http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-afraid-to-call-it-a-_war-on-terror_-94700279.html

Andrew C. McCarthy: Obama afraid to call it a 'war on terror'
By: Andrew C. McCarthy
OpEd Contributor
May 24, 2010


Part one of a three-part series

President Obama's administration has been roundly ridiculed, and deservedly so, for its aversion to the language of war -- indeed, for the word war itself. From the Bush language purge, though, it was but a short hop to this sorry destination. Short and inevitable.

Saul Alinsky, Obama's community-organizing inspiration, waxed at length about language in "Rules for Radicals," about the power of words to inspire ... or to enervate.

The president learned his lessons well: bloodless prolixity deftly imposed from who knows where within Leviathan's sprawl. It was not the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or even the National Intelligence Directorate but the Office of Management and Budget that advised the Pentagon that the word war is now out.

"This administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror,' " said the new, March 2009 guidance. Our warriors were curtly told, "Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

How radical Islam and the left are sabotaging America

Monday: Obama is afraid to call it a war on terror

Tuesday: Ignorance about Islamic radicalism is our downfall

Wednesday: State Department offers terrorist apologetics on silver screen
That this "overseas contingency" on which we are "operating" has left a rather large (and still unfilled) hole in the ground in lower Manhattan apparently was beside the point. Or, better, was exactly the point.

War is a powerful word, redolent of power, force, zeal and national purpose. That is why the left routinely invokes war in its beloved campaigns against poverty, obesity, and other abstractions.

Real wars, the forcible defense of our nation and the pursuit of our interests, are to be avoided. So are real enemies.

Thus came the complementary announcement (an affirmation filed in federal court by Attorney General Eric Holder) that "enemy combatants" aren't enemy combatants anymore. They are simply "individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay."

Unfortunately, that formulation ran the risk that we might confuse jihadists with Cuban refugees.

During the Clinton administration, in which Holder served as deputy attorney general, those apprehended while seeking to escape Communist tyranny also became known as "individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay" -- a policy aggressively defended by the Justice Department at the time, without much harrumphing from the left.

Perhaps that's why Holder interchangeably used "individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations" -- more precise, though not quite as catchy.

As in the final Bush years, "Islam" is not to be uttered in conjunction with "terror." Our "contingency" is only with "violent extremists," and we wouldn't presume to suggest that they are motivated by anything other than, say, George Bush, Abu Ghraib or the existence of Guantanamo Bay.

In Obamalogic, people who live in foreign sharia societies where women are stoned for adultery somehow appreciate the American jurisprudential distinction between detention under the laws of war and detention under civilian due process. And what do you know? Just like the American left, they turn out to be profoundly offended by the military detention.

That, we're told, is the root cause of terro-- er, violent extremism -- notwithstanding that there was no Gitmo on 9/11 or during the raft of atrocities that predated it. The word terror is passe. We wouldn't want to use a term that comes straight out of the Koran. Rather than terrorism, Obama's hapless Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained, she prefers the term "man-caused disaster."

Bloodless is one thing, but mindless?

A civilization fights to preserve itself or it dies. Has ours become so hollow, such a pale imitation of its former self? Do we lack the capacity even to speak of the evils arrayed against us? Have we become so cowardly that our censure is reserved for our saviors, not our pillagers?

The Grand Jihad is banking on it.



Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor and author of "The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America," from which this is adapted.

===


http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/the-grand-jihad-how-islam-and-the-left-sabotage-america-by-andrew-c-mccarthy.html

The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the left Sabotage America by Andrew C. McCarthy
Filed under Mideast no comments
A review by Ruth King

Andrew C. McCarthy’s remarkable new book The Grand Jihad—How Islam and the Left Sabotage America puts the Obama administration, U.S. agencies tasked with maintaining our security, Islamism and the hard left on trial.
McCarthy honed his prosecutorial skills as Assistant United States Attorney for the southern district of New York. From 1993 to 1996 he was in charge of the successful prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and other jihadists for plots to bomb the World Trade Center, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations complex, and possibly the FBI’s downtown Manhattan headquarters.

Long before 9/11 focused our attention on Islamic terrorism, McCarthy connected the dots between the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane–the first jihad murder committed on American soil–and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. He described this in devastating detail in his first book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter, 2008). In his new book, McCarthy lays out his case with scrupulous care, backing his arguments with solid research, including a comprehensive knowledge of radical Koranic doctrine and its guiding principles of jihad, sharia and conquest.

The book opens with a bang. “And so he bowed. Barack Hussein Obama swept into the royal reception hall. With the election won and power assumed, it was suddenly alright to hype ‘Hussein’ again, and the new President had adjusted accordingly.”

The leader of the free world whose treatment of Great Britain bordered on rudeness bowed reverentially to a tyrant whose munificence has contributed to slavery, terror, jihad and a systematic weakening of America’s institutions and values. Swiftly, McCarthy presents the accusation: “The subversion of those values is Obama’s fondest wish: the work of his presidency, the Hope behind the Change: the President was bowing to a shared dream.”

McCarthy rejects the notion that Obama is a crypto Moslem. Instead he describes Obama’s real faith as neo-communism, “…feverishly spiritual in its zeal to tear down the existing order under the banner of its all purpose rally cry ‘social justice.’” McCarthy argues that the hard left and the global Islamic project have shared purposes, and seemingly irreconcilable differences are shelved for the greater goal, namely, destroying the state, conveniently packaged as” fundamental change.”

The left uses the word “progressive” and Islam uses the phrases “moderate” and “Religion of Peace” but McCarthy debunks both. Along the way he revisits the bloody legacy of the PLO’s ”nouveau pacifist” Abu Mazen/Abu Abbas in the murder of women and children and focuses on the Arab lionization of the “brave leaders and model warriors” who carried out the most brutal attacks. He is scornful of those who see the “root cause” of Moslem hostility to the United States in the Israel/Arab conflict. McCarthy writes: “Israel serves as the commentariat’s unified field theory for explaining all Islamic hostility.” Along with the formidable Diana West, McCarthy was one of the few who took General Petraeus to task for his recent echoing of the “unified field theory” on Arab hostility.

Under the heading “The Sabotage Campaign in Action” the author outlines the saga of escalating defiance by Moslems and their representative organizations and the craven response by our institutions including the Transportation Security Administration, the Pentagon, Congress, and Homeland Security.

Chapter by chapter McCarthy indicts those who air brush the enemy; those in the academies, the courts and the media and our financial system who resolutely see no jihad; who ignore the sedition emanating from mosques, madrassas and Moslem charity and fraternal organizations; who seek “fundamental change” by destroying our institutions and values from within. He courageously takes the indictment right up to the White House and the administration’s “lone isolated extremist” knee-jerk reaction to every terrorist outrage. He excoriates President Obama for his delay in making a public statement and the Justice Department for its rush to offer Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber Abdulmutallab who almost brought down an airliner over Detroit.

Since the book went to print we have had another episode with the Times Square terrorist. Even New York’s mayor Bloomberg speculated that the terrorist was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.” Something indeed!

McCarthy concludes : “No Yemen, no Britain, no Islam, no ideology. Most of all, no Grand Jihad. A lone ‘isolated extremist.’ Just like Nidal Hasan, the Christmas bomber had spontaneously combusted without rhyme or reason, impossible to predict, impossible to prevent. From this kind of threat America could not and would not defend itself.” And, writes McCarthy, “A half a world away, King Abdullah smiled. He knew a bow when he heard one.”

This is the best book on the subject I have read and I have read most of them.

Andrew McCarthy, take a bow!
-
Product Details
Pub. Date: May 2010
Publisher: Encounter Books
Format: Hardcover, 464pp
Sales Rank: 88,557
ISBN-13: 9781594033773
ISBN: 1594033773

Synopsis

The real threat to the United States is not terrorism. The real threat is Islamism, whose sophisticated forces have collaborated with the American Left not only to undermine U.S. national security but also to shred the fabric of American constitutional democracy—freedom and individual liberty. In The Grand Jihad, bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy offers a harrowing account of how the global Islamist movement’s jihad involves far more than terrorist attacks, and how it has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep.

For years, McCarthy warned of America’s blindness to the Islamist threat, but in The Grand Jihad McCarthy exposes a new, more insidious peril: the government’s active appeasement of the Islamist ideology. With the help of witting and unwitting accomplices in and out of government, Islamism doesn’t merely fuel terrorism but spawns America-hating Islamic enclaves in our very midst, gradually foisting Islam’s repressive law, sharia, on American life. The revolutionary doctrine has made common cause with an ascendant Left that also seeks radical transformation of our constitutional order. The prognosis for liberty could not be more dire.

Biography

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor who prosecuted the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven other jihadists for bombing the World Trade Center in 1993. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., and a contributing editor at National Review. He is the bestselling author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

===

theisraelproject.org

Extremist Palestinians Attack UNRWA Summer Camp in Gaza
Israel Continues Taking Measures to Ease Freedom of Movement for Palestinians in West Bank


Easing restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank (courtesy Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 23, 2010)
Israel Continues to Transfer Humanitarian Aid to Gaza

Palestinian militants vandalized a United Nations-run children’s summer camp in Gaza Sunday (May 23). About 20 men, some armed with assault rifles, tore up tents and burned storage facilities.[1] The attackers also left behind three bullets with a note threatening to kill John Ging, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza which runs the camp, unless its summer camps are canceled.[2]

Meanwhile, Israel moved forward with confidence-building measures by announcing the removal of 60 checkpoints in the West Bank.[3] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the goodwill gestures after a meeting between Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and IDF generals.

In addition to dismantling the checkpoints, Israel plans to improve daily life for Palestinians by:

granting tourists and 50 Israeli tour guides entry to Bethlehem through all crossings;
opening the Dahariya crossing near Hebron and the Keidar road near Ma’ale Adumim;
facilitating travel for senior Palestinian businessmen through security crossings; and
allowing Arab-Israeli civilians to visit the West Bank through all crossings along the security fence and the city of Tulkarem on weekends through the 104 crossing.[4]
The confidence-building measures came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Mideast Envoy George Mitchell discussed steps Israel could take to advance progress on the proximity talks.[5]

Other possible measures include releasing Palestinian prisoners, turning over more territory in the West Bank to Palestinian security forces[6] and transferring land to the Palestinians for a road from Ramallah to the new, planned Palestinian community of Rawabi. The land had originally been allocated for the expansion of Jewish communities.[7]

On Sunday, Ging condemned the attack on the summer camp, calling it “vandalism linked to extremism and an attack on the happiness of children.”[8]

Although Hamas officials condemned the attack,[9] Fatah spokesman Osama Alqawasmi blamed Hamas for the camp’s destruction. In a prepared statement, Alqawasmi said, “Hamas and its security forces are totally responsible for destroying and burning of UNRWA camp.” He added that Hamas was “targeting the education process [in Gaza] and the UNRWA curriculum.”[10]

The attack on the UNRWA camp likely was carried out by Islamist terrorist groups based in Gaza with links to the global jihad movement.[11] The camp is one of the sites where UNRWA’s annual “Summer Games” are scheduled to take place.[12]

In the past three years, jihadist groups in Gaza with an even more extremist agenda than Iran-backed Hamas have grown considerably.[13] Hamas seized Gaza from Fatah – the political party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – in a bloody coup and established its own government there in June 2007.[14]

Like Iran-backed Hamas, the extremist jihadist groups that attacked the summer camp don’t believe in making peace with Israel. They also believe that even Hamas has deviated from the true Islamic path by considering compromises and long-term ceasefires.

The jihadist groups have been responsible for attacks against Israel and have also attacked Internet cafes, Christian sites and other targets in Gaza considered “Western.” These organizations also planned to attack former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the special envoy for the Mideast Quartet involved in brokering a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, on visits to Gaza. In both cases the plots were thwarted.[15]

Hamas also organizes summer camps for children in Gaza in which weapons training, marching drills, martial arts and anti-Zionist and anti-American songs are used to indoctrinate children.[16] In 2009, Hamas ran 700 camps for 100,000 Palestinian children – including elementary school and university students. The camps also put strong emphasis on Islamic studies including memorizing the Koran. [17]

The summer camps are part of a campaign of indoctrinating children and purging any trace of Western culture, as stipulated in Hamas’ founding charter. Article 15 of the charter states that “The ‘ulama [scholars] as well as educators and teachers, publicity and media men as well as the masses of the educated, and especially the youth and the elders of the Islamic Movements, must participate in this raising of [Islamic] consciousness. There is no escape from introducing fundamental changes in educational curricula in order to cleanse them from all vestiges of the ideological invasion which has been brought about by orientalists and missionaries.”

The next article states: “We must accord the Islamic [young] generations in our area, an Islamic education…so that every Muslim, fighting Jihad, could live out his era aware of his objective, his goals, his way and the things happening round him.”[18] Click here to read the full text of the Hamas charter

In September 2009, Hamas broadcast an episode of its children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” in which the costumed character Nassur the Bear told the program’s child host, “There won't be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They'll be erased... We want to slaughter them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?...And if they don't want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we'll have to [do it] by slaughter.”[19] Click here for more examples of Hamas’ incitement

Hamas recognizes that the UN-run camps are the biggest competition to its own camps and has repeatedly denounced them to reduce their popularity. In 2009, Hamas officials alleged that drugs were used in the UNRWA camps and a Hamas-affiliated Web site claimed that the UNRWA camps spread disease.

On Aug. 2, 2009, a Hamas spokesman said the UNRWA camp was a “barbaric attack on our children at the inferior summer camps [those run by UNRWA] whose objective is to corrupt their morals with drugs and other things.”[20]

Hamas also criticizes the UN camps for being co-ed and promoting reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. UNRWA's commissioner general for the PA denied the camps promote normalization with Israel, saying the camp activities “have no relation to normalization or anything like that.”[21]

This year, boys and girls will be separated at UNRWA’s camps. [22]


Footnotes:

[1] “Militants attack U.N. Gaza summer camp,” Reuters, May 23, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64M0RT20100523

[2] “Masked men vandalize UN summer camp for Gaza kids,” AP, May 23, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9FSGAP80

[3] “Easing restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 23, 2010, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Easing_restrictions_Palestinians_West_Bank_23-May-2010.htm; Katz, Yaakov, “IDF to ease West Bank restrictions,” The Jerusalem Post, May 24, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176251

[4] Katz, Yaakov, “IDF to ease West Bank restrictions,” The Jerusalem Post, May 24, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176251

[5] “Proximity Talks: PM Netanyahu Meets with Senator Mitchell in Jerusalem,” Israel Prime Minister’s Office, May 20, 2010, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/Spokesman/2010/05/spokemitchel200510.htm

[6] Mozgovaya, Natasha; Ravid, Barak; Khoury, Jack, “PM halts Ramat Shlomo building as indirect talks begin,” Haaretz, May 10, 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/pm-halts-ramat-shlomo-building-as-indirect-talks-begin-1.289320

[7] Krauss, Joseph, “Signs of progress lacking as US envoy ends Mideast visit,” AFP, May 20, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hBGGAwKIrj1y8CUVuhWh1iJpjN5A; Grossman, Shmulik, “Settlers to battle Palestinian road plan,” YnetNews, May 17, 2010, http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3890860,00.html

[8] “UNRWA condemns attack on its Summer Games location,” UNRWA Web site, May 23, 2010, http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=691

[9] “UN camp for Gaza children torched,” BBC News, May 23, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/10143791.stm

[10] Translated by TIP staff: Hamid, Chad, “Hamas Government Pledges it will Pursue UNRWA Camp Attackers,” Alghad (Jordan), May 24, 2010, http://www.alghad.com/index.php/rss/index.php?news=507037

[11] “Militants attack U.N. Gaza summer camp,” Reuters, May 23, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64M0RT20100523

[12] “UNRWA condemns attack on its Summer Games location,” UNRWA Web site, May 23, 2010, http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=691

[13] Hamas steps up its struggle against the global jihad-affiliated networks trying to challenge its control of the Gaza Strip,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Sept. 1, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_e080.pdf

[14] “Hamas Coup in Gaza, ” The International Institute for Strategic Studies Web site, June 2007, http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/v
olume-13---2007/volume-13--issue-5--june-2007/hamas-coup-in-gaza; “Hamas takes full control of Gaza,” BBC, June 15, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6755299.stm

[15] “Hamas steps up its struggle against the global jihad-affiliated networks trying to challenge its control of the Gaza Strip,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Sept. 1, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_e080.pdf; “YMCA library building in Gaza City blown up,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Feb. 21, 2008, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/gj_200208e.pdf

[16] “Participation of children and teenagers in terrorist activity during the Al-Aqsa intifada,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 30, 2003, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/1/Participation+of+Children+and+Teenagers+in+Terrori.htm

[17] “Hamas summer camps in the Gaza Strip integrate social activities with political and Islamic indoctrination and semi-military training,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Aug. 16, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e078.htm

[18] “Hamas Charter (1988),” Palestine Center, http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html, accessed May 24, 2010

[19] “Hamas teaches kids to kill Jews,” Palestinian Media Watch, Sept. 23, 2009, http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1339

[20] “Hamas summer camps in the Gaza Strip integrate social activities with political and Islamic indoctrination and semi-military training,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Aug. 16, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e078.htm

[21] “Hamas summer camps in the Gaza Strip integrate social activities with political and Islamic indoctrination and semi-military training,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Aug. 16, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e078.htm

[22] “Hamas summer camps in the Gaza Strip integrate social activities with political and Islamic indoctrination and semi-military training,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Aug. 16, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e078.htm