Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 50

The Obama Administration Opens Formal Contacts With the Muslim Brotherhood

Don't say I didn't warn you. Besides explaining what the Muslim Brotherhood is and has always been, the major point of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the West Sabotage America was to warn that this day was coming. And so it has come: Reuters reports that the Obama administration has established a policy of formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood is the world's most important Islamist organization. It is openly, unabashedly committed to the destruction of the United States and the West. In typical Obama fashion, this disastrous decision to engage America's avowed enemies has been couched as the mere continuation of prior policy: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have confirmed that the U.S. would "resume" contacts which had "occurred in recent years." But make no mistake about it, this is a new policy. 

The contacts that have occurred in recent years have been outside of U.S. policy -- at the urging of leftists in the State Department, the intelligence community, the commentariat, and, in particular, the Obama White House. They have long campaigned for a policy of "engagement" with the Muslim Brotherhood (including Hamas, the terrorist organization that is the Brotherhood's Palestinian branch). They've needed to do this campaigning because it was American policy not to deal with the Brotherhood -- dealing with the Brothers empowers them, bolstering their status as leaders of mainstream Islam and legitimizing their agenda, which calls for Islamicizing societies, ultimately establishing a global caliphate, destroying Israel, and incrementally expanding sharia throughout the West.

This day has been coming since President Obama's first day in office. In 2007-08, the Brotherhood was proved by the Justice Department to be engaged in what the Brotherhood itself describes as a "grand jihad" aimed at the "elimination and destruction of Western civilization from within" by "sabotage." The title of my book was not my words but theirs -- taken from their internal memoranda, seized by the FBI from the home of a Brotherhood official. The Brotherhood's anti-U.S. strategy was not news to anyone who follows Islamist movements, but the proof for all to see came during the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, during which several defendants were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. Supporting Hamas's terrorist war against Israel has been the Brotherhood's highest priority in the U.S. since Hamas was formed, and trial evidence showed unmistakably that the leading Islamist organizations in the U.S. -- almost all either formed by or having ties to the Brotherhood -- were complicit.

Among the most important of these is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which was designated as an unindicted coconspirator by the Justice Department and shown by prosecutors to have housed the HLF in its offices and to have helped it transfer money to Hamas fronts overseas. Yet, only a few months after the convictions, the Obama administration dispatched Valerie Jarrett, the president's close friend and top political adviser, to give the keynote address at ISNA's 2009 convention. This was only the most notorious of the administration's outreach episodes involving groups (such as CAIR) which were shown to be Brotherhood affiliates and Islamist apologists. Indeed, by the time of Ms. Jarrett's appearance at the ISNA convention, ISNA president Ingrid Mattson had been chosen to speak at Obama's inauguration ceremonies, and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Arif Alikhan (who has referred to Hezbollah as a "liberation movement") was named assistant secretary for policy development at Obama's Homeland Security Department.

At around the same time, at his 2009 Cairo speech -- which was one big "outreach" to Islamists -- the administration infuriated the Mubarak regime by inviting Brotherhood members to attend, even though the Brotherhood was then a formally banned organization under Egyptian law. Ultimately, of course, the administration pushed Mubarak aside even though it was clear by then that his fall would usher the Brotherhood into power. That will happen in the upcoming fall elections, the Brothers having successfully lobbied for a rapid election schedule that will prevent the formation of any meaningful secular opposition.

In the meantime, the administration has worked feverishly to whitewash the Brotherhood's extremism and support of terrorism. As I have argued, Obama officials were preparing the ground for the Brotherhood's ascendancy. They understand the political consequences of this catastrophe for the president ... if the American people come to recognize what the Brotherhood is and how deeply it despises America and the West.

Thus, as the uprising in Egypt intensified, Obama adviser Bruce Reidel was quick to pen an essay called "Don't fear Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood" (to which I responded here on NRO). James Clapper, Obama's director of national intelligence, then proceeded to insult Congress's intelligence -- and badly damage his reputation for seriousness -- by branding the Brotherhood as a moderate, "largely secular" organization. (Besides being known as the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization's motto remains, "Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope -- Allahu Akbar!")

Only a few months before Clapper's testimony, the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Muhammad Badi, called for "jihad and sacrifice" in confronting the United States and Israel. He proclaimed that America is "experiencing the beginning of its end and is heading toward its demise." The enthusiastic endorsement of violence, particularly against Israel, would be surprising only to those who drink the Obama Kool-Aid that claims the Brotherhood has renounced violence.

As I have repeatedly pointed out -- and as Barry Rubin argues in this excellent analysis of the new Obama policy -- the Brotherhood has always favored violence where it would advance the Islamist cause; it tactically renounced violence against the Egyptian regime because it would have prompted ruinous retaliation from Mubarak and because the Brotherhood was making progress through the political process and influence over Egyptian institutions.

Quite apart from its long history of violence, the Brotherhood has long endorsed terrorism (which it calls "resistance") against Israel and against Western forces operating in Islamic countries. The Brothers also favor an inside/outside strategy against the U.S. and Europe -- exploiting the atmosphere of intimidation created by Islamist terrorists like al Qaeda to exercise outsize influence over American and Western policy-makers while advancing the sharia agenda through "peaceful" political means. It was not surprising, then, that the Brotherhood's former Supreme Guide, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, praised Osama bin Laden as a "mujahid" (a jihad warrior) in a 2008 interview -- adding that, though the Brotherhood objected to al Qaeda's targeting of civilians, "I support its activities against the occupiers," and concluding that bin Laden deserved praise for his "sincerity in resisting the occupation," a point on which the al Qaeda leader was said to be "close to Allah on high."

The Brotherhood's approach is popular in Egypt and throughout the Islamic Middle East. Indeed, shortly after Mubarak fell, the Brotherhood's leading jurisprudent, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, was given a hero's welcome in Tahrir Square, where he had been banned from inciting Islamist revolutionaries for 30 years. The sheikh is the most influential Islamic cleric in the world. Drawing on classical sharia teaching, he instructs that Islam and secularlism cannot co-exist. Moreover, Qaradawi has promised that Islam will "conquer" America and Europe, he calls for the annihilation of Israel by violent jihad, he incited the murderous rioting over the Danish cartoon depictions of Mohammed, and he has issued fatwas approving suicide bombings and the terrorist murder of American troops and support personnel in Iraq. I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the State Department has nevertheless long regarded Qaradawi as an "intelligent and thoughtful voice from the region" who is "an important figure that deserves our attention" (to quote Alberto Fernandez, State's director of public diplomacy in the Middle East during the Bush years).

Since Mubarak's fall, the Brotherhood has worked toward formally reestablishing Egypt's ties with Iran and for ending the peace agreement with Israel. The Brotherhood is also behind the "Peace Flotilla" expeditions in which Islamists and Leftists join together in efforts to break Israel's blockade against Hamas in Gaza -- the American part of the effort is being spearheaded by such old Obama friends former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, Code Pink founder Jodi Evans, and Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- and the planned U.S. ship is called, yes, The Audacity of Hope. 

Meanwhile, the Obama Justice Department has pulled the plug on further prosecution of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates identified as coconspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case. And now we'll be formally engaged with the Brotherhood overseas just as we've been formally embracing its operatives in our own country. The Grand Jihad is right on schedule.

A History Lesson for George Stephanopoulos

Beating the same drum as Chris Wallace, George Stephanopoulos portrayed GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann as gaffe-prone during a Sunday interview by recalling an earlier statement in which she said that a number of America's founders had opposed slavery and worked to end it. Stephanopoulos countered, "Now, with respect, Congresswoman, that's just not true." In fact, it is true -- Jeffrey Lord and Mark Levin provide a history lesson, outlined in Jeff's post at TAS. 

Jihadists Attacking Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul

Fox reporting. The attack is said to be "still ongoing," carried out by six suicide bombers. Taliban has claimed responsibility.

Re: Afghan Central Bank Head Flees

Matt, let's not blow this out of proportion. President Karzai has just finished talking things over with Ayatollah Khamenei and I'm sure they have this situation under control. After all, what are friends for?

Speaking of Iran . . .

. . . as I just was, Ken Timmerman reports that the mullahs have made dramatic progress in their ballistic missile programs over the past year of Obama administration engagement and smart diplomacy. They have in production three new missiles, including one developed with the assistance of China which is designed for use against U.S. aircraft carriers. Moreover, they have conducted three tests of long-range missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads -- which tests the regime did not announce. Given that a June 2010 Security Council resolution, in the course of imposing sanctions on Iran, expressly forbids the regime from conducting tests of "nuclear-capable" missiles, the non-disclosure of the tests "is tantamount to admitting they were of nuclear-capable missiles," according to Israeli defense expert Uzi Rubin.

A U.N. panel has been investigating Iranian violations of the pertinent resolutions, but Russia and China have evidently intervened to suppress the report -- and the Obama administration is keeping mum, too. Rubin theorizes that this is because bringing attention to the Iranian tests would reveal the folly of the administration's "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations, which prominently featured Obama's accession to Russian demands that the U.S. cancel deployment of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic -- because, you know, Iranian missiles are not a threat to the U.S. or its allies. Rubin also points out that the Obama administration "wants to say that sanctions are working, so if they say that Iran's missile tests have been successful, they wouldn't look too good."

Annals of the Arab Spring: Tehran Hosts America's "Allies" and Genocidal Maniac for "Counterterrorism" Confab

Score another big triumph for the Democracy Project, in which American taxpayers fork up hundreds of billions of dollars to create sharia "democracies" that loathe America and gravitate to Iran.

MEMRI has an extensive report of the "World Without Terrorism Conference" in Tehran, at which the mullahs hosted their friends Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashiri -- in addition to leaders of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Mali. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was in full swoon over Iran's initiative in holding the confab ... notwithstanding the inconveniences that al-Bashiri is currently under indictment by the U.N. for his genocidal rampage in Darfur and that Iran is currently abetting its collaborator, Bashar al-Assad (known around the Obama White House as "The Reformer"), in his regime's brutal crackdown against the Syrian people (reminiscent of the mullah's own brutal crackdown against the Iranian people during President Obama's "engagement" policy). 

For the fortune they have paid to make Iraq and Afghanistan what President Bush envisioned as stable democracies that would be strong American allies against terrorism, and for the sacrifices in American blood still being offered in the decade-long effort, Americans will be thrilled to learn that the conferees concluded the United States and Israel are the leading causes of terrorism in the world. (I'd note that, under Islamic law, "terrorism" is understood to be the taking of Muslim lives without right, and that what we in the West construe as "terrorism" Muslims consider to be "resistance" against enemies and occupiers -- but, hey, that's just my Islamophobia talking ... no need to blather on about sharia this and sharia that.)

Our "allies" dutifully listened carefully as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explained that 9/11 was an inside job aimed at ensuring "the safety of the Zionist regime," and thus greatly resembles that other well-known fraud, the Holocaust, in its colonialist designs.

Our "allies" also held side-meetings with the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei -- under whose leadership Iran has fueled jihadist operations against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'll be delighted to hear that Iraq's Talabani proclaimed that Iraqis were united in their oppositon to the ongoing U.S. presence in their country -- appearing to agree with Khamenei that Islamic regimes should take advantage of America's decline. Afghanistan's Karzai (taking a brief time-out from his ongoing negotiations with the Taliban in order to attend) expressed hope that President Obama would keep his promise to withdraw U.S. forces rapidly. Both Iraq and Afghanistan pleaded for Iranian aid.

For his part, President Zadari, whose Pakistani regime rakes in billions in U.S. aid while giving sanctuary to the likes of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, told Khamenei that the U.S. was trying to sow division in Pakistan for its own ends. Like our other "allies," he pledged to work toward expanding relations with Iran.

The vaunted "Arab Spring" was hot topic of Khamenei's meeting with the defendant, er, I mean, the Sudanese President, al-Bashir -- a meeting that Ahmadinejad also attended. (The Iranian regime has previously promised to share its nuclear research with Sudan.) You'll never believe this, but Supreme Leader Khamenei -- having apparently not spoken with Senator McCain -- actually thinks the Arab Spring is really the "Islamic Awakening," in which Egyptians, Tunisian and Libyan Muslims are rising up in defiance of "the West and the Zionists." As he put it, "The U.S. and Zionist regime's bastion in Egypt has collapsed." He also expects that, much to the dismay of the West, we'll soon see the "formation of an Islamic government in Libya, at the doorstep of Europe."

Turning directly to Sudan, Khamenei expressed Iran's full support for Bashir's Islamic government and praised him for standing up to "the U.S. and Zionist regime's pressures and conspiracies." Bashir thanked Iran for its unwavering support and crowed that the U.S. and Israel were the biggest "losers" in the Middle East's tumult.

It is a pity that Egypt did not attend -- with the Muslim Brotherhood now wielding influence, Egypt and Iran are on the verge of reopening diplomatic ties that have been severed for over 30 years, but it hasn't happened quite yet. Still, Pakistan rebuffed Saudi pleas that it not go to the Iranian conference. Zadari knows which way the wind is blowing, and so does the Brotherhood (whose Hamas branch has long benefited from Iranian support). By next year, expect new sharia democracies in Egypt and Eastern Libya to be on the mullahs' dance-card -- probably paying the airfare with U.S. aid (i.e., money we borrow from China to give to nascent sharia states so they can seek Iranian support). 

Bachmann accepts Wallace's apology

In an interview by Sean Hannity's last night, Rep. Michele Bachmann said she had gotten a call early last evening from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who apologized for the way he put the "flake" question during Sunday's interview. She recounted that she was happy to accept the apology and that "we're moving on."

What's Flakey Is Chris Wallace's Notion of Federalism

Chris Wallace's "flake" question to Michele Bachmann on Fox News Sunday was awful, but it was not all that surprising. Back in March, Mr. Wallace went terrier on Newt Gingrich over long ago marital infidelities ... before proceeding to go mushy (as I recounted at the time) in an interview of John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who were gushing over the "Arab Spring" (as Fox News programs are wont to do). 

Mr. Wallace is generally very good, but one gets the sense that, as a studiously even-handed guy, he is bothered by the Left's smear of Fox as a right-wing lapdog. Every now and then, with a conservative guest, he goes overboard to prove it's not true. Those guests are apt to be asked obnoxious questions that would never be put to Lefties, to whom Fox interviewers are unfailingly polite. But look, Wallace was big enough to say he was sorry, and to do so with a refreshing "I messed up" -- it's nice to hear a stand-up guy who doesn't do the weaselly "I'm sorry if you misunderstood me" routine. If, as Katrina reports, Michele hasn't accepted the apology, she ought to. Americans aren't just looking to replace President Obama's policies; his frequent lack of grace also grates. So be gracious -- it's not just good politics, it's the right way to be.

While the "flake" question to the candidate got most of the attention, I was more taken aback by the anchor's flakey ideas about federalism and the Constitution. Wallace spent a big chunk of the interview trying to create a contradiction where there is none between (a) Bachmann's respect for states' rights on the issue of gay marriage and (b) her support for a constitutional amendment to clarify that marriage in the United States is limited to the marital bond between one man and one woman.

Bachmann said that while she personally opposes gay marriage, it is not the place of the president or the federal government to dictate to the states; therefore, she respects the right of New York to adopt gay marriage as it has done by legislation (now signed by the governor). In taking this position, she properly relies on the U.S. Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people those powers that the Constitution neither grants to the federal government nor denies to the states. Marriage is a state law issue.

Simultaneously, Bachmann supports the afore-described marriage amendment to the Constitution. Wallace insisted that these two positions were in conflict. He seemed incredulous that Bachmann could maintain that the federal government must respect state sovereignty yet seek to impose what Wallace intimated would be a federal government standard.

What Mr. Wallace does not seem to get is that the Constitution and the federal government are not the same thing. The Constitution is an independent and higher authority. It, in fact, created the federal government, and it dictates what the federal government may and may not do. When the Constitution says, for example, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, ..." that is not an intrusion by the federal government; it is a directive to the federal government from the Constitution. Similarly, when the Constitution directs states to, for example, give full faith and credit to the public acts of other states, that is not a directive by the federal government but by the Constitution -- i.e., by the American people.

