from the man who replaced Abu al-Yazid, there is no reason to think al-Qaeda’s modus operandi in Afghanistan has changed since al-Yazid explained it in 2008 and 2009. The following are the four areas in which al-Qaeda’s effort now focuses:

First, training:The improved combat performance of Taliban and other Afghan insurgent forces since late-2001 is witness to the training regimen provided by al-Qaeda trainers. As Abu-al-Yazid told the media, al-Qaeda established numerous small camps in Pakistan’s tribal area after evacuating Afghanistan and began training both Afghan fighters and would-be mujahideen who came from elsewhere in the Islamic world. It also is likely that AQ and the Taliban used the larger training camps in Pakistani Kashmir to train fighters for Afghanistan. Included in the training were classes on how to assembly and deploy IEDs of the type used in Iraq. Prior to his death, Abu al-Yazid said that because the Taliban had sufficient manpower, some non-Afghan Muslims being trained in South Asia were being sent to fight in Iraq, Somalia, North Africa, and Yemen.

Second, logistical assistance: As noted, AQ’s self-designated primary role in each Islamist insurgency it assists is the provision of logistical, financial, training, and procurement support; al-Yazid himself was one of AQ’s best in these skills. Al-Qaeda’s logistical and financial networks are now helping and supplementing the Taliban’s and there is no indication the Afghan insurgents are wanting in any necessary of war. The logistics arena is, like the combat arena, a place where the need for AQ personnel declines over time. Just as al-Qaeda fighters teach combat skills, the organization’s support people teach logistical, organizational, and financial skills that help an insurgency to become more self-sufficient and over time allows AQ to reduce its manpower commitment. (NB:The fact that, unlike the Soviets, U.S. and NATO commanders have refused to mine the passes connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan has greatly eased the task of managing logistics operations and so increased both the Taliban’s combat capabilities and U.S. and NATO casualties.)

Third, intelligence collection: AQ’s intelligence-collection networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan operate in a framework built over twenty-five years. In intelligence terms, al-Qaeda is an old-established South Asian firm. Based on relationships created during the anti-Soviet jihad (1979-1992), AQ’s intelligence officers work closely with those of Mullah Omar, Hekmatyar, Haqqani, and others. And although he is an Afghan parliamentarian and appears pro-Karzai, bin Laden also has close ties to Shaykh Abdul Rasul Sayyaf who commands a small but well-trained and highly clandestine insurgent force in Kabul and the region west of the city. AQ has a long history of cooperation with Sayyaf; Shaykh Sayyaf, for example, gave bin Laden land for his first training camp, and helped al-Qaeda to set up Masood for assassination in September 2001. It would be Pollyanish to think this cooperation has ended; it is more likely that Sayyaf‘s people provide intelligence to AQ and other Afghan mujahideen about the plans and intentions of Karzai’s regime, the movement of NATO forces in and around Kabul, and assists them in covert operations in the city.

There are two areas of intelligence collection which are especially important to al-Qaeda and its Afghan allies at the moment:

The first area is in the southern provinces of Helmand, Nimruz, and Kandahar and focuses particularly on collecting intelligence on Canadian and British forces. Abu al-Yazid and other senior al-Qaeda leaders have drawn attention to the weak support that British and Canadian voters provide for their governments’ Afghan commitment; more than half of Canadians oppose the war, and about two-thirds of Britons oppose it. As the pace of operations in Kandahar increase, Taliban insurgents are likely to try to inflict as many casualties as possible on UK and Canadian soldiers, an action which directly serves al-Qaeda’s strategic goal of stripping away U.S. allies.

–The second area in which al-Qaeda is surely operating with other Afghan and Pakistani insurgent organizations is in ensuring a steady flow of intelligence about the land routes NATO uses to move supplies, fuel, and ordnance into Afghanistan from Karachi, Peshawar, and the Former Soviet Union. The Afghan mujahideen drove the Red Army to distraction with an uncanny ability to slow, disrupt, and bleed the vehicle convoys on which the Soviets and their Afghan allies depended for all of their needs. Then as now, Afghanistan produces nothing and so every materiel need had to be brought in from the Soviet Union, and because of mujahideen anti-convoy operations the Soviets and their allies were always short of everything. In this realm, it is likely that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hekmatyar are especially interested in building a capability to attack the resupply routes from Central Asia. Each of these organizations have long been eager to build a capacity to project power into Central Asia, and each surely welcomes the chance to build ties to the mujahideen in northern Afghanistan who are beginning to believe they have simply exchanged an infidel Soviet occupation for an infidel U.S.-NATO occupation and its Karzai puppet.

Fourth, media operations: As it has done in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and North Africa, al-Qaeda’s al-Sahab Media Production Organization has revolutionized the local insurgency’s attitude toward and use of the electronic media. Prior to 2001, Mullah Omar and his lieutenants had little domestic media capability and none internationally. In fact, Omar and his coterie frankly said they cared little about media activities, and some Taliban leaders even regarded media equipment as unIslamic. Things have changed. Today the Taliban has an around-the-clock media organization that produces regular video tapes, audio messages, and radio broadcasts from all parts of Afghanistan. This coverage features interviews with Taliban commanders, video of attacks on NATO forces; and testimony from local Afghans welcoming the Taliban’s return and the Islamic justice systems it brings. This reporting feeds the print and electronic media in Pakistan and the Arab Peninsula and is fed worldwide on Taliban Internet sites that are available in Pashtu, Arabic, Urdu, and some other languages. Taliban media operatives also use satellite telephones to contact Western reporters when NATO operations kill civilians, and the operatives often send pictures or video of the incidents to their Western contacts via their mobile phones.

The Taliban’s media operations — when added to those of the Pakistani media and al-Jazirah — are again making the Afghan jihad a priority concern across the Muslim world, a fact that seems to be validated by media reporting that in 2009, donations from individuals in the Arab Peninsula states and other Muslim nations provided a greater portion of the Afghan insurgents’ operating revenue than did their share of profits from heroin trafficking. All told, the impact of the media productions by the current Afghan insurgents dwarfs that of the media produced two decades ago by the anti-Soviet jihadis. Millions more Muslims worldwide are intimately familiar with the events and personalities of today’s Afghan war than they were twenty years ago during the anti-Soviet war, and that awareness is yielding increased volunteers and donations.

Overall, then, Afghanistan is no longer a place that requires the bulk of al-Qaeda’s attention and human and material resources. Al-Qaeda believes Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the other Afghan insurgent groups have the war well in hand and that the slow but steady spread of insurgent operations around the country clockwise from Kandahar demonstrates that the Afghan mujahideen have the initiative and that more ordinary Afghans — nationalists and Islamists — want to be rid of the occupation.

As a result, while al-Qaeda core is based in South Asia, it is still able to devote increasing amounts of its manpower and resources to activities outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. The improved capabilities of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa are evidence of this, as is the ongoing rebuilding and increasing operations of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the just reported planning for wide-ranging al-Qaeda-related attacks in Europe; and the growing presence of Salafist scholars and mujahideen groups in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, and Jerusalem. Bin Laden and his lieutenants also have successfully increased the number of U.S. citizens within their military and media wings, which surely means that al-Qaeda is planning more attacks on U.S. interests and is intent on further radicalizing young U.S. Muslim males

Bin Laden and his lieutenants also perceive that the U.S. government has never understood its Afghan problem, has never intended to win the war, and that the current U.S. administration has given up. The points supporting this belief include:

The excessive concern of U.S. leaders for civilian casualties and the resulting reduction in night operations, artillery support, and air attacks to prevent such casualties. All three were major negatives for the mujahideen and the reduction of such operations is most welcomed by them.

