1-30-09

Obama Seeks Sunni Support for a World at War - Sunni, You're Family

Justin Raimando in his article, 1-28-09 The Mailed Fist and the Velvet Glove quoted Obama from an Arab TV, Arabiya, interview as saying

"My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

"Al-Arabiya: The largest one."

"Obama: The largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith – and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers – regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams." (Why even mention non-believers unless non-believing is important to Obama.) See that little bit of dark green? That's Shiite Iran, Sunni Arabs' biggest foe. Is Iran crazy to take on the West and all that light green? Nope. Iran has India, China, and Russia on its side.

So why is Barack Obama telling Sunni Arabs they are family? Obama needs Sunni Arabs to know that even if the USA propaganda machine tells the world Sunni Arabs are al Queda, Taliban bad guys, and the USA bombs the fool out of Sunni Arabs, Obama and the bad guys who run the USA, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, are really on the side of Sunni Arabs. Which gets us to a point. Why does the bad guy directed USA torture and bomb Sunni Arab women and children? To get Sunni Arabs mad and killing US soldiers and Iranian Shiites. Angering Arabs is why the USA has drones bombing Pakistani women and children. Blackwater killed Sunni and Shiites in Iraq for the purpose of promoting Iraqi bloodshed, which in turn resulted in many more of our brave soldiers losing their lives and war generally increased. See, Iraq Bans Blackwater Now, Gates: Missiles Strikes in Pakistan Will Continue Defense Secretary Says Pakistan Has Been Informed of the Decision

Gates tells members of the US Congress drone missile attacks will continue against Pakistan. Sound a little weird? Yep. The US Secretary of Defense does not have the US Constitutional authority to declare war on Pakistan. That's the power of elected members of the US Congress. Gates directing the US military to bomb Pakistan is unConstitutional, violates International Law, and promotes war because is makes Sunni Arabs hate the USA more and drives them to take their weapons and kill our brave soldiers. Another major absurdity found in the article comes when the Secretary informs Pakistan of his decision to bomb the fool out of Pakistan, as if the notification makes it OK for the USA to make war and violate International Law.

Also Obama and the Rothschilds and Rockefellers want Sunni Arabs hating the American people and the United States. Remember the goal of the Obama, Rothschilds and Rockefellers is to destroy the United States and enslave the American people. Getting people and countries to hate the USA is behind the bad guy directed USA crimes against humanity.

Neocon, Iraq War advocate and AIPAC co-founder, Dennis Ross, is said to have written the most inflammatory sections of Obama's hate speak against Iran in Obama's AIPAC address in June 2008. In it Obama said, The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat. www. Dissident Voice, It’s been reported that Dennis Ross has accepted an invitation to become Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s “top advisor on a wide range of Middle East issues, from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran” and to serve as Special Envoy to Iran.

As one blogger wrote: “Appointing extremely anti-Iran Dennis Ross as ‘Special Envoy to Iran’ is like appointing a pedophile as kindergarten teacher.”

Ross is co-founder of AIPAC; neoconservative ideologue; big-time supporter of the Iraq War;

Obama's reaching out to Sunni Arabs, reminding Sunni they are his family, Obama's threat to nuke Iran, Blackwater and drones killing of women and children are tools used by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers to start war. War weakens people to the point people are easy to conquer and control. The Rockefeller and Rothschilds manipulated the recent world economic meltdown. Economic warfare, conventional warfare, they are the tools the communi$t$, Rothschilds and Rockefellers, are using to conquer the peoples of the planet. And yes, we are living in the time of the Bible Book of Revelations.

January 28, 2009

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14152
The Mailed Fist
and the Velvet Glove
Obama speaks to the Muslim world
by Justin Raimondo
President Obama's interview with al-Arabiya television is remarkable in several ways, but what strikes me the most is that it coincided with the first air strikes on Pakistan under his administration: 22 people were killed, including between four and seven Taliban/al-Qaeda bad guys.

In the Arabiya interview, Obama was at his charming best, and the easily charmed were bowled over. Andrew Sullivan, for example, fairly swooned, and announced it's "about the same thing as inviting Rick Warren or supping with George Will: it's about R-E-S-P-E-C-T."

What would you say if the police came into your neighborhood to confront reported criminals, killed a few – and also managed to knock off 18 or so bystanders? Would you say this shows the police respect the neighborhood?

All the sweet talk won't drown out the protests of the elected president of Afghanistan, who wants us to stop bombing his people too. Yet, truth be told, Obama's honeyed words are alluring:

"My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

"Al-Arabiya: The largest one."

"Obama: The largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith – and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers – regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams."

Even as he was speaking, American drones were snuffing out lives and his generals were planning a wider war. That seems to be the signature Obama style: cool, calm, and collected as he talks out of one side of his mouth, while he's giving the order to kill out of the other. If that doesn't scare you, then you've probably had a little too much of that sweet-tasting Obama-brand Kool-Aid.

