Fallout From Soleimani Killing Begins

Diplomatic fallout from the targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani last Friday began in earnest today as both Iran and Iraq took steps to retaliate against the United States.

This morning, the Iraqi parliament voted to ask the Iraqi government to remove foreign troops from the country and cancel its request for international assistance against ISIS. The resolution was backed by Iraq’s prime minister, Abdul Mahdi.

“The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory,” the resolution said in part. “The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.”

Shortly after, the news broke that Iran was canceling its compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. The Associated Press reported that Iran had taken several measured steps away from the deal since President Trump withdrew the US in May 2018, but Iranian state television now says, “The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations.” As recently as August 2019, the IAEA reported that Iran was still in compliance with the main restrictions of the deal.

The new moves come after both Iran and the US issued threats against one another on Saturday. A Revolutionary Guards general, Gholamali Abuhamzeh, said in a Reuters report on Saturday, “The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there … vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since a long time ago … some 35 U.S. targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach.”

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iranian proxy group, Hezbollah, said in an AP report, “When American troops return in coffins, when they come vertically and return horizontally to the United States of America, then Trump and his administration will know that they lost the region and will lose the elections.”

President Trump responded with a broadside on Twitter in which he threatened to target 52 Iranian targets, including some cultural sites, for attack. The president also said that the US may respond to an Iranian attack in a “disproportionate” manner.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

 · Jan 4, 2020

Replying to @realDonaldTrump

....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.....

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

244K

5:52 PM - Jan 4, 2020

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The Trump Administration appears undeterred by the new developments in the Middle East. On Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Pompeo downplayed the significance of the Iraqi parliament vote, saying, “We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign, and we’ll continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Iran Threatens Retaliation, Here’s What Could Happen Next

Iran fired back with a salvo of words on Friday after a strike in Baghdad killed a top Iranian general. The US has now confirmed that Major-General Qasem Soleimani was killed by an American airstrike from a drone rather than by a Katyusha rocket attack as was initially reported.

After the killing on Friday, Iran vowed retaliation against the US. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said in a tweet that the “great nation of Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.” Rouhani said that Iran would raise the flag of Soleimani against “terrorism and extremism in the region” as well as “US excesses.”

https://twitter.com/HassanRouhani/status/1213009152093696005?s=20

NBC News reported that the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that "harsh retaliation is waiting for the criminals whose filthy hands spilled his blood." Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif added that the attack was "an act of state terrorism and a violation of Iraq's sovereignty."

There are many possibilities for Iranian retaliation around the world. A State Department report from 2018 detailed how Iran supports terrorist groups around the world as well as presenting a threat to maritime commerce in their own backyard. In the past year, Iran has attacked ships in the Persian Gulf, shot down a US drone, and been linked to a drone and missile attack on Saudi oil facilities.

With theater-range ballistic missiles, Iran could launch attacks on neighboring countries a far away as Egypt, Israel, and Eastern Europe. Using terror cells and cyberattacks, they could strike almost anywhere in the world. Iran’s cyberwarfare capabilities have also been judged to be “ahead of most nations in strategy and organization” by the Center for Strategic and International Studies but are not as advanced as those of Russia and China.

Even worse is the possibility that Iran could strike the US at home. There have been numerous recent reports that Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group, has terror cells within the United States. Among the reports are a Washington Institute report detailing the FBI capture of two Hezbollah operatives tasked with “carrying out pre-operational surveillance for potential Hezbollah attacks in the United States and Panama.”

The attack on Soleimani and his cohorts was a legitimate target of opportunity. The Iranian general headed a covert warfare branch of the Revolutionary Guards and was meeting with pro-Iranian militia and terrorist leaders in Baghdad in an obvious effort to undermine the US and the government of Iraq.  

The big question is what comes next. Even though justified, Soliemani’s death is an escalation that raises the possibility of a broader war with Iran. A conventional invasion and occupation of Iran would be much more difficult than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran has a military comprised of nearly 1 million men per the Military Times and sophisticated anti-shipping missiles that could close off the Persian Gulf to the US Navy. Russia and China upgraded Iran’s air defense system over the past decade into a state-of-the-art integrated missile system that would be much more difficult to destroy than that of Iraq. Much of Iranian geography consists of mountainous terrain that would be amenable to a Taliban-style insurgency.

One of the most important considerations, however, is that the American public, after two decades of the War on Terror, is not in the mood to embark upon another long war. Neither is President Trump, who has been conducting on-again/off-again negotiations with the Taliban to allow the US cover to withdraw from Afghanistan. The Iranians know this and will undoubtedly be skeptical that President Trump has the stomach for a full-scale war.

Likewise, Iran knows that it cannot withstand the full force of the American military. They will avoid direct confrontation that could provoke the US into a regime-destroying war.

The conflict will most likely settle into a low-intensity battle of covert forces and one-off missile strikes by both sides. Terror attacks at home and cyberattacks on US companies and government agencies are a real threat in coming months as Iran must act to save face.

