Article

2017-02-25 -Land of the Free

Flynn's replacement undermines Trump stand on facing the truth about "radical Islamic terror", says "terrorists are unIslamic"

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Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 16:18|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 this is deeply concerning. this overturns what many people voted for. We want to face the truth and deal with it honestly. This does not mean hating all muslims, this means taking steps against the theocrats, while supporting the secular. This means halting mass Muslim migration. This means training law enforcement in how to spot theocrats and treating political Islam in the same way we treated communism in the cold war. This means helping Muslim refugees in regional safe zones not bringing them here.

All this will go down the drain with another liar in office.

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 16:22|| 2017-02-25 16:22|| Front Page Top

#2 McMasters has experience with this. When he took over the 3rd ACR in Iraq, he pacified the city of Tal Afar with a win hearts and minds, build up key areas of the city and kill the bad guys when they came out to play. His tactics were the ones Petreaus used for the surge later.

I don't think he is for mass mooslimb migration into our country, but he has had great success in the Middle East and I would be willing to hear him out on ideas to bring order to the Middle East.

Posted by DarthVader 2017-02-25 16:54|| 2017-02-25 16:54|| Front Page Top

#3 Accepting the hearts&minds / popularity contest paradigm does have disturbing implications.

We will have to convince the general Muslim populace that we are better servants and executors of their will than the 'terrorists.'

I.e. we will have to submit to their judgement and thus to their will.

Also McMasters is explicitly rejecting a phrase from the President's inaugural address. This doesn't bode well.

Posted by Elmerert Hupens2660 2017-02-25 17:25|| 2017-02-25 17:25|| Front Page Top

#4 DarthVader that is exactly the strategy that failed.

Iraq failed because the US immediately put sharia in the constitution and bent over to Islam

If Iraq was ever going to succeed and become the key state beacon of freedom in the middle east between 2 theocracies then it needed to banish Islam from politics unequivocally

Islam needed to be out of government at all levels and out of the schools and universities, too.

And it needed to be enforced with a soldier on every corner not with "hearts and minds" crap. They needed to feel defeated and give up part of their culture as the Japanese did after WWII.

Do you think if they had done that, told the middle east that Iraq was now open to give equal rights to apostates, gay muslims, oppressed women, atheists, christians, zoroastrians, kurds and jews that anybody would have responded?

If they had empowered the secular and crushed out the theocrats would Iraq have worked?

they would have needed overwhelming force but yes I think they could have built a country that would have been a beacon of hope and we would not have seen the turn towards Islamism across the middle east since.

Your strategy is exactly why we failed.

it betrays a complete lack of understanding of the problem. You think it's a military problem of control

it's not

it's a cultural and religious problem.

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 17:45|| 2017-02-25 17:45|| Front Page Top

#5 also it is complete lunacy to think that you from Western Civilisation are going to "win hearts and minds" from Islamic Civilisation cultures.

Are you completely bonkers?

They think they are superior to you because of Islam

All they were ever going to do was take what they could get from you then betray everything you worked for and throw it in the bin while they pick up their korans.

Because you ignored the Islamist theocrat problem and didn't enforce secularism.

We got exactly what we were always going to get with that lunatic 'hearts and minds' idea

if you are going to get a cultural change wherein people are forced to give up what they have been brainwashed since childhood to think is most sacred (the supremacy of islam and its interference in politics)

then you need a soldier on every corner for 15 years (a generation).

and going into that war without first ensuring that outcome could be achieved was stupid in the extreme.

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 17:50|| 2017-02-25 17:50|| Front Page Top

#6 Good discussion.
McMaster's deviation with a personal opinion, as many others, is the problem.

Posted by Skidmark 2017-02-25 18:12|| 2017-02-25 18:12|| Front Page Top

#7 anon1...
He did have a successful strategy and later it did work to keep some peace... until we pretty much let the Iranians and hard liners do whatever they wanted.

I would listen to what he had to say about it to bring about a more peaceful middle east.

However... that being said. My own personal opinion is that the root of islamic terrorism is the islamic text. While some countries, like Indonesia can be peaceful with their neighbors and the west, I do not think that we can bring vast numbers of mooslimbs into this country and retain the values we have as a liberal (classic Jeffersonian liberal) western nation.
While we may be able to produce stable and peaceful ME nations, there is no way in hell I want to see huge numbers of them here for much of the same reasons you laid out.

Posted by DarthVader 2017-02-25 19:43|| 2017-02-25 19:43|| Front Page Top

#8 Of course, to fix the overall situation, Muslims have to convince each other that ISIS is unislamic. My guess is McMaster is triangulating that. Good luck....

Posted by KBK 2017-02-25 19:47|| 2017-02-25 19:47|| Front Page Top

#9 He did have a successful strategy and later it did work to keep some peace... until we pretty much let the Iranians and hard liners do whatever they wanted.

He paid the Sunni Arabs off. When he stopped doing so (i.e after Uncle Sam left), they resumed their revolt. Nothing magical there. Petraeus was overrated.

The surge was ancient military principle re-asserting itself. Rumsfeld justified penny-packet deployments by saying more troops = more targets, which was eye-rollingly and uncharacteristically stupid for a really smart guy. In reality, more troops = more eyes and ordnance on target. Petraeus's ROE's led to more deaths than necessary, but the Iraqis were really all fought-out by then.

The ISIS thing was just a resurrection of Sunni Arab hopes based on the idea that they might not be able to beat Uncle Sam, but they could as hell kick Shiite Arab and Kurdish ass. If Obama had stayed the course (and Maliki had cooperated), there would have been no ISIS in Iraq, thanks to American air support.

But bottom line is that Petraeus was no genius, and by extension, neither is McMaster.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2017-02-25 20:09|| 2017-02-25 20:09|| Front Page Top

#10 If terrorism is so unislamic, then where are the masses of soldiers of true Islam to take them on? Where are the mass protests against them? They're doing their usual thing of following the strong horse. They're not against it like they would be if someone burns a holy Crayon, then they come out in droves.

Posted by gorb 2017-02-25 20:58|| 2017-02-25 20:58|| Front Page Top

#11 kbk has a point, but I'm with anon1 on this.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2017-02-25 21:44|| 2017-02-25 21:44|| Front Page Top

#12 and ZF

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2017-02-25 21:45|| 2017-02-25 21:45|| Front Page Top

#13 Darth Vader it is a failed strategy

complete failure

it does not matter in the scheme of this struggle whether or not tal afar had peace for a year or two with 'hearts and minds' because you lost the entire region to sectarian violence and the rise of islamism

the "peace" was temporary it was not permanent

you did not fix the problem in fact you made it worse because you allowed oxygen for the Islamists to organise by bending over to put sharia in the constitution in your effort to "win hearts and minds"

you actually lost the war by doing that

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 22:42|| 2017-02-25 22:42|| Front Page Top

#14 KBK: Muslims are NEVER going to convince themselves that Islamic State are unislamic because they are literally implementing what is in the texts.

Al Azhar university, the foremost authority on Sunni Islam is UNABLE to declare Islamic State "unislamic" or "apostates" for exactly this reason. They can call them extreme, or literalist but they cannot declare them unislamic.

Al Azhar frequently issues fatwas against secularists declaring them unIslamic but there hasn't been one against Islamic State for that reason.

In the fatwa against them for burning the jordanian pilot to death in a cage, Al Azhar ruled that the perpetrators should themselves be punished by cutting off alternate arms and legs or crucifixion for the sin of "interfering with the dead body of a muslim" but they were unable to declare islamic State unislamic.

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 22:45|| 2017-02-25 22:45|| Front Page Top

#15 Darth Vader; you are right about your idea that the root problem is in the text as well as in the interpretation, and your idea that mass muslim migration cannot be allowed or we will lose our civilisation to Islam

That is 100% correct.

The only way to deal with iraq is, once militarily defeated, to culturally defeat political islam by removing it from all levels of government, the military the civil service and the schools/universities. With zero tolerance. Not even a hijab.

In addition a register of approved preachers should have been set up with no unapproved preachers allowed to speak to any mosque in the country. And the approved list stocked with secular and reform muslims only

this did not happen. It would have required a full scale occupation and the political will on the home front to defeat and crush the ideology which was obviously absent.

The situation now is this:

1) we should bomb the crap out of Islamic State and then join forces with Russia to clear them out with ground troops

2) we should not rebuild anything this time, return them to the dark ages

3) we should set up refugee safe zones nearby and send the refugees there or to the arab world with not one Muslim to come to the West. There are 57 Islamic countries in the OIC. They will take them or they will sit where they are.

4) We should be immediately banning Muslim migration to all Western countries. those allowed in on a case-by-case basis thoroughly vetted to ensure they are secular and they should be made to sign an agreement to the principles of secular society which if they breach results in immediate annulment of their provisional visa. Not one is to be given permanent citizenship.

5) Any US Citizens that marry Muslim non-citizens will have to go to the Muslim host country. The Muslim spouse will not be given citizenship, only provisional visa as per above terms. Even if they become parents of anchor babies. The entire family will have to move abroad.

We LOST the battle. Iraq was the one chance to remake the Muslim world in a secular tolerant form that would be compatible with Western civilisation.

We lost. Now we have to circle the wagons to prevent Islamism from destroying Western Civilisation.

Clearly Trump was trying but he has been thwarted by the mistaken Bush generation that thinks it can say "islam is a religion of peace" and avoid this conflict.

You cannot.

You either keep it outside your country or you lose it.

Posted by anon1 2017-02-25 22:56|| 2017-02-25 22:56|| Front Page Top

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