Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East

There exists in the Middle East a basic willingness to use WMD against civilians — with no hesitancy involved — and with full Islamic religious justification. The US and the EU are trying to find a diplomatic solution to a problem that does not have one. It is Iran that must be struck. If it is, the other players will get the message. There is nothing to fear from an Iranian military retaliation so long as Iran does not have an atomic bomb. Once it does, it will be too late.

by Ali Salim

Political scientists and orientalists in the West who think that the nuclearization of the Middle East is containable, and not an existential threat to them, are making a serious mistake. These political scientists seem to think Iran’s nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s bomb and Syria’s chemical arsenal are just local problems. Most of these scholars do not speak Arabic and do not understand the Middle Eastern mindset: they deeply wish to believe it is a mirror image of how they think.

It is not. Had Hitler possessed weapons of mass destruction, does anyone doubt that he would have used them against the Russians and Americans? In north Yemen in 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser sprayed poison gas on civilians; in Halabja in 1988, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein sprayed poison gas — including mustard gas and sarin — on his Kurds, and now Bashar Assad is pouring chemical weapons on his fellow Syrians.

The use of weapons of mass destruction by leaders in the Middle East against their own people is an indication of just how light the trigger finger is of many tribal leaders and religious fanatics running wild in that region. There exists in the Middle East a basic willingness to use WMD, whether chemical or nuclear, against civilians — with no hesitancy involved — and with full Islamic religious justification.

If the extremists in Iran, the Hezbollah or the mujahideen of the global jihad get their hands on nuclear or chemical weapons, the world will immediately become a very difference place. Unfortunately, a substantial proportion of the so-called “free Syrian army” is cast in the same radical Islamic mold as Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front. If the West provides the anti-Assad forces with advanced weaponry, or intervenes to collapse the Assad regime, it is entirely possible that fanatic Islamists will take control of Syria – the same scenario the Americans have already seen played out in Afghanistan and Egypt.

America, which withdrew from the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan — abandoning the people there to the mercy of merciless extremists — racked up painful statistics on the loss of American soldiers’ lives, the loss of military equipment and a mounting economic damage that threatens domestic stability. Since then, the world, as it did after the Second World War, has been aligning itself into two camps, one represented by the enlightened, if faltering, West, and the other by the forces of reaction and repression: namely North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran — along with its satellites, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas — in addition to countries and terrorist organizations spread throughout the African continent.

In this divided world, the leaders of the United States, who are also the leaders of the free world, have been standing at the sidelines, looking on, apparently not wanting to put their hands into the dirt. Historically, such a stand is seen by countries you would not want to live in as an invitation to take over all abandoned ground.

The Arabs, as usual, whose brothers are being massacred in Syria, will wait on the sidelines until someone has taken out Assad for them; as far as they are concerned, the best candidate for this job is America. The leaders of the Arab states excel in taking no action whatsoever while repeating empty slogans — the most common of which is, “The Liberation of Palestine” — while at the same time either ignoring the Palestinians or treating them like trash.

The wealthy Arab states, at most, are willing to fund jihad missions, including suicide bombings carried out by unfortunate, brainwashed Islamists whom they send, as part of the global jihad, to blow themselves up along with innocent Arabs and Westerners….

More

 

Krauthammer’s rips apart Obama’s policy of appeasement to the Islamic world

    Brilliant. Just. Brilliant. 

Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.

Robert Spencer vs. David Wood: Did Muhammad Exist?

Muslims and non-Muslims assume that Muhammad existed. Robert Spencer’s new book challenges this assumption, charging that the Muhammad of Islam is shrouded in myths and legends. Can David Wood defend Muhammad’s existence against Robert’s arguments? Find out as Robert and David debate the topic, “Did Muhammad Exist?”

 

The Middle East Mess

by ALAN CARUBA

I have a novel idea. Let’s just let the Middle East stew in its own Islamic juices. Along with the Maghreb, the northern tier nations of Africa, down into Nigeria, wherever you find an Islamic regime, you find millions of very unhappy people.

I am not the only one who feels that way, a Monday, May 14 Rasmussen Reports poll found that 63% “believe there is a conflict in the world today between Western civilization and Islamic nations, but most also think the United States should leave the Islamic world alone.”

Will the Muslims ever practice tolerance or accept peace with the West or anywhere else for that matter? No, never. The Koran-which Obama always refer to as the “holy Koran”-is replete with directives to fight for “Allah’s cause” (Koran: 9.88), to “fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them” (Koran: 9:5) and twenty other calls to war and murder. There is a reason why their weapon of choice is a Muslim man or woman who is willing to kill themselves in order to kill you.

It is just my opinion, but I believe the present “war on global terrorism” will best be fought covertly with a well-funded, covert intelligence and a counter-terrorism program, not by a massed army followed by a decade of “nation building.”

In the recent past, people throughout the Middle East forced out Tunisia’s despot, killed Libya’s despot, removed Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak from office, and are fighting and dying to get rid of Syria’s despot, Bashar Assad. Both Yemen and Somalia are basket cases with tribal warfare the order of the day. Even the Iranians have demonstrated their unhappiness, taking away Amadinejad’s majority in their parliament. He recently abandoned his usual bellicose talk of wiping Israel off the map.

You cannot point to a single Islamic nation from Morocco to Bahrain that has not had demonstrations intended to pressure their monarchs into granting greater freedom and what we would call democratic reform. As long as Sharia law is in the mix, that’s not a likely outcome.

It took just over seventy years from 1917 to 1991 to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Islam’s grip on the Middle East goes back to the seventh century. The region is not going to change any time soon and those in power, like Assad, are going to be ruthless in their means to retain it.

The only reason that Saddam Hussein is not in control of Iraq is because the United States and its allies invaded in 2003 and brought his brutal regime to an end. Thank you, George W. Bush, but we should have left right after accomplishing that. Americans are tired of lengthy, inconclusive wars. We have been understandably unhappy with all the conflicts since Vietnam.

Afghanistan has been invaded many times since the days of Alexander the Great and the results have always been a disaster for those who did. Next door is Pakistan which like so many nations in the Middle East has never done anything but take our military and economic aid, and betray us at every opportunity. Egypt’s new leaders are getting ready to throw us overboard.

What I propose is a simplification of a complicated problem and there are few simple answers in a world looking at economic meltdown if debt problems are not resolved. When you toss in a roiling Middle East, it just gets messier.

To begin, let’s stop going to war in the Middle East. We invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. A short, intense bombing mission temporarily drove al Qaeda from its haven and it found a new one in Pakistan, including a safe home for bin Laden. We deposed Saddam Hussein, a major troublemaker in the region, and should have come home. We have little to show for the lives sacrificed and the money spent in both ventures. Billions have been squandered in both nations.

Israel is the only legitimately Western nation in the region, a true democracy. It is America’s greatest ally there. It shares invaluable intelligence at the highest levels of our government. It is a major trading partner with the U.S. Most of the technology Americans use in communications and in our military contains Israeli developed components. All the large U.S. technology companies have research centers in Israel. It also has a very large army and is quite capable of defending itself, but an umbrella of protection should exist because it is strategically important to our own security and Europe’s.

As for the Palestinians, they are a diplomatic sideshow propped up by the United Nations, self-proclaimed permanent victims. It tells you everything you need to know about the Palestinians that they are the oldest existing “refugee” group in the world! Israel has done what any sane nation would do. It built a huge wall to keep them penned up in Gaza, controls the West Bank, and maintains a strong defense on their northern borders with Lebanon and Syria…

More

Robert Spencer, Bruce Thornton, David Goldman, and Daniel Pipes on Losing the Middle East

By Robert Spencer

View here