Mark Byron

Another Jihadi Next Door

I found this story as I was looking at coverage on the Ottawa shootings; it seems that a Quebec guy turned jihadi wannabe and ran over a pair of Canadian soldiers Monday, killing one before being killed by police. Thus, two soldiers have lost their lives violently this week, although we don't know the motive of today's shooting yet.

The driver, Martin Rouleau-Couture, was on police radar-

Officials seized Rouleau’s passport as he was about to leave the country but didn’t have grounds to charge him with anything.

“We couldn’t arrest someone for having radical thoughts,” Fontaine said. “It’s not a crime in Canada.

“And unless we have clear indications of what he was doing, it was very difficult to prevent and stop him.”

I'm reminded of the story out of Oklahoma a while back where a fired worker, a Muslim convert, went postal and beheaded a former coworker. That story was a mashup of jihadi and sociopath-tipped-over-the-edge, making that one an open question whether you want to put it in a terrorism bucket or not.

This hit-and-run jihad is a bit more firmly on the terrorism side of the aisle, but Mr. Rouleau seems to be the type of young man that would wind up finding some radical outlet like skinheads or goths or some place to rage against the machine. One could have hoped he would find a civilized outlet for that aggression; his secondary surname (likely his mom's name per French custom) of Couture begs for an MMA outlet.

However, he found radical Islam rather than something with a Western spin, taking a soldier with him en route to his 72 raisins.

Goin' Postal... WIth a Side of Jihadi

The Beltway Sniper was a Muslim but his killing spree was more akin to a classic loner serial killer. Here's a post from 2002 on that issue-

So, we have a merger of two theories, the Islamic terrorist and the home-grown nut-case. It looks like we have an Islamic home-grown nut-case....How much of JAM's motivation [is] Islamic and how much just good old-fashion rage against the system?

The same could be said of the Moore, OK beheadder. That is a mash-up of a classic "goin' postal" fired worker firing on his former co-workers and a jihadi-style beheading of a captured infidel.

The shooter was a Muslim convert, but he grew up in an era where workplace shootings by former workers are a somewhat regular occurrence. One case in Michigan a few years back had a beserker kill an pro-life protestor before going to his workplace, but we weren't blaming Planned Parenthood for setting him off.

When folks like the president (or Dubya back in the day) mention Islam as "a religion of peace", they don't mention that the peace in question is submitting to God and his teaching and the more radical folks will make you do that by force. It's a bit like Ming's "All creatures shall make merry... under pain of death" from Flash Gordon; not all that peaceful, especially if it's played out by someone who is frustrated and violent to begin with.

Contrary to Rick Perry's plea, this is one that the president can opt to pass on. He wouldn't say anything helpful or do anything helpful, nor would a conservative president do much that would make a difference.

"Does attacking ISIS help Assad?" Yes. Next Question?

Some odd things happening in our ISIS War, including taking out ISIS-held refineries. That will hit them in the pocketbook if they don't rebuild what was damaged.

However, we're in some odd territory in Syria where a multi-player civil war is ongoing. A group of non-ISIS jihadis, the Nusra Front, are being struck as well.

The U.S.-led campaign in Syria has drawn a mixed response from the country's multitude of rebel brigades, many of whom cooperate with the Nusra Front and have been locked in a deadly fight with Islamic State militants since January. But the rebels' ultimate goal is to topple Assad, while the U.S. is focused on defeating the Islamic State group.

That coalition gives one pause about backing non-ISIS rebel groups, since you might wind up helping create a ISIS-junior in the process if the folks the Obama team are helping are either allied with al Qaeda or have their weapons snatched by them once the dust settled.

One news site this morning had an article hyperlink "Does attacking ISIS help Assad?" (this might have been it)- Yes, next question.

We were this close to bombing the Syrian army's chemical weapons locales a year ago; that would have helped ISIS and could well of had them running Damascus by now had a crippled Baathist regime been picked off by their primary foe.

Attacking ISIS does change the dynamic of Syria's civil war. Not that such attacks are a bad thing, but it will make it easier for some other party to defeat ISIS in due time; that other party could well be the Syrian government or a rival jihadist group like the Nusra Front rather than more civilized folks that we would like to see in charge.

Not Quite That Simple

I'm not sure if the president gets the full scope of the ISIS problem from what I just read of his speech from last night.

Two things struck me as off-chord. The first was "ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple." It's also a de-facto government in the areas of Iraq and Syria that it controls. That makes tackling it more of a military operation than a police operation.

If they were "just a terrorist organization" you would be able to root out cells by good detective work, working with the countries they are based in to try and find out where they were. However, ISIS has essentially killed off or driven off government authorities where they are operating, so a counter-terrorism approach isn't quite going to work.

What we're dealing with is more of a not-so-small army. A rather informal one, but treating them as a group of mad bombers is not all that effective.

The other point was discounting the religious element of ISIS- "ISIL is not 'Islamic.'"

It might not be a particularly healthy version of Islam, but they at least think it is. They don't call themselves the Humanitarian State or the Arab State. The fault lines in the conflict go on mostly religious lines, as they are preaching a hard-line Sunni vision of Islam and killing off any non-Sunnis that are in their path; the exceptions to the Sunni-vrs-everyone else is with the Kurds, who are mostly Sunni but both more moderate and non-Arab.

There are two points to trying to discount their Islamicness. One is to try and avoid making this a religious war and the other is to denigrate their faith in order to demonize them. However, ISIS sees this as a religious war. There is oftem more tribalism than theology in their support from ethnic Sunni Arabs who feel oppressed by Shia and Alwaite leaders in their territory, but they are running this as a religious war.

Those facts are a bit too politically incorrect to acknowledge, but they are there. Hopefully. the folks in the Pentagon and the CIA will be less PC behind the scenes.

Naive Liberal, not Islamist

President Obama is a liberal academic, not an Islamist as Allen West claims, unless he's hiding his Muslim faith exceedingly well like a Jewish converso in 1500s Spain who's only publicly a Christian. Granted, his is a rather liberal Christianity with a Liberation Theology tint to it, but were it not for having a ethnically Muslim father and step-father in his early days, that charge would have very little to stick to.

West rattles off six points of pro-Islamist policies, not all of which are all that valid.

1. The unilateral release of five senior Taliban back to the enemy while the enemy is still fighting us.

You wouldn't call Israeli conservative governments Islamists, and they've traded with Hezbollah and Hamas at times while they were still at odds with them. They also traded at lopsided ratios.

You could easily make a case that a captured soldier knew the risks of being a soldier and should be willing to stay up if it means keeping a large number of enemy combatants under wraps, but prisoner exchanges were regular items from the Cold War.

He was supposed to give Congress a heads-up on the release, so it was very bad form, but it looks more liberal than Islamist.

2:Providing weapons of support to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government — F-16s and M1A1 Abrams tanks — but not to the Egyptian government after the Islamist group has been removed.

He helped an elected Egyptian government and help back support from a junta who kicked out said elected government. That one is more pro-democracy than Islamist. If you don't let folks have a chance of winning an election, their only outlet for effecting change is to take up arms.

3. Negotiations with Qatar and Turkey, two Islamist-supporting countries.

Last I checked, Turkey is in NATO. It's current government is something of a bad actor as of late, helping ISIS for a time and lending support for Hamas, but it is a nominal ally of the US. Qatar has been less helpful, backing the Islamist side in the Libyan civil war,  making them fair game for a critique.

4. Negotiations with Hamas, a terrorist group.

Who's also the de-facto government of Gaza. Given that they have the stated goal of wiping Israel off the map, there is little to negotiate about. A valid critique of Obama.

5. Returning sanction money, to the tune of billions of dollars, back to the theocratic regime led by Iran’s ayatollahs and allowing them to march on towards nuclear capability.

Both 4 and 5 are exhibits of Obama's liberal faith in diplomacy; if you play nice with others, they'll play nice with you. Bad policy in this case, but it's more a Harvard Law than madrassa than gets him there.

6. Obama’s evident support of Islamists in Libya.

I'm not all that clear on the evidence on that one. He was anti-Gaddafi and wound up letting some unsavory folks get weaponry as part of backing the opposition in the first civil war (a second one between moderates and Islamists is ongoing), but they seem to be passive-to-pro-moderate in the second one.

He's a liberal small-d Democrat, and a somewhat naive one at that. That better describes his geopolitics than "Islamist" which is the 21st century analogue to "Commie symph."

 

"I Hope They Pull You Through"

That's what the tot was told to tell Grandpa while visiting him at the hospital. Grandpa then said "I'm lying at death's door."

"I hope they pull you through!"

That old joke came to mind when I saw this piece of trash-talk from our vice president-

The United States will pursue the killers of two American journalists "to the gates of hell," Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday.

"As a nation, we are united, and when people harm Americans, we don't retreat, we don't forget," he said at an appearance in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

"We take care of those who are grieving. And when that's finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside."

It's good that VP Biden is accepting the un-PC concept of Hell, but not so good that he promotes himself to God and condemns ISIS folks to reside there. Odds are very good that Biden's right on that, but that's not his call.

Biden's at least a nominal Catholic, but if he wants to get a promotion to godhood, he might want to check out Mormonism. His running mate seems to be assuming he's Louis "L'État, c'est moi" XIV, so a promotion to godhood isn't that much of a reach for him.

Rats of Tobruk 2.0?

A very intersting civil war is developing in Libya, where things never did quite settle down after Qadaffi was outsted. An intra-Arab cold war seems to be developing, with Qatar helping an Islamist faction while Egypt and the UAE are helping a nationalist faction. The UAE seemingly did some air strikes on the Islamist faction from Egyptian air bases; both countries are mum on the accusation.

One thing about this scuffle is that it brings up cities that bring echos of the African campaign of WWII.

In another development on Monday, Libya's previous Islamist-dominated parliament reconvened and voted to disband the country's interim government. Correspondents say it leaves Libya with two rival parliaments, each backed by armed factions.

Elections in June saw the old General National Congress (GNC), where Islamists had a strong voice, replaced by the House of Representatives, dominated by liberals and federalists. The GNC, which reconvened in Tripoli on Monday, has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of its successor assembly, which is based in Tobruk.

I recall a story in one of my history books about an Aussie contingent trapped by German forces in Tobruk. They held out far longer than they should have against Rommel's better-equipped force, earning them the nickname the Rats of Tobruk. The nickname was originally a putdown from German propaganda, but the Aussies made it their own.

One could picture the Islamists recasting that old tag seven decades on, but they'd likely call them dogs rather than rats to give the proper Muslim spin on the issue.

 

Prisoner of Memetic War

We're just short of 13 years into our active fight with al Qaeda and their affiliates and there seems to be no end in sight, since we're battling a meme (a fairly new $5 word for a contagious idea) rather than a country, and the meme seems not be dying out.

That begs the question in the news this morning-is a prisoner of memetic war stuck with a life sentence? We're winding down our stay in Afghanistan, and the end of hostilities is usually the trigger to release the POWs. A Club Gitmo member made that point and a federal judge agreed with him in large part.

But not totally. Since our fight with the Taliban isn't over yet, assuming it will be shortly isn't a judge's call, so he's stuck in Gitmo for the time being. However, judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did state that there was an "apparent legal responsibility" to eventually let the detainees go.

The guy who was making the suit was a Kuwaiti caught in Tora Bora, not a Pashtun Talib, so the government could make a case that he was an al Qaida figher and not a Talib. The night is still young in our clash with Osama's kids.

However, that long night could go on decades longer. al Qaida's love child ISIS is showing some nasty legs, as are a number of offshoots in Africa. Some have clear roots with al Qaeda, while others like Boko Haram have just an anti-Western flavored Sunni Islam in common.

If our Kuwaiti is deemed to be a prisoner of that memetic war, he could be a guest at Club Gitmo for quite a while, serving a de-facto life sentence for fighting for the wrong force. That doesn't quite sit well in my spirit, nor does it for a lot of folks, but we've not had this kind of decades-long (possibly centuries) conflict with the meme of militant Islam.

Kurds and Whey

When the Iraq war went down a decade ago, one posited outcome was to divide Iraq into Arab Sunni, Arab Shia and Kurdish areas. The idealistic folks among us, including Dubya's foreign policy team, thought that was too pessimistic and too tribal and that Iraqis should be able to put those petty differences aside and have one central government.

Well, fast forward to today and we're on the verge of having that tripartite solution emerging as the jihadi Sunni ISIS group grabs the traditionally Sunni areas including Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and heads for Baghdad as we go to press.

On a somewhat positive note, Kurdish irregulars have headed south and snagged Kirkuk. It's a big oil-producing region that's largely Kurdish but outside of the autonomous Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Rather than have ISIS snag it as they run amok, the Kurds have told the Iraq army to take a hike and look after their own.

Kurds have been fairly friendly to the US, as the US essentially set up a Saddam-free zone after the Gulf War in the north and the Kurds kept most of that autonomy after the second go-round kicked out the Baathists. Unlike the rest of Iraq, where the locals didn't care that much for the US, a free-standing Kurdistan would likely be US-friendly and a possible ally on NATO's southern edge.

Backing an independent Kurdistan would tick the Turks off, since there is a large Kurdish area of Turkey that's been traditionally repressed (but a bit less so in the last few decades, if memory serves), so the geopolitics of the Kurds going from autonomous to independent would be touchy for the US and NATO to back. The Iranians wouldn't be all that happy either, since they too have a Kurdish minority, but with the nuclear detente deteriorating, there seems to be little downside in playing nice on that front.

There's going to be some cold realpolitik to wade through in the weeks to come, as we have an al-Qaeda-Shiite brawl sprawling over Iraq and Syria (and possibly Lebanon) where we have little at state on either side. An Assad-Iran-Hezbollah-Iraqi central government coalition has little to root for, and a radicalized ISIS team and less-radicalized Sunnis and Christians in Lebanon doesn't tug at the heart-strings too much, either.

The Kurds are one of the few friendlies in the area and could use some help. The whole shooting match could use some help, but the Kurds have a more-manageable starting point than the others.

Northern Nigeria's Peculiar Institution

While I was out running errands just now, I was listening to an NPR show where a piece on the Nigerian situation dusted off the LBJ line of of "winning the hearts and minds" of the ethnically Muslim northerners off of the Talibanic Boko Haram and towards something more... civilized.

Of course, the conflict that wily Texan was commenting on half a century ago was Vietnam. Nigeria has a loose echo of 'Nam, with an insurgent north and a corrupt south. It also can have echoes of the Taliban, with BH playing the title role while the the central Nigerian government plays the corrupt warlords who filled the post-Soviet power vacuum.

What's missing in both of those is the dynamic of a ethnically Christian south and an ethnically Muslim north. Vietnam was a Buddhist-Catholic blend and Afghanistan was nearly all Muslim, albeit of different ethnic groups and flavors of Islam. A partition would play into BH's hand, but a ongoing civil war to subdue BH would have echoes of the early days of the US in Iraq, where Sunni hotbeds like Falujah became death-traps for US troops and their allies.

The current story of selling schoolgirls into slavery reminds me of another civil war we know and love, one that centered around ridding the rebel side of slavery. Sadly, Goodluck Jonathan is no Abe Lincoln. Even Lincoln would have his hands full if devout Confederates were bombing schools as a way to get into heaven.

