Category Archives: Terrorism

On Killing The ‘Right Way,’ For The ‘Right’ Reasons

Democracy, Islam, Jihad, Just War, Middle East, Terrorism

“Killed in an un-Islamic way” is how Jake Tapper of CNN described the torching by ISIS of a captive, caged Jordanian pilot. In case you didn’t know, beheading is killing the Islamic way.

Killing à la America, now that’s an entirely different matter. We do it right. The US is civilized: America strafes from above.

Villagers in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen already know it, although the people on the ground near American drone bases in Somalia and Ethiopia are still blissfully unaware of it—Barack Obama is the uncrowned king of the killer drone. In Iraq, ordinary men and women scan the skies nervously for the telltale metallic shimmer, wondering whether they are being simply surveilled from above, as promised, or targeted by Hellfire missiles. Ditto the Iranians, who once even downed, and promptly displayed to the world, an RQ-170 Sentinel, launched into Iranian airspace by Uncle Sam.

Here is the face of disfigurement by American forces.

Still, the “good” killers can claim they are without mens rea—criminal intent—we don’t mean to disfigure and kill all the little Shakiras we’ve disfigured and killed.

The child, reported London’s Daily Mail, “was burned beyond recognition by a U.S. drone and left for dead in a trashcan. … She was found by a medical mission team two years ago and was described as ‘lucky’ by staff as two other children found with her were killed by the military attack.” “[B]rought to the U.S. from her home in Pakistan,” the girl’s American surgeons patched her up.

As you can see, not much remains of the small, charred face. Nevertheless, as the narrative goes, the little girl and tens of thousands like her, should be grateful that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put little Shakira together again. (Or would have if they could have.)

That’s how we role; we reduce the “bad guys'” countries to rubble, decimate their neighborhoods with Daisy Cutters—all with good intentions and for a good cause: Democratizing the devils!

Ours is “The Jupiter Complex”: “the ability granted by the possession of huge air forces, to rain thunderbolts on the wicked.” “The Jupiter Complex,” writes (neoconservative) historian Paul Johnson, “was to be with the United States for the rest of the century.”

And into the next.

Savages all, if you ask me.

Playing Politics With The Pawns

Jihad, Politics, Terrorism, The State

The prisoner swap between the US and the Taliban, last year, trading five fierce-looking Muhammadans from Afghanistan’s Jihad Central for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was problematic for reasons other than that American administrations claim not to negotiate with terrorists. It is of a piece with the “release from Qatar, in December,” of an “al Qaeda operative held in a U.S. prison” in exchange for two Americans held in that country.

If the government intended to swap these prisoners for Americans, why not reserve some swap-worthy swarthies to save murdered ISIS captives Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff?

Likely because the returns were not that great. It’s all about optics and politics.

‘Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive’

Foreign Policy, Iran, Islam, Terrorism

The dilemmas faced by “a mulish military power which doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola” are enormous.

The Yemeni president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, resigned on Jan. 22, “after Houthi rebels seeking greater political power effectively seized control of the capital, Sanaa.” (Foreign Policy)

For years, Yemenis had felt the brunt of “U.S.-trained units of elite Yemeni special forces” combined with CIA drone strikes from above. Now the superpower must decide “whether, and how, to cooperate with the Houthis — who are widely seen as an Iranian proxy force — in the fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni-based group that claimed to have orchestrated this month’s attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo.”

The Houthis hate al Qaeda, which is “a Sunni militant group that sees the Houthis and the Iranian as apostates.” So do we, the Americans, hate al Qaeda. But we also hate the Iranians (principally because Israel is threatened by Iran, which is no threat to the US).

Another dynamic is at play besides the Sunni-Shia dynamic. It is that between the forces of centralization, with which the US generally sides (witness Iraq), and the forces of decentralization, with which the Arab people with whom we meddle generally side, given the tribal, familial focus of their societies.

The Houthis are demanding greater regional autonomy (like the Kurds of Iraq); the US is inevitably looking to empower another puppet central power like Hadi’s so as to lord it over its Yemeni client state.

In the words of Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

UPDATED: A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN

Canada, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Islam, libertarianism, Terrorism, The State, The West

“A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

He adopted the religion of peace and forthwith proceeded to shatter the peace of his countrymen.

In the waning months of 2014, Quebecer Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in the back, at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa. Zehaf-Bibeau then stormed Parliament, but was dispatched by a sergeant-at-arms before he could do further harm.

The mother of the martyr, Susan Bibeau, is a “deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.” Mrs. Bibeau has done quite well as a Canadian bureaucrat, acquiring “homes in Montreal and Ottawa.” Her errant son told mommy dearest of “his desire to travel to Syria,” a fact she revealed only after the butcher’s bill came due; following Zehaf-Bibeau’s lone-wolf, wilding rampage on Parliament Hill.

Why would a convert to Islam want to travel to Syria? To visit the ruins? And why would a Canadian civil servant, who described her son as a misfit, not report Zehaf-Bibeau’s destination of choice to the authorities? In any event, it transpires that said authorities had been investigating Zehaf-Bibeau, but had yet to determine whether or not to confiscate his passport.

Before Michael Zehaf-Bibeau came another Quebecer called Martin Couture-Rouleau. Like Bibeau, Rouleau went to war with his countrymen upon converting to Islam. He rammed his car into two Canadian Forces members near Montreal, one of whom died of his injuries.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Couture-Rouleau was known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, and had been closely monitored. These authorities were confident that Couture-Rouleau and 90 other suspected extremists “intended to join militants fighting abroad.”

So what did the Canadian security apparatus do to forestall an attack on Canadian soil? First, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police staged an intervention. The Mounties tried to “talk Couture-Rouleau down” from his murderous mindset. Convinced that the therapeutic intervention succeeded, the Mounties then stopped monitoring him. Oh, and they also took away Couture-Rouleau’s passport. …

… The point here is not to belabor well-known, accepted outrages. Instead, I’d like to float a modest proposal. …

Read the complete column. “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is now on WND.

UPDATE (1/24):

Myron Robert Pauli: These idiots who say that America was attacked “from Afghanistan” or “from Iraq!!” – that would be true if missiles flew from there – but as it was, the US allowed people into this country (mostly Saudis – no Afghans or Iraqis on 9/11) who went to flight school in this country, boarded airplanes in this country, and even got visas renewed AFTER flying into buildings by the State Department. Security begins AT HOME and not stomping around Garbagecanistan propping up Malikis and Abadis and Kharzis.
Yesterday at 7:21am · Like

Myron Robert Pauli: Can the feds explain why when an American citizen with a biometric DoD identity card (myself) flies – to talk at a conference on Aircraft Survivability, no less – he is subjected to TWO nudie scans, TWO gropes, mass spectrometer of all carry on luggage, and one hour of interrogation ….. BUT when Umar Farouk Underpantsabomber flies to the US from Nigeria via YEMEN !!! and his dad calls the authorities on him, they let him on the airplane?????? These buffoons refuse to protect America while the government sends aid to ISIS-Sunni-“rebels” who are going at the non-threatening (albeit dictatorial) Assad and the late Khadaffi.
Yesterday at 7:26am · Edited · Unlike · 1