Posted on 01/31/2015 9:58:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
No doubt because of my background investigating, prosecuting, and studying terrorism, the cynical claim by White House spokesmen that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization has annoyed me even more than the Obama administrations nonstop lying usually does. No surprise then that I could be found railing about it on The Kelly File Thursday night.
In that spirit, ten thoughts for the weekend:
1. Under federal law, there are only three requirements for a group to qualify as a foreign terrorist organization: It has to be (a) foreign, (b) engaged in terrorist activity (bombings, assassinations, etc., carried out to intimidate people and change policy), and (c) a national-security threat to the United States. The law that covers this is Sec. 1189(a) of Title 8, U.S. Code, from the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. Its here, and its just the first few lines even a president who routinely ignores the laws he is sworn to execute faithfully should be able to make some time for it, maybe on the plane ride between the golf course and the Saudi palace.
2. Obviously, even if it were true, as posited by Messrs. Schultz and Earnest (speaking for President Obama), that the Taliban is concerned only with Afghanistan, not with the global jihad, that would be irrelevant. They easily fit the definition of a foreign terrorist organization.
3. Of course, it is not true that the Taliban is concerned only with Afghanistan. The administrations risible claim to the contrary is part of its campaign to bleach the Islam out of radical Islam. Islamic supremacism, the ideology that fuels jihadist terror, is a global conquest ideology. Obama wants you to believe that there is just a dizzying array of small, disconnected, strange-sounding, indigenous insurgent groups that are not joined by any unifying ideology the Afghan Taliban (not to be confused with the Pakistani Taliban), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Haqqani Network, Boko Haram, al-Nusra, Ansar al-Sharia, the sundry jihadist franchises that invoke al-Qaedas name (in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Islamic Maghreb, in the Indian subcontinent . . . ), and so on. You are not to see them as a united front against the West, but instead as animated by strictly parochial political and territorial disputes. The strategy, a disingenuous elevation of semantics over substance, is designed to minimize the global jihadist threat to the West that has intensified on Obamas watch and has undeniable roots in a supremacist interpretation of Islam.
4. You need not take my word for it when it comes to the Talibans ideological connection to the global jihad. Instead, just look at what they do. What did the Taliban do when they ruled Afghanistan? They willfully allowed their territory to be used as a launch pad for attacks against the United States (the 1998 embassy bombings in eastern Africa, the 2000 bombing of the Cole, and the 9/11 atrocities). And after 9/11, when, by simply handing bin Laden & Co. over to the United States, they could have stayed in power and avoided an invasion of the Afghanistan they are said to be preoccupied with, what did they do? At enormous cost to themselves, they tried to shelter al-Qaeda. In the 14 years since, they have continued to abet the global jihadist campaign, and have reveled in making war against the United States a war they now understandably think they will win.
5. The Talibans continued alliance with al-Qaedas global jihad is of a piece with Hamass self-proclaimed incorporation in the Muslim Brotherhoods global ambitions, and with the forward-militia role Hezbollah plays for Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis revolutionary state that exports its Shiite version of jihad. All of these actors perceive themselves as enmeshed in a civilizational struggle against the West. We cant erase that by pretending there is no animating ideology, pretending that they can be pacified if we satisfy their local grievances.
6. This business of distinguishing insurgents from terrorists is nonsense. An insurgency is just a domestic uprising (in the sense that the insurgent is from the country in which he is rebelling). When insurgents use terrorist tactics they are domestic terrorists. It may make Obama feel better to say that his pal Bill Ayers was an insurgent, but that doesnt mean he wasnt a terrorist.
7. The most disturbing facet of the insurgent canard is that Obama is buying the logic of such Islamic supremacists as the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkeys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They claim that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist organizations (as American law designates them to be) but domestic political organizations that engage not in terrorism but in resistance a righteous fight against injustice and occupation in their homelands.
8. Obama, of course, is not approving of the Talibans tactics and goals. But he wants you to see them as domestic insurgents because progressives believe insurgents should be negotiated with and brought into a political settlement and to the extent insurgents go overboard in their aggression, progressives believe they should be prosecuted in the civilian justice system, not fought militarily like wartime enemies.
9. In the United States, Obama is operating in a political environment where the public based on longstanding prudential American policy believes we should not negotiate with terrorists because that encourages and legitimizes their savage methods. Similarly, the public strongly believes international terrorists are enemies who must be defeated, not defendants who must be indicted. Obama knows he is negotiating with, intends to settle with, and eventually will leave Afghanistan to the tender mercies of, the Taliban. Therefore, the administration is desperate that you not look at the Taliban as terrorists.
10. But they are terrorists.
Andrew C. McCarthy is a policy fellow at the National Review Institute. His latest book is Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obamas Impeachment.
He lost be a bit at #8: “8. Obama, of course, is not approving of the Talibans tactics and goals. “
I think he does approve, at least more than he disapproves
I think he’s a very strange narcissistic duck who believes in Marxism, Islam, and black supremacy. It’s interesting to do the thought exercise as to what Obama’s perfect world would look like. It would be almost theocratic, with him at the top, but it would also be highly political, with the government (him at the top) doling out wealth and favors by racial, political, and religious affiliations. Traditional white America would be slaves at best... if they were allowed to live.
Obama has to reclassify Al-Qaeda as something other than a terrorist organization, because otherwise he himself could be arrested and put on ice without legal council as the NDAA specifies.
So, in a similar vein; the Democrat party is a "domestic terrorist organization".
Got it.
“He lost be a bit at #8: 8. Obama, of course, is not approving of the Talibans tactics and goals. ”
I think the author, by appearing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, is shrewdly emphasizing other aspects of the argument that are more likely to sway the mushy middle.
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