About James Foley’s final statement
[UPDATE 11:00 PM: For anyone who thinks Foley was a terrorist sympathizer, or that he was not a courageous man, please read this tribute from a fellow-writer and American named Herschel Smith. It begins:
Journalist James Foley (he corresponded with me as Jim) has been beheaded by ISIS. I choose not to remember him from the recent photographs, but as the wonderful young man he was. As a note to ISIS, I don’t believe a word he had to say while under duress. I knew him better than you did. You wasted your time with his confessions, or charges, or whatever you forced him to say.
Read the whole thing.]
A lot of people have wondered why James Foley would have read an anti-American statement before he died. As commenter “kit” writes:
I read the anti American, pro terrorist statement they asked Foley to read. I also saw exerpts from his twitter account that seemed he was in sympathy with the terrorists. If he knew they were going to kill him, why would he want to die like a traitor? I would want to go out cursing Islam. He read a horrible anti American statement, instead.
Why would that statment be his Mom’s proudest moment of her son?
In my first post on Foley’s killing, I mentioned the statement and indicated that we can only guess as to why:
… [I]t is difficult if not impossible to know whether [Foley] meant his words or not. Perhaps Foley thought that if he read the statement his captors might spare his life, although his words indicate that he fully expected them to kill him. If the video is for real””and so far there is no indication whatsoever that it is not””his statement would have to have been made while he was under an extraordinarily extreme form of coercion and dread.
So my first answer is that I don’t judge anyone who is subjected to circumstances like that for whatever he/she may say. Of course, extreme bravery and resistance is desirable, as with Fabrizio Quattrocchi. But that is the exception rather than the rule, and cannot be expected or demanded; very very few people are capable of it.
I also have read at some sites that Foley was a Muslim sympathizer and an America-hater, but the evidence presented has not convinced me that this was really the case, and when I skimmed his Twitter feed (cited by some as indication of his terrorist sympathies) I saw nothing there that would suggest such a thing. But even if it turns out to be true (which I doubt), that would have nothing to do with the fact that his death, and the manner of it, is an outrage. It also does not change the fact that, as I wrote in that first post, he was under such a degree of coercive pressure and fear-inducing control that I refuse to judge him harshly for what he said while under that duress.
But having had some time to think about it and to read many people’s comments, I believe that the most likely explanation is that the terrorists had made him rehearse that scene many times, reading the script without being killed. This would have had the effect of calming a victim into thinking this was just another mock execution, no different than the others—a ploy that would be a bit akin to the Nazis placing fake showers in the gas chambers to lull their victims into docile cooperation, or Jim Jones’ forced rehearsals for the mass suicide of his followers many years later:
…[Jim Jones] had many rehearsals for the killings, which had the effect of getting people used to what would be happening and more ready to accept it, as well as more doubtful when the real thing began to happen that it actually was the real thing; maybe it was another rehearsal?
Kidnappers have their victims completely at their mercy, and their victims know that. So another possibility is that Foley was told that if he didn’t read the statement he would be tortured to death rather than killed quickly, and the video would be taped and shown to his family. If so, he probably would have calculated it would be better to cooperate, and that those people who mattered would understand that he was under duress when he did so, and that he might have done it to spare them further pain.
I’m sure those are not all the possibilities, either. But there is no reason to conclude that Foley meant what he said, or that he wasn’t brave. As for his grieving parents, who are under extraordinary and extreme stress as well, not for one moment are they going to be judged harshly by me when they say that his end was a courageous one and that his life was courageous as well.
[NOTE: After I wrote this post I read more of the statement from Foley’s parents. They seem incredibly brave to me under the circumstances, and their statement indicates that they are (and that he was) proud Americans.]
I suggest we disregard any statement beginning with “I would have…” unless it comes from someone who has been in an identical situation.
Instead of focusing on what Foley was thinking, it might be best to focus on bho’s actions that greatly assisted the birth of isil. Leading from behind is not leading.
I wish I were as kind as you are Neo, but I guess I am too jaded. When I read that “he cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethically cleanse the Chritians of Aleppo,” I found it disturbing
In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his tweets contained terrorist propaganda.
When a journalist named Austin was kidnapped by jihadists, Foley ridiculed the idea that Syria jihadists would do that.
He was an activist, not a journalist.
That does not mean that I am not outraged by his beheading by the very people he sympathized with.
And yes, I do not know what I would do facing a beheading but I hope I would curse their rotten bones. I know my brother would.
There are real heroes in America, I am just not sure he was one of them. He was, however, a very poor and unfortunate guy and I am truly sorry about his death. My biggest empathies lie with American servicemen. They are heroes to me .ANd I am not saying that anyone thinks he is a hero. I am speaking for myself.
Foley was a Marquette alum.
No grad of a Jesuit school would turn on his country.
Neo’s theory makes perfect sense.
kit:
You read someone’s statement saying that he cheered them on. But did you read his own statement about it? I don’t trust what someone says that someone says unless I read it myself. I have not find anything like that in Foley’s writings, and so I don’t believe it at this point.
