Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 11

The Ideology Problem in Timbuktu Is Not al-Qaeda's Making -- It Is Classical Islam

Andrew's post describing the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Mali is essential, if excruciating, reading. Beyond the monstrously cruel but all too usual punishments being imposed, I'm struck by two things, which really show how willful blindness leads inexorably to spring fever: The Guardian attributes the atrocious penalties to the "menace of al-Qaida"; it also notes, however, that the "ban [on music] comes in the context of a horrifically literal and gratuitous application of Sharia law in all aspects of daily life."

Much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, al Qaeda did not make up sharia law. Islam did. And in the West, it is a key tenet of due process that law is imposed literally -- ambiguous laws violate the principle that people of ordinary intelligence must be on fair notice of what is prohibited. There's nothing "gratuitous" about applying as it is written.

We can keep our heads tucked snug in the sand, or we can recognize the source of the problem. As I detail in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, the literalist construction of sharia that al Qaeda's local franchise is enforcing in Mali is "literal" because it comes from Islamic scripture, not from some purportedly "extremist" fabrication of Islam. Moreover, while it seems only militant jihadists proudly urge this construction in practice, it is enthusiastically endorsed in principle by two of the most influential institutions in the Islamic Middle East: al Azhar University and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Don't just take my word for it. Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law is not some al Qaeda pamphlet. It is a renowned explication of sharia's provisions and their undeniable roots in Muslim scripture. In the English translation, before you get to chapter and verse, there are formal endorsements from the International Institute of Islamic Thought -- a U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood think-tank begun in the early eighties (and to which American administrations of both parties have resorted as an exemplar of "moderation") -- and from the Islamic Research Academy at al Azhar University, the ancient seat of Sunni learning to which President Obama famously turned to co-sponsor his cloyingly deceptive 2009 speech on relations between Islam and the West (“We certify,” the famed scholars wrote, that the “translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community…. There is no objection to printing it and circulating it…. May Allah give you success in serving Sacred Knowledge and the religion.” There could be no more coveted stamp of scholarly approval in Islam.).

#more#

Reliance is also endorsed by Islamic authorities in Jordan (leading influences on a largely Palestinian population that may well overthrow the pro-Western monarchy) and Syria (leading influences on the "rebels" on whose side interventionists -- including both presidential candidates -- would have us jump to abet the Muslim Brotherhood's ongoing campaign to oust the minority Alawite Assad regime).

Here, as I summarize in Spring Fever -- quoted verbatim and supported by citations -- is what Reliance has to say about the arts: 

It is forbidden to make pictures of “animate life,” for doing so “imitates the creative act of Allah Most High”; “Whoever makes a picture, Allah shall torture him with it on the Day of Judgment until he can breathe life into it, and he will never be able to.” (Reliance w50.0 & ff.)

“Musical instruments of all types are unlawful.” Singing is generally prohibited (for “song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage), and “[o]n the Day of Resurrection Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.” However, if unaccompanied by musical instruments, song and poetry drawn from Islamic scripture and encouraging obedience to Allah are permissible. Ironically, although music is generally forbidden, dancing is permissible “unless it is languid, like the movements of the effeminate.” (Reliance r40.0 &ff.)

Those sharia provisions are complemented by these -- again, endorsed by al-Azhar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and our "moderate" "allies" in the region: 

Apostasy from Islam is “the ugliest form of unbelief” for which the penalty is death (“When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed”). (Reliance o8.0 & ff.)

Apostasy occurs not only when a Muslim renounces Islam but also, among other things, when a Muslim appears to worship an idol, when he is heard “to speak words that imply unbelief,” when he makes statements that appear to deny or revile Allah or the prophet Mohammed, when he is heard “to deny the obligatory character of something which by consensus of Muslims is part of Islam,” and when he is heard “to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law.” (Reliance o8.7; see also p9.0 & ff.)

[Note: These latter prohibitions against denying or reviling any aspect of Islam, Allah or the prophet are the basis for imposing death for blasphemy. The call to kill apostates for such offenses obviously applies with equal or greater force to non-Muslims, who are pervasively treated worse than Muslims by sharia (see, e.g., Sura 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden which had been forbidden by Allah and his Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the book [i.e., Christians and Jews], until they pay the jizya [the poll tax imposed on non-believers for the privilege of living in the Islamic state] and feel themselves subdued.”)]

“Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.” (Reliance o9.0.)

It is an annual requirement to donate a portion of one’s income to the betterment of the ummah (an obligation called zakat, which is usually, and inaccurately, translated as “charity” – zakat can only be given to Muslims and is designed strictly to fortify the Muslim community, not benefit the less fortunate generally); of this annual donation, one-eighth must be given to “those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army roster…. They are given enough to suffice them for the operation even if they are affluent; of weapons, mounts, clothing and expenses.” (Reliance, h8.1-17.)

Non-Muslims are permitted to live in an Islamic state only if they follow the rules of Islam, pay the non-Muslim poll tax, and comply with various adhesive conditions designed to remind them that they have been subdued, such as wearing distinctive clothing, keeping to one side of the street, not being greeted with “Peace be with you” (“as-Salamu alaykum”), not being permitted to build as high as or higher than Muslims, and being forbidden to build new churches, recite prayers aloud, “or make public displays of their funerals or feast-days.” (Reliance o11.0 & ff.)

Offenses committed against Muslims, including murder, are more serious than offenses committed against non-Muslims. (Reliance o1.0 & ff; p2.0-1.)

The penalty for spying against Muslims is death. (Reliance p50.0 & ff; p.74.0& ff.)

The penalty for fornication is to be stoned to death, unless one is without the “capacity to remain chaste,” in which case the penalty is “being scourged one hundred stripes and banished to a distance of at least 81 km./50mi. for one year.” (Reliance o12.0 & ff.)

The penalty for homosexual activity (“sodomy and lesbianism”) is death. (Reliance p17.0 & ff.)

A Muslim woman may only marry a Muslim man; a Muslim man may marry up to four women, who may be Muslim, Christian, or Jewish (but no apostates from Islam). (Reliance m6.0 & ff. – Marriage.)

A woman is required to be obedient to her husband and is prohibited from leaving the marital home without permission; if permitted to go out, she must conceal her figure or alter it “to a form unlikely to draw looks from men or attract them.” (Reliance p42.0 & ff.)

A non-Muslim may not be awarded custody of a Muslim child. (Reliance m13.2-3.)

A woman has no right of custody of her child from a previous marriage when she remarries “because married life will occupy her with fulfilling the rights of her husband and prevent her from tending to the child.” (Reliance m13.4.)

The penalty for theft is amputation of the right hand. (Reliance o14.0.)

The penalty for drinking alcohol is “to be scourged forty stripes.” (Reliance o16.3; p.14.2.)

The penalty for accepting interest (“usurious gain”) is death (i.e., to be considered in a state of war against Allah). (Reliance p7.0 & ff.)

The testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. (Reliance o24.7.)

If a case involves an allegation of fornication (including rape), “then it requires four male witnesses.” (Reliance o24.9.)

The establishment of a caliphate is obligatory, and the caliph must be Muslim and male. “The Prophet … said, “Men are already destroyed when they obey women.” (Reliance o25.0 & ff; see also p28.0, on Mohammed’s condemnation of “masculine women and effeminate men.”)

This is not al Qaeda doctrine. This is sharia, authoritatively explained and endorsed. It is not the construction of Islam that many Muslims in the West wish to live under. But it is the mainstream supremacist Islam of the Middle East, which Islamic leaders -- including those who come to the West to preach it -- would not dream of discrediting, even if they are not as enthusiastic as al Qaeda where imposing it is concerned.

The State Department and the leading foreign policy voices of both major American political parties say sharia is perfectly compatible with "democracy" and the Western conception of human rights -- of liberty and equality. Sure it is. And then you wonder why the Obama administration opens a consulate in Benghazi, one of the most perilous places in the world for Americans, refuses to safeguard it despite multiple pleas for beefed up security, and then fraudulently claims a pluperfectly predictable atrocity was caused by a video no one ever saw. If you're going to live in a dreamworld, better get used to nightmare consequences.

The Obama Administration and Iran

K-Lo points us to David Feith's timely reminder about the Iranian terror plot in Washington. It made me revisit what the Obama Justice Department said about the Iranian regime in the sworn complaint supporting the arrests:

[T]he IRGC [i.e., the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is an arm of the Iranian military; the IRGC is suspected of having been involved in a number of foreign operations; t'he IRGC is composed of a number of branches, one of which is the Qods Force. The Qods Force conducts sensitive covert operations abroad, including terrorist attacks, assassinations, and kidnappings, and provides weapons and training to Iran's terrorist and militant allies. Among many other things, the Qods Force is believed to sponsor attacks against Coalition Forces in Iraq, and in October 2007, the United States Treasury Department designated the Qods Force, pursuant to Executive Order 13224, for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

Notice, not a word about nukes. Just the regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for over 30 years, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and whose top policy imperative, since 1979, has been "death to America."

Once again, the problem in Iran is the regime, not the nukes. The foreign policy of the United States should unapologetically and overtly be organized around the goal of regime change. That doesn't necessarily require military invasion, although we should not shy from that when they kill and threaten us. But Obama -- like his predecessors -- is using the levers of American power in an effort to obtain a grand deal with the mullahs, myopically focused on nuclear power with no accounting of the regime's much more serious decades of terror promotion and incorrigible anti-Americanism.

Why would we even think about cutting a deal with the mullahs -- on nukes or anything else? Nothing this regime could say or do at this point could be trusted. We should not want a deal with these guys, so it's just mind-boggling that we keep groveling for one. We should want them gone, we should be squeezing them every way we can toward that end, we should make no secret about it, we should support the regime's opponents in Iran, and we should make other countries understand that if they want to have cordial relations with Iran, we are going to make their lives difficult.

Obama Administration & Iran

K-Lo points us to David Feith's timely reminder about the Iranian terror plot in Washington. It made me revisit what the Obama Justice Department said about the Iranian regime in the sworn complaint supporting the arrests:

[T]he IRGC [i.e., the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is an arm of the Iranian military; the IRGC is suspected of having been involved in a number of foreign operations; t'he IRGC is composed of a number of branches, one of which is the Qods Force. The Qods Force conducts sensitive covert operations abroad, including terrorist attacks, assassinations, and kidnappings, and provides weapons and training to Iran's terrorist and militant allies. Among many other things, the Qods Force is believed to sponsor attacks against Coalition Forces in Iraq, and in October 2007, the United States Treasury Department designated the Qods Force, pursuant to Executive Order 13224, for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

Notice, not a word about nukes. Just the regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for over 30 years, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and whose top policy imperative, since 1979, has been "death to America."

Once again, the problem in Iran is the regime, not the nukes. The foreign policy of the United States should unapologetically and overtly be organized around the goal of regime change. That doesn't necessarily require military invasion, although we should not shy from that when they kill and threaten us. But Obama -- like his predecessors -- is using the levers of American power in an effort to obtain a grand deal with the mullahs, myopically focused on nuclear power with no accounting of the regime's much more serious decades of terror promotion and incorrigible anti-Americanism.

Why would we even think about cutting a deal with the mullahs -- on nukes or anything else? Nothing this regime could say or do at this point could be trusted. We should not want a deal with these guys, so it's just mind-boggling that we keep groveling for one. We should want them gone, we should be squeezing them every way we can toward that end, we should make no secret about it, we should support the regime's opponents in Iran, and we should make other countries understand that if they want to have cordial relations with Iran, we are going to make their lives difficult.

My One Wish for Tonight's Debate

. . . is that Mitt Romney and the people who are prepping him read Bing West.

There is no satisfactory answer to the question Bing poses, and it goes to the core of Obama's fitness to be president.

Sharia and Freedom

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column is adapted from Andrew C. McCarthy’s foreword for Andrew Bostom’s Sharia Versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, published this week by Prometheus Books.

‘Multi-religious prayer almost inevitably leads to false interpretations, to indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed, and thus to the dissolution of real faith.” So wrote Joseph Ratzinger in 1986. Even then, the man who would later become Pope Benedict XVI was renowned as a singularly deep thinker on the finer points of religious belief systems -- to say nothing of the sweeping themes.

As head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, Cardinal Ratzinger was ruminating on the World Prayer Day for Peace, forged by his legendary papal predecessor, John Paul II. Though he was among the pontiff’s closest advisers, Ratzinger was uneasy about John Paul II’s grand gesture: taking center stage in a spectacle of interfaith solidarity. Flanked about him were leaders of the world’s religions. Even Shamanism took its place among Roman and Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, Protestant sects, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and, of course, Islam -- all joined in an iconic, ecumenical quest for “peace.”

It was as if there were but one civilization, one single, common way of looking at the world. It was as if there were a talismanic aura about “peace,” such that the word connoted a universal value, impervious to inquiry about its meaning to the variegated voices uttering it. Was this “peace” the mere absence of war? Hadn’t the 20th century already proved that there were evils worse than war? Was “peace” an absence of war achieved by appeasing malevolent oppressors? Or was it an absence of such oppressors because they had been righteously defeated -- because liberty and equal opportunity, undergirded by the rule of law, had triumphed? Details, details. Surely a tidal wave of banners, splaying “peace” in a Babel of tongues, would wash away such impertinent questions.

In a nod to the host locale of this iconic display, the event’s legacy came to be known as the “spirit of Assisi,” that city of deep spiritual redolence. Ah, but deep spiritual redolence#...#for whom? Assisi is a holy city if you are a Christian. To other religious traditions, it is just another dot on the map. To a fundamentalist Muslim, it would be better understood as a coveted city than a holy one. What makes it sacred in Roman Catholic lore, its witness to what the faithful take to be ultimate truth, would make it anything but a place of reverence in classical Islam.

