Monday, June 25, 2007

BULLETIN

ABCNews' Brian Ross reported on Sunday that large teams of newly trained al Qaeda suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe. A graduation ceremony, filmed by a Pakistani journalist, showed 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12. The tape shows Mansoor Dadullah, a Taliban military commander, congratulating the teams and presumably sending them off on their suicide missions.

"These Americans, Canadians, British, and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Dadullah says on the tape. "Why shouldn't we go after them?"

According to ABCNews, US intelligence officials dismissed the film as an example of "an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda campaign."

[Editor's Note: Such a cavalier attitude to this existential threat to life should not be the knee-jerk reaction of our intelligence force in the field. Far better to assume the worst and prepare appropriately for it, than to belittle it and leave our country as unprepared as we were before 9/11.]

The Fall of Gaza - Implications for the West

Hamas' bloody victory in Gaza, which left over 100 people dead at the hands of their fellow Palestinians, has ramifications that go far beyond its borders. It begins another chapter in the global battle between the free world and radical Islam and highlights one of the major causes for the failure of the peace process - the inability of the Palestinians to govern themselves responsibly. It also signals the collapse of the Palestinian dream - for a state of their own.

The chaos that has overtaken Gaza was forecast by our analysts over a year and a half ago, and it won't stop here. Already, deadly retaliation in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarm are ominous indicators of what is likely to happen next. In order to understand the broader impact of this takeover by Hamas, it is essential to understand the context of the event and the culture that spawned it.

One of the most serious blows to the West resulted from the looting and destruction that ensued. Not only buildings and offices were looted and destroyed. According to Debka, hundreds of thousands of American, British, and Israeli intelligence documents and electronic media fell into the hands of the radical Islamists of Hamas. This was intelligence that was provided to the Fatah. Documents relating to Western activities throughout the Middle East "and covering years of undercover activity".

The theft of this intelligence is of a scale that is without precedent in modern history and threatens to undermine our activities in the region for some time to come. While it is inconceivable that we ever thought that such sensitive and critical information would be safe in the hands of the PA (who have proved over and over again how unreliable they really are and how closely allied to the terrorism we claim to hate), this monumental loss only underscores the serious problems we face with our current foreign policies. Our misconceived and misplaced trust has now seriously compromised our security in the region and put our personnel at great risk.

1. The real problems of the Palestinians are what they have always been - the exploitation of the people by their own leaders. The conflict with Israel is a useful excuse that has been utilized by a succession of leaders to distract the Palestinian people from the ongoing abuse they receive from those who govern them.

   This abuse has been a fact of life for the last 50 years. In every Arab country that shares borders with Israel, refugee camps still exist like open sores on the landscape. These camps are still home to the families of the several hundred thousand Arab refugees who fled the newly established state of Israel during the 1948 war. Unlike Israel, which quickly absorbed an equal number of Jews forced to flee their homes in Arab countries, these nations, which include Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, still impose refugee status on these people half a century later, and confine them and their progeny in festering camps where they live in poverty and where hopelessness is a way of life. The Palestinians are now reaping the bitter fruit of generations of exploitation by their own leaders.

2. Peace is not on the table. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, America has mistakenly accepted the assumption, seen as plainly today as ever before, is that peace is not even on their agenda. Their strategy is based on deception and violence in lieu of diplomacy and peace.

   In the glow of unanimity brought about by the 'Roadmap to peace in the Middle East, which was presented to Palestinian and Israeli leaders by the 'Quartet' mediators (United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia), we rushed to court Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah and President of the Palestinian Authority, assuming that because he was not as radical as Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh , he was therefore a 'partner in peace.' We have missed the point entirely. We have ignored the fact that he, with Yassir Arafat, was one of the founders of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement in 1964, which was dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel through violence. The lesser of two evils is still evil, and Mahmoud Abbas is still a terrorist in a suit. The naiveté in our approach toward Abbas led us to provide him with arms and intelligence that were used against us and our ally, Israel, by the radical elements of his own organization.

   Hamas' primary goal, clearly stated in its charter, is to wipe Israel off the face of the map. In addition to Zionists, it also lists "Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others" as "cells of subversion and saboteurs", and promises that "the day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated."

   That such organizations which symbolize the diversity and philanthropy of our free society are specifically targeted for destruction, should be cause for great alarm. These are not idle threats. Hamas' intolerance is total, unforgiving, and without limits. Christians in Gaza have been threatened and their churches as well as a monastery have been gutted.

   Our own refusal to recognize their intent, so clearly stated, and to see what is before our eyes, puts us in grave danger, because it feeds into their plans and keeps us from preparing a successful strategy of our own against them.

   Our policy, instead, has been to continue trying to impose our own values and democratic institutions on their culture, to insist on 'democratic' elections, for example, without recognizing the terrible, most likely consequences, and to dismiss their spoken and written words as part of a 'propaganda campaign'.

   It is because of this great gap in our own understanding that every meaningful effort toward the peace table - from Madrid to the Road Map - has been first courted by the terrorists as a means to gain time, and then, when peace seems almost at hand, totally trashed, with a variety of excuses, and replaced by violence, first against Israel, then against Christians, and more recently, against each other.