The success of U.S.-NATO operations humanitarian operations — 3 million more Afghan kids in school, better health care, more roads and electricity, etc. — that has occurred simultaneously with the geographic spread of the insurgency and the increase in popular support for it. Afghans are accepting Western aid, but they are not giving their hearts and minds to the occupiers.

Washington’s abandonment of virtually every war goal set out in 2001, as seen in its willingness to deal with the Taliban and last year’s setting of a date for the start of U.S. troop withdrawal. Each is seen as evidence that the current Administration has thrown in the towel.

The widespread corruption of the Karzai regime, and especially that of the president’s family and friends, has made it clear to the mujahideen and most of the Afghan people that the regime represents only itself and can survive only as long as there are NATO bayonets to protect it, no matter how many elections are held.

The willingness of the U.S.-NATO high command to give the mujahideen six-months’ notice before major offensives — as was done in Helmand and now in Kandahar — is taken as evidence that the last thing Western forces want to do is to incur heavy casualties and so the mujahideen are given time to move the bulk of their manpower and supplies out of harm’s way before campaigns are started.

The enormous U.S.-NATO expenditure of time, money, and manpower to build large Afghan military and police forces, a program that mostly benefits the mujahideen. The British tried this in the 1880s, the Soviets did the same in the 1980s, and the result was the same both times: the Afghan fighters enlisted to get armed, trained, and learn the enemy’s tactics and then deserted to the mujahideen; others won some trust from their trainers and then turned their guns on them; and yet others continued to serve in the forces as agents-in-place to assist the mujahideen at a later time.

The miniscule presence of U.S.-NATO combat forces in Afghanistan and their one-hand-tied-behind-the-back modus operandi. For al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is not only laughable but self-defeating for the U.S. and NATO to believe that they can beat the insurgency with 120,000 troops focused on winning hearts and minds when the Soviets could not do so with 120,000 troops using the utmost savagery.

In closing let me say that al-Qaeda’s ability to reduce its manpower and material commitment to the Afghan jihad does not connote any lessening in its determination to see the U.S. and NATO forced to withdraw. If the Taliban’s current positive conditions turn negative, bin Laden will refocus some of al-Qaedas forces and resources in its support.

Afghanistan, for al-Qaeda, all Islamist groups, and most Muslims, remains of overwhelming symbolic and theological importance. It is the site on which Allah provided the mujahideen with Islam’s first victory over a superpower, and al-Qaeda, their mujahideen brethren, and their civilian benefactors will spare no effort to fight so as to be deserving of Allah providing Islam a second victory over a superpower in the same Muslim land.

On 12 September 2010, the Washington Post published a much-discussed and highly praised OpEd by former ABC journalist Ted Koppel. The gist of the article is that Washington’s response to 9/11 amounted to playing into bin Laden’s hands. Well, no kidding.

Needless to say, Mr. Koppel argues that the world began on 9/11 and that all of today’s troubles stem from Mr. Bush’s time in office — what a coincidence the piece came on the eve of midterm elections! He of course neglects to mention that Mr. Clinton, more than anyone else, is responsible for the war America is fighting today against al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies. Still, there is more than enough abject failure for the last three presidents to share, including the sainted Mr. Obama, who is mentioned but once in Mr. Koppel’s article.

Mr. Koppel’s essay is a partisan political commercial meant to support the Democrats and it is wrong on many counts. Indeed, Mr. Koppel’s article is much like those we see defending the Bush administration’s war-making activities in Republican venues; in both instances, partisanship and lust for office triumphs over concern for genuine U.S. national security interests.

Mr. Koppel says: “Al-Qaeda is an organized terrorist group.”

Wrong: Al-Qaeda is an organized, worldwide insurgent group. Had it been anything remotely resembling a traditional “terrorist group” the CIA’s successes against it before 9/11 would have exterminated it. But because it is an insurgent group, it cannot be decapitated, which we have proven indisputably by the failure of covert action, drones, rendition, and Special Forces operations meant to destroy al-Qaeda’s leadership. Finally, terrorist groups are lethal nuisances; al-Qaeda poses a national security threat to the United States.

Mr. Koppel says: “The Bush administration’s initial response to 9/11 was just about right.”

Wrong: The Bush administration’s initial response to Afghanistan was perhaps the single most irresponsible and self-defeating military-political initiative ever launched in U.S. history. The Bush invasion of Afghanistan captured a few cities; installed an incompetent, unrepresentative, and apparently gangster-like man as president; and deployed too few troops to prevent all of our enemies from escaping to fight another day. Bush, Rumsfeld, and the other boy-warrior advocates of the “light-footprint, win-their-hearts-and-minds approach” ensured that the U.S. would be defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only workable post-9/11 plan for Afghanistan was a massively destructive 12-15 month punitive expedition against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and their civilian supporters, to be followed by an immediate withdrawal with a frank acknowledgment that the same punishment — or worse — might need to be applied again at a later date.

Mr. Koppel says: “As for the 100,000 U.S. troops in or headed to Afghanistan … [they are there because] Pakistan has an arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear warheads. Were any of those to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda’s fundamentalist allies in Pakistan, there is no telling what the consequences would be.”

Wrong multiple times:

• Our troops are in Afghanistan to destroy our Islamist enemies who intend to attack the United States at home and abroad. That U.S. and NATO forces have and will fail to do so does not change the only rational and worthwhile mission for our troops.
• Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in danger because U.S.-NATO forces have been in Afghanistan for 9 years; because the Alliance refuses to do anything to help itself and dragooned Pakistan’s army into fighting its war; and because of the stupidity of the Pakistani government in agreeing to do so, thereby causing a civil war in Pakistan. The fact is that the longer we stay fecklessly milling about in Afghanistan and pleading with Pakistan to do more of our fighting, the greater chance there is of a nuclear weapon going to the Islamists.
• There is every way of “telling what the consequences would be” if the Islamists get a nuclear weapon: They will try to get it into the United States and, if successful, they will detonate it in a major city. (NB: They have religious authorization to kill up to 10 million Americans with nuclear weapons.)

Mr. Koppel says: “America’s war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam.”

Wrong: No, the United States government is perceived throughout the Muslim world as being at war with Islam. Mr. Koppel suffers from the same arrogant racism that infects all of our bipartisan elites: He and they believe that Muslims are too stupid and primitive to be able to distinguish between Americans — who most Muslims treat, as individuals, with the utmost courtesy and regard as generous, hard-working, and religious — and the U.S. government. The best polling available shows nearly 80-percent of Muslims worldwide — men and women, young and old, moderate and extremist — identify Washington’s foreign policy, and not Americans, as intending to undermine or destroy Islam. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have strengthened this perception, but it is foolish to think that ending the wars — or the rendition, Guantanamo Bay, and interrogation issues Mr. Koppel ritualistically anguishes over — would change the perception of Muslims. As long as bipartisan Washington stays on the Arab Peninsula, plays utterly loyal employee to its Israel-First paymasters, and promotes Arab tyranny Muslims will believe the U.S. government is waging war on Islam.

Mr. Koppel asks: “Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos?”

Answer: Yes, and he did not just hope but counted on being able to produce the chaos that is now coming to the United States. Osama bin Laden knows his Muslim brethren and the U.S. bipartisan elite better than most U.S. leaders are willing to recognize. He knew, for example, that Muslims would refuse to go to war and kill themselves because of U.S. elections, emancipated women, and draft beer. He also knew that Muslims would fight to defend their faith and brethren against U.S. government attack. He likewise knew that neither U.S. party would ever change U.S. policy supporting Israel and Arab tyrants, and that those and other policies would eventually motivate young U.S.-citizen Muslim males to attack targets inside the United States. Thus, not only did bin Laden know the chaos his actions would ignite, he correctly predicted that the bipartisan U.S. governing elite would to lie to Americans about their attackers’ motivation until the jihad had time to take root in North America.