I totally agree with you, Neo. I think we criticize people in situations like Foley’s because we don’t like to accept the sad and scary truth that anyone can break, given the right (or wrong) circumstances. We don’t like to believe the universe can be so unjust. But whenever we choose to make victims like Foley the object of our condemnation, the torturers and killers win again. Stalin exploited this dynamic during his show trials to brilliant effect. His victims were so pathetic that people found it easier to overlook what they suspected had been done to them.
I’m inclined to think that he was a useful idiot whose captors decided was no longer useful.
His mother’s statement, “We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world”, sure sounds to me like she was acknowledging that American foreign policy was to blame. It almost sounds like something Stanley Ann Dunham might have said.
Obviously, none of this justifies his beheading, but his is not an uncommon fate for those who get too close to revolutionary movements.
rickl:
I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion at all.
I think pleas to ISIS are useless, but I think parents absolutely must try. And if they’re going to try, they have to try to figure out what language might reach the terrorists. The language Foley’s parents used seems to me to be an attempt to do that without going so far as to actually blame the US.
rickl: “sure sounds to me like she was acknowledging that American foreign policy was to blame.”
I wouldn’t go there at all. It sounds more like something a mother, any mother, would say in the hopes of saving her child.
What mother wouldn’t say or do anything to spare the life of her child?
When Foley was being held hostage in Libya, he later wrote in MU publications that prayer helped him survive.
He was tortured and tricked.
Charles Says:
August 20th, 2014 at 8:17 pm
I believe she said that after he was killed. “We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages.“
Again, focusing on Foley and what may or may not have been his motivations is a dead end. It plays into the isil game plan. Foley is not the issue. The barbarism of the muslims is the focus point. There is no middle ground for negotiations with the death cult. They must be obliterated…. men, women, children, goats, sheep, and camels. All must be in our cross hairs if the west is to survive. Keep your eye on the ball.
I agree with parker and am willing to join an anti-muslim death cult to prove it. The mere idea of sawing off a living, breathing, talking human head from the front is more than I can stand. These people came from somewhere in their thousands; they didn’t just hatch yesterday.
I am not interested in Foley’s last words, but I would like to know more about his words and agenda as a reporter. I get the sense he saw himself as a champion for victims. There were good guys (victims) and bad guys (oppressors). The regimes in Libya and Syria were the bad guys. The ‘rebels’ were the good guys. It probably did not sway him that the good guys were murderous thugs. They are ideological true believers. So was he.
Isil has decreed that the hindquarters of slaughtered female goats and sheep must be covered least they cause in pure thoughts. Enough said to illustrate the depths of the perversion of islam. These are people who fear vaginas, regardless of mammalian species. Kill them all without hesitation. Its the only way to be sure.
It would be a lie to say I wouldn’t read some idiotic statement to keep someone from sawing my head off with a dull sword- IF I believed it would save my life. So that much I can easily understand from a naive individual. Foley knew what these guys were capable of since he had been covering them for years. I’m inclined to believe he thought he’d be spared for whatever reason, and after hearing his interview on O’Reilly, I’m inclined to think his reasoning was that he was critical of US policy. Which is not uncommon for American journalists who work chiefly abroad. Most who do what he did are not there to show the good deeds of America.
I’d even speculate he was kidnapped as a result of his own desire to get closer to these guys through contacts he trusted.
All that said, his views of American policy don’t warrant us not feeling sorry for him. I can’t think of a more god awful way to die than he did, and his differences with US policy, if he had them, are his right as an American to express. We all do that here, regularly. That’s what makes us different. I think.
But if I were his parent, I would curse his murderers, and vow to see them in hell, or send them there myself. Begging these bastards for mercy is beyond my ability to comprehend.
I simply disagree. I would feed Western sympathizers of islam to islam all the live long day and be happy for it. My guess is that the problem would fix itself rather quickly. Westerners who apologize for islam do it out of a distant fear and from their own weakness, as I have suggested is rampant in the liberal worldview, an integral part of it’s manifestation. But a perceived threat compared to a real threat actually does change their minds. As with the savages they support, medicine for one is medicine for the other. Those in islam do come to respect those who destroy them without thought or worry, if they do so successfully. It’s the only thing they understand. It would also work with American minorities who seem to have mistaken income redistribution with debt through slothfulness on the part of those who should have been managing, not babying, them.
To all:
Please take a look at my UPDATE at the top of the post.
James Foley may have been a man who believed he was trying to tell the story of the suffering in the ME. If he was critical of American foreign policy, that would be the norm for most journalists.
My heart bleeds for his parents. Regardless of his politics, they loved him and now he is gone in the most vile way imaginable. Their lives will never be the same. I commend them for showing the brave face that they did in public. I could not have done that.
