Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 26

It's a Pity Somebody Has To Win

Asked about the Iran-Iraq war that stretched for eight ghastly years after breaking out in 1980, Henry Kissinger is said to have quipped, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”

The pity is that we have lost that exquisite wisdom  concerning our national interest, despite a two-decade road to hell paved by good intentions -- at least compassionate intentions -- from Kosovo to Kandahar. If that isn’t clear enough from the latest killings of American soldiers stuck like sitting ducks between the Afghan Taliban and other Afghan Islamists, all doubt is removed by Elliott Abrams, the longtime Republican foreign-policy solon who served as a top National Security Council official during the heady days of the Bush “Freedom Agenda.” “Can there be a group anywhere in the world today more disappointed in United States foreign policy than those fighting the Syrian regime?” Abrams, a distinguished public servant whom I admire, asked this week in a post on the Corner.

#ad#Yeah: How about the American people?

Our entanglement in Afghanistan is now reduced to pleading with Taliban decapitators to come to the negotiating table while the Afghan forces our soldiers train and the Afghan civilians our soldiers protect kill our men and women -- and while officials of the government we prop up echo their clerics’ exhortations to violent jihad until our infidel forces vacate the country.

And Iraq? Destroying the Saddam Hussein regime’s capacity to project power and facilitate terror took just a few weeks, but based on the second Bush inaugural’s mellifluous nonsense that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” we stuck around another eight years to try to turn the place into a functioning democracy and counterterrorism ally. After more than 4,000 lives were lost and $800 billion expended, we have left behind an Iran-dominated sharia state best known for its internecine Islamic barbarism, its persecution of religious minorities, and its Islamist prime minister, who clings to power despite having lost the last election.

In Gaza and Lebanon, we called for “the success of liberty” through “democratic” elections -- democratic in the sense that the third grade holds a referendum to elect a class president, nothing resembling a culture of Western democracy. What we got for our trouble was the installation of Hamas and Hezbollah into positions of governmental power -- unreconstructed jihadists now swaddled in the cloak of democratic legitimacy. In Kosovo, we raced to recognize an Islamic government, eviscerating the Westphalian order’s bedrock principle that the borders of a nation -- even Serbia -- must be respected, while validating ethnic cleansing and the destructive notion that Islamic solidarity takes precedence over national sovereignty. In Libya, we threw overboard a regime that, for all its notorious faults, was lauded by our government as a key ally in the fight against jihadist terror and nuclear proliferation, abetting its replacement by a sharia regime in which anti-American terrorists hold key positions. And in Egypt, we pulled the rug from beneath the pro-American Hosni Mubarak’s feet and ended up with the Muslim Brotherhood -- extremists being pulled in a more extreme direction by the electoral success of still more doctrinaire Islamic supremacists. Meanwhile, Coptic Christians flee a country that is no longer even marginally safe for non-Muslims.

#page#Haven’t we done quite enough?

Apparently not, according to Mr. Abrams. He is exercised because the Obama administration, after bungling Egypt and Libya, is not of a mind to leap with both feet into Syria, the sharia ascendancy’s next stop. To be sure, Bashar al-Assad is a savage dictator in the mold of his late father, and the regime has slaughtered thousands of Syrians as it clings to power. This, in the Freedom Agenda mind, triggers an American obligation to intervene, bereft of any companion American national-security obligation to concern ourselves with what might follow after Assad falls.

#ad#Abrams thus accuses Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of “smearing” the Syrian “opposition.” (After the Libya misadventure, “rebels” is so de trop that “opposition” is apparently the euphemism in vogue for the 2012 Arab Spring.) Smearing them how? Madame Secretary had the temerity to point out that Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman Zawahiri, has thrown al-Qaeda’s support (which is to say, its mass-murder proficiency) behind the opposition, as have those proud democrats at Hamas -- who have just vacated their longtime Syrian redoubt for the comfier climes of Egypt and Qatar. (Hamas, being the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, gravitates naturally to the safe havens of a fledgling Muslim Brotherhood government and the playpen of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, its sharia maestro.)

Certainly one could accuse Mrs. Clinton of being disingenuous. After all, what she is saying about Syria was true of Libya -- where the Obama administration nevertheless intervened even though the ink was not yet dry on the State Department’s request that Congress increase funding for the Qaddafi regime. But she could only rightly be condemned of a smear if you buy Abrams’s delusion.

