Speaking to Eric Shawn, FNC, on Sunday morning 14, re Jihad Jane of Philadelphia and her companion Jihad Jamie of Colorado, who has now been released in Ireland. It is tempting to treat these American recruits as facile: two lonely women looking for purpose and security falling under the spell of seductive ops. My information is that the recruitment is not possible unless the jihadist makes a decision that the life of a martyr is superior to the life of a drifter or screw-up. No recruit is minor; no recruit is an accident. This is witting and self-satisfying conduct. Once upon a time, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a lowly engineering student in a mostly Black agricultural school in North Carolina. Awliki in Yemen was an engineering student in Colorado. A. Q. Khan was a charming, hard-working husband and father, working in dual-use technology in the Netherlands in the 1970s. The infamous all began as one-off volunteers. Opportunity and perseverance changed their fates. Adam Ghadan, real name Adam Pearlman, writes copy for Bin Laden in Wazisirstan; the life of an Orange County teenager transformed into Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw (below). They hanged Haw-Haw. We use Predator swarms.
I must posit here that we have all collectively entered a kind of perpetual motion machine. There is literally no end to it. It has no hallowed purpose. There is only continued violence simply for violence’s sake. In order to address the problem, we must examine how we got here. And, then, walk ourselves painstakingly back and hope of finding the entrance.
The temptation for us is to accept that it has always been this way. But that would be wrong. I remember vacationing in Kashmir on a houseboat on Dal Lake back in the early 70’s. Friends of mine traveled through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and reported having had a wonderful time. My senior year in high school, our class hosted two foreign exchange students – one from Germany and one from Afghanistan – both of whom became close friends. Something has changed in the meantime. It behooves us to define precisely what this is.
We might begin – as our president Obama has often suggested – that we confront all our enemies face to face in a room and ask them what it is they want. Islamists would say that they want all the unbelievers to abandon their 'evil' ways and submit to their concept of God. Communists would say they want a central governmental authority that would require everyone to submit to the dictates of a single all-powerful state. These in a nutshell are the demands of our enemies. The common bond between them is ‘submission’. Never mind (for now), that both these goals are unachievable and that, even if they were (achievable), all hell would soon break loose between whatever remains.
India has been declared an enemy by Pakistan only in the sense that Pakistani Islamists see her as having aligned herself with western values – democracy and capitalism. Both these concepts fall under the heading of ‘evil’ in the Islamic and communist lexicons. As both - the Islamic vision of the world as well as the communist vision - are in essence unattainable, the conflict must continue endlessly.
The pressure has been building on all parties to show results. The West is tired, and is quite prepared to submit in this, what has become a war of attrition. Obama’s election represents a capitulation to both communism and to Islam. However, a powerful backlash is presently building. The breach will come if and when Israel acts or falls. Expect all-out war. In war, reason stops. All that matters is survival.
How India ends up after all this depends on how the (I Ching) yarrow stalks happen to arrange themselves. America as she has been may disappear - or she may not. One thing is for certain, everyone will be greatly diminished. It’ll be the perfect time to start over.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
I agree with Peter on the parallel between Communism and Islam.
Both are ideologies of the optimal way the world should be run. In order for either of their systems to accomplish their utopian goals, everyone must participate, there is no half way. As there will always be some non-zero amount of people who dissent and wish to go their own way, free choice is ruled out, submission is mandatory. Anyone wishing to live otherwise is robbing these of their heavens on earth.
The Bible tells Christian that they will always, until Jesus returns at the Rapture, be surrounded by an unbelieving world that will persecute them. It instructs how to survive in this world, while working to convince the unbelievers that God has a reward for those who put other's interests above their own. Membership in Christ's church is voluntary, as to not pollute the minds of those in the congregations.
Islam teaches that the unbelievers should either convert, submit or die. No other belief is allowed, as heretics are to be executed. The believers do God's work by ridding the world of unbelievers.
As Christianity in the past, and Islam today has proved, there cannot be a merger of Church and State. Requiring the citizens to be members of a particular faith brings unbelievers into the fold. Those who are the best apparatchiks come to rule both institutions, and as recently stated about Iran, it "is neither Islamic nor a Republic".
Don't quite see it, Brian. Communism, Nazism, and Socialism are all Utopian obsessions featuring equality of outcomes, sharing, end of racism and prejudice, social justice, yada yada. Hard to find anything Utopian in Islam.
The goal is a worldwide caliphate where everyone is subject to Sharia Law - governing by God's Law. It might not promise equality, but what could be better for mankind? Opt outs cannot be tolerated.