Originally published on The Resurgent

FBI Foils Election Day Bomb Plot

There has been a lot of talk lately about incivility and the potential for violence in the current political climate. Yesterday, the danger came sharply into focus when the FBI arrested Paul Rosenfeld for plotting to blow himself up on the National Mall in Washington, DC on Election Day.

Per NBC News, Paul Rosenfeld of Tappan, N.Y. was arrested by the FBI after sending text messages and letters to a reporter in Pennsylvania last August and September. In the messages, Rosenfeld threated to publicly detonate a bomb on the mall to kill himself. The reporter notified law enforcement and Rosenfeld was promptly arrested. In a search of his home, authorities discovered a bomb containing eight pounds of black powder. Crating and other components increased the total weight of the bomb to 200 pounds.

Rosenfeld, who was unhappy with the direction of the country, planned the attack to draw attention to his political beliefs. Was he promoting a radical leftist ideology or was he a right-wing militant? Neither, as it turns out.

Rosenfeld believed in sortition. What the heck is “sortition,” you ask? Sortition is a political system in which representatives are chosen by lot rather than by election or appointment. In such a system, a random sample of regular citizens becomes responsible for government decisions. The system was used in ancient Athens to determine members of courts and councils.

Paul Rosenfeld was ready to sacrifice his life because he wanted government representatives to be randomly selected people rather than political elites. If Rosenfeld would give his life for such a belief, how many other Americans would give their lives to stop what they are told is an attempt to destroy their country and their way of life?

Authorities believe that Rosenfeld acted alone. I would also speculate that he may be suffering from some sort of mental illness. Mental illness is also a frequent factor in the mass shootings that seem to plague modern society.

After his arrest, Rosenfeld confessed to the plot and told the FBI that he did not intend to hurt anyone else. He only planned to kill himself.

"Had he been successful, Rosenfeld’s alleged plot could have claimed the lives of innocent bystanders and caused untold destruction," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney.

The foiled bomb plot underscores the danger present in the current heated environment. Although Rosenfeld’s ideology seems divorced from reality, it is often unhinged radicals who convince themselves to pull the trigger on violence.

As Sen. Rand Paul warned this week, with violent rhetoric common on both sides, “I really worry that somebody is going to be killed and that those who are ratcheting up the conversation ... they have to realize they bear some responsibility if this elevates to violence.”

Thus far, law enforcement has been able to intervene and stop most violent plots but there have been exceptions such as the attack on the Republican baseball team and the white-supremacist car attack on protesters at Charlottesville.

The sheer number of angry activists and people with mental problems in the US means that more political violence and bloodshed is certain to occur. When it does, we should pray that the act does not ignite the powder keg on which the nation is currently perched.

Originally published on the Resurgent

Both Sides Are Hypocrites On Mass Killings

The response to mass killings has become a sick joke.

After yesterday’s mass shooting in Texas, leftists took to the internet to attack gun laws, the NRA and the Republican Party before the bodies were even cold. As an added measure, anti-religious zealots attacked Christianity and the effectiveness of prayer since the mass murder took place at a Baptist church. Never mind that the killer was apparently an atheist who got his gun illegally.

Few stopped to ponder that the left had attacked Donald Trump only a few days earlier for tying immigration policy to the New York City truck attack. Trump’s claim ignored that his immigration policy would not have affected the terrorist who immigrated from Uzbekistan to the US years before becoming radicalized.

To its credit, Congress had attempted to eliminate the diversity visa program that allowed the New York terrorist to immigrate as part of an immigration reform compromise in 2013. At the time, the bill was opposed by many conservatives who considered it “amnesty.”

The sick joke is the reflexive jockeying after terrorist attacks and mass killings to determine who can benefit politically from the tragedy. The left infamously hopes that killers are white men while the right crosses its collective fingers for a Muslim terrorist or Antifa activist. Neither side wants to let the crisis go to waste.

Social media is scoured for signs of the perpetrator’s political leanings. Was he a Democrat or a Republican? A liberal or a conservative?

For many conspiracy theorists, the facts don’t matter. According to them, the Texas and Las Vegas shooters were secret Muslim converts or they had histories of attending far-left rallies. Maybe both. Lack of evidence just means that their posts were scrubbed by the Deep State. Regardless of the killer’s politics, if any, Alex Jones can be depended on to trot out a false flag conspiracy.

But it isn’t just conspiracy nuts. Both sides are filled with hypocrites. The roles change according to what is found on the muderer’s Facebook profile and Twitter history, but partisans on both sides shamefully leverage the deaths of innocents for their own political gain. One side attacks and the other side attacks the first side for its insensitivity.

The cynical gamesmanship is transparent to most Americans and doubtless contributes to the disapproval and lack of confidence that the country feels toward both political parties. The majority of Americans are repulsed by the bickering, insults and accusations.

A national tragedy is not the time to push a pet political agenda or try to drive a wedge between voters and your opponent. Politicians and activists should act with at least a modicum of class, dignity  and self-restraint in the wake of mass murders.