After reading Mr. Koppel’s OpEd I recalled that my dad always warned warn his kids that they should not put much stock in what TV journalists said because they simply read what someone else wrote from a teleprompter. Given his OpEd in the Post, my Dad’s advice seems better than ever, and one hopes Mr. Koppel does not sally forth with any more analysis or recommendations that he writes himself.

A number of items over past week caught my attention, and, being a bear-of-little-brain, they added to my confusion about why those brilliant folks who lead us seem so many times to have even less brains than I do.

General Petraeus: Here we have a four-star U.S. general in command of a 120,000-person, U.S.-NATO army in Afghanistan, where, of course, he is losing the war. Faced with coming defeat, it seems odd that the general still has time to intervene in domestic U.S. politics with his pathetic moaning about “how burning Korans in Florida will endanger U.S. troops.” (NB: Losing Afghanistan would make Petraeus 0 for 2 in wars: Attacks are again occurring across Iraq and a U.S.-trained Iraqi soldier today killed 2 and wounded 9 U.S. soldiers. Perhaps he is seeking to divert attention?)

Now, there is no doubt that burning Korans in Florida will incite more Muslims to fight us and so more U.S. service personnel will be at risk. But that impact pales when compared to the U.S. soldiers and Marines who are dying and being maimed in Afghanistan because of the impact of first General McChrystal and now Petraeus greatly reducing nighttime operations — at which U.S. troops excel — and air support for our troops in order to chase the never-to-be-caught phantom of winning Afghan hearts and minds by reducing civilian casualties.

In this context it is worth recalling that the Afghans hate and fight the U.S. and NATO because we are occupying their country. If we did not kill a single civilian, the insurgents — whether driven by faith or nationalism — would still be fighting to drive our forces and non-military presence out of their country.

Petraeus already has plenty of American blood on his hands. He ought to focus his attention on rectifying that failing and stay out of domestic politics like all good soldiers should.

Afghan Strategy: The media report that the long-planned U.S. military offensive to drive the Taliban from Kandahar Province is ready to start. “Unnamed” U.S. officials and military officers have leaked to the media that this could be the beginning of the end for the Taliban. The mainstream media reporters lap up this swill and spew it out to Americans — no one more so than the Washington Post’s David Ignatius — as if the Kandahar offensive has the remotest possibility of lasting success. It does not.

• Do our political leaders, generals, and journalists know that Kandahar is one of more than 30 Afghan provinces; that the insurgency has or is spreading to all of them; and that focusing so much strength in one southern province gives the Taliban and its allies access and opportunities elsewhere?
• Do they know the people of Kandahar hate infidel occupiers as much as any other Afghan, and that they prefer the brutal but effective law-and-order and lack of corruption they experienced under the Taliban?
• Do they know U.S. and NATO generals have given the Taliban more than 180 days notice that the Kandahar offensive is coming; that the Taliban and its allies have sewn the province with mines, IEDs, and booby-traps; and that the Taliban has moved its most important stockpiles of military materiel out of harm’s way — just as they did in Helmand Province last spring?
• Do they know that if things get too hot for the Taliban in Kandahar they will exit to an adjacent province or move across the border into Iran or Pakistan, and there wait to return as soon as U.S. and NATO forces leave?

One must believe that our bright, well-educated politicians, generals, and journalists know all these obvious things. The question that occurs, therefore, is: “Why are they getting our soldiers and Marines killed for nothing?”

Israel: Having yielded to President Obama’s plea for more useless Palestine-Israel peace talks, the Israeli government quickly scuppered them and showed Obama who is boss.

• Even as the talks opened, Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman said the talks were pointless and pledged to wreck Netanyahu’s government if he made any concessions.
• Next, on the weekend, Israel’s defense minister signed a defense cooperation agreement with Russia, a pact the media reports will focus on Moscow purchasing Israeli — read U.S.-origin — technology for unmanned military drones and lasers. The timing was not coincidental. The Israelis were reminding Obama that a good deal of highly sensitive U.S. technology could find its way from Israeli hands to Russia if Israel is pressed too hard to cut a deal with the Palestinians.
• Then to top off the week, the former chairman of the “Conference of Major Jewish American Organizations” published a letter effusively praising Obama for having substantially improved Israel’s qualitative military edge over its neighbors, thereby once again reminding the Palestinians and all Muslims that the idea of an even-handed U.S. approach to peace is still a fantasy.

If Americans needed reminding that there is no difference in the lust of Democrats and Republicans to get the United States involved in an Israel-Muslim religious war where no U.S. interest is at stake, this week’s events did the trick. And if anyone is looking for something more lethal to the lives of U.S. troops and destabilizing to U.S. domestic security than burning Korans and Petraeus’s enemy-protecting regulations, he or she need look no farther than the current U.S.-Israel relationship.

I started out to write a piece about the whole of President Obama’s predictable and deceitful speech last night about Iraq. On reflecting a bit more, however, I came to focus on the president’s phrase: “It is time to turn the page on Iraq,” a phrase which underscores how woefully ignorant Obama and his colleagues in both parties are about the power of history and the world that exists outside of their closed minds and Washington, D.C.

Obama can say what he wants, but he and our governing elite will find that history’s pages are not that easy to deal with. You can turn the page, blot the page, and tear out and shred the page, but history remains clear, vibrant, pertinent to all human affairs, and potentially fatal if ignored, suppressed, or forgotten. At best, you can run from history for a time, but, as Mr. Lincoln said, you cannot escape history. This is especially the case when the page-turning is unilateral and the others involved in the history you are fleeing have it graven in their minds and hearts.

The Iraq war will henceforth be seen as having set several historical trends in motion:

1. The invasion and occupation of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition will be remembered by Muslims as the perfect Koranic predicate for a defensive jihad: An infidel state invaded a Muslim nation without provocation and installed man-made, not God-made laws and government. As years pass, the U.S.-led invasion will be seen as the most important and durable legitimizing agent for the defensive jihad Osama bin Laden declared in 1996. Washington and London did for bin Laden what he could do not do for himself: They invaded Iraq and thereby made the jihad a worldwide phenomenon.
2. The U.S. military lost the war in Iraq. It came home in defeat, suffering from a near-complete lack of credibility amongst its Islamic enemies, and in dire need to somehow defeat someone, at some time, on some battlefield. Because they authored the defeat, Mr. Obama, his party, and the Republicans are doing all they can to praise the military for being completely successful. But soldiers and Marines — except for most of their generals — are hard-headed. They know defeat and uselessly killed-and-crippled colleagues when they see them, and they saw both as Iraq steadily slipped toward a regionally destabilizing sectarian civil war as they marched out. Thus, the Islamists will perceive — and perception is reality — that they have defeated the second superpower after having beaten the USSR in Afghanistan. All told, the one thing more damaging to the United States than starting the Iraq war, was the Bush-Obama decision to deliberately lose it. This can only yield positive results for the Islamists in terms of morale, recruits, donations, and admiration across the Muslim world, and especially among young Muslim males in the United States and its three most important allies, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
3. Washington destroyed the single most important U.S. ally against the forces led and inspired by Osama bin Laden: Saddam Hussein. So long as Saddam ruled Iraq, the Islamist mujahideen were stuck in South Asia and the Persian Gulf and they were not coming west in any great numbers. Yes, Saddam was murderous toward his own people and helped Palestinians kill Israelis, but neither of those activities had the slightest negative impact on U.S. security. Indeed, the cost of those activities was a small price to pay — and one that did not have to be paid by Americans — for keeping the jihadis locked in South Asia. (And, as was shown in 1991 and 2003, Saddam and his army could be easily destroyed at any time by U.S. forces, so there was no harm allowing him to serve as the cork in the neck of the jihadi bottle for as long as he kept performing that service.)
4. By removing Saddam, U.S. and UK political leaders built a westward-bound jihadi highway from South Asia through Iraq: Bush and Blair roughed it out, and Obama, Brown, and Cameron paved it. To date, this roadway has given Sunni Salafi fighters a base in Iraq from which — for the first time — they can enter Turkey, the Levant (Jordan Syria, Lebanon, and Israel), and Saudi Arabia with only moderate difficulty. And in what is a delicious, nearly sublime irony, the Neoconservatives and Israel Firsters who forced the unnecessary invasion of Iraq to make Israel more secure have ended up ensuring Israel’s demise. Israel now faces a scenario in which battle-hardened Sunni Salafists are joining Islamist Palestinians to form an enemy that cannot be bribed, intimidated, and corrupted as was/is Fatah. Israel’s U.S.-supplied advanced-conventional and nuclear weapons are useless against such a face-to-face enemy, and Israeli attacks on Iran, Syria, or Lebanon would only strengthen the Salafi Sunnis. By starting the Iraq war, Israel’s U.S.-citizen “best friends” signed its death warrant.
5. U.S. defeat in Iraq ensures — if any more assurance was needed — that the United States and NATO will lose in Afghanistan. How so? The Afghans know they defeated the Red Army and believe they are in the midst of a winning campaign against the U.S.-NATO coalition; the West, after all, has pledged to leave without winning. For the Taliban and its allies, this adds up to complete confidence in God’s promise of victory over Islam’s enemies if the believers keep fighting in His name. Having seen the Iraqis realize God’s promise by their efforts, the Afghans will not be outdone in making sure they notch the defeat of the second superpower into the stocks of their AK-47s.

These five points add up to a sixth: From here out, America’s war with militant Islamists will increase in cost, ferocity, and bloodiness, and will be fought at home as well as overseas. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, Washington has proven that it and most of its generals no longer know how to fight and win wars; that is, they have neither the manliness nor historical acuity to know that wars end once and for all only when enough of the enemy and his infrastructure, supporters, and families have been killed to convince those remaining that game is not worth playing. This fact is invaluable knowledge for Islamist enemies who are willing to pay any human or material price in a war meant to defeat the enemies of God.

And if you doubt more bloody-and-losing wars are coming because of our easy willingness to be beaten in Iraq and Afghanistan, think about the lures the Islamists are now dangling in front us in Yemen and Somalia. The U.S. Intelligence Community has said — wrongly I think — that al-Qaeda in Yemen is more dangerous to U.S. interests than its counterpart in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and yesterday the media reported that the Western- and UN-backed Somali regime is on the brink of losing Mogadishu to the pro-al-Qaeda group al-Shabbab. The Islamists are betting that Washington will eventually gulp down both lures, begin interventions in both places, and thereby add to the overwhelming U.S. debt, further debilitate an exhausted, undermanned, and little-feared military, and create more political dissension in the United States.

President Obama may have turned the page of history in the sheltered, unrealistic world in which he and his advisers think and reside, but for America’s Islamist enemies the page is still being written, and they will keep using the blood and taxes of non-elite Americans to write the story of what now increasingly looks like their eventual victory.

Fourteen years ago this morning, 27 August 1996, I found myself reading a just-published document by Osama bin Laden entitled “Declaration of War Against the United States.” In the 12-page treatise bin Laden announced al-Qaeda’s intention to wage war on the United States and summarized its motivation in six items:

• U.S. support for and protection of Arab police states
• U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula
• Unqualified U.S. support for Israel
• U.S. and Western exploitation of Muslim energy resources at below market prices
• U.S. support for other nations that oppress Muslims, especially Russia, China, and India.
• U.S. stationing of military forces in Muslim lands

From 1996 until today, bin Laden, al-Qaeda, their allies, and those they inspire have stood by this short list of motivations. A researcher would look long, hard, and ultimately futilely for any motivations that pivot off of such cultural issues as U.S. democracy, elections, civil liberties, gender equality, etc. To be sure, bin Laden made clear that Islamists were not at all interested in any of these cultural attributes for the Muslim world. But his prose likewise made clear that he knew almost no Muslims could be motivated to risk their lives and wage jihad because there is an early presidential primary in Iowa and women are welcomed into the U.S. workplace.

No U.S. political leader or mainstream media outlet has, since 1996, given any indication that bin Laden’s declaration has been read and and understood. Instead, both have preached to Americans that they are being attacked by Islamists because of the way we live and think here in North America. Americans also have been assured that the impact of Washington’s interventionist policies in the Islamic world plays no role in our attackers’ motivation. This, of course is bald lie, but our political and media leaders have stood by it for 14 years and counting.

As that lie has left the United States floundering in an expanding war against an enemy that does not exists — that is, the Muslim freedom-and-liberty haters — it is worth thinking about what our interventionist policies and lie-based response to bin Laden’s declaration have cost us since August, 1996:

• Two U.S. or U.S.-run military facilities in Saudi Arabia, one in Riyadh (1995) and the other in Dhahran (1996).
• Two U.S. embassies in East Africa — Nairobi and Dar es Salaam — in 1998.
• The U.S. Navy’s destroyer COLE in 2000.
• The destruction of the World Trade Center and a heavily damaged Pentagon in 2001.
• Defeat in an unnecessary war against Muslims in Iraq.
• The coming defeat of the U.S.-NATO coalition in Afghanistan, and probably the less effective future performance of the NATO alliance.
• The death of approximately 9,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel in the foregoing events, and the wounding of several times that number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The later category includes a higher percentage of men and women who lost one or more limbs than in any U.S. war since the Civil War.
• More than a trillion dollars in federal expenditures on war and counter-terrorism with no end in sight.
• The establishment of a widespread presence of radical Islamists inside the United States and a now-increasing tempo of planned and attempted domestic attacks.
• The steady undermining of Pakistan as a stable, cohesive nation-state, a process which raises concerns about the security of that country’s nuclear arsenal.

This, it seems to me, is a high price to have paid over 14 years to fight the non-existent, liberty-hating Islamist enemy, especially because U.S. military and intelligence efforts have given us no means of accurately measuring progress in the war save for a body count and the wishful thinking of politicians and editorial writers.

Indeed, the hard metrics all seem to show progress for bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires: Islamist victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; a weakening Pakistan; the growth of Islamist militancy in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza (all of which is enabled by the U.S.-led destruction of Saddam’s murderously anti-Islamist regime); and Islamist insurgencies in places where they were either dormant or non-existent in 2001, including Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, southern Thailand, Mindanao, North Africa, and the North Caucasus.

Perhaps the best way for Americans to see how much damage the United States has suffered and how little progress it has made against al-Qaeda and its allies is to reflect on Osama bin Laden’s concise, well-publicized, and precisely defined war aims:

1. To help bleed the United States to bankruptcy.
2. To spread out U.S. military and intelligence forces so they have little flexibility and few reserves.
3. To create as much political dissent in America as possible, and to strip away as many U.S. allies as possible.

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether Washington or bin Laden has the clearer war aims, and which side — on an objective reading of reality — has more reason to thank God and be proud and encouraged on this, the 14th anniversary of the start of the al-Qaeda-led war on the United States.

The politicians and media continue to spew and sputter about the NYC mosque, with much of their commentary now turning to ask: “Why are Americans so fearful of and hateful toward Islam and Muslims?” The obvious answer is that Americans are so fearful of and hateful toward Islam and Muslims because their leading politicians and the media have taught them to be.

Since the Cold War’s end, the administrations of Ivy League-educated presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have told Americans that Muslims hate them because they have freedom, personal liberty, gender equality, erotic moves, and beer. Moreover, the argument has continued, Muslims want to take all of these things from Americans and impose Sharia law on them. This last is a bit of an inconsistency from the politicians as they also claim the Islamists attacking America have absolutely nothing to do with Islam.

The media — left and right — have inculcated the same belief in their readers, listeners, and viewers. From Sean Hannity to Keith Olberman, from CNN to CBS to NPR, and from the Washington Times to the New York Times the message is the same: They [Muslims] hate Americans for who we are and how we think, not for what the U.S. government does. The media, too, chant that al-Qaeda and its allies are criminals and have nothing to do with Islam.

The two foregoing paragraphs encapsulate a knowing and utterly destructive lie that is being foisted on Americans by their political leaders and the media. There is precisely no evidence to show we are at war with the Islamists because they intend to impose Sharia in the United States, intend to make my granddaughters wear burqas to grammar school, or yearn to re-establish prohibition. When the Islamists win in Iraq, Somalia, Jordan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere they will surely not install alcohol, gender equality, or a Western-style rule of law, but neither do they give a hoot about whether we indulge in North America in what they regard to one degree or another as the devil’s handiwork.

The Muslim enemy described by U.S. politicians and the media, then, is a deliberate lie, but a useful one to them in three senses. First, it presents a looming and monolithic enemy that is easily described, sure to appear predatory to Americans, and easy to motivate Americans to hate. Second, it portrays the causes of the current war as items that are non-negotiable, as in “My granddaughters will never go to school wearing burqas!” Third, it allows the politicians and media to hide the vital role Islam plays in the war by assuring Americans that the Muslims Americans they need to fear are limited in number and, as noted, have nothing to do with the Islamic religion. In fact, the Islamists have hijacked the faith and are no more than criminals. How the few criminals the politicians define as America’s enemies could possibly high-jack, redefine, and control the faith of 1.4 billion Muslims is never really explained.

The negative reaction of many ordinary Americans to the NYC mosque, then, is the product of the education about Islam they have received at the hands of extraordinarily well-educated presidents, politicians, and journalists. And, today, these elite teachers are now criticizing and often damning ordinary Americans for believing what presidents, politicians, and journalists have for 20 years told them is the truth. It is all a bit dizzying.

What is the answer? Well maybe we should try the truth:

1. Most Muslims, in the United States and overseas, do not hate Americans because of their freedom, liberty, beer, and gender equality. We have yet to see an Islamist fighter blow himself up because Americans look forward to Miller Time or because there are women in America’s workplaces. That said, the West — at the bidding of its crazed Amazons who lust to kill all male Muslims opposed to womens’ rights — has killed many thousands of Muslims who believe their faith mandates that they defend the separation of the sexes.
2. Most Muslims, in the United States and overseas, perceive U.S. foreign policy in the Islamic world and its impact as aimed at undermining or destroying Islam, and as being dictated by Israel. This empirical reality is so obvious and quantifiable that even U.S. politicians and journalists cannot be unaware of it. Their failure to acknowledge it, therefore, must be attributed to their decision that they cannot possibly retain their posts or audiences if they told Americans two fundamental and irrefutable truths:
   1. Our lack of energy self-sufficiency, and our longtime acceptance of this cowardly and demeaning status quo, makes the U.S. federal government — under both parties — the single largest supporter of tyranny in the contemporary world. Because Washington refuses to do anything constructive about energy policy, we are the main supporters and protectors of the fascist police states that rule and oppress Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Algeria, and Egypt. (NB: Egypt gets billions in U.S. support not because it has oil but because Washington needs to bribe Mubarak to pretend he and his countrymen do not passionately and eternally hate Israel.) As can be imagined, this policy wins America few friends in the Muslim masses and makes our advocacy of freedom and democracy ring a bit hollow. And as to why the media and the politicians deliberately lie? One would suppose that while a publicity slogan akin to “Vote for or watch us because we make the world safe for tyranny!” would be truthful, it might not rally the nation’s support.
   2. Our unquestioning and vastly expensive support for Israel makes us the enemy of the entire Muslim world, Sunni and Shia. The question to ask is not whether we should provide such support, but, rather, what do we get for providing it? The answer to the second and completely appropriate question is twofold: (a) We get absolutely nothing from our relationship with Israel that America could not easily live without; and (b) We get an endless war with 1.4 billion Muslims that will soon see fronts opening in the United States. The right follow-up question would be to ask: What we would get from letting Israel sink or swim on its own? Answer: (a) A reduced level but not an end to warfare with Islam, and (b) The well-deserved destruction and legal prosecution of the criminal gang of U.S.-citizen Israel supporters that corrupts the U.S. political system and buys either the silence or support of the U.S. media.

Energy dependence, pro-tyranny policies, and support for Israel — those are the three most basic answers to the question “Why are Muslims attacking us?” There are others: the U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula; the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen; and Washington’s support for Russia in the North Caucasus and China’s Tibet-like, genocide-by-inundation-of-Han-Chinese in its Muslim Xinjiang province. But the core of Muslim motivation to attack America coalesces around the points sketched above.

Now, there is no reason to change U.S. policy simply because Muslims do not like it. If Americans decide current policies in the Muslim world are essential to U.S. security, then they must be kept. But to so decide, Americans first must be able debate the issue an a factual basis, and not on the basis of the insane “Muslims hate us because of our freedoms” mantra endless chanted by our politicians and the media. Let it be said precisely: Those Muslims who hate and attack the United States do so because of what the U.S. government intervenes to do in the Islamic world, and not because of how Americans think and live in North America.

Fortunately, this realization also underscores that fact that America’s problem with the Islamic world is eminently solvable in one of two ways; either we maintain the policy status quo — and prepare for an endless and massively bloody war with Islam at home and abroad — or we dump policies that involve us in other peoples’ religious wars and thereby redirect the violence to where it belongs, with Israelis and Muslims fighting and killing each other to their hatred-filled hearts are content.

Finally, the lies of the politicians and the media are susceptible to a quick but painful cure if U.S. Muslim leaders at long last step forward and tell the truth. U.S.-citizen Muslims know better than anyone else that Muslims do not hate America’s freedoms and liberties; if that was true, these men and women surely would not have come to America to raise their families and make their future.

U.S. Muslim leaders know that Osama bin Laden, his allies, and tens of millions of other Muslims are motivated to wage jihad by the impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Islamic world. They also know that Muslims who are fighting the United States believe — and rightly so in terms of theology — that they are resisting infidel invasions of Islamic lands and the infidel-supported maintenance or imposition of rule by tyrannical apostate regimes. Indeed, the main reason U.S. Muslim leaders are not as damning of bin Laden and his ilk as U.S. politicians and media want them to be is because they know that fully siding with Washington would be to support Arab tyrannies and Israel’s behavior and territorial expansion at the cost of their credibility with other U.S. Muslims and their brethren overseas.

