The President Shouts "Squirrel"; NYT Hails Modern Day Kellogg Briand Pact (Updated)

Between the IRS, Benghazi, AP & Fox scandals, it is safe to surmise that the Obama administration felt that it had lost control of the media cycle. So it is no surprise that team Obama would make a highly touted, short notice speech on _____________ (insert non-scandal related topic here). In this case, they opted to make the topic "counterterrorism." The underlying theme was "LOOK, A SQUIRREL." You can read the speech here.

There was virtually nothing new in this speech beyond the gloss. Obama used a lot of words to cover ground he has covered before - for example, close Guantanamo, how to authorize drone strikes, treating counterterrorism as a legal matter rather than one of war, change the AUMF, and foreign aid for unfriendly governments.

The most troubling part of the speech was when Obama restated his intent to unilaterally end the "War on Terror." We may of course end our side of it, but somehow I doubt that al Qaeda or Iran will respond in kind. Obama asked for Congress to withdraw the Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed after 9-11, both on grounds that it was no longer necessary and because, he intimated, future governments could not be trusted with such an open ended authorization.

What Obama succeeded in doing in his speech was to highlight just how utterly naive and dangerous his foreign policy truly is. Obama ignored Iran and the nuclear threat it poses. He ignored all of the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. He almost wholly ignored the role of al Qaeda in Syria and how the Syrian civil war is destabilizing the entire Middle East. He almost wholly ignored the extensive gains by al Qaeda across North Africa - including in Libya and Benghazi, as well as ignoring the attack on our diplomats in Benghazi but for an embrace of the Accountability Review Board recommendations.

After jaw droppingly asserting that we now face only the same dangers as we faced pre 9-11, Obama explained the threat as: ,

Most, though not all, of the terrorism we faced is fueled by a common ideology -- a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the United States is not at war with Islam. And this ideology is rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of terrorist attacks.

If you were to drill down to the single greatest problem with Obama's foreign policy, it is shown in the above paragraph. The terrorism we face is not "fueled by a common ideology," it is fueled by a common strand of a religion - Wahhabi Salafi Islam. It is not "rejected" by the "vast majority of Muslims," it is the mainstream of teaching coming out of Saudi Arabia and Saudi influenced mosques and madrassas around the world. Indeed, it is an interpretation of Islam that is spreading around the world, overtaking all other forms of Islam. Bottom line, so long as Obama and the left around the world try to whitewash Islam - and in particular, Wahhabism - and shield it from sunlight and responsibility, we will hemorrhage blood and gold dealing with the threat.

One other issue of note was Obama's attempt to deflect blame on the AP and Fox investigation scandals by calling for a media shield law to protect journalists. In other words, 'stop me before I do it again.

So this was Obama's attempt to reset the media narrative. Its effect won't last, but that won't be because the far left in the media fail to talk up this ridiculous speech as something substantive rather than the bit of refried misdirection that it actually is. The NYT editorial board is a case in point. It claims to be in thrall with the Obama speech, and in particular, his decision to unilaterally end war:

President Obama’s speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.

If this were not so deadly serious, one would have to laugh at this bit of insanity. It is the NYT cheering a modern day Kellogg-Briand Pact, the 1928 declaration outlawing war and signed by, among others Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union.

Update: MSNBC joins the NYT in labeling Obama's speech as "historic." One wonders whether between the NYT and MSNBC there is an ounce of intellectual honesty.



Update: Andrew McCarthy at NRO makes precisely the same points I raised above about Obama's speech. Michael Ledeen at PJM is left bewildered that Obama could make a speech on counterterrorism and not mention the world's biggest source of terrorism, Iran.

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Where Are The Muslim Moderates?

The radical muzzies and their allies in the left wing media are on a bender attacking the NYC police for their counterterrorism operations. So where are the moderate Muslims in all of this? They are in NYC for a counter-demonstration in support of the NYPD. This is all part of a much larger fight for the future of Islam. The American Islamic Leadership Coalition, AILC, released the following statement on this issue:

Since the 2007 release of its Intelligence Division's landmark report, "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat," the NYPD has come under a systematic and coordinated assault by highly-politicized Islamist organizations and their enablers, intent on dismantling the NYPD's successful counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization programs. These groups would prefer to see American Muslims shackled to a mindset of victimization, and thus alienated from American society at large, rather than confront the very real issues we face in our communities, including the threat of extremist ideology.

It is important to note that published NYPD documents clearly and appropriately distinguish between the religion of Islam, and the highly politicized ideology of hatred, supremacy and violence characteristic of political Islam (i.e., "Islamism"), and especially the subset thereof known as "jihadi Salafism." Significantly, since the attacks of 9/11, the NYPD has displayed far greater courage in acknowledging and addressing the ideological factors that cause radicalization among Muslims, than have the majority of federal agencies explicitly tasked with defending our nation and its people.

The AILC deplores the widespread tendency of government officials, journalists, academicians and activists to assume that Islamist organizations historically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami, Wahhabism and Salafism represent mainstream American Muslims or our concerns.

The American Islamic Leadership Coalition recognizes and regrets the widespread fear of Islam and Muslims that has arisen in recent years in North America and Europe. However, we ascribe this rise of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim attitudes primarily to the actions of Muslims themselves (i.e., Islamists), whose efforts to establish an Islamic caliphate, an Islamic state, and/or to impose an antiquated and falsely-divinized human understanding of Islamic law upon others by force, dominate our daily headlines, and inevitably generate a strong sense of disgust-and visceral mistrust-among many of our fellow citizens.

Any and all efforts to conceal the Islamist agenda, or render its discussion beyond the pale of acceptable discourse-by branding such talk as "Islamophobia" or "hate speech"-threatens not only our common freedom and security, but the very future of Islam itself. For the Islamists' prime goal is the silencing of Muslim opposition, and of any voice in the Muslim world that would challenge their monolithic, sterile and shallow understanding of Islam, which lacks the spirituality that enables religion to serve as a true path to God.

A campaign of vilification waged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies against the NYPD has reached new heights over the past six weeks, with no less than eight separate stories having appeared in the New York Times from January 24 - February 15, 2012, including an editorial from its editorial board and a page one feature, which concern the screening of a film entitled The Third Jihad to some 1,400 NYPD officers while they waited for a training program.

In light of the swirling controversy over the New York Police Department's counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization practices, we feel it is our civic, moral and religious duty to publicly address a number of issues raised by this controversy.

We have viewed The Third Jihad, and regard the information presented therein to be both factually accurate, and important for our fellow Muslim and non-Muslim citizens to understand, debate and address. The Third Jihad is narrated by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an AILC founding member, and a devout Muslim, physician and former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. At the very outset of the film Dr. Jasser states, "This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of 'radical' Islam. Only a small percentage of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are radical."

The Third Jihad explicitly distinguishes between the religion of Islam, and the highly politicized ideology of religious hatred, supremacy and violence characteristic of Islamism. While the film does not examine the pluralistic, tolerant and spiritual traditions of Islam that lie at the heart of our own understanding thereof, this does not imply that the film is inaccurate in its depiction of what it specifically terms "radical Islam," as exemplified by movements such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Wahhabism (aka "Salafism") and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Notwithstanding Islamist claims to the contrary, we believe there is nothing inappropriate about the NYPD or other security agencies using the film The Third Jihad to help their staff understand and recognize the ideology that underlies and animates Islamist terrorism.

In recent weeks, other media outlets have targeted the NYPD for its community policing, and its monitoring efforts on college campuses, alleging that these constitute religious discrimination and profiling.

The AILC affirms that all inhabitants of the United States are entitled to equal protection under the law, regardless of race, ethnicity and religion. However, there is a major distinction between alleged religious profiling and sound law enforcement. As Mayor Bloomberg stated recently:

"We cannot repeat the mistakes we made after the 1993 bombing and slack in our vigilance…Reacting after the fact is not enough…We do not target individuals based on race or religion…We follow all possible leads wherever they take us."

The issue at hand is not "improper surveillance." Rather, it is the responsibility of the NYPD to know the communities it must serve and protect, and to anticipate any terrorist threats thereto, including those that arise from the ideological indoctrination of Muslims with a "jihadi-Salafi" mindset. In regard to the legality of the NYPD's activities, we note that according to the modified Handschu guidelines, "[f]or the purpose of protecting or preventing terrorist activities, NYPD is authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public, on the same terms and conditions as members of the public generally."

To our knowledge, no NYPD counter-terrorism cases have given rise to departmental abuses of power. Nor have any of the scurrilous attacks directed against the NYPD cited specific legal improprieties known to have occurred. We find it particularly disturbing that while seeking to undermine public confidence in the NYPD through innuendo-and issuing calls for "oversight," "corrective training" and "participation" by the "Muslim community" (i.e., Islamists!) in all counter-terrorist programs initiated by the NYPD-none of these reports have cited a single case in which the NYPD has been admonished by executive or judicial authorities for the tactics it employs to prevent terrorist attacks

Unlike those who dream of establishing an Islamic state or caliphate, members of the AILC are dedicated to theseparation of state and religion and the defense of our constitution, which guarantees equality before the law and the right of all individuals to worship as they see fit.

Thus, we come to New York City as a coalition, to proclaim that American Muslims are not monolithic, and that a broad spectrum of Muslims support the courageous work of the NYPD to defend this city, and our nation, from attack.

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Hey, A Transportation Security System That Works

Because of Islamic terrorism, we are having to institute such draconian and troubling measures as full body scans. As I have written before, I have less than zero sympathy for Muslim complaints over religious objections to these security measures. And indeed, I read today that in Britain, two Muslim women refused to go through a full body scan at Manchester Airport. The end result, they were not allowed to board their plane. That's a heartening success story in my book.

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A Dangerous Retreat From The War Of Ideas

Within the past week, Homeland Security released the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, and Defense Department released the Quadrennial Defense Review. These are major reports designed to drive policy for the next few years. Yet reading through the two of them, there seems to be something missing - like any mention of the threat from "Islamic" terrorists. Indeed, other than a mention of al Qaeda and generic "terrorists," the word "Islam" and its derivations do not appear in either report.

This is PC madness. It is wishing the problems away. We will never - repeat never - win the war against Islamic terrorism unless and until we engage in the war of ideas against the ideology driving that terrorism. I criticized Bush for only engaging in the war of ideas half heartedly. But that is a half more than Obama has done. Obama has completely retreated from the war of ideas. That is a dangerous retreat indeed, as to quote former terrorist Dr. Tawfiq Hamid, "the civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology."

Let's highlight that for a moment. Let's do a little exercise.

1. Do you know the person pictured at the top of this post?

2. He is a cleric in what denomination of Islam?

3. What is his background?

4. Why is he important?

5. Ideologically, what differentiates him from, say, Zhudi Jasser or David Suliman Schwartz, two prominent Muslims in America?

6. What is different about the pictured man's version of Sunni Islam from . . . let's pick the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam prevalent in Indonesia during Obama's time there?

If you can answer those questions, that puts you ahead of probably 99.99% of all other Americans. Yet these are questions about which most Americans should have at least some idea.
The Answers:

1. The man pictured at the top of the post is Anwar al Alaki.

2. Alaki is a Wahhabi / Salafi cleric.

3. He was born in America and raised here until he was 11, then went to Yemen for ten years before returning to receive his college education in America. It is not clear whether he was radicalized here or in Yemen, though that would be very helpful to know. Salafism is the prevalent form of Islam practiced in Yemen, but most mosques in the U.S. are owned by Salafists (compliments of Saudi petrodollars) and there is a strong radical element funded through Saudi Arabia on most campuses.

4. Alaki is a member of al Qaeda. He played a central role in both the Ft. Hood Massacre and the attempted slaughter by Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day Undiebomber.

5. Alaki, in full accord with the doctrines of Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, believes Western society is incompatible with Islam and wants to impose sharia law throughout the world. Also in accord with the teachings of Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, he views use of force and terror as legitimate means to that end. Zhudi Jasser and David Suliman Schwartz are Muslim reformers. Both seek modifications of Salafi Islam and both practice forms of Islam that they believe are compatible with Western freedoms. Both are highly critical of Salafism and neither wants to see Sharia law imposed in any state.

6. Salafism is militant, triumphalist, and deeply discriminatory. The Shafi'i school, practiced in Indonesia during Obama's stay there, was far less militant and very open to coexisting with other religions. It is changing now as Salafists are being sent to Indonesia in force by Saudi Arabia. They are radicalizing influence on Islam in Indonesia. That said, historically, terrorists have not arisen from practitioners of the Shafi'i school; they have virtually all arisen from the Salafi / Wahhabi school and schools heavily influenced by Salafism.

If most Americans knew the answers to those questions, it would tell us and the world that we are not at war with Islam, but that we are at war with the ideology of Salafists. It would give standing and recognition to those Muslims who are fighting the overtaking of their religion by Salafits. Given the warning signs put out by Major Nidal Hassan prior to the Ft. Hood massacre, and given that he was a Salafist, it would likely have meant that the warning signs would have been heeded and the massacre aborted months before it occurred. It would place Salafism where it needs to be - in the full and direct light of the public, subject to the strongest force a democratic world can muster, public opinion. It is only that which will force a moderation of Salafi Islam. But if we can't answer those questions, than we can do nothing to "to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant [Salafi] ideology."

In this, it seems, Obama has thrown not merely us, but all of the non-Salafi Islamic world under the bus. Add that to a national counterterrorism effort in tatters and you have a recipe for disaster - not to mention never-ending war with the law of averages being that one day, these terrorists will succeed in a nuclear attack on America.

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Michael Mukasey - Shovel Ready

Michael Mukasey was the U.S. attorney general from 2007 to 2009 and the presiding judge at initial proceedings against Jose Padilla in 2002. He appears in the pages of the Washington Post today to shovel away the incredible amounts of bull excreta piled high onto the counterterrorism issue by Attorney General Eric Holder and Whitehouse Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan. Specifically, Mukasey rebuts many of the outrageous claims made by Eric Holder in his letter to Mitch McConnell and the equally outragous charges made by John Brennan in his Sunday morning show appearance and his USA Today opinion piece. This from Mr. Mukasey:

. . . When Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb concealed in his undershorts, he committed a crime; no doubt about that. He could not have acted alone; no doubt about that either. The bomb was not the sort of infernal device readily produced by someone of his background, and he quickly confirmed that he had been trained and sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen.

What to do and who should do it? It was entirely reasonable for the FBI to be contacted and for that agency to take him into custody. But contrary to what some in government have suggested, that Abdulmutallab was taken into custody by the FBI did not mean, legally or as a matter of policy, that he had to be treated as a criminal defendant at any point. Consider: In 1942, German saboteurs landed on Long Island and in Florida. That they were eventually captured by the FBI did not stop President Franklin Roosevelt from directing that they be treated as unlawful enemy combatants. They were ultimately tried before a military commission in Washington and executed. Their status had nothing to do with who held them, and their treatment was upheld in all respects by the Supreme Court.

. . . Guidelines put in place in 2003 and revised in September 2008 "do not require that the FBI's information gathering activities be differentially labeled as 'criminal investigations,' 'national security investigations,' or 'foreign intelligence collections,' or that the categories of FBI personnel who carry out investigations be segregated from each other based on the subject areas in which they operate. Rather, all of the FBI's legal authorities are available for deployment in all cases to which they apply to protect the public from crimes and threats to the national security and to further the United States' foreign intelligence objectives." . . .

Contrary to what the White House homeland security adviser and the attorney general have suggested, if not said outright, not only was there no authority or policy in place under the Bush administration requiring that all those detained in the United States be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. The Supreme Court held in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that "indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized" but also said in the same case that detention for the purpose of neutralizing an unlawful enemy combatant is permissible and that the only right of such a combatant -- even if he is a citizen, and Abdulmutallab is not -- is to challenge his classification as such a combatant in a habeas corpus proceeding. This does not include the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, but only such legal assistance as may be necessary to file a habeas corpus petition within a reasonable time. That was the basis for my ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that, as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason, he had to consult with a lawyer for the limited purpose of filing a habeas petition, but that interrogation need not stop.

What of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," who was warned of his Miranda rights and prosecuted in a civilian court? He was arrested in December 2001, before procedures were put in place that would have allowed for an outcome that might have included not only conviction but also exploitation of his intelligence value, if possible. His case does not recommend the same procedure in Abdulmutallab's.

The struggle against Islamist extremists is unlike any other war we have fought. Osama bin Laden and those like-minded intend to make plain that our government cannot keep us safe, and have sought our retreat from the Islamic world and our relinquishment of the idea that human rather than their version of divine law must control our activities. This movement is not driven by finite grievances or by poverty. The enemy does not occupy a particular location or have an infrastructure that can be identified and attacked but, rather, lives in many places and purposely hides among civilian populations. The only way to prevail is to gather intelligence on who is doing what where and to take the initiative to stop it.

There was thus no legal or policy compulsion to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, at least initially, and every reason to treat him as an intelligence asset to be exploited promptly. The way to do that was not simply to have locally available field agents question him but, rather, to get in the room people who knew about al-Qaeda in Yemen, people who could obtain information, check that information against other available data and perhaps get feedback from others in the field before going back to Abdulmutallab to follow up where necessary, all the while keeping secret the fact of his cooperation. Once his former cohorts know he is providing information, they can act to make that information useless.

Nor is it an answer to say that Abdulmutallab resumed his cooperation even after he was warned of his rights. He did that after five weeks, when his family was flown here from Nigeria. The time was lost, and with it possibly useful information. Disclosing that he had resumed talking only compounded the problem by letting his former cohorts know that they had better cover their tracks.

Many of the points Mukasey raises above I have raised in prior posts, including the two posts I link in the opening paragraph of this post. Regardless, the bottom line is that the Obama counterterrorism effort is a farce. The only thing more farcial is watching Holder and Brennan go on the offensive, attempting to claim that using the criminal justice system to gain wartime intelligence is superior and that, in any event, it was necessary. These people will get Americans killed.

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Taheri On Obama's Perfidy & Naivity

Amir Taheri opines in the NY Sun today on Obama's world tour, providing some fascinating observations from his sources in Iraq and Europe. They track with what I have been saying since I started this blog - that the far left wants to declare Iraq illegitimate and a defeat for political gain. It is perfidy, partisanship and naivity writ on a grand scale. And in part, Taheri explores the hypocrisy and consequences inherent in Obama's call to leave Iraq in order to shore up Afghanistan with two combat brigades.
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This from Amir Taheri:

Termed a "learning" trip, Sen. Barack Obama's eight- day tour of eight nations in the Middle East and Europe turned out to be little more than a series of photo ops to enhance his international credentials.

"He looked like a man in a hurry," a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. "He was not interested in what we had to say."

Still, many Iraqis liked Obama's claim that the improved situation in Iraq owed to Iraqi efforts rather than the Gen. David Petraeus-led surge. In public and private comments, Obama tried to give the impression that the Iraqis would've achieved the same results even without the greater resources America has poured into the country since 2007.

In private, though, Iraqi officials admit that Obama's analysis is "way off the mark." Without the surge, the Sunni tribes wouldn't have switched sides to help flush out al Qaeda. And the strong US military presence enabled the new Iraqi army to defeat Iran-backed Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad.

Nevertheless, in public at least, no Iraqi politician wants to appear more appreciative of American sacrifices than the man who may become the next US president.

Iraqis were most surprised by Obama's apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he'd been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States," a senior Iraqi official told me. "As far as he is concerned, this is Bush's war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat."

Even so, Obama knows that most Americans believe they're still at war with an enemy prepared to use terror against them. So he can't do what his antiwar base wants - declare an end to the War on Terror and the start of a period of love and peace in which "citizens of the world" build bridges between civilizations.

That's why Obama is trying to adopt Afghanistan as "his" war. He claims that Bush's focus on Iraq has left Afghanistan an orphan in need of love and attention. Even though US military strategy is to enable America to fight two major wars simultaneously, Obama seems to believe that only one war is possible at a time.

But what does that mean practically?

Obama says he wants to shift two brigades (some of his advisers say two battalions) from Iraq to Afghanistan. But where did that magical figure come from? From NATO, which has been calling on its members to provide more troops since 2006.

NATO wants the added troops mainly to improve the position of its reserves in Afghanistan. The alliance doesn't face an actual shortage of combat units - it's merely facing a rotation schedule that obliges some units to stay in the field for up to six weeks longer than is normal for NATO armies.

Overall, NATO hopes that its members will have no difficulty providing the 5,000 more troops it needs for a "surge." So there's no need for the US to abandon Iraq in order to help Afghanistan.

The immediate effect of Obama's plan to abandon Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan is to ease pressure on other NATO members to make a greater contribution. Even in Paris, some critics think that President Nicolas Sarkozy should postpone sending more troops until after the US presidential election. "If President Obama can provide all the manpower needed in Afghanistan, there is no need for us to commit more troops," said a Sarkozy security adviser.

Obama's move would suit Sarkozy fine because he's reducing the size of the French army and closing more than 80 garrisons. Other Europeans would also be pleased. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will soon face a difficult general election in which her main rivals will be calling for an end to "the Afghan adventure."

Today, with the sole exception of Spain (where the mildly anti-American Socialist Party is in power), pro-US parties govern Europe. These parties feel pressure from the Bush administration to translate their pro-American claims into actual support for the Afghanistan war effort. By promising to shoulder the burden, Obama is letting the European allies off the hook.

. . . Having announced his strategy before embarking on his "listening tour," he couldn't be expected to change his mind simply because facts on the ground offered a different picture. . . .

Read the entire article. One of the things Taheri misses in the above is that Obama is the Chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Europe. While our problems in Afghanistan are NATO related, Obama has yet to hold a single hearing to find out why our NATO allies are not cooperating and to bring pressure on them to do more.

I could think of no man less qualified to be commander in chief than Obama. That belief is far from predicated on his lack of any military experience. It seems clear that his decision making will be guided by political expediency rather than principle. It seems clear that his decision making will always prioritize the political over military necessity or force protection. While he will no doubt make the American hating far left happy, what that translates into for those who have volunteered to served and defend this nation is dead U.S. soldiers.

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VD Hanson On The Surreal Narrative Of The Left

I blogged earlier that evidence is ever mounting that two myths of the left - that the war in Iraq has increased terrorism and that Iran is stronger as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - are false (see here). Today, VD Hanson blogs on a similar theme, discussing the surreal left who cling to their narrative at all costs and who flatly refuse to find any ties between the improving figures and the President's conduct of the War on Terror.
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This from Victor Davis Hanson writing at the NRO:

Recent studies showing a decline in global incidents of Islamic terror have been interpreted as solely a Middle-East intramural affair. . . .

But surely the catalyst for the decline in terrorist incidents worldwide was the radically different response of the U.S. to terrorism and 9/11 that finally brought jihadism into an open-shooting war against the West (e.g., cf. the Left’s “creating terrorists”), in which the terrorists are losing the battle-space, along with the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East — as their own websites and cries of anguish attest.

The successful toppling of Saddam was followed in short order by the shutdown of Dr. Khan’s atomic shop, the surrender of WMDs by the Libyans, and the supposed sidetracking of the Iranian nuclear bomb program (at least according to the National Intelligence Estimate) — and yet no one thought the timing of all these events was odd (even when Ghaddafi himself reportedly connected his decision to abandon a weapons of mass destruction program to Saddam’s fate).

By the same token, the rise of governments that are sympathetic to the U.S. in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe is never associated with a shared and growing worry over Islamic radicalism — or a grudging, often private acknowledgment of the U.S. role abroad in beating back jihadism. How surreal to see a constitutional government in Iraq, with broad popular support, fighting and defeating terrorists and insurgents of both the Wahhabi and Iranian brand — at a time when the consensus is that Iraq only made terrorism much worse. . . .

So these are upside-down times when facts and events on the ground simply do not support the general pessimism of the Western media, the serial publication of gloomy he-did-it,-not-me memoirs about the post-9/11 supposed failures, and the shrill rhetoric of the Democratic primaries.

In general, the hard efforts of the last six years against radical Islam — that bore fruit by the radically changed atmosphere in Iraq, the decline in terrorism worldwide, the lack of a follow-up to 9/11, and polls that showed a marked fall in approval for al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, and the tactic of suicide bombing — are explained away in various ways. The common theme, however, is that one never mentions the efforts of the bogeyman George Bush. . . .

We have not won the war on terror, but we are starting to see how the combination of domestic security, international cooperation, military action, cultural ostracism of those who condone terrorism, and promotion of constitutional government in the Middle East can, and will, marginalize and eventually defeat the jihadists. We know this not just by the anguished complaints of the Islamists themselves, and real progress on the ground — but also by the mantra of increasingly ossified critics who still insist that things are either worse, or were never that bad, or abruptly got better on their own.

Read the entire article.

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Counterterrorism Concerns in the UK

In today's Telegraph, Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command discusses his major worries across the pond:

. . . The abortive Glasgow bomb resulted in talk of an alleged "doctors' plot" among NHS professionals. Did this show that elements of the Muslim middle classes are at least as vulnerable to the call of radicalism as marginalised figures in the ghettoes?

"Middle-class bombs will kill just as well as working-class bombs," he retorts. "It show the dangers of profiling or stereotyping. What we've seen are people from all social classes, all educational standards and a whole host of nationalities. The only thing they have in common is a sense of grievance."

What about studies by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre — which consists of representatives from 11 Government departments and agencies — on radicalisation in prisons and universities?

"I'm very worried in both these cases. There is a prison population of 80,000. Muslims are around eight per cent of that, even though they number around three per cent of the general population.

"A tiny proportion of that eight per cent have been convicted of anything to do with terrorism. So I do worry about the pernicious influence of extremists."

He goes on to say there are two conflicting approaches. "Either you put them all together and you end up with a 'university of terror' or you disperse them and run the risk of such influences being spread everywhere." What about the threat of radicalisation in mainstream universities? He says: "We have seen significant members of terrorist networks in full-time education. It's still present and it's of great concern – but we need more study." . . .

Read the article. As to the issue of the Doctor's plot, recent research shows confirms neither socio-economic status nor degree of education correlate with whether a Muslim will become a terrorist. On a related note, the NYPD looked at the radicalization process in great detail in its report issued earlier this year. They also concluded that, because of the subtelties associated the radicalization process, it was difficult to develop a profile of the typical terrorist beyond exposure to and immersion in Salafi jihadi Islamist ideology.

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