Yes, these issues are all "interrelated," as the current Washington buzzword would have it, albeit not in the way Obama imagines. Many Muslims worldwide watched his interview on the same day – perhaps in the same newscast – they heard of the Pakistani air strike. It's a short walk, in this instance, from cognitive dissonance to hypocrisy.

The Arabiya interview had some troubling aspects, an undercurrent of hardness running through the feel-good rhetoric, the mailed fist beneath the velvet glove:

"Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side."

"Paramount," according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, means "superior to all others." This is what President Obama is telling the peoples of the region: Israel comes first, over and above the Palestinians, the security interests of Israel's neighbors, and maybe even above any moral concerns one might have. (You'll note he didn't condemn Israel's brutality in Gaza, even though the interviewer gave him ample scope to do so.)

But there's a message in there for us Americans, too: Israel's alleged security also trumps U.S. interests in the region, an odd situation that, as Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt pointed out in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, has distorted and in many ways poisoned our relations with the Arab world.

Those who criticize our new president on these grounds are bound to be attacked by the party-liners, as Professor Juan Cole has been – if you can take this empty razzing seriously -- by the talk-radio lefty Taylor Marsh. Cole's answer to her is priceless:

"The notion that we should not say something critical of the policy of a Democratic president because it might give aid and comfort to the right-wing enemy is completely unacceptable. It is a form of regimentation, and equivalent to making dissent a sort of treason. We had enough of that the last eight years (it used to be from different quarters that I was accused of traitorously succoring the enemy).

"I am an analyst, and a truth-teller. I don't work for anyone except, in a vague way, the people of Michigan, who took it into their heads to hire me to tell them about the Middle East, and their charge to me is to call it as I see it. I serve no interest. I am a member of the Democratic Party, but I don't accept everything in the party platform, and I am not so partisan that I cannot admire politicians and principles of other parties, whether the Greens or (some) Republicans. I didn't agree to join the Communist Party, such that no dissent is allowed lest it benefit the reactionaries and revanchists."

Amen, brother.

The occasion for the Obama-ite assault on the respected Professor Cole was "Obama's War," a Salon.com piece that questioned the president's announced plan to launch a major escalation of the Afghan war by extending it into Pakistan. As Obama begins to implement this vastly ambitious military campaign, a mindless "you're giving aid and comfort to the 'enemy'" mindset will increasingly dominate the pro-Obama airwaves – yet on the Internet it's a different story, and this is the real playing field on which the future of American politics is being contested.

Don't let the Iraq "drawdown" – if and when it occurs – fool you. Those troops, for the most part, will be transferred to Afghanistan and environs. Bring the troops home? Not a chance.

Aside from signing on to the "war on terrorism" concept, a generational conflict comparable to the Hundred Years War or both World Wars, Obama has also inherited the Bush doctrine, the central canon of which is military preemption of potential threats. He is now acting on that principle: that's what the Pakistan air strikes and the Afghan "surge" are all about.

What rationale is there now for continued U.S. military operations in Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden and his crew have long since vanished into obscurity, and there is no real evidence he's hiding in the wilds of Waziristan, as is constantly inferred. U.S. military operations in Pakistan are a blatant violation of international law, and the potential blowback is frightening to think about. If we destabilize the government of Pakistan, and radical Islamists take possession of the country's nuclear weapons – I don't even want to think about it. Yet this is a very real danger.

If we are really in for an extended military occupation of Afghanistan, and even parts of Pakistan, let's hear it from the chief: how long, and at what cost? I'm very much afraid, however, that, like a president he increasingly resembles, he's apt to say we must pay any price, bear any burden. How many will follow him into that abyss?

~ Justin Raimondo

http://www.answers.com/topic/sunni

The branch of Islam that accepts the first four caliphs as rightful successors of Muhammad.
pl. Sunni or -nis. A Muslim belonging to this branch; a Sunnite.

Sunni, or Sunnite, refers to those Muslims in the majority trend in Islam. Sunnism and Shi'ism split on the question of succession and the appropriate method of choosing a leader. The Sunni accepted the legitimacy of the first four Caliphs (successors to the Prophet). They would then accept as leader anyone from Muhammad's tribe, according to the consensus of the Umma or by the ahl as-shura as representatives of the Umma. Later, in effect, whoever became the leader by whatever route was acceptable to the Sunni. In the Shi'i tradition, Ali was seen as the successor to Muhammad.

The core beliefs of Muslims are based on the Qur'an and sunna of the Prophet Muhammad and centrally concern God, Muhammad, and the Umma. By the eleventh century, five hundred years after the Hijra (622, the flight of the Prophet and his followers from Mecca to Medina), a consensus on these beliefs emerged. Beyond these core beliefs, within Sunni Islam, is a diversity of interpretations and perspectives. While indicating what is meant by this diversity, it should be remembered that Islam is strictly monotheistic. The Qur'an is clear about God and his Oneness. As to the question about the relationship between God and man, the Qur'an is ambiguous. Exploring the oneness of God and His relationship with man, the Sunni focus on the ‘immanence of God’ or the ‘transcendence of God’. One response to the ambiguity is the Sufi (mystic) tradition which expresses a yearning for personal communion with, and love for, God. In contrast, the answer to this and less crucial questions which the Qur'an did not answer was found in hadith which were used to elaborate the silent or ambiguous areas of the Qur'an. In this way, the sunna of the Prophet became a source of law. A legalistic response resulted from the search for answers or enlightenment from the sacred sources which produced a diversity of schools of law or more precisely, methods, doctrines, and schools of thought (madhhab (madhahib, pl.)) Madhahib were networks of colleagues, masters, and disciples around the doctrines of a great Imam. These doctrines evolved through a constant interplay with politics. Eventually, these madhahib were reduced to the four that were equally accepted by all Sunnis. These madhahib elaborated and interpreted Islamic Law—the Shari'a.

The Hanafi madhhab uses reason and analogy based firmly on orthodoxy. It allows the use of subjective opinion and customary law, which made it more flexible and was also accommodating to secular needs (the Hanafi madhhab was officially recognized by Ottoman and Moghul Empires and other major states). The Maliki madhhab, which rejected rational interpretation of the Qur'an though it allows reasoning by analogy as long as the public good is not injured, is dominant in much of Africa. The Shafi'i madhhab indicates a methodology (usul al-fiqh or roots of jurisprudence) whereby ijtihad (independent reasoning applied to legal interpretation of the sacred sources) can be safely utilized. It also recognized the validity of analogy via this methodology. This methodology influenced the other madhahib found in Africa, along the Arabian coastline, southern India, Indonesia. The Hanbali madhhab adheres to strict observance of the terms of the Qur'an and sunna with limited scope for ijtihad or analogy, and to this madhhab belong, Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), and through emphasis on the work of an earlier Hanbali, Ibn Taymiyya (1328d). Al-Wahhab focused on a recommitment to the Qur'an, Prophet and His Companions, and a strong commitment to anti-saint worship and anti-Sufism. Wahhabism became predominant in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. However, in Saudi Arabia, the other madhahib can be utilized where the Hanbali madhhab is silent.

Thus within Sunni Islam, there is a set of central core beliefs from which radiates a very diverse set of contrasting responses and institutions. (See also Shi'i, Islamic politics, Islamic fundamentalism, fatwa.)

— Barbara Allen Roberson

Obama’s Neocon
by Gary Leupp / January 9th, 2009

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/01/obama%E2%80%99s-neocon/

It’s been reported that Dennis Ross has accepted an invitation to become Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s “top advisor on a wide range of Middle East issues, from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran” and to serve as Special Envoy to Iran.

As one blogger wrote: “Appointing extremely anti-Iran Dennis Ross as ‘Special Envoy to Iran’ is like appointing a pedophile as kindergarten teacher.”

Ross is co-founder of AIPAC; neoconservative ideologue; big-time supporter of the Iraq War; foreign affairs commentator for Fox News; fellow with Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), sister organization of AIPAC described by one distinguished scholar (Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi) as “the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States;” a man who has stated (in defiance of the U.S. intelligence consensus) that Iran will “be a nuclear power, if not a nuclear weapon state” by April 2009 if not forcibly deterred.

The only reason to make him envoy to Iran is to have him repeat the Bush-Cheney ultimatum: cease enriching uranium (something the Non-Proliferation Treaty allows all signatory nations to do, and which Iran does under tight IAEA monitoring) or face a U.S. strike.

As the leader of the U.S. negotiating team during the Israeli-Palestinian talks in 1999-2000, Ross was described by fellow U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller (also Jewish) as “Israel’s lawyer” and criticized for not “critically examining” what following “Israel’s lead” would mean for U.S. interests. He is widely believed to have authored Obama’s fawning AIPAC speech presented last June.

In short his appointment does not mean CHANGE or HOPE for any so naïve as to suppose that an Obama presidency might bring either. It likely means more war, based on more false pretexts, to further reconfigure Southwest Asia.

On Oct. 2, 2002, Barack Obama told an antiwar crowd in Chicago that he opposed “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

Now he’s in bed with the neocons. His supporters ought to ask, “What happened”?

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/29/iraq-bans-blackwater/

Iraq Bans Blackwater
US Contractor Cited for 'Improper Conduct and Excessive Use of Force'
Posted January 29, 2009

The Iraqi government has informed the US embassy today that it will decline to renew Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in the nation. This will require the security contractors, still being used by the State Department, to leave the nation once the joint US-Iraq committee finishes drawing up its formal guidelines for contractors.

According to Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the decision came as a result of “improper conduct and excessive use of force” by the contractor, still infamous in Iraq for its 2007 killing of 17 civilians in Baghdad.

The move was hardly a surprise, as the State Department was advised over a month ago to look for a replacement security service on the belief that Iraq would do this. The current contract with Blackwater is scheduled to expire in the spring. While it is unclear how much long the committee will take in drawing up the guidelines, the US has assured it will abide by Iraqi law regarding its contractors.