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THE AMERICAN “INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND” JIHADIS-It has hamstrung our foreign policy for decades
Frontpagemagazine ^ | April 20, 2018 | Robert Spencer

Posted on 04/20/2018 5:30:41 AM PDT by SJackson

One of the biggest ongoing problems of U.S. foreign policy is a failure to understand what we’re really up against. This problem is nothing new, although Barack Obama took it to new heights by banning all mention of Islam and jihad from counterterror training, with many of his loyalists still in place and hampering our ability to deal realistically with the jihad threat today.

This myopia goes back decades. In Theodore H. White’s America In Search of Itself, there is this telling passage about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979:

Of the negotiating effort, the most biting summary was that later made by Captain Gary Sick of U.S. Naval Intelligence. “Nobody knew what kind of person Khomeini was,” said Sick…”In every day of this early crisis,” he said, “and right through until this day, there’s been this American inability to understand the true fanaticism of this man, not moved by any sense of compassion, by any concern for law, by any understanding of international tradition. We’d been dealing with people like Kim Il-Sung, Mao Tse-tung, and other dictators. So it was difficult for us to grasp the total, unyielding, unwillingness of this man to consider any other factor outside of his own limited view of the world. Khomeini was beyond the experience, if not the imagination, of anyone in the United States government. We made that mistake repeatedly — of trying to deal with Khomeini as if he were a government.”

Khomeini’s Islamic regime was a government, but not in any sense that American diplomats were used to dealing with. What set Khomeini and his regime apart from the likes of Kim and Mao was Islam, and few, if any, foreign service professionals in the State Department understood that or knew how to deal with it.

And it wasn’t just Khomeini. American Presidents and policymakers of recent times have consistently shown an inability or unwillingness to understand the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat in general. This willful ignorance persists and his gotten worse, with the Bush/Obama policies of denying that the jihad terror threat has anything to do with Islam. The wrong diagnosis of the problem leads to the wrong solutions being applied. This is true of the Israeli/“Palestinian” conflict, the incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, the immigration issue, and more.

This pervasive lack of understanding is glaringly exposed in my forthcoming book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, the first and only comprehensive one-volume treatment of jihad activity from the beginning of Islam, around the world from Spain to India and elsewhere, told in the words of eyewitnesses and chroniclers who were close to the events. This is the history that most Americans don’t know, and that American policymakers need to know.

If Jimmy Carter’s State Department had known what is in the book when they were deal with the Iranian hostage crisis, the world would likely be very different, and calmer, today. If American Presidents and policymakers had known what was in this book when trying to broker peace between Israel and the “Palestinians,” and trying to establish Western-style republics in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars would not have been wasted.

What American policymakers didn’t understand in 1979 they still don’t understand. Unless this willful ignorance is addressed and corrected, the policy errors will continue to multiply. A President who wants to secure America’s defenses not just during his term of office, but for future generations, will require all American diplomats and foreign service officers to study the jihad doctrines of Islam, as well as the history of jihad. But in that current environment, such a requirement is virtually inconceivable, as it would result in a cascade of accusations of “Islamophobia” and hysterical claims that Muslims are subjected to widespread discrimination and harassment in the U.S.

And so the foreign entanglements and misadventures are likely to continue.


TOPICS: Editorial; Egypt; Government; Israel; Russia; Syria; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; egypt; erdogan; gaza; hassannasrallah; hezbollah; iran; iraq; isis; israel; jerusalem; kurdistan; lebanon; letshavejerusalem; pakistan; receptayyiperdogan; robertspencer; russia; sinai; syria; turkey; waronterror; yemen

1 posted on 04/20/2018 5:30:41 AM PDT by SJackson
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

2 posted on 04/20/2018 5:36:19 AM PDT by SJackson (The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement)
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To: SJackson
One of the biggest ongoing problems of U.S. foreign policy is a failure to understand what we’re really up against

I am SO cynical about this. I believe the powers that be, understand it perfectly. They are deliberately allowing the infidels to destroy us, because many of them are anti American to begin with.