Concededly, that has heretofore been the Obama delusion, too, just as it was the regnant bipartisan delusion of administrations stretching back 20 years ago, back when Mrs. Clinton was still baking cookies and fixing healthcare. It is the lunatic idea that the Muslim ummah consists of about two dozen terrorists engaged in “anti-Islamic” violence, regrettably strewn among 1.5 billion moderates yearning for freedom through a peaceful political process.

The reality is more like what we’re seeing in Egypt, where four out of five citizens want some measure of repressive sharia law. Or the Palestinian territories, where a decisive majority denies Israel’s right to exist -- as do Muslims throughout the region, including in made-in-America Iraq. Or Afghanistan, where being a Muslim apostate is a capital offense under the constitution midwifed by the State Department, and where the accidental burning of the Koran is deemed just cause for a murder spree -- and for calls by Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars for the American soldiers, not the Afghan murderers, to be punished.

One need not carry a brief for Assad to take notice that it is not just al-Qaeda and Hamas backing the “opposition.” The hugely influential Qaradawi backs them, too. That is because the backbone of the opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, Syria is a more diverse country than Libya. The regime is composed of an Alawite Muslim minority -- regarded as heretical by Qaradawi -- and it is backed by Shiite Iran. Its opposition includes an ethnic, religious, and ideological potpourri of Druze Muslims, Kurds, Armenians, Christians, Marxists, a few liberal democrats, some disgruntled former regime officials, and even a smattering of Jews. But all that said, three-quarters of the country’s 23 million people are Sunni Muslims -- the Brotherhood’s breeding grounds.

As the Wall Street Journal outlined in a lengthy 2007 report, the Brotherhood’s influence is so pervasive that Bush administration heavyweights like Elliott Abrams had to swallow hard and deal with them if they wanted to cultivate Assad’s opposition. They rationalized that this was worth doing by coupling their dreamy sharia-democracy promotion with the cold calculation that toppling Assad would be a severe blow to Iran’s ambitions.

While more admirably focused on American national interests, the second theory was, and is, wrong. Replacing Assad’s regime with the Brotherhood is not necessarily an improvement as far as American interests are concerned -- they are both deeply anti-American and the Brotherhood is even more vested in Israel’s destruction. But that aside, the premise is wayward. When America’s enemies face off against each other, it is not in our interest to choose one over the other. As they battle, they weaken each other -- and that has already had the salutary effect of weakening Iran, which now sees not only Assad teetering but its tenuous ties with Hamas fraying.

Of course it is tragic that some innocent victims and authentic liberal democrats are caught in the carnage. It is not our burden, however, to prevent that or to become enmeshed in other countries’ civil wars – not when there is no vital American interest in one side's prevailing over the other. It is certainly not in the vital interests of a country weary of war, out of patience with Muslim madness, and $15 trillion in debt to further insinuate itself so that anti-American dictators can be replaced by anti-American Islamists.

It’s a pity that they can’t both lose. But if they have to savage someone, better each other than us.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America .

'I Have Been Sent with Obfuscation'

The quote is from Mohammed, Islam's founding prophet, in a canonical hadith. My friend Raymond Ibrahim alludes to it, and so much more, in "Tawriya: Islamic Doctrine of 'Creative Lying'," an essay published at both FrontPage Magazine and the Stonegate Institute (and at Ray's website). It's interesting stuff, and slightly different from the more familiar concept of taqiyya, which is lying made permissible by the circumstances. Tawriya is, instead, statements that are literally true but intended to mislead. It goes to one of my bugaboos: Islamists who feign condemnations of "terrorism" -- hint: If their subjective definition of terrorism (the unjust killing of Muslims) is different from your common definition, it is unsurprising that you can get them to condemn "terrorism" with all apparent earnestness but find them squirming when you specify names like "Hamas" and "bin Laden." 

As with everything Ray writes, it's worth reading.

Mark Levin's Ameritopia

Today, The New Criterion published my review of The Great One's latest No. 1 bestseller. Ameritopia is a remarkable book, mainstreaming foundational works of political philosophy that shape the divide between liberty and statism. My conclusion:

The stark question Mark Levin poses is whether we are so far gone that the losses are permanent. Do we throw off Ameritopia and pivot back toward liberty and self-determination? Or will we remember this pass as “the good old days,” the soft tyranny in an inexorable disintegration into some harsher variety that has, for millennia, been the fate of failed democracies? Levin -- insightful, fact-driven, pulling no punches -- characteristically declines to don rose-tinted glasses. Ameritopia is the deep contemplation of a staunch believer in the vision of the American founding, one who sees that if dramatic counteraction does not begin promptly, all will be lost. The chilling part is that he is anything but sanguine about the likely outcome.

