Filed under: Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Islam, Middle East, Military, National Security | Tags: Creepy Groupthink, Endangering America, Politically Correct Language
The most important post today came from Victor Davis Hanson. who wrote about “The Obama Borg: How ‘man-caused disasters” replaced Islamist terrorism in the Obama lexicon.”
In Star Trek lore, the Borg was a collective of servile drone operatives that sought to assimilate other species into its ‘hive mind.’
Something akin to that creepy groupthink arose when the Obama administration took power and sought to reformulate the so-called war on terror. Almost immediately, Obama operatives suggested that radical Islamists were no more likely than any other group to commit acts of terrorism. In fact, the very idea of terrorism — not to mention a war against it — was supposedly a Bush-administration construct unfairly aimed at Muslims.
Obama apparently sincerely believed that there was no intrinsic connection between Islamism and terror; or, if there was, Islamic radicalism was no more dangerous than right-wing or supposedly Christian-inspired terror. Or if Islamic radicalism did arise, it might be mitigated by multicultural sympathy and outreach, mostly by contextualizing the violence as an inevitable result of prior Western culpability.
If you remember, Obama came into office proudly extolling his years in a Muslim Country (before he was ten years old) as giving him a deep understanding of that part of the world. He called the War in Iraq “a dumb war,” and set about making nice with Muslim countries and changing the vocabulary of the American government. Terrorism became “man caused disasters,” the war on terror became “the politics of fear.”
The dreadful shooting at Fort Hood became “workplace violence”and the increasing radicalism of Major Hasan and his correspondence with the radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki was brushed aside for fear of being labeled Islamophobic. Even though he yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he killed twelve soldiers, one civilian and wounded more than 30 others. Army Chief of Staff George Casey stated “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” Thirteen lives snuffed out and thirty wounded and that is less important than “our diversity.”
What kind of orders must have been issued? Political correctness reigns, and to fail to respect “our diversity” can be a career-ending error. In Afghanistan, our soldiers who were assigned the task of training Afghan troops and police, were forbidden to have magazines in their weapons to show their trust for the trainees. That resulted in a lot of dead American soldiers when jihadists turned their weapons on the trainers.
Dr. Hanson enumerates cases of those who served in the Bush administration who have been drawn into the hive and now speak in only preferred terms.
Jihadism, violent extremism, radical Islam is a part of the vast Muslim religion. The abuses of strict adherence to sharia law, honor killings, abuse of women are all part of the vast Muslim religion. Yet the West twists themselves into pretzels to avoid giving offense. Muslims are quick to accuse the West of “Islamophobia,” because they fear to speak out against the “violent extremists?” I don’t know, but it would seem that the problem must be settled within Islam. I don’t think it can be solved from outside.
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, delivered a paper on “Denying Islam’s Role in Terror: Explaining the Denial” at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, and it is well worth your time. It is a complicated problem, but the refusal to name the enemy, to recognize terrorism where it exists, leaves us open to errors like the refusal to monitor Tammerlan Tsarnaev even when warned of his extremism by the Russians.
Today, Mr. Obama has announced that it’s time to close Guantanamo. He cannot grasp the reason why the worst of the terrorists should not be in this country in our domestic justice system. Guantanamo is about as close to a resort as any prisoners experience anywhere in the world, and the prisoners are better treated, but Obama’s view of Islam is fixed in concrete, and he does not change his mind. The creepy groupthink the Obama administration has used to reformulate the war on terror is a real problem, and the failure to understand the violent part of the Religion of Peace will do damage to our country.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Islam, Middle East, Military | Tags: Chemical Weapons, Drawing "Red Lines", The Assad Regime
euronews
The White House admitted yesterday what has been known for some time. The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons to attack its own people. In 2010, Barack Obama stated that the use of chemical weapons is a “red line” for the United States, a “game changer” that would theoretically move the White House in an undefined way from its position of studied indifference.
The opposition has accused the Assad regime for some time of using chemical agents, but the White House has dismissed the claims. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has announced that the United States now believes “with varying degrees of confidence” that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its people. Whatever “varying degrees of confidence” means. Hagel said the intelligence community has been assessing the problem. Other countries have reached the same conclusion with a high degree of confidence. Except they aren’t usually expected to do anything about it.
Theoretically, when you announce a “red line”, a “game changer,” you have set in motion something like the entire Pentagon deciding what you should do about it. Threats that are just repeated with “varying degrees of confidence” elicit little confidence from either the people or any of the players. 70,000 dead is a lot of people.
If American aid can help to cause Assad’s downfall and lead to his replacement by a non-radical replacement, we should help. If getting rid of Assad simply means installing another radical regime, then we shouldn’t be talking about “red lines.”
Ideally, a leader of a regime who uses nerve gas on his people should have a giant fist descend like a hammer directly on his head, so its like will never be repeated. But ideal circumstances seldom happen. Dithering, needing ever more information, consulting with the UN and going all wishy-washy only makes the U.S, weak and our enemies bold, and that is the worst of all worlds.
Filed under: Freedom, Islam, Terrorism | Tags: A Moment of Silence, All By Himself., The Boston Bombing
Tuesday morning, the White House press office issued a peculiar announcement. President Barack Obama would hold a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston bombings. All by himself. At the White House. Heroically. No press. No one else present. Alone, for a private moment.
Just the White House photographer to record the sacred, private moment.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Islam, Law, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: Atrocity and Genocide, Depend on the UN?, Gross Humanitarian Disaster
A year ago today, President Obama announced the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board. Over the past year, there have been appalling atrocities in Sudan, in the Congo, in Syria — just to mention some of the really big ones — and the Atrocities Prevention Board has been utterly silent.
No pronouncements, no calls from the board to respond to this situation or that. Members of the board, headed by Samantha Power, with professors Skloot and Professor Totten have refused to respond to correspondence from dozens of scholars of genocide studies and human rights activists. If the board is faithful to its mission, it would call on the U.S for more intervention, yet it has been created by a president who has made it completely clear that he doesn’t want to intervene anywhere if possible.
Samantha Power made her living on a claim that the problem was a lack of political will to intervene in situations of gross humanitarian atrocities. The board apparently defers to the United Nations, which makes the existence of the board an absurdity. The administration has preferred to downplay radical Islam. The President only recently managed to say “terrorism” for the first time, and the word “Islamist,” which Muslims themselves use all the time, has never to my knowledge crossed his lips.
We have had reports from the Israelis that Bashar Assad has been using poison gas on the rebels who are fighting the government, for several weeks. This has not been mentioned by the White House, nor by the Atrocities Prevention Board. The White House has not, as far as I know acknowledged that. And where did Assad get big supplies of poison gas anyway? The missing WMD in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Nah, couldn’t be.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Immigration, Intelligence, Islam, Law, Terrorism | Tags: State Supported Terrorism, The Boston Marathon, The Brothers Tsarnaev
As we gradually learn about the two Tsarnaev brothers, one of the big questions has been where did they get the money and training to amass their arsenal of bombs and guns? Apparently, from the taxpayers of Boston.
According to the Boston Herald Tammerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old with a green card entitling him to permanent residence in the United States, was living on taxpayer-funded welfare checks from the State of Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services, along with his wife and their 3-year-old daughter. The welfare benefits ended in 2012 when the family stopped meeting income eligibility requirements.
His wife was working 80 hour weeks as a home health aide, while Tammerlan stayed home and delved into the world of radical anti-American Islamism. Both of the Tsarnaev parents received benefits, and the brothers received benefits through their parents when they were of age. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old now in federal custody, was attending college on scholarship, but recent grades showed hm failing. He apparently earned money by selling pot, and in 2011, when FBI agents interviewed the brothers on suspicion of terrorism, the City of Cambridge awarded him a $2,500 scholarship, according to the Boston Globe.
