United Against Islamists? by Olivier Guitt

On Jan. 22, four European tourists - two Swiss, one Briton and one German - were kidnapped at the border of Mali and Niger. The major terrorist group in the region, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is very likely behind this operation. This should not come as a surprise.

I had warned about this worrisome new strategy. In fact, North Africa has become in the past two years a major front in the war against radical Islam. While Algeria has witnessed regular attacks and has been in the news a lot, its neighbors have also not been spared by Islamist terrorism. Indeed, Morocco, Tunisia and more recently Mauritania have suffered terror attacks.

AQIM's original intention was to federate all the Islamist terror groups of the region. In fact by putting together resources and attacking what they call "infidel" regimes, AQIM thinks it can recreate a portion of the Caliphate.

AQIM is using this to its advantage the porous and virtually uncontrollable borders in the region. The group is actually following the advice given in the early 2000s by a Yemeni representative of Osama bin Laden to GSPC's (AQIM's former name) then leader, Amir Hassan Hattab, to use the Sahara as its fallback base. Since then, the Sahel has become a haven for jihadist groups more or less linked to AQIM.

The West knows about it and tries to do something about it. For example a French Breguet Atlantique airplane, based in Dakar, flies over the area regularly, an operation that is tantamount to finding a needle in a sand dune. The United States has a training center in Gao, in Northern Mali, where it trains Malian military in anti-terror combat.

In fact, in 2005, after the AQIM-led attack against Mauritanian soldiers that killed 15 and injured 17, the FBI dispatched a team to Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital.

Since then, the Americans, like the French, make incursions in the north of the country and train the Mauritanian police. During his visit to Nouakchott in February 2008, Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister, hinted that France helps the authorities to monitor their long border with Mali.

But this has changed since the bloodless military coup of August 6 in Mauritania. In fact, most countries in the region and in the West decided to more or less cut-off ties with the new regime. For instance both the United States and France suspended their non-humanitarian help that actually included financial support to fight the war against radical Islam. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons behind the coup was to unseat President Sheikh Sidi Ould Abdallahi who was viewed as weak against the Islamists.

Overall cooperation on counterterrorism between the West and North Africa is quite good (behind the scenes), even with countries such as Libya. But a few clouds are hanging in this sky. After the Austrian government paid 5 million euros (about $6.5 million) for the release in November of its nationals who had been kidnapped by AQIM in February, the Algerian minister for Maghrebi and African affairs, Abdel Kader Messahel harshly criticized Austria. Indeed he said that by giving in to blackmail and to the demands of hostage takers, the governments in question encouraged terrorist organizations to continue these tactics and implicitly financed terrorism. He added, "The payment of ransoms to terrorist groups to obtain the release of hostages is an act condemned by international bodies."

But that is not all: cooperation between the countries of that region is at best poor. The animosity between most countries makes it sometimes difficult to sustain a real cooperative relationship. For instance, Morocco and Algeria have had a very rocky relationship in the past 30 years and this does not favor the exchange of information between the two countries. On the opposite, each country has a tendency to accuse the other one of being too lax on terrorism, letting dangerous fighters cross into the border of the other one.

There is also the competition aspect: none of the countries in the region want to recognize they have a terrorism problem, because of the impact such a perception could have on both tourism and foreign investment. So, for example when the two Austrian tourists were kidnapped in February in Tunisia by AQIM, the Tunisian authorities claimed that they had been abducted in Algeria and not in their "very safe" country.

National interest is still the priority for each nation, notwithstanding the war against common enemies. As long as this will last, terror groups such as AQIM will thrive.

Qaradawi's Extremism Laid Bare by IPT

On January 30, 2009 excerpts of a speech by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi were aired on Al-Jazeera. In the speech, Qaradawi made vicious remarks about Jews, inciting Muslims to put Jews in "their place" as Hitler had done, in revenge for Israeli actions in Gaza several weeks prior:

"Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers."

Such vitriol is nothing new for Qaradawi. At a "Gaza Victory Rally" in Doha, Qatar two days earlier, which was attended by Hamas Political Chief Khalid Mishaal, he gave a speech saying that "martyrdom is the greatest wish of a Muslim," and that the "resistance must continue." Qaradawi concluded by praying for the opportunity before his death to kill a Jew, "The only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah."

Qaradawi, based in Qatar, is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and is a popular cleric throughout the Sunni Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood is an 80-year-old Egyptian religious movement that seeks the global spread of Islam and establishment of a Shariah, or religious law, in nations with Muslim populations. The MB is the ideological underpinning for all modern Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas and Al Qaeda.

