Islamic State Uses Ramadan for New Terrorist Attacks

Following-up from yesterday, "Baghdad Car Bombing is Third Mass Attack in Days (VIDEO)."

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, ISIS told jihadists that it was a good time to kill people https://t.co/N37QItAn96

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 3, 2016

Baghdad Car Bombing is Third Mass Attack in Days (VIDEO)

It's a daily thing now.

Daily, and on an apocalyptic scale.

At NYT, "More Than 140 Dead in Terror Assault Claimed by ISIS":

BAGHDAD — As celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan stretched past midnight into Sunday in central Baghdad, where Iraqis had gathered to eat, shop and just be together, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 143 people — the third mass slaughter across three countries in less than a week.

The attack was the deadliest in Baghdad in years — at least since 2009 — and was among the worst Iraq has faced since the American invasion of 2003. The bombing came barely a week after Iraqi security forces, backed by American airstrikes, celebrated the liberation of Falluja from the Islamic State, which almost immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Even as fires still blazed Sunday morning at the bombing site, Iraq’s machinery of grief was fully in motion: Hospitals tried to identify charred bodies, workers sorted through the rubble searching for more victims, and the first coffins were on their way to the holy city of Najaf and its vast cemetery, always expanding, where Iraq’s Shiites bury their dead. By Sunday evening, a worker at the cemetery said more than 70 bodies had arrived, and many more were expected on Monday.

Less than two days earlier, two police officers and 20 hostages, many of them foreigners, were killed after gunmen invaded a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Islamic State claimed to be behind that attack. In Turkey, the authorities blamed the Islamic State for a coordinated suicide attack on Istanbul’s main airport that killed more than 40 people, although the terrorist group has not claimed responsibility.

Many of the victims in Baghdad on Sunday were children; the explosives detonated near a three-story complex of restaurants and stores where families were celebrating the end of the school year, residents said...

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Sen. John McCain on Islamic State: 'What we need to do is go to Raqqa and kill them...' (VIDEO)

It's pretty straightforward, and McCain's just the latest in a long line of folks who've said the same thing.

But oh my goodness, it's "Islamophobia" to call this radical Islam. Actually killing jihadists "harms" the fight against "violent extremism," or some such bullshit.

Watch, at CBS Face the Nation, "McCain on ISIS: 'What we need to do is go to Raqqa and kill them'."

Resist the Urge for Retribution After #ParisAttacks

So argues neorealist scholar (and infamous anti-Israel political scientist) Stephen Walt, at Foreign Policy, "Don’t Give ISIS What It Wants":

When a shocking event like the Paris attacks occurs, we know how the world will respond. There will be dismay, an outpouring of solidarity and sympathy, defiant speeches by politicians, and a media frenzy. Unfortunately, these familiar reactions give the perpetrators some of what they want: attention for their cause and the possibility their targets will do something that unwittingly helps advance the perpetrators’ radical aims.

What is most needed in such moments is not anger, outrage, or finger-pointing, but calm resolution, cool heads, and careful thought. What happened in Paris is an untold tragedy for the victims and deeply offensive to all we hold dear, but we must respond with our heads and not just our hearts. Here are five lessons to bear in mind as we reassess the dangers and search for an effective response.

No. 1: Keep the threat in perspective.

The sudden and violent deaths of some 130 innocent people in a peaceful city invariably grips our attention. But an event like this cannot shake the foundations of society unless we let it. The deaths in Paris last Friday, Nov. 13, are tragic, but these and similar incidents pale in comparison with the carnage and inhumanity Europe suffered from either 1914 to 1918 or 1939 to 1945. For all its current troubles, Europe today is richer, freer, safer, more open, more equal, and more stable than it has been since any other time in its history, and those achievements must not be surrendered. If France or its neighbors turn their backs on what has been built in Europe over the past 60 years, it will be a victory the attackers would welcome but most emphatically do not deserve.

Let us also remember that other cities and societies have experienced similar events yet are thriving today. New York, Oslo, London, Boston, Madrid, Paris, Ankara, and several other cities have faced costly terrorist attacks in recent years, yet one visits them today and finds communities that have rebuilt and recovered and are doing just fine. As we mourn the dead, we should take comfort in knowing that terrorism is a weapon of the weak and thus can have only a limited material impact on its targets. The City of Light will be here and thriving long after those who ordered these attacks are gone and mostly forgotten...