Tammerlan had been a Golden Gloves boxer who delivered pizza while attending community college, and hoped to compete in the Olympics. Supposedly at the urging of his mother, he began taking his religion more seriously, started intensely studying Islam and attending a radical local mosque funded with Saudi money and controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Relatives say his descent into extremist Islam began around 2008 or 2009.
The Russian FSB intelligence service reportedly contacted the FBI repeatedly to warn that Tammerlan was suspected of being a dangerous radical. In mid-2011 he was being monitored by the FSB, as he prepared to leave the United States to join unspecified underground groups. The FBI reported finding no “terrorism activity,” and according to Secretary Janet Napolitano dropped him off their watch list. Lots of questions.
The bigger the bureaucracy, the more fraud and abuse can be found. You get way too many layers of management, and the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and nobody wants to stir up trouble, large or small. The ideal becomes going along to get along. Is that inevitable? I thought there was something in the immigration laws that required those seeking to immigrate to prove that they would be self-supporting. That’s another problem with big bureaucracies, The people no longer know what the rules are, and we only find out when something terrible happens to expose the carelessness of government. Mistakes happen, of course, but when they become big ones, people lose faith in their officials.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Islam, Israel, Middle East, National Security, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Dictators and Democracy, We Are Not At War With Terror, Weakness And Indecision
This video is from August 6, 2009. Not new, but it certainly demonstrates the problem. As long as we are unable to think clearly about terrorism, we will not solve the problem. I guess you could call political correctness a kind of worm in the brain, burrowing into every thought process and leaving a slimy trail of weakness, indecision, and misdirection.
This kind of sloppy thinking led to a failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq, with the consequences that have followed our abrupt pullout. It has led to the mistake of setting a date for our withdrawal from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to wait until then to take over. It has led to attempting to impress the Afghans with our trust by depriving our own troops of weapons to defend themselves and costing more lives. We have lost far more of our troops under Obama than ever happened under George W. Bush.
And it’s the kind of thinking that deluded the administration to assume the Arab Spring was a democratic movement that would lead to peace in the Middle East and an end to terrorism. But the Arab world had no experience of democracy ever, and no idea how it was to work. What they have known forever is dictatorship, so a new set of dictators moved in.
Mr. Brennan is now the Director of the CIA.
Filed under: Islam, Law, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Boston Marathon Bombing, Hunt for the Bombers, Terrorism
A natural characteristic of human nature is plain old curiosity. Whenever there is something unusual going on, people want to see. Looky-loos they call them. This has been the case in Boston, and it takes a real scare to get people back into their homes with the doors locked. Yet the rest of the country has been attached to radio and Twitter to follow the dramatic search.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been captured. His older brother, 26-year-old Tammerlan Tsarnaev is dead. Dzhokhar, pronounced Jho-har, 19-years-old, had been hiding in a boat in the backyard of a home in Watertown, just outside the city. Police approached him cautiously, worried that he might be wearing a suicide bomb vest. Three other people have been taken into custody, nothing known about who they are or why they are in custody.
Lots of information and pictures at the boston.com website, which has had very full coverage. The older brother had apparently become radicalized several years ago and a relative had warned the younger brother repeatedly about the bad influence of his older brother. Photos at the website include one of police massing in armor around a couple of MRAP vehicles ready to do a house-to-house search that is pretty scary. You can hardly imagine being a young man on the run with that show of force after you. Sounds like the police performed spectacularly and did a remarkable job of keeping the public safe.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in a hospital in serious condition. These two young men seemed to have everything going for them. The older one was hoping to compete in the Olympics in boxing. Good students, getting good educations. The younger brother was an outstanding wrestler.
Filed under: Islam, Law, National Security, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Fort Hood Shooting, Islamic Terrorism, Major Nidal Hasan
It was on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood Texas when Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people and wounded 30 others — the worst shooting ever on a military base. He has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder, and 32 counts of attempted murder.
