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Know Your Enemy: A Primer on Islamic Jihad
National Review ^ | 7/25/15 | Rep. Steve King

Posted on 07/25/2015 5:57:40 AM PDT by markomalley

Islamic jihad has declared war on the United States and all of Western civilization. ISIS has announced its intention to dominate the world and fly its black flag from the White House in continuation of a 1,400-year-old war against us “infidels.”

In the first 100 years after the death of Mohammed (a.d. 632)`, Islamic jihad conquered most of the known world except Western Europe. Christian forces blocked the first century of Islamic conquest at the very bloody Battle of Tours on October 10, 732. Islamic jihad continued to threaten the very existence of Christianity throughout the next millennium. October 7, 1571, marked the destruction of Islamic jihad’s massive fleet by the Holy League fleet in the Aegean Sea.

More than a century later, Islamic jihad, having conquered the Middle East and most of Eastern Europe, had surrounded and besieged the crown jewel of Western Christendom, Vienna. If Vienna fell to Islam, all of Western Europe would be likely to follow. After a two-month siege of Vienna, relief forces from Poland and Germany arrived.

The battle for relief of Vienna began on September 11, 1683, and ended with the rout of the Islamic forces the following day. On September 11, 1697, Prince Eugene caught and routed a large Islamic army and delivered a decisive blow at the Battle of Zenta.

In keeping with the September 11 theme, the British established a mandate for Palestine on September 11, 1922, and at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes were killed on September 11. Millions of Islamists remember the humiliations of September and seek to humiliate the “Great Satan,” the United States. Thus the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

Islamic jihad can be defeated, and it can be done in less time than it took to defeat the USSR in the Cold War. Our strategy, however, must be tailored to the times and circumstances.

Islamic jihad is our enemy. It has declared war on us and will kill us anywhere it can. No American is safe anywhere in the world until this suicidal ideology is defeated. It is not impossible to defeat an ideology. Within a span of half a century, Western civilization has defeated at least four ideologies. Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese imperialism all went down literally in flames in the face of a superior culture. Next in line was the far more stubborn Russian Communism, which struggled through 45 years of cold war before succumbing to liberty and free enterprise. Islamic jihad can be defeated, and it can be done in less time than it took to defeat the USSR in the Cold War. Our strategy, however, must be tailored to the times and circumstances.

Cyber warfare: Islamists are not innovative but do have a history of borrowing technology and deploying it against their enemies. ISIS, for example, is using the Internet to inspire, recruit, and direct terrorists around the world. We have the capabilities to scramble their communications and cause them to doubt the sources of instructions. It’s time to launch cyber warfare against them both offensively and defensively and to do so worldwide. They will stop using the Internet only when they no longer trust the communications network. With a smart cyber-warfare system, we can watch them close down their most important recruiting tool.

Financial warfare: If all its resources could be shut off, ISIS would atrophy. The U.S. has a powerful global financial reach, giving us the capability of cutting off almost all funds flowing to ISIS. We need to shut off the flow of exported oil from the ISIS regions and shut off payments going to them. Banks that deal in transactions with Islamic jihad or with their suppliers can be singled out to be the target of special disincentives that raise the transaction costs well above the financial benefit of doing business with jihadists.

Education: The next and most difficult task is to shut down the elements of their educational system that teach Islamic jihad. Millions of young boys are indoctrinated daily with the ideology of Islamic jihad. The madrassas are a breeding ground for violent jihad and serve to identify and recruit the most zealous. Countering this indoctrination will require a worldwide effort and may well be endless, but it is necessary to make the attempt, because reduction in the teaching of intergenerational hatred is the foundation for a peaceful future.

Humint: Human intelligence remains limited in the Islamic world. The Western world had not engaged fully with the Middle East to the extent that our intelligence sources were ready-made or fully developed. Our humint began to change after September 11, 2001, as Americans saw the need to expand our network. We are still making progress, but this administration has demonstrated an unwillingness to gather strategic information. If we are to have success in defeating Islamic jihad, our intelligence community must expand significantly. It is essential to the principle of nosce hostem (know your enemy), which will require time, resources, commitment, and, most of all, leadership.

Strategic alliances: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all have demonstrated a willingness to fight Islamic jihad. Our relationships with these countries have been badly damaged. The U.S. foreign-policy establishment clumsily found a way to be on the wrong side of each Arab Spring event, demonstrating an astonishingly dogmatic fidelity to the Muslim Brotherhood. Our credibility in the region has been badly damaged. Nonetheless, these countries are poised to take on a good share of the fight. First, our relationship with each will need to be restored. Then a strategy will need to be developed with them at the table.

Egypt: Egypt is key to ultimate global success against Islamic jihad. Al-Azhar University in Cairo is the world’s premier center of Islamic theology. It is where Obama gave his speech to the Muslim world in 2009, and where Egyptian president al-Sisi delivered his own address to the Muslim world. Sisi made clear his opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, to the imposition of sharia law, and to Islamic jihad. Sisi is positioned to become the modern-day Ataturk, someone who will bridge the gap between East and West. The United States needs to embrace Sisi and coordinate a strategy of diplomacy coupled with the right balance of kinetic activity.

Kurdistan: The Kurds are loyal allies. At our encouragement, they rose up against Saddam Hussein after Desert Storm. They are likely the largest ethnic group in the world without a country. Millions of Kurds live in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. They have for years demonstrated their willingness to defend themselves. We should directly arm the Kurds with all the weapons and supplies they can use and send our special forces to them on the ground. The Kurds will not go into Baghdad or Damascus because they have no civilian population base there to support them. They will push ISIS out of Iraq, with the help of many Sunni Iraqis, and they will provide one jaw of the vise that will crush ISIS. An independent Kurdistan is likely to be the result. A perpetual ally replacing the ISIS caliphate would be strategically priceless.

Syria: Assad must go. Syria’s terror-fomenting alliance with Iran will breed ever more violence in the Mideast until a pro-Western government replaces the regime. However, Assad has a certain utility until ISIS is destroyed in Syria. He becomes the other jaw of the vise that, with the Kurds as the other, will crush ISIS. When that day comes, the U.S. may have a commander-in-chief who thinks strategically.

We are dealing with the complexities of a long and difficult history of conflict. Religious friction has been at the heart of conflicts in this region since the time of Mohammed. The conflict between Shia and Sunni is complex enough without the overlay of the history of conflict with Christianity.

Russian-sponsored regimes must be defeated. The wealth of and need for oil fuels the fight. Anti-Semitism, with notable exceptions, dominates the region of the Middle East. We are in an increasingly global conflict as jihadists use Western technology and exploit cultural vulnerabilities to invade through peaceful migration, recruit through the Internet, indoctrinate through their mosques and madrassas, and radicalize and direct Islamic jihad.

We can defeat this ideology because we are a superior civilization. We have the ability to reason, develop new technology, grow our economy, and control the events described above. Islamic jihad has no real capacity to compete. History is on our side. Culture is on our side. Economics are on our side. Military capability is on our side. We lack only a strategy and the will.

— Steve King, of Iowa’s fourth congressional district, is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.


TOPICS: Editorial; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: caliphate; isis; jihad; rop

1 posted on 07/25/2015 5:57:40 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

Bump


2 posted on 07/25/2015 6:09:22 AM PDT by exnavy (Gun control is two hands, one shot, one kill.)
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To: markomalley

Good article, so no offense meant, BUT.....

This is all known by the powers that be. Why is nothing being done /rhetorical.


3 posted on 07/25/2015 6:13:36 AM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: markomalley

Rule #1 - Don’t be stupid enough to elect a uslim President, who has Iranian jihadists as trusted advisors.

Rule #2 - Eradicate all forms of political correctness.

Only then will the West have the ability to take down the caliphate.


4 posted on 07/25/2015 6:19:55 AM PDT by Paulie (America without Christianity is like a Chemistry book without the periodic table.)
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To: markomalley

Good article on the existential threat of Islam to the Western world. I was not aware of the significance of 9/11 to Muslim jihadists until I read this.


5 posted on 07/25/2015 6:21:02 AM PDT by quantumman (K)
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To: markomalley

Uh, tell your buddies in Congress.


6 posted on 07/25/2015 6:31:57 AM PDT by onedoug
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To: markomalley
King has a good position except for one mistake.

"The U.S. foreign-policy establishment clumsily found a way to be on the wrong side of each Arab Spring event, demonstrating an astonishingly dogmatic fidelity to the Muslim Brotherhood."

We were the initiator of the "Arab Spring" events. He is not nearly hard enough on the Obama administration. They tried to run Libyan arms through Benghazi to Syrian rebels without the knowledge or consent of Congress. It is highly likely that Obama and Hillary Clinton were arming ISIS.

7 posted on 07/25/2015 6:36:24 AM PDT by Bryan24 (When in doubt, move to the right..........)
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To: Bryan24
NOT HARDLY !

It was OUR ENEMIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE and their minions !

People REFUSE to face the FACTS of just how EVIL the Arab-Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama II, (a.k.a. Barry Soetoro), IS !
His IRANIAN SPY, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, is assisting him with is DECEIT AND DESTRUCTION of the United States of America, as we know it.

But when you FORCE the public to see the truth, they are blinded with a God-given, POWERFUL DELUSION!
The ILLEGAL ALIEN IN CHIEF is not hard to understand, one you admit to yourself that his goal is the DESTRUCTION of everything we love! Read these articles, to get a better understanding of the VILE, and ILLEGAL ALIEN IN CHIEF.
8 posted on 07/25/2015 6:39:24 AM PDT by Yosemitest (It's Simple ! Fight, ... or Die !)
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To: exnavy
Islam and the Dark Age

and

Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited

Everyone on FR should read this book. Lights will come on. The air will become clear.

9 posted on 07/25/2015 6:41:52 AM PDT by arthurus (it's true!)
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To: markomalley

Know Your Enemy: A Primer on Islamic Jihad:

You can lie, steal, cheat, rape and murder as long as it is in the name of jihad. You can act like a raving lunatic and be labeled as normal. And when you die, you get 72 virgins, because heaven is one big orgy.


10 posted on 07/25/2015 6:48:06 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator (American Jobs for American Workers)
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To: markomalley

Islam has been at war with everyone else since 622 A.D.

According to their book there can be no peace until there is only Islam.

From our perspective there can only be peace when there is no Islam.


11 posted on 07/25/2015 6:51:04 AM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: quantumman
Watch the movie “day of the siege.” Having spent many years in the ME, I can tell you Muslims are very aware of what Sept 11 means. Our Sept 11, 2001 was a call to the Islamic world to re-establish the caliphate. They all want it. They are now fighting to see who will control it.
12 posted on 07/25/2015 6:57:22 AM PDT by D Rider
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To: D Rider

Thanks, will do!


13 posted on 07/25/2015 6:59:27 AM PDT by quantumman (K)
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To: Bryan24

Obama and Hillary were arming ISIS.


14 posted on 07/25/2015 7:26:25 AM PDT by charlie72
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To: Lurkinanloomin
From our perspective there can only be peace when there is no Islam.

I take a little more hopeful view: there cannot be peace until Islam is dealt a defeat so severe that the surviving Muslims decide that the warlike passage of the Qu'ran really should have always been interpreted in a sublimated spiritual sense as enjoining warfare against unbelief within oneself, that jihad as warfare against other people was always a horrible mistake, and decide this so definitively that all future generations of Muslims will suppress attempts at literal interpretation of the Qu'ran. (cf. the effects of the Seige of Muenster on the Anabaptists and of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Japanese State Shintoism.)

15 posted on 07/25/2015 11:22:50 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: The_Reader_David

That would require the repudiation of the example of the prophet which is what is written in the Koran.
They want to die for their religion. We should oblige them.


16 posted on 07/25/2015 11:33:50 AM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: The_Reader_David

I have a better idea. A defeat so severe only scholars of antiquities will even know what the word Islam means. Like Baalism or Isis worship.


17 posted on 07/26/2015 1:46:30 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: markomalley

I found this article earlier today while looking for something else. I’ve printed it, read it several times and I am now going through it with a yellow hi-liter which helps burn things into my brain for later recall.

Thanks for posting this, because I was about to!


18 posted on 07/27/2015 5:06:21 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust Post-Apocalyptic skill set...)
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