Although small in number, U.S. Muslim leaders now have an opportunity to be responsible U.S. citizens by frankly squaring with their fellow citizens and defeating the lies of the politicians and the media, both of which are abetted, scripted, and largely paid for by U.S.-citizen Israel Firsters. Only U.S. Muslim leaders have the ability to speak the truth directly to their adopted country and to begin to end the fantasy that Islamists are attacking America because of its freedoms, liberties, and lifestyle. U.S. Muslim leaders must tell their fellow citizens that this is a much bigger and more dangerous war than has been described by their recent quartet of Ivy League presidents.

With the moral courage to speak frankly and then defy the vilification they will get from Neoconservatives and Israel-First-influenced websites, newspapers, magazines, and politicians, U.S. Muslim leaders can help Americans see that they are not fighting an insignificant number of unIslamic criminals, but rather are at war with growing numbers of Muslims who are inspired by U.S. interventionism and a legitimate interpretation of their faith. Such frankness would allow U.S. Muslim leaders to warn Americans that Washington’s interventionism is pushing the United States ever deeper into a religious war with much of the Islamic world. Their words would give all Americans the facts with which to force a debate with the lairs who flog the self-defeating “they hate us for our freedoms” doctrine.

And, rather poignantly, U.S. Muslim leaders who decide to speak with stark honesty on this issue will be serving themselves as parents, for they know best that an increasing number of their U.S.-born sons are becoming jihadis here at home and overseas because they hate U.S. foreign policy and not because of the liberties they and all Americans share.

The building of a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attack will be a signal victory for al-Qaeda and its cause. Al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center with several goals in mind: to prove the U.S. government cannot defend its citizens; to damage the U.S. economy; to cause large numbers of casualties; and to strike at the heart of what militant Muslims regard as a “Jewish city.” Al-Qaeda accomplished this mission superbly and with lasting positive impact for its cause.

Another of bin Laden’s goals for the attack is not often discussed in the West, and that’s the impact the attack was meant to have on what can only be described as the Muslim world’s endemic defeatism. For several centuries before 9/11, Muslim forces were beaten every time they faced European powers. Just since 1945, for example, Hindu India thrice beat Islamic Pakistan, Israel three times beat multiple Arab armies, and the United States twice defeated Iraq and proved it can rain destruction on Muslim targets from Sudan to Afghanistan at any time. Indeed, so deeply entrenched is Muslim defeatism that Osama bin Laden’s generation is often termed the “generation of defeat.”

Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 raid and its previous anti-U.S. attacks, therefore, were meant not just to begin bleeding the U.S. economy and driving America from the Islamic world, but also to spur the belief among Muslims that they could prevail in a fight against the West. In this effort, Al-Qaeda built on two solid foundations, one theological and the other empirical. First, Allah promised Muslims victory if they patiently fight the infidels in His name. Second, Allah kept his word by allowing the mujahideen to beat the USSR in Afghanistan.

For bin Laden, his colleagues, and their allies the Afghan victory was all the proof needed that God’s word was reliable and that any infidel power attacking Muslims could expect to share the Red Army’s fate. The Islamists, however, found that destroying all the Muslim world’s defeatism a much harder nut to crack. Thus, bin Laden launched al-Qaeda attacks meant both to hurt the United States and to instill in Muslims confidence that they are militarily potent and can defeat an infidel power trying to undermine Islam or invade a Muslim land.

As noted, the al-Qaeda attacks up to 9/11 convinced and encouraged some Muslims; the post-9/11 growth in the number and vitality of Islamist insurgencies around the world has been startling. But while the al-Qaeda attacks are keys in the campaign to reduce defeatism, they have not been sufficient to carry the day. They have, however, set the stage for defeating Muslim defeatism, and success will be complete when the U.S. military leaves Iraq — having lost a war that need never been waged and having created a safe haven for Sunni Islamists — and when the U.S.-NATO-led coalition is driven from Afghanistan by the Afghan nation in arms. Victory in Afghanistan, in particular, will be the most powerful antidote to defeatism because in that Muslim land two infidel superpowers were beaten by mujahideen fighting in Allah’s name.

Against this background, then, the mosque to be built on the site of America’s 9/11 defeat will be seen and celebrated by bin Laden, his allies, and the hundreds of millions of other Muslims who support or sympathize with them. The mosque will be seen as clear and concrete proof that Allah will deliver victory to His faithful if they continue to fight in His name.

This is a hard but I think an irrefutable fact. And when the mosque rises on the ground where America was defeated and humiliated on 9/11, and rises in the heart of a “Jewish City,” hundreds of millions of Muslims in the United States and around the world will be exclaiming — some quietly, others loudly, but all fervently — “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!). The mosque will be seen — no matter what its builders and their supporters claim to the contrary — as a tangible sign of the reliability of God’s promise of victory for Muslims who fight the infidels who attack Islam. And this sign will be burnished by the coming U.S. defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the mosque is built, then, it is important to remember that whatever 1st Amendment issues are involved, and however admirable the builders’ desire for intra-faith dialogue may be, the United States is once again — and knowingly, though Bloomberg and Obama feign ignorance — putting its foot into a snare that bin Laden did not lay but one from which he and those he leads and inspires will benefit enormously. The construction of the mosque at the site of America’s 9/11 defeat by Islamist forces will be seen by those forces and their followers as an unquestionably positive augury of victories to come, and perhaps as the much-needed final, fatal stake in the heart of Muslim defeatism.*

Note

* The NYC mosque issue is another example of how many lose-lose situations America faces in the war against the al-Qaeda-led Islamists. To now decide not to build the Mosque would reinforce in Muslim minds the idea that the U.S. policy is always anti-Islamic and that U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters dictate that policy.

I hesitate to again return to the issue of war with Iran, but do so because the likelihood of that catastrophe appears more likely with each passing day. I look around the country and see no groundswell of popular support for such a war, or support for Israel attacking Iran. I hear no newscasters or strategists or pundits warning about any specific threat Iran poses to U.S. interests at home or abroad. And yet, Republicans in the federal legislature unanimously support the idea of Israel attacking Iran. The Democrats need not say anything publicly because it is obvious they are owned lock, stock, and barrel by U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters, and will do their and Netanyahu’s bidding.

Meanwhile, President Obama is sitting down for a Ramadan dinner with American Muslims, even as he does nothing to restrain Israel, or at least disassociate America from Netanyahu’s intention to start a religious war that will ultimately engulf the world. Indeed, Obama has told the U.S. military — if media reports are correct — not to shoot down Israeli air force planes if the fly through U.S. controlled Iraqi airspace on their way to bomb Iran. Too bad, such a turkey shoot would be entirely in the interests of the United States and would be excellent practice for U.S. pilots.

One hopes that Mr. Obama does not think his Ramadan guests are ignorant or — like him — cowardly and incompetent. The Muslim leaders who share supper with Obama will defend and assist their Muslim brethren in America and overseas to whatever extent is necessary once the Israel-Firsters get their war with Iran. Ironically, once the Israel-Firsters have their Iran war they will have assured Israel’s eventual destruction and involve the country of which they are nominally citizens — the United States — in an unending war with Islam. Indeed, if there is war with Iran, America will be fighting Muslims at home and abroad long after Israel is nothing more than an annoying and unlamented memory.

On Wednesday this week, I received an e-mail from Steve Clemons, a very intelligent man who runs the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. I was just one of many addressees to receive the note which called attention to an article by the Israel-First media shill Jeffrey Goldberg in the new issue of the Atlantic. The article claims there is a better-than-even chance that Israel will attack Iran this year. Geez, no kidding? Do Goldberg’s findings really surprise Mr. Clemons and the rest of Washington’s intelligentsia? Isn’t it apparent that Netanyahu and the Israel-Firsters simply have Rahm Emmanuel tell their Obama-dog to jump, and the Obama-dog barks back “how high?” Anyway, I sent the following note back to Mr. Clemons.