My desire is to see this country finally realize that they are at war with us, no matter what we want. We cannot ignore this. It’s time for us all, citizens and leaders alike, to stand up and start defending ourselves. If we don’t, we will go the way of Rome – brought down by barbarians who just outlasted the vaunted Roman power structure.
southpaw, rickl, et.al.:
Please see my update at the beginning of the post.
In addition, re Foley’s parents:
Even though their son had been killed, they had just gone through (and are still suffering from, as they will be for the rest of their lives) one of the most searing experiences possible for human beings to experience. First a two-year-long period in which violent and ill-meaning terrorists had captured their son and held him under unknown but probably vile conditions in unknown and probably vile places. Then, they had seen a video of his forced “confession” and beheading. Broadcast around the world. They also knew that other young men—other parents’ sons, other people’s loved ones—are right now, even as they spoke, being held by those very same people, who threaten to do the very same to them.
The Foleys, almost more than anyone on earth, would have compassion for those men and their families, and fear that they would suffer the same fate. Anything—ANYTHING—they could do or say that might save their lives, and spare those families, even if it was the longest of longshots, would be something they would try.
So cursing the kidnappers out would hardly be wise. In their compassion, they tried to say something, ANYTHING, that they thought would help.
I do not think it has any chance of helping. But even the smallest possible chance would be a chance worth taking.
I don’t think it takes much imagination to imagine all of that. I don’t understand how anyone could condemn them for saying what they said.
I certainly am not going to condemn Foley for anything he said while being held captive by such monsters. I agree that it’s quite plausible they had rehearsed the scene before — some of what I’ve read about Saddam-era prisons indicate the technique was common there.
Side-note: I saw Obama vowed to “protect Americans everywhere” following Foley’s execution.
I don’t trust that “promise” for one second. Obama hasn’t the slightest idea how to “protect Americans” aside from apologizing and apologizing some more. After all, “protecting Americans” would mean admitting there was something Americans needed to be protected *from,* i.e. capital E-Evil that won’t go away if you ignore it and can’t be dissipated with words. I wouldn’t trust this guy to protect an old lady across the street, let alone the nation from savages. Folks, we’re on our own here.
Worst. President. Ever.
What if the President started executing the remaining Gitmo detainees?
One at a time and post the executions on YouTube.
Firing squad only.
It’s clear the video was shot in (at least) 2 different takes. The first, Foley is cool, calm, collected. The second, you see him sweating and twitching as he realizes just how close he is to death. This leads me to believe he had done this before and was simply cooperating with his captors in the belief that he would not be harmed.
rickl said:
“His mother’s statement, “We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world”, sure sounds to me like she was acknowledging that American foreign policy was to blame. It almost sounds like something Stanley Ann Dunham might have said.”
Actually, it sounded very dignified to me. She didn’t want other parents to suffer what she had just suffered. Perhaps it wasn’t the statement you would have made. But, ISIS had just released a video of her son getting beheaded the night before she made that statement, so I’m willing to cut her a break. And I think you should be, too.
neo-neocon, kudos for remembering Fabrizio Quattrocchi. We are all going to need some of his courage. We have a President who not only puts party before country, as he projects that the GOP does when it doesn’t implement his agenda but represents the people who elected them, he puts golf and Martha’s Vineyard before country. We are all on our own. For short term gain political gain he’ll let anyone cross the border. Mexican drug cartel members, MS-13, Hezbollah, ISIS, it doesn’t matter. We are all now on our own.
And he wants us to think that scratching his head with that middle of finger of his is just a habit of his; that he isn’t flipping us the bird. Yeah, right.
As part of my interrogation training my captors demonstrated how well they knew the details of my personal life. Names of cousins, girlfriends – their addresses and phone numbers were stated. They said they would kill my girlfriend if I didn’t read a prepared statement. It was chilling and this was only a training exercise. I suspect this may be what happened here.
The terrorists might also have told Foley that if he didn’t cooperate the other hostages would suffer for his insubordination.
The sad thing is that Foley probably died still believing Islam is a “religion of peace”.
http://www.wnd.com/2009/12/117991/
OK guys, first read this.
Now let’s think. These guys understand one language. No, that language is not force. Force is for Mafiosi like Al Capone, who was a crook, but had a sense of honor. ISIS understands the language they speak, the language of terror.
I’m not sure how to deal with Putin and Ukraine. That’s for another time. Putin hasn’t declared war on America. ISIS has.
To Do List for CinC:
1) Convene Congress. Like FDR (hey, Democrats can kick a$$ too!!) did after Pearl Harbor. Formal Declaration of War on ISIS.
1a) Resolve that America will not negotiate with ISIS. The U.S. of A. will accept only an unconditional surrender (sound familiar?)
2) Resolve in Congress that as ISIS does not respect The Laws of War, America will not respect them either.
3) Resolve that Ameica will use all means at her disposal to prosecute and win the War. Bring back the draft. Sell war bonds. Whatever.
3a) America will seek reparations to cover the costs of the war. These will come from the petroleum resources in territory liberated from ISIS by U.S. forces.