Three and a half years later, the military has still not tried Hasan. Hasan has asked, through his attorney, to plead guilty to 13 counts of premeditated murder. Army regulations prohibit a judge from accepting a guilty plea to charges that carry the death penalty. Hasan then tried to plead guilty to 13 counts of unpremeditated murder. The judge ruled that Hasan cannot plead guilty to these lesser charges, or to 32 additional counts of attempted premeditated murder, because these pleas could be used against him in the trial of the premeditated murder counts.
No one has doubted the identity of the shooter, Major Hasan. No one has doubted that he acted intentionally. So how come there has been no trial?
The reason it has taken so long is that Major Hasan has discovered that his religion, Islam, requires him to grow a beard. Members of the military are not allowed to have beards, and the judge of the military trial ruled that he cannot have a beard and has threatened to have it forcibly removed. This has been litigated for a good part of three years.
We revere our military, and the men and women who volunteer to serve; but we should not forget that the military is a very large bureaucracy that floats on a sea of paper and rules.
What has happened in recent years is that lawyers have become deeply integrated in the military decision-making process, down to the brigade level, with two or three lawyers deployed with every brigade. They not only apply their view of the law, but constrain action through the rules of engagement they write, and how things will appear to network TV.
The federal government does not understand terrorism. We don’t know how to treat it, we don’t know what the rules are. Islam is a religion that permeates all aspects of believers’ lives, from personal grooming to food, to war-making, to sex and marriage. When you get to religious believers who want to destroy the West and all its peoples as opposed to religious believers who belong to a religion of peace, it gets very complicated.
So we get down to Guantanamo, and terrorism, release of prisoners who immediately return to the battleground, and demonstrating our benevolence with civilian trials for terrorists, and military trials where the religious commandment to grow a beard can delay a trial for three years, and we can’t accept the prisoners’ legal admission that he killed 13 people, something everyone knows is true.
Throw in the “trusted traveler” status for Saudi Arabia. Nobody has thought through our relationship with the violent part of Islam and how the usual rules do or do not apply. Americans don’t get beheading, or amputating hands for a crime. We don’t understand veiled women and what to do with that in this country, nor “honor killings,” nor the repression of women and marrying little girls to old men.
These are questions that need answers, and the answers aren’t going to come from the JAG corps. Their “rules of engagement” have succeeded in getting a lot of our soldiers killed. And misplaced political correctness led the entire group of military doctors at Fort Hood to ignore all the warning signs, and there were many, of Major Hasan’s descent into jihad and a mass shooting.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: "Trusted Traveler" Status, $60 Billion Oil Business, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Perhaps you remember, in the wake of 9/11, the uproar when we began airport screening and our government twisted itself into politically correct pretzels to avoid paying extra attention to young men from the Middle East of the same general age as the 9/11 terrorists, who perhaps were buying one-way tickets, had little or no luggage, that kind of thing. We could not single out people like that, that would be racist!
Nevermind that 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Nevermind that one part of the Saudi government is sponsoring radical Wahhabi schools throughout the Muslim world. Nevermind lingering questions and concerns about possible Saudi Arabian support for some of the hijackers or the Ministry of Interior’s inconsistent record on sharing intelligence on suspected terrorists and terror financiers. Nevermind that Saudi terrorists released from Guantanamo are the most likely to be recidivists.
So Homeland Security has embarked on a new program intended to give “trusted traveler” status to low-risk airline passengers which will be extended to Saudi travelers. The Saudi government will vet their own people and they can give them fast-track entry into the United States. We don’t give “trusted traveler” status to France or Germany. How about Poland? No. Just Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. Israel has reached a deal, but the partnership has not yet been implemented. It makes no sense.
I understand that Saudi Arabia walks a careful tightrope in the Middle East between the radical elements that surround them, the Western world, Wahhabism, Aramco Oil, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Arab Spring. The Royal family is huge, and while some members are friendly with the West, others support the Wahhabi movement, whose madrassas are a spawning ground for terrorism, and the regime is constantly threatened.
The decision is a turnaround, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) notes, from when Saudi Arabia was briefly placed on a list of countries whose U.S. bound travelers would receive extra scrutiny in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt in 2009.
Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke highly of “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” when she announced the change in January.
By enhancing collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.
The program which began in 2008 to expedite pre-approved passengers through airport customs and security when they arrive in the U.S., is designed to weed out low-risk passengers and enable authorities to zero in on those who may pose a threat. Passengers can skip the line at customs and complete their entry process at an automatic kiosk. Once accepted, travelers can enjoy the greater freedom for five years.
Saudi Arabia sends thousands of travelers into the U.S. each month, and more than 92 percent of Saudis who seek entry visas receive them. In 2012, 20,677 student visas were granted to Saudi citizens. The United States and Saudi Arabia do about $60 billion in business each year, most of it in Saudi oil exports.
Florida Senator Bob Graham, who served on the 9/11 Commission, said the Commission lacked the time and resources “to pursue all potentially relevant evidence” involving Saudi Arabia. “Significant questions remain unanswered.” Graham has spent years arguing that a 28-page chapter from that inquiry would cast things in a different light if it ever is declassified.
Including Saudi travelers in Global Entry may be “a continuation” of an American policy of deference toward Saudi Arabia. “The question is what was the first step in approving a country to be involved in this? What are the requirements?” Graham asked. “This is not a theoretical. This really happened that 15 Saudis came into the country. I think all by aviation…It would seem there would be some red flags.”
Political correctness should have no place in the government’s business, and especially no place in our national security. This administration does not understand that, and has gotten a lot of our people killed because of that misconception.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Iran, Islam, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: "The Arab Spring", The Battle for Syria, Threatening South Korea
Kim Jong Un, the young new dynastic dictator now filling his father’s and grandfather’s shoes declared that “Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to pre-emptive nuclear attack” upon the “aggressor” America. And had just set off its most advanced-ever underground nuclear test to get our attention..
In 2007, in a widely read article in Foreign Affairs, Barack Obama said “Throughout the Middle East, we must harness American power to reinvigorate American diplomacy” which “could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria.”He further promised that he would “develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.” How? Through “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy — the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.”
That’s working out well. It’s like an upside-down world where the movie is running backwards, starting with a Nobel Peace Prize, and then we slowly get less and less safe, and the world gets more and more troubled.
We are apparently moving towards helping the rebels in Syria, and John Kerry has officially changed his mind about Assad. But the question is do we know which rebels are associated with al Qaeda and which are not?
We approved deposing Mubarak in Egypt, and now we have a Muslim Brotherhood radical in charge, and we’re sending him F-16s and monetary aid, for unfathomable reasons, while the dissidents in Egypt can’t get any help. The Arab Spring did not lead to a blooming of peace., but a blooming of continuing rebellions. The “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy” went well. Hillary set records for mileage flown, but the foreign policy miracles that were promised never materialized. America is perceived as weak, and despots are encouraged.
We are undeniably less safe than we were, and if the movie is still running backwards, we’re in trouble.
Filed under: Iran, Islam, Middle East, Military, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Al Qaeda Spokesman and Leader, Guantanamo Bay, To Be Tried In Federal Court
The Turks first arrested Sulaiman Abu Ghaith weeks ago. The Turks passed him on to Jordan where he was captured. As a high-ranking al Qaeda figure and son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, it shows that the war on terror is still on, and we are still on offense. Well, sorta. The good news is that he is in U.S. custody, and it is bad news for his fellow jihadists.
The problem is that the Obama administration views terrorism as a law-and-order matter, and Abu Ghaith will be tried in a criminal court in Manhattan, where he, according to the rights of a detainee in a New York court, has lawyered-up and pleaded “not guilty” on Friday to one count of conspiracy to kill Americans. I wrote a couple of weeks ago in a discussion of Chuck Hagel’s nomination:
Mark Bowden’s new book The Finish about the bin-Laden raid discloses President Obama’s desire to capture bin Laden rather than kill him so that he could be tried in court. He quotes the president as saying he thought he would be in a strong political position to argue in favor of giving bin Laden the full rights of a criminal defendant if bin Laden went on trial for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr,” Obama is quoted saying in an interview with Bowden.