“Steve: This is a nice piece, but why waste so many words on an Israel-First propagandist like [Jeffrey]Goldberg. Israel will attack Iran because it wants to. We will support/condone the attack — and then very publicly refund and rearm Israel after the attack — because the bulk of the Congress has been suborned by disloyal Israel-First U.S. citizens and their rich Christian evangelical sidekicks. Going to war with Iran is in the hands of Israel and its U.S. supporters; the constitution is well and truly dead on the issue of war-making — the American people have no say at all about when we go to war with Iran.

“When we have a war with the entire Muslim world — Sunni and Shia — Americans at last will be confronted by the catastrophic failure of the best-educated governing elite the country has ever known. They will also see that the two parties are identical in foreign policy and intellectual bankruptcy, and that the electoral process is incapable of providing relief.

“At that time, I suspect, enormous numbers of Americans will begin to reacquaint themselves about the basic reason the Founders gave us the republic-preserver known as the 2nd Amendment.

“Respectfully,

“Mike Scheuer”

As of this moment, I have gotten no response from Mr. Clemons, nor do I expect one. Israel’s control of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world is seriously criticized by few of Washington think tanks because most of them depend on donations from rich U.S. citizens, many of whom are also leading Israel Firsters.

It seems to me that the bottom line is that most of America’s 300 million citizens are now watching helplessly as their bipartisan governing elite is influenced (bribed?) by agents of a foreign power to allow Israel to start a war that will kill their military sons and daughters, further wreck the economy, and bring Muslim-vs-Israeli violence to their towns and cities. It appears that the war will start without one of the 535 federal legislators doing anything concrete to try and make sure America does not go to war unless the president asks for a declaration of war and the Congress votes one. On this issue, as I noted above, the U.S. Constitution is a dead letter because our leaders care more about lining their pockets and getting reelected than in defending the republic by refusing to fight other peoples’ meaningless-to-America religious wars.

Because of unquestioning and endless U.S. support for Israel and Washington’s abject failure to control thousands of miles of land and coastal borders war is coming to the United States. Thank God and the Founders for the 2nd Amendment, which ensures that those Americans who so choose can try to defend themselves, their property, and their families after having seen the federal government refuse to do so.

August 6th is a date that sticks in my throat each year because it brings Pacifists, fools, liars, and fantasists — the dependable base of the Democratic Party — slithering out of their holes to attack commonsense from every possible angle. And this August 6th is no exception. The intelligence of Americans is again being assaulted by this gang of ill-educated and effete miscreants, a gang whose members are always eager to damn America.

Hiroshima: First we have the teary-eyed fools who still believe there was no reason to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is almost impossible to believe that sixty-five years after those blessed bombs were dropped on Japan and ended the war there are still Americans who believe the action was not necessary. This of course speaks directly to the manner in which American history is taught and distorted at all levels of our educational system. The core of any school lesson on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can only be that if ever a country deserved being the target of a nuclear attack, that country was Imperial Japan.

From 1931 until 1945, Emperor Hirohito and his government — with what appears to be the support of most Japanese — invaded, tortured, raped, mutilated, and otherwise destroyed countries and people from China to the northern coast of Australia. That emperor, that regime, and that people waged a premeditated, offensive war that was at least as unconscionable as the war waged by Nazi Germany.

After Pearl Harbor, it fell to the lot of the United States Navy and Marine Corps and their allies to erase Hirohito’s regime from the earth’s face. And they did the task admirably, but not before the Bataan Death March, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and dozens of other bloody campaigns in which the Japanese enemy proved himself brave, durable, and utterly barbaric. And while these battles were fought, Japanese occupation forces in China, the Philippines, Indo-China, and elsewhere continued at their leisure to torture, rape, and mass murder civilians and prisoners of war, despite the courageous efforts of anti-Japanese resistance units.

And so after fourteen years of inhuman Japanese barbarity across Asia and the Pacific, U.S. leaders were faced with a decision: stage an amphibious invasion of Japan’s home islands and face an estimated million or more U.S. and allied casualties, or try to end the war with nuclear weapons. Talk about a no-brainer; it would have been an impeachable offense if President Truman had refused to use nuclear weapons and instead sent U.S. Marines and soldiers to their death needlessly. The claim that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped — which is always flogged by August 6th’s ignorant weepers — has been proven to be absolutely incorrect by Richard B. Frank (Downfall. The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999) and D.M. Gianfranco (Hell to Pay. Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947. Annapolis, MD: Naval University Press, 2009)

As regards Hiroshima, there should surely be commemorative events in the United States each August 6th. Those events ought to honor and applaud the fact one brave man named Harry Truman had the moral courage, commonsense, and patriotism to protect the lives, futures, and families of another one million brave men and to rid the earth of the inhuman scourge known as Imperial Japan.

That President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Clinton ordered a U.S. diplomat in Japan to attend the anti-U.S. ceremonies in Hiroshima on this August 6th can only be seen as them siding with their fellow Democrats in believing that the bombings were morally reprehensible, and that a million or more U.S. casualties would have been a small price to pay to avoid contemporary Japanese not liking us very much on August 6th each year.

George W. Bush: Readers of this site will know that I carry no brief for George W. Bush and his administration. But the annual August-6th attacks on President Bush for the CIA’s PDB memo saying that “Osama bin Laden intends to attack in the United States” is really more than commonsense can tolerate. Was there such a memo? Yes, of course. And there had been numerous nearly identical memos presented to President Clinton between 1996 and the end of his term.

Now, why is Mr. Bush annually attacked and Mr. Clinton is given a free pass? The answer is obvious: In the fight against the bin Laden-led Islamists, Mr. Clinton is responsible for all the American deaths at home and abroad since 1996, and a frank admission of that reality is unacceptable to the Democrats, the media, and the bulk of the academy that loves them both and sucks off the government’s money tit when the Democrats are in power.

But, you might ask, how can you blame Clinton and not Bush? Well, I do blame Bush for not paying any attention to bin Laden and his ilk during his first year in office. But the truth is that on 6 August 2001 the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Community did not know where bin Laden was located, and without such data Mr. Bush had nothing to attack. This was not the case during Mr. Clinton’s tenure.

Between 1 May 1998 and 31 May 1999, President Clinton had ten documented chances — see the 9/11 Commission Report and its archive (NB: Why do you think those documents have not been released? I’ll bet I know) — to try to kill Osama bin Laden. Indeed, in the third week of May, 1999, President Clinton and his advisers knew on five consecutive nights in precisely which house in Kandahar City Osama bin Laden was staying. Ten chances but not even one try by Mr. Clinton to do his duty to protect Americans by killing bin Laden. And one must remember that Mr. Clinton’s failure came after bin Laden had twice attacked U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia, destroyed two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and publicly pledged to try to acquire a nuclear device and use it in the United States.

So next August 6th Americans should use the annual attack on Mr. Bush to trigger their memories and recall that 9/11, the ongoing humiliation of Americans at airports, the casus belli used by Bush for the idiot Iraq war, all the dead Americans since 1996, and the trillions of dollars spent on war since then can all be laid at the door step of Mr. Clinton and his advisers, men and women who did not have the moral courage to risk the media and European disdain that would have met their efforts to try to protect Americans.

Also next August 6th, those few Marines, soldiers, and sailors still living because no invasion of Japan was needed, as well as what now must be their many millions of descendants, can thank God that on 6 August 1945 the president of the United States was named Harry S. Truman and not William Jefferson Clinton.