Keep reading.

What's amazing to me is how strikingly identical is the so-called neorealist take on the terror threat to the Democrat Party's failed appeasement policies. We can just keep shrugging our shoulders, saying that these massive terrorist attacks aren't really a threat to our existential values (much less our survival), all the while deploying rank partisan attacks on the so-called "Islamophobes" who've been right on the terror threat time and time again. Walt links, for example, to this hit piece on the counter-jihad right, "America’s leading Islamophobes spreading fear, bigotry and misinformation."

Walt's a far-left partisan hack all dressed up in scholarly garb, ensconced at Harvard's Kennedy School, spewing crap like this that's fundamentally no different from the antiwar bilge scraping the bottom of the far left-wing fever swamps.

It's true that terror attacks like Paris on Friday the 13th are unlike the threat of a strategic nuclear attack during the Cold War. But over time, the refusal of Western states to stand up to the Islamic invaders will undoubtedly result in increasing decline, decay, and ultimate disintegration and destruction. Western societies, enfeebled by Utopian feel-goodism, will simply give up the fight altogether, and then be run over soon enough by the violent Muslim hordes from the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. See my post on Niall Ferguson, "After the Fall of the Roman Empire, #ParisAttacks Should Be Warning to the West." Europe's on the leading edge of the Western collapse. Perhaps America's "splendid isolation" behind our natural ocean defenses, will buy us some time. But decline is a state of mind more than anything else. So we won't be that far behind Europe so long as progressive (regressive) types like Walt, and his presidential hero Obama, hold sway over politics, culture, and ideas.

Europe's Dangerous Refugees

At Der Spiegel, "Paris Attacks: How Great Are the Terror Dangers Posed by Refugees?":

It has now been confirmed that one of the Paris suicide bombers reached Europe disguised as a refugee. Security officials had long felt that such a scenario was unlikely. How big is the risk?

It hasn't taken long for the French authorities to begin learning details as to who was behind Friday night's terrorist attacks in Paris. Several of perpetrators, officials learned over the weekend, are from France, with two having most recently lived in Brussels and two more residing just outside of the French capital. Investigators believe that a 27-year-old Belgian man named Abdelhamid A. was the coordinator of the attacks, which cost the lives of at least 132 people at multiple sites in Paris on Friday evening.

One piece of news regarding the attackers, however, has received a particularly large amount of attention. Not far from the corpse of one of the suicide bombers, a Syrian passport was found. On Monday, French authorities confirmed that the attacker traveled with the passport into the European Union via Greece as a refugee.

The discovery would seem to confirm the fears of many in Germany and Europe that terrorists are among the hundreds of thousands of refugees currently streaming into Europe.

According to a report on Greek radio, a second attacker may also be suspected of having traveled to northern Europe via Turkey and Greece. Thus far, however, there hasn't been an official statement given regarding the second case.

At the moment, only the following is known: The finger prints of the attacker who blew himself up in front of the Stade de France stadium on Friday evening match those taken of the man as he traveled into Greece carrying a Syrian passport. The man, identified on the passport as Ahmad Almohammad, arrived in Greece at the beginning of October via the island of Leros, authorities say. Police officials say that the young man was registered there along with a group of 69 refugees. As part of the registration procedure, his fingerprints were taken, officials said.

On Oct. 7, the 25-year-old, who called himself Ahmad Almohammad, entered Serbia from Macedonia and continued on to Croatia and Austria. The Serbian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying that he was not armed when he traveled through Serbia. According to French justice officials, however, the passport that he was carrying was falsified and had been prepared in Turkey. The confirmation that an attacker traveled into the EU as a refugee confirms a scenario that security officials had long thought possible, but unlikely. After all, Islamic State hardly needs to send assailants into Europe as refugees in order to carry out terrorist attacks on the Continent. Hundreds of Islamists from Germany, along with thousands from other European countries are currently in IS-held regions of Syria and Iraq of their own free will. Because they possess citizenships of European countries, they can return whenever they like. French officials said on Monday that at least three of the suspected attackers had spent time in Syria since the end of 2013 and subsequently returned to France.

In addition, there are large numbers of extremists who grew up in Europe and are prepared to take part in violent attacks here. The attacks in Paris at the beginning of this year on the editorial offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and on the Jewish supermarket Hyper Casher demonstrate as much. So too does the subsequent attack in Copenhagen, which saw a jihadist who had grown up in Denmark shoot two people to death.

Intended to Mislead?

But there remain a number of open questions. The true identity of the man who traveled into Greece as a refugee with the falsified passport isn't yet known. There are many possibilities. One is that he wasn't a Syrian at all. He may have been an Islamist known to European security officials and who had joined the Islamic State in Syria. For such an Islamist, it may seem easier to enter Europe as a refugee under an assumed identity -- because Syrians who arrive in Europe are almost guaranteed of being granted refugee status.

But there are other questions as well. Why, for example, was the attacker carrying a passport at all? It looks as though Islamic State wanted the passport to be found, which would play into the hands of Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, in two ways. First, it would increase fears in the West due to the large numbers of refugees currently arriving, and it would further divide European society. Secondly, it would discredit the refugees themselves. For Islamic State, refugees are traitors for fleeing the country rather than joining Islamic State for the establishment of a Caliphate.

The passport also raises questions when it comes to the coordination of the terror attacks as well. Most of the attackers were French, that much has become clear. As such, it wasn't a fake refugee who brought terror to Europe. The chief coordinator is thought to be a Belgian man. It is unclear how an attack could have been prepared and organized with an attacker who had only been in Europe for a few weeks. But here too, the available information is sketchy. On Monday, the French government said that the attacks appear to have been planned in Syria...

Keep reading.

CNN just reported that six of the eight attackers traveled to Syria, so I'll be looking for more information on that. Stay tuned.

French Authorities Name Belgian National Abdelhamid Abaaoud as Mastermind of #ParisAttacks

At the Guardian UK, "Abdelhamid Abaaoud named as alleged mastermind of Paris terror attacks."

More at WaPo, "Raids spread across France and Belgium amid manhunt for suspects."

Reports: Salah Abdeslam Arrested in Belgium #ParisAttacks

At London's Daily Mail, "Fugitive 'blood brother' 'is arrested in Belgium after fleeing building with his hands in air as police fired tear gas'."

It's going to be a big news day.

After the Fall of the Roman Empire, #ParisAttacks Should Be Warning to the West

From Niall Ferguson, at the Times of London, "Like the Roman empire, Europe has let its defences crumble."

And ungated, at the Australian, "Paris attacks: fall of Rome should be a warning to the West":

I am not going to repeat what you have already read or heard. I am not going to say that what happened in Paris on Friday night was unprecedented horror, for it was not. I am not going to say that the world stands with France, for it is a hollow phrase. Nor am I going to applaud Francois Hollande’s pledge of “pitiless” vengeance, for I do not believe it. I am, instead, going to tell you that this is exactly how civilisations fall.

Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths’ sack of Rome in August 410AD: “ ... In the hour of savage licence, when every ­passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed ... a cruel slaughter was made of the ­Romans; and … the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies ... Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they ­extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless …”

Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?

Keep reading.

And beware complacency.

We Were Right to Fight in Iraq

From William Kristol, at USA Today:

We were right to invade Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein, and to complete the job we should have finished in 1991.

Even with the absence of caches of weapons of mass destruction, and the mistakes we made in failing to send enough troops at first and to provide security from the beginning for the Iraqi people, we were right to persevere through several difficult years. We were able to bring the war to a reasonably successful conclusion in 2008.

When President Obama took office, Iraq was calm, al-Qaeda was weakened and ISIS did not exist. Iran, meanwhile, was under pressure from abroad (due to sanctions) and at home (due to popular discontent, manifested by the Green uprising in the summer of 2009).

The Obama administration threw it all away...

Keep reading.

Islamic State Seizes Government Headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq

Hey, we've got the terrorists on the run!

Oh wait. They're running the wrong way. Shoot!

At WSJ, "Islamic State Militants Make Gains in Key Iraq Province":

Islamic State fighters seized the government compound in the city of Ramadi on Friday and besieged hundreds of government forces nearby, coming closer to controlling the capital of Iraq’s largest province, officials said.

The compound’s capture marks a setback to the government’s offensive against the extremist group in Anbar, the Sunni province that borders Baghdad, and complicates the Shiite-led government’s ties with the province’s Sunni tribes as they cooperate to expel the militants.

Many of Anbar’s leaders have pleaded for more help from Baghdad to stave off recent Islamic State gains in their province, Iraq’s Sunni heartland. But Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has calibrated his support, sending security forces and arms, but not the powerful Shiite militias that have in recent months helped to drive Islamic State out of central Iraq, including the city of Tikrit.

Anbar’s Sunni tribes are split on whether they need the Shiite militias, and some U.S. and Iraqi officials fear their participation would inflame sectarian tensions and undermine the government.

“The government response has been very weak,” said Rajeh Barakat, an Anbar tribal leader and member of the local provincial council.

Iraqi’s parliament speaker, Salim al-Jabouri, warned on Friday that Ramadi might fall to Islamic State, saying that its collapse “would have consequences on the national security level.”

U.S. officials played down the development, characterizing the Islamic State gains in Ramadi, as well as in the fight to control the oil refinery in Beiji, in Salahudeen province, as ephemeral victories that are likely to be reversed sooner or later. The difficult fights in both places haven’t yet sparked any high-level concern about the U.S. strategy, American military officials said on Friday...

More.

U.S. Concerned About al-Qaeda's Reemergence in Yemen as Saudi-Led Coalition Attacks Houthi Rebels

At the Los Angeles Times, "Saudi-led Yemen air war's high civilian toll unsettles U.S. officials":

Concerned about reports of hundreds of civilian casualties, Obama administration officials are increasingly uneasy about the U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led air war against rebel militias in Yemen, opening a potential rift between Washington and its ally in Riyadh.

Backed by U.S. intelligence, air refueling and other support, Saudi warplanes have conducted widespread bombing of Yemeni villages and towns since March 26 but have failed to dislodge the Houthi rebels who have overrun much of the Arab world's poorest nation since last fall.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, widely regarded as the terrorist network's most lethal franchise, has capitalized on the chaos by sharply expanding its reach. Fighters loyal to the group claimed control Thursday of a military base and other key facilities near Mukalla, an Arabian Sea port in southern Yemen.

Saudi officials said they are not targeting areas with Al Qaeda fighters, however, and are focusing only on the Houthis, a Shiite Muslim minority whom they view as proxies for Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival.

With the country sliding into civil war, the United Nations special envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, resigned under pressure Wednesday. Officials said the Moroccan-born diplomat had lost the support of Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies.

Pentagon officials, who pride themselves on the care they take to avoid civilian casualties, have watched with growing alarm as Saudi airstrikes have hit what the U.N. this week called "dozens of public buildings," including hospitals, schools, residential areas and mosques. The U.N. said at least 364 civilians have been killed in the campaign.

Although U.S. personnel don't pick the bombing targets, Americans are working beside Saudi military officials to check the accuracy of target lists in a joint operations center in Riyadh, defense officials said. The Pentagon has expedited delivery of GPS-guided "smart" bomb kits to the Saudi air force to replenish supplies.

The U.S. role was quietly stepped up last week after the civilian death toll rose sharply. The number of U.S. personnel was increased from 12 to 20 in the operations center to help vet targets and to perform more precise calculations of bomb blast areas to help avoid civilian casualties.

U.S. reconnaissance drones now send live video feeds of potential targets and of damage after the bombs hit. The Air Force also began daily refueling flights last week to top off Saudi and United Arab Emirates fighter jets in midair, outside Yemen's borders, so they can quickly return to the war.

Saudi officials say their goal is to pressure the Houthis to disarm and to reinstate President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. That would require the Houthis to give up virtually all their gains since they captured the capital, Sana, in September and forced Hadi into exile in March...

More.

New Islamic State Video Shows Slaughter of Ethiopian Christians

At the New York Times, "ISIS Video Purports to Show Killing of Ethiopian Christians."

And note: The video doesn't "purport" to show anything. Christians are being murdered before our very eyes, this time in Ethiopia. Who's next?

And watch, at Bare Naked Islam, "Islamic State (ISIS) slaughters and beheads 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya (WARNING: Extremely graphic)."

Islamic State Murders Egyptian Soldier and Another Captive

I don't consider these "executions." An execution implies the victim is a criminal suspect, charged by a court of law, and tried according to some basic principles of due process. That's obviously not the case with the murders by Islamic State.

At the Jerusalem Post, "ISIS affiliate in Sinai claims execution of Egyptian solider, beheading of captive."