Nevertheless, papering over these distinctions is our convention, is it not? And nowhere is that manifested more clearly than in the cloying homage paid by the West to things Islamic. The ostentation with which the U.S. armed forces revere the Koran -- indeed, “the Holy Qur’an,” as our top commanders unfailingly refer to it -- borders on parody: mandating, at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for instance, that a copy of the book be distributed to each detained jihadist (notwithstanding that each construes it to command war -- I suppose I should say, holy war -- against the West), the said delivery carried out by a white-gloved military guard, who must, if at all feasible, be a Muslim.

Who cares what the Koran and the other sources of Islamic scripture -- the hadith and the authoritative biographies of Islam’s warrior prophet -- actually say? We are to regard them as “holy,” the same adjective our official lexicon ubiquitously attaches to cities like Mecca, Medina, and Qom -- even as the word “Christmas” is purged as a modifier of “carol,” “card,” “tree,” “present,” “party,” and “celebration.” In the West we no longer acknowledge, much less celebrate, what distinguished us as the West.

Such distinctions, though, were the inspiration for Cardinal Ratzinger’s clarion note of caution against multi-religious prayer. Religion as cosmetic reverence shorn of substantive content is a virtue only the postmodern, post-doctrinal West could love: its self-congratulatory elites having evolved beyond anything so quaint as doctrine and arrived at#...#nihilism. Ratzinger knew better. Doctrinal differences never lose their salience because it is doctrine that defines a believer. To airbrush our differences -- even for the well-intentioned purpose of elevating “peace” as a transcendent value -- is to deny the essence of who we are.

Thus should multi-religious prayer be a rarity, Ratzinger admonished -- “to make clear that there is no such thing#...#as a common concept of God or belief in God.” Far from religion, religious relativism -- oblivious of doctrinal content, eroding real faith -- is a destroyer of conviction. The philosopher cardinal grasped, moreover, that the obverse is true: Real faith has such transcendent power that religious relativism -- this “common concept of God,” this nihilism swaddled in politically correct reverence -- cannot compete.

#page#Real faith is an ultimate claim about what constitutes the good life. It is the antithesis of relativism, whether that relativism takes the form of an amorphous quest for “peace” or similarly fashionable pieties: “anti-terrorism,” “social justice,” “equality,” “freedom,” or “democracy.” Such noble ideals, we blithely assure ourselves, could not conceivably provoke dissent from any creed worthy of the name “religion.” Indeed, in our post-doctrinal West, such dissent actually deprives the underlying belief system of any standing as religion -- and, therefore, of any need for us to examine the belief system or come to terms with how broadly its convictions are held. That was the wayward reasoning of the British government after the jihadist bombings of July 7, 2005. Terrorism, pronounced Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, is “un-Islamic activity” simply by dint of its being terrorism. After all, Islam is a religion, so violence perforce could not possibly be rooted in Islamic doctrine. Q.E.D. -- why tarry over what the doctrine actually says?

#ad#Well, because it matters. There is no common concept of God, and the mush that passes for this feel-good illusion cannot obscure that real faiths exist. They are different because they represent different claims about ultimate truth. One cannot apprehend what those claims are, and how the believer is apt to act on them, without studying doctrine and respecting the divergences between faiths. Substantive differences, civilizational chasms, and supremacist ambitions do not evaporate just because we wish to believe everyone wants “peace.”

Real faith inspires. It has meaning and gives purpose to our lives. Real convictions, no matter how loathsome they may seem to an unbeliever, inspire allegiance and action. Nihilism, no matter how alluringly coifed, is a feckless competitor. Something will always beat nothing.

To understand and elucidate the something that is the core of classical Islam has been the mission of Andrew Bostom’s scholarship for well over a decade. A professor of medicine by education and training, Dr. Bostom has brought the uncompromising rigor of that discipline to the study of Islamic history and doctrine. It is the saddest of ironies that such rigor is sorely needed in an age of jihadist supremacism.

Western elites, however, have abandoned the field -- or, better, put it up for sale to Islamic activists and their apologists. Lushly endowed by the Wahhabist rulers of Saudi Arabia and schooled by the Salafist program of the Muslim Brotherhood, these partisans make little secret of their dedication to “the Islamization of knowledge.” That’s the stated mission of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Virginia-based think-tank founded by Brotherhood operatives in 1981. The goal is clear: to make Islam appear unthreatening, to limn its detractors as irrational and racist (“Islamophobes”), and thus to control the narrative about their doctrine even as they pursue its hegemonic ambitions.

Dr. Bostom is one of the precious few who dare make the counter-case, based on nothing so noxious as bigotry or dreamy as hope. In the best Western tradition, Bostom’s quest for knowledge is rooted in reason, applied gimlet-eyed to an assemblage of evidence drawn painstakingly from the historical record.

The contributions of this approach have already been immense. Most notably, Bostom has edited two essential compendia: The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (2008). These collections, featuring accounts of Islam in word and deed for over a millennium, as well as the critiques of scholars of Islam -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- over the centuries, put the lie to conventional wisdom. Jihad, despite assiduous efforts to reinterpret its meaning and bleach away its history, originated as the mission to spread Islam by forcible conquest. Strains of Jew hatred inhere in Islamic scripture and tradition -- neither were they inculcated in Muslims by shameful anti-Semitic chapters in the history of Christendom, nor are they strictly a byproduct of Israel’s modern establishment as a nation-state in the Promised Land inhabited by Jews for many centuries before the birth of Mohammed.

These treatises set the stage for Sharia Versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. The traditions of holy war and animus toward Jews are critical to our understanding of classical Islamic doctrine. Sharia, however, is the doctrine’s essence. It is Islam’s legal and political system. Its establishment is the necessary precondition for a society’s Islamization, and it is thus the objective of both violent jihad and stealthier methods of pressuring a society’s major institutions to bend to Islamic norms. Sharia is the animating force of classical Islam -- its claim to ultimate truth. To the extent that doctrine, preponderant among the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, is challenged by reformist movements within Islam, one cannot apprehend what those tensions are about, or assess how uphill is the reformer’s quest, absent an understanding of sharia and its doctrinal centrality.

#page#As for our own challenge, preserving Western civilization and American constitutional republicanism, Bostom’s title is aptly succinct: “Sharia Versus Freedom.” To borrow again from Cardinal Ratzinger, by exhibiting their trademark “indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed,” Islam’s Western apologists depict sharia as gnomic and aspirational. It is not a regulatory code, they assure us, but a mystic, private compass by which the believer comes uniquely to experience the divine. Of course, when a woman who has been sexually assaulted is sentenced by a sharia tribunal to death for extramarital fornication, or a homosexual is similarly condemned for consensual relations, or an apostate for renouncing Islam, the executioners don’t hurl aspirations; they hurl stones.

#ad#In point of fact, sharia is a manifestation of bedrock convictions: that there is no division of private belief and public conformity, no separation between mosque and state, between the demands of the sacred law and the governance of civil society. Sharia is authoritarian -- unapologetically so. It is, to the believer, Allah’s gift to mankind, the path divinely prescribed for human flourishing. Consequently, it brooks no repeal or refinement by legislation -- what right does man have to change or try to improve upon the writ of his Creator, to whom he is obliged to submit? And, as Bostom’s subtitle intimates, sharia is “totalitarian” in the sense that it really does endeavor to control everything -- theological principles, economics and finance, domestic relations, social interaction, crime and punishment, the use of force, even hygiene.

Most significantly, sharia is juxtaposed to freedom because it strangles individual liberty, the catalyst of progress. Sharia, we have noted, eschews our fundamental premises that the people are sovereign; that they may control their own destiny irrespective of any predetermined code; and that, while civil society may be profoundly influenced by spirituality, it is governed by secular laws.

Equal protection under those laws is the glue of a free, pluralistic society -- but sharia rejects it, elevating Muslims above non-Muslims and men above women. Our basic liberties fare no better -- sharia rejects freedom of conscience (apostasy from Islam is not merely a crime but a capital offense), freedom of speech (expression that casts Islam in an unfavorable light or sows discord among Muslims is a transgression as grave as apostasy), freedom of association, privacy, economic freedom, humane punishments, and the social commitment to tolerate and even appreciate most of our differences -- not extinguish them by violence and coercion.

Sharia-compliant Islam is ascendant. In the Middle East, about 80 percent of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan tell pollsters they desire to live under sharia strictures. Even in the Far East, in Indonesia, where the practice of Islam tends to be more moderate due to its syncretism with other traditions of worship, sharia is on the march -- preferred by half the population#...#and rising. Throughout the West, including in the United States, governments are under pressure from their swelling, aggressive Muslim communities to accept and adopt sharia standards -- legitimizing them in our law and our culture, even as their brute repression of speech degrades our capacity to assess the wages of conferring legitimacy.

The price will be high. The “spirit of Assisi” is a sweet-sounding invitation to abandon our defenses and our inconvenient knowledge that convictions matter -- that liberty, equality, and the elevation of reason are not just another way of life but a better way of life. Supremacist Muslims are a grave threat to that better way of life because they make an unabashed claim to truth and they are acting on it.

We cannot defend ourselves from the threat unless we see it for what it is -- unless, as Andrew Bostom puts it, we examine “sharia without camouflage.” We cannot defeat the threat until we once again revel in what makes us different, for it is also what makes us better.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center . He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy , which was published by Encounter Books.

From Benghazi to the Federal Reserve: It's About the Training, Stupid

It is interesting to juxtapose this week's terrorist plot to bomb the Federal Reserve -- a plot that never had a chance of succeeding -- with the controversy over when the Obama administration figured out the Benghazi massacre was a preplanned terrorist attack.

The would-be Federal Reserve bomber, Quazi Mohammed Nafis, is a young ne'er-do-well who, according to his family in Bangladesh, was afraid of his own shadow and came to America strictly to study. There is no indication he ever had any terrorism training. In fact, the criminal complaint relates that he was hoping someday to get training from al Qaeda. He was obviously inspired by Islamist ideology in the U.S. (I'll get to that in another post), but he was tactically incompetent. As you read the complaint, it becomes clear that he wants to do major damage to the United States, but he is too unschooled to ask basic operational questions, does not really know anything about bombs, and was roped in by the FBI because he couldn't tell the difference between inert and explosive material -- and didn't have the sense to insist on testing a sample to make sure it would go boom.

Consider this: we now have nearly a 20-year track record of jihadist terror attacks and plots going back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Here's what we know: the Blind Sheik, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas always emphasized that para-military training was critical and maintained training camps at which aspiring jihadists were turned into competent jihadists -- given instruction from experienced hands (many from the jihad campaigns in Afghanistan and Bosnia) in explosives, surveillance, close-combat, hijacking, kidnapping, etc. Moreover, the successful attacks -- e.g., 1993 WTC, 1996 Khobar Towers, the 1998 U.S. embassies, the Cole, 9/11, and many post-9/11 operations against our troops (e.g., the Karbala killings) -- all involved terrorists who had received training, and most were choreographed by knowledgable terrorist commanders who had come up through the training ranks.

Training does not guarantee success. Many who've received it have nevertheless failed to pull of their plots. But the lack of training virtually guarantees failure. Over the last 20 years, we've seen several cases of wannabes who had bought on to jihadist concepts and dreamed up spectacular attack plots; they failed to carry them off because they didn't know what they were doing. I'm not suggesting that terrorism is quantum-physics, but neither is it amateur hour. Ambitious plots against hardened targets -- even if they are not as secure as they should be -- are not easy to pull off. They require know-how.

Which brings us back to Benghazi. The question is not when the administration figured out it was a pre-planned terrorist attack. It is whether any government official with a modicum of national-security experience could ever seriously have believed it was anything but a pre-planned terrorist attack. This was a coordinated operation over the course of a few hours against two separate targets (which the attackers knew to be related), carried out by teams of men armed with, and competent in the use of, high-powered weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades. This is not the sort of thing that could be executed by a gaggle of Mo six-packs who get a little too amped up at the movie protest -- even if there had been such a protest (there was not). 

The administration will no doubt find some sap in the intel community to take the fall over this, citing a garble in the communication chain or some such. But don't be fooled. No intelligence agent could ever have believed Benghazi was a spontaneous eruption of anger -- and that's even if we didn't know, as we now know, that the intel community was getting some information in real time and knew within a day exactly what had happened.

This was not an intelligence failure. It was an Obama policy failure. In a desperate attempt to obscure that fact with the election looming, the Obama administration made a political calculation that the movie narrative could be sold to their media allies, who in turn would sell it to the public. As it turns out, the story was too far-fetched and the public wasn't buying.

If They're Moving Their Lips, the Obama White House Is Lying About the Benghazi Massacre

In addition to Mark's account of the State Department briefing further demonstrating that the intelligence community knew, and reported early on, that the Mohammed video had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack, be sure to read Steve Hayes's superb report in the Weekly Standard. Steve shows how the intelligence community knew in real time, and was reporting within hours, that the September 11 attack was carried out by trained terrorists -- there was no spontaneous protest that got out of hand. Yet the election-minded White House, including the president, willfully lied to the American people for days afterward.

As I argue in my column, Obama's Libya policy is what lies -- in every way -- at the bottom of this scandal. Of course the architect of the policy would rather you thought it was about a video no one saw.

Denying the Libya Scandal

The desultory vice-presidential debate underscored that, even if there were not a thousand other reasons for denying President Obama a second term, the Libya scandal alone would be reason enough to remove him.