President Obama’s decision to put the U.S.-citizen/militant Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awalki on the target list for killing has received much attention and discussion. Some think it appalling that a U.S. citizen can be hunted down and killed by U.S. forces without receiving due process. Others believe al-Awalki is a foe of America who has incited violence against his fellow citizens and so deserves summary execution.

Because facts are facts, both sides of the argument have merit: al-Awlaki is an U.S. citizen and he is a self-declared and self-evidently potent enemy of America who is based overseas and inciting and perhaps managing violence here. Obama’s decision to try to kill him is both objectionable and understandable, but the debate over it should not be allowed to blur the reality that al-Awalki is not the whole problem, but rather is the harbinger of the war that is coming to the United States. Before much longer, the U.S. military and law enforcement agencies will be killing U.S. citizens in a war occurring inside the United States. (NB: I would support killing al-Awalki overseas; capturing him in the United States.)

Al-Awalki was active in the United States for a number of years and appears to have been connected to at least four terrorist plots in the United States, only one of which — the shootings by Major Hassan at Fort Hood — came to fruition. It is perhaps better to say al-Awalki has been involved in four plots that we know of; there may well be other plots in the works which he inspired or helped plan before moving to Yemen. Again, though, al-Awalki is not the whole of the problem.

The United States today is playing host to other U.S. citizens who are Islamist clerics like al-Awlaki and who hold views identical to his. In addition, we have many Islamist clerics trained at universities on the Arab Peninsula — especially at Saudi schools — working at Muslim mosques and schools in the United States who are likely to be more militant than al-Awalki. Many of these men have been here for years, and U.S. authorities have no handle on the dimensions of the problem because the clerics — native-born and foreign — are trained to take advantage of the First Amendment’s protections to shield their activities. (It is worth noting that this is a North-American problem as there every reason to believe the situation in Canada is the same.)

In addition, U.S. authorities have no fix whatsoever on how many Islamist clerics or non-cleric firebrands have entered the United States using student or professional visas — which are particularly easy for Saudi citizens to acquire — or who have illegally crossed over our uncontrolled borders. Those entering illegally from Canada or Mexico are especially concerning. If al-Awalki was involved in four plots that we know of, and, as we now know, U.S. authorities were following him but had not caught on to what he was up to, what might a number of illegal-alien Islamist clerics or firebrands — unknown to any U.S. police agency — be involved in today in the United States? Just to reflect on this potential threat for a moment ought to be enough to demolish the idea that controlling U.S. borders springs from racism rather than from legitimate national-security concerns.

Thus, America is beset with a significant number of U.S.-citizen and foreign-born Islamist clerics intent on inciting violence in the United States. This is a major concern, but the more important point is that these men obviously are working with a portion of the U.S. Muslim community that is susceptible to their incitement, a conclusion at least partially proven by the successful career of Anwar al-Awalki. And it is in this pool of Muslim Americans susceptible to instigation to attack their own country that disaster lies for all of us in the form of IEDs, ambushes, assassinations, and suicide bombs to be used on our highways, against our infrastructure, and in our towns and cities. It is therefore of surpassing importance to ask and then understand what gives the Islamist clerics’ incitement traction among some — usually young and male — Muslim Americans.

The answer is clear: Their incitement works because of the impact on the Muslim world of the overseas interventionism of our governing elite and its media supporters. But this truth will never be told to Americans by their leaders; indeed, they will keep lying to Americans even after Islamist attacks in the United States become routine.

When the violence begins, it will not be motivated by the hatred of young American Muslims for liberty, freedom, gender equality, or elections — the things U.S. leaders claim are the main motivations for al-Qaeda and other Islamists overseas. The attackers will instead be motivated by what the U.S. government does in the Islamic world. America’s mistake, al-Awalki explained in mid-July 2010, was that it

“thought it could threaten the lives of others, kill and invade, occupy and plunder, and conspire without bearing the consequences of its actions. 9/11 was the answer of millions of people who suffer from American aggression, and since then, America has not been safe. And nine years after 9/11, and nine years of spending, and nine years of beefing up security, you are still unsafe…. We are not against Americans for just being American. We are against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. What we see from America is the invasion of two Muslim countries; we see Abu Ghuraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay. We see cruise missiles and cluster bombs…. We cannot stand idly in the face of such aggression, and we will fight back and incite others to do the same.”

“I for one was born in the U.S. I lived in the U.S. for twenty-one years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam, involved in non-violent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq, and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding on myself, just as it is binding on every other Muslim.”

In other words, the young Muslim Americans who will wage war in America are motivated by the relentless interventionist policies imposed on the Muslim world by the U.S. bipartisan governing. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly and patiently explained this reality to Americans since August, 1996, and yet U.S. leaders and the media have ignored his words and replaced them with their own wished-for reality, which claims Muslims are attacking us because we vote, drink beer, and watch R-rated movies.

But the explanations of U.S. leaders are incorrect and show they are either liars or stupid people — there is no third option. The growth of anti-U.S. Islamist militancy and violence at home and abroad has occurred as a direct response to the manner in which U.S. leaders have maintained and expanded U.S. intervention in the Muslim world. “[The Fort Hood shooter Major] Nidal Hassan was not recruited by al-Qaeda,” al-Awalki has told Americans.

“Nidal Hassan was recruited by American crimes, and this is what America refuses to admit. American refuses to admit that its foreign policies are the reason behind a man like Nidal Hassan, born and raised in the U.S., turning his guns against American soldiers. And the more crimes America commits, the more mujahideen will be recruited to fight against it.”

Now no one need accept al-Awalki’s definition of U.S. foreign policies as “crimes;” the policies were clearly not created by mad men and women who lusted for a war at home and abroad with the Muslim world. Still, the beginning of wisdom is to recognize the hard but irrefutable truth in the words of al-Awalki, bin Laden, and dozens of other Islamist leaders: America is at war with Islam because of what its government does abroad and not for what Americans think or how they live at home.

We are at war because our Obamas, Bushes, Clintons, Cheneys, Bloombergs, McCains, Pelosis, Bidens, Schumers, McConnells, and Liebermans are rank interventionists, bent on supporting Israel without question, protecting Arab tyrannies, supporting India, China, and Russia against their domestic Muslim populations, and insisting that secular democracy be imposed on Muslims. When the killing and destruction starts in America the interventionist policies of these men and women will be the motivators of the Islamist attackers who kill Americans.

At day’s end, then, targeting U.S.-citizen Anwar al-Awalki is an important but subsidiary issue. Al-Awalki is a small part of a much greater problem that is now gathering momentum and heading toward a level of violence in America that has not been seen since our Civil War. For this reason it is time to reconsider which of our foreign policies toward the Muslim world are necessary for genuine U.S. security requirements, and which are in place only because of the influence bought through corrupt practices by the Israel-First lobby — which wants Islamist attacks in America to prove we are in the same boat as Israel — and the lobbies of the oil and arms-making industries who do the biding of the Saudis and other Arab tyrants. The Islamists’ center-of-gravity and glue of unity both depend on a status quo in U.S. foreign polices, and so both can be undermined by defeating the three lobbies who most support Washington’s interventionism.

And time is of the essence on this matter. While U.S. interventionism in the 20th century involved Americans in multiple unnecessary wars abroad, the interventionism of U.S. leaders in the first decade of the 21st century has brought us multiple wars abroad and has lit the fuse for a war here at home. To paraphrase John Quincy Adams, our governing elite went overseas to find Islamist dragons to slay, and by doing so gave birth to an Islamist dragon here at home which, before it is eliminated, will force the U.S. government to kill many Americans and see the country’s civil liberties’ environment changed forever.