And watch, at Bare Naked Islam, "Islamic State (ISIS) in Sinai Peninsula executes Egyptian soldier and beheads a civilian in latest video."

At Least 17 Dead as al-Shabaab Lays Waste to Somali Hotel

The tide of war keeps receding.

Reports elsewhere say victims were beheaded.

At NYT, "Official: Al-Shabab Siege at Somali Hotel Ends, 17 Dead."

And at Euronews, "Militants launch deadly assault on Mogadishu hotel."

The Orwellian Obama Presidency

From Bret Stephens, at WSJ, "Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory":

The humiliating denouement to America’s involvement in Yemen came over the weekend, when U.S. Special Forces were forced to evacuate a base from which they had operated against the local branch of al Qaeda. This is the same branch that claimed responsibility for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo and has long been considered to pose the most direct threat to Europe and the United States.

So who should Barack Obama be declaring war on in the Middle East other than the state of Israel?

There is an upside-down quality to this president’s world view. His administration is now on better terms with Iran—whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,” just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president—than it is with Israel. He claims we are winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.

He treats Republicans in the Senate as an enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad’s war on his own people by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.

He was prepared to embrace a Muslim Brother as president of Egypt but maintains an arm’s-length relationship with his popular pro-American successor. He has no problem keeping company with Al Sharpton and tagging an American police department as comprehensively racist but is nothing if not adamant that the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” must on no account ever be conjoined. The deeper that Russian forces advance into Ukraine, the more they violate cease-fires, the weaker the Kiev government becomes, the more insistent he is that his response to Russia is working.

To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory...

Perfect. Devastating. Just too honest, my goodness!

Keep reading.

Islamic State Is Modern Islam

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "There Is No Modern Islam":

Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history.

Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by promising that the Middle East would be just like Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.

But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to look.

Progressive politicians and pundits trying to cope with ISIS lapse into a shrill incoherence that has nothing to do with their outrage at its atrocities and a lot to do with their sheer incomprehension. Terms like “apocalyptic nihilism” get thrown around as if heavy metal were beginning to make a comeback.

Those few analysts who admit that the Islamic State might be a just a little Islamic emphasize that it’s a medieval throwback, as if there were some modern version of Islam to compare it to.

Journalists trying to make sense of ISIS demanding Jizya payments and taking slaves ought to remember that these aren’t medieval behaviors in the Middle East. Not unless medieval means the 19th century. And that’s spotting them a whole century. Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from the United States. Its labor market and that of fellow Petrojihadi kingdoms like Kuwait and Qatar are based on arrangements that look a lot like temporary slavery… for those foreigners who survive.

Non-Muslims paid Jizya to Muslim rulers until very recently. Here is what it looked like in nineteenth century Morocco from the account of James Riley, an American shipwrecked sea captain.

“The Mohammedan scrivener appointed to receive it took it from them, hitting each one a smart blow with his fist on his bare forehead, by way of receipt for his money, at which the Jews said, ‘Thank you, my lord.’”

Those Jews who could not pay were flogged and imprisoned until they converted to Islam. An account from 1894 is similar, except that the blows were delivered to the back of the neck. Only French colonialism finally put a stop to this practice as well as many other brutal Islamic Supremacist laws.

Morocco was one of the Arab countries where Jews were treated reasonably well by the standards of the Muslim world. It’s one of the few Arab countries to still retain a Jewish population. When ISIS demands Jizya from non-Muslims, it’s not reviving some controversial medieval behavior. It’s doing what even “moderate” Muslim countries were doing until European guns and warships made them stop.

If the French hadn’t intervened, the same ugly scene would have gone on playing out in Morocco. If the United States hadn’t intervened, the Saudis would still openly keep slaves.

Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a second-hand enlightenment that never went under the skin.

ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim world was like before it was forced to have presidents and constitutions, before it was forced to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of equal rights for all.

The media reported the burning of the Jordanian pilot as if it were some horrifying and unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy, were burned alive for their crimes against Islam. Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the seventh century, but from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned, might be beheaded.

These were not the practices of some apocalyptic death cult. They were the Islamic law in the “cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only reason they aren’t the law now is that the French left behind some of their own laws.

Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never truly colonized still behead men and women for “witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.

The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is...

More.

Analysis of U.S. Policy Toward Islamic State

Last night, at CBS Evening News: