Michael Scheuer | Non-Intervention

Last week on Bill O’Reilly’s program on FOX, he asked if it is important for the adjective “Islamic” or “Islamist” to be placed before the word terrorist, militant, insurgent, or extremist when we are attacked by a Muslim individual or group. The conservative guest tried to answer, but did so ineffectively. The liberal guest supported President Obama’s decision to de-name America’s mortal foes, using the tired old irrelevancy that Irish extremists were not called “Catholic terrorists.” There is such deep and enduring stupidity in this statement that I was surprised Mr. O’Reilly did not pound a figurative 20-penny nail into his guest’s forehead. All that ever needs to be said in response to this inanity is the IRA never claimed to attack anything in Catholicism’s name. It attacked in the name of hating Britain and reuniting Ireland as a secular or — for some — a socialist state.

Anyway, after giving Mr. O’Reilly’s question some thought, I believe there are at least five legitimate reasons why we ought to always use the adjective “Islamist” or “Islamic” whenever America is attacked by a Muslim individual or group. Language is mean to educate and when “Islamic” or “Islamist” are used Americans will be instructed about or prompted to remember that:

1. Islam is one of the world’s two great religions and claims a membership of more than 1.3 billion people. Bottom line: Our Islamist enemies draw from an enormous and devoutly religious manpower pool.
2. Virtually all our Muslim enemies describe themselves as “Islamic” or “Islamist” and claim to be waging a defensive jihad against the United States in response to Washington’s intervention in the Muslim world. Bottom line: We are, by definition, fighting a religious war if our growing number of Muslim enemies claim to be defending their faith — which they do. History has shown religious warriors of all faiths are among the most intense, violent, dedicated, and enduring of warriors. Our Islamist enemies, for example, have yet to approach the level of violence and indiscriminate killing practiced by Protestants and Catholics performing as the Reformation’s holy warriors.
3. Our Islamist enemies are not outside of Islam. Those who argue the Islamists have hijacked Islam, distorted it, or reinvented it are liars, dupes for Arab tyrants, ignorant, fools, or politicians trolling for votes. Bottom line: Most of our Islamist enemies fall into the Salafist or Wahhabi traditions of Sunni Islam. These are among the smaller sects of Sunnism, although some analysts claim Salafism is the fastest growing Sunni sect. These people are deeply conservative, draw almost exclusively on the Koran and the Prophet’s saying and traditions for guidance, and are martial in orientation when it comes to defending the faith. All this said, they are accepted by the great bulk of Muslims as “good Muslims” and to refuse to describe them as “Islamic” or “Islamist” as do President Obama and his team is to blind America to the nature of its enemy and to underestimate that enemy’s durability, patience, and potential for growth.
4. Opposition to and hatred for U.S. interventionism in the Muslim world is not resident solely in the Muslims who have picked up arms to fight us. Bottom line: This hatred is shared by 80 percent of the world’s Muslims, according to the results of polling Gallup conducted in every Muslim company over the course of several years. This hatred is shared equally by young and old, men and women, extremists and moderates, Arabs and non-Arab Muslims. The U.S. government’s policies — not the lifestyle of Americans — are thus a casus belli for Islamic civilization as a whole, and while only a tiny fraction of that civilization has so far resorted to war the number of fighters is growing in all areas of the Muslim world, including Europe and North America.
5. The concept of a defensive jihad in Islam — which our Islamist enemies claim to waging against us — is absolutely part, and an honored part of Islamic theology and history, and, by invading Iraq, Mr. Bush provided the irrefutable predicate for waging such a jihad. Indeed, many Muslims believe a defensive jihad against Islam’s infidel attackers is a form of worship, a belief which was shared completely by the leaders and soldiers of the Catholic armies that set out repeatedly in the 11th and 12th centuries to invade the Levant and evict Muslims from Holy Land. Bottom line: We are fighting an Islamist enemy whose jihad is justified by both his theology and his history. We certainly feel better describing the Islamists’ jihad as a terrorist campaign, but it brings us no understanding whatsoever of our Islamist enemies. And over the long run, it blinds us to the Islamist threat to America and will lead to our defeat.