Obama believed that affording terrorists “the full rights of criminal defendants would showcase America’s commitment to justice for even the worst of the worst,”
Obama’s warped view of Islamic terrorism; his idea that the Israeli conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah is the cause of Middle East troubles; his idea that Egypt is a potential friend and sending 20 F-16s to them is a bright idea, is beyond troubling.
Abu Ghaith doesn’t belong in a federal courthouse. He belongs at Guantanamo, where he can be thoroughly interrogated. The number one priority should be actionable intelligence. The Obama administration has long attempted to bring the terrorists at the detention center at Gitmo to be tried in American federal courts, and justifiably met strong objections from Congress.
The “War on Terror” has been very hard for the left to understand. They understood going into Afghanistan in search of bin Laden right after 9/11. That was clear, get the bad guy responsible.They didn’t understand Iraq, the horrors of Saddam Husein’s rule, and when we didn’t find nuclear weapons instantly, they went berserk. WMD — weapons of mass destruction, to many minds meant only nukes.
The first pictures of prisoners being transported to Guantanamo in orange jumpsuits and hoods told them instantly that the detainees were being tortured. Wars are only supposed to last for 4 years, no more. They are supposed to be with a country, not a word. They never got the distinction between a soldier and a terrorist — an insurgent refusing to follow the rules of war —and why it matters.
We’ll see how it works out. What are the sentencing guidelines for” conspiracy to kill Americans? As Jason Riley said in the Wall Street Journal:
Of course, President Obama won’t send people to Guantanamo anymore. He’ll blow you to pieces with a drone but says interrogating you at Gitmo is a human rights violation. Figure that one out.
Filed under: Capitalism, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Islam, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Al Jazeera, The Emir of Qatar, Vice President Al Gore
Al Gore’s Current TV channel has been famous for the fact that nobody watched it. Not one of his better investments, but former Vice President Gore is very good at rent seeking. Mr. Gore and his co-investors just sold liberal cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, the network bankrolled by the emir of Qatar.
Current’s owners could have simply said they were selling to the highest bidder, with the emir paying an estimated $500 million for a network with only 22,000 viewers. Instead they attempted to glorify Al Jazeera.
Co-founder Joel Hyatt, a lawyer and Democratic fundraiser explained:
“When considering the several suitors who were interested in acquiring Current, it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had.” Among them: “to give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the important stories that no one else is telling.”
Mr. Hyatt also asserted that “Al and I did significant due diligence.” He wrote that he spent a week at Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar and was impressed by the “journalistic integrity” he saw there.
The Middle East Quarterly profile titled “The Two Faces of Al Jazeera” gave the network good marks for programming outside the emir’s interests, but Al Jazeera continues “to inflame Arab resentments in its promotion of anti-Americanism, Sunni sectarianism and in recent years, Islamism.”
Before buying Current TV, Al Jazeera managed to get access to only a few million cable households in the US. A former vice president justifying a $100 million bonus for a failed enterprise is not the best judge of “journalistic integrity.”
Barry Rubin says “al-Jazeera is a radical media outlet run by people who are anti-American, anti-Christian, antisemitic, and anti-Western. It is an instrument of extremist revolutionary movements. On a number of occasions it has lent itself to promote and be used by violent terrorist groups.”
“While al-Jazeera is more open to dissenting views than previous state-controlled media this is misleading. It is more open in English than in Arabic but former staffers in the English-language section have spoken about how it is not a free agent but the news is slanted to please the Qatari government which owns it. “
Qatar is the most pro-Iran Arab government. It brokered the Fatah-Hamas deal which soon led to the Hamas coup. …It is also the leading supplier of arms to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. On every issue, Qatar has taken a more radical, anti-American positions than all other Arab countries except Syria. It was also the key financier of the overthrow of the Libyan regime.