Let us get past the shock of scores of people being murdered while peacefully attending a worship service, a concert or just walking down the street. As a nation, we need time to mourn. We need to come together in our grief and sadness rather than rushing into an emotional policy debate that, in all likelihood, won’t stop the next psychopath or jihadist anyway.

Coming together in mourning may help the nation heal politically as well. We may realize that the other side isn’t made up of bloodthirsty radicals who want to destroy the country, but are, in reality, our friends, neighbors and relatives who are just as shocked and saddened as we are.

Originally published on The Resurgent 

Vegas Style Shootings Are Impossible to Prevent

A day after the Las Vegas massacre, pundits and political activists are out in force. Gun control activists are pushing their agenda while others are arguing for a hidden conspiracy. The one thing that most people have missed about the shooting is how easy it was to carry out and how difficult it would be to prevent similar attacks.

Stephen Paddock presents a problem for both sides of the gun debate. He purchased his guns legally in spite of waiting periods and background checks, but even stricter gun laws won’t prevent killers from getting weapons. Guns, both legal and illegal, are plentiful in the United States and relatively easy to obtain. Stephen Paddock had no criminal record and there was no reason to prevent him from legally purchasing a gun. The same cannot be said of the gangbangers of Chicago who, despite criminal records, also seem to have no trouble finding guns.

Paddock avoided security by avoiding the concert venue which likely had metal detectors and building a sniper’s nest in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay casino across the street. Paddock likely smuggled his arsenal into the building in suitcases or golf bags. A frequent traveler myself, I have never seen a single hotel with metal detectors or luggage screening of any sort. Why would they? It isn’t illegal to have a legally owned gun in your hotel room (subject to state and local laws).

From the right, the traditional answer of more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens with concealed carry permits would not have made a difference in Las Vegas. Paddock was shooting with a high-powered rifle from across the street on the 32^nd floor of a high-rise hotel. Pistols in the hands of concert-goers would have been useless.

From the left, no gun control laws under consideration would have prevented the massacre. Paddock passed background checks because he had no criminal record or history of mental illness. His large arsenal was accumulated over months or years at stores in several different states so waiting periods would not have made a difference. Gun-free zones just move the violence to other areas.

In fact, no law other than a total ban of guns in private hands would have prevented the shooting. The number of illegal guns used in crimes indicates that even a ban would not go far enough. Since thousands of guns that are already in private hands, confiscation would be required to prevent those guns from falling into the wrong hands. Such a policy is not only unconstitutional, it is politically impossible and unworkable from a practical standpoint, requiring the diversion of thousands of law enforcement officers from their current duties to tracking down and seizing guns from law-abiding citizens.

A total gun ban would not even necessarily have prevented Paddock from killing scores of people. In 2016, a man driving a stolen truck killed 85 people in Nice, France. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma City with a truck bomb.

Lone gunmen with no prior criminal history are notoriously difficult to defend against. I was working in the northern Virginia area in 2002 as the DC Sniper murders were taking place. The sniper, John Muhammad concealed himself in the trunk of Chevrolet Caprice and eventually killed 17 people and wounded 10. The entire Washington area was petrified. People were afraid to go outside for even long enough to pump gas.

Afterward, I thought that the strategy would be an easy one for Islamic terrorists or others to adopt. If Al Qaeda or Islamic State sent a few hundred followers across the country with locally purchased guns to shoot up shopping malls, concerts, movie theaters, parks and restaurants at random, the United States would be paralyzed in short order. Such attacks are impossible to prevent in a free society. The killer will ultimately be killed himself, but if suicide or martyrdom is the shooter’s ultimate goal, death is not a deterrent.

New laws and rules could make it more difficult for the Stephen Paddocks of the world to go on murderous rampages. The question is how many rights we are willing to surrender and how many inconveniences we are willing to endure. Do we, as a nation, want to scrap the Second Amendment and undergo TSA screenings every time we check into a hotel? For most of us, the answer is no.

The fundamental problem with mass killings is the existence of evil and the depravity of the human heart. Evil cannot be legislated out of existence no matter how hard we try. We just have to deal with the evil-doers as best we can.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

FBI Director: Terrorist Drones Are 'Imminent' Threat

On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that terrorist attacks in the United States by groups using drones were an “imminent” threat. Such attacks could be launched against soft targets using the small unmanned aircraft armed with chemical weapons or small explosives.

“We do know that terrorist organizations have an interest in using drones; we've seen that overseas already with some growing frequency and I think the expectation is it's coming here imminently,” Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee as reported by the Washington Free Beacon. “I think they are relatively easy to acquire, relatively easy to operate, and I think quite difficult to disrupt and monitor.”

ISIS has been known to use drones in both a surveillance and an attack role. Last April, Fox News reported that ISIS had posted online videos with instructions for arming commercially-available drones.

“Two years ago, this was not a problem,” said Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “One year ago, this was an emerging problem. Now it's a real problem, and so we are quickly trying to up our game.”

Rasmussen said that counterterrorism agencies are working to understand and defend against the threat of drones. In Iraq, drones have been used by ISIS to drop bombs on Iraqi government troops, but merely flying an unarmed drone in the vicinity of a busy airport could bring down a commercial airliner. Last week, an army helicopter collided with a small drone over New York, but was able to land safely. The operator of the drone has not been identified.

Several private companies are working on anti-drone projects as well. Droneshield provides devices to detect drones as well as the “dronegun” that jams the remotely controlled aircraft and forces them to land. The company’s products have been used by law enforcement and military organizations in the field. Another company, Department 13, has developed software that allows operators to take control of threatening drones.

Current federal law complicates the ability of local law enforcement and private companies to defend against drone attacks. The federal government considers drones to be aircraft and it is a federal crime to shoot at any aircraft. Popular Mechanics points out that state laws that allow police to target threatening drones are in conflict with federal law.

Drone technology is advancing at a rapid clip and terrorists have proven adept at altering new technology to their purposes. Drone aircraft are cheap, plentiful, anonymous and can adopted to perform a variety of roles. This makes them attractive to terrorists and difficult to defend against. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Manchester bombing shows danger of homegrown terror

The terrorist bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester has intruded on the discussion of walls and travel bans in the United States. The unpleasant truth about terrorists is that it is too late to keep them out. They are already here.

The Manchester bomber was reported to be Salman Abedi, 22. According to The Telegraph, Abedi was born in Manchester to parents who immigrated from Libya. He was a British citizen who was educated locally in British schools and had only become radicalized recently.

The problem is the same in the United States. Many of the terrorist attacks carried out against Americans over the past few years were committed by American citizens. One of the first instances of homegrown terrorism was the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in which Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a native of Virginia, murdered 13 people and wounded 32 others. Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernadino terrorists, was a natural born US citizen. His wife was a Pakistani national who had entered the country legally. Omar Mateen, the terrorist who attacked Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, was born in California. Many other terrorist attacks were also carried out by self-radicalized Muslims who were native-born US citizens.

A common denominator in many attacks is that the terrorist was the son of immigrant parents, but this is not true in all cases. For example, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who shot up a army recruiting office in Little Rock in 2009, was born Carlos Bledsoe to a family of Tennessee Baptists. Likewise, Zale Thompson, who attacked NYPD officers with a hatchet in 2014, was a convert to Islam.

Building a border wall or enforcing a travel ban will not protect Americans from terrorists who are also Americans. In the age of the internet, sermons of radical clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki and terrorist propaganda from groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are easily accessible online. Potential terrorists can become indoctrinated and plan attacks from the comfort of their own homes without training or direction from group leaders in the Middle East.

If citizenship is an “unreliable” indicator of terrorism, as a Department of Homeland Security report said last February, how can authorities identify and stop terrorists without simply waiting for them to strike? Security forces have several good options at their disposal to find and stop terrorists before they have a chance to kill.

First, jihadi websites provide a means for radical preachers and recruiters to cross borders easily. They should be monitored and/or shut down. Terrorist websites that attempt to incite terrorism or show propaganda videos of terrorist killings should be fair game for cyberattacks to take them offline. When jihadi websites are up and running, valuable intelligence might be gained if counterterrorism officials can determine who they are talking to. When prospective terrorists in the United States can be identified, they can be singled out for additional scrutiny.

There are valid civil liberty concerns about government surveillance, but constitutional freedoms don’t apply to foreign nationals broadcasting messages from outside the United States. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech don’t include the right to incite violence.

It is also necessary to develop a network of friendly Muslims to report radicals who use American mosques as recruiting centers. Some radical mosques have been hotbeds of terrorism in both Europe and the United States. For example, Fort Hood terrorist, Nidal Hasan had attended the same mosque in Falls Church, Va. as two of the September 11 hijackers. The imam was Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born al Qaeda spokesman, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Religious freedom should be respected, but a balance needs to be struck between tolerance for Muslims and disregarding dangerous and violent teachings.

Rather than a travel ban, authorities should closely monitor people who travel to terrorist hotspots. For example, the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, traveled to Dagestan, a Russian republic riddled with Islamic terrorism, but the FBI and counterterror agents never pieced together the available information to identify the men as a threat. Dagestan, formerly called Chechnya, is not on the list of countries subject to the travel ban. As American citizens, the Tsarnaevs would not have been prevented from reentering the US even if it had been.

An additional method for preventing terrorism is the use of sting operations. FBI stings, in which agents play the role of terror group handlers for prospective terrorists, have led to numerous arrests in recent years. The targets of the stings are often homegrown, lone wolf radicals whose posts on social media have caused concern. Some critics argue that the stings are entrapment, but the tactic is an important one for rooting out radicals who might otherwise be invisible until too late.

Finally, the immigration system should be reformed to tackle the problem of people who enter the country legally and then overstay their visa. Far more illegal immigrants overstay their visas than cross the Mexican border. According to the Department of Homeland Security, hundreds of thousands of visitors to the US stay illegally and there is currently no effective system to track and deport them. No one knows how many might be radicals.

The face of Islamic terrorism has changed since September 11. Attacks by foreign operatives who infiltrate into a country to carry out hijackings or bombings is increasingly rare due to heightened security at airports and borders. The next step is to address the threat of US citizens who have joined the radicals. Finding and stopping homegrown radicals is difficult, but it isn’t impossible.

Originally published on The Resurgent

72 terror convictions from countries on travel ban list

Many news outlets have reported that there had been no Americans killed by terrorists from any of the countries that were part of the temporary travel ban imposed by President Trump’s Executive Order. It is true that no successful attacks were carried out by immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan or Syria, but it now appears that there is more to the story.

The Washington Times reports that at least 72 immigrants from the countries that make up the ban have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes since Sept. 11, 2001. The data compiled by the Senate Judiciary Committee and analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies also points out at that at least 17 of the convicted terrorists entered the country through the federal refugee program singled out by Mr. Trump. Many of the immigrants were convicted of minor crimes such as fraud, but the report indicates that more than 30 of the convicts served at least three years in jail for their crimes.

One of the most serious incidents involving a terrorist from the countries singled out by Mr. Trump was the Nov. 28, 2016 stabbing spree at Ohio State University. The perpetrator of the attack was a Somali refugee who had also lived in Pakistan. The attacker injured 11 people before killed by a police officer.

The Times noted that James Robart, the federal judge who originally blocked the Executive Order, was unaware of any of the arrests and seemed to be unaware of the OSU attack as well. Judge Robart asked a lawyer for the Justice Department, “How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?” The lawyer was unable to answer the question.

“Let me tell you. The answer to that is none, as best I can tell,” Robart replied. “So, I mean, you’re here arguing on behalf of someone that says ‘We have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries,’ and there’s no support for that.”

The issue surfaced again on appeal when a three-judge panel noted in its ruling that the government “has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.” The lawyers for the government apparently failed to present any of the convictions or the reports of the OSU attack as evidence to support their case.

Records of the terror convictions should have been easily accessible to both the lawyers arguing the case and the judges ruling on it. Jessica Vaughan, who authored of the CIS report, said the information could have been found quickly “if they or their clerks had looked for it.”

Recalling news reports of a terror attack that occurred only three months ago would not have even required legal research. A researcher would only have had to google “Somali terrorist,” but apparently no one did.

The revelations of numerous terror convictions that were never presented into evidence, even when a judge directly questioned a Justice Department attorney about them, raise new questions about the competence of the Trump Administration. Was the Administration aware of these terrorists when it crafted the temporary immigration ban? If so, why were they not presented to support the Administration’s policy until after it had lost in, not one, but two court appearances?

Spelling and grammar errors in government documents and releases make the Trump Administration look amateurish and inept. Failing to do such basic research before such a high profile case is even worse.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump's First Drone Strike Kills Three in Yemen

MQ-9 Reaper drone (Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguso  USAF/freestockphotos.biz)

The first drone strike of the new Trump Administration is reported to have occurred in Yemen. Local security and tribal officials told the Associated Press that the two strikes on Saturday, the day after President Trump’s inauguration, killed three al-Qaeda officials. The strikes reportedly killed Abu Anis al-Abi, an area field commander for al-Qaeda, and two others who were not identified by AP.

Drone strikes in Yemen are nothing new. Standoff missile attacks by the unmanned aircraft were the Obama Administration’s weapon of choice in the War on Terror. According to Newsweek, between January 2009 and December 2016, President Obama ordered 526 drone strikes in various countries.

It was a 2011 drone attack in Yemen ordered by Obama that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a member of al-Qaeda who was a US citizen. This attack in particular was criticized from both the right and left. Leftists have been critical of the drone war in general while many conservatives condemned the killing of an American citizen without a trial even though Awlaki was beyond the reach of the US criminal justice system.

Yemen’s role in the War on Terror goes back beyond the September 11 attacks. In October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked by al-Qaeda suicide bombers while on a refueling stop in Aden, killing 17 US sailors. The attack was one of several that foreshadowed the worst terror attack in US history.

Today, Yemen is engaged in a civil war that involves both al-Qaeda and Iran-backed Shia rebels from the Houthi tribe. A Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia is supporting forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is also backed by the US.

During the campaign, Trump supported drone strikes, saying, “The U.S. needs to use all means necessary to combat terrorism,” but argued that the US should not get involved in the Yemeni civil war. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Evan McMullin in his own words

EvanMcMullin.com

Evan McMullin’s campaign is gaining steam, but a big question for many voters is “Where does Evan McMullin stand on the issues?” As McMullin gains ballot access in a growing number of states, the question of who Evan McMullin is and exactly what he stands for remains. We have combed interviews to find Evan McMullin in his own words.

On why he’s running: “One of the biggest threats this country faces is Islamist terrorism. I am the only credible candidate who has any experience whatsoever, firsthand, fighting terrorists,” McMullin said to Bloomberg. “I know exactly what needs to be done to defeat ISIS and other such groups. On day one, I can start that process.”

He further stated on Fox News, “Donald Trump is already losing this election. I entered the race six days ago when he was down ten points at the national level. State polls in critical states over the past couple of days show that he’s even further down in them. Donald Trump has no chance of winning this election. He has alienated too wide a swath of the American population. He continues to put his foot in his mouth. He will not win. He’s weak and I think he’s melting down…. He is ensuring that Hillary Clinton is our next president.”

McMullin told Heat Street, “I am the only conservative in this race. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He has pretended to be at times and not at other times. I have been a conservative my entire life. I believe firmly that I am the only one that can carry that mantle. And I am committed to uniting this country and I believe that under these [conservative] principles… that the country can be united again. It's been divided for too long and both of these candidates, Clinton and Trump, in their own individual ways, are further dividing us. We need a new generation of leadership.”

McMullin agreed that getting down ticket Republicans elected was very important and called encouraging disaffected conservatives “a positive element of what we’re doing. We’re giving the American people someone to vote for, not just against.”

On Donald Trump: “Donald Trump is no conservative,” he told ABC News. He won the nomination “through misrepresenting himself and exploiting vulnerabilities that the American people have…. I do believe he’s a fraud and a con man. That’s not something I say lightly. That is my professional opinion.”

McMullin told National Review, “I believe Donald Trump is a bona fide authoritarian. I am deeply concerned that if he were president of the United States he would act accordingly.”

On Hillary Clinton: “Hillary Clinton has proven that she doesn’t believe she’s accountable to the American people,” he said to ABC News. The email server issue, a lot of people talk about how classified information was compromised and how lives and sensitive operations were compromised as well… Part of the story that didn’t come out that is even more important is that she believes that she is unaccountable to the American people. She went to great lengths to move her work, her email traffic, off the State Department system. She does not believe that she’s accountable to the American people.”

“So we’re in a time now where Americans, hardworking Americans, don’t feel like they’re being listened to. They don’t feel like their government thinks it’s accountable to them. Are we really going to elect a president who personifies that? I think we shouldn’t.”

On whether Hillary is worse than Trump: “I think they would both be absolutely terrible for the country,” McMullin told ABC News. “I think neither of them understand what makes this country special. Neither of them envision a government that is accountable to the people. Neither of them respect our system of checks and balances.”

“I don’t want either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to become president. Neither of them is acceptable to Americans.”

On trade: On Fox News, McMullin said, “I’m for [the Trans Pacific Partnership]. We need the trade. Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers are outside our borders and we need access to them. Right now, as it is, we are limited in so many ways in so many countries…. We have got to get to yes on this….”

“On trade, I’ll just mention that there are people who are genuinely suffering as a result of displaced industries and jobs. Automation is another part of that. It isn’t only trade. We do need to hear their concerns. We do need to help them transition more. I believe that and that’s a message conservatives need to promote more, but we can’t stop trading and broadening our trade opportunities. We have to do that.”

On immigration: “I think we need to secure our border first and foremost,” McMullin told the Fox News panel. “It’s a basic part of being a country. It’s a basic piece of national security. We must do that.”

“As far as a wall is concerned,” he continued, “the experts actually say that in some places a wall is necessary, in some places a double wall is necessary and in other places a wall wouldn’t help. I’m for whatever it takes to secure our border with Mexico. We’ve got to do it.”

“I’m for enforcing our laws, but not for deporting 11 million people. I think it’s ridiculous. It would cause so much trouble, economically and in other ways. It’s a ridiculous idea. I oppose that. I think that what we need to do is for those here illegally, who are not criminals and want to stay, there should be a path towards a legal presence in the United States.”

On Heat Street, McMullin said specifically that the pathway would be towards “legal residency and, in some cases, citizenship.”

When asked about Syrian refugees, McMullin said, “If you’re a terrorist and you want to come to the United States, the worse possible way to do it is as a refugee. You go through a year-and-a-half to two years of vetting. If you want to come to the United States and you’re a terrorist, you’re much better off just coming through on the visa waiver program from Europe or just walking across the border from Mexico, so I think there is a lot of hysteria and unjustified hysteria around the refugee situation. I think we need to be more careful and thoughtful and accurate with the way we talk about that issue because it has implications for a variety of other interests that we have overseas.

McMullin told ABC News, “I don’t think we should ban people based on their religion. I don’t think we should call an ethnic group racist.”

On ISIS: “The problem is the pace of what we’ve been doing. President Obama has articulated a containment strategy that sort of has a slow road to defeating ISIS. The problem is for an Islamist organization to have a safe haven the size of the one ISIS has, you buy them time to plot and plan the kinds of attacks that happened in Europe, the United States and elsewhere over the last year, so the pace needs to pick up. This isn’t something that we can sort of get around to casually and that’s my objection to what President Obama is doing.”

When a Fox panelist asked if ISIS should be destroyed, McMullin replied, “absolutely.”

