Analyst's note: Absolutely must read and carefully consider this most interesting article by our friend and associate John Bernard. This "war," in which we are said to be now engaged, was started without a clear statement of objectives by our Congress who has the Constitutional reponsibility to do so. This has left our Presidents, while acting as "Commander in Chief," without clear and proper national objectives from our Congress. Our White House (under at least two administrations), our Dept. of Defense and their generals, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and our Dept. of State have been operating without basic information from which to create a viable strategy.
To make matters even worse, we are also being guided by the principles of "political correctness" where our DNI James Clapper: (believes) Muslim Brotherhood 'Largely Secular,' 'Has Eschewed Violence' , Shariah Front Group Now Teaches Govt Counter Terrorism Classes, we find Mohamed Elibiary (Muslim Brotherhood Member) on DHS Staff with Security Clearance Undermines Nat'l Security, the Obama Administration Bans the Truth About Islam and Jihad, the White House Calls Fort Hood Massacre 'Workplace Violence', and our FBI explains that Penetration in White House by radical agents worse than thought.
As you can see our federal organizations and our law enforcement organizations are being advised by Islamist jihadist enemy operatives from the Muslim Brotherhood and their various supporting organizations. These Islamist jihadist operatives are embedded in key elements of our federal government, our main-stream media, and our universities. As a nation, we have therefore spent much of our national treasure -- both our gold and the blood of our soverign American citizens and our allies -- toward "purposeless activity" which comes from the use of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations not originally designed for this situation or this enemy. The results are "Unreasonable Risk and Ill-Conceived Combat Missions!" In short, we have, after all this time (longer than it took to win WWII), NOT yet properly defined our Islamist jihadist enemy nor even understant what is required to win. If our Islamists jihadist enemy is allowed to continue to exist, our bleeding has only begun.
We are working to connect-the-dots for you. Please consider this message and do not take it lightly! What is reported here is NOT beyond the imagination -- of the Islamist jihadist enemy. This is what we face -- here within America -- unless we begin to recognize this enemy and take appropriate action. The Islamist jihadist front group here in America is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many splinter groups Many Americans feel safe in a Fool’s Paradise, believing their country will protect them from extremism and terror – when PCism is more important to politicians than action. Should this America fall to this Islamist enemy, there is no where to run.
Dave Gaubatz who spent 20 years as an active duty USAF (Special Agent/OSI), 3.5 years as a civilian 1811 Federal Agent, trained by the U.S. State Department in Arabic, and was the first U.S. Federal Agent to enter Iraq in 2003. He is also a counterterrorism counterintelligence officer. He is co-author of the book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America. His website is here, and he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Here is but a summary of recent article by Mr. Gaubatz.
"I could give the politically correct answer and say Americans really do care about the future of our country. In reality the vast majority do not. Since returning from Iraq I have literally given hundreds of lectures to politicians, law enforcement, media, and the public. I gave up everything to try to inform Americans of the impending threats we are facing from Islamic based terrorist groups. Unfortunately the least concerned Americans are our politicians and law enforcement. Others are living in a false sense of security that our politicians are protecting us.
[....] I saw many things in Iraq that people should never have to witness. I saw mothers who had been tortured and subsequently killed by Saddam’s forces, and many of the mothers died while holding their babies... Many were buried alive with their children in their arms.
I had the opportunity to interview many ‘enemies of prisoners of war’ (EPW). [...] I wanted to know what type attacks America would be facing in the future. Over and over we were told al-Qaeda and other terrorist supporters (such as CAIR who support Hamas) would be targeting the ‘hearts of Americans’. I wanted this clarified in more detail. Numerous EPW told us they would attack our children because they are the hearts of Americans.
[....] During my research of over 250 Islamic centers in America and in addition the ‘CAIR Project’ as described in our book ‘Muslim Mafia’, I found clear evidence there are many, many versions of Maj. Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood), Mohamed Mohamed (Oregon), and Hussein (Baltimore) who are plotting murderous attacks against our children in America. The media, our politicians, and senior law enforcement want Americans to believe these type of planned attacks are by ‘lone wolves’ and not part of a major plan by Islamic leaders.
I will tell you - and I have no problem swearing under oath in a court of law - that 80% of Islamic centers in America are teaching their worshippers to commit these type attacks. I have the evidence, but again unfortunately our senior law enforcement, media, and politicians for the most part are paid off by the ‘Saudi government’ to keep this information away from American citizens."