Much more can be said on this topic, and there are many analysts far more qualified to elaborate on these points. This said, President Obama’s edict that his administration will not use the terms “Islamic” or “Islamist” or “jihad” when speaking of the Muslims who are attacking us can only please those men. This self-defeating ban — so like that imposed by the effete Europeans Obama and his party admire — signals Washington’s refusal to face reality. It also shows Obama — like Bush before him — has no intention of adequately or even minimally educating Americans about the growing threat they face from an Islamic civilization that universally hates and means to defeat the U.S. foreign policies it believes are meant to undermine and destroy Islam.

Almost before the car bomb in Times Square was defused, the city’s mayor, its police commissioner, and sundry politicians were heaping praise on the New York Police Department (NYPD) for “stopping” the attack. This spin will quickly take hold and become accepted as truth. It is not.

Saturday night’s events in Times Square are another defeat for the United States. While all our thanks must go to the NYPD officers who defused the car bomb, the idea that the police stopped the attack is a lie. The credit for that goes to a T-shirt salesman who reported smoke coming from the car bomb and to the would-be attackers amateur bomb-making. The hard truth is the NYPD was completely and utterly defeated. The Department did not know the attack was coming and would not have stopped it if not for the smoke and the T-shirt seller.

This will sound like a harsh attack on the NYPD, but it is not intended as such. The NYPD and all U.S. police departments — large and small — have been set up to fail and take the fall. If we learn in coming days that the attack was planned by Islamist militants, we also will learn these men were motivated by a belief that U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world is meant to undermine or destroy Islam. That is, the thankfully failed attack was caused by factors entirely beyond the control or influence of the NYPD; all it can do — all any U.S. police department can do — is prepare for more of the same. And that preparation for the future should be aimed as much at post-attack clean-up as for pre-attack interdiction. There are simply too many would-be attackers out there for the police to track and stop.

Sadly, the negative impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world is creating Islamist enemies for America at home and abroad far faster than they can be identified, let alone destroyed. Before this day is through, you can bet on two things: (1) the politicians will be on TV telling Americans that if the car bomb is the work of Islamists, it demonstrates they hate our freedoms and liberties; and (2) Washington will receive expressions of sympathy and offers of forensic help from Israel. Both will be aimed at inoculating Americans from anyone who suggests the truth: that the would-be attackers — if Islamists — are motivated by the U.S. government’s relentless interventionism in the Muslim world, not by the lifestyle and political philosophy of Americans. In short, the politicians will try to make sure Americans stay ignorant of intervention’s cost, and unaware that intervention is bringing war to their cities and streets.

The Islamist enemy we face would permit virtually none of the things we prize — elections, liberties or freedoms (as defined in the West), gender equality, etc. — in a country it governed. But very few Muslims are willing to kill themselves to stop us from enjoying those things. There are many, however, willing to die to end U.S. intervention in the Islamic world. For the last decade, for example, the U.S. and UK governments have not stopped a single Islamist attack in which the attackers were motivated by the West’s neo-pagan lifestyle. The documents and testimony acquired by authorities after an attack occurs or is prevented invariably point to motivation fueled by three things: (1) the U.S.-UK military presence in the Muslim world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan; (2) the half-century of U.S.-UK support of or protection for Arab police states in such places as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria; and (3) unqualified U.S., UK, and Western support for Israel. One might note, parenthetically, that these three motivators are among the causes listed by Osama bin Laden for the war he declared on America in August 1996, nearly 14 years ago.

Americans will not hear this explanation for our Islamist foes’ motivation on TV this Sunday or any Sunday; indeed, they will hear it described as an isolationist, anti-Semitic, and anti-U.S. view. That description will be a media-supported political tool intended to prevent Americans from asking questions politicians are rightfully terrified of answering. As a result, the NYPD and the country’s other police departments will keep working themselves to death trying to protect Americans, and all the while U.S. political leaders in both parties will press ahead with the interventionist policies that will insure all police departments fail. At day’s end, Washington’s interventionism is creating numbers of Islamist militants bent on waging jihad that will in time overwhelm the police departments’ manpower and capabilities.

The Tea Party folks are now in the strong position that always comes in a fight with self-blinded, delusional opponents. Mr. Obama and his party, most Republicans, and the media are so arrogant they do not see they are talking only to themselves, while much of the the country comes together against them. The president’s remarks last week about how Tea Party forces ought to “thank him” is a good example of how far removed he is from a reality that finds millions of Americans believing he and our political elite are deliberately trying to destroy what they and their ancestors — white, black, yellow, and red — have built on this continent over the past 400 years.