American Muslim groups and mainstream American media outlets often paint Qaradawi as a "moderate" who represents mainstream Islam. This dangerous mischaracterization ignores Qaradawi’s speeches, sermons, and writings, which have called for the killing of American and British troops in Iraq, the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the execution of homosexuals, and have shown support for domestic violence against women.

He is currently banned from entering the U.S. or Britain because of his hate-filled rhetoric calling for violence, in the face of the West’s so-called "war against Islam." In September 2004, Qaradawi proclaimed that it was a religious obligation for Muslims to fight U.S. and British troops in Iraq. The communiqué, signed by Qaradawi and 93 other clerics, said that "the Jihad – waging Iraqi people's resistance to the foreign occupation … is a Shari’a duty incumbent upon anyone belonging to the Muslim nation, within and outside Iraq, who is capable of carrying it out," and that it was "forbidden for any Muslim to offer support to the occupiers."

Additionally, he also has ties to terrorist financing. On November 12, 2008 the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Union of Good (also known as the Charity Coalition), a worldwide collection of charities which listed Qaradawi as the President, under Executive Order 13224 as a terrorist entity as a result of its fund-raising activities on behalf of Hamas and Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Despite the ban on his physical entry into the U.S, Qaradawi’s Islamist news organization, Islamonline.net (IOL), announced on December 27, 2008, that it had opened an office in Washington D.C. IOL serves as Qaradawi’s mouthpiece to the West to spread "the "message of Islam to the world," and posts many of his controversial fatwas, such as those that support the use of women in suicide bombings, punishment or execution for homosexuals, divorce for women who do not wear the hijab, and death for apostates from Islam.

Those who downplay Qaradawi’s extremism include some of the usual apologists, like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Dr. John Esposito, who ignore his radicalism, and instead, present him as "moderate." On numerous occasions, CAIR has embraced the radical cleric, describing him as a "renowned Muslim scholar," even after acknowledging his support for "martyr operations" against Israeli targets.

In an interview on MSNBC on July 26, 2005, CAIR legal director Arsalan Iftikhar, referred to Qaradawi as "one of the most famous Muslim scholars in Cairo" who had said "unequivocally" that suicide bombings and acts of terrorism "are completely outside the bounds of Islam." This is a gross lie, as Qaradawi expressed, prior to 2005, support for suicide bombings and the killing of Israeli civilians. Similarly, in 2006 CAIR National Director Nihad Awad called him a "prominent and known scholar." Perhaps this treatment should come as no surprise, considering Qaradawi himself confirmed his favorable attitude toward CAIR in a November 2002 interview on Al-Jazeera, referring to the organization as "our brothers there [in America]."

Likewise, Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, places Qaradawi among "a cross section of Muslim thinkers, religious leaders and mainstream Islamic movements from Egypt to Indonesia, Europe to America" that engage in a "reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism and human rights."

Shockingly, mainstream American media outlets such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and the Christian Science Monitor have also painted Qaradawi with a "moderate" brush despite his verbal attacks.

When Qaradawi referred to Shiite Muslims in September 2008 as "heretics" seeking to infiltrate Sunni societies and inflaming sectarian tensions throughout the Middle East, the Associated Press chose to characterize the Sheikh as someone "widely respected throughout the Middle East … [who] has also participated in numerous Muslim and interfaith reconciliation dialogues." The Los Angeles Times did the same, calling him a "prominent moderate cleric," despite his inflammatory remarks.

In the run up to the Iraq War in 2003, the Christian Science Monitor referred to Qaradawi as a "moderate Egyptian cleric," while the Washington Post described him as a "popular Islamic cleric who is often seen as a moderate voice in the Arab world," despite his pronouncements at the time calling those who died resisting the occupation in Iraq "martyrs."

Perhaps the most egregious example is a February 2003 article in the Washington Post that refers to Qaradawi as a "maverick" and as being "seen as a voice of moderation." The article even goes so far as to call him a "reformer" that was "seeking to create a new, moderate current in Muslim thinking."

Qaradawi’s consistent calls for – and praise of - violence are never mentioned in these stories to place his moderate reputation into proper context. To continue to call him a "moderate" is an injustice, especially to those Muslims whose true moderate voices are closed out of the debate.