The Islamic Circle of America (ICNA) claims to be "moderate," but its handbook exposes its more hard core Islamist ambitions which is the downfall of the West. "The group wants "the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari'ah." The hand book spells out its political goals which is "the Establishment of Islam" as the sole basis of a global society and governance. This is not good people.
Faithful readers here, will not be surprised to learn that these goals are inline with the stated purposes of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami -- and other global Islamist jihadist. Using different methods, they all work toward the same goal which will culminate in a restoration of the Caliphate. They preach "social justice" and "charity" but in their Islamist centers and elsewhere they teach a totally different message. Their teachings are not inaccordance with the values of this United States and our Declaration of Independance and U.S. Constitution.
From Andrew C. McCarthy in his book "THE GRAND JIHAD How Islam and the Left Sabotage America" we have also learned that:
"In Islam, the umma is all -- it cannot be divided, depleted, or watered down; it wants a toe-hold, then an enclave, then the whole enchilada. [....] Islamism does not participate in politics; it uses politics. And when it does, we overlook at our peril that it is doctrinally and incorrigibly anti-democratic. For Islamist, democracy is a tool for acquiring power, not a culture of governance [....] willingness to engage in politics -- whether in democratic or authoritarian societies -- is not a concession. It is a jihad strategy, called siyash, and it is fully consistent with sabotage. [....] our "big thinkers" deduce that if the terrorists figure the [Muslim] Brothers are soft, they obviously must be moderates -- so we can work with them."
[....] We're tunnel-focused on terrorism, concerned only about forcible damage to life, limb, and property. As long as we're told there will be no harm, he [the Islamist] rightly figures we'll assume he means no terrorism. If terrorism is not in the equation, we go back to sleep -- amenable to all manner of accommodation, even to sowing the seeds of our own destruction at the behest of people who tell us, flat-out that their goal is conquest. In our suicidal disposition, "democracy" somehow requires that of us."
Why do too many of our national leaders continue to listen to the same Salafist clerics who approve suicide terrorism and preach that it is a Muslim duty to kill our soldiers (our sons and daughters) and those who support them? This Salifist message includes killing the supporting civilian workers to our military as well as killing the American taxpayers and American voters. It is time we all stop listening to the seductive prompting of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR now embedded in our federal and state governments (in some cased, even our local law enforcement) and for three generations in many of our academic institutions.
We must stand on our own without the "tsunami of oil-backed money" from the same Saudi regime that has long backed the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood here in America. If we (from citizens to the DoS, DoD, DoJ, HLS, and Intelligence Community, etc.) were to watch more closely we would find that the Muslim Brotherhood organizations says one thing in English and frequently something totally different to the al-Jezeera audience.
The Islamists do not really want "participatory democracy," but rather the ultimate purpose of their jihad (often implemented as a Trojan Horse) is to implement sharia law as a part of a global Islamic state. The Islamists teachings are provides guiding principles to our enemy now and always.
After much study and experience, I have come to understand that Islam means "submission," not "peace." I personally have come to believe that ONLY the Muslims who (1) do not support sharia law, and (2) who fully and continually demonstrate their acceptance of American constitutional principles represent the Islam that is welcomed and encouraged here in America and the West. Such people are either apostates to their own religion or have never understood or accepted the tenants of their own faith.
All other Muslims, I refer to as "Islamist." The religion of the Islamist is wrapped around a political ideology that ultimately wants us either dead or in total submission; the Islamist are thus unwelcome here in America. The ideology of the Islamist is totalitarianism and implements an authoritarian political system under sharia law. The Islamist is focused at least as much on complete domination in this world as they are about salvation in the next.
Again I share the words of Andrew C. McCarthy as he writes in his book "THE GRAND JIHAD How Islam and the Left Sabotage America"the following:
"Defending ourselves will require flushing out the Islamists: identifying them and imposing on them the burden of defending their totalitarian ideology against the positive case for liberty and human reason. Doing so will undeniably burden true moderate Muslims as well: Given the prevalence of anti-Constitutional beliefs in Islam, foreign Muslims should not be permitted to reside in America unless they can demonstrate their acceptance of American constitutional principles. But those who satisfy this burden should be welcome, encouraged, and given the space necessary to seek reform."
Some major elements of our federal government have not yet recognized the very enemy from which they are obligated to protect us. To make matters worse, they seem content to try every method to work with them. Again from Andrew C. McCarthy on page 376 of his book "THE GRAND JIHAD How Islam and the Left Sabotage America" we find the following.
“[….] more details are emerging about the Homeland Security Department’s high-level pow-wows with tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, along with her top aides, personally held two days of intensive briefing in late January 2010 for, among others, ISNA, MPAC (the Muslim Public Affairs Council), and the Muslim American Society. The concept, imported from the United Kingdom, is to treat these anti-Western Sharia organizations as allies and devise in collaboration with them, a “two-way information-sharing” framework. As one exasperated former U.S. intelligence officer explained to Pajamas Media:
The “counter-radicalization” program is something that the other side created for us ….. It initially started in Britain. The Muslim Brotherhood groups suggested it. We went over there and got it. We thought it was a great idea and now we’re using it. It’s the enemy giving us a way to destroy ourselves.”
Just so. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Islamist had developed “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house.”
Why, it’s almost as if they now has a government that was helping them do it.”
Please read and consider the facts and the patterns now clearly visible to all. I have studied and worked national security issues now almost every day for the last 42 years. In my opinion, few areas of research rise to this level of importance for all Americans to understand.
Action is required by all of us to survive. But you say, "What can you do?" You say, "You don't understand?" The Islamist jihadist enemy is working to keep you in that state of ignorance in order to make it easier to impose a global totalitarian system that is one of the most brutal and unrelenting this world has offered. In addition to reading this entire article, I encourage you to search within this CSIA Report on the terms of "Phares", "Muslim Mafia", "jihad", "sharia", "CAIR", "Caliphate", "Awlaki", "Cordoba", "Dhimmi", "Hezbollah", Moderate Muslim", "Muslim Brotherhood", "Panther", "Salafists", "Tawfik", "Marxist", "IslamBerg", "Iran", "PFLP", and "Hawala" and the related CSIA Report: Media Collection for additional insight.
A piece -- written by Dr. Mervyn F. Bendle and published in Family Security Matters ... first published in Australia's News Weekly reproduced with permission -- not only points out the major problems, it provides urgent measures required to fix them if we are going to survive this insidious Islamist jihadist enemy who now operates in ever growing numbers within our national borders.
The political ideology of Islamism is something that freedom-loving people must challenge at every opportunity, lest we forever lose our liberty. This analysis points out that "Civilisational jihad is the challenge of our times and the future of our nation will be determined by how we rise to meet it." This most important summary by Dr. Bendle is provided below in full because of its potential impact to our nation.
Knowing that CAIR is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, is but one fact to understand that our jihadist enemy is already inside these United States of America, and our worst has got to be better than their best!
"This is the central message of an important new report released by the Center for Security Policy in Washington DC.
Entitled Shariah: The Threat to America: An Exercise in Competitive Analysis - Report of Team B II (pdf), the study is the product of an extended period of research, analysis and debate, undertaken by a large team of security policy experts, which seeks to re-orientate American national security policy regarding the Islamist danger.
In doing so it focuses on the core of Islam, its system of law, or "shariah", conceptualised as a totalitarian ideology akin to communism, Nazism and fascism, and pursued by Muslim supremacists who seek "to impose ... a global totalitarian system cloaked as an Islamic state and called a caliphate" (p.6).
The report emphasises that the extremely aggressive Islamist campaign of "civilizational jihad" is not entitled to constitutional protection because it is not primarily a religious pursuit involving "the sacrosanct realm of private conscience and belief", but is a political project that "seeks to supplant our Constitution with its own totalitarian framework" governing every area of life (p.8).
In advancing this argument, the report pointedly accepts the standard Muslim definition: "shariah is held by mainstream Islamic authorities ... to be the perfect expression of divine will and justice and thus is the supreme law that must comprehensively govern all aspects of Muslims' lives, irrespective of when and where they live. Shariah is characterised as a 'complete way of life' (social, cultural, military, religious, and political), governed from cradle to grave by Islamic law" (p.37).
For adherents to shariah there can be no compromise with any other system of laws, politics, beliefs or behaviour. In particular, "the West [is] an obstacle to be overcome, not a culture and civilisation to be embraced or [even] tolerated", much less respected (p.6).
Note that the report stresses that such a totalist and exclusivist conception of shariah is not limited to Muslim radicals or extremists; quite the contrary, it insists that this is the authoritative view of shariah held throughout the mainstream Muslim world, across the spectrum from the largely irrelevant "moderates" to highly effective militant Islamists.
It follows from the premise that Islamism and shariah are totalitarian in their very nature, and that claims to the contrary are either ignorant and misguided, or deliberately deceptive, in accordance with the Muslim principle of deliberate lying (taqiyya) to non-Muslims to further their interests.
Unfortunately, in the report's critique of the current Obama Administration it is often not clear whether the responsible officials are unforgivably ignorant or intentionally deceptive. For example, it cites John Brennan, Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor, who has decreed that the term "jihadist" will no longer be used to describe violent Islamist extremists because "jihad" means "to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal" (p.15).
While this is one (archaic) use of the term, the claim is essentially incorrect, as all relevant uses of "jihad" intend it to mean holy war undertaken to extend the hold of Islam over the globe. As the report observes: "Brennan's assertions directly contradict the teaching of leading Islamic scholars [and] the top counterterrorism advisor to the President of the United States has a professional responsibility to know these facts" (p.15).
Unsurprisingly, as the Team "B" report points out, in the vital sphere of law enforcement, security and defence policy, the relevant information about the nature of shariah and its role in Islamism "is not even taught at a basic level" at the FBI, CIA, or at the Departments of State, Defence, Justice or Homeland Security (p.19). Instead, the Administration has pursued "the failed strategy of fictionalising the state of Islam in the vain hope that reality will, at some point, catch up to the benign fable" (p.7).
An excellent case study in the consequences of this official strategy of studied ignorance, naivety and dissimulation concerns the massacre carried out by Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood army base in Texas in November 2009, in which he murdered 13 people. Even though "Hasan announced himself an enemy combatant ... no-one was either able or willing to process that information properly" (p.16).
And while he was quite explicit about his jihadist views, "few in the Administration, the media, academia or the rest of the elite seemed capable of comprehending [his] motives" (p.16). Consequently, virtually every aspect of the Hasan case was subjected to "spin" by the Administration and quickly became politicised, when a robust and unconditional denunciation of such Islamist atrocities and their shariah-based justifications was clearly called for.
Another case involved "a Muslim woman whose request for a legal restraining order against her Moroccan husband who had serially abused and raped her was denied by a New Jersey family court judge [who] ruled that the abusive husband had acted according to his Muslim (shariah) beliefs and thus not with criminal intent" (p.18).
Such examples illustrate the extent to which Islamism is winning the civilisational jihad by utilising a stealth strategy, involving "multi-layered cultural subversion, the co-opting of senior leaders, influence operations and propaganda, and other means of insinuating shariah into Western societies", in accordance with the promise of a prominent Islamist that their work is "a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilisation from within and sabotaging its miserable house [until Allah's] religion is made victorious over all other religions" (p.17).
As the report acknowledges (p.8), its assessment echoes the analysis of Robert Spencer in Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs (2008). It also parallels other prominent works, including Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US (2006), by Steven Emerson; The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy (2007), by Walid Phares; and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (2010) by Andrew McCarthy.
However, the report also draws together a great deal of material and is a major resource for those who choose to resist the jihadists' ideological onslaught, providing a wealth of information and analysis in a document that is not only written in a clear, concise and engaging fashion, but is also freely available for download from the Center for Security Policy website.
Above all, it is also quite deliberately combative, being modelled on the efforts of the original "Team B", a group of national security experts, who were invited in 1976 by the then CIA Director (later President) George H.W. Bush, to conduct a "competitive analysis" of then-prevailing official U.S. government intelligence estimates of Soviet intentions and offensive capabilities, at a time when it was felt that a period of détente had been reached between the West and the USSR.
In contrast to the comfortable illusions of the policy establishment, "Team B found that the Soviet Union was, pursuant to its ideology, determined to secure the defeat of the United States and its allies and the realisation of the worldwide triumph of Soviet Communism" (p.5).
This analysis provided the intellectual foundation for Ronald Reagan's successful presidential campaign in 1980 and for "his strategy for destroying the Soviet Union and discrediting its ideology" that came to fruition a decade later (p.6).
Now that America is faced with a similarly determined and well-resourced totalitarian threat, "Team B II" recommends a major policy overhaul and a series of urgent measures to meet the new challenge (see "Measures needed", listed below).
Implicit in the "Team B II" concept is the notion that its recommended approach will not only more effectively combat Islamism and the colonisation of Western societies by shariah but will also form the basis of a successful political campaign, contesting the Obama Administration's policy of appeasement towards the Muslim world, which appears to have failed (witness Iranian President Ahmadinejad's recent outrageous accusation at the United Nations of American complicity in the 9/11 attacks).
Central to such developments may be the unfolding saga of the provocative attempt to probe American resolve by establishing a large mosque near "Ground Zero" in New York.
The report has obvious implications for Australia, which lacks the resources required to put together its own "Team B". Nevertheless, we similarly face a stealth campaign by Islamists and their allies in politics, academia and the media, committed to infiltrating shariah into our society, under the guise of multiculturalism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, human rights, etc.
The above recommendations are sensible and, while the universities are compromised, there are many concerned and well-informed people in the community.
Consequently, it may be that the opportunity exists for political leadership and a more robust policy in this area. Civilisational jihad is the challenge of our times and the future of our nation will be determined by how we rise to meet it.
The end results will be additional deaths of innocent American citizens. If our leaders are unwilling to at a minimum, clearly identify the people, agencies, ideologies or nations as they see themselves, their analysis is then based on wishful thinking rather than fact. If this is true, then their analysis is likely detrimental to the safe conduct of those using your work as guidance. In order to increase you knowledge of the the world around us on this critical topic, we suggest an internal search within this site on the terms of "jihad", "sharia" (this gets both spellings), and "Muslim Brotherhood", "Awlaki", "CAIR", "COIN", "Caliphate", "Caliph", "Constitution", "Cordoba", "Deradicalization", "Dhimmi", "Hezbollah", "Hizb ut-Tahrir", "Holy Land Foundation", "Islamist", "Moderate Muslim", "Salafists", and "Taqiyya".
I have provided the above information to frame this most recent work by John Bernard that is provided below. Semper Fidelis.
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Unreasonable Risk and Ill-Conceived Combat Missions!
During an exchange with a Senatorial Aide, I received from him the link to a piece written by a Colonel Tony Pfaff, USA. The piece is entitled, 'RISK, MILITARY ETHICS AND IRREGULAR WARFARE'. In this piece the Colonel details the problems encountered in asymmetrical combat, the unwieldy and artificially established parameters thrust upon not only unit field leaders but upon individual combatants as well.
He refers to the 'absurdities' created in an environment created by the unusual mix of non-combatants, friendly combatants and 'irregular' fighters. The absurdities he refers to amount to forcing friendly combatants to measure the value of life on a sliding scale with the non-combatant at the top and the friendly combatant at the bottom. To his credit, he makes it clear that a commander should never take the indefensible position of not considering protection of his force when planning and carrying out the mission.
The main problem with the piece is that while it accurately portrays the combatant as being the instrument through which a sovereign nation can project violence to protect it's citizenry and thus rightly assumes risk on it's behalf, it never-the-less tries to equate all human life. From the vantage point of a government's responsibility to it's citizenry, that should never be an issue. From a strictly objective view point and certainly through the eyes of our Founding Fathers and our Constitution, all men are indeed created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights "by their creator". The problem, however, is that men are free to determine for themselves who that "creator" is and whether he has indeed established that standard for literally all men or if he has decreed that unbelievers should be brutalized, and killed.
While I do recognize and agree with the Founding Fathers on the rights of all men, I do not see the world as flat. I recognize that there are indeed men who have given themselves to ideologies that run counter to our unique understanding of that vision and that some men in fact hold ill in their hearts for any who do not believe as they do. Such are they who hold to the doctrines of Islam and the entire population in Afghanistan stands in excess of 98% compliant with that religion.
Colonel Pfaff continues and quotes from Walzter:
"While commanders are expected to conserve soldiers’ lives as a matter of military necessity, the demands of irregular warfare—where support of the local population is critical to mission accomplishment—place almost all the risk associated with conducting operations onto the soldier.
The difficulty for the standard view [conventional warfare] is that when choosing where to transfer risk—mission, enemy civilians, or themselves—combatants must always choose to transfer risk to themselves, except when the mission itself is at stake. By placing friendly combatants lowest in priority in terms of risk avoidance, one effectively denies them the right to life. By denying them the right to life, they are denied the protection of the state they are defending. This view is explicitly held by Walzer who notes:
“The immediate problem is that soldiers who do the fighting …lose the rights they are supposedly defending. They gain war rights as combatants and potential prisoners, but they can now be attacked and killed at will by the enemy. Simply by fighting … they have lost their rights to life and liberty … and they have lost it, even though, unlike aggressors states, they have committed no crime.” [13]"
Doesn't this by necessity draw into question the efficacy of COIN warfare? While history demonstrates not only the unusual risks associated with this sort of campaign, it also illustrates the futility of defining mission accomplishment in an environment where the local population and/or the government is not equally invested to the point of willingness to sacrifice their own lives for their own benefit. The popularized phrase, "winning of hearts and minds" in itself is a damning indictment of the reluctance of the local population to even agree with the "liberating force". And if they must be "convinced" first, was there ever an emergency of conscience to begin with?
This is a further indictment against our Sovereign leader's ability to define the enemy and separate them from the "non-combatant/innocents" in that country. It should also force us to reconsider just how far from the original mission of retribution for the actions of 9/11 we have strayed!
The Colonel then moves the discussion from combat operations to law enforcement with such fluidity as to suggest they not only should exist simultaneously, but says that the Soldier and Marine should be expected to operate in both environments, alternately, with ease. While that may seem reasonable as an operation ages and in fact did happen in both Japan and Germany in the forties, it is worthy to note that the transition there did not occur until after Germany and Japan had capitulated. It is also worthy to note that we were fighting regular forces answerable to the Sovereign governments of both those countries. We were also battling and then working with men who had a sense of personal honor not unlike our own. Their understanding of their responsibilities to their sovereign government and then to us as occupiers was measured by their own government's mandate for them. Once their government capitulated, they essentially laid down their arms.
Neither the Taliban nor Al Qaeda represents a Sovereign government or a people if we are to believe the ISAF and United States narrative. I have argued that at least the Taliban are as much an Afghan phenomenon in Afghanistan as their brothers in Pakistan are, Pakistani. Because of that distinction, separating them from the civilian population is not only daunting, but fruitless because they are, essentially, the same. Making that case need not go further than a quick look at IED proliferation. I will use an analogy: We live on a rural dirt road, in a rural town that is approximately 3.5 miles long and has a population of approximately 100. I can tell you with confidence that no one can travel down this road, much less spit on it without someone and sometimes everyone knowing it. As such, enforcement of the law and security of property and lives here is a relatively simple task. In any case, nothing goes undetected.
In Afghanistan, if we are to believe the narrative, the average Afghan citizen only wants 'peace' and security from the Taliban. According to Karzai and our government, we are (were) there to offer them that opportunity. If this is true and the average Afghan does not agree with the Taliban, then there should be very few instances of IED's being successfully set and nearly zero of ISAF, NATO and American troops falling victim to them. The facts show something decidedly different, however. In a land that is by any measure rural and where digging a hole in a road and setting an explosive device would surely be noticed by some if not all of the population adjacent to the IED site, there is little evidence that a plurality of the population in any of the areas we have operated in, have made a good faith effort to aid in the identification and location of either the IED's or the 'perpetrators' and the staggering numbers of amputees and deaths as a result of that lack of non-combatant good faith effort punctuates the point.
If we extend this conversation of Afghan civilian/non-combatant situational awareness to the presence of Taliban and Al Qaeda members in their midst, it is extremely difficult to make the case that the 'non-combatant' element of Afghan society is not also complicit on some level. And if they are complicit, there is one question that has not been adequately answered by the Colonel and that is whether anyone, with a straight face, can declare any portion of the population as non-combatants. And if we can't, then the apparent ethical problem plaguing our Sovereign government and our upper echelon military leaders is a self-inflicted wound that has neutralized their ability to consider force protection as primary during combat operations in an ideologically monolithic society like Afghanistan.
As a consequence of that misplaced ethical concern for an inappropriately identified non-combatant population, they have unnecessarily endangered our forces and reduced their combat effectiveness by forcing them to consider the lives of these 'non-combatants' as superior to their own. This is the very definition of 'unreasonable risk'.
As an unintended consequence, this has made this Sovereign nation less secure and it's population less safe.
At the same time, they have emboldened an unsophisticated gaggle of murderers and their compatriots (the complicit 'non-combatant') and have caused our allies to have far less confidence in our ability to accurately identify legitimate threats across the world and drawn into question our willingness to meet them on any field of combat with appropriate force.
Colonel Pfaff also quoted Israeli Asa Kasher and then Major General Amos Yadlin who refuted Waltzer's earlier claim that the state should always place the life of the combatant as a last concern remarking:
“…the duty to minimize casualties among combatants during combat is last on the list of priorities … we reject such a conception because it is immoral.” [14] The authors argued that the state’s obligation to protect its citizens from harm—which justifies the use of force in the first place—extends also to soldiers. While recognizing that soldiers do assume risks friendly civilians do not, they argue that soldiers still retain their rights to life. The state may be justified in putting his life at risk because of its obligation to defend all citizens, but the obligation to protect the soldier to the extent commensurate with his duties does not go away."
To which I say; AMEN!
Semper Fidelis;
John Bernard
