Tag Archives: ISIL

International news

'Jihadi John' gets a name

Now we’re getting somewhere in the hunt for the guy seen in all those ISIL videos.

“Jihadi John” has been identified. The individual wearing all black reportedly is Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Briton who is known to come from a prosperous family; he earned a degree in computer programming. The world has seen this guy, heard his voice and assumed he’s carried out the gruesome beheadings of captives, some of whom were Americans and Brits.

http://news.yahoo.com/bbc-names-jihadi-john-suspect-islamic-state-beheading-110602366.html

British intelligence officials, naturally, aren’t confirming or denying this goon’s name. It came from The Washington Post, which likely has sources within the UK’s intelligence network.

If the guy comes from a well-to-do family, there likely will be pictures revealing his face released before too long.

A part of me believes the Brits and U.S. intelligence officials are looking for this guy as these words are being written. Another part of me understands the difficulty in finding him and, um, dealing with him once he’s located. Yes, we found Osama bin Laden hiding in plain sight in Pakistan, but that search took nearly a decade after 9/11 to complete. Our spooks located bin Laden and the commander in chief ordered the hit that was carried out by SEALs and CIA commandos.

Will Emwazi meet the same fate as bin Laden?

I surely hope so.

 

International news, military news

Why the fixation over labels?

Conservative media continue to be fixated over the White House’s refusal to refer to the terrorists with whom we are at war as “Islamic terrorists.”

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson got the third degree on Fox News Sunday over that question.

His answer: Islamic State terrorists don’t deserve to be dignified by any reference to Islam.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/02/22/fox_news_sunday_host_vs_jeh_johnson_islamic_state_doesnt_deserve_the_dignity_of_being_called_islamic.html

I’ve long wondered when this silly argument is going to cease. I’m believing now that it will never end.

From my standpoint, it makes no difference if we call these monsters “Islamic terrorists,” or “violent terrorists,” or “garden-variety terrorists.” What matters — or what should matter — is what we’re doing in the field to fight these groups.

We’re stalking them. We’re killing them. We’re taking some of them prisoner. We’re subjecting them to serious interrogation.

Isn’t that enough?

However, it doesn’t seem to be among those on the right who keep insisting that the refusal to label the bad guys as “Islamic terrorists” somehow makes the fight less, well, heartfelt or sincere on our part.

I continue to believe our deep-cover agents, special operations personnel, Homeland Security and CIA analysts are doing all they can do to ensure that we avoid a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. No one anywhere can predict the level of success in avoiding another dastardly attack.

If we get hit once again, it won’t be because the White House doesn’t hang the correct label on the forces of evil with whom we are fighting a war.

 

national news

Father's grief brings criticism of hostage policy

Carl Mueller’s grief is beyond most people’s comprehension.

His daughter, Kayla Jean, was killed in an air strike against her Islamic State captors. Parents aren’t supposed to mourn the loss of their children. Parents throughout the world understand the natural order, and what Carl and Marsha Mueller are experiencing upsets that order.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/slain-us-hostages-dad-slams-us-ransom-policy/ar-BBhR85n

Having laid down that predicate — and stating my own sorrow over Kayla Jean’s death — it is important to put his criticism of longstanding U.S. policy regarding ransom for hostages in some perspective.

Carl Mueller said the U.S. government put policy ahead of his daughter’s safe return.

He believes the government should have paid ransom for her daughter’s release.

“We understand the policy about not paying ransom,” Carl Mueller told “Meet the Press.”

“But on the other hand, any parents out there would understand that you would want anything and everything done to bring your child home. And we tried. And we asked. But they put policy in front of American citizens’ lives.”

Paying ransom every time someone is captured by an enemy, though, puts other Americans at even greater risk. If an enemy knows it can get paid large sums of money whenever it grabs an innocent victim, there can be no limit to the demands the enemy can make.

The U.S. policy that prohibits paying ransom does not make it any easier for those who lose loved ones at the hands of ruthless killers. Carl and Marsha Mueller’s grief is unfathomable.

U.S. no-ransom policy doesn’t diminish the grief we all feel for their horrific loss. The policy, though, is the correct one. Those who commit evil deeds need no additional incentive to exact their terrible vengeance.

 

national news

Ted Cruz: Exaggerator in chief

Ted Cruz’s mother must have told him when he was a boy: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate.”

Or perhaps words to that effect.

Well, the Texas Republican freshman U.S. senator, is exaggerating in the extreme — once again — while criticizing the Obama administration’s approach to fighting the war on terror.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/ted-cruz-obama-radical-islamic-terrorists-115312.html?hp=l2_4

He can’t stop blasting President Obama for declining to use the words “Islamic terrorism.” He also ripped Obama a new one for the White House’s failure to acknowledge that the 21 Egyptians who were beheaded by Islamic State terrorists were Christians.

Oh, and then he was critical — naturally — for State Department flack Marie Harf’s statement that we need to work toward ending poverty in the nations that breed the terrorists. Cruz said this: “Now, with respect, that is idiocy. The solution here is not expanded Medicaid. The solution is the full force of U.S. military power to destroy the leaders of ISIS. They have declared war … jihad on the United States. Jihad is another word the president doesn’t say.”

I understand what the young man is seeking to do here. He’s trying to make a point by embellishing what Harf said, or meant. Medicaid? Come on.

As for the president being an “apologist for radical Islamic terrorists,” Sen. Cruz needs — once again — to examine the record. We’re killing these individuals every single day. We’re doing precisely what we’ve been doing since President George W. Bush sent us to war right after 9/11.

No, I don’t expect this kind of rhetoric to stop. After all, we’ve got a presidential campaign to wage and I expect fully to hear a lot more of it from other potential candidates for the White House. I’m just spewing my own frustration at what I keep hearing.

Bear with me, please. I’ll get over it — eventually.

 

International news, national news

Let's stop quibbling over branding of war

President Obama went on offense today in declaring that the enemy in our current war against terror doesn’t comprise “religious leaders.”

We are fighting terrorists, pure and simple, he said.

So, the president will continue to resist referring to the enemy as “Islamic terrorists,” or “Islamist terrorists,” or some such derivation of the use of a word describing a great religion.

Obama: ISIS ‘aren’t religious leaders, they’re terrorists’

While some of us — including yours truly — disagree with the president’s decision to avoid using the term “Islamic terrorist” in describing our enemy, I am willing to drop the argument.

We’re now quibbling over semantics.

“We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam,” he said.  “No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

Obama sounds just like his immediate predecessor, former President George W. Bush, on this matter. President Bush made precisely the same point when we went to war in Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Was there an outcry then about how we defined the enemy? If there was, well, it’s gotten lost on me.

Yet the outcry continues to this day about the current president’s use of language to describe the war that is on-going.

What difference does any of this make? What ought to matter is what we’re doing on the field of battle. We’re bombing Islamic State targets, along with aircraft being flown by our allies. I’m certain we’re killing terrorists; we’re even killing some of their leaders. We’re seeking to disrupt the terrorists’ command and control operations. We’re attempting to blast them into oblivion. We are deploying special operations units to hunt them down on the ground. We’re putting men and women at supreme risk of being captured.

OK, so we’re not calling them Islamic terrorists. The bad guys know who they are and what they represent. So do the good guys — and we’re acting accordingly.

Let’s stick to the mission in the field and quit arguing over what to call it.

 

International news

Fighting a war by fighting poverty

1 Comment

Having already criticized a State Department spokeswoman for suggesting that job creation should be a strategy in fighting the Islamic State, I am struck by the amazing outrage by right-wing media over her comments.

I hope I stipulated clearly that I wouldn’t join the right-wing hysteria in questioning President Obama’s commitment to destroying ISIL. Others have done enough of that already. Some of the comments are contained in the link attached to this blog post. Take a look. They’re pretty wild.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/02/17/right-wing-media-attack-obama-for-tying-terror/202548

Media Matters, a left-wing media watchdog website, has produced a most interesting video showing President Bush offering strikingly similar advice in 2002, at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico.

While the comments of State Department flack Marie Harf have drawn considerable condemnation, it fascinates me that President Bush said more than a dozen years ago, “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity.”

Perhaps Harf’s comments got blown out of proportion, and weren’t viewed in the totality of the message she sought to deliver on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show with Chris Matthews. I regret not digesting fully all of what she said, which included comments about the administration’s intention to keep killing terrorists as the war on terror rages on.

I just caution, though, that war remains the dirtiest business that humankind ever conducts. It must be fought hard and it must be fought with the intent to defeat the enemy. There can be no doubt about our enemy’s intentions on the current battlefield — and there should be no doubt about our own intentions.

If working quietly with nations that produce terror cells to alleviate the root cause of people taking up arms against the United States and our allies is part of an overall strategy that includes waging all-out war, then by all means let’s proceed.

Let’s never lose sight of the undeniable fact that we’re dealing with a nasty enemy, as Presidents Bush and Obama both have understood.

 

International news, national news

That's the ticket: Find jobs for ISIL terrorists

What in the world is the State Department thinking?

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told Chris Matthews on MSBNC’s “Hardball” talk show that the United States cannot win the war against the Islamic State by killing them, that we need to help them find jobs.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/17/state-department-spokeswoman-floats-jobs-as-answer-to-isis/

Holy crap!

Here’s how FoxNews.com reported it: “‘We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. … But we cannot win this war by killing them,’ department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “We need … to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether –‘

“At that point, Harf was interrupted by host Chris Matthews, who pointed out, ‘There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor Muslims.'”

I’m not going to buy the notion that some critics of the Obama administration say about the president going soft on terrorists.

However …

This idea that we need to focus on job creation while waging war against these monsters is nuts in the extreme.

Harf did add that there’s “no easy solution.” She said American military operations would continue to kill ISIL leaders. But she said, “If we can help countries work at the root causes of this — what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?”

How about, Ms. Harf, we soft-pedal the job creation and push the pedal to the metal on our efforts at killing the bad guys?

War is a supremely unpleasant endeavor, but we’d better continue fighting it as if we intend to win it.

 

International news

It's Egypt's turn to express outrage

Islamic State terrorists are doing a marvelous job … of uniting the Arab world against them.

The latest expression of outrage comes from Egypt, which this morning launched a series of air strikes against ISIL targets in Libya. Egyptian air force pilots were striking in retaliation for yet another hideous video, this one showing the decapitation of 21 Egyptians, all Coptic Christians, apparently being held captive in Libya.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/egypt-bombs-is-in-libya-after-beheadings-video/ar-BBhCHE6

Egypt has struck back hard at the terrorists, joining Jordan — which this past week suffered its own tragedy with the immolation death of the young Jordanian air force pilot, which also was video recorded and broadcast around the world.

The U.S.-led coalition needs more of this outrage, although we shouldn’t wish more death and misery to bring our Middle East allies into the fight with us.

In a televised address, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described IS as “inhuman criminal killers.” He added: “Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals.”

The Egyptians already are fighting ISIL-sympathetic terrorists operating in the Sinai desert, so they’ve already been battle-tested.

It might be too much to hope for at this moment, given that the struggle ahead appears to have no end. However, ISIL’s brand of ghoulish and ghastly murder against captives well could be the sort of galvanizing series of events that finally — finally! — brings the Arab world fully into a fight that it should have joined at the beginning.

Welcome aboard, friends.

 

political news

Obama 'selfie' reveals great divide

2 Comments

There can be no doubt — none, zero — that President Obama can do nothing without attracting the ire of his political foes.

His recent rash of “selfies,” distributed on BuzzFeed, has become the latest object of right-wing scorn.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/02/13/cue-conservative-media-outrage-over-obamas-self/202531

So help me, I don’t understand why the critics are so up in arms over these videos.

They show the president of the United States acting, well, like many of the rest of us. He’s borderline goofy, self-effacing, rather silly and, oh, maybe a little snarky.

Isn’t he acting like Mr. or Ms. Average Joe or Jane? Don’t others do much the same thing as what we’ve seen the president do?

The righties dislike the timing of one of his selfies, coming on the day that it was revealed Kayla Mueller died while in the hands of Islamic State terrorists. But wait! Didn’t Obama express heartfelt sympathy to Mueller’s family? Didn’t he assure them and the world that the terrorists would be brought to justice? Sure he did.

So, he takes a few minutes to promote Healthcare.gov through the recording of the selfie. What is the problem here?

It’s “beneath the dignity of the office,” we keep hearing.

I’ll just add that presidents of both political parties have acted like human beings while they’re in office. None of this is unique to the 44th president.

Let’s all just give the guy a break.

International news

No ransom — ever — for terrorist hostages

President Obama is right to insist that the United States will not pay ransom for hostages held by terrorist organizations.

And yet, the death the other day of a young Arizona woman, Kayla Jean Mueller, at the hands of her Islamic State captors has shaken the nation at many levels.

Mueller died, possibly as a result of a Jordanian air strike against ISIL targets. The president confirmed this week that he dispatched a mission to obtain Mueller’s rescue, but it didn’t succeed.

Still, he said telling family members — begging for their loved ones’ safe return — of U.S. no-ransom policy is among the most difficult things he must do as president and commander in chief.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/232374-obama-confirms-the-us-tried-to-rescue-kayla-Mueller

But he must hold that line.

“The one thing that we have held to is a policy of not paying ransoms with an organization like ISIL. And the reason is once we start doing that, not only are we financing their slaughter of innocent people and strengthening their organization, but we’re actually making Americans even greater targets for future kidnappings,” Obama said.

This fight will go on, perhaps in perpetuity. No one knows how it will end or how the United States ever will be able to declare victory.

If we’re going to fight a ruthless enemy, we need to ensure they understand that there can be no monetary price to be paid for someone’s priceless life.