Such wanton brutality should hopefully discourage other high minded infidels from entering the sandbox.
Even though Foley had a reputation of being more than fair minded for the Islamist cause, he was nothing more than grist for the Islamist cause.
Notably, his prior kidnappers were agents loyal to the Duck of Death. The REAL reason he got out of that one: the Duck of Death was a loser… to the Islamists.
&&&
The fuzzy details of his abduction strongly indicate that he was fingered as an infidel journalist BECAUSE he wired off photos and such while in a border town in Syria.
It was the mistake of a lifetime: Erdogan had long since converted that border strip into ISIS’s main ‘communications zone.’
{ That’s military-speak for a rear area that constitutes the logistical pipeline for an army in the field, sometimes “zone of the interior” in military history texts.}
That Foley didn’t — in any way — appreciate that he was standing on ISIS’s turf goes far in illustrating just how over his head Foley was.
Thus we can deduce that in all of Foley’s history readings, military histories did not figure large. BTW, that’d fit the journalist profile. Anyone seeped in military history would stay the heck out of the crossfire. (Like me, for instance.)
It’s just a fact of civil wars: the factions can’t stand/ won’t trust ‘neutral’ observers.
Every faction defaults to the (bizarre) assumption that such high profile journalists are spies/ agents.
But any historian could know that no intelligence service would field such assets. Forget James Bond, the CIA/ GRU want totally faceless agents — with no profile at all.
They’d rather use someone as pliant as a vacuum cleaner salesman. This tick was used to good humor in “Our Man in Havana.”
For such an occupation requires that one rove all over town peddling wares that have universal demand and application. Further, most people would be AFRAID to draw such a salesmen into ANY conversation — for fear that a ‘hard close’ would soon follow. (!)
&&&
As has been related elsewhere, the French and other NATO members have been doing a land office business financing AQ (wholesale, and in all its flavors) by way of ransoms. (France merely holds the per capita record.)
Thus we have ISIS demanding $100,000,000 for Foley — from the US government — which has yet to pay off on a single ransom.
This American/British policy has caused AQ to shun American and British targets. Somehow, they’ve discovered that either the Delta Force or the SAS may be dropping in consequent to any revenue operation.
These NATO ransoms largely finance AQ.
This gambit is also tied into the Somalian piracy. It was ENTIRELY launched by AQ in the Arabian Peninsula. AQ got 20% straight off the top — the traditional cut given to Mo’, BTW.
Once Moscow and Beijing got involved, the Somalian ‘navy’ was put out of action.
The UN sent a private dick to investigate all of the above. He was promptly kidnapped — for ransom — right at the airport — just off the plane — in Somalia. Obviously, the ‘government’ was in on that op. He was hustled off quicker than Ninoy Aquino hitting the tarmac.
Sherlock never saw it coming.
Even Inspector Clouseau knew enough to wear a disguise!
FT.com
For Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and an expert in al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism, the defining characteristic of the Isis/AQI approach, however is the their particular “use of violence”.
“Groups like al-Qaeda used violence in a tactical way, in a way proportional to their aims,” he says. “For Isis and AQI the savagery is the point. The action is what matters, not the ideas. To Zarqawi and Baghdadi [the Isis leader], the spectacle and the limitless force — beheadings, crucifications, people being buried alive — is what matters.”
anyone see if he sent a message while readnig the way others have in the past while forced to read stuff?
Jeremiah Denton, Vietnam POW who blinked ‘torture’ in Morse code during TV interview, dies
http://www.startribune.com/252914451.html
he died this past march..
captured and forced to read a statement
his actions been copied in movies ever since
KBK….
Gerges, the genius, has yet to figure out that the ENTIRE reason for the blood spectacle/ spectacular is to raise a mass army.
It’s recruitment jihad.
It’s goal is to provide the Caliph, via levée en masse, with an overwhelming force that can’t be countered by a professional army.
The tip off being the bizarrely short jihadi ‘training’ proffered to the proles.
And, they are going for it.
Al-Baghdadi, et. al. are NOT interested in war porn/ blood porn, per se.
They do know, from first hand experiences, blood porn is an overwhelmingly effective inducement. It excites blood-lust and ethnic rage. It makes the proles vicariously powerful; for some, even sexual arousal.
Al-Baghdadi is NOT looking for patriots, he’s looking for twisted, frustrated souls, rather like the Joseph Frady’s alter ego/ psychopath. (The Parallax View (1974))
Fawaz’s ‘insight’ is utterly useless.
Al-Baghdadi wants POWER. He wants to be Caliph — THE Caliph. Aping Mo’ is just agitprop for him.
blert, your correct..
the less we do, the more who join them
the stronger we appear, the fewer join them
leaders tell the people they use what is needed to get actoin from them, whether it be truthful or a lie, its self serving… just see what obama has said… its the idea of socialist leadership, a complete lack of respect towards others.
and yet. they have not realized that its not that the left has no shame, the left has no guilt, which is sociopathic.
this is why they set up voting booth registrations about 10 feet away from where the gentle thug giant was killed… come protest, and register democrat…
And its not just ISIS that is converted towards totalitarianism… Islam is being USED. because they will take the fall if they fail, and if they succeed, they will be wiped from the face of the earth.
ie. the left wants total control… they do not want to pay the price of the attempt, which is generally “cleaning house”… so they fight by proxy. in this case using islam.
they are using hegel to favor islam to take over or help them to. the idea being that once there is no more united states, such a thing is not an issue any more, as wihtout limits, how hard would it be to sweep the countries of islam and exterminate everyone?
not hard at all…
and thats the point
and if the blacks help? what will happen to them?
same deal… because if they do things to them now and use them and so on, without limits what will they do to them?
My anger is directed toward islam. I do not believe in the devil, but islam is the one religion which makes it seem most possible.
The galling thing is that islam is an absurdity, a farce, a really really, bad joke.
After 911, the world should have been flooded with relentless propaganda (in the positive sense) deconstructing, ridiculing, disdaining islam. Hope and psychological reassurance should have flooded the globe to encourage apostasy.
The effort could only have come from an organized effort of the United States government, which is still true.
But just as we (the general public) are bizarrely expected to assess BO without reference to his biography, who he is, so too we are expected to fight a death battle with an enemy – – islam, the religion – – without reference to islam, what it is.
The solution to ISIS is mass manufacture and dropping of GBU-43/B MOABs (Massive Ordnance Air Blast).
We desperately need to return to WWII concepts of collateral damage and rules of engagement.
In war ONLY winning matters, nothing else.
When we’ve killed as many civilians as we did during WWII (60 million) we can mull over the moral issue, but not until then.
Harold you are correct about ROE. That is why I knew COIN was never going to work in the long run. COIN is what missionaries and the Peace Corps are about. When you bring in the US military, it must be to win. Marines are trained to kill and they risk all. Margaret Thatcher knew that Bush I’s commitment to the limited aims in that region would result in future problems on a grander scale. Let’s face it, we are outnumbered (and if not outnumbered, then at least out-propagandized via the MSM) when it comes to getting the populace behind what must happen. In the lead-up to the Normandy invasion, 700 people died in the practice maneuver. That information only recently came out. In the 24 hr news cycle world, I doubt we could have won WWII.
Tonawanda…
Look at Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-colonialism; the struggle of the have-nots against the haves; the state monopoly over economy, which was very much patterned after the Soviet Union. All of these things did not come out of Islam. Islam is not that developed.
Azar Nafisi
“a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. – Yury Andropov to Pacepa
The following terrorist organizations have been established by the KGB:
PLO
National Liberation Army of Bolivia (created in 1964 with help from Ernesto Che Guevara)
the National Liberation Army of Colombia (created in 1965 with help from Cuba)
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969
The Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975
The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s.
The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB. However, the main KGB activities and arms shipments were channeled through Wadie Haddad of the DFLP organization, who usually stayed in a KGB dacha BARVIKHA-1 during his visits to Russia.
Led by Carlos the Jackal, a group of PFLP fighters accomplished a spectacular raid the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries office in Vienna in 1975
Transfer of anti-tank grenade RPG-7 launchers, radio-controlled SNOP mines, pistols with silencers, machine guns, and other weaponry to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through Wadi Haddad who was recruited as a KGB agent in 1970 (operation VOSTOK, “East”)
read up on Aleksandr Ivanovich Lazarenko (he eventually ended up head of department V)
The arms given to HADDAD:
50 west german pistols (10 with silencers and 5k ammo)
50 captured MB-ZI maching guns with 10k ammo
5 british made sterling automatics with silencers and 36k ammo
50 american AR15 automatics with 30k ammo
15 booby trap mines
5 radio controlled SNOP mines
When hitler fell, guess who took up the charge and created these things? and notice how the american left, which follows the soviet line, also favors these things and pretends they are not what they are, and give dizinformatzia…
We desperately need to return to WWII concepts of collateral damage and rules of engagement.
cant… our president would be up on war crimes given the treaties signed after the war…
people have to read about what the rules are, who did what, and so on… its not hidden, its just that your not going to know it by osmosis like the lefts zeigeist
Bookworm has an excellent fisk of Obama’s statement regarding James Foley (after which he apparently jumped in a golf cart with a big smile on his face):
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2014/08/21/obamas-awful-statement-about-james-foley-was-even-worse-than-i-predicted/#comments
I found this article linked at Gates of Vienna, unfortunately the article has no citations or supporting references. But at least it is a starting point for those who want to examine its contentions:
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/bracken-the-islamic-jihad-conquest-formula/
Artful – – I am not sure what your point is.
Sharon W: “That is why I knew COIN was never going to work in the long run. COIN is what missionaries and the Peace Corps are about. When you bring in the US military, it must be to win. Marines are trained to kill and they risk all.”
You’re wrong about that. Marines, like soldiers, are trained to kill but they (we) are trained to kill in a targeted specific manner in the service of achieving larger political objectives.
Winning a war means winning the peace. COIN is about securing and building the peace.
Eric, We will have to disagree about the aims of the military. It reminds me of Sherman’s March and dropping the bomb in Japan. The peace comes after the victory. When exactly has the victory over the aims of Political Islam occurred in the Middle East? To me COIN represented a band aid on a still fresh wound. Jefferson created the Marine Corps to fight the Muslim pirates that were marauding the sea lanes and kidnapping American ships, etc. In our time, with a trained military with enough firepower to truly win we get this:
“U.S. military ships and helicopters had been trailing the Adams yacht, the Quest, since Friday, shortly after armed Somalis seized the vessel. The Adams were believed to be en-route from southern India to Oman, news sources say.”
The couple were murdered while the military was on watch. A different time indeed.
blert said:
“It’s just a fact of civil wars: the factions can’t stand/ won’t trust ‘neutral’ observers.
Every faction defaults to the (bizarre) assumption that such high profile journalists are spies/ agents. ”
But it isn’t bizarre. Just look at the recent Israeli/Hamas conflict in Gaza. With only a couple of rare exceptions reporters willingly cooperated with Hamas” propaganda campaign. On the one hand Hamas would see the reporters as spies if they reported the truth. On the other hand Hamas saw the reporters as useful tools to promote their narrative. It wouldn’t be as effective coming from some official arm of Hamas, such as their own official press agency. It would be dismissed as propaganda. But if it’s reported by willing propagandists working for ostensibly independent print and TV news corporations it has the ring of truth.
I thought it was telling that the Finnish journalist who inadvertently reported the fact that Hamas was launching rockets from a hospital parking lot was outraged when it was repeated by Israeli media. Her reporting was not supposed to help Israel. It was supposed to help Hamas.
We live in the age of the activist journalist. They are agents, not objective reporters. They aren’t in the business to report the facts but to shape the narrative. They are agents for a cause. As Chris Matthews famously said, he sees it as his job to help Barack Obama to succeed. The unusual thing is that he was so open about it. Usually activist journalists try to maintain the pretense of objectivity while promoting their causes.
The NYT assigned at least one reporter to cover Occupy Wall Street who was actually prominent in organizing Occupy Wall Street. Ezra Klein tried to keep his JournoList a secret as he and the other supposed journalists coordinated their stories to help the Obama administration. After he was exposed, I guess, he felt free to openly pursue his activism while still working at the WaPo.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/ezra-klein-isnt-a-reporter/
And why not? This will not get you fired at the WaPo, which itself has an agenda.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/03/washington-post-falls-for-left-wing-fraud-embarrasses-itself.php
Of course, it didn’t “fall” for a left wing fraud. The WaPo is a left wing fraud. One of the supposed reporters who tried to smear the Koch brothers and the Keystone pipeline is Juliet Eilperin, who is married to the climate propagandist for John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. As the Powerline post notes, it is merely an Obama administration front group (it fails to note it’s funded by Soros). Podesta is a special adviser to Obama on, among other things, energy policy and is rabidly anti-Keystone pipeline. Like Hamas, the CAP knows its propaganda is more effective if it appears in a newspaper than if it’s released on CAP letterhead.
And don’t forget Walter Duranty won a pulitzer for knowingly repeating pure Soviet propaganda through the NYT. He may have been the first but he wasn’t the last Soviet agent posing as a journalist for a supposedly reputable American media corporation.
What would be bizarre is if groups like ISIS and Hamas didn’t view reporters as spies or agents. Because activist journalists view themselves as exactly that.
I was utterly disgusted to see “blame Foley” comments, critiquing him for reading the obviously Islamist-prepared statement. What dogmatic little hero-in-his-own-mind would pompously assert such a criticism much less while the outrage over the cowardly murder of this man was still fresh? HOW IS IT NOT OBVIOUS that he was making every effort to survive? HOW IS IT NOT OBVIOUS that no one can possibly hear such a statement, given under such extreme duress, and believe that it credibly reflects the reader’s beliefs? HOW IS IT NOT OBVIOUS that we just do not know or understand (or can ever understand) the circumstances under which he read that statement? Apparently, some little men, with little thoughts, starring in their own little mission impossibles cannot see what is obvious to everybody else.
What would you do? You don’t know until you’ve been under this sort of duress so don’t bore us with your heroic speculations. (BTW, Jim Foley had been captured by these freaks before and went back into the zone to continue his work.)
Artful — – I am not sure what your point is.
conveniently obtuse… eh?
Blame the creators, not the tools…
Blame those who train them, and supply them, not the tools
If X didnt do that, then Y could not exist.
but how else do you create economy and become filthy rich enough to collect breguet watches if your majority product is a commodity?
see: “Putin’s Extravagant $700,000 Watch Collection”
Hard to have such a collection at over six times your salary… eh?
and you can tell its them because there are tons of articles much like the aids and anthrax articles insuring that the blame is with the US… (same as the constant zionist conspiracy stuff)
track it down and its IRAN puttng out the info, and claiming its from Snowdens stuff, which others have gone through, and its not there…
“Yet Iranian government officials and independent analysts in Iran alike cited IRNA’s report as definitive proof of ISIS’s American and Israeli origins,
the “Snowden Hoax” can be traced to a German website, http://www.shababek.de, and Kareem al-Baidani.
the most vociferous are those who are commonly serving the point of disseminating stuff that always seems to help the poor victimized downtrodden state that has a long history of such games
its actually more likely that they are funded by Qatar, who will vastly benefit over current incidents…
same old same old…
I don’t know what James Foley’s parents are going through and I don’t want to know. I can only imagine, from a great distance, the grief and horror over how their dear son was mistreated. If James Foley was my son I would hesitate to go on tv and give his disgusting murderers, and their sympathizers, the satisfaction of seeing that grief. The Foleys might have other motives in mind, though. I don’t know and am completely open to other points of view on this.
I’m with your sense of why Mr. Foley said what he said before the Vile Butcher offed his head, Neo. My decades of studying the Human Evil of the 20th century is certain that men can be made to say anything. Ask the keepers of the dungeons of the Lubyanka and Lefortovo. And, the interrogation cells at RSHA HQ on Prinz AlbretStrasse. This young man’s family and friends have my heartfelt prayers and condolences. May ISIS turn on a massive-slow spit in Hell for Eternity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNMi8fXi5Os
^^^
This was the Academy Award winning montage from The Parallax View.
In the film plot, Frady gets a REAL head case to fill out an application for the Parallax Corporation.
He then wins this sit down audition, which is designed to see whether Frady is psychotic enough to be a tool for Parallax.
It’s relevance for ISIS and fanatic jihadis must be obvious.
Steve57…
To clarify:
The assumption that’s bizarre is that journalists operating in one’s military zone are devious HOSTILE agents.
In the case at hand, Foley was NEVER hostile to ISIS or any other Islamist faction.
He was also never an intelligence asset for anyone. He could never stumble across ‘secrets’ in the first place. And, then, there’s the basic reality that ISIS haze absolutely NO trick military assets that the GRU or CIA might be interested in.
To the extent Foley did ANYTHING — either in Libya or Syria — it was to attempt to get the average Achmed’s story on the Muslim revolution.
&&&
In an operation that was first seen in Afghanistan, ISIS (like the muj) moved to ransom their Western friends — back to the West.
This, in spite of the fact that the West was ALREADY funding the jihad!
Robert K Brown [ Soldier of Fortune magazine, circa 1984 ] related that visiting Westerners — to include CIA operatives — have been found to be at extreme risk — particularly in the extreme northeast — where OBL was already operating. He related that even those (CIA infidels) bringing the muj weaponry were being abducted. They had to be rescued on the QT. One must imagine that they were bought for the ransom, after which the muj involved became cut off from the sugar.
Brown related that he was getting his dope straight from the CIA and SOF players. (Many of the CIA agents in that era and time were simply ‘retired’ Special Operations re-treads.)
OBL’s crew was — on the record — totally excluded by the CIA — of which OBL screamed at the top of his lungs. OBL was NEVER on the CIA’s pad. He never went rogue.
Daniel Greenfield over at Sultan Knish has an interesting post about Foley over at his place. Still, it’s awful stuff, and needs looking after. I remember years ago working with WWII vets, particularly of those who served in the Pacific. I got first hand what they had seen and been up against. This time it’s different, very different. No uniforms, open borders and a sympathetic faction in the WH. I pray that in the waning days of the regime that our “Ellsburg” emerges.
Neo – in case you’re still reading these threads –
I think my choice of words was bad. I don’t condemm or blame the parents in any way. Nor do I blame Foley for his own death, but nobody can deny he was placing himself in a lot of danger. If he believed he was immune as a journalist, and would be considered neutral, then he was obviously mistaken. I don’t know, and I don’t really care what he thought about US involvment in the ME; neither he nor anyone like him deserves what he got. I feel very bad for his parents and family. What I was awkwardly trying to convey is that I lack the capacity to understand their response. But I don’t condemn it.
I am wired differently – I can only imagine the grief I would feel if it were one of my children, but I am certain it would be unbearable. Just thinking about it makes me sick.
The difference between me and the Foley’s to Foley’s murderers would be very different – maybe it would be foolish as you say, but it would be a wish to see them all drawn and quartered. I’m a barbarian myself. I don’t believe that they would spare anyone of us for the asking, and I certainly don’t believe these people are too stupid to know that neither of our sons is directing US foregin policy.
They know exactly what they are doing — the more we’re horrified by them, the more they enjoy it and the more they use it. That’s the point. I just wouldn’t give them them the satisfaction of seeing my grief or my horror, and I wouldn’t bother pointing out to them my inability to affect foreign policy, because as I said, they aren’t idiots. The already know that a well meaning journalist is irrelevant in matters of state. He is however, exactly the kind of nice victim they are looking to butcher, because of his decency, it seems all the more senseless to US.
If they had murdered my son. I would want hell to rain down on them, and I’d do what I could to make it happen. And I’d tell them that if I was asked.
So I don’t blame or condemn his parents, and I sincerely hope their statement works for someone.
But I have no doubt there’s nothing that we can offer them that will replace their objective to horrify and intimidate all of us. We will either win or lose this battle of cultures. There won’t be a compromise on their part. You don’t need to look further than Israel and the rest of the Arab world to see that not going to end with a handshake.
I believe they are an enemy that need to be destroyed, and they need to know that we wouldn’t hestiate to do it. Continuing to repeat that we mean them no harm is more harmful to us than saying nothing. It’s exactly the response they are looking for. Anything else is delusional and ignores everything we have seen and they have told us.
Art…
It’s my contention that ISIS picked up a lot of talent when the Jordanian cohort went rogue.
They were trained by the West — with a huge assistance from Amman — and generous financing from KSA.
They were vetted against AQ sympathies.
They were not vetted against Islamic fanaticism.
It’s not for nothing that ever since they left Jordan they’ve entirely fallen off of the radar — in the MSM.
It’s also not without significance that the second the Jordanian cohort showed up, ISIS had a huge rift with AQ. You guessed it: money troubles. Any AQ connection would queer any sugar coming from UK, USA or KSA.
And then, ISIS/ ISIL promptly goes hammer and tongs on AQ in Syria — straight out of the blue — amazing — NOT.
What Barry and Riyadh never figured on was that the ENTIRE crew would go rogue. Al-Baghdadi proved to have enough sugar to sate the boys. (Thank you Qatar!)
Well, he who has the gold — and spends it — makes the rules.
American coms have to be at the heart of al-Baghdadi’s empire. Again, this is something that was totally against the ‘plan.’ The Jordanian cohort was supposed to go after Assad — not sell crude oil to him at a horrific hair cut. (!)
%%%
The lunatic idea that Israel is involved in any way — well, such is Muslim ‘logic.’
&&&
When the boys went rogue, they became toxic in DC. Hence, the MSM cheerleaders can’t utter a word about this missing cohort.
%%%
BTW, you must note that Assad is sitting fat and sassy in Damascus. The Jordanian cohort was supposed to provide the (southern) pressure to sweep Damascus.
Instead, all of the action went straight up to the Euphrates river valley.
###
The collapse of Mosul smells like a tale that turns on both social media AND communications penetration.
Famously, the Wehrmacht was on a roll only so long as it could read Allied signals. (Africa, Atlantic, Russian front ALL ebbed and flowed on B’dienst penetrations. It’s STILL taboo to lay this out before the general public. Instead, EVERY other imaginable rationale is proffered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_code_breaking_in_World_War_II
Post-war German accounts (self flatteries like “Lost Victories” Manstein ) don’t utter a single word about the signals battles.
The reality is that EVERY single super debacle — coming and going — turned on signals failures.
Of course, von Manstein portrays his ‘analysis’ as being based upon a brilliant general appraisal of the larger situation. As IF!
%%%
The American attempt at a hostage rescue was almost certainly frustrated because we have leaks (traitors) in our own ranks. Consequently, the opfor knows enough to move their hostages right under our noses — in total signals silence.
If you believe that ISIS figured out the time to move was ripe — on their own — then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is suitably priced — and going fast!
Traitors leaking the NORAD hyjacking test scenario best explain 9-11. That NORAD WAS running a scenario only came out when its top general testified to the 9-11 Commission. The matter was quickly ‘faded’ by the MSM.
Naturally.
Similarly, Clarke jetted the bin Laden clan out of the US — on his own authority. Well, he certainly claims he did. (Clarke was, yet another, hold-over appointment from Clinton — the President that couldn’t bring himself to arrest OBL even when he was to hand in KSA. (!)
(And here I’m supposed to believe Darth Chaney is compromised!)
###
By this stage, the Jordanian cohort can’t be more than a slice of al-Baghdadi’s jihad army. He’s raising more ‘talent’ at a ferocious pace.
But, still, they make a nice stiffener — especially with their communications technology training. Everything points to it being quite sophisticated.
[Mosul — the ransom business — and the http://WWW.]
fakewooder — you forgot 4) send in the B-52s!
Sharon W — there can be successful COIN strategies, we’re just not using one. Alexander had a very effective COIN strategy when he conquered Afghanistan:
“Hi, folks, welcome to the fabulous new Alexandrian Empire! For the small annual tribute of 200 bushels of wheat, twelve cows, two bulls, and 36 sheep, you can be part of this wonderful new society. You’ll learn Greek, and have the benefit of Greek plