And you believed President Obama when he said that the war on terror was won when Osama Bin Laden was assassinated. The United States has now issued a global travel alert out of fear of... attacks by al-Qaeda against US citizens (Hat Tip: Jihad Watch).
"There is a significant threat stream and we're reacting to it," said
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told ABC
News in an interview to be aired Sunday that the threat was "more
specific" than previous ones and the "intent is to attack Western, not
just U.S. interests."
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the alert
indicates the U.S. government must have some "pretty good information"
about a possible threat.
Great Britain announced Friday night it would also close its embassy
in Yemen "as a precautionary measure" on Sunday and Monday and urged its
nationals to leave the country.
The travel alert issued Friday warned
Americans of the "continued potential for terrorist attacks,
particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring
in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula."
It said: "Current information suggests that al-Qa'ida and affiliated
organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and
beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period
between now and the end of August."
So when are we going to see that video of President Obama declaring victory in the 'war on terror'?
We may be tired of the war on terror, but the terrorists and their supporters aren't
Walter Russell Meade tries to connect the dots between several events that the Obama administration would like us to believe are not connected. Here's his conclusion.
But sometimes truth needs to be told. We are killing people in acts
of war across Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa and expect to
kill quite a few more. We are fighting a battle first to contain and
then to defeat a vicious ideology of murder and hate that masks itself
as religious zeal. We are fighting this war both at home and abroad, and
there is not an inhabited continent anywhere on Planet Earth where this
threat is not a serious concern. All Muslims are not our enemies —
far from it, and many of our most important allies and associates are
decent, pious, enlightened Muslims who loathe the hate-spewing murderers
as much as anybody else — but all of our enemies claim to be fighting
in the name of Islam.
Basing war policy on the denial of facts is never smart, and the blow
back can be severe. It’s quite possible that President Obama will be
more frank about this conflict in his second term; whatever happens in
November the threat will be too real and our efforts to deal with it
will be too far-reaching for the United States government to pretend
that we don’t face a global security challenge as serious as a war.
Has the Left not noticed that President Obama is pursuing President Bush's war on terror, or are they too embarrassed to say anything? Rich Lowry captures the double standard.
Needless to say, had Dick Cheney consulted “baseball cards” to decide in weekly meetings attended by Karl Rove who deserved to have close encounters with drone-fired missiles, Nancy Pelosi would have drafted the articles of impeachment herself.
The Obama killings vindicate the core premises of the Bush war on terror: This is a war, and the protections of our criminal-justice system don’t apply to the enemy. In light of the kill list, it’s a wonder anyone ever objected to Bush-era detentions or interrogations. If we can pick someone off a roster of names and sentence him to death without due process, surely we can capture and hold that same person. If we can execute someone — and any of his associates who happen to be in the vicinity — from on high, surely we can keep him awake at night and otherwise discomfit him should he fall into our hands.
The Times notes that “Mr. Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced.” True enough. It hasn’t been subjected to a highly politicized assault at home and abroad by people desperate to put it in the worst possible light and even make it a war crime.
With a few exceptions, the Left has retired from the field when it comes to smearing the executive branch for prosecuting the war. If the Left were still in the game, it would insist on always calling the actions assassinations, demand congressional authorization and judicial sign-off, excoriate the secret proceedings, and pour scorn on the entire notion of enemy combatants’ standing outside the criminal-justice system. It would call the assassinations a “terrorist-recruiting tool,” as indeed they are, since almost anything we do to combat al-Qaeda will offend some sympathizers of al-Qaeda.
For most of the left, the highest principle of just-war theory is licet si Obama id faciat (it’s okay if Obama does it). This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama. As it happens, the president holds exactly the same Obama-centric view. So long as the kill list is overseen by him as judge and executioner, it’s beyond reproach.
Imagine what a second Obama term would be like with the fawning media, God forbid. What could go wrong?
President Barack Obama said his goal of defeating al-Qaeda is within reach and that it's time to turn the country's attention to domestic concerns.
