Analyst's note: You absolutely must read this well written, well reasoned and documented article. We might as well know the source of our coming discomfort. May I also suggest you read the book "A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent inside the Revolutionary Guard of Iran" . Here is but one review to which I second:
"I'm a cynical guy. US politics teaches me that leaders are cowards and fakers who are really out for their own glory. Americans desperately need a hero, and this author is the real deal. He started as a religious idealist whose talents made him the ultimate insider. When he witnessed unspeakable tortures committed against the families of people suspected of betrayal, he betrayed his "brothers." He volunteered to spy for the CIA, loading us up with invaluable information about Khomeini's associates. Every day he had to stare into the faces of people who would torture his wife and baby if they found out, but he kept going. He never got any fame or credit, and he did it totally alone, on his own initiative.
I'm a hard-hearted guy. I don't cry at sappy movies. But Khalili's rendering of his two best friends and their youthful idealism, and the separate paths they chose in the Iranian Revolution, repeatedly got me choked up. The story is tragic and horrifying, the espionage is nail-biting, and as the risks get more intense, I kept saying, "I can't believe this guy is doing this!"
I stayed up all night reading this, surprised the author waited over two decades to tell his story-- why not cash in on his heroism back in 1988?-- until I realized he's driven by one mission, which can be summed up as: "The governing mullahs in Iran cannot be negotiated with, because they've been explicitly planning Armageddon all along." If we can't trust this insider, who can we trust?
I'm not an effusive guy, just groggy from lack of sleep after I stayed up all night with this book. I dare you to read page one. Get hooked by this story and remind yourself what courage is really all about. Our nation should work for a free Iran, if only because the culture produces sterling characters like this author and his childhood friends."
We absolutely must understand the ideology of our enemy -- the Islamist. Unless we stop the Islamist, they will continue to create blood and horror on this earth and will continue to attack us until they destroy us or the end of time, which ever comes first. They wish to die for Allah and see it as the ultimate Muslim sacrifice.
We simply must understand that Islam is a religion wrapped in a political ideology with what they believe is the command to kill the non-Muslim. We now can have no excuse for not understanding this Islamist enemy.
The Islamist will NOT negotiate, except to gain a better position from which to attack us. Those now in power in Iran believe that the infidel (non-Muslim) must die throughout the world for their 12th Imam to return to the earth. They will use whatever weapons -- to include any weapon of mass destruction -- to which they have access to attack the U.S. and Israel, thus creating, what they believe the necessary conditions for the 12th Imam's return.
Hezbollah cells, an Iranian creation, are operating within the U.S. even as you read this and our fed gov't now calls them a "Resistance Movement." Hezbollah is yet another Islamic organization that takes orders and funding from Iran. They are also working with the Muslim Brotherhood here within this United States.
“Stakelbeck on Terror” gives us a glimpse into the world of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In an interview with a CIA operative who worked undercover within the Guard. We learn how Islamists are using mosques in the U.S. to advance terrorism and jihad.
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See a list of previous episodes here.
Do you ever wonder why there is growing concern here about Islamic mosques in the United States? The reason is simple and described in the video below. Americans are only now beginning to wake up to the realization that the global Islamist jihadist's ideology and planning is being promoted in thousands of American Islamic mosques. In some cases, in our own schools.
I highly recommend the book, "A Time to Betray" that you might better understand what is now developing once again on the public stage throughout the Middle East as a result of the behind the scenes actions of the mullah's of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood .... and yes our own "progressives." But now on to the article by John Howard
"Americans of a certain age did not think it possible that any president could accomplish the level of incompetence and destruction wrought by Jimmy Carter. His monumental achievement provided a benchmark against which all others may be measured and provides a handy guide for how best not to deal with everything from the domestic economy to American confidence.
But Carter’s greatest talent for devastation was in the field of foreign affairs; his saddest, most enduring legacy. It is in this area that he achieved his most lasting damage, single handedly creating the most dangerous international problem with which we are now confronted. The residue of his tenure has been expensive, indeed.
[....] With Carter Administration connivance, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to the cheers of the Iranian mob and White House celebration; a vindication of religious freedom; the great uprising of liberty in Iran, an advancement of human rights and an important national achievement in the removal of an authoritarian regime. And, now, because of Jimmy Carter, we have the Iran of today with its nuclear ambitions, more completely authoritarian than the Shah on his worst day; an international exporter of terrorism and an enemy of the United States – indeed, our greatest challenge in the region. Some improvement.
[....] Carter’s moves were not, of course, unprecedented. America’s intellectual and media elites had a long and sordid history of subverting American interests by the misrepresentation of what they always characterized as popular movements for freedom. In their parlance, Mao Tse Tung was an “agrarian reformer”, bent only on freeing the Chinese people from a relatively benign dictator who was, coincidentally, a friend to the United States, so their henchmen in the State Department actively undermined Chiang Kai Shek’s government. Fidel Castro was a freedom fighter struggling to liberate his people from the boot heal of the corrupt Batista regime. Khomeini was only a man of religious freedom.
In every case, the successor was far worse and far more resilient than those he replaced. And, of course, in every case, the successor has been an effective enemy to our nation. In an earlier age, a nascent conservative movement asked “Who lost China?” We should, perhaps, now be asking “Who lost Iran?”
Comes, now, Barak Obama, who, in a mirror image of Carter’s failure, has allowed his State Department to undermine the legitimacy of an important American ally. Indeed, Obama’s own words have telegraphed the abandonment of a friend who has been a bulwark of opposition to Islamic radicalism and an important component in the fight against Islamic terrorism. It is Mubarak’s policies that have marginalized Islamic radicals and have enabled the small Christian and Jewish communities in Egypt to exist, if not thrive. At the very time that Christians are under attack in Egypt, the Obama Administration is acting as midwife, ushering in what promises to be yet another Islamic dictatorship.
[....] If the loss of Iran was bad, the loss of Egypt will be geometrically worse. It is larger, wealthier and more important strategically than Iran will ever be. Its capacity for mischief with respect to Israel, sitting, as it does, on its border, is drastically greater than that of Iran. Its ability to threaten other American allies, when combined with that of Iran, may galvanize the entire region against United States interests. One can only imagine how deeply American security interests would be compromised were a new, Islamist government to gain access to intelligence sharing between the CIA and the Egyptian security services. And imagine the threat to American security represented by a Middle East united through its two largest nations in opposition to American ambitions in the region.
With the fall of Mubarak, we can expect Islamists to move promptly against secularism and religious pluralism and the coming Christian bloodbath will shock the conscience of thinking people. But thinking people are in short supply in this administration. A largely secular society will see a huge step backwards for individual prerogative and lifestyle choice.
[....] But these are not the concerns of Obama and his administration as they reflexively chant “democracy” as if it conjured a talismanic magic spell. These are not the concerns of those who would sacrifice United States security for an ideal that cannot be achieved without vast cultural and intellectual change that will be decades, if not centuries, in the making. These are not the concerns of Platonist idealists who pursue goals, domestically and internationally, in complete isolation from experience and reason.
Once again, a liberal president has shown the world that the United States is a feckless, inconstant and unreliable friend and that nations trust it at their peril. Forces may yet arise that will save Egypt. But they will not emerge from this administration and future generations may well be left with asking “Who lost Egypt?” Don’t expect to read the answer in the New York Times. But Jimmy Carter may now take comfort in knowing that there is, indeed, a president whose incompetence and capacity for destroying American interests exceeds even his own.
Please click here to read the entire article for additional perspective.
