Out with the old war, in with the new....

[The Annoyed Man]

I ran across the following in my daily ramblings around the interwebs yesterday, and I thought it was a compelling story. Leftist reporters make fun of New Media news sources, but the truth is that the lamestream media feels threatened by New Media, because they KNOW they are dropping the ball on these stories and burying them to protect their golden boy, and New Media has filled that vacuum and done it admirably.

1389 Blog

On Aug. 26, about two weeks before his was killed, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens attended a ceremony marking the opening of consular services at the Tripoli embassy.

“I’m happy to announce that starting on Monday, August 27, we are ready to offer a full range of consular services to Libyans,” stated Stevens at the ceremony in Tripoli. “This means non-immigrant visas, as well as assistance to Americans residing in, or visiting, Libya.”

The main role of a consulate is to foster trade with the host and care for its own citizens who are traveling or living in the host nation.

Diplomatic missions, on the other hand, maintain a more generalized role. A diplomatic mission is simply a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organization present in another state to represent matters of the sending state or organization in the receiving state.

The State Department website lists no consulate in Benghazi.

According to Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND, the so-called consulate was more of a diplomatic meeting place for U.S. officials, including Stevens.

The security officials divulged the building was routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.

Last week, the State Department gave a vivid account of Stevens’ final day during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It was disclosed that about an hour before the attack began, Stevens concluded his final meeting of the day with a Turkish diplomat. Turkey has been leading the insurgency against Assad’s regime.

Last month, WND broke the story that Stevens played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Assad’s regime in Syria, according to Egyptian security officials.

Here's what I think:

1. The administration has been waging a secret war by proxy against Syria, with the help of Turkey, through the agency of State Department recruited Jihadists (REALLY!?!?!?!....after what we know today about dealing with Jihadists? ). If it weren't so bloody serious, it would be hilarious. But this IS serious, for a couple of reasons:
   
   1. One of the criticisms that democrats lay at the feet of republicans is a history of fighting secret proxy wars by dealing with unsavory people to fight other unsavory people (never mind democrat Charlie Wilson's War, our first war in Afghanistan).
   2. The administration is trying to promote a public image of restraint and peacemaking in the middle east, but it is secretly embroiling our nation in further conflagration, by employing religious crazies......the very same religious crazies who are trying to kill Americans, both in Lybia and in other countries.
2. Now that we know that Ambassador Christopher Stevens was employed in hiring Jihadists to wage a secret war against Syria, using the Benghazi mission to do so, and having just an hour or so before met with a Turkish representative in that effort, does ANYBODY with a brain in his skull doubt that the Muslim brotherhood (still yet another bunch of religious crazies), which is active in Syria, had the mission under surveillance and was deliberately trying to eliminate Stevens and the Turkish diplomat? There is NO WAY on God's green earth that the Benghazi attack was anything but a well-planned and executed paramilitary strike for the deliberate purpose of killing our Ambassador.

This is really a much bigger story than the tragic loss of Stevens and the other Americans killed in Benghazi. It is about a two-faced scumbag of a Chicago thug in the Oval Office, with the assistance of a Sec. State whose background is in the crooked Rose Law Firm and the Whitewater scam, committing the nation to a course of action in the middle east which is in direct opposition to the administration's stated goals of bringing American involvement in middle eastern war to a close. They are extracting us from one open war, while committing us behind our backs to another.

[RoyGBiv]

I'm gonna need some time to digest this in order to agree/not with your two-faced-administration conclusion. At first blush something doesn't feel right about it. I can easily believe the administration is doing these things, but the answer to the question "to what end?" needs to be answered more clearly for me.

That said.... To the notion, if true, that Stevens was "coordinat(ing) with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East".... All I can say is.... HOLY COW BATMAN.!!

[OldCannon]

[Beiruty]

The author of the blog has no clue about the various factions of islamists.

[The Annoyed Man]

I'm gonna need some time to digest this in order to agree/not with your two-faced-administration conclusion. At first blush something doesn't feel right about it. I can easily believe the administration is doing these things, but the answer to the question "to what end?" needs to be answered more clearly for me.

That said.... To the notion, if true, that Stevens was "coordinat(ing) with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East".... All I can say is.... HOLY COW BATMAN.!!

I can think of any of a half dozen reasons why, running the gamut from evil to well-intentioned. To me, that is not the point. Charlie Wilson's War, mentioned above, is a perfect example of "well-intentioned." But consider the ultimate outcome of that one...... Wilson leads the effort to fund Operation Cyclone, a CIA effort to aid the Mujahideen (which became the Taliban) in tossing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But any Mujahideen/Taliban gratitude to their U.S. sponsors was very short lived, as it wasn't very long (just 12 years) before they let the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda set up shop there, from whence they directed the events which lead up to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.

And so now we are apparently aiding a new crop of "Mujahideen," described in the article as "Jihadists," to fight against their own oppressive government. Who among us wants to take the bet that in 12 years from today (the amount of time between the end of Operation Cyclone and 9/11/01) those same Jihadists won't find some imagined grievance against the U.S. and try to kill a bunch of Americans? Personally, I would not touch that bet with a 10 foot pole. Jihadists in the middle east.....and everywhere else, for that matter.....have proven themselves to be less than grateful or honorable, and all too willing to indiscriminately murder Americans.

And all of this is for what? So that we can stay in petroleum bondage to OPEC instead of telling OPEC to go hang themselves and developing our own resources? Strategically, there is only ONE reason other than the conversion time required for the U.S. to become independent from OPEC to continue to try and exert our influence over that region, and that is to protect Europe's access to those resources. Europeans have gotten fat and happy......and socialist.....by letting American taxpayers carry the burden of protecting Europe's interests. I'm not an isolationist, and I do believe that we need to be engaged diplomatically and economically with the rest of the world.....so long as OUR national self-interest is the primary motivator on which those efforts are based—not the national self-interest of people who live 8,000 miles away. If European governments had to provide for protecting their own strategic interests, they would have to dispense with socialism to pay for it.....or collapse. So the longer we subsidize their strategic defense, the longer we subsidize their socialism. The sooner they are compelled by their own discomfort to return to a capitalist economy, the sooner we will have a global playing field on which we can fairly compete.

Europe's major powers are nuclear armed. Germany manufactures the Leopard 2, one of the very best main battle tanks in the world. They don't need our support to keep Russia from pouring through the Fulda Gap, because Russia no longer has the wherewithal to pull off something like that. Russia is still expansionist, but it lacks the power of the former USSR to expand by overrunning western Europe. If the U.S. were energy independent....or at the very least not importing oil from beyond north America....then we could leave Europe to defend its own energy interests in the middle east and concentrate our efforts on more profitable areas. And, to the point of this thread, we could dispense with trying to manage secret wars where we employ crazy people, people who hate us second only to the people against which we are employing them. It's not only tragic, it is just plain stupid that this is the kind of effort in which Christopher Stevens was employed, as a trusted and loyal servant of the State Department.

But it doesn't matter to me whether his motivations are sinister or benevolent, Obama IS running a new secret war in the middle east out of one side of his mouth, and crowing about ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars out of the other side of his mouth on the premise that these nations should be able sort out their own problems.

And in the background, Obama keeps funding all of this by going further and further into hock to China.....while at the same time refusing to cut all of his other spending. So, is it wrong? Heck yes, it is wrong.

[The Annoyed Man]

The author of the blog has no clue about the various factions of islamists.

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

[OldCannon]

The author of the blog has no clue about the various factions of islamists.

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

Shi'a, Sunni, and Sufi are the three I know about (more accurately: the three I've given any thought to). Very significant differences, much like one could spot significant differences in Catholics, Protestants, and Russian Orthodoxy if you looked. My knowledge is pretty rudimentary though.

Good wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_Islam" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[RoyGBiv]

And all of this is for what? So that we can stay in petroleum bondage to OPEC instead of telling OPEC to go hang themselves and developing our own resources? Strategically, there is only ONE reason other than the conversion time required for the U.S. to become independent from OPEC to continue to try and exert our influence over that region, and that is to protect Europe's access to those resources. Europeans have gotten fat and happy......and socialist.....by letting American taxpayers carry the burden of protecting Europe's interests. I'm not an isolationist, and I do believe that we need to be engaged diplomatically and economically with the rest of the world.....so long as OUR national self-interest is the primary motivator on which those efforts are based—not the national self-interest of people who live 8,000 miles away. If European governments had to provide for protecting their own strategic interests, they would have to dispense with socialism to pay for it.....or collapse. So the longer we subsidize their strategic defense, the longer we subsidize their socialism. The sooner they are compelled by their own discomfort to return to a capitalist economy, the sooner we will have a global playing field on which we can fairly compete.

I'm struggling to understand WHY Obama might want to engage in this activity.. It just doesn't jibe with any agenda or goal I would associate with him. Supporting the jihadists isn't going to result in achieving any stated strategic Obama goal. I suppose there's one reason I can make sense of... Perhaps he thinks he can actually buy influence and peace in the region by supporting those that American Colonialism and American Puppet Governments have oppressed while simultaneously taking a weakened posture, from our military stance to our "leading from behind" on so many other things. From the "Apology Tour" in 2009 to troop withdrawals ahead of field commander recommendations to (now alleged) back-room deals via the Benghazi consulate. I suppose a cohesive story can be made from that somehow. Something still feels "missing".

[Jumping Frog]

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

Here are a couple of recent Statfor articles that were interesting:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/salafism ... ratization" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/defining-al-qaeda" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[The Annoyed Man]

And all of this is for what? So that we can stay in petroleum bondage to OPEC instead of telling OPEC to go hang themselves and developing our own resources? Strategically, there is only ONE reason other than the conversion time required for the U.S. to become independent from OPEC to continue to try and exert our influence over that region, and that is to protect Europe's access to those resources. Europeans have gotten fat and happy......and socialist.....by letting American taxpayers carry the burden of protecting Europe's interests. I'm not an isolationist, and I do believe that we need to be engaged diplomatically and economically with the rest of the world.....so long as OUR national self-interest is the primary motivator on which those efforts are based—not the national self-interest of people who live 8,000 miles away. If European governments had to provide for protecting their own strategic interests, they would have to dispense with socialism to pay for it.....or collapse. So the longer we subsidize their strategic defense, the longer we subsidize their socialism. The sooner they are compelled by their own discomfort to return to a capitalist economy, the sooner we will have a global playing field on which we can fairly compete.

I'm struggling to understand WHY Obama might want to engage in this activity.. It just doesn't jibe with any agenda or goal I would associate with him. Supporting the jihadists isn't going to result in achieving any stated strategic Obama goal. I suppose there's one reason I can make sense of... Perhaps he thinks he can actually buy influence and peace in the region by supporting those that American Colonialism and American Puppet Governments have oppressed while simultaneously taking a weakened posture, from our military stance to our "leading from behind" on so many other things. From the "Apology Tour" in 2009 to troop withdrawals ahead of field commander recommendations to (now alleged) back-room deals via the Benghazi consulate. I suppose a cohesive story can be made from that somehow. Something still feels "missing".

Something may well be missing. But the record does show what Stevens was doing, and Turkey hasn't yet denied any of this. I don't think that Turkey believes they require any deniability because Syria has already shelled Turkish towns in the past 2-4 weeks, and they are in an open state of hostility with one another. Publicly, the Obama administration has pressured the Assad administration to make nice with his population. Maybe in the larger regional picture, Obama hopes to keep Syria under pressure and off balance so that she will too preoccupied to act if Israel finally makes a stab at Iran's nuclear facilities. Who knows.

As far as the islamists in the region, I know about Sunni, Shia, Wahhabi, etc. What I was asking Beiruty for was clarification about how these groups interact within the region.....since he stated that the article's author didn't know what she's talking about. Here is what the website says about the author:

About

Welcome to the counterjihad!

We offer news, views, and tech tools for the antijihadist activist: Web 2.0, mobile computing, tech tools and tips, confronting e-jihadism, censorship and media spin. We also offer news and information on the Balkans counterjihad, Serbia, Russia, and the Orthodox Christian Church.

1389 was the year of the Battle of Kosovo. The Serbian army, along with some allies, under the leadership of Prince Saint Lazar, knowing that they were about to die, sacrificed themselves to fight the Turkish invasion to a standstill. Their sacrifice prevented much of Europe from being overrun at that time. In their honor, I have chosen 1389 as the name of this blog, and as my nom de guerre.

