Photo Credit: Foreign Policy Along the vast mountain range that marks the Lebanon-Syria border, Hezbollah fighters point out recently captured al-Nusra Front training sites and military positions, and describe how they’ve been able to clear the area of the jihadis. They pick their way over the remnants of the al Qaeda affiliate’s makeshift camp, where clothes, tins of foods, and shell casings are strewn across the ground.
“They were fighters with nothing to lose, so some of them fought fiercely — at some points it was hand-to-hand combat,” said one Hezbollah commander. “But our weapon is our will, our passion, and our conviction.”
For the last two weeks, Hezbollah has been fighting along the Qalamoun mountain range, a 450-square-mile area that straddles both Lebanon and Syria, and overlooks the organization’s heartland in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Their enemies are an assortment of fighters belonging to the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, and elements from the Free Syrian Army. Hezbollah has touted the ongoing Qalamoun battles as a victory, saying it successfully reopened a clear path from Lebanon into Syria and constrained the threat from Sunni militants posed on Lebanon’s border.
With the battle still unfinished and the sound of explosions continuing to ring in the air, the Hezbollah commander describes how they were able to recapture the territory. “We managed to cleanse the area, which had about 40 positions belonging to the terrorists,” he said. “So far, we have liberated 120 square miles.”
According to another fighter, 80 percent of the recaptured area had been under al-Nusra Front’s control, while Islamic State fighters remain in the northern part of the mountain range, where the battle has yet to come. (Read more from “Hezbollah Is Stronger Than Ever” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-06-02 02:52:432016-04-11 11:00:31Hezbollah Is Stronger Than Ever
Photo Credit: Fox News Qatar has agreed to temporarily extend travel bans on five senior Taliban leaders released last year from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a State Department official confirmed to Fox News Sunday.
The official said the ban would remain in place until diplomatic talks for a longer-term solution are completed. The restrictions had been due to expire on Monday under a May 2014 exchange for Bergdahl. U.S. officials said Friday the Obama administration was closing in on an agreement with Qatar to extend the restrictions for six months that could be announced this weekend. It was not immediately clear why that agreement had not been finalized.
The U.S. remains in “close contact” with Qatari authorities “to make sure these individuals do not pose a threat to the United States.” As a result of the talks to date, Qatar “has agreed to maintain the current restrictive conditions on these individuals as we continue these discussions,” the official said.
The official said the former detainees are all currently in Qatar and remain subject to the travel ban and extensive monitoring. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly speak to the matter.
Under the terms of the exchange, the five detainees were sent to Qatar, where government officials agreed to monitor their activities and prevent them from traveling out of the country for one year. In return, Bergdahl, who had been held captive by the Taliban for nearly five years after walking away from his Army post in Afghanistan, was released to the U.S. military. He recently was charged with desertion. (Read more from “NOT GOING ANYWHERE: Qatar Extends Travel Ban On Ex-Gitmo Inmates” HERE)
For months, many Western observers have been closely following the minute-by-minute developments concerning the battle between Islamic State and coalition forces in the hopes that such data will help them discern what the future may hold.
Yet knowledge of the end game has been available for anyone cognizant of what the Obama administration is all about.
In an article published over seven months ago, I anticipated the main developments to have taken place since U.S. President Obama declared war (i.e., “air strikes”) on the Islamic State in September, 2014. Titled “Does Obama Need ‘Time to Defeat or Forget ISIS?” I made the following predictions, all of which have come true, and in the same sequence:
Obama’s “it will take time” [to defeat IS] assertion prompts the following prediction: U.S. airstrikes on IS targets will continue to be just enough to pacify those calling for action against the caliphate (“we’re doing what we can”). The official [U.S. government’s] narrative will be that the Islamic State is gradually being weakened, that victory is a matter of time (remember, “It will take time”)….
[W]e will hear about the occasional victory against IS — this or that leader killed or captured…
Then, just as they “suddenly” appeared in Iraq, we will “suddenly” again hear — probably first from IS itself — that the Islamic State has made some major comeback, winning over some new piece of territory, as the caliphate continues to grow and get stronger.
Now consider how the Obama administration’s actions have fulfilled these predictions, and often in the same sequence.
The official [U.S. government’s] narrative will be that the Islamic State is gradually being weakened, that victory is a matter of time…
Last February, key Obama administration figures — including Secretary of State John Kerry and retired General John Allen, the president’s special coordinator for the coalition against the Islamic State — triumphantly asserted that, thanks to U.S. air strikes, “half the group’s [IS] leaders in Iraq had been killed.”
Not long thereafter, an investigative report demonstrated that such claims were utterly false and hardly representative of reality.
[W]e will hear about the occasional victory against IS…
In April, the Pentagon announced that, thanks to U.S. air strikes and the Iraqi army, “ISIL [Islamic State] is no longer the dominant force in roughly 25 to 30% of the populated areas of Iraqi territory where it once had complete freedom of movement.” The Pentagon even released a map showing which territories the Islamic State had lost.
Soon, however, it became evident that the Pentagon’s claim and map were misleading and incomplete. Among other irregularities, the map, while showing territories that IS once held and territories it had since lost, failed to indicate the new territories IS had gained since the coalition effort began — making the 25%-30% claim totally misleading.
[W]e will hear about … this or that leader killed or captured…
Nor was Obama administration grandstanding concerning the killing of “key” ISIS figures wanting. Most recently, on May 16, U.S. special forces managed to kill Abu Sayyaf. Although only a mid-ranking leader, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said his killing “represents another significant blow to Isis.” (Read here for an idea of how many times U.S. officials have made the “significant blow” assertion whenever this or that jihadi dies, only for the jihad to spread and conquer more lands.)
Even the New York Times observed that “Abu Sayyaf is a midlevel leader in the organization — one terrorism analyst compared him to Al Capone’s accountant — and likely is replaceable in fairly short order.”
Then, just as they “suddenly” appeared in Iraq, we will “suddenly” again hear — probably first from IS itself — that the Islamic State has made some major comeback, winning over some new piece of territory, as the caliphate continues to grow and get stronger.
Finally, after the Obama administration had claimed that it had killed half of IS leadership, that it had pushed IS out of 25%-30% previously held territory, that its killing of an IS midlevel leader was a “significant blow”—right on cue, the Islamic State just announced its takeover of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, one of Iraq’s most strategic provinces. According to a May 17 Reuters report:
Islamic State militants said they had taken full control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday in the biggest defeat for the Baghdad government since last summer . . .
It was the biggest victory for Islamic State in Iraq since security forces and Shi’ite paramilitary groups began pushing the militants back last year, aided by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition.
The U.S. Defense Department, while not confirming the fall of Ramadi, sought to play down the impact on the broader Iraq military campaign of an Islamic State seizure of the city.
To fully appreciate the significance of this latest conquest by the Islamic State, consider the words of Anbar governor Ahmed al-Dulaimi, spoken back in November 2014: “If we lose Anbar, that means we will lose Iraq.”
Of course, none of these developments are surprising for those among us who were able to take a step back — to transcend the distracting noise and nonsense daily grinded out by mainstream media — and look at the big picture. For those able to read the plain writing on the wall, the end game of Obama and IS was always easy to discern.
Put differently, Americans need to start viewing the Obama administration with the eyes of a hedgehog, not a fox.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-29 01:31:102016-04-11 11:00:37Obama, ISIS, and the Writing on the Wall [+video]
By Eliezer Sherman. Qatar could be buying votes to suspend Israel from FIFA, Israeli diplomatic sources said on Thursday.
“We suspect that Qatar, about whom claims are circulating that it paid in order to host the 2022 World Cup, is now paying countries to vote in favor of the Palestinians,” diplomatic sources told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
Israeli diplomats have been working globally behind the scenes to ensure that a vote at the FIFA congress on Friday to suspend Israel from the world soccer federation, spearheaded by the Palestinian Football Association, does not pass.
Although FIFA was racked this week by an explosive corruption scandal instigated by the U.S. indictment of nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives over financial conspiracies, Friday’s congress and the vote to suspend the Israeli Soccer Association were set to move forward. (Read more from “Qatar Might Be Buying Votes to Suspend Israel From FIFA, Israeli Diplomats Say” HERE)
________________________________________________
FIFA Execs Indicted
By Christopher Ingraham. In the end, it only took a $150 million scandal to make Americans care about soccer.
FIFA, the notoriously corrupt and yet seemingly invincible governing body of world soccer, has finally landed itself an indictment that some would say is worthy of its reputation. The charges against a handful of senior FIFA officials include money laundering, racketeering, bribery and fraud. In short, the federal lawsuit alleges what millions of soccer fans have suspected all along: that FIFA officials have been using the organization’s massive influence to line their pocketbooks.
On the surface, it’s just another white collar crime story: rich, powerful men making themselves richer and more powerful. But a closer look suggests that there is a lot of real-world suffering happening as a direct result of FIFA’s decisions.
For the most obvious example of this, look to Qatar. The decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the rich Gulf state with a terrible human rights record was a controversial one right out of the gate. There have been extensive allegations of bribery: why else, some figured, award the Cup to a tiny country with sweltering summer heat and no soccer culture to speak of?
Human rights advocates’ worst fears about Qatar seemed to be confirmed as Qatar began building the infrastructure to host the Cup, and reports of migrant worker deaths started to pile up. The numbers, to the extent that we know them, appear startling: A Guardian investigation last year revealed that Nepalese migrant workers were dying at a rate of one every two days. In sum, the Guardian put the total Qatar death toll of workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh at 964 in 2012 and 2013. (Read more from this story HERE)
________________________________________________
Corrupt FIFA Donated Tens of Thousands of Dollars to Clinton Foundation, and that’s Not the Only Tie
By Jackie Kucinich. Both Bill Clinton and his family’s charity have been tied to soccer’s governing body, as well as Qatar’s disastrous World Cup bid.
And just like that, another Clinton Foundation donor is in the news.
The Clinton global charity has received between $50,000 and $100,000 from soccer’s governing body and has partnered with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association on several occasions, according to donor listings on the foundation’s website.
Several top FIFA executives were arrested Wednesday in Zurich and face corruption charges stretching back two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Involvement with the embattled body extends beyond the foundation to Bill Clinton himself. The former president was an honorary chairman of the bid committee put together to promote the United States as a possible host nation for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. (Read more from this story HERE).
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-29 01:29:292016-04-11 11:00:38Qatar Buying Votes to Suspend Israel From FIFA, Says Diplomats; FIFA Execs Indicted
Islam is divided into two primary sects. They are the Sunnis that constitute 80-85% of the 1.6 billion Islamic followers worldwide and the Shia that comprise 10-13% of the other adherents. There are additional component factions of Islam such as the Sufi, Druze, Alawi, Alevi, and Ahmadiyya that make up the remainder of the “umma,” or Islamic world community. But the Islamic contingents that are in active war with the U.S. and Western Civilization are the Sunni Salafi Wahhabis and the Shia Khomeinist Twelvers.
These two strains of Islam comprise an Islamic enemy that is dedicated to overthrowing the U.S. Constitution and replacing it with Islamic Sharia law. These Muslim sects both believe Islamic scripture mandates that Islamic Sharia theocratic-jurisprudence must supersede all man-conceived, secular-governmental-legal systems (i.e., democracy, communism, fascism, monarchy) because the Islamic Sharia-religious-legal system is based on divinely-revealed canons. Therefore, it cannot be subordinate to any human-conceptualized legal codes. So, according to Islamic scripture, no other legal system can coexist in the same physical territory at the same time with Islamic Sharia.
In order to install Sharia theocratic-jurisprudence in non-Muslim lands, Muslims are conducting “jihad” religious war. If and when the jihadist “soldiers of Allah” succeed in their jihadist conquest, the non-Muslims have only one of three options: 1) convert to Islam; 2) surrender and agree to be part of Islamic Sharia-ruled society as second class citizens with only limited rights by acknowledging the superiority of Islam through paying annual “jizya” – that is, mafia-like “extortion-protection money,” or 3) resist and fight to the death.
Islamic jihad is the “forever war” because Muhammad declared he had been ordered by the Islamic god Allah to fight until all non-Muslims declare their allegiance to Allah and Muhammad: “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” The recitation pledge that Muhammad demanded of non-Muslims is the Islamic creed or oath of belief (“Shahada”) signifying religious conversion to Islam: “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” (The Islamic “Shahada” is comparable to the Christian “Nicene Creed” and the Jewish “Shema Yisrael.”) Muhammad is considered by Muslims to be the “perfect man” that all Muslims are exhorted to emulate, so Muslims are enjoined in this declaration to fight like Muhammad until the worldwide victory of Islam is achieved. One of the “forever war” Quranic injunctions that Muhammad was encapsulating with his never-ending war declaration is contained in Sura 8:39: “And fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no fitna [disbelief, or the disorder that results from unbelief in Islam] and (until) the religion, all of it, is for Allah.”
So, to summarize, the United States Government is confronted by Islamic enemies from both the Sunni and Shia sects. These Islamic sects are in fact existential adversaries of the U.S. Constitution and advocates of the Islamic Sharia in its place; hence Islamic Sharia religious-political doctrine is a nemesis of the very idea of the liberties, freedoms, and separation of church and state embodied in the U.S. Constitution and U.S. legal system. Furthermore, Islamic scripture calls for Muslims to wage war without end until they succeed in Islamizing the entire world. The strategy of jihad warfare is that, once Sharia jurisprudence is instituted as the law of the land, all obstacles (human, legal, and cultural) to making Islam the sole, dominant religion can be systematically removed.
Enemy Divisions
However, besides conducting the jihadist war on the U.S., the Sunni Salafi Wahhabis and Shia Khomeinist Twelvers are engaged in an Islamic sectarian religious civil war to convince the umma that theirs is the ascendant Islamic jihadist sect to follow. This same competition between Sunni and Shia has been continuous in various forms and intensities since the death of Mohammed in the 7th century. These sects have cooperated in the past 1400 years in waging jihad against the “infidel” West, so the West should not be surprised should they do it in the future, but at this time the Sunni Salafist Wahhabis and Shia Khomeinist Twelvers are so fanatically committed to destroying each other that the twofold Islamic threat facing the U.S. currently must be understood within that sectarian existential paradigm.
Furthermore, the battlefield has yet another complicating factor in order that the conflict be accurately understood. It is that the Sunni Salafi Wahhabi force component is divided further into three subdivisions competing to be recognized as the preeminent Sunni leadership. Among the warring sub-sects is al-Qaeda along with multiple al-Qaeda-allegiant groups around the world in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Sinai, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Somalia, and Europe. Opposing al-Qaeda for the mantel of Sunni leadership is the Islamic State and its numerous Islamic State-allegiant groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sinai, Indonesia, Philippines, and Europe. The third Sunni contender for power is more nebulous and operates in a covert, psychological warfare and seditious mode, which make it a very difficult-to-counter, shadowy threat. This seditious Sunni entity is the Muslim Brotherhood anchored in the U.S., Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Gaza, and Europe. While the Muslim Brotherhood is not the same type of armed kinetic threat as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, it is as great or greater threat because they are now very successfully carrying out subversive preparation of the operational battlespace on the U.S. domestic front by silencing criticism with “Islamophobia.”
Dispelling a Myth
There is one additional point that requires clarification to understand the complex, multifaceted, simultaneous war within Islam and against the U.S. and the rest of the non-Muslim world. That point is the fact that Islam is a creed based on firm scriptural doctrine contained in the Quran (reputedly the verbatim words of the Allah god), the Hadiths (collections of the reports of the teachings, deeds and sayings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), and the Sira (biography of Muhammad). These three doctrinal sources are together referred to as the Sunna, which is the basis for Islamic Sharia canonical law prescribing both religious and secular duties and retributive penalties for lawbreaking. That the Sunna and Sharia are the doctrinal foundation of Islam negates the contention that, because not all Muslims are jihadists or accept the violent jihadist injunctions, Islam is “moderate.” It does not matter how individuals or even groups of Muslims believe or interpret Islamic scripture, what matters is what is recorded in the Sunna and Sharia. Individuals and groups come and go, but the Sunna and Sharia are unchanging. Moderate Islam is a mythical deception. There may be moderate individual Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Sharia-allegiant Muslims, Sunni and Shia, are committed to the fundamental Islamic organizing principle – spreading Islam through spreading the Sharia. It is those Sunni and Shia Sharia-allegiant Muslims that should be the focus of U.S. security concerns.
The On-going War Accross Jihadistan
At present there are tri-cornered conflicts occurring in Iraq-Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya. And of course those clashes don’t include the Islamic jihadist insurgencies in Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand to name some of the better known. But the hostilities of immediate concern to the U.S. are the ones in Iraq-Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya.
In the Iraq-Syria struggle the U.S. is providing combat air support to the Iranian dominated Shia Government of Iraq, thus putting the U.S. on the Shia Khomeinist Twelver side against the Sunni Islamic State Salafist Wahhabis. In Afghanistan the U.S. is fighting the Taliban, which is the stalking horse of the al-Qaeda Sunni Salafist Wahhabis, while the Islamic State Sunni Salafist Wahhabis are also in Afghanistan fighting against the Taliban, U.S., and the Shia Khomeinist Twelvers. In Yemen the U.S. is aligned with Sunni Saudi Arabia in their war against the Shia Houthis, the surrogate for the Iranian Shia Khomeinist Twelvers. The paradox from the U.S. point of view is that oil-rich Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia are the clandestine financial backers of the Islamic State Sunni Salafist Wahhabis that the U.S. is fighting in Iraq-Syria. In Libya al-Qaeda Sunni Salafist Wahhabis are vying with Islamic State Sunni Salafist Wahhabis for supremacy of the U.S.-created political and social morass. The U.S. is primarily a helpless spectator to this internecine Libyan Sunni blood-letting. In the U.S. itself the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to purge FBI and U.S. military training materials of accurate jihad information and counter-jihad tactics by convincing the White House that these things were politically incorrect Islamophobia.
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
The U.S. is aligned against itself. In the Iraq-Syria theater the U.S. is actively assisting the Shia against the Sunnis. In Yemen the U.S. is supporting the Sunni side against the Shia. In Afghanistan the U.S. is aligned with a Sunni government against the Sunni Taliban surrogate of the al-Qaeda Sunni Salafist Wahhabis. In Libya the situation is spinning out of control as the two Sunni components battle, while the U.S. is a paralyzed observer. In the U.S. the Obama regime has opened many channels to the Muslim Brotherhood in order to receive its guidance for countering Islamic jihad. And finally the Obama regime says it is on the verge of concluding a treaty with the Iranian Shia Khomeinist Twelvers that guarantees they acquire nuclear weapons, according to the treaty in a decade or sooner by cheating.
Obvious Conclusions
The first obvious conclusion is that the Obama regime has absolutely no coherent strategy to repel the Islamic enemy.
The second obvious conclusion is that the U.S. has dual Islamic enemies that are Sunni and Shia Sharia-allegiant Muslims.
The third obvious conclusion is that the Muslim Brotherhood and its various front organizations operating in the U.S. are covert agents of Islamic jihad and must be exposed as such and be removed from all positions of government policy influence.
The fourth obvious conclusion that any treaty that puts nuclear weapons in the possession of Shia Khomeinist Twelvers is absolute insanity and needs to be stopped.
The fifth obvious conclusion is that the U.S. desperately needs to finally stop dealing with Islamic jihad by employing tactical crisis management solutions and adopt a comprehensive strategy which is based on the reality that the U.S. loses regardless who triumphs in the Islamic religious sectarian war: Islamic State Sunni Salafist Wahhabis, al-Qaeda Sunni Salafist Wahhabis, Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, or Shia Khomeinist Twelvers. The U.S. has no allies that share our values in any of these Islamic groups. In fact, each of these Islamic groups is dedicated to replacing the U.S. Constitution with the Islamic Sharia jurisprudence. They are all existential enemies. (See “Analyzing the Sunni-Shia Religious Sectarian War From the U.S. Standpoint”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-28 02:18:352016-04-11 11:00:39Explaining the Confusing Sunni-Shia Sectarian Wars and America’s National Interest [+video]
Photo Credit: AP Is the world going mad? Military posturing is quietly reaching new extremes in Europe, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea. And the provocative bluster has just reached new heights.
The source was anonymous. But the mouthpiece has a measure of credibility. High profile military analyst and former US Naval War College lecturer John Schindler tweeted last week: “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: ‘We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.’ Let that sink in” . . .
The warning comes as Europe engages in some of its biggest ever war games — right on Russia’s front door. It’s a deliberate ploy, intended to remind Moscow of the consequences of its duplicitous invasion of Ukraine.
Half a world away, the “w” word was mentioned again yesterday. This time in an editorial by a Chinese state controlled paper. Said the Global Times: “If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.”
It came as China’s government effectively declared a “no fly zone” over the disputed waterway after warning the US over its “provocative” aerial reconnaissance of several islands. (Read more from “The ‘War’ Word Is Being Increasingly Heard as Europe, Russia, China and the United States Adopt Provocative Postures” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-28 02:18:242016-04-11 11:00:39Senior NATO Officer: West Will Likely Be at War this Summer, Lucky if it’s not Nuclear
Photo Credit: Defense One Live Last week, I learned that the introduction of my book, Fortifying Pakistan (co-authored with Peter Chalk), was part of Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad library. While some other members of the Bin Laden book club were amused to be included, I was incensed. Our book is about Pakistan’s unwillingness to avail itself of American assistance in order to be a more effective partner in combatting terrorism. We argue that Pakistan’s recalcitrance is rooted in its commitment to using terrorism as a tool of foreign policy in India and Afghanistan. One has to wonder why Bin Laden would be interested in reading about that. After all, by the time the book came out, he was already in Pakistan. He, of all people, knew full well the practical implications of our research. He was safely ensconced in a Pakistani sanctuary, a leisurely stroll down the road from Pakistan’s premier military academy, at Kakul.
The research project that culminated in the 2006 publication of Fortifying Pakistan began in 2004, when I was a new researcher at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). My boss, Paul Stares, (now at the Council on Foreign Relations) hired me to initiate a South Asia research program. This project was not an easy sell. Most of Washington had long decided that Pakistan was our most allegiant ally in the war on terrorism. That attitude endured until the Obama administration came into office.
Simply put: It was blasphemous to suggest, in 2004, that then-president Musharraf was playing a both sides with Washington. The Bush administration could not countenance such a possibility, or even consider the plausibility of it, given that its attention and resources were focused on Iraq.
Prior to joining USIP, I served as a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. (Note: I am not, nor have I ever been, an actual political scientist.) During one of my last projects for RAND, I had briefed a senior Department of Defense official in early 2004, after returning from a January fact-finding trip I had made to Peshawar. I learned from numerous persons that the Pakistanis, through elements of the Frontier Corps, were facilitating Taliban operations in Afghanistan and movements into and out of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
This was no surprise to me. After all, Pakistan’s army and intelligence agency (the ISI) had long used the Frontier Corps to train Islamist militants operating in Afghanistan. The official seemed nonchalant at the time of the briefing, which puzzled and discomfited me. He seemed to be playing tic-tac-toe while the Pakistanis were playing three-dimensional chess. (Read more from “If Only US Leaders Read This Book on Pakistan That Was on Bin Laden’s Shelf” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-28 02:15:022016-04-11 11:00:42If Only US Leaders Read This Book on Pakistan That Was on Bin Laden’s Shelf
Photo Credit: The Telegraph By Julian Ryall. China’s armed forces are to extend their operations and its air force will become an offensive as well as defensive force for the first time, in a major shift in policy that will strengthen fears of accidental conflict . . .
The People’s Liberation Army, including its navy and air force, will be allowed to “project power” further beyond its borders at sea and more assertively in the air in order to safeguard its maritime possessions, the [defense] white paper [released by the chief administrative body of the Chinese government] stated . . .
The posture risks escalating the tension over disputed islands in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Pacific, where the United States is determined to protect the interests of allies like Taiwan and the Philippines . . .
Global Times, a tabloid newspaper run by the Communist Party, said that China might have to “accept” there would be conflict with the United States.
“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea”, said the paper, which is often seen as a mouth-piece of hardline nationalists in the government in Beijing. (Read more from “US-China War ‘Inevitable’ Unless Washington Drops Demands Over South China Sea” HERE)
_____________________________________________
What Else did China’s Defense White Paper Predict for the Future?
By Kieth Johnson. [I]n the United States . . . the consensus over accommodating China’s rise seems to have given way to a more hawkish stance on the need to contain the rising Asian giant.
China’s new white paper provides plenty of points of continuity with past strategies, especially with Mao Zedong’s doctrine of “active defense,” known in the United States as the Billy Martin school of conflict management (“I never threw the first punch; I threw the second four.”)
At the same time, though, the defense blueprint breaks new ground. It codifies the ongoing transformation of China into a true maritime power, and puts more emphasis on high-seas, offensive naval operations. More broadly, it envisions a much bigger, global role for Chinese armed forces than had previously been the case, and in some places echoes the famously hawkish Chinese views of thinkers such as Liu Mingfu, whose bestselling book “The China Dream” paints a vision of nearly inevitable conflict between the two global titans. . .
For a 5,000-year old civilization that has survived invasions from Mongols, Japanese, and Western Europeans, this is a sobering conclusion: “In the new circumstances, the national security issues facing China encompass far more subjects, extend over a greater range, and cover a longer time span than at any time in the country’s history.” Later, the paper notes: “Due to its complex geostrategic environment, China faces various threats and challenges in all its strategic directions and security domains.”
That’s especially true when it comes to the South China Sea. (Read more from “China’s Military Blueprint: Bigger Navy, Bigger Global Role” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-27 00:09:142016-04-11 11:00:43US-China War ‘Inevitable’ Unless Washington Drops Demands Over South China Sea
The United States allows 70,000 people from all over the world to obtain legal permanent residence through our Refugee Program–one of the most generous in the world. We also bring in another 40,000 or so through the Asylum program. Then there is the Special Immigrant Visa for people from Iraq and Afghanistan–about 10,000 in FY 2014–and a Cuban/Haitian Entrant program bringing in another 20,000 annually. That adds up to about 140,000.
Many of these “refugees” come from Islamic countries like Somalia, Iraq and Iran, bringing with them at least the potential for terrorism, in many cases a contempt for our country and the almost universal edict among Muslims to dominate. Islamic supremacist Mega Mosques are being erected all over the country, vigorously supported by the Obama Justice Department, which runs interference for them over the objections of local citizenry.
It’s about to get worse. The Syrian civil war–enabled at least partially by Obama’s insane foreign policy–has created a refugee crisis, with approximately 2.9 million Syrians now living in refugee camps in surrounding countries. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees wants the U.S. to accept 130,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. We have only taken 700 so far, but given the FBI’s warning that it cannot guarantee ISIS or other terrorists are not among the refugees, even that is too many.
Not to be dissuaded from such silly national security concerns, a group of 14 U.S. senators, led by the indefatigable Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, have written a letter to Obama urging him to allow 65,000 Syrians in as refugees. This would require a dramatic expansion of the refugee program, and virtually guarantee that a sizable number of ISIS fighters would slip in among them. Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy has given them the moniker “Jihad Caucus” because practically speaking, Jihad is what this request will bring.
The 14 senators demanding this massive influx of Syrians are:
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Christopher Coons (D-DE)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Edward Markey (D-MA)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
These same 14 sent another letter in April Demanding action on the Syrians. These senators have truly earned the name Jihad Caucus. A few years back, Dick “Turban” Durbin, as he has been called, said U.S. troops guarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners, were Nazis. Sounds like a bit of projection to me. (See “The Jihad Caucus”, originally posted HERE)
Listen to an earlier interview with this author on The Joe Miller Show:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-27 00:08:272016-04-11 11:00:44The Jihad Caucus: How Islamic Immigration to the US is About to Get Much Worse [+video]
Photo Credit: Foreign Policy Shiite militias and Iraqi government forces have started to move into place around the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi in preparation for a highly-publicized but hastily-planned push to wrest the city from the fighters who chased the Iraqi army out earlier this month.
U.S. military officials believe that the militants had been carefully planning the city’s conquest for weeks, slipping fighters into the city to isolate several government buildings, then surrounding and isolating the Iraqi forces trapped in those pockets. They also battered Iraqi positions with dozens of captured Iraqi armored vehicles and bulldozers packed with explosives — 10 of which have been reported to be as large as the 1995 Oklahoma City blast. With scores dead and wounded, the exhausted and demoralized Iraqi forces were ordered to pull back to defensive positions outside of the city. U.S. officials said that dozens of armored vehicles, along with tanks and artillery pieces, were abandoned by government forces.
Furious American policymakers blasted the Iraqis for effectively abandoning the city. The Iraqi army “was not driven out of Ramadi,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters at a NATO summit in Brussels last week. “They drove out of Ramadi.” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, meanwhile, used an interview Sunday to publicly accuse the Iraqis of lacking the “will to fight,” The White House quickly tried to walk the comments back, but there is little doubt Carter was speaking for many inside the Pentagon.
The Defense chief’s comments hinted at the biggest question hanging over both the Ramadi fight and the broader push against the Islamic State: can Baghdad win the war if its generals seem to be continually out-thought and out-maneuvered by their counterparts from the militant group?
As always, however, matters of victory and defeat in war are complicated. When it comes to Ramadi, the loss isn’t one that can simply be placed at the feet of bad leadership. The Iraqi Army and police there had been fighting almost continuously for 18 months with little support — and no relief — from the government in Baghdad, said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute who specializes in Iraqi military issues. And for them there has been “no safe place, no real rest and recuperation, no escape from the battle.” (Read more from “Why Are the Islamic State’s Commanders so Much Better Than the Iraqi Army?” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-27 00:07:572016-04-11 11:00:44Why Are the Islamic State’s Commanders so Much Better Than the Iraqi Army?