February 16, 2006

Al-Qaeda Documents Show Terrorism is Not a Response to U.S. or Israeli Actions

Recently captured Al-Qaeda documents say it outright:

The documents show al-Qaeda is committed to waging a holy war against "dictators of the Earth and secular groups" that will end only when "everyone believes in Allah."

These are Al-Qaeda's own internal documents:

Recently captured al-Qaeda documents portray terrorist leaders struggling over strategy, facing challenges by subordinates and issuing guidelines listing minimum qualifications for terrorism training camp supervisors.

Drawn from a classified database called "Harmony" compiled by the U.S. Special Operations Command, the documents were disclosed in a report released this week by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

The documents were obtained during recent anti-terrorism operations, the report says. They came from a variety of sources and were selected because they show al-Qaeda discussions of ideology, tactics, potential operations or training, the study says.

It doesn't matter what has happened in Iraq. It doesn't matter if Israel exists. The terrorists' desire is keep attacking the free world until all non-Muslim religions are destroyed, and Sharia law is established everywhere.

Internal Al-Qaeda Documents Show U.S. Actions in Afghanistan and Iraq Have Deterred Terrorism

For any who have the absurd opinion that U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq haven't deterred the terrorists -- please read this quote, from recently captured Al-Qaeda documents:

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is also criticized in some documents. One letter by operative Abd-al-Halim Adl in June 2002 challenges bin Laden's leadership and blames him for the "misfortune and disaster" brought on by post-9/11 U.S. military actions.

Adl asks the recipient, identified only as Mukhtar, to urge bin Laden to change course and "stop all foreign actions, stop sending people to captivity, stop devising new operations."

Those criticizing the Iraq war have never yet responded to the question I raised back in September of 2003 (and which received one of my first links from Prof. Glenn Reynolds):

The left doesn't want us in Iraq, where we are bringing the fight right to the terrorists' own backyard? Okay - what's their plan?

There's never a word from the left about how to fight terrorism. They can't get enough of saying Iraq wasn't "imminently" going to attack us. (I guess if Iraq was going to help nuke us in a couple of months we were supposed to leave Hussein in peace.) They can't get enough of complaining that Bin Laden hasn't been caught yet. Etc. etc. Okay-what's their plan? How would they fight terrorism? What would they do to prevent another 9-11?

After all this time, the Left has never yet come up with a plan to deter and destroy Al Qaeda, so as to prevent another 9-11.

It's interesting to be getting some support from France for a change. Even France now says that Iran's nuke program is just a cover for making WMD's. 

USA Patriot Act Renewal Likely:

WASHINGTON -- The USA Patriot Act is headed toward renewal with broad Senate support for a White House-brokered compromise that adds modest new civil liberties protections to the terror-fighting law.

"The outcome here is absolutely predetermined," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said late Wednesday. "It's going to pass with overwhelming support."

The Patriot Act must be renewed.

Debunked: The View that Jews Were At One Time Better Off in Muslim Lands vs. Christian Lands

Earlier this week I posted about a panel held at Pepperdine University regarding the film, "Munich." Some Liberal views on the subject of the Islamists were ably expressed there by Prof. Michael Berenbaum. One statement made by Prof. Berenbaum which I did not comment on in the earlier post was, 'Until the last 50 years, it was better for a Jew to live in a Muslim country, than in a Christian country.' (Quoting from memory -- I believe that's about what he said). While the Conservatives in the crowd were shocked by the statement, which elicited loud cries of disapproval from a group that was otherwise for the most part quiet and well-mannered, I have since heard that this is a view that has been around for a long time and has been expressed by many others. So it can use some debunking.

The current result of centuries of Jewish communities living under Muslim rule, has been the drastic diminishment of those communities, and in many cases, their utter elimination. The comparable result in the free world has been the flourishing and success of those communities, which contribute greatly, in art and science, to all other people in the nations in which they thrive.

So anyone espousing the view expressed by Prof. Berenbaum is saying that he would have advised Jews of earlier times that it would be better for them to sacrifice the entire future of their communities, so as to have a somewhat more palatable present. The view is shortsighted in a way that would have been devastating to the Jewish people had it actually been accepted at the time to which it refers.

Note: Robert Spencer states that in fact, it is not so that life for a Jew or Christian was preferable under Muslim rule in earlier times. From The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), page 54:

The humiliations took various forms, but they were almost always present. Historian Philip Hitti notes one notorious example from the ninth century: "The Caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves,... and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle."

Later, Christians in the Ottoman Empire, according to historian Steven Runciman, "were never allowed to forget that they were a subject people." This extended to the appropriation of their holy places by the conquering people: When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, according to Hoca Sa'deddin, tutor of the sixteenth-century Sultans Murad III and Mehmed 111, "churches which were within the city were emptied of the vile idols and cleansed from the filthy and idolatrous impurities and the defacement of their images and the erection of Islamic prayer niches and pulpits ... many monasteries and chapels became the envy of the gar dens of Paradise."

In the fourteenth century, the pioneering sociologist Ibn Khaldun. explained the options for Christians: "It is [for them to choose between] conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax, or death."