By the time the ineffable Joe Biden took center stage Thursday night, Obama operatives had already erected a façade of mendacity around the jihadist murder of our ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. officials. The vice president promptly exploited the debate forum to trumpet a bald-faced lie: He denied the administration’s well-established refusal to provide adequate security for the diplomatic team. Just as outrageously, he insisted that the intelligence community, not the election-minded White House, was the source of the specious claim that an obscure, unwatched video about Islam’s prophet -- a video whose top global publicists are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- spontaneously sparked the Benghazi massacre.

Our emissaries in Libya understood that they were profoundly threatened. They communicated fears for their lives to Washington, pleading for additional protection. That is established fact. Yet Biden maintained that it was untrue: “We weren’t told they wanted more security again. We did not know they wanted more security again.”

Shameful: so much so that even Jay Carney, no small-time Libya propagandist himself, would feel compelled to walk Biden’s denial back the next morning. But the vice president was far from done. His assertion that “the intelligence community told us” that protests over the video had sparked the murders of our officials was breathtaking, even by Biden standards.

#ad#For a moment, let’s pretend that there is no historical context -- meaning, no Obama-policy context -- in which to place what happened in Benghazi on September 11. Let’s just stick with the freshest intelligence.

In recent months, Benghazi has been the site of several jihadist attacks. The International Red Cross offices there were bombed in May by an al-Qaeda affiliate called the “Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades” -- named in honor of the “Blind Sheikh,” whose detention in the U.S., on a life sentence for terrorism convictions, al-Qaeda has repeatedly vowed to avenge.

On June 4, four missiles fired from an unmanned U.S. drone killed 15 people at a jihadist compound in Pakistan. The most prominent was al-Qaeda’s revered Libyan leader, Hassan Mohammed Qaed, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Yahya al-Libi. It was a severe blow to the terror network, and the intelligence community instantly knew al-Qaeda was determined to avenge it.

The following day, the Abdul Rahman Brigades detonated an explosive outside the American consulate in Benghazi. According to CNN, the attack was specifically “timed to coincide with preparations for the arrival of a senior U.S. State Department official.” The Brigades recorded the attack on video, interspersing scenes of the mayhem with footage of al-Qaeda leaders and 9/11 carnage. In claiming responsibility, the jihadists brayed that they were targeting U.S. diplomats in retaliation for the killing of al-Libi. A week later, the Brigades shot rockets at the British ambassador’s convoy as it moved through Benghazi.

#page#By midsummer, al-Qaeda’s emir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recorded an acknowledgment of al-Libi’s death that exhorted jihadists, particularly in Libya, to retaliate: “His blood urges you and incites you to fight and kill the crusaders.” Naturally, Zawahiri was targeting September 11 as the moment for vengeance. His recording was released on that morning, intimating that a revenge strike would be the most fitting way for Libyans to mark the day when, eleven years earlier, al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Obligingly, al-Qaeda affiliates carried out the Benghazi massacre later that day.

#ad#Not only did the intelligence community have reason aplenty to anticipate trouble in Benghazi on September 11 -- reason having nothing to do with the Mohammed video. We now know, thanks to reporting by the Daily Beast’s Eli Lake, that the diplomatic compound’s surveillance cameras recorded “an organized group of armed men attacking the compound.” Mr. Lake adds that the intelligence community had a surveillance drone taking video “for the final hour of the night battle at the consulate compound and nearby annex.” Moreover, U.S. intelligence officials figured out, within a day of the attack, that the operation was pre-planned and several participants were tied to al-Qaeda affiliates.

Yet, the administration continued, day after day, blaming the massacre on the video. The claim was absurd on its face. Plus, it contradicted an intelligence tapestry signaling a well-planned jihadist operation, to say nothing of the manner of the attack -- the timing, preparation, and cruelty of which veritably screamed, “al-Qaeda!” Still, even now, Biden and the Obama administration claim that the intelligence community actually believed our people were killed over a video -- that Obama officials were simply repeating what they were told, not spouting what they audaciously hoped to deceive Americans into believing.

Why the deception? Because if you conclude the Benghazi massacre had nothing to do with a cockamamie video no one has seen, you soon realize Obama’s favorite campaign theme -- namely, that killing bin Laden decimated the terror network -- is nonsense. And you realize that what happened in Benghazi on September 11 is directly traceable to Obama’s Middle East policy.

As noted above, the recent intelligence we’ve just reviewed arose in a historic context. Beginning in 2009, the Obama administration, echoing the Republican establishment, told Americans that Qaddafi had become a key ally of the United States against terrorism. Obama even substantially increased the American aid the Bush administration had begun providing to Qaddafi’s regime. The rationale for embracing the dictator was straightforward: Not only had Qaddafi abandoned his nuclear program; he was providing vital intelligence about jihadist cauldrons throughout his country. By percentage of population, more Libyans traveled to Iraq to wage terrorist war against American troops than did citizens of any other country. And in Libya, Benghazi was the epicenter of the jihad.

In 2011, however, President Obama initiated an unprovoked war against the Qaddafi regime. Though Qaddafi had taken no intervening hostile action against the United States, and though no vital American national interest would be served by Qaddafi’s removal, Obama chose to side with the Islamist rebellion against him. Why? As demonstrated in my new book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, the president was determined to sell the “Arab Spring” fantasy of a Middle East seized by the desire for freedom rather than strangled by the ambitions of freedom-killing Islamic supremacists.

#page#In Libya, Islamists were the backbone of the rebellion: the Muslim Brotherhood partnering, as it is wont to do, with violent jihadists -- in this instance, al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Toppling Qaddafi would necessarily result in their empowerment. They’d insinuate themselves into any new government. They’d set up sharia enclaves where they were strong enough to do so. And they’d strengthen themselves by seizing chunks of Qaddafi’s arsenal of high-powered weaponry. Being incorrigibly anti-American, they’d use their new influence and power against the United States.

That is why some of us implored Obama not to intervene. As I argued at the time (responsively quoting a Fox News anchor):

I am not “suggesting that we would be better off with the Qaddafi dictatorship still in effect.” I am saying it outright. If the choice is between an emerging Islamist regime and a Qaddafi dictatorship that cooperates with the United States against Islamists, then I’ll take Qaddafi. If the choice is between tolerating the Qaddafi dictatorship and disgracing ourselves by#...#turning a blind eye to the atrocities of our new Islamist friends#...#then give me the Qaddafi dictatorship every time.

#ad#The “atrocities” of note at the time were twofold: the massacres Libya’s Islamists carried out against black Africans suspected of allying with Qaddafi’s regime, and the barbaric murder of Qaddafi himself -- when he was abused and displayed as a trophy, just like Ambassador Christopher Stevens would later be. These opened a ready window on the type of savages Obama’s policy was guaranteed to abet.

The straight line from Obama’s Libya policy of empowering Islamists to the Benghazi massacre is rarely discussed. Maybe it would be clearer if the Republican establishment had not ardently supported Obama’s war against Libya. Maybe it would be clearer if Romney and Ryan stopped sounding nearly as delusional about the “Arab Spring” as Obama and Biden do. Maybe it would be clearer if Romney and Ryan stopped talking about reprising the Libya debacle in Syria, joined at the hip to what they call “our ally Turkey” -- Hamas’s new sugar daddy and staunchest defender. It would surely be welcome if the GOP ticket started diagnosing “spring fever” instead of manifesting its symptoms.

In Benghazi, we see the wages of the disease. The pathogen was not a video. Want to know why our people were left unprotected and why mounds of intelligence foreshadowing peril were ignored? Don’t look to Obama’s vice president, look to Obama’s policy.

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the  National Review Institute  and the executive director of the  Philadelphia Freedom Center . He is the author, most recently, of  Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy , which was recently published by Encounter Books.

Treating Spring Fever

I've been more scarce than I was hoping to be around these parts lately. About four weeks ago, we released my new book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which fully develops the argument I've long been making: The "Arab Spring" is not an outbreak of democracy; it is the ascendancy of Islamic supremacism, meaning "freedom's cold, dark winter." I confess to being hopeful that the book is relevant to the campaign debate about Middle East policy. But when some of what I predicted began to come true -- i.e., when the government's failure to come to grips with reality resulted in deadly perils for Americans -- it seemed almost unseemly to be hyping a book.  

If you're going to write books, promotion is part of the deal -- unless they're read, what's the point? But the book is either good or it's not; that's a matter of whether it accomplishes what I set out to accomplish, not of how much I talk about it. Of course I hope people will read Spring Fever and decide that it has something valuable to add to our understanding of what is happening in the Middle East. Yet, what is happening in the Middle East is causing real pain for a number of our fellow Americans and their families. While I am talking about the web of governmental recklessness and dishonesty, they're paying the personal price. Exploiting that so I can say, "See, I told you so," is not what I want to be doing ... even if I can't help saying it to myself about a hundred times a day.

Anyway, I'm grateful to Investor's Business Daily, which recently interviewed me about the book and about why the issues it addresses should weigh heavily in the upcoming presidential election. That interview is here.

I also appreciate Barton Swaim's thoughtful review of Spring Fever for the Wall Street Journal. Like Mr. Swaim, I supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but we have a difference of opinion about the democracy-promotion rationale for the mission. That being the case, he is remarkably fair in relating and grappling with my views rather than dismissing them, as many dissenting reviewers might have. And here is the only really negative part of his critique: "The author's lack of interest in appealing to centrists is a disappointment in an otherwise powerful book."

I can live with that.

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