3 posted on 04/20/2018 5:41:17 AM PDT by Mark17 (Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning GOD....And the rest, as they say, is HIS-story)
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To: SJackson
We don't need to understand them

We just need to know how to kill them.

4 posted on 04/20/2018 5:42:14 AM PDT by grobdriver (BUILD KATE'S WALL!)
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To: SJackson
THE AMERICAN “INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND” JIHADIS....(?)

I KILL YOU..!!

See...we understand it perfectly....

5 posted on 04/20/2018 5:46:02 AM PDT by unread (Joe McCarthy was right.......)
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To: SJackson
THE AMERICAN “INABILITY REFUSAL TO UNDERSTAND” JIHADIS-It has hamstrung our foreign policy for decade
6 posted on 04/20/2018 5:50:37 AM PDT by ThanhPhero (E)
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To: Mark17

It’s liberalism, and its True Believers.

Basically they believe only the worst of American aspects, and anyone else is pure and good and we just must have offended them (because, after all, America IS offensive). They’re like everyone else and just need a talking-to.

Liberals really do think like this. I have to hear it coming from a fellow tutor’s mouth to her students every single time. She spares no moment to drag down anything American, while thinking the best of “other” “different” as she calls them when degrading American behavior.


7 posted on 04/20/2018 5:52:00 AM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMVs.)
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To: SJackson

Understanding them is really quite simple.

READ THEIR BOOK!!

It says you have to either convert or die.


8 posted on 04/20/2018 5:55:12 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SJackson

It isn’t “THE AMERICAN “INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND” JIHADIS”, it’s the LIBERAL inability to recognize danger when it confronts us. Most Conservatives understand that Jihadis want us dead.


9 posted on 04/20/2018 6:09:56 AM PDT by BuffaloJack (Chivalry is not dead. It is a warriors code and only practiced by warriors.)
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To: Mark17
"I am SO cynical about this. I believe the powers that be, understand it perfectly. They are deliberately allowing the infidels to destroy us, because many of them are anti American to begin with."

I share your view. The American left is so hardwired to hate the USA, they will ally with any enemy state or terrotistic organization that promises to hurt or destroy the West.

10 posted on 04/20/2018 6:12:57 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: SJackson

They say their ‘holy war’ will not end until they have killed me and everyone else like me. I believe them.

What else is there to understand?


11 posted on 04/20/2018 6:21:52 AM PDT by WayneS (An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. - Winston Churchill)
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To: SJackson

THE AMERICAN “INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND” JIHADIS-It has hamstrung our foreign policy for decades

The refusal to under stand jihad’s IS THE PROBLEM.


12 posted on 04/20/2018 6:23:54 AM PDT by JayAr36 (Washinton DC, District of Corruption proven daily)
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To: the OlLine Rebel
They’re like everyone else and just need a talking-to.

Maybe so, but it might take a 2X4 upside their heads, just to get their attention. 👍

13 posted on 04/20/2018 6:25:18 AM PDT by Mark17 (Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning GOD....And the rest, as they say, is HIS-story)
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To: Truth29
I share your view. The American left is so hardwired to hate the USA, they will ally with any enemy state or terrotistic organization that promises to hurt or destroy the West.

Amen bro. May an elephant caress them with his toes. (Little Jimmy Dickens)

14 posted on 04/20/2018 6:29:36 AM PDT by Mark17 (Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning GOD....And the rest, as they say, is HIS-story)
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To: SJackson

Peopleof the past knew how to handle them.
CIVILIZE THEM WITH A KRAG!

Browning also invented the .45 ACP to put down Juramentados when the .38 Colt was found to be useless.


15 posted on 04/20/2018 7:07:06 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: SJackson
Not all politicians were so willfully ignorant.



16 posted on 04/20/2018 7:17:21 AM PDT by Bratch ("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke)
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To: SJackson

Oh, I think we understand them very well.


17 posted on 04/20/2018 7:42:09 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: SJackson
foreign service professionals

That's the problem with "professionals". They are often unable to think outside of their box.

18 posted on 04/20/2018 9:22:07 AM PDT by glorgau
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