RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/perverse-logic/

“CIA director John Brennan is at it again,” writes Raymond Ibrahim below, “equivocating over the nature of jihad by evoking paradigms familiar to the West.”

Many of us are quite familiar with Mr. Brennan’s world view, as we wrote about here when Brennan was first nominated to be CIA Director. As Brennan himself said, Islam had “helped to shape my own world view,” as his travels around the world for more than three decades, had taught him about “the goodness and beauty of Islam.”

Well, Mr. Brennan was at it again last Tuesday, as he spoke at the Council of Foreign Relations. You can read details of his visit below, however we would like to point out one thing.

Raymond Ibrahim writes that the “tendency to project one’s own cultural norms and priorities onto others is the height of arrogance and ethnocentrism.” He is 100% correct. It is something Americans have a bad habit of doing, including in their prosecution of the War on Terror. …” National Security Roundtable

A CIA Chief’s Willful Blindness On Jihad By Raymond Ibrahim

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/cia-chief-jihad-fueled-by-repression-economics-and-ignorance/print/

CIA director John Brennan is at it again—equivocating over the nature of jihad by evoking paradigms familiar to the West.

Last Tuesday, “during an event at the Council of Foreign Relations, Brennan was asked about the ‘war of ideas’ surrounding Islam, which the questioner said many Americans tend to equate with violence.”

The CIA chief responded by saying that al-Qaeda’s ideology is “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an”; that “al-Qaeda has hijacked” Islam; that “they have really distorted the teachings of Muhammad.”

Even so, “that ideology, that agenda of al-Qaeda,” confirmed Brennan, “has gained resonance and following in many parts of the world.”

So what is the CIA chief’s explanation as to why such a “perverse and very corrupt” understanding of Islam—one that has “distorted the teachings of Muhammad”— resonates among Muslims?

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/was-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-lost-because-of-terrorism/ Terrorists want people to know what they did and why they did it. Terrorist groups usually rapidly put out a statement taking credit for an attack that they took part in… or didn’t take part in. Terrorist groups live off publicity and donations. They need to constantly kill people and issue […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-My-renewed-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-346758
When someone who was one of Israel’s best known diplomats touts such silliness, it is difficult to know what is more disconcerting: Whether he actually believes what he is preaching, or whether he doesn’t.

Ambassador (ret.) Michael Oren: Israel must take its fate in its own hands and adopt measures that are a riposte to any Palestinian effort to declare a state unilaterally at the UN…we must not sit idly but declare what our borders are; borders that leave the maximum number of Israelis on our side and afford maximum security for Israeli citizens.

Interviewer: You are talking about a unilateral measure similar to what Ehud Olmert called “Convergence.”

Michael Oren: We should learn from past mistakes…there are dangers involved in all situations – even a two-state one, which by the way is always the preferred solution, a solution that emerges from mutual negotiations. But if this is impossible, we cannot deliver our destiny into the hands of the Palestinians or any external party, [we must] take the required steps to preserve our identity as a democratic and Jewish state, and if possible, acquire American support for these measures. – Interview with Michael Oren on what Israel should do if the negotiations with the Palestinians fail, Channel 2, March 22.

Three months ago, I called on former-ambassador Michael Oren to meet me in a public debate over his support for unilateral withdrawal from much of Judea-Samaria, if negotiations on a Palestinian state fail (See “A public challenge to Michael Oren,” January 23).

Unanswered challenge

In the column, I challenged Oren to address what I saw as the numerous and dangerous lacunae in his policy proposal, to elaborate on its prospective implementation, and to explain how any benefits would, in fact, accrue from such implementation.

I challenged him to give some idea of his envisioned post-unilateral evacuation map, of the frontiers to which he sees Israel withdrawing, and of how they would be demarcated and secured.

I called on him to designate which portions of the western slopes of the Judean-Samarian highlands that command the heavily- populated coastal plain, Israel’s only international airport, much of the trans-Israel highway, and vital infrastructure installations, he would, unilaterally, include under Israeli jurisdiction, and which portions he would, unilaterally, exclude.

These, and other trenchant questions, regarding the feasibility and advisability of his proposed policy paradigm went unanswered – and with good reason. For any attempt to translate Oren’s (or any other) unilateral prescription from the conceptual to the concrete will quickly reveal it to be, at best, impractical imbecility—or worse, deliberately detrimental.

Oxymoronic formula

It pains me to have to resort to such harsh language with regard to the affable Oren, with whom I have always maintained an amicable relationship, and who, has devoted much of his adult life to meritorious service to his country.

But lives – many lives – are at stake and his current proposal is so patently preposterous and perilous that it must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, exposed as the hallucinatory hazard it truly is, and dispatched swiftly from the public discourse, with the scorn it richly deserves.