For the record:

• 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech is a team blog. There are several blog authors and admins, including both men and women.
• 1389 is the founder and primary admin. 1389 is a female.
• Articles authored by someone other than 1389 will be identified as such. Look for a byline, a category tag identifying the author, or an external link to the source of the article.

Another post with more information:
http://1389blog.com/2012/10/19/the-beng ... -thickens/

[Beiruty]

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

Here are a couple of recent Statfor articles that were interesting:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/salafism ... ratization" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/defining-al-qaeda" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look up wahhabies too. Those who conspired, became outlaws and fought Moderate Muslims and led to the birth of KSA and their Monarchy. I will explain more soon.

[Oldgringo]

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

Here are a couple of recent Statfor articles that were interesting:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/salafism ... ratization" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/defining-al-qaeda" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look up wahhabies too. Those who conspired, became outlaws and fought Moderate Muslims and led to the birth of KSA and their Monarchy.

Beiruty, 'ol buddy, there are no doubt many, many Muslims who deplore the heinous acts of certain Muslims. Until such time as the peaceful and loving Muslims come forward and publicly and vigorously denounce and expose the cowardly and murderous Muslims, all will be painted with the same brush. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. It's kinda' like an infidel is an infidel, eh?

[Beiruty]

Please educate us....I don't mean about the author's ignorance or lack thereof, but educate us about the various islamist factions.

Here are a couple of recent Statfor articles that were interesting:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/salafism ... ratization" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/defining-al-qaeda" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look up wahhabies too. Those who conspired, became outlaws and fought Moderate Muslims and led to the birth of KSA and their Monarchy.

Beiruty, 'ol buddy, there are no doubt many, many Muslims who deplore the heinous acts of certain Muslims. Until such time as the peaceful and loving Muslims come forward and publicly and vigorously denounce and expose the cowardly and murderous Muslims, all will be painted with the same brush. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. It's kinda' like an infidel is an infidel, eh?

Like many moderate Muslims, we do what we can do. Whether this is satisfactory to infidels is beyond my or our control. We do our duty.

[Texas Dan Mosby]

The author of the blog has no clue about the various factions of islamists.

Being a blogger, that is forgivable.

Being a GOVERNMENT intent on influencing a nation / region?

Not so much.

U.S. policy in that part of the world has been pretty much ridiculous since....well, forever. As much as I despise the current administration for its ridiculous policy decisions across the board, this particular bit of ineptitude is not an exclusive trait of the Obama administration alone. On the contrary, this is just another example of the ongoing failure to understand that part of the world, which has lead to yet another U.S. course of action that is just.....ludicrous.

Supporting any faction willing to take on the Syrian government through unconventional means and expecting them to be allied with U.S. policy after the smoke finally clears is just stupid, stupid, STUPID.

Oh well, at least we won't mess up our track record of failures.

[The Annoyed Man]

The author of the blog has no clue about the various factions of islamists.

Being a blogger, that is forgivable.

Being a GOVERNMENT intent on influencing a nation / region?

Not so much.

U.S. policy in that part of the world has been pretty much ridiculous since....well, forever. As much as I despise the current administration for its ridiculous policy decisions across the board, this particular bit of ineptitude is not an exclusive trait of the Obama administration alone. On the contrary, this is just another example of the ongoing failure to understand that part of the world, which has lead to yet another U.S. course of action that is just.....ludicrous.

Supporting any faction willing to take on the Syrian government through unconventional means and expecting them to be allied with U.S. policy after the smoke finally clears is just stupid, stupid, STUPID.

Oh well, at least we won't mess up our track record of failures.

All true, but the thing that any thinking person must find ironic about that part in red is that this administration sold itself in the 2008 election cycle as being the one to restore our good will with muslim nations. Remember Joe Biden? How they put him on the ticket for his foreign policy expertise to fill in the gaps in The One's knowledgebase? Well, either Obama suspects what we all know, that Biden is a on crack, and that he cannot be listened to, and so he's proceeding under his own intellectual power....OR....they've been listening to Jumpin' Joe and he's just been giving Obama extraordinarily bad advice. Either way, Obama looks bad.