3. The conflict is not local and it will not stop in Gaza. The growing chaos in Gaza is symptomatic of a much larger malaise that is fed and nourished from international sources. It starts with al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist organization with global reach, and Iran, a Shia terror-supporting state with a global agenda. Both sides have been supporting the conflict in Gaza with weapons, money, training, and personnel. Their strategies differ, but their goal is the same - to achieve a world governed by Shari'ah law. Even now, Gaza is about to fall under the umbrella of this repressive Islamic law under the new Hamas rule.

   The impact is already being felt elsewhere. With the murders and humiliation of Fatah at the hands of Hamas still fresh, retaliation in the West Bank has already begun. This will be followed by a creeping movement towards Islamization, and the West Bank, with its Biblical cities of Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem, will also fall. The impact on Israel, surrounded from the north by Hezbollah, and the east and south by Hamas, will be severe.

   For many years, Israel has been the laboratory for terrorists to practice their craft and develop their techniques. Today, with the great help of Iran and its surrogate, Syria, the laboratory has grown much larger. The technological resources are now much richer, and the money continues to flow through global channels to fund their missions. Lest we forget, the money comes not only from Iran, but from Islamist sources around the world, including the United States. Today the target is the democratic West, and most particularly, the United States.

4. Chaos Theory - Iran Style The fall of Gaza to Hamas last week was not an accident. What we must not fail to understand is that chaos is not the outcome, it is the strategy. Ahmadinejad seems to truly believe that by creating global chaos he will hasten the coming of the Mahdi, Islam's equivalent of the Messiah. In 2005, at a meeting with three European foreign ministers, Ahmadinejad explained his real mission: "Do you know why we wish to have chaos at any price?" he asked. "Because, after the chaos, we can see the greatness of Allah."

   So creating chaos is Iran's strategy of choice and conviction.

   • Iran has done this in Iraq, where early attacks against both Sunni and Shia have ignited an internecine battle that shows no sign of slowing down.

   • Iran has helped to destabilize local economies throughout the region (Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank, and elsewhere) by flooding them with millions of counterfeit US hundred dollar bill. They call it 'yellow money' and it has helped to lower the value of the dollar in the global marketplace.

   • In Gaza, Iran has used Syria as a surrogate to provide training, massive shipments of guns, rockets, and tanks (with the cooperation of Egypt, through whose borders they pass), and funding to incite the destabilization of the 'democratically elected' Palestinian Authority.

   • Iran has provided terrorist training for export. It is no accident that many of suicide bombers who have died in Iraq over the last few years have been Palestinians, recruited to join the jihad against the west and die for the glory of Allah, and bringing the threat far closer to home.

   The anarchy in Gaza is far from over. Hamas' current attempts to reign in the chaos, and create a semblance of order are in direct opposition to Iran's greater vision. By pitting the various local factions - Hamas, Fatah, al Qaeda, Egypt, and Israel - against each other, the seeds that have been sown in Gaza will, we predict, continue to spread throughout the region, and from there to Europe, Asia, and America. Iran's unholy liaison with al Qaeda, despite their religious differences (Iran is Shia while al Qaeda is Sunni), can only spell greater chaos in the Middle East and beyond.

   If we fail to recognize that Ahmadinejad is a man who has nothing to negotiate, we will begin to realize the power we need to confront him on our won terms. If we fail to understand that he uses the oldest Middle Eastern guile to woo us into thinking that we can negotiate with him and defuse a global conflagration, we will fail. If we recognize his lunacy for what is, and see the broader dangers represented by Hamas' victory in Gaza, we can create a successful strategy for defeating our true enemies in this war against Islamist terrorism.

Our culture, based on freedom and the sanctity of human life, is foreign to radical Islam. Hamas does not understand it or want it. Neither does Hezbollah, Fatah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the many other Islamist organizations that are spreading their toxic ideology around the world. The Middle East is a complex place that has spawned complex cultures that we barely understand. We cannot impose our values on the indigenous people of the region. If we want to wage peace in the Middle East, we need to understand the underlying imperatives of the cultures there.

History will view the recent events in Gaza in the context of the history that came before it and that which will follow. It is likely to be recorded as the outcome of failed policy by Western states, who put their faith in a false premise and failed to take into account that cultural values run deep and that we cannot build our foreign policy based on an assumption that ours are universally shared.

Hamas has a strong presence in the US and support for their agenda can be found in enclaves throughout the country, from Virginia to California. The creation of Hamastan in Gaza brings us one step closer to direct confrontation with the radical Islamic front that seeks to destroy our way of life.

This is 1938 again and we can choose to be either Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill. We will not win this war for our future by appeasing the enemy. The Radical Islamist vision of the future is non-negotiable, therefore the sooner we stop trying to negotiate with countries like Iran and Syria, and organizations like Hamas, the sooner we will be able to create a viable and successful strategy that will win the war against this vicious enemy.

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