The composition of the 9-11 commission guaranteed a show trial against the Bush administration. There were six lawyers among the ten members, including a Democratic Watergate prosecutor and a Clinton deputy attorney general. There were no emeritus members with law enforcement, intelligence, or military backgrounds. No more than three of the ten had backgrounds that might have allowed them to contribute meaningfully on national security issues.
Remember the commission could easily have selected information to accuse Bill Clinton. The state of war was confirmed by attacks on the Trade Center in 1993, in Saudi Arabia 1995 and 1996, and with the embassy bombings in 1998. In response, he directed DOD to facilitate terrorist participation in our criminal justice system. Jamie Gorelick’s legal opinion on separation of national and international intelligence made improbable the right data would be compiled into meaningful intelligence reports. In hindsight these decisions were feckless, but they are consistent with the complacency and apathy infecting our society and its institutions.
The above article also shows that over ten years have passed, and John Leyman’s optimism was not justified because we still have not defined the enemy. Obama’s seeking a strategy to deal with ISIS sounds like McCain’s and Obama’s determination to “get bin Laden“. But with ISIS, shouldn’t the most gullible finally realize that bin Laden’s death hardly constituted victory when we face the first campaigns of a long war against terrorism?
Our real enemy is Wahhabi Jihadism and not the latest mercurial, sociopathic prophets emerging from the Wahhabi/Salafi heresy. These teachings provide the ideological framework coverts embrace to justify not only totalitarianism, but also stateless terrorism. This heresy considers Jews, Christians, Sunnis, Shi’as and secularists as sub-human, legitimate objects for slaughter. It rejects traditional Muslim allegiances to family, tribe, ethnicity, and country. The Caliphate sought requires no particular human or physical remnant. Therefore those using terrorist political stratagems become immune to diplomacy, containment, or retaliation.
Article 13 of the First and Second Geneva Conventions and Article 3 of the Fourth Convention tell us terrorists are not the armed forces, militias, volunteer corps, insurgents, or freedom fighters of any country or authority. They are not an organized resistance movement carrying arms openly and have no distinctive identifier. They avoid the rules of war to focus on the torture and murder of Protected Persons as defined by all Conventions. Such cunning, barbaric adversaries best fit Webster’s definition for a virus. Choosing existence beyond the pale means the rules of war presuppose their eradication.
However, eradication precludes political theater. Sustained political/military intervention must fracture terrorist organizations, and promote those seldom heard in African, Asian, and Oriental countries, who would lead representative governments guaranteeing universal speech, religion, and private property freedoms for all. Such initiatives would bring Global War on Terror (GWOT) victory by frustrating plans, breaking alliances and fracturing organizations of Wahhabi Jihadists into ever less effective units. Without cities, countries or armies bin Laden, and successor sociopath prophets would live out unnaturally shortened lives as pariahs.
Frontline: Saudi Time Bomb: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/
'Our Enemy Is Not Terrorism' http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2004-05/our-enemy-not-terrorism
A New Approach to Safeguarding Americans (Obama’s Way) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-John-Brennan-at-the-Center-for-Strategic-and-International-Studies/ First Geneva Convention (1949) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/First_Geneva_Convention_(1949)
Geneva Convention/Second Geneva Convention http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Second_Geneva_Convention
Geneva Convention/Fourth Geneva Convention http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention
The Enemy is Islamism.
We’ve been looking through the wrong end of the telescope for nearly 13 years. We didn’t declare a “war on aviation” after Pearl Harbor, but that’s what declaring a “war on terrorism” amounts to.
Calling terrorism the enemy is the same as saying that eating strudel and drinking beer seventy-five years ago was the enemy.
Two presidents speaking to the country....
FDR: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...
BHO: The only thing we fear is ourselves...
” Our real enemy is Wahhabi Jihadism and not the latest mercurial, sociopathic prophets emerging from the Wahhabi/Salafi heresy. “
Especially those who enable and fund it....
You know... the Saudi Royal Family....
It is ISLAM.
A good article by Mr. Lehman, but pretty frustrating because as he lists the litany of crimes -- he also states the obvious -- we (America, and the West) ignore them. So we continue to reap the crop of our willful blindness. Islam is at war against the West, it always has been (since the mid-seventh century), and it always will be. It isn't just a 'Wahhabi Jihadism heresy'. It is Islam. The heretics are the twirling dervishes, or those that want to be cultural muslims - but don't want the bloodshed. I.e., those muslims that put loyalty to the human race (and to the conscience that God implanted into all of us) over loyalty to the Satanic moon-god that Mohammad worshiped. But don't pretend that this 'Wahhabi Jihadism' is some grotesque mutation of Islam. It is Islam.
As I told people ten plus years ago: This may not (as W said) be our war against Islam — but it is certainly Islam’s war against us.
It takes the author 480 words before he mentions Islam and then he never mentions it again.
The enemy is Islam. Not “radical” Islam, or Islamic fundamentalism.
History teaches that all Republics commit suicide.
History is repeating, and I daresay - ours looks to be more than just a metaphor, but a literal dalliance of offering ourselves to our enemies.
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I'm sorry, I guess I'm slow. What does this mean, exactly? Is this referring to being stopped in the security line? Jobs?
You are so close John, but close will not stop the enemy at our gate. Nibble at the corners of the enemy cookie or shine a light on the cardboard facade; elucidate the machinations of the complex enemy, but everyone in political circles is AFRAID to name this enemy.
The fear is that to properly name the foe is to revert to an era of barbaric mentality - a mentality of our forebears who would recognize an evil and then smash it. Our ancestors would name the enemy and rain unholy hell upon his family, land and possessions. With an enemy who accepts only total annihilation of himself, tribe and resources in order to be properly vanquished, our leaders are too afraid to alter our decadent slide and revert to a people of morality, religion and righteousness.
Things could be different if and when the name of the enemy is shouted from the rooftops and measures taken to decimate the scourge of Islam.
Great thread. BTTT!