The fact that Qardawi’s radicalism has been overlooked time and again, regardless of the evidence showing otherwise, is alarming. The quest to find moderate Muslim leaders with whom to deal does not mean we should settle on someone, who although popular, preaches and sustains views that are not only inimical to U.S. interests, but which pose a very real physical threat to us as well. In the interest of calling a spade a spade, Qaradawi should be labeled exactly as he is – a radical Islamist.

Why the U.S. can't afford its military by Shaun Waterman

With the combined cost of the economic stimulus package and the Wall Street bailout now projected by some estimates to top $2 trillion, and the federal deficit spiraling, U.S. officials are fretting that current levels of defense spending may be unsustainable.

Moreover, military leaders argue that they will need more money in future years to repair or replace equipment worn out or destroyed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; transform the force to fight modern wars; and invest in new generations of high-tech weaponry.

"The spigot of defense spending that opened on Sept. 11 is closing," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a hearing last month of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending currently constitutes more than half of U.S. domestic discretionary spending -- that is, the part of the federal budget that is not spent on mandatory items like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That is about 4.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product -- more than double the proportion of national wealth most other industrialized countries spend on defense.

In absolute terms, the CBO says, Fiscal Year 2008 defense spending, adjusted for inflation, is now 20 percent more than it was in 1985 -- at the height of the Cold War military buildup -- and has risen 43 percent since its lowest post-Cold War level in 1998.

Yet although the military is much smaller than it was at that time, service chiefs projected last year that they will need continuing annual growth to maintain force readiness -- even accounting for the gradually falling cost of smaller U.S. deployments in Iraq.

"Quite bluntly," analyst Stephen Daggett of the non-partisan Congressional Research Service told a little-noticed hearing of the House Budget Committee last week, "the cost of everything we have been doing in defense has been accelerating upward too fast even for growing budgets to keep up."

Daggett in his prepared testimony listed several reasons for the explosive growth in the cost of the U.S. military.

First, personnel costs have spiraled. The "average military service member is about 45 percent more expensive, after adjusting for inflation, in Fiscal Year 2009 than in FY 1998," he said. Figures he presented showed that, although congressionally mandated increases in pay and benefits have grown by 30 percent more than inflation in that period, fully one-third of the total increase is down to the expanding costs of healthcare for military retirees under the "TRICARE for life" program.

And in the future, J. Michael Gilmore of the CBO told the same hearing his agency projected "needed funding for the military medical system (including care for both veterans and serving personnel) is growing seven, eight times more than rapidly than … costs as a whole" for the Defense Department -- and will more than double to $90 billion a year by 2026.

Daggett also identified two elements related to the ballooning costs of major weapons systems, like the Air Force's new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or the Navy's controversial DDG-1000 multibillion-dollar destroyer: intergenerational cost growth and systematic underestimation of acquisition costs.

"The growing price of weapons does much to explain why the expense of maintaining even a smaller force structure than in the past has climbed so high," he said.

Intergenerational cost growth refers to the fact that military weapons systems, unlike almost every other category of high-tech equipment, are more expensive than they were 20 years ago.

As an example, Daggett cited the comparative costs of the F-35, which the Air Force considers its "low end" fighter, and the F-16 it will replace.

The F-35 is now projected to have a "flyaway cost" of $83 million each, compared with the inflation-adjusted cost in today's dollars of $30 million for the F-16 when it was developed in 1985.

"Look at any part of the civilian sector," he told lawmakers, according to a transcript of the hearing, "not just electronics, but automobiles or aircraft … the (cost) trends are not as good in (the Department of Defense) and sometimes they're going in the opposite direction … from what's going on in the civilian sector."

Daggett said the reasons for this were "a matter far beyond the scope of this brief survey" but did proffer some thoughts, including that developers often sought the highest possible performance -- what Gates has referred to as the 99 percent solution, vs. a much more affordable 75 percent solution.

"The bottom line on it is seeking performance," Daggett said. "What drives it here is when you're developing a weapons system, what are you looking for? You're looking for performance, and you're trying to push the envelope in a lot of cases."

Another driver of escalating weapons costs, he added, was a requirements development process that tended to produce systems with multiple capabilities, and he cited the DDG-1000 as an example.

The new destroyer will be half as large again as the DDG-51 it will replace, because it has state-of-the-art capabilities on so many different fronts, including air defense, anti-submarine warfare and communications -- not to mention the ability to carry helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and a Marine Corps or Special Forces detachment.

"In short, it is all things to all requirements writers," he said, adding the result was a ship "that is now projected to cost between $3.5 (billion) and $4 billion each, and that cannot, therefore, be afforded in substantial numbers."

The DDG-1000 also illustrated Daggett's second factor in the spiraling costs of weapons systems -- the systematic underestimation of acquisition costs.

Figures he presented showed that, between 2000 and 2007, the cost growth of major weapons systems between first estimate and delivery rose from 6 percent of total costs to 27 percent, while delays in delivery rose from an average of 16 months to 21 months in the same period. In other words, major systems are now, on average, costing more than a quarter more than they were budgeted for, despite being nearly two years overdue.

Gilmore said such overspending was in large part the result of unrealistic initial estimates.

He said the initial estimate of $1.5 billion in today's dollars for the DDG-1000, then called the SC-21, "would've made it the cheapest surface combatant (vessel) ever built. … There were a lot of people in the building -- I was in the building at that time -- who knew that initial estimate was unrealistic."

He said that when initial costs are lowballed in such a fashion, "no program manager in the world is going to be able to manage the program in such a way that the costs will not grow."

"It's not so much cost growth as cost realism setting in," he concluded.

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror? by Judea Pearl

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism—the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society—was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated—without blushing—that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas—the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains—to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph—another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Understanding the Islamist Agenda and Negotiations by Douglas Farah

There are many good reasons for wanting to talk directly to one’s enemies, particularly states that pose a direct threat to one’s security. The Obama administration, facing a host of domestic problems and inheriting the ineffective policies of the previous administration in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, has incentives to want to get the Iran issue contained, at a minimum.

The same can be said for the Afghanistan crisis, which is lurching from bad to worse. The Taliban, flush with opium money, is making inroads while the corrupt and ineffective government fiddles, and Kabul is close to burning.

But one has to be clear that the other side wants some sort of serious back and forth. This is what is missing in both cases.

One must start from a recognition of what it is Iran wants: the abolition of Israel, the unimpeded sponsorship of armed non-state actors (Hezbollah and Hamas, with the dalliance with al Qaeda when convenient), and imposition of a global theocracy. None of these issues is negotiable.

From this Wall Street Journal piece, it is quite clear that Iran sees nothing to be gained by talks, and much to be gained by trying to humiliate the incoming administration. Perhaps they are simply recognizing the reality that their basic goals leave little room for substantive negotiations.

It seems to me that Fareed Zakaria makes serious mistake in his assessment of Afghanistan policy in calling for talks with the Taliban.

This is largely for the same reason: the lack of a understanding of what the Taliban want and what they are.

Like the Iranians (yes, the Taliban is Sunni and wahhabist, and yes the Iranians are Shi’ite and they have much disdain for each other on many issues) the Taliban has as its bottom line the establishment of a global Islamist caliphate that starts in Afghanistan and from there, the world.

The differences with al Qaeda are cultural clashes and discomfort with the way the Arab forces treat the Taliban, but not over fundamental beliefs, tactics or strategy. A world under Sharia law, as understood by both groups, is a divine mandate and therefore not negotiable.

Zakaria writes that:

The United States is properly and unalterably opposed to al-Qaeda. We have significant differences with the Taliban on many issues—democracy and the treatment of women being the most serious. But we do not wage war on other Islamist groups with which we similarly disagree (the Saudi monarchy, for example). Were elements of the Taliban to abandon al-Qaeda, we would not have a pressing national security interest in waging war against them.

That is simply not true. As he notes later, al Qaeda (the old guard, perhaps less relevant than ever) is essentially a parasite, living off host groups and nations. But in the case of the Taliban, the host has welcomed the parasite, fed it, clothed it, protected it and embraced it.

The idea that the Taliban would, in a verifiable way, renounce and cut ties to al Qaeda, is simply not realistic. The idea that we should stand by and deal with-and likely assure the ascent to power of-a group whose basic philosophy is to return everything they can back to the Middle Ages is an abandonment of everything we claim to stand for. The fact that we tolerate Saudi Arabia’s abysmal behavior is no reason to watch another country fall under the worst kind of enslavement and barbarism.

Finally, the line about having no pressing national security interest in the Taliban repeats exactly the misguided analysis that led the Taliban to facilitate the execution of the 9/11 attacks. Every major attack (1998 East Africa bombings, USS Cole, 9/11) were carried out by non-state actors (al Qaeda) operating from a “failed” state or sympathetic state (Taliban and Sudan).

Dialogue is a useful, vital tool in international relations. But it is only useful when the bottom lines of both sides are understood and the areas of overlap can be discussed. Otherwise, it is a waste of precious time and resources.