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'Our Enemy Is Not Terrorism'
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings ^ | May 2004 | John Lehman

Posted on 09/02/2014 1:29:38 PM PDT by Retain Mike

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I believe only John Lehman was willing to speak reasonably and to speak up concerning our dilemma. The above article is an example of the point other commission members never acknowledged and the public never got.

The composition of the 9-11 commission guaranteed a show trial against the Bush administration. There were six lawyers among the ten members, including a Democratic Watergate prosecutor and a Clinton deputy attorney general. There were no emeritus members with law enforcement, intelligence, or military backgrounds. No more than three of the ten had backgrounds that might have allowed them to contribute meaningfully on national security issues.

Remember the commission could easily have selected information to accuse Bill Clinton. The state of war was confirmed by attacks on the Trade Center in 1993, in Saudi Arabia 1995 and 1996, and with the embassy bombings in 1998. In response, he directed DOD to facilitate terrorist participation in our criminal justice system. Jamie Gorelick’s legal opinion on separation of national and international intelligence made improbable the right data would be compiled into meaningful intelligence reports. In hindsight these decisions were feckless, but they are consistent with the complacency and apathy infecting our society and its institutions.

The above article also shows that over ten years have passed, and John Leyman’s optimism was not justified because we still have not defined the enemy. Obama’s seeking a strategy to deal with ISIS sounds like McCain’s and Obama’s determination to “get bin Laden“. But with ISIS, shouldn’t the most gullible finally realize that bin Laden’s death hardly constituted victory when we face the first campaigns of a long war against terrorism?

Our real enemy is Wahhabi Jihadism and not the latest mercurial, sociopathic prophets emerging from the Wahhabi/Salafi heresy. These teachings provide the ideological framework coverts embrace to justify not only totalitarianism, but also stateless terrorism. This heresy considers Jews, Christians, Sunnis, Shi’as and secularists as sub-human, legitimate objects for slaughter. It rejects traditional Muslim allegiances to family, tribe, ethnicity, and country. The Caliphate sought requires no particular human or physical remnant. Therefore those using terrorist political stratagems become immune to diplomacy, containment, or retaliation.

Article 13 of the First and Second Geneva Conventions and Article 3 of the Fourth Convention tell us terrorists are not the armed forces, militias, volunteer corps, insurgents, or freedom fighters of any country or authority. They are not an organized resistance movement carrying arms openly and have no distinctive identifier. They avoid the rules of war to focus on the torture and murder of Protected Persons as defined by all Conventions. Such cunning, barbaric adversaries best fit Webster’s definition for a virus. Choosing existence beyond the pale means the rules of war presuppose their eradication.

However, eradication precludes political theater. Sustained political/military intervention must fracture terrorist organizations, and promote those seldom heard in African, Asian, and Oriental countries, who would lead representative governments guaranteeing universal speech, religion, and private property freedoms for all. Such initiatives would bring Global War on Terror (GWOT) victory by frustrating plans, breaking alliances and fracturing organizations of Wahhabi Jihadists into ever less effective units. Without cities, countries or armies bin Laden, and successor sociopath prophets would live out unnaturally shortened lives as pariahs.

Frontline: Saudi Time Bomb: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/

'Our Enemy Is Not Terrorism' http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2004-05/our-enemy-not-terrorism

A New Approach to Safeguarding Americans (Obama’s Way) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-John-Brennan-at-the-Center-for-Strategic-and-International-Studies/ First Geneva Convention (1949) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/First_Geneva_Convention_(1949)

Geneva Convention/Second Geneva Convention http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Second_Geneva_Convention

Geneva Convention/Fourth Geneva Convention http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention

1 posted on 09/02/2014 1:29:38 PM PDT by Retain Mike
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To: Retain Mike

The Enemy is Islamism.


2 posted on 09/02/2014 1:32:53 PM PDT by BuffaloJack (Unarmed people cannot defend themselves. America is no longer a Free Country.)
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To: BuffaloJack

Yep... Islam is the enemy. It is the religion of the anti-christ with its false prophet Mohammad.


3 posted on 09/02/2014 1:33:50 PM PDT by kjam22 (my music video "If My People" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74b20RjILy4)
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To: Retain Mike

We’ve been looking through the wrong end of the telescope for nearly 13 years. We didn’t declare a “war on aviation” after Pearl Harbor, but that’s what declaring a “war on terrorism” amounts to.


4 posted on 09/02/2014 1:37:58 PM PDT by Dr.Deth
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To: Retain Mike

Calling terrorism the enemy is the same as saying that eating strudel and drinking beer seventy-five years ago was the enemy.


5 posted on 09/02/2014 1:38:05 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: Retain Mike

Two presidents speaking to the country....

FDR: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...

BHO: The only thing we fear is ourselves...


6 posted on 09/02/2014 1:38:39 PM PDT by GraceG (No, My Initials are not A.B.)
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To: kjam22

Someone convinced Bush that he couldn’t name Islam as the enemy because of the sheer numbers of people he’d then be at war with.

Of course, Political Correctness and wanting not to be called names probably played a part in that as well.