Just four days after his trip to Afghanistan, Obama said that money saved from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should help pay down the national debt and go to health care, education and infrastructure.
"After more than a decade of war, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home," he said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday.
The president took note of the agreement he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday that shifts security to the Afghan people. He reminded the American public, once again, of the military raid that killed Osama bin Laden a year ago.
But he said the nation now should concentrate on economic issues such as tax disparities and government spending. Without mentioning Republicans, he cast the rival party's view as one that promotes more tax cuts for millionaires while cutting the spending "that built a strong middle class."
"That's why I've called on Congress to take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt and use the other half to rebuild America," he said.
If only he had won the war.... What could go wrong?
"The war on terror is over," a senior official in the State Department official tells the National Journal. "Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism."
This new outlook has, in the words of the National Journal, come from a belief among administration officials that "It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists."
The National Journal explains:
The new approach is made possible by the double impact of the Arab Spring, which supplies a new means of empowerment to young Arabs other than violent jihad, and Obama's savagely successful military drone campaign against the worst of the violent jihadists, al Qaida.
For the president himself, this new thinking comes from a "realiz[ation that] he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively 'moderate' Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere."
This new outlook is radically different than what was expressed under President George W. Bush immediately after September 11, 2001. "Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity," Bush said on November 6, 2001. "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
The guy really believes his own propaganda. What could go wrong?
Dr. Walid Phares argues that the recent suicide bombing in Stockholm shows that attempts to remain neutral in the war on terror are doomed to failure.
Until Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly’s explosive belt went off prematurely in Stockholm last month, Sweden was the poster child for isolationism in the war on terror. While Abdulwahab’s bomb failed to achieve his desired result, it did obliterate the myth that nations can remain neutral to global terrorism.
Abdulwahab’s failed attack typifies the jihadis’ all-out war against “infidels.” He was a doctrinaire jihadist with ties to a local militant Islamist organization, and his attack didn’t spring up out of nowhere. There had already been warning signs that terrorists were mobilizing against the Scandinavian democracy. Militants had threatened Swedish artist Lars Vilks for his satirical cartoon portrayal of the prophet Mohammed, attacking his home and attempting to murder him with an axe. Others threatened Vilks.
The Iraq-born Abdulwahab was a member of the Facebook group “Islamic Caliphate State.” He lived in Luton in Bedfordshire, England, home to four of the terrorists who killed 52 and injured more than 2,000 in the 7/7 train bombings.
Swedish authorities claimed that Abdulwahab had been “completely unknown” to them before the blast, and that they were trying to ascertain when he was first “radicalized.” Swedish prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand said that the country’s security apparatus “was not a Stasi organization engaged in analyzing people’s Facebook pages.”
The irony is that Abdulwahab’s musings on Facebook are the only evidence of his radicalism prior to the attack.
Farasat Latif, the secretary of the Luton mosque to which Abdulwahab belonged, said, “Despite Abdulwahab’s extreme views nothing pointed to the fact that he was going to do something stupid.”
Unfortunately, I think we're reaching the point in the West where we have to assume that any Muslim might do 'something stupid' until we can affirmatively prove otherwise.
Phares sums up:
European authorities have a lot of catching up to do. Whether or not they wish to admit it, they are at war. Even when jihadists act as “lone wolves,” they always have ties to some kind of radicalizing environment. The internet is always a vehicle for radicalization, but small cadres of global jihadists create the habitat that cultivates terrorists like Abdulwahab. Luton had been a known hotbed of radicalization since July 7, 2005.
The Swedes have now joined the community of nations besieged by Salafi terrorists. They may entertain notions of neutrality, but the jihadists who attack them don’t care.
Indeed. What it will take to get them to start catching up?
On Wednesday, President Obama will deliver an address in Indonesia that is being billed as a continuation of his Cairo speech in 2009. Here's a video with Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich on Obama's views on Islam.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