The Constitution, not the federal government, is the supreme law of the land. It has that exalted status because it was adopted as such by the states. It is the compact that sets forth the conditions -- in particular, the division of powers and the guarantees of freedom -- under which the states and the people agree to exist as one nation. In adopting its terms, the states and the people agreed to be bound by those terms -- which is why, for example, Article VI makes the Constitution's terms binding on "the Judges of every State," regardless of any contrary state law.

Article V prescribes the procedures for amendment of the Constitution's provisions. The hurdles are steep, ensuring that, before our fundamental compact can be changed, a broad consensus of the states (and thus the American people) must assent. No amendment is adopted unless it has first been proposed by a super-majority (two-thirds) in both Houses of Congress (or two-thirds of the state legislatures), and then is approved by an even higher super-majority (three-fourths) of the states. When an amendment that binds the states is adopted, this is not, as Wallace suggests, a matter of the federal government telling the states what to do. It is a matter of the American people overwhelmingly telling the states and the federal government what the basic compact of nationhood now holds.

Bachmann correctly argued that the Tenth Amendment calls for respecting New York's right to permit gay marriage. She also correctly maintained that a constitutional amendment effectively nullifying gay marriage would be very difficult to achieve and would not be federal government usurpation of states' rights. If traditional marriage is to be made the supreme law of the land, which she emphasized was a very big if, a constitutional amendment would be the only valid manner in which the American people -- not the federal government -- could make that determination.

On that last point, Bachmann contended that it was essential for a president to appoint judges who respected the limited role of the federal government and federal courts. Wallace responded as if she were trying to change the subject, but Bachmann rightly countered that this was precisely the subject: If you do not deal with gay marriage through the Constitution's amendment process, the issue is certain to be usurped by activist federal courts (see, e.g., Ed Whelan's excellent Bench Memos posts on the California Prop 8 case). Were that to happen, both the people of New York State and the American people would be undermined in their efforts to decide for themselves whether and where gay marriage ought to be permitted.

The congresswoman's point was that, regardless of what she may think of gay marriage -- or what any president, member of Congress, or federal judge may think of gay marriage -- the people of a state have a right to govern themselves as they choose unless the Constitution forbids the choice they wish to make. On the matter of gay marriage, the Constitution contains no such prohibition. If there is to be such a ban, the Constitution would have to be amended. A constitutional amendment is not Washington dictating to a state; it is the American people dictating to a state. Such amendments are exceedingly rare, as they should be, because there are very few matters on which Americans cannot tolerate divergent views about, and approaches to, life. What none of us should want is unelected federal judges dictating a single standard -- one way or the other -- under which we all must live.

On all of this, Michele Bachmann was admirably consistent. It was Chris Wallace who seemed confused.

Our Sharia-Compliant Afghan War

In a better time, when the burdens of war were shared by an engaged nation and not shouldered exclusively by military families making up less than 1 percent of the population, the high farce that is the Afghanistan mission would have been obvious before President Obama uttered one word on Wednesday night. All you’d need to know is the story that came to light the day before.

Turns out that the U.S. government has embraced a core tenet of sharia -- that archaic corpus of Islamic law that Mitt Romney recently assured us would never gain traction in America. Patrick Poole reported at Pajamas Media on Tuesday that the secretary of the army has just granted “conscientious objector” status to Pfc. Nasser Abdo, a Muslim American soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. Heeding the admonitions of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood operatives, the Pentagon accepts the claim that sharia forbids Muslims from assisting infidels in a war against Muslim forces in an Islamic land.

#ad#News Flash One: The war in Afghanistan, an Islamic land, is a war waged by infidels (that would be us) against Muslim forces -- the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, etc.

News Flash Two: The operating theory of the American counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is that the hearts and minds of the population of this tribal sharia society will side with us non-Muslims in a war against their fellow Muslims, most of whom are also their fellow Afghans.

Which is to say, our strategy is insane.

That does not mean our troops cannot kill a goodly number of jihadists. They have done that, and they will no doubt continue to do that as long as U.S. and allied forces remain in Afghanistan. Naturally, the number of terrorists we manage to get will dwindle as we draw down, while our diminishing numbers will make our own troops increasingly vulnerable to attack. But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.

That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate. Victory, under our chosen strategy, can never be achieved. That is why Obama, Gen. David Petreaeus, and COIN enthusiasts everywhere resist mention of the V-word.

“Victory” has been downgraded to “success,” but even success is not much discussed -- and that is because, as conceived, success is a pipedream too. The idea is that we stay and hold the Taliban et al. at bay until we have finally trained enough Afghan soldiers and police officers to fight the Taliban for us. Because once we win over their hearts and minds, the theory goes, these Afghans will believe they are actually fighting the Taliban for themselves -- fighting “their war,” not ours, as the heady plan was explained by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former theater commander and Kennedy School fellow who now teaches international relations at Yale. It’s all very cerebral, psychological, and sophisticated, the kind of war professors could love.

There’s just one problem with it. Okay, there’s a ton of problems, but let’s get to the big one: If we acknowledge that sharia is a valid reason not to send an American Muslim to fight against his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, what on earth makes us think the Afghan Muslims are going to fight their fellow Afghan Muslims in furtherance of American national-security interests?

The sharia objection Private Abdo successfully posed to his deployment is not frivolous. To the contrary, from the perspective of a devout Muslim, it is ironclad. The animating theme of Islamic law is the supremacy of Islam and the imperative that it reign over the earth, that Muslims overcome non-Muslims. Consequently, infidel forces are generally regarded with hostility in Islamic countries (particularly if they are pursuing their own, rather than Islamic, interests). This is why politicians in the new Afghan and Iraqi “democracies” get such mileage out of America-bashing. Their populations, which are nearly 100 percent Islamic, despise America. In these places, the very thought of Muslims helping non-Muslims make war against Muslims is anathema.

Reliance of the Traveller, the classic manual of Islamic law accepted throughout the ummah, instructs believers that there is nothing “more heinous in Allah’s sight” than “the killing of a believer.” How, you may ask, are we to convince Afghans that when we kill Taliban operatives we’re not killing believers, and that when they kill them for us, they won’t be killing believers either? Here, our Beltway solons get downright Jesuitical, maintaining that these Taliban characters are not really Muslims but, yes, “violent extremists” who have perverted Islam. But behold: Even in the West Wing faculty lounge, they don’t really buy this fairy tale. That’s why such pains were taken to give Osama bin Laden a fastidiously Muslim funeral, during which American naval personnel actually prayed for Allah to pardon him and grant him every blessing of paradise before feeding him to the sharks.

#page#Like the army secretary, the administration was just following sharia, under which bin Laden was a Muslim, through and through. As the Prophet Mohammed decreed, any man “who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah” is a Muslim. Mass-murder is not disqualifying.

#ad#Under sharia, believers may not join non-Muslims in killing Muslims, even if those Muslims, like the Taliban, are not particularly popular. According to Reliance of the Traveller, it is unlawful to shed the blood of a Muslim “unless he be one of three: a married adulterer, someone killed in retaliation for killing another, or someone who abandons his religion and the Muslim community.”

Wait a second, you say: If sharia permits retaliatory killing, can’t Muslims help us against these assassins from al-Qaeda and Taliban? No, with exceptions that are not relevant to this discussion, only when the murder victims are Muslims is retaliatory killing permitted. Muslims who kill non-Muslims are expressly protected. Moreover, non-Muslim forces in Islamic countries are deemed “occupiers,” the term the detestable Afghan president Hamid Karzai has taken to calling American troops. Occupiers (like any non-Muslims who fight and kill Muslims) are seen as oppressors and enemies of Allah. The Koran sternly warns Muslims not to take such non-Muslims as friends or protectors (e.g., Suras 4:139, 60:01), and most certainly not to take up their cause against fellow Muslims. As Sura 4:144 puts it, “O, ye who believe, take not for friends Unbelievers rather than Believers: do ye wish to offer Allah an open proof against yourselves?”

Private Abdo may not approve of al-Qaeda. He may not want to see the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan. But that is not the point. They are Muslims. He, like the Muslims of Afghanistan, sees himself as a Muslim first. He is not going to side with us over them. It doesn’t matter that he may privately believe they are reprehensible. Since they are Muslims, he sees it as Allah’s place, not his, to condemn them. In this life, in the sharia schema of Muslims versus non-Muslims, he is with his fellow Muslims -- and would risk grave peril, both here and in the afterlife, were he to cross over to the other side.

On the Corner this week, Iraq vet David French complained that counterinsurgency had developed an undeserved reputation for being “touchy-feely” because of its close association with nation-building. His point is well taken. COIN, as he attests, involves “intense fighting” under conditions that are exceedingly dangerous -- made intolerably dangerous, I would add, by the stringent rules of engagement imposed on our warriors, given the impossible task of wooing the Islamic population with one hand while they battle the Islamic enemy with the other. That our forces make such progress in the constraints under which they operate is an astonishing testament to their bravery and competence.

The problem is that COIN and nation-building, if they are to have a prayer, cannot succeed until after the enemy has been defeated. What wins hearts and minds is not showing how virtuous and decent we are -- especially in a confrontation between civilizations with very different ideas about virtue and decency. Hearts and minds are won when the enemy’s will is broken. COIN and nation-building worked in postwar Germany and Japan because complete victory was achieved first. As Jed Babbin recounts, it did not work in Vietnam, where, as in the War on Terror, the enemy was never conquered and its state sponsors were permitted to fuel the fighting with impunity.

Victory is not a step that can be skipped. Its stark absence cannot be disguised by miniaturizing the enemy, by pretending it is an aberrant fringe of violent extremists. The Taliban enjoys broad popular support -- or, at least, sympathy -- because the Afghan public is more aligned with its beliefs than with ours. That makes the population the enemy. There is a reason why so many U.S. and allied troops are being attacked and killed in sneak attacks by the Afghan recruits they are trying to train. There is a reason why the Obama administration is negotiating with the Taliban -- conceding that the Taliban won’t be defeated and must be accommodated -- even as Americans are told that battling the Taliban is the reason our young men and women must remain in harm’s way.

It is madness.

— 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.

Alinksy Does Afghanistan, Part II

If you read Part I, after the President's West Point speech a year-and-a-half ago, you knew what he was going to say last night. If there weren't so many lives of our best young people at stake, it would be faintly amusing to listen to the mainstream media commentary about how Obama's strategy just might be political rather than designed to achieve military success in Afghanistan. Obama's strategy has never been anything but political. As I said in Part I:

Obama knew he’d be fine politically [in the West Point speech] as long as he agreed to send some reinforcements — low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 extra troops in [General Stanley] McChrystal’s request. Now the president can continue purporting to define the mission, in his own words, “narrowly . . . as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist allies,” while conservatives gush that we are over there to demolish bin Laden’s network and the Taliban. In reality, we’ll be chasing the thankless, impossible dream of turning Kabul into Kansas. Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months, during which time we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan’s and that the hapless Karzai isn’t producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.

In the middle of 2011, the “taking into account conditions on the ground” part of Obama’s strategy will kick in. If, by talking down Karzai (which Obama continued doing in his [West Point] speech), the Left succeeds in souring the country on the Afghanistan enterprise such that the president’s reelection chances won’t be impaired by a withdrawal, the president will pull out. If, instead, the noble cause is still popularly perceived as noble, Obama will reprise the West Point two-step: satisfying the Right by staying the course, and satisfying the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then). That’s the plan.

Okay, okay, I got the unemployment rate wrong -- it's actually higher than 12 percent if you consider the real rather than the cooked numbers. More significantly, I failed to account for the possibility that our forces would find and kill bin Laden. That feat -- in Pakistan, where we obviously don't have 100,000 troops -- made last night a no-brainer: Obama would declare "mission accomplished" and not worry about a somnolent American media asking how we could have surged to defeat the Taliban while simultaneously negotiating with the Taliban and calling for the Taliban's inclusion in any Afghan political settlement. What I said 18 months ago remains true today: Obama's plan "would be preposterous if it were actually a national-security strategy. But it's not. It's a political strategy." It doesn't need to be coherent or effective. It needs to get Obama through 2012.