The review is at TNC's website, here. 

As Two More American Soldiers Are Killed in Afghanistan . . .

our savvy commander-in-chief commends himself for issuing the apology that, he tells ABC, has "calmed things down."

There is more on the latest Islamo-mayhem at The Feed. Meantime, the ever reliable United Nations has joined the redoubtable Afghan President Hamid Karzai in expressing outrage over the killing and maiming of American troops who are risking their lives to make life better for Afghans -- oops, wait a second, in demanding disciplinary action against the American soldiers who burned the holy Holy Koran. Naturally, Jan Kubis, the "Special Representative for the United Nations Secretary-General in Afghanistan," exploited Obama's apology in demanding that the soldiers be punished. As she pointed out, if an offense is significant enough to apologize over, there must of course be retribution in order to demonstrate that the apology was "sincere." Nice work, Mr. President.  

Andrew Breitbart

Like all of us, I am stunned and saddened by Andrew's passing. He was just an amazing life-force of righteous, cheerful energy and ideas. My thoughts and prayers for his wife and kids. What a profound loss for them, and for all of us.

Releasing the Blind Sheikh?

The Arabic-language newspaper al-Arabiya reported on Tuesday that the Obama administration has offered to release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to Egypt. Abdel Rahman is the infamous “Blind Sheikh” who was convicted in 1995 for masterminding a terrorist war against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. According to the late Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s founder, Abdel Rahman is also responsible for the fatwa -- the necessary Islamic edict -- that green-lighted the 9/11 attacks.

The alleged offer to release Abdel Rahman is said to be an effort to end the impasse over 16 American “civil-society activists” (including the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood) being detained by Egypt’s interim government. The Blind Sheikh, the report says, would be part of a prisoner exchange: 50 Egyptians swapped for the Americans whose organizations are said to have received foreign funding in violation of Egyptian law. (See my post from last week on efforts by senior Republican senators to secure the Americans’ release.) Speculation that a quid pro quo may be in place has intensified because, in recent days, Egyptian authorities suddenly adjourned the trial of the Americans and lifted the travel ban against seven of them, including Sam LaHood -- freeing them to return to the U.S.

#ad#The al-Arabiya report is available only in Arabic so far, not on the newspaper’s English-language website. It was brought to the attention of the English-speaking blogosphere late Tuesday night by the indispensable Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch (see here). Through the intercession of Andrew Bostom, the website “Translating Jihad” has now published an English translation of the full story.

Blind since the age of four, the 73-year-old Abdel Rahman has been renowned in global Islamist circles as “the Emir of Jihad” since the 1970s. He is an al-Azhar University–educated sharia jurist and the leader of an Egyptian terrorist organization, Gama’at al-Islamiya (“the Islamic Group”). Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Gama’at purports to have renounced violence. Although he was acquitted by an Egyptian court for complicity in the 1981 slaying of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Abdel Rahman has bragged about issuing the fatwa that approved the killing. His fatwas calling on Muslims to murder Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, are numerous and notorious.

American immigration authorities permitted Abdel Rahman to settle in the United States in 1990, eventually giving him permanent residence status as a “religious worker,” even though his long history of inciting terror and his virulent anti-Americanism were well known -- and even though his name appeared on U.S. terrorist watch lists.

I was the lead prosecutor at Abdel Rahman’s lengthy 1995 trial. A jury convicted him of conspiring to wage a war of urban terrorism against the United States, and of bombing conspiracy, solicitation of attacks on American military installations, and conspiring to murder -- as well as soliciting the murder of -- Mubarak. In January 1996, then–district judge (and later U.S. attorney general) Michael Mukasey sentenced Abdel Rahman to life imprisonment. The sheikh’s convictions and sentence were unanimously upheld on appeal. My book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad details Abdel Rahman’s history and the investigation of the jihadist organization he built in the United States.

Egyptian Islamists have been agitating for Abdel Rahman’s release since we arrested him in New York City in July 1993. Some of this agitation has predictably crossed into barbarism. In 1997, Gama’at threatened to “target#...#all of those Americans who participated in subjecting [Abdel Rahman’s] life to danger” -- “every American official, starting with the American president [down] to the despicable jailer.” The organization promised to do “everything in its power” to obtain his release. Six months later, Gama’at jihadists set upon 58 foreign tourists and several police officers at an archeological site in Luxor, Egypt, brutally shooting and slicing them to death. The terrorists left behind leaflets -- including in the mutilated torso of one victim -- demanding that the Blind Sheikh be freed.

#page#Gama’at subsequently issued a statement warning that its forcible struggle against the Egyptian regime would proceed unless Mubarak met its three demands: the implementation of sharia, the cessation of diplomatic relations with Israel, and “the return of our Sheikh and emir to his land.” In March 2000, terrorists associated with the Abu Sayyaf group kidnapped a number of tourists in the Philippines and threatened to behead them if Abdel Rahman and two other convicted terrorists were not freed. Authorities later recovered two decapitated bodies (four other hostages were never accounted for).

On September 21, 2000, only three weeks before al-Qaeda’s bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, al-Jazeera televised a “Convention to Support the Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman.” Front and center were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (then bin Laden’s deputy, now his successor as emir of al-Qaeda). They warned that unless Sheikh Abdel Rahman was freed, jihadist attacks against the United States would be stepped up. At the same event, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, an al-Qaeda operative who is one of the sheikh’s sons, exhorted the crowd to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.”

#ad#In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the New York Post reported bin Laden’s proclamation that his war on America had been justified by a fatwa promulgated by Abdel Rahman from prison. Abdel Rahman had indeed issued a decree casting the fight for his release as an Islamic duty. Regarding Americans, the Blind Sheikh exhorted “Muslims everywhere to dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships,#...#shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.”

The Mubarak regime, of course, fell last year, after Obama -- following some temporizing -- called for the Egyptian president to step down. Egypt is currently run by a military council, although it is transitioning to an overtly Islamist government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamists won about 80 percent of the parliamentary seats in just-completed national elections -- an outcome the Obama administration has said it welcomes.

Tuesday’s al-Arabiya story portrays the Blind Sheikh’s potential release and repatriation as an offer by the Obama administration, not a demand by Egypt’s interim government. But there have been many such demands from Egyptian sources. They have increased in number since last year’s revolt, and have featured protests outside the American embassy in Cairo. Helping spearhead the effort has been Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the extremely influential Muslim Brotherhood jurist. Like the Blind Sheikh, the 85-year-old Qaradawi is an Egyptian alumnus of al-Azhar who fled the secular regime and is regarded by Muslim supremacists as a hero. The Egyptian press reports that, ever since the Americans were detained in December, Abdel Rahman’s family and supporters have aggressively pushed the government to barter them for the sheikh’s release.

According to the al-Arabiya report, which is entitled “Umar Abd-al-Rahman at Forefront of Egyptian-American Prisoner Exchange Deal,” Egypt’s interim rulers perceive the United States to be in a “weak position” because the 16 American prisoners were caught violating Egypt’s laws and sovereignty. Thus, according to Major General Muhammad Hani Zahir, who is described as an “expert” on terrorism matters, Egypt is in a position to “exploit” the situation and demand weighty concessions.

Zahir claims that the American activists provoked some of the violence in the Egyptian uprising, and that this offense is akin to terrorism support -- a charge that can result in severe sentences in Egypt, just as it does in many American terrorism cases. Zahir thus speculates that the prospect of convictions on such extreme charges puts enormous pressure on Obama. Consequently, Zahir says, the Egyptian government is pulling together a list of all Egyptian nationals currently in American custody -- intimating that the government’s demands could far outstrip the 50 prisoners the newspaper claims the U.S. has offered. It is worth noting that, besides Abdel Rahman, other convicted Egyptian terrorists serving life sentences in the U.S. include Mahmud Abouhalima, one of the 1993 WTC bombers.

#page#It is important to stress that, while it appears the Americans are being freed, all we have at the moment to suggest an unsavory deal has been cut is a report in the Arabic press. Al-Arabiya is no fly-by-night operation, but neither is it immune to the Arab media’s penchant for sensationalism and conspiracy theories. The Obama administration has not publicly indicated any intention to resort to a prisoner swap to resolve the ongoing crisis over Egypt’s detention of Americans -- let alone signaled that it would be open to releasing the Blind Sheikh in such a swap. The United States provides Egypt with billions in aid and obviously has many negotiating cards to play. There should be no need to entertain requests that convicted terrorists be released.

On the other hand, there are patent grounds for concern. While President Obama has at times been admirably aggressive in taking the fight to jihadists overseas, he has at other times lapsed into appeasement -- and is especially cavalier when it comes to captured terrorists. His administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal with the Taliban and is reportedly contemplating the release of terrorists held at Gitmo in order to make it happen. The administration was pressured into releasing Binyam Mohammed, an al-Qaeda operative accused of plotting with convicted terrorist Jose Padilla to carry out a second round of post-9/11 attacks against American cities. It has participated in prisoner swaps that resulted in the release of terrorists complicit in the killing of U.S. soldiers -- deals that violated longstanding American policy against negotiating with terrorists. And it has gone to great lengths to propitiate the Islamists who will soon be running Egypt -- branding them as “largely secular” moderates, indicating a willingness to work with them, and remaining mum as their ascendancy has led to a campaign of violence against religious minorities.

#ad#For quite some time now, I’ve been concerned that President Obama might cave in to Egyptian pressure for Sheikh Abdel Rahman’s release. I’ve assumed, however, that the president’s political instincts rendered such a move inconceivable before the November election. In the interim, I’ve hoped that an engaged Republican opponent might highlight the matter, turning it into a campaign issue, pressing Obama for a public commitment that Abdel Rahman will not be released, period. To be sure, that would be an unenforceable promise, but one Obama could not break without severe political consequences.

Has the crisis involving Americans detained in Egypt changed those calculations? It is too early to tell, but not too early to be very worried.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of  The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America .

Congratulations to the New York Times

... for capturing our 2012 award for Most Ironic Headline:

"Beheadings Raise Doubts That Taliban Have Changed"

A Salute to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly

The Center for Security Policy, under Frank Gaffney's steady leadership, held its annual boffo presentation of the Mightier Pen Award yesterday, with Roger Ailes as the honoree. I'm honored to be a prior recipient of the award. But I was even more honored when Frank asked if I'd say a few words about Ray Kelly, the Big Apple's legendary police commissioner who is currently the target of a relentless media campaign by Islamist organizations, along with their lapdogs in the media and in government.

At Big Peace, the CSP's David Reboi has a post that includes video of my tribute to the Commish.

And because we're always asking why the only Muslims we ever seem to hear from are the Islamists, it's worth noting, as Dave does, that next Monday at NYPD headquarters, Zuhdi Jasser's American Islamic Forum for Democracy and the American Islamic Leadership Coalition will head up a demonstration in support of Ray, and of Rep. Pete King (who has pursued investigations of Islamic radicalism despite an aggressive Islamist campaign). Details on that here.

Egypt Releases Seven Americans . . . but Is There a Catch?

The AP reports that Egypt's transitional military government has lifted a travel ban against seven of the 16 Americans currently being tried for their work with organizations that allegedly took illegal foreign contributions -- work that incited protests against the military rulers, the government alleges. The report takes this development (which includes the release of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's son) as a signal that the crisis is being resolved. The 16 Americans are among 43 "civil society activists" being tried. Though the trial started Sunday, it was promptly adjourned for two months (until April 26). In the meantime, the American defendants have not been required to attend the trial and, more significantly, the three judges resigned from the case, citing "uneasiness." The country's top prosecutor is said to have lifted the travel ban at the recommendation of the case's investigating magistrate. 

That all sounds great, and hopefully it really is the end of the story -- or at least the beginning of the end. But there is a disturbing possibility that the AP story does not mention.

The widely read Arabic newspaper al-Arabiya reported yesterday that the Obama administration has offered a prisoner-swap in exchange for the release of the Americans -- an exchange that would have the U.S. releasing the "Blind Sheikh", Omar Abdel Rahman, in addition to 49 other Egyptian inmates held in American prisons. I was the lead prosecutor on Abdel Rahman's terrorism trial in 1995, when he was convicted of masterminding a terrorist war against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. The al-Arabiya story has not made it to the paper's English language site, but word of it first appeared late last night at Jihad Watch, and a translation of the story is now posted on the "Translating Jihad" site.

I'll have more to say about the Blind Sheikh story soon. Is it true, and is it a quid pro quo for Egypt's apparently imminent release of the detained Americans? I certainly hope not . . . but I don't know.

BREAKING: Iranian Attempt to Assassinate Israeli Defense Minister Foiled in Singapore

The Jerusalem Post reports that three Iranian operatives, possibly from Hezbollah, have been arrested in Singapore while plotting to kill Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister. Singapore's authorities evidently acted to thwart the plot, in conjunction with the Mossad. Details here.