Mr. Obama, his Ivy League colleagues, most Republicans, and the media shills who back them regard America and the world as laboratories for their campaign to build a country that matches their collectivist, amoral, and anti-republican ideology. They want to “perfect” the rest of us in their image, which means all must think as they do.

This is what happens, I think, when people separate themselves from anything that might be truthfully termed religious faith. I am not talking here about any particular religion or sect, but rather the belief that there is a God who made the world and its inhabitants, who demands the latter obey some minimal rules of decency in relations with each other, and who gave humans the ability to reason and with it the ability to see that while God is perfect, they are not, cannot made so, and therefore need to give each other the benefit of the doubt as often as possible.

Mr. Obama and his political peers in both parties talk a good religious game, but most, it seems to me, have long ago lost the sense that they are imperfect human beings ultimately accountable to their maker. They are intent in perfecting the rest of us, or least creating conditions in which we cannot not object to or block their behavior. The beginning of this process is to eradicate any sense of America being a special place worth preserving with as much prosperity and independence as possible. Mr. Obama, with help from his party and most Republicans, is excelling at this kind of destruction:

• He has increased the amount of foreign aid that America will give away to the rest of the world from the nearly $30 billion level of 2009. He and his bipartisan colleagues act as if this is “their” money, not the taxpayers. They also act as if it is a genuinely moral decision to take part of the money the federal government steals from our pockets and give it to foreigners — while Americans here at home are unemployed, hungry, and in other ways having a tough time. The message can only be read to say: “To hell with Americans, we political leaders want to appear benevolent by giving money to foreigners who we think are more worthy of help than the Americans who worked for the money being given away.”
• He and his bipartisan colleagues continue to conduct wars overseas that they have no intention of winning. Whatever position each of us hold on the Afghan and Iraq wars, I doubt there is anyone who wanted to see U.S. soldiers and Marines die in wars our political leaders never meant to win. As in the area of foreign aid, Obama and his Republican peers seem to think that these young people are “theirs” and so can be “spent” as they see fit, even if it means wasting their lives by involving us in wars they do not mean to win. Again, the message can only read: “To hell with American parents, we will use their kids lives as we see fit, after all an American life is worth no more than that of any foreigner.”
• He, his party, and the Republicans have decided to “perfect” the U.S. Constitution by deciding its requirement that Congress declare war is no longer valid, and that, as superior men and women, they can decide where and when to go to war without the American people having a say in the decision. More than that, they believe they have every right to make policies that yield situations where war is automatic if foreign powers act in certain ways; if, for example, China goes after Taiwan, Serbia decides to retake its stolen Kosovo province, North Korea attacks South Korea, or if Israel decides on war with Iran. This message can only read: “To hell with Americans, our job is to decide when and where to go to war, or when to allow others to decide that issue for you, the only role U.S. citizens have is to cheerfully pony up the taxes and young people we will waste in such wars.”
• He and all recent presidents have conducted a war on Christianity in America under the banner of the “separation of church and state.” Falsely claiming that they are doing the Founders’ work, these men and women, through their actions and appointments, have aided — or at least have done nothing to stop — the creation of “rights” that are nothing less than attacks on Christian beliefs. Whether by eradicating the term “Christmas” from our public lexicon; by championing nearly every kind of sexual deviance, or by facilitating the murder of 45-plus million unborn Americans by defending and perpetuating a Supreme Court decision even more merciless, anti-human, and lethal than Dred Scott, our political leaders have a message that can only read: “To hell with American Christians, we regard them as out-dated simpletons, we hate their God, and we will create a federal government that takes His place.” [NB: Other religions of course are exempt from the “separation of church and state” sanction. They are, rather, to be favored by our national government and with our tax money. Tyrannical Islamic theocracies are protected by the U.S. military and Islam is called a “religion of peace” whose young men just happen to be killing our soldiers and Marines, and the “Jewish state” receives tens of billions of dollars annually to help maintain its theocracy and involve our soldier-children in its expansionism and endless religious war.)

The perfection sought by Mr. Obama and his bipartisan colleagues, then, seems to be one in which they remake America and the world in their image, no matter what the cost to the Americans. Most Americans, in our leaders’ minds, are badly flawed because they still harbor such quaint ideas as love of God, country, family, and neighbor, and so are fit only to pay in treasure and blood for their leaders’ experiments in perfecting people at home and abroad.

The Tea Party people see, reject, and are challenging this agenda. They are, for now, doing so peacefully. We should all hope that Obama, his party, and the Republicans begin to see that their smug sense of invulnerability and superiority is unwarranted and blinds them to a whirlwind of anger they have knowingly sowed and which — in one form or another — they will surely reap.

The National Journal has a blog on national security affairs that I contribute to and this week’s question had to do with Obama, nuclear proliferation, and how to make America secure therefrom. As discussed here last week, I fear the nuclear problem is out of control and that international agreements to secure WMDs are needed but about 20 years too late. For America, as a result, only effective border control has a chance — if slim one —to stop a nuclear or other WMD attack in the United States.

The NJ discussion ended up talking in part about whether President Obama was a talented, far-sighted leader or a naive 1960’s kid in way over his head. I took the later view and was upbraided by long-time Washington “expert” who asked what world I lived in and suggested that I am too dumb to recognize the brilliance of our current genius leader. Well, I must admit that I am none-too-brilliant, but Obama’s genius has yet to become apparent to me.

Below, for what it is worth, is my response to my upbraider.

Poor Mr. _____. He has reached the point that all living in Washington risk reaching — an absolute in ability to distinguish between motion and movement, and between skill and artifice.

The world I live in is the one all non-delusional Americans live in; that is, one where our recent presidents in both parties have failed utterly to defend America. Obama has little to do with the issue, except that he, like his three predecessors, is unwilling to do the hard things needed to protect the country and works only for re-election. The nuclear conference was a hoax, and to even dream that Obama is in the same league as the other presidents whose ultimate aim was no nukes suggests a pressing need for anti-hallucinatory medication. Poor Pollyanna Obama is just fresh red meat for Medvedev and Putin to munch on at their leisure. Anyway, too much nuclear stuff has been loose for too long. A nuclear device is on it’s way to CONUS from somewhere, and the one, slim chance to stop it is to control our borders, but Obama, like his predecessors, will not do that, and so — BOOM.

What else? Well, Obama is content to lose wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — as was Bush — but he hates the military as good 1960’s child must. As a result, our soldiers and Marines will die in Afghanistan until at least the midterm elections so he and his party can look like they give a hoot about winning. If Obama and his party lose the Congress, then our kids will stay in Afghanistan and die so he and his avisers can figure a way to exploit their pointless sacrifice to win in 2012.

He has made our war with Islam worse by kissing Mubarak’s butt and issuing his grandstanding promises at Cairo which he has no intention — or, given his subservience to Netanyahu, no capability — of keeping. He continues to wage war against the U.S. Intelligence Community in the name of his own “moral compass, which simultaneously guides him to surround himself with socialists, America-haters, and “experts” who in everyday America would accurately be regarded as political and/or social lepers.

Like his predecessors, he spends us into the poor house, sells our debt to our enemies, and talks as if American power and will is respected in the world as it was under Reagan, never recognizing that most of the world sees the U.S. Federal government for what it is — a corrupt, elitist, avaricious, delusional, tapped out, and used up old Madam whose wondrous and compelling allure is apparent only to her own mind.

This then is the world I live in, and my children and grandchildren — and yours — are very likely to live in worse.

By the end of 1991 — 19 years ago if you’re counting — the Soviet Union was gone and a new Russian government was in power. At the time there was much heated, anxious discussion over the need for immediate U.S.-Russian cooperation to bring under effective control all of the former USSR’s 22,000-plus nuclear weapons. Then, in the 2004 presidential election campaign, John Kerry and George W. Bush debated whether that arsenal should be brought under full control by 2008 or 2010. On Monday, President Obama will convene in Washington a so-called nuclear summit aimed at stopping nuclear proliferation and preventing al-Qaeda and its allies from acquiring and using a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon against the United States or one of its allies. And, by the way, when the conference opens none of the attendees will be able to verify that the former-USSR’s WMD arsenal is fully controlled.

Who is kidding who? Most Americans probably presume that President Obama and his team are holding the conference to protect their country. They would be right, but mainly in the theoretical sense. Obama is holding the conference so Americans “think” that he and the Republicans — this is an effort with bipartisan support — are doing something to defend them against the WMD threat. All such international conferences produce enormous amounts of blather and precious little substantive accomplishment. When it concludes, Obama will appear with the other attendees gathered around him and announce that the world is safer because of the conference and that this safety will henceforth grow through international cooperation. And the former-USSR’s nuclear arsenal still will not be fully secured.

Effective international control over the illicit trafficking in WMDs and/or their components is a long-term effort and — given the waste of nearly two decades — one that still has a long way to go. Most reports show that the number of cases of trafficking in these materials is growing, and that many of the trafficking operations that are discovered and stopped in one way or another are tied back to the states of the former-USSR. But there are also numerous incidents where nuclear-related materials are stolen or illegally purchased in countries that do not have adequate control over the nuclear reactors they use for research purposes or to produce electrical power. In short, the possible sources of WMD-related componets and materials are many and there appears to be no quick multi-national fix for this problem.

What do do? Well surely Obama and the Republicans should press ahead with their summit and then try to implement whatever measures it produces. But expecting this to prevent our Islamist foes from acquiring and using some kind of WMD inside the United States is pretty near a forlorn hope. Ultimately, and as always, America’s defense will depend on its willingness to do its own heavy lifting. Because we cannot expect effective international controls anytime soon, our bipartisan leaders’ best bet for keeping a WMD out of the United States is — no surprise here — to control our land and water borders. Airline security has improved to the point where it would be difficult to get nuclear materials into America on a civilian airliner (although the issues of chemical and biological weapons and suicide bombers on airliners are a long way from being solved). But driving a nuclear device into the United States from Mexico or floating one across the Niagara River from Fort Erie, Ontario, to Buffalo, New York, — as we floated beer across on many a summer day when I was a kid — is a lead-pipe cinch. In other words, Obama’s summit can produce potential safety in the decades ahead, but only near-term and effective border control — which means using the U.S. military — can offer any reasonable chance of defending the United States against nuclear materials that have already been illicitly acquired.

One other point of interest. Osama bin Laden formed his al-Qaeda organization in 1988. It has been seeking to acquire a nuclear and other WMD capability since 1989. In other words, al-Qaeda and its allies have a twenty-year head start over whatever this week’s summit decides to do.

Having been at war with Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and their growing number of allies for nearly fourteen years, Americans now find they have elected a president who has a solution for the problem.

Faced with increasing Muslim hatred for the impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Islamic world, Obama and his advisers have decided that the U.S. government will no longer use the words “Islam” or “Islamic” to describe our enemies, or the word “jihad” to describe the war they are waging against us. This usage, they say, “offends” Muslims. The impetus for the decision seems to be to appease those who do not like the use of the word “Islamic” when it is tied to the anti-U.S. jihad being waged by many Muslims. The “offended” are mostly the Saudi and Gulf regimes that fund much of the federal debt and hold the oil dagger over our economy’s heart, as well as the U.S.-based Muslim groups they sponsor and which use the constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom to spread a martial and anti-Christian brand of Islam. Those who are killing our soldiers and Marines abroad, however, are only too proud to describe themselves as Islamists who are waging a defensive jihad against “Christian-Zionist Crusaders.” In addition, their leaders and clerical supporters have repeatedly declared “this war is preeminently a war of creeds.”

Obama’s actions on this issue and others raise a good number of troubling questions:

• Why would Obama deliberately make it more difficult for Americans to understand the world they live in and the Islam-motivated forces that are attacking them?
• Why has he deliberately dismantled the CIA programs which — whatever you think of them — provided at least some success against al-Qaeda when he has nothing to put in their place?
• Why — like his predecessors — has he done nothing to defend U.S. borders when U.S. citizens continue to be killed by Mexican gangsters or illegal aliens?
• Why does he refuse to tell Americans how many Muslim illegals are stopped each month crossing our borders; give them an estimate of how many we miss; and note that the threat of nuclear terrorism in the United States cannot be lessened unless our land and water borders are effectively controlled?
• We does he allow the United States to be humiliated by thugs like Netanyahu and non-entities like Hamid Karzai?
• Why is he eager for a war with Iran that is dictated to him by Israel and pro-Israel U.S. citizens?
• Why does he surround himself with advisers who manifest almost every kind of anti-U.S., anti-republican, and anti-Christian ideology imaginable, and whose blood lust is reserved not for America’s enemies but for its unborn?
• Why has he wasted 16 months on a health care bill opposed by half the population, while allowing unemployment to grow and building the federal deficit to intolerable and unsustainable heights?
• Why is he allowing this massive debt to be funded by U.S. enemies in Beijing and Riyadh?
• Why has he shackled rules-of-engagement on our soldiers and Marines that make them targets and not the killers they should be?
• Why has he warned our Afghan enemies three-months in advance of the coming U.S.-led military offensive in Kandahar so they can sow the city and province with mines, IEDs, and booby-traps to kill our troops?
• Why has he stopped improving the quality of U.S. nuclear weapons while our enemies keep improving their weapons?

Aside from the fact that Obama, his advisers, and their predecessors have been mentally crippled and inculcated with hatred for America by effete and amoral Ivy League educations, I have no answers for the foregoing. But I do believe the Founders saw the chance that these fellows would come down the pike at some point and therefore included the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

In terms of open borders, deliberately misidentifying our Islamist foes and their motivation, refusing to permit U.S. troops to defeat the country’s enemies, groveling to and obeying Israel, and squandering our taxes, Obama is more extreme only in degree than his immediate predecessors.

We will have the 2010 and 2012 elections to clean out this unsavory gang of over-educated, anti-American elitists, but in the mean time Americans ought to keep their powder dry. Violence and crime from Mexico and the next chapter of the war been Israelis and Muslims are clearly coming to U.S. streets. And given the performance so far of Obama’s administration, and his predecessors’ record of abject failure in the same areas, it seems clear that Americans will have no one but themselves — armed with the 2nd Amendment’s guarantees — to defend their families, property, and independence.

One of the signal problems for Americans is to see how so many seemingly disparate events fit into the Islamists’ war against the United States. Last week’s subway bombings in Moscow, for example, seem, at first blush, to be tragic but altogether unrelated to the United States. But are they?

The answer I think is no, they are not unrelated. The Islamists’ overall goal in waging war against the United States is to drive it as far as possible out of the Muslim world. To do that, Osama bin Laden and his allies have focused on three aims: (1) to help bleed America to bankruptcy; (2) to spread out U.S. military intelligence forces so that they lack flexibility and reserves; and 3) to stimulate as much political dissent and suspicion of the federal government in the United States as possible — with the goal of weakening our society’s cohesion — and to strip away allies from the United States.

In this context, the Moscow bombings have their most obvious impact on the first aim, to help bleed us to bankruptcy. Almost before the full story in Russia was known, the city governments in New York and Washington, DC, acted to increase security for their municipal transportation systems, thereby draining further funds from budgets that are already deeply in the red. Though not well covered in the media, I cannot help but think that other cities with metro systems surely followed suit.

There are those who will argue that this is nothing to worry about, that the expense of increased subway security is small in the overall scheme of things. And they would be correct, if the expense is looked at in isolation. But when one recalls that the bombings occurred over 4,000 miles away, injured no Americans, were aimed at a foreign power, and that the U.S. economy is already bleeding profusely from the more direct impacts of the Islamists’ war, it is clear that the Moscow attacks did at least marginally advance the Islamists’ goal of helping to bleed our economy.

The second impact of the attack lies in Washington’s immediate expression of support and sympathy for Russia in the wake of the attacks. In the minds of most of us, I would suspect, this was the right thing to do given the human and material damage done by the bombings. And yet in this odd war — where so many U.S. choices are lose-lose — there is even a cost to expressing sympathy.

As I have long argued, the major motivation for our Islamist enemies is the interventionism of the U.S. government in the Muslim world. One aspect of this interventionism that the Islamists have focused on since the mid-1990s is Washington support for states that oppress Muslims, most often naming Russia, India, and China as such states. In the case of our support for Moscow in the bombings? wake, Washington has again shown that it stands at the side of those our foes regard as the enemies of Islam. And in the case of the North Caucasus — where the bombers seem to have come from — it is hard to argue their point.

Since the early 1990s there has been an ongoing confrontation between Russia and its six republics in the North Caucasus. There have been two major ‘Chechen Wars’ that most in the West are familiar with, but in the last decade there has been a slowly but steadily growing insurgency across all six of the republics. This insurgency, moreover, has shed much of its initial secular/nationalist fervor in favor of an increasingly Islamist orientation. And while there are some Arab fighters and probably much Arab money aiding the North Caucasus insurgents, the motivation of those fighters is predominantly local — to throw off the Russian yoke and its attendant corruption and brutality in favor of independence and the rule of Islam.

In this situation, Washington’s support for Russia after last week’s bombings will be seen by and advertised in the Muslim world as yet another example of U.S. willingness to support any country that will oppress Muslims. Again, this is not to say that we should not have publicly supported Russia — although that discussion is worth having — but it is to say that Americans should at least be aware that the policy of supporting Russia does have a cost attached to it. Too often, I believe, we follow policies that have long been in place — such as expressing support for governments hit by the Islamists — without being cognizant of the cost that comes with what we tend to see as a simple good deed.

At day’s end, then, the bombings in Moscow can be accurately described as far away, not aimed at the United States, and motivated in the first instance by local grievances. But they are not without cost to the United States, and to acknowledge this is good first step toward beginning to see the Islamists’ war against America as a whole, and not — as we have — as a series of unrelated and compartmented problems labeled “Iraq,” “Afghanistan,” “Yemen,” etc., etc.

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden last week issued a short statement saying that his forces would kill captured U.S. personnel if Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and his al-Qaeda colleagues were executed after trial. This threat should be taken to the bank as the correlation between bin Laden’s words and deeds would put any Western leader’s record to shame.

But what motivated bin Laden? I believe it was the amateurishness, and really the stupidity of Barack Obama and Eric Holder — or of those who advise them on foreign policy, General James Jones and John Brennan. President Obama campaigned on the idea that the use of renditions, harsh interrogations, and Guantanamo Bay were “recruiting tools” for al-Qaeda. He pledged to do away with all of them and show the Islamic world that Muslim extremists could be treated fairly by the renowned U.S. judicial system. After taking office, Mr. Obama dismantled the CIA operational system that had yielded significant if not war-winning successes. Or, perhaps, the idea that he “paralyzed” the system would be more appropriate, as much of it still exists in name as he and his advisers have not devised replacements equal in effectiveness and more compatible with what Obama called his “moral compass.”

Well, okay, Obama is president and has the authority — given the supine behavior of Congress — to do pretty much as he pleases in foreign, defense, and intelligence policy. But that should not include having America lead with its chin. Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder have been outspoken in their claims that Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and the others would be — as in the days of Judge Roy Bean — “tried, convicted, and hung.” And most recently, Mr. Holder has said that bin Laden himself should be killed if found and not captured. I happen to agree with him on bin Laden, but not until all indictments are dropped against bin Laden so we are not also killing the U.S. judicial system when we kill bin Laden. It has never been the U.S. judicial system’s tradition to arbitrarily kill a person is has been trying to arrest for 13 years.

As a consequence of what the president and the attorney general have said, Americans now have the worst of both worlds. These gentlemen have largely halted rendition/interrogation operations that contributed some to U.S. defense and they have established the U.S. judicial system in Muslim perceptions — and perception is reality — as being completely fair and just so long as you are not a Muslim. If you believe that the Bush system was a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, will not a U.S. judicial system that is portrayed by Obama and Holder as a legal façade hiding an intent to lynch be an even better recruiting tool?

At day’s end, however, the over-arching problem for the United States remains what may well be a case of lethal deafness among our bipartisan political elite. The worldwide Islamist militant movement has grown — not shrunk — since 9/11. The bombings in Moscow this morning are symbolic of that growth as they surely were executed by representatives of the Islamist insurgency now thriving in the North Caucasus. And look around the world to Yemen, Somalia, Mindanao, Pakistan, Kashmir, and southern Thailand and you will see Islamist insurgencies that have either started or have been revitalized from quiescence since 9/11. Most worrying, look at the growth of Islamist militancy inside the United States and the UK.

As the movement led and — more important — inspired by bin Laden and al-Qaeda grows, only Representative Paul’s voice is on the record for consistently warning Americans that the Islamists are motivated by what the U.S. government — under both parties — does in the Muslim world, and not by what Americans think and how they live. We are at war with a growing part of the Muslim world because of U.S. interventionism and not because our daughters go to university, we drink beer after work, or we vote in elections. The war is spreading because we invaded Iraq, because we are half-century-long supporters of Muslim tyrannies, and because we are Israel’s reliably abject servants.

Whether or not any of these motivators for the Islamists’ war on America are to be changed is up to the American people. But you can be absolutely sure that unless Rep. Paul’s warnings are heeded and acted on at the grassroots level there will be no pressure on our governing elite to change, and they will keep static the interventionist policies that are driving America toward military defeat, widespread domestic violence, and economic ruin.

As I am sure all recall, seven CIA officers were killed in a suicide attack near the Afghan town of Khowst in late December 2009. As always when such incidents occur, there are numbers of retired CIA officers who are eager to criticize the Agency and its officers for mistakes the critics claim they surely would not have made had they been in charge. There has been quite a bit of that in the Khowst case, but among the subtle themes in the criticism has been one by “old boy” CIA officers whose basic claim — when you strip away their patronizing and clearly faux grief over the loss of “under-trained female officers” at Khowst — is that there is little place for females in CIA’s Directorate of Operations and no place for them in overseas operations.

A good example of the kind of chauvinism is an article entitled “CIA, Stabbed in the heart?” and available at the website: noquarterusa.net. With wet eyes and malignant intent the comment posted there on an article in GQ by Robert Baer — and the Baer article itself — sound as if they are saluting the fallen officers, but they are both really part of these retired officers’ ongoing war against the CIA, and especially on the idea of sending “girl officers” to do a man’s job. I sent a comment to the site this morning and have appended it below.

Sir:

As always among you “old boys” this supposedly “accurate” piece by Baer, and Johnson’s comment on it, are nothing more than patronizing, anti-female-in-the-Agency claptrap. Those who died at Khowst were well trained and dedicated officers who did their best for the United States. Unlike most retired CIA officers, the serving officers at Khowst were not sitting on the sidelines and attacking their former employer and sniping at those — women and men — who risk their lives in America’s defense. The dead at Khowst did not have time to sit safely in North America and dwell on the glories of the good old days when “real men” could tell Americans — as Johnson memorably did — that they have less to fear from Islamists than they do from spiders or lawnmowers or whatever threat the old boys felt qualified to tackle while they were working.

All Americans should know that all of the chances to kill bin Laden under Clinton and Bush — 14 in all — were based on the work of women as much as or more than men. Indeed, the senior officer killed at Khowst and her colleagues are dead not because of the old boys’ claim that they were under-trained — which is a lie — but because the men who ran the U.S. government they served were cowards and failed to take the opportunities to protect America that were provided almost equally by the CIA’s female and male officers.

M. F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA

There still seem to be Americans who believe that one of the two major parties is dedicated to restoring U.S. sovereignty and independence. I tend to believe that idea is wrong. If America is to be restored and preserved intact for our posterity — shaped and governed as the Founders intended — other political vehicles will have to be devised.

As a bit of evidence of how willing our political leaders are to do anything, no matter how humiliating to be reelected, I have pasted in below part of the text of a Republican donation-seeking mass mailing I received last night. The note was from the party’s House leader John Boehner and clearly shows how willing the Republicans are to grovel before Israel and the U.S. Israel-Firsters if it means more money for the party and a chance for reelection in the fall.

Boehner’s message is that Israel has not humiliated America nearly enough to merit even a squeak of protest from the administration; indeed, Boehner seems to blame President Obama for forcing Netanyahu to behave in public in his true form: that of a crude, war-mongering, two-bit political bully. Boehner suggests that any questioning or criticism of Israel is unAmerican and unworthy of our important ally. Boehner’s note in fact praises the bipartisan abdication of U.S. sovereignty that has occurred over the past 20 years. He thereby makes it very clear that both parties are willing to have Israel take the United States into its religious war so long as campaign donations from AIPAC keep flowing into their pockets. So locked in AIPAC’s thrall is Boehner that he shows no embarrassment or shame in asking for money from the parents of children who have and are dying uselessly for Israel in Iraq.

While it may be an apocryphal story, I recall reading that a young Lieutenant George Patton once offered a Fourth of July toast in the following words: “God bless America, and God damn her enemies.” Though Patton spoke long ago, he somehow knew that Boehner and his like would someday appear and merit God’s damning.

Following is the partial text of Boehner’s e-mail:

“Fellow Friend of Israel,

The Obama Administration’s heated denouncement of our ally Israel’s actions in approving the development of 1600 apartments in East Jerusalem during Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit was beyond irresponsible.

The actions taken by Israel were absolutely consistent with the policy and commitments of three previous U.S. administrations. It is this current administration’s attempt to renege on such previous promises that is abhorrent and should be condemned by all Americans. It is clearly an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship, but most importantly, from a national security standpoint, it is beyond comprehension why this administration would choose to demonize and weaken Israel — the U.S.’s closest friend, the strongest democracy and our most important military ally in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, this development is just another example of how the far left ignores the principles and traditions of America. The Obama Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to U.S. national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies.”