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Do we really need to have sympathy for the devil?

by Mojambo ( 72 Comments › )
Filed under Egypt, Islamists, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia (Islamic Law) at August 16th, 2013 - 12:00 pm

The Devil of course being the Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration is reflexively pro M.B.  even though the Islamists are the most reactionary people in the world. However Obama/Kerry can always count on John McCain and Miss Lindsey Graham giving them cover. Funny how Obama was quick to send F-16’s and M1 Abrams tanks to Morsi the fascist but now wants to withhold aid to the Egyptian military. By the way the Egyptian military is cracking down on Islamists in the Sinai.

hat tip – Boker Tov, Boulder

by Ralph Peters

What do we want the future Egypt to look like? A flawed, hybrid democracy, or a Sunni Muslim version of Iran? Based on his bluster yesterday about events on the Nile, Secretary of State John Kerry prefers the latter.

[……..]

In full outrage mode, America’s most famous windsurfer castigated the Egyptian authorities, insisting that the Muslim Brotherhood had a right to “peaceful protests.” Apparently, “peaceful” means armed with Kalashnikovs, killing policemen, kidnapping and torturing opponents, turning mosques into prisons, attacking Christians and burning Coptic churches.

The Brotherhood protesters rejected all offers of compromise and all demands to disperse. The interim government’s response was heavy-handed, but the Muslim Brothers chose violent resistance — using women and children as shields (a tactic typical of Islamist terrorists).

Do we really need to have sympathy for the devil?

With its blundering, fickle, late-in-the-day support for whoever appeared to be gaining the upper hand, the Obama administration has managed the remarkable feat of alienating every faction in Egypt. […….]

There was, indeed, a coup. But not all coups involve tanks. The real coup came after Egypt’s premature, badly flawed election, when Morsi and the Brotherhood excluded all non-Brothers from the political process; curtailed media freedoms and jailed journalists; attacked Christians; and rushed toward an Islamist state that the majority of Egyptians did not want.

Tens of millions of Muslims took to the streets to protest the Brotherhood’s plunge toward tyranny. Only after attempts to persuade an unrepentant Morsi to compromise failed, did the military move against the regime.  […….]

Yet our breathtakingly inept ambassador backed the Morsi regime right to the end. That isn’t diplomacy. It’s idiocy.

But all you have to do to create witless panic in Washington is cry “Military coup!” Well, sometimes — regrettably — a military is all that stands between a population and deadly (and anti-American) fanaticism. Despite yesterday’s bloodshed, would we really prefer a return to Brotherhood rule? Stuff the political correctness and get real.

Is the Egyptian military an ideal ally? Nope. But it’s a far better bet than Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood turned out to be.

The danger now is that the administration and naïfs in Congress will cut aid to the Egyptian military and curl up into a snit.  [……..]

Do we really need to make additional enemies in the region? Of moderates and secularists? In a quest to be “fair” to fanatics?

Official figures allow 275 dead in yesterday’s violence, while the Muslim Brotherhood claims more than 2,000. The latter number’s preposterous — you can’t hide that many corpses from prying journalists — but the reality is probably somewhere in between.

[……..]

It’s time to get over ourselves. Our narcissistic belief that we not only can, but must, decide the destinies of Middle Eastern populations is destructive. We can, at times, play constructively on the margins, but we’re not even good at that.

The Obama administration needs a new foreign-policy motto: “First, do no harm.”

And we need to base our policies on our long-term interests, not on here-and-gone headlines. The enemy of the Egyptian people and of the American people is the same: Islamist fanaticism. And defeating radical extremists isn’t a smiley-face business.

When someone insists that he knows what God demands everybody must do, you can either submit or resist. Egyptians chose to resist. And the Muslim Brotherhood, not the Egyptian military, chose blood.

Read the rest –  This blood is on the hands of  Muslim Brotherhood

Col Ralph Peters tells Obama to  shut up about Egypt – ‘He needs to be quiet’

UPDATE –

Watch this video on YouTube.

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Posted in Egypt, Islamists, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia (Islamic Law) | 72 Comments »

The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt is a severe blow to Hamas

by Mojambo ( 107 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Egypt, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinians, Syria at July 16th, 2013 - 12:00 pm

I doubt that Hamas will be overthrown, however it can be weakened and its capacity for terror  can be incrementally degraded.

 

Hamas security stand guard near an Egyptian watch tower on the border with Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.
Hamas security stand guard near an Egyptian watch tower on the border with Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.

by Khaled Abu Toameh

These are tough days for Hamas. After losing the military and financial support of Iran and Syria, Hamas has now lost its main allies in Egypt.

The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt is a severe blow to Hamas, whose leaders are now studying ways of avoiding a “revolution” that could end their rule in the Gaza Strip.

But although Hamas has suffered a major setback in wake of the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, it is premature to talk about the beginning of the countdown for the collapse of the Hamas regime.

The Gaza Strip has neither an organized opposition nor an army that could assist in removing Hamas from power.

One of the biggest fears is that if Hamas is toppled, those who would replace it would not be any better. This is particularly true in light of the growing popularity of various Islamist groups operating inside the Gaza Strip, some of which are affiliated with al-Qaeda.

[……..]

Morsi’s rise to power had been seen by Hamas and other Muslims as a “divine victory”: Allah’s gift to his believers.

Contrary to Mubarak, Morsi’s regime adopted a completely different policy toward Hamas.

While Mubarak dealt with Hamas and the Gaza Strip as a “security” issue, Morsi sought to legitimize the Palestinian Islamist movement in the eyes of the whole world.

For the first time ever, and much to the dismay of the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority leaders, under Morsi, Hamas leaders became regular and welcome guests in the Egyptian presidential palace.

Morsi’s rise to power emboldened Hamas in a way that allowed it further to tighten its grip on the Gaza Strip.

[…….]

During the last war between Israel and Hamas, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” and much to the dismay of Fatah’s Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank, Morsi dispatched Egyptian prime minister Hesham Qandil to the Gaza Strip, in an unprecedented show of solidarity with the Hamas regime.

[…….]

Although Hamas leaders have publicly played down the significance of the Egyptian coup, reports from the Gaza Strip suggest that some leaders of the Islamist movement are already nervous.

According to one report, the new rulers of Egypt have issued an order banning all Hamas leaders from entering their country.

Another report said that Egyptian security authorities have arrested several Hamas members based in Cairo and Sinai on charges of involvement in terror attacks against Egyptians.

Hamas leaders who tried to contact senior Egyptian government officials over the past few days said their phone calls were being totally ignored.

The crisis in Egypt also seems to be have had a negative impact on the day-to-day lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: there seems to be a severe shortage of petrol, natural gas and basic goods as a result of severe restrictions imposed by the Egyptian authorities along their shared border.

Palestinian Authority officials and other Palestinians are now hoping that the latest revolution in Egypt will accelerate or facilitate the overthrow of the Hamas regime. Some Palestinian Authority representatives have even called on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to learn from the Egyptian model and rise up against Hamas.

The new rulers of Egypt may even turn out to be extremely hostile to Hamas, especially in light of claims that Hamas members had been dispatched to Cairo and other Egyptian cities to help Morsi supporters crush the opposition.

But does all this mean that the countdown for Hamas’s collapse has begun? Not necessarily.

Unlike Egypt, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not have an army that could come to the rescue. Also, Fatah’s supporters in the Gaza Strip do not have enough weapons to launch an Egyptian-style coup against Hamas.

Hamas, on the other hand, has a huge arsenal of weapons and thousands of militiamen who are quick to act against any individual or group who challenge its regime.

The Gaza Strip also does not have a credible, powerful, well-organized secular opposition that could rally thousands of Palestinians behind it.

Today, the only choice in the Gaza Strip is between Hamas and Fatah. The problem is that many Palestinians still do not see Fatah as a better alternative to Hamas.

Read the rest – Will Hamas be next?

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Egypt, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinians, Syria | 107 Comments »

Egypt’s preferable dictatorship; and Israel’s reviled strategic wisdom

by Mojambo ( 193 Comments › )
Filed under Egypt, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood at July 11th, 2013 - 3:00 pm
There is little doubt that Morsi was the worst choice of all for Egypt and that Mubarak for whatever faults he had was far preferable. I agree with Miss Glick, Egypt is a failed state.

by George F. Will

Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi knows neither Thomas Jefferson’s advice that “great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities” nor the description of Martin Van Buren as a politician who “rowed to his object with muffled oars.” Having won just 52 percent of the vote, Morsi pursued his objective — putting Egypt irrevocably on a path away from secular politics and social modernity — noisily and imprudently.

It is difficult to welcome a military overthrow of democratic results. It is, however, more difficult to regret a prophylactic coup against the exploitation of democratic success to adopt measures inimical to the development of a democratic culture.

Tyranny comes in many flavors. Some are much worse than others because they are more comprehensive and potentially durable. The tyranny portended by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood promised no separation of politics and religion, hence the impossibility of pluralism, and a hostility to modernity that guaranteed economic incompetence. Theologized politics, wherein compromise is apostasy, points toward George Orwell’s vision of totalitarianism — “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

Military despotism might be merely for a while, although perhaps for quite a while: The 1952 Egyptian coup inaugurated six decades of military rule. Egypt’s military tyranny is preferable to Morsi’s because it is more mundane. Mussolini’s fascism, being Italian, was tyranny tempered by anarchy; Egyptian military tyranny has been tempered by corruption because the military is thoroughly entangled with Egypt’s economy. A famous description of Prussia — less a state with an army than an army with a state — fits Egypt, but greed might concentrate Egyptian military minds on the advantages of economic dynamism, which depends on liberalization.

What was optimistically and prematurely called the “Arab Spring” was centered in Tahrir Square in the capital of the most populous Arab nation. Western media, and hence Western publics, were mesmerized by young protesters wielding smartphones and coordinating through social media their uprising against the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. […….] In the short term, meaning for the foreseeable future, Egypt’s best hope is for an authoritarianism amenable to amelioration.

Jeane Kirkpatrick came to Ronald Reagan’s attention partly because he was a constant and serious reader whose fare included Commentary magazine. In its November 1979 issue, Reagan found Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships & Double Standards.” His future ambassador to the United Nations made an argument that is pertinent to America’s deals with Egypt after the military coup:

Liberalism, the Carter administration’s animating impulse, adhered to a “modernization paradigm” which taught that the U.S. interest was always in modernization. This meant, liberals thought, that popular movements espousing revolutionary aspirations were inherently preferable to traditional autocracies.  […….] However, the liberalization of an autocracy is, Kirkpatrick believed, although neither certain nor easy, still more likely than the reform of an ideologically revolutionary regime. […….] Generally speaking, traditional autocrats tolerate social inequities, brutality and poverty while revolutionary autocracies create them.”

An Islamist regime wielded by the Muslim Brotherhood would be revolutionary, aiming for the total subordination of society to administered doctrine. A democratic origin of such a regime will not mitigate its nature.

The U.S. Constitution bristles with the language of proscription: Congress, although the expression of popular sovereignty, “shall make no law” doing this and that. The purpose of such provisions, the Supreme Court has said, is to place certain things “beyond the reach of majorities.” [……]

Abraham Lincoln rejected the argument of his rival Stephen Douglas, who favored “popular sovereignty in the territories.” Douglas thought slavery should expand wherever a majority favored it. Lincoln understood that unless majority rule is circumscribed by the superior claims of natural rights, majority rule is merely the doctrine of “might makes right” adapted to the age of mass participation in politics. [……..] prettified by initial adherence to democratic forms. Egypt’s military despotism may be less dangerous than Morsi’s because it lacks what Morsi’s had, a democratic coloration, however superficial and evanescent.

Read the rest – Egypt’s preferable tyranny

Israel never gets credit for being proven right when she says that the  signatures of Arab dictators are meaningless.

by Caroline Glick

On Wednesday, Egypt had its second revolution in as many years. And there is no telling how many more revolutions it will have in the coming months, or years. This is the case not only in Egypt, but throughout the Islamic world.

The American foreign policy establishment’s rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of the members of that establishment’s utter cluelessness about the nature of Arab politics and society. Their enthusiastic embrace of protesters who have now brought down President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood regime indicates that it takes more than a complete repudiation of their core assumptions to convince them to abandon them.

US reporters and commentators today portray this week’s protests as the restoration of the Egyptian revolution. That revolution, they remain convinced, was poised to replace long-time Egyptian leader and US-ally Hosni Mubarak with a liberal democratic government led by people who used Facebook and Twitter.

Subsequently, we were told, that revolution was hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood. But now that Morsi and his government have been overthrown, the Facebook revolution is back on track.

And again, they are wrong.

As was the case in 2011, the voices of liberal democracy in Egypt are so few and far between that they have no chance whatsoever of gaining power, today or for the foreseeable future. At this point it is hard to know what the balance of power is between the Islamists who won 74 percent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary elections and their opponents. […….]They are a mix of neo-Nasserist fascists, communists and other not particularly palatable groups.

None of them share Western conceptions of freedom and limited government. None of them are particularly pro-American. None of them like Jews. And none of them support maintaining Egypt’s cold peace with Israel.

Egypt’s greatest modern leader was Gamal Abdel Nasser. By many accounts the most common political view of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters is neo-Nasserist fascism.

Nasser was an enemy of the West. He led Egypt into the Soviet camp in the 1950s. As the co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, he also led much of the Third World into the Soviet camp. Nasser did no less damage to the US in his time than al-Qaida and its allies have done in recent years.

Certainly, from Israel’s perspective, Nasser was no better than Hamas or al-Qaida or their parent Muslim Brotherhood movement. Like the Islamic fanatics, Nasser sought the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews.

Whether the fascists will take charge or not is impossible to know. So, too, the role of the Egyptian military in the future of Egypt is unknowable. The same military that overthrew Morsi on Wednesday stood by as he earlier sought to strip its powers, sacked its leaders and took steps to transform it into a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood.

There are only three things that are knowable about the future of Egypt. First it will be poor. Egypt is a failed state. It cannot feed its people. It has failed to educate its people. It has no private sector to speak of. It has no foreign investment.

Second, Egypt will be politically unstable.

Mubarak was able to maintain power for 29 years because he ran a police state that the people feared. That fear was dissipated in 2011. This absence of fear will bring Egyptians to the street to topple any government they feel is failing to deliver on its promises – as they did this week.

[…….]

And so government after government will share the fates of Mubarak and Morsi.

Beyond economic deprivation, today tens of millions of Egyptians feel they were unlawfully and unjustly ousted from power on Wednesday.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists won big in elections hailed as free by the West. They have millions of supporters who are just as fanatical today as they were last week. They will not go gently into that good night.

Finally, given the utter irrelevance of liberal democratic forces in Egypt today, it is clear enough that whoever is able to rise to power in the coming years will be anti-American, anti- Israel and anti-democratic, (in the liberal democratic sense of the word). They might be nicer to the Copts than the Muslim Brotherhood has been. But they won’t be more pro-Western.

They may be more cautious in asserting or implementing their ideology in their foreign policy than the Muslim Brotherhood. But that won’t necessarily make them more supportive of American interests or to the endurance of Egypt’s formal treaty of peace with Israel.

And this is not the case only in Egypt. It is the case in every Arab state that is now or will soon be suffering from instability that has caused coups, Islamic takeovers, civil wars, mass protests and political insecurity in country after country. Not all of them are broke. But then again, none of them have the same strong sense of national identity that Egyptians share.

Now that we understand what we are likely to see in the coming months and years, and what we are seeing today, we must consider how the West should respond to these events. To do so, we need to consider how various parties responded to the events of the past two-and-ahalf years.

Wednesday’s overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government is a total repudiation of the US strategy of viewing the unrest in Egypt – and throughout the Arab world – as a struggle between the good guys and the bad guys.

Within a week of the start of the protests in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, Americans from both sides of the political divide united around the call for Mubarak’s swift overthrow.

A few days later, President Barack Obama joined the chorus of Democrats and Republicans, and called for Mubarak to leave office, immediately. Everyone from Sen. John McCain to Samantha Power was certain that despite the fact that Mubarak was a loyal ally of the US, America would be better served by supporting the rise of the Facebook revolutionaries who used Twitter and held placards depicting Mubarak as a Jew.

Everyone was certain that the Muslim Brotherhood would stay true to its word and keep out of politics.

Two days after Mubarak was forced from office, Peter Beinart wrote a column titled “America’s Proud Egypt Moment,” where he congratulated the neo-conservatives and the liberals and Obama for scorning American interests and siding with the protesters who opposed all of Mubarak’s pro-American policies.

Beinart wrote exultantly, “Hosni Mubarak’s regime was the foundation stone – along with Israel and Saudi Arabia – of American power in the Middle East. It tortured suspected al- Qaida terrorists for us, pressured the Palestinians for us, and did its best to contain Iran.

And it sat atop a population eager – secular and Islamist alike – not only to reverse those policies, but to rid the Middle East of American power. And yet we cast our lot with that population, not their ruler.”

Beinart also congratulated the neo-conservatives for parting ways with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who counseled caution, and so proved they do not suffer from dual loyalty.

That hated, reviled Israeli strategy, (which was not Netanyahu’s alone, but shared by Israelis from across the political spectrum in a rare demonstration of unanimity), was proven correct by events of the past week and indeed by events of the past two-and-a-half years.

Israelis watched in shock and horror as their American friends followed the Pied Piper of the phony Arab Spring over the policy cliff. Mubarak was a dictator. But his opponents were no Alexander Dubceks. There was no reason to throw away 30 years of stability before figuring out a way to ride the tiger that would follow it.

Certainly there was no reason to actively support Mubarak’s overthrow.

Shortly after Mubarak was overthrown, the Obama administration began actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood believed that the way to gain and then consolidate power was to hold elections as quickly as possible. Others wanted to wait until a constitutional convention convened and a new blueprint for Egyptian governance was written. But the Muslim Brotherhood would have none of it. And Obama supported it.

Five months after elections of questionable pedigree catapulted Morsi to power, Obama was silent when in December 2012 Morsi arrogated dictatorial powers and pushed through a Muslim Brotherhood constitution.

[……]
He was silent over the past year as the demonstrators assembled to oppose Morsi’s power grabs. He was unmoved as churches were torched and Christians were massacred. He was silent as Morsi courted Iran.

US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson and Obama remained the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest champions as the forces began to gather ahead of this week’s mass protests. Patterson met with the Coptic pope and told him to keep the Coptic Christians out of the protests.

Obama, so quick to call for Mubarak to step down, called for the protesters to exercise restraint this time around and then ignored them during his vacation in Africa.

The first time Obama threatened to curtail US funding of the Egyptian military was Wednesday night, after the military ignored American warnings and entreaties, and deposed Morsi and his government.

This week’s events showed how the US’s strategy in Egypt has harmed America.

In 2011, the military acted to force Mubarak from power only after Obama called for it to do so. This week, the military overthrew Morsi and began rounding up his supporters in defiance of the White House.

[……]

In a Middle East engulfed by civil war, revolution and chronic instability, Israel is the only country at peace. The image of Kerry extolling his success in “narrowing the gaps” between Israel and the Palestinians before he boarded his airplane at Ben-Gurion Airport, as millions assembled to bring down the government of Egypt, is the image of a small, irrelevant America.

And as the anti-American posters in Tahrir Square this week showed, America’s self-induced smallness is a tragedy that will harm the region and endanger the US.

As far as Israel is concerned, all we can do is continue what we have been doing, and hope that at some point, the Americans will embrace our sound strategy.

Read the rest – Israel’s reviled strategic wisdom

 

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Posted in Egypt, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood | 193 Comments »

Senate Republicans arm the Muslim Brotherhood; no wonder Tehran supports Hagel; and reports Israel hit a biological weapons factory near Damascus

by Mojambo ( 104 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Egypt, Hezballah, IDF, Iran, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Republican Party, Sharia (Islamic Law), Syria at February 4th, 2013 - 7:00 am

I cannot say that I  am totally surprised. Republicans and Democrats have been in the pocket of the House of Saud ever since 1944. God Bless Rand Paul.

hat tip for all three articles – Powerline

by Andrew C. McCarthy

I’m done grumbling about how President Obama is empowering America’s enemies. After all, it is not just Obama. When it comes to abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, Republicans are right there with him.

Not all of them, of course. This week, for example, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment that would have prohibited our government from transferring F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government. This lunatic plan is not just an Obama initiative. It is also a GOP brainstorm — of a piece with 2011’s Libya debacle, in which Republican leaders cheered as Obama, upon consulting with the Arab League, ignored Congress and levied war on behalf of the very jihadists who, quite predictably, have since raided Qaddafi’s arsenal, besieged northern Africa, and massacred Americans in Benghazi.

A few weeks back, the John McCain & Lindsey Graham roadshow made its way to Brotherhood Central in Cairo, with newcomer Kelly Ayotte in tow. Senator Ayotte appears to have filled the void created by Joe Lieberman’s retirement — after all, when you have Republicans, who needs another Democrat? The former trio is best remembered for its Tripoli triumph of late 2009, when the three kicked back in the Qaddafi compound and toasted our newly cozy relations with the dictator. The bipartisan solons then winged their way home in time to second the Obama State Department’s increase in funding for the Libyan dictator’s regime. After all, they reasoned, Qaddafi was our hedge against Libya’s jihadists. As is their wont, though, the solons soon dazzled us with a 180, suddenly deciding that what we really needed to do was back Libya’s jihadists in their war against Qaddafi. The rest, as they say in Mali, is history.

So the GOP brain trust now brings this Midas touch to Egypt, rallying behind Obama’s cozy relations with the new “Islamic democracy.”  […….]

Senator Paul, by contrast, has three ideas that seem positively batty to the McCain gang. First, he thinks that American foreign policy ought to be premised on American national interests, not on the shifting notions of “global stability” popular at the Wilson School and the Council on Foreign Relations. Second, he suggests that when we give aid and arms to anti-American Islamists, bad things tend to happen to America. Finally, Paul believes the foundation of American foreign policy is, of all quaint things, the United States Constitution. The Framers gave Congress not merely the authority but the duty to thwart executive excess. On the international stage, that primarily means the power of the purse, which enables the people’s representatives to defund such madness as the arming of Islamic supremacists.

So Senator Paul tried to stop weapons transfer. His amendment, however, was defeated 79–19, because 23 Republican senators opted to follow the lead of McCain, Graham, and Ayotte. They joined all Senate Democrats (and a couple of nominal “independents” who are, in effect, Democrats) in voting to “table” the Paul Amendment. “Tabling” is a bit of procedural chicanery, allowing senators to defeat Paul’s amendment yet pretend to the folks back home that they didn’t actually vote “against” it.

Don’t be fooled. The choice here was simple: Stand with the Muslim Brotherhood or stand with the American people. Nearly two-thirds of Senate Republicans went with the Brothers.

Let’s be clear about whom Republicans have voted to arm. In late 2010, as I detail in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, Mohammed Badi, head of the Muslim Brotherhood, called for violent jihad against the United States and Israel. The “Supreme Guide” gleefully added, “The United States is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.” The Brotherhood took pains to post this speech on its Arabic-language website, reflecting its official position.

Badi’s sentiments would have been no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. It had not been long, after all, since the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which the Justice Department proved that the Brotherhood regards the core mission of its U.S.-based affiliates (such organizations as CAIR, the Muslim Students Association, and the Islamic Society of North America) to be, as the Brothers themselves put it, “a grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” by “sabotage.” [……..]

Mohamed Morsi, a leading Brotherhood official, became Egypt’s president last summer — just as his close associate, the aforementioned Supreme Guide, was railing that all Muslims, including rulers, must “wage jihad in Allah’s way” in order to reverse the “usurpation” of Palestine by the “murdering Zionist criminals.” In his very first public pronouncement after winning the presidency, Morsi called for the United States to release Omar Abdel Rahman. That would be the “Blind Sheikh,” who is serving a life sentence for terrorism convictions, and who has been credited by Osama bin Laden with issuing the fatwa that approved the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda quite sensibly gleaned that fatwa from this statement about Americans that Abdel Rahman made following his conviction:

Muslims everywhere . . . dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.

In addition to calling for the Blind Sheikh’s return to Egypt, where such sentiments are common, Morsi has directed the release of many terrorists who had been incarcerated during President Hosni Mubarak’s tenure — Mubarak having had a close counterterrorism partnership with the United States. Morsi further failed to protect the American embassy from being overrun by Islamist rioters.  [……..]

Prior to his election, Morsi promised that his top imperative would be the imposition of sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal code and societal framework. He has been true to his word, recently orchestrating the imposition of a new sharia constitution — the heavy-handed gambit that has horrified minorities and sent Egypt reeling into its latest chaos. Sharia constitutions are apparently fine with Senator McCain these days, but as we saw in his vertiginous positions on Qaddafi, the GOP’s guru of choice is not exactly a model of consistency on this point.

In a 2011 interview with Der Spiegel, the senator declared, quite correctly, that “sharia law . . . in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned.” Thus McCain then insisted that the sharia-driven Brotherhood — which he accurately described as “a radical group” that “has been involved with other terrorist organizations” — “should be specifically excluded from any transition government” in Egypt.  […….]

Meanwhile, under Morsi’s leadership, Egypt is seeing the widespread persecution of Christians and other religious minorities. In many areas, police and Islamist vigilantes now enforce sharia standards on the streets, just as they do in Saudi Arabia and Iran. And recordings recently surfaced of Morsi calling Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” — “blood-suckers” for whom Muslims “must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred,” including “hatred . . . for all those who support them.” [Memo to Republicans: “Those who support them” refers to . . . the American people.]

I could go on, but as Beltway supporters of America-hating Islamists like to say, “What difference does it make?” Still, just in case it makes any difference to you, here are the Republican senators who shamefully voted to provide Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government with F-16s and Abrams tanks: Alexander, Ayotte, Barasso, Blunt, Burr, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Collins, Corker, Enzi, Flake, Graham, Hatch, Hoeven, Inhofe, Isakson, Johanns, Johnson, Kirk, McCain, McConnell, Murkowski, Portman, Toomey, and Wicker.

Kudos to the 18 Republicans who joined Senator Paul in trying to stop the arming of America’s enemies: Boozman, Coats, Cornyn, Crapo, Cruz, Fischer, Grassley, Heller, Lee, Moran, Risch, Roberts, Rubio, Scott, Sessions, Shelby, Thune, and Vitter. Common sense is on their side. Sadly, history is sure to follow, and probably soon.

Read the rest – Senate Republicans arm the Brotherhood

I love Mark Steyn’s description of Chuck Hagel as being an oversedated Elmer Fudd. Some commenter wrote ” ‘It would seem Obama has little shame putting forth nominees who have “no other merit than that of… [being] personally allied to him’ ”

by Mark Steyn

You don’t have to be that good to fend off a committee of showboating senatorial blowhards. Hillary Clinton demonstrated that a week or so back when she unleashed what’s apparently the last word in withering putdowns: What difference does it make?

Quite a bit of difference, it seems. This week, an oversedated Elmer Fudd showed up at the Senate claiming to be the president’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, and even the kindliest interrogators on the committee couldn’t prevent the poor chap shooting himself in the foot.

Twenty minutes in, Chuck Hagel was all out of appendages.

He warmed up with a little light “misspeaking” on Iran. “I support the president’s strong position on containment,” he declared. Breaking news!

Obama comes clean on Iran! According to Hagel, the administration favors “containment.” I could barely “contain” my excitement! Despite official denials, many of us had long suspected that, lacking any stomach for preventing a nuclear Tehran, Washington would settle for “containing” them. Hagel has been a containment man for years: It worked with the Soviets, so why not with apocalyptic ayatollahs? As he said in a 2007 speech, “The core tenets of George Kennan’s ‘The Long Telegram’ and the strategy of containment remain relevant today.” Recent history of pre-nuclear Iran – authorizing successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, bombing Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, seeding client regimes in Lebanon and Gaza – suggests that these are fellows disinclined to be “contained” even at the best of times. But, even if Iran can be “contained” from nuking Tel Aviv, how do you “contain” Iran’s exercise of its nuclear status to advance its interests more discreetly, or “contain” the mullahs’ generosity to states and non-state actors less squeamish about using the technology? How do you “contain” a nuclear Iran from de facto control of Persian Gulf oil, including setting the price and determining the customers?

[…….]
Unfortunately, as Hillary said the other day, “our policy is prevention, not containment”. So five minutes later the handlers discreetly swung into action to “contain” Hagel. “I was just handed a note that I misspoke,” he announced, “that I said I supported the President’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say that we don’t have a position on containment.” Hagel’s revised position is that there is no position on containment for him to have a position on.

[……..]

Containment? Prevention? What difference does it make? Could happen to anyone. I well remember when Neville Chamberlain landed at Heston Aerodrome in 1938 and announced the latest breakthrough in appeasement: “I have here a piece of paper from Herr Hitler.” Two minutes later, he announced, “I have here a second piece of paper from my staffer saying that I misspoke.” Who can forget Churchill’s stirring words in the House of Commons? “If, indeed, it is the case that I said, ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender!,’ then I misspoke. I meant to say that we’re keeping the situation under review and remain committed to exploring all options.”

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re as expert in all the nuances of Iranian affairs as Chuck Hagel. After he’d hailed Iran’s “elected, legitimate government,” it fell to another Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand, to prompt Hagel to walk it back. Okay, delete “elected” and “legitimate”: “What I meant to say, should have said, is that it’s recognizable.”

“Recognizable”? In the sense that, if you wake up one morning to a big mushroom cloud on the horizon, you’d recognize it as the work of the Iranian government? No, by “recognizable,” he meant that the Iranian government is “recognized” as the government of Iran.

“I don’t understand Iranian politics,” he announced in perhaps his least-misspoken statement of the day. But the Iranians understand ours, which is why, in an amusing touch, the Foreign Ministry in Tehran has enthusiastically endorsed Hagel.

Fortunately, Iran is entirely peripheral to global affairs – it’s not like Chad or the Solomon Islands or the other burning questions the great powers are currently wrestling with – so it would be entirely unreasonable to expect Hagel to understand anything much about what’s going on over there. So what of his other, non-Iranian interests?

“There are a lot of things I don’t know about,” said Hagel. “If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.”

[……..]

Really? So what’s the job for, then? Just showing up at the office and the occasional black-tie NATO banquet? Most misspeakers loose off one round and then have to re-load, but Chuck Hagel is a big scary “military-style assault weapon” of a misspeaker, effortlessly peppering the Senate wainscoting for hours on end. Late in the day, after five o’clock, he pronounced definitively: “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“It does matter what you think,” insisted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte.

With respect to my own senator, I think it matters that he seems incapable of thinking – or at least of thinking through his own Great Thoughts.

There are over 300 million Americans, and another 20 million Undocumented-Americans about to be fast-tracked down the soi-disant “path to citizenship.” Surely, from this vast talent pool, it should be possible to find someone who’s sufficiently interested in running the planet’s biggest military not to present himself on the world stage as a woozy, unfocused stumblebum. In an exquisite touch, responding to reports that Hagel was “ill-prepared,” someone in the White House leaked that he had been thoroughly “coached.” In other words, don’t blame us: We put him through the federally mandated Confirmation Hearing For Dummies course. [……..]

Hagel may know nothing about Iran, but he’s an incisive expert on America.

During an appearance on al-Jazeera in 2009, a caller asked him about “the perception and the reality” that America is “the world’s bully” – and Hagel told viewers that he agreed. Confronted with this exchange by Sen. Ted Cruz, Hagel floundered. There was no aide to slip him a note explaining that the incoming SecDef takes no formal position on whether or not his own nation is “the world’s bully.”

Ah, if only. In the chancelleries of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Cairo, Pyongyang, the world’s bullied are laughing their heads off.

Read the rest – Easy to see why Tehran endorses Hagel

There are reports circulating that the Israelis hit a biological facility outside of Damascus last week. I would sure hope so.

by Michal Shmulovich

In air raids on Syria overnight Tuesday, Israeli jets targeted several sites, including a biological weapons research center, which hadn’t previously been mentioned in the media, TIME magazine claimed Friday.

The center was “flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad,” the report said, quoting Western intelligence officials.

The article also claimed Washington has given Israel a “green light” to carry out more such raids if it deems them necessary.

TIME added that Israel has raised security at embassies “and other potential targets overseas,” for fear of a Hezbollah-orchestrated retaliatory attack.

Thus far, the TIME article noted, only two airstrikes had been mentioned in the media: One attack, announced by Syria, was allegedly on a scientific research center in Jamarya, northwest of Damascus; the other, reported by various news organizations, claimed Israeli jets struck a convoy carrying advanced anti-aircraft defense systems toward Lebanon, presumably to Hezbollah, the Shi’ite group allied to Iran and Assad.

[……..]

Regarding the strike at Jamarya, the magazine added new details: “Among the buildings leveled at the military complex at Jamarya, outside Damascus, were warehouses stocked with equipment necessary for the deployment of chemical and biological weapons, relatively complicated systems typically manned by specially trained forces,” it said.

The biological warfare labs were considered to be of particular concern — in part because of the grave damage small amounts of biological agents can cause, and also due to the stated interest in such weapons by terror groups, namely Osama bin Laden’s successor as head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The TIME story added that the US was prepared to carry out raids of its own in the Aleppo area if it feared rebels might otherwise gain control of weapons of mass destruction in that area of Syria.

On Wednesday, US officials told The New York Times that Israel had notified the United States about an airstrike it carried out overnight Tuesday near the Lebanese-Syrian border. The officials said that they believed the target of the strike was a convoy carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry intended to reach Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

An unnamed Western official told the Wall Street Journal that the convoy was carrying sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons, which could constitute a strategic game-changer were Hezbollah to possess them.

A former Syrian general said Friday that the facility reportedly struck by Israel produced non-conventional weapons, in addition to conventional arms. Maj. Gen. Adnan Sillu was previously in charge of the country’s chemical weapons training program.

[………]

Read the rest – Israel’s strike on Syria also hit biological facility says report

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Egypt, Hezballah, IDF, Iran, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Republican Party, Sharia (Islamic Law), Syria | 104 Comments »

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