The same panelist then followed up with a question about whether American ground forces should be used. “I don’t think we should take anything off the table,” McMullin answered, “but there are a lot of great options… for us before we put troops on the ground. We need to use CIA operations; we need to use our Special Forces. I’ve been there, done that. We are very good at this. We need to train indigenous forces. There are countries in the region who have volunteered to put up their own troops. We need to exhaust some of these things before we go ahead and put traditional troops on the ground. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think we can defeat ISIS through other means….”

On the prisoners at Gitmo: “I don’t think Gitmo should be closed. These are enemy combatants and 

they deserve to stay where they are until hostilities are completed…. These are people who want to kill Americans en masse. I’ve dealt with these people face-to-face. They are intelligent, many of them, they’re well-traveled, they’re well-studied. These are very motivated people who eat, sleep and drink destroying America and the idea that they shouldn’t be locked up and held…. We need to put ourselves on a war footing and remember that’s what we’re involved in….”

On Russia: “I’m no friend of any authoritarian,” McMullin told ABC. “Donald Trump is an authoritarian and the leaders around the world, in history and currently, that he admires, that he aspires to be in one way or another, are all authoritarians. It’s very interesting that that’s the case. He speaks very openly about it. I think we all need to be concerned with that.”

“I’m no beginner to this game, but Donald Trump is. He sees Putin as a friend. But Putin sees him as a big, fat target.”

In the Washington Post, McMullin called Donald Trump’s pro-Russian advisors “Moscow’s most successful intelligence operation. They must be beside themselves to have co-opted either willingly or unwillingly someone on the doorstep” of the presidency.

-To be continued

Read this on Conservative Firing Line

'Mad Vlad' Putin is no conservative hero

Many conservatives are applauding Russian President Vladimir Putin for his decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Even though the US-led coalition has been bombing ISIS for more than a year, many feel that Putin has taken a leadership role in the war in comparison to President Obama’s lackluster resolve.

A good example of the conservative applause for Putin comes from Robin McFee of Family Security Matters who applauded Putin for his “moral clarity” in pointing out the failures of the Obama Administration in the Middle East. Going even further, Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist who converted to Christianity, called Putin’s intervention in Syria “a holy war,” saying “it is the latest crusade of our time.”

“Putin is the St. Constantine of our time,” writes Shoebat, referring to the Roman emperor who stopped the persecution of Christians and legalized Christianity. “For like that priestly king of old,” he continues, “he has unsheathed the holy sword of the Church to strike down the enemies of God for the cause of humanity.”

Even Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and founder of Samaritan’s Purse, said, “What Russia is doing may save the lives of Christians in the Middle East.” Franklin continued, “You understand that the Syrian government for their good and for their bad over the history of this country, they have protected Christians, they have protected minorities from the Islamists.”

Graham’s view is likely close to the truth. Putin and Russia are not intervening to save Syrian Christians. They are intervening to save the Assad regime. The possibility that some Christians might be saved in the process is purely incidental to Putin’s primary goal.

On American Thinker, Fay Voshell writes that the “former KGB agent is now a devout Christian whose faith informs policy” and that “Putin's religious values are rooted in Russian Orthodoxy and personal religious experiences, including his wife's car accident in 1993 and a life-threatening house fire in 1996.”

Nevertheless, Putin’s actions in the two decades since his supposed conversion more closely resemble a Machiavellian strongman than a principled Christian. In 1999, when, as prime minister of Russia, Putin sent troops into Chechnya, it was to stop “the collapse of the Soviet Union,” not to protect Christians in the mostly Muslim republic. As World Affairs notes, Putin blamed Chechen terrorists for a series of bombings in Russia, but when an unexploded bomb was found, Russian agents were revealed to be the perpetrators of the false flag attack.

Putin’s concern for the innocent was not evident in his reaction to the hostage taking at Beslan School No. 1 in North Ossetia in southern Russia in 2004. Security forces responding to the terrorist attack used flame throwers and grenade launchers when they assaulted the school according to the Moscow Times. The attack resulted in the deaths of more than 330 of the 1,200 hostages. Most of the dead were children.

Putin invaded two other countries as well. The 2008 invasion of Georgia and the 2014 invasion of Ukraine bear many similarities. In both cases, Russia used the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians to seize outlying provinces from independent nations. In both cases, Russia seems unwilling to stop with its early gains. The Guardian describes a Russian border fence around South Ossetia that grabbed additional Georgian territory overnight. Likewise, the war in Ukraine is still raging and the country is bracing for a possible full-scale invasion.

After Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shot down an unarmed Malaysian airliner in 2014, killing 298 people, Putin was quick to blame Ukraine and has continued to use the incident for propaganda against Ukraine. In the United Nations, he has blocked attempts to create a tribunal to investigate the incident.

Putin can be accurately described as a dictator, having been the de facto ruler of Russia since 1999 when he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president. He served two terms as president until 2008 when Russia’s term limit forced him to step aside. Undaunted, he was appointed prime minister by Dmitri Medvedev and promptly had the constitution changed. When Medvedev’s term ended, Putin was elected to a third term in 2012.

Putin’s alleged Christian convictions did not stop him from ordering the deaths and imprisonment of countless political opponents and journalists. The list of Putin’s Russian victims is long and spans 20 years, not including his time as a KGB officer. The most infamous murder was Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned dissident. In a plot worthy of James Bond, Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.

Even Putin’s alleged concerns about Islamic radicalism are suspect. Both Syria and Iran have long been client states of Putin’s Russia. Syria’s relationship with Russia goes back to the days of the Soviet Union. Unknown to many, it is Russia that is building Iran’s nuclear program that now threatens, not only Israel, but Europe and the United States as well. Likewise, Russia has supplied Iran with modern fighter aircraft as well as air defense systems that would make an attack on those nuclear facilities difficult and costly. Putin is also a major supporter of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Business Insider points out that Putin actually took credit for the deal.

Although Putin’s support for Iran predates the Syrian civil war, Russia and Iran have found common cause there as the two main supporters of the Assad regime. Bashar Assad is a Shia Muslim as are the Iranians. The opposition to Assad is primarily Sunni. Russia and Syria have had a nonaggression pact since 1950 and Russia has had military bases in Syria since 1971. Fox News reported in August that the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, designated as a terrorist by the US, secretly traveled to Russia to meet with “senior Russian leaders.”

For hundreds of years, Russian foreign policy has been built around two goals. First is the desire to build a buffer zone to protect their borders from invasion. Second is the quest for a warm water port. Many Russian ports are blocked by ice during winter. Other Russian ports are blocked by narrow straits and potentially hostile neighbors. It is likely that Putin’s venture into Syria, in addition to propping up a friendly regime, is about making sure that Russian naval power is not expelled from the Mediterranean.

Russia’s intervention might also be economic. Russia has been battered by international sanctions and low oil prices. The ruble has lost half of its value and inflation for the year is predicted to be 18 percent according to Investopedia. Russia’s imperial wars may be both a distraction from the economic mess at home and an attempt to stabilize and increase the price of oil.

At his core, Putin is an opportunist who is seeking to restore the Russian empire. He seems to take Rahm Emanuel’s advice to “never let a crisis go to waste” when he can use it to expand Russia’s borders or sphere of influence.

In short, Putin is everything that conservatives fear that Obama is. He is a dictator who changed the constitution to stay in power and doesn’t have qualms about killing people who threaten him. He is known to have used false flags to justify war against Chechnya and Ukraine and works world crises to his advantage. Putin is no hero for conservatives.

Originally published on Conservative Firing Line

Air Asia pilots did not scream ‘Allahuakhbar’

A popular story going around the internet today is that the cockpit voice recorder, one of the “black boxes,” from Air Asia Flight 8501 revealed the chilling last words of the pilots. In the story, typically attributed to Yahoo News Singapore, claims that a National Transportation Safety Committee investigator revealed the last words of the pilots to be “Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar.” The implication from American news outlets that have picked up the Yahoo story is that the Air Asia crash was the result of Islamic terrorism. Investigation by Examiner reveals that this is not true. At the very least, the claim is premature.

The Yahoo article is an almost word-for-word copy of an earlier article from the New Straits Times, an English language newspaper published in Malaysia. A pundit from The Right Scoop noted that Yahoo had omitted a crucial detail from their version of the story.

In the NST story, the investigator, Nurcahyo Utomo, says, “It is as if we can feel them... Allahuakhbar, Allahuakhbar were the last words said before they died.” Yahoo repeats this quote in its entirety.

The NST description of the quote was “he said referring to his experience analising [sic] black boxes from past crashes.” The Yahoo article omitted this entire phrase, leaving readers with the impression that the quote came from the Air Asia pilots rather than pilots of crashes that Utomo had previously investigated.

When viewed in the context of the entire article, it is clear that Utomo has not yet analyzed the cockpit voice recorder from the Air Asia crash. The lead sentence of the story says that analyzing the data will – note the future tense – be difficult for Utomo because he knew the pilot personally.

The last sentence quotes Utomo as saying, “I could not imagine how I am going to listen to his last words.” Again, the article and Utomo himself use future tense, implying that he has not yet heard the recording of the last words.

In its entirety, the article discusses Utomo’s past experiences with crash investigations and listening to cockpit voice recordings. “Listening to the playback of a black box involved in a crash is not like listening to music or a discussion,” he said. “We are listening to a recording that represents the last moments before the crash and it is disturbing. There are times where the investigators would get unnerved listening to the recording.”

The NST article goes on to say, “analysing [sic] the recording while listening to their final words like ‘Allahuakhbar’ repeatedly, give the investigators goose bumps” according to Utomo.

While it is possible that the Air Asia pilots said “Allahuakhbar” before they died, there is no indication that the cockpit voice recorder and other black boxes have already been examined. The absence of this story from the mainstream American media and its presence only on blog-type sites should be an indication of its lack of credibility.

Read the full article on Aviation Examiner