No Persian Carpet Bombing for Now

The Iranians have agreed to partial oversight of their nuclear program; it doesn't remove the threat of them being able to make nuclear bombs in fairly short order, but it also doesn't require a small war to get rid of them, either.

The glass-half-full view would note that Iran is involved in a Shia-Sunni brawl in Syria with spillovers into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been attacked by (one would assume) anti-Syrian forces who are going after Assad's Lebanese allies who have sent troops into Syria to help Assad.

The odd development is that neither the Gulf monarchies nor Israel has any love for Iran or Syria and that the two might be strange bedfellows in an anti-Shia alliance. They couldn't say so publicly, but the Saudis wouldn't be disappointed if the Israelis took out some Iranian nuclear facilities and would politely ignore an IDF flyover of Saudi airspace to and from Iran.

What's the US game here? Path of least resistance. We're in roughly the same spot with Iranian nukes as we were with Syrian chemical weapons; an attack looks bad, rouses the rabble on the Shia street and might not do much good if our intel misses some of their stash. Slowing the Iranians down might be better than a dicey military strike.

Does it make Israel less safe? Good question. A lot depends on whether the Iranians are on a peace offensive just to buy time to keep the Americans happy while their real nuke program is a couple steps away from inspectors or whether the mullahs in Qum are willing to play nice with the rest of the world in order to have better economic relations with the US and Europe.

Do-Something Syndrome

I'm not sure what a tactical strike at Syrian WMD facilities would do for the situation in that country. I'd be saying this regardless of who's in the White House.

I don't think the Assad regime is going to change tenor with a few facilities removed from service. It will make him look like the victim of a big Western bully taking sides in a civil war and might actually help his position overall.

The administration doesn't want to engineer regime change... OK. What are they after?

What they might be after is to say they did something. Diplomacy isn't all that helpful when the two factions seem to have no common ground to come to other than a common grave to bury their dead. Thus, a minimalist military action plays to the "do something" response.

It's hard to sit back and say "I don't have a dog in that fight" and let two foes go at it; it runs counter to both American do-gooderism and Christian peace-making chords in me. China-Vietnam and Iran-Iraq were two examples from my youth where the best geopolitical response was be a long, messy stalemate. That would be the realpolitik play here, a drawn-out war of attrition that weakens both the Assad-Iran-Shia axis and the jihadi-Salafist-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood axis.

Not pretty, either way. Doing nothing empowers Assad to keep gassing the rebels. Doing a small attack makes Westerners feel good but gives Assad a high ground. Doing a big attack would either require a lengthy occupation or allowing a jihadi-state to pick up the pieces.

As the computer said at the end of War Games-"Strange game; the only winning move is not to play."

Burying the Lead... and a British Soldier

Two black Muslim youth hacked a British soldier to death in London; however, this BBC piece avoids that inconvenient truth until deep into the piece. The BBC piece played up the presence of anti-Muslim protestors from the "English Defence League" rather than the jihadi-talking youth who macheted their way to infamy before getting shot by police.

Compare that to this Daily Mail piece that Drudge linked to that strongly covers dissing shout-outs to PM Cameron and a declaration of war on infidel Brits.

‘You people will never be safe,’ he declares in a clear south London accent. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’

In broad daylight, he and an accomplice had just repeatedly stabbed and tried to behead an off-duty soldier in front of dozens of passers-by.

Unlike the Boston bombing, which were done by Chechen immigrants, this was seemingly done by native-born (or at least native-raised, if the accent is an indication) Londoners.

 

Forthrightly Dealing With the 4th Amendment

The Constitution bans "unreasonable searches and seizures" in the 4th Amendment. It doesn't mandate a warrant for police to check things in an emergency situation; it's vague enough to have the Supreme Court lay down guidelines of what they see as reasonable and when one can skip a warrant. Not all of the legal nicities like Miranda rights and warrants kick in during a quick-reaction spot.

Yeah, Watertown's door-to-door search is a dicey precedent, but the Boston bombing is a once-a-decade case. Doing that to catch a garden-variety drug dealer would be overkill, but I don't see what went down in metro Boston as unreasonable.

I recall one old cop drama (Picket Fences, if memory serves) where a couple of cops have an iffy search move; one of them says "Rehnquist court...I'll take my chances." Rehnquist has past on and we have the Roberts court, but I'd be hard press to see Anthony Kennedy shooting down what happened last Friday and joining a 5-4 center-left coalition shooting it down. 9-0 for the searches wouldn't be surprising.

We Have Met the Enemy, and... Who Are They, Anyway?

We've got a slew of folks wanting to make our Boston bomber an "enemy combatant." Watch it Dzhokar, you're about to be gored by a couple of RINOs.

Who's the enemy in question? Militant Islam, one would assume. Define "militant Islam." Does saying tacky things about rape victims and Harry Potter count? If that's the case, than Todd Akin needs to watch what he says about Hogwarts.

While were in the neighborhood, define "combatant." The late bomber Tamerlan was a boxer; if he took a beef with one of the folks at the gym "out back", has he become an enemy combatant? If what we know about their taste in theology is enough to cast them as the enemy, then what level of violence is enough to declare them a combatant?

Unless we get some clear link with an organized terror group, we're much better off letting the justice system deal with our bomber rather than shepherding him into Gitmo. Otherwise, we're judging their theology to see if it is radical enough to count, and what I've seen so far could almost make me a militant Christian if they applied that standard across the theological board. Guess I have to be careful about what I say about rape victims, lest I get on their radar.

The Counter-Revolution Will be Tweeted

I was thumbing through the TV listings and saw a Good Eats rerun on; Alton was making broth ...in a pressure cooker. Given that was the tool of choice of the Boston bomber, I was surpised that they would run it, but they did, even noting how the thing can explode if you don't regulate the pressure properly. Alton is always big on multitaskers, but that wasn't a use he had in mind.

That was 8-830. Slide to CNN and we have the 19 year old bomber cornered. By 8:45, we get the news that he's in custody; the official confirmation comes via a Boston PD tweet. The revolution may not be televised, but the counter-revolution will be tweeted.

Now it becomes a legal case, with indictements and grand juries, along with an investigation into whether they had help.

The late bomber's name (assuming his folks aren't right in that this all as a frame job) was Tamerlan Tsarnaev. I assume that's a variant on the Central Asia leader Tamerlane, a Muslim hero of the 14th century. It would take a rather warped world-view to view his modern namesake as a hero.

[Update 12:15AM-I'm not sure if hero would be the best world for Tamelane. Badass of the Week is an understatement; try half-millennium. That link isn't quite suitable for work and would be best read as if the Randall the Honey Badger guy is reading it; Tamelane might have been the original Honey Badger, now that I think about it.]

Semi-Homemade Terrorists

Part of the debate over the Boston Massacre 2.0 bombers was whether they were home-grown or whether they were jihadis from elsewhere. The answer would seem to be "yes."

They've ID'ed the bombers as a pair of Chechen immigrants. The older of the two is dead at the hands of local police, while the younger of the two heads up the on-line dictionary definition of "armed and extremely dangerous."

One of the brothers, identified by several sources as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, studied engineering at Bunker Hill Community College but had taken off a year to train as a boxer, the source said Friday.

...

Several sources identified the other brother, who remained on the lam, as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19.

The source briefed on the investigation added that it should not be assumed that the brothers were radicalized because of their origins in the Russian Caucasus.

That's true, but there are quite a few jihadis flowing out of Chechnya embittered by Russian maltreatment and egged on by al Qaeda types looking for new cannon fodder.Given that Russian maltreatment of Chechnya, the brothers and others like them have a refugee pedigree which drowns out the jihadi stereotype stateside; in Russia, Chechens are blamed for everything but global warming, but our immigration rules tends to give folks the benefit of the doubt short of clear evidence of radicalization.

Without grilling Dzhokhar or his friends, we can't know for sure, but it would seem that it is better than even money that he's been something resembling "radicalized"; pipe bombs on steroids (pressure cookers were the tool of choice, a trick likely borrowed from Taliban bombers) aren't exactly polite civil discourse.

Dzhokhar looks like he got voted off American Idol a few weeks ago rather than being a terrorist, but they don't come with "Hug me, I'm a Jihadi" T-shirts. I recall a Belgian woman who was a dead ringer for Kristy McNichol; she became a suicide bomber in Iraq after marrying a Muslim and going jihadi. You don't need to look like a crazed radical to be one.

There's an interesting story to be told here. Some legit anger at Pooty-poot and his troops might have been morphed into a generic hatrid of infidels; that's merely the leader in the clubhouse of possible rationales.

Thrown Under the Bus...the Hard Way

Ten people are hurt in a Tel Aviv bus bombing that Hamas is praising. No deaths yet, but three folks are supposed to be in serious condition.

Folks in the Peanut Gallery who are critical of Israel (yes...I'm thinking of my Connexions friends) try reaiming some of your animus towards the real villains of the piece. Israel will frequently have some collateral civilian damage when it goes after Hamas targets in Gaza, but Hamas (or their allies, since there are a variety of hard-cases that don't like Israel) does it on purpose.

Do criticize Israeli excesses and pray for peace on both sides, but Hamas seems to start out excessive in the sense they think each and every Israeli is fair game; the same can't be said of the IDF, or else Gaza would already be a parking lot.

Related articles

The Missiles of November

A Bit Too Competent

Last I checked, "incompetent" isn't a synonym for the n-word, unless it is in super-code like where blacks were Canadians. If it is code, I didn't get the memo.

The problem with UN Ambassador Susan Rice might be that she is too competent.We'd like to think that our ambassadors are representing the US, but they're first and foremost representing the President. If the President says X, an ambassador is supposed to toe the party line and say X as well; if you say Y, you're sending mixed messages and you're giving the President and Secreatary of State some major headaches.

Thus, Ms. Rice was staying with the party line on Benghazi, much to the consternation of critics of the administration. They would have liked her to go rogue and say "I'm not sure what the folks in the White House were being told, but it look like an al Qaeda-type operation to me." That would have been the Ms. Smith Goes to Washington thing to do, but she'd be working on her resume in earnest if she did.

Thus, she was being a bit too good of an ambassador, falling on her sword for the boss rather than deliver an inconvienient truth. That's not the first time that's happened in congressional testimony and it won't be the last.

Susan Rice seems a bit like a liberal analogue of her Stanford predicessor and namesake. The president is going to want someone who can reiterate the administration line to folks overseas and on the Hill, and she seems to be doing that rather nicely. Whether she has the gravitas and character to advice the president on foreign policy and talk him out of bad ideas is open to question as things go foward in looking for a replacement for Secretary of State Clinton.

Oh, and questioning it isn't sexist or racist; the administration's critics would give the third degree to anyone up for the post. If anything, they'll go a bit easy on her to avoid looking like a Neanderthal.

It reminds me a bit of a trailer for The Trials of Rosie O'Neill;  Ed Asner was playing a collegue a bit against his arch-liberal real-life persona

"You don't like me because I'm a woman!"

"I'm a card carring member of NOW; I just don't like you."

John McCain might not have his NOW card paid up, but if he doesn't like Susan Rice, it's likely for policy rather than gender or race.

Aleppo, the Jihadi Depot

When countries fall apart, all bets are off. Somalia has at least three independent segments, one of which (Puntland) is a pirate haven. Syria may be heading in that direction, as a Western-friendly opposition government is given the back of the hands of Islamists in the second city of Aleppo-

Islamist rebels are unimpressed with the new grouping.

In a video posted online, an unidentified speaker sits at the head of a long table with at least 20 others, in front of a black Islamist flag. He lists some 13 armed Islamist groups who reject the opposition coalition.

"We are the representatives of the fighting formations in Aleppo and we declare our rejection of the conspiratorial project, the so-called national alliance," he says. "We have unanimously agreed to urgently establish an Islamic state."

Aleppo isn't far from the Turkish border, nor is it too far from the Mediterranean. The former could make it a thorn to Turkey, or allow Turkey to make it a thorn to an unfreindly Syrian government. There is no grand rule requiring Syria to stay unified once the Assad team is shown the door, and an Islamist-run Aleppo might not be easily ousted without outside help, especially if one of their neighbors is interested in keeping them in power.

If that Aleppo faction can swing west and set up shop on the Med, it could wind up acting a bit like Puntland and make the western Med a no-go zone like the entrance to the Red Sea and the route to the Suez Canal was terrorized by Somali pirates. That's a bit of a long-shot, but the prospects of an Islamic Jack Sparrow doing Pirates of the Mediterranean isn't that big of a stretch if Somalia is any lession.

The Missiles of November

Could we be looking at the first major war involving Israel in four decades? Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood-led government is backing their Hamas brethren, even sending their PM over to Gaza to give moral support while Hamas exchanges rocket-powered pleasantries with Israel.

Egypt and Israel have come to blows four times, most recently in 1973. After that, a rapprochement created an uneasy peace that saw Israel give the Sinai back to Egypt after grabbing it in 1967 as a buffer. Expect Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Camp David accords that codified that rapprochement, to be back in the news, likely bashing the Likudniks for breaching the spirit of Camp David.

I'm not sure if the Egypian government, having just gotten into power and still working to keep the Mubarak leftovers in check, is up to picking a fight with Israel. Camp David is part of the legacy of the Sadat-Mubarak team, but one that helped Egypt become allied with the US and a bit more prosperous than it otherwise would have been. Officers might well be inclined to drag their feet and not want to go back to the four-wars-in-a-quarter-century that crippled the Egyptian military.

____________

It's Friday morning; where are the Islamic rabble going to be roused today? Somehow, I expect something American to be trashed over the current unpleasentness in Gaza, since their isn't anything Israeli to be trashed in most Arab countries other than a Israeli flag to be burned in effigy. Friday is always a prime day for that, since it's go-to-mosque day and a good Jew-bashing sermon will get the rabble roused.

Old-Time Religion, Salafi Style

Reading up on the various strains of Islam finds some interesting parallels with Christian movements. The hard-conservative Salafis are a case in point.

On one level, the Salafis remind me of Restorationists (Campbellites) looking to reestablish the early church without two millennia of stray tradition and added doctrine, getting back to the New Testament basics; the Salafis are looking to the 7th century as their benchmark when Islam was new and close to the original. On that level, we might have fellow comrades on some issues of the day if it is simple Ten Commandments-level morality.

However, one key difference between a Christian going back to basics is that we don't have a tradition of Christian government; from a worldly perspective, Jesus never ran anything but His mouth. We don't have hands-on experience on how Jesus would have run a government, or even how Paul or Peter would have served as a prime minister or President. Thus, Christian back-to-basic are more theological in nature and have little political economy in the mix.

Conversely, Mohammad did run a good hunk of Arabia before he died. Muslims have more of a track-record of Mohammad and his early successors as political leaders as well as mosque leaders. Couple that with a lack of church-state separation in Muslim thought makes their theology political and their politics theological.

That makes modern Salafis problematic in the public square, since democracy wasn't in the mix in early Muslim history that they look to as normative; that's new stuff that is best avoided as impure to them.

Note that only a minority of Salafis are violent, but they are the ones that get the press, like the guy who wants to trash the Pyramids. Interestingly, you have folks appealing to the Salafi love of early Islamic history to save the condos made of stone-

But in retaliation to Gohary’s remarks, the vice president of Tunisia’s Ennahda party, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Moro, called the live program and told Gohary that famous historic military commander Amr ibn al-Aas did not destroy statues when he conquered Egypt.

“So who are you to do it?” he wondered. “The Prophet destroyed the idols because people worshiped them, but the Sphinx and the Pyramids are not worshiped.”

Hopefully, they'll learn to adapt to a democratic system that may be flavored by the Koran, but not as strict as they'd like; that is going to be a touch-and-go proposition. Before we cast too many stones, recall that we had the Alien and Sedition Acts a decade into our Constitution era; the Egyptians and other Arab democracies might have to fumble towards their own version of a viable political culture.

The Future's So Dark, We Need the High-Beams

Mali doesn't get a lot of news coverage in normal times. The old shaggy-dog pun that comes to mind was the stainless-steel basin sold there, the unbrownable Mali sink.

Mali's northern parts, including the historic city of Timbuktu, has been taken over by jihadis who trash anything that they don't like; since they're just south of Libya, they might well have had a hand in the Benghazi embassy attack.

The president, whoever he might be come January, will have this one on his plate; the local African countries can provide some troops and diplomatic cover, but a Western responce seems to be needed, as Mr. Totten points out in his piece. If Yemen has become the drone capital of the world with their lawless wastes, Mali will be getting there in short order.

P.S.- here's your Timbuk3 earwig from the title.

Uncle Tom's Mosque-Part V-Northern Exposure

It's Friday, so something regarding a mosque is sure to be in play; today, it's a bombing of a mosque in northern Afghanistan-

A suicide bomber targeted worshippers who had gathered at a mosque in north Afghanistan for prayers to mark Eid al-Adha, killing at least 41 people.

More than 50 people were wounded in the attack, which happened as people were leaving the Eid Gah mosque in Maymana, capital of Faryab province.

Note that this is in the north, where the Taliban have less of a following. During the post-Soviet civil war, the northern part of the country stayed independent of the Taliban government; the US used a combination of air power, special forces and Northern Alliance fighters to roll back the Taliban a decade ago.

The tragic part is that it came on one of Islam's big holidays; Eid al-Adha celebrate's Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, although the Koran twists the Genesis story to have Ishmael as the would-be sacrifice rather than Isaac. It's a bigger party than the end of Ramadan.

"We had just finished Eid al-Adha prayers and we were congratulating and hugging each other," deputy provincial governor Abdul Satar Barez told the AFP news agency.

"Suddenly a big explosion took place and the area was full of dust and smoke and body parts of police and civilians were all over the place. It was a very powerful explosion."

Since a lot of officials and police were at the mosque, it was a target for the Taliban as a way of getting at the powers-that-be. That's the underlying theme of a lot of Muslim-on-Muslim violence as of late (note the part V), where the jihadis go after the establishment Muslims.

 

Optimal Prime

I'm not sure how much legs this will have, but this stint on The Daily Show won't help the president much-

President Obama, during the taping of The Daily Show, discussed the Benghazi terrorist attack that claimed the lives of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

“Here’s what I’ll say. When four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal. We’re going to fix it,” Obama said per pool. “The government is a big operation and [at] any given time something screws up,” he also said, saying that he believes “you find out what’s broken and you fix it.”

Having an ambassidor dying at the hands of jihadists is sub-optimal? That sounds like discussion from a MBA quant-methods class of a solution that can be improved upon with some linear programming, not an assessment of a murderous attack on our consulate in Libya.

Too cool for school. And he's supposed to be the guy in touch with the little guy?

Taliban Vrs. Talib

A 14 year-old girl who wants to be a doctor when she grows up and goes to bat for education with her blog would be a prize in most places, but in Pakistan's Sharia Belt, she gets a hit put on her;

Malala Yousufzai, 14, remains in critical condition a day after surgeons removed a bullet lodged in her neck. Taliban militants shot Malala and two other girls Tuesday as the girls headed home from school in Pakistan's conservative Swat Valley. The two other girls were not seriously injured.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for targeting Malala, who enraged the militant group by writing about her daily battle with the extremists who used fear and intimidation to force girls to stay at home instead of going to school. Malala's online writing earned her Pakistan's first National Peace Prize in November.

An irony here is that Taliban means students in Arabic; students of the Koran by implication, but they are gunning down a coed talib (that's the singular form) for wanting to be educated.

Educated in something other than 24/7 Koran. That might be the craw-sticker. Over in Nigeria, the jihadist group Boko Haram declares western-style education to be non-halal and harasses Christians and folks who don't oppose a secular approach to things. There might be a bit of that here.

However, since the Taliban come from the barefoot and pregnant school of culture (not so much religion; you'd be hard pressed to quote Muhammad sura and verse to back illiterate girls), a teenaged girl treating herself as their peer, if not their superior, is double-trouble.

It's one thing to send a prank 911 call to send a SWAT team to an offending blogger's house, it's another to send a Swat Valley team of hit men to kill a juice-boxer blogger. It shows something of the desperation of the Taliban to terrorize Pakistani culture to a point where the only thing you can do is survive and have your nose in a Koran when you're not doing the minimum to survive.

Uncle Tom's Mosque-Part IV-To the Right of the Salafis

Another Sunday bombing in Nigeria, but this time, it's of a Muslim school; the Sunday School bombing of the week happened in Kenya.

Gunmen detonated a bomb Sunday near an Islamic boarding school in northern Nigeria and later exchanged gunfire with security forces, causing unknown casualties in the region's latest round of violence, officials said.

...

Boko Haram has attacked mosques and killed Muslims in the past. The Zaria boarding school near Sunday's bombing is run by Awwal Adam Albani, who is a critic of Boko Haram and a follower of the ultraconservative sect of Islam known as Salafi.

The Salafi are a back-to-basics bunch within Islam; while they have a few jihadist in their midst (the Blind Sheik from the first World Trade Center bombing is one), terrorism isn't their strong suit and many of them have preached against such terrorism. When the Salafi aren't radical enough for you... things are getting out there. If the Salafis are Islam's answer to the King James only Baptists, then Boko Haram is more like Fred Phelps gone violent.

Taking Back the Arab Street

Interesting news out of Benghazi, where the US embassy had been torched last week. A mob of more-moderate citizens overran a militant group's headquarters. A step in the right direction and not something you'd expect on a Friday during crazy season in Muslim territory, with French cartoons adding to the outrage mix; the natives are more outraged at their own radicals than the next poor excuse for free speech.

Uncle Tom's Mosque-Part III-Wake Up, Little Sufi

It's not been a easy time to be a moderate Muslim, especially one who's either accommodating to local secular rulers or who's not part of the normal Sunni-Shia paradigm. Sufis have taken it in the neck twice recently. The most recent one happened in southern Russia, in the Dagestan area near the Caspian Sea. There, a female autoboomer took out a Sufi leader, Sheikh Said Afandi.

The other one happened in Libya,

On Friday, a Sufi mosque and adjoining library were vandalized in Zliten. The mosque's dome collapsed and hundreds of books were destroyed.

And, on Saturday, in broad daylight, Salafist activists brought in a bulldozer to flatten the Sidi Al-Sha'ab shrine, which was centuries old and contained 50 graves considered sacred by Sufi Muslims.

The Sufis are among the more mystic-oriented of Islam's flavors, making the attractive to spiritual seekers from the West, something of a halfway house between Catholic monasticism and Eastern meditative thought; theistic but without the Christian doctrine that intellectuals often run from.

The shrine bulldozed was in the capital, Tripoli. The nearest Christian analogy I could think of would be militant Baptists storming downtown Houston and demolishing Joel Osteen's stadium-church for preaching a false gospel. Sufi=Pentecostal isn't a great fit here, especially when the Sufis go back a millennium and the Pentecostals are just getting a second century going in their modern form, but they both lean towards the experiential and are often seen as theological outliers by the more textual-oriented folks in their faith.

The fact that a fledgling Libyan government had to essentially stand back and let the mob have its way is not a good sign for other new democracies in the area, especially Egypt and their good-sized Coptic community.

The bombing in Dagestan is a part of a ongoing string of attacks on traditional religious leaders in the ethnically-Muslim areas of southern Russia; Tartarstan was the previous site of anti-establishment violence in the far domestic (since they call their old USSR neighbors "the near abroad", that would fit those minority sections of Russia). That's been a problem since the USSR broke up, and won't be stopping anytime soon; this might be one main reason why the Russians veto stuff on Syria; they don't want any of these scuffles becoming UN material in the future.

The Sound of One Crucifixion Report Clapping

Drudge has had a link to a World Net Daily piece claiming the mobs of Muslim Brotherhood backers have been crucifying foes, including one in front of the presidential palace; this seemed to be the core piece backing up the claims. It was supposed to have been aired on Sky News, but the article on the piece has been wiped off the site according to the article.

There's one problem with the piece; no one outside of a circle of anti-Islamist or conservative web sites seems to be running the story. For a story of that magnitude to be a non-starter elsewhere is a bit odd. Glenn Beck's Blaze site has the story, but I'm not seeing any serious confirmation other than a lot of people regurgitating a single report in English.

If a political lynching happened in front of the White House, one would assume that it would be bigger news than just one piece floating around conservative web sites. Egypt might not have the most vibrant and free press on the planet, but one would expect that someone other than Drudge and WND would have picked this one up. Fox News, the Washington Times, someone with some gravitas beyond Drudge (who has gravitas, but has his share of false alarms).

It smells like the story might be not what it seems to be. Some form of English-language confirmation beyond what has showed up in "Islamophobic" circles (I don't like that term as a conversation-slamming analogue to homophobic, but I don't know of a good term to describe the folks who are overly nervous about things Islamic) would be helpful.

{Update 9/7-The National Post's Johnathan Kay takes up the story three days after I wrote this and chalks it up to an urban legend. That's a conservative-leaning paper (Canada's Washington Times without the Moonie connection) and one that would be one of the first places a conservative-leaning story would get traction in the traditional media.]