7 posted on 09/02/2014 1:39:48 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Retain Mike

” Our real enemy is Wahhabi Jihadism and not the latest mercurial, sociopathic prophets emerging from the Wahhabi/Salafi heresy. “

Especially those who enable and fund it....

You know... the Saudi Royal Family....


8 posted on 09/02/2014 1:40:24 PM PDT by GraceG (No, My Initials are not A.B.)
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To: MrB

[ Someone convinced Bush that he couldn’t name Islam as the enemy because of the sheer numbers of people he’d then be at war with.

Of course, Political Correctness and wanting not to be called names probably played a part in that as well. ]

He sure as hell couldn’t blame the people who funded Bin Laden EITHER some reason...


9 posted on 09/02/2014 1:41:14 PM PDT by GraceG (No, My Initials are not A.B.)
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To: Retain Mike

It is ISLAM.


10 posted on 09/02/2014 1:41:46 PM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: MrB

Yep... Bush said in a famous speech...”you’re either on the side of the terrorists or your on the side of America. And we will treat those who harbor terrorists exactly as terrorists.” That was the exact right attitude, but he wasn’t politically able to make that happen. I don’t know for sure why, but it was our chance.


11 posted on 09/02/2014 1:42:36 PM PDT by kjam22 (my music video "If My People" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74b20RjILy4)
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To: GraceG

Yep, there was that little item as well...

Is it possible to get a president who isn’t beholden to some anti-American special interest these days?


12 posted on 09/02/2014 1:42:51 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Retain Mike
Our real enemy is Wahhabi Jihadism and not the latest mercurial, sociopathic prophets emerging from the Wahhabi/Salafi heresy. These teachings provide the ideological framework coverts embrace to justify not only totalitarianism, but also stateless terrorism. This heresy considers Jews, Christians, Sunnis, Shi’as and secularists as sub-human, legitimate objects for slaughter. It rejects traditional Muslim allegiances to family, tribe, ethnicity, and country.

A good article by Mr. Lehman, but pretty frustrating because as he lists the litany of crimes -- he also states the obvious -- we (America, and the West) ignore them. So we continue to reap the crop of our willful blindness. Islam is at war against the West, it always has been (since the mid-seventh century), and it always will be. It isn't just a 'Wahhabi Jihadism heresy'. It is Islam. The heretics are the twirling dervishes, or those that want to be cultural muslims - but don't want the bloodshed. I.e., those muslims that put loyalty to the human race (and to the conscience that God implanted into all of us) over loyalty to the Satanic moon-god that Mohammad worshiped. But don't pretend that this 'Wahhabi Jihadism' is some grotesque mutation of Islam. It is Islam.

13 posted on 09/02/2014 1:43:24 PM PDT by El Cid (Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house...)
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To: Retain Mike

As I told people ten plus years ago: This may not (as W said) be our war against Islam — but it is certainly Islam’s war against us.


14 posted on 09/02/2014 1:44:17 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a stBut is it grammatically catement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: BuffaloJack

1400 years speaks for itself.

Naval scholars and historians overlooking the Barbary Coast?

Kinda short sighted... and wanting to blame Bush?

Yep, blame Bush for the last 1400 years of Obama’s kin and brethren wreaking havoc on civilized mankind.

That makes real good democrat politics.


15 posted on 09/02/2014 1:48:23 PM PDT by himno hero (hadnuff)
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To: Retain Mike

It takes the author 480 words before he mentions Islam and then he never mentions it again.

The enemy is Islam. Not “radical” Islam, or Islamic fundamentalism.


16 posted on 09/02/2014 1:49:50 PM PDT by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyranni)
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To: MrB

[ Yep, there was that little item as well...

Is it possible to get a president who isn’t beholden to some anti-American special interest these days? ]

After 9/11 we should have played serious hardball with the Saudis, we should have requested.... No..., DEMANDED that they cut all Extremist funding otherwise we start bombing their saudi royal family mansions in 12 hours....

Then DEMANDED that they PAY for us to hunt down and shoot all the terrorists they did fund over the years and pay for re-building the WTC and then PAY to fill the survivors fund for the 9/11 victims.....

Oh and execute the saudi royal family members that were directly involved with the wahabiists...

Instead we went after the tail of the lizard and the head that provides food is stil alive and well living off the money fromthe civilized world that buys their fuel from these inbreds...


17 posted on 09/02/2014 1:50:09 PM PDT by GraceG (No, My Initials are not A.B.)
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To: himno hero
It's interesting to see what people thought of islam during those 1400 years...

Quotations on Islam from Notable Non-Muslims
18 posted on 09/02/2014 1:53:17 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: GraceG

Well said. After 9/11 I said that the only sensible bombing targets were the posh suburbs of Rihyad with indoor swimming pools and underground garages stuffed with Rolls-Royces.


19 posted on 09/02/2014 2:00:19 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: Retain Mike
Part of the insanity of the previous admin was not implementing a War doctrine. And one of the more bureaucratic laughs was implementing the use of enemy combatants. Instead, we had the rule of law supporting us in the form of the Geneva convention. We could have treated terrorist as terrorist and spies. We chose not too, and gave them special protections.
20 posted on 09/02/2014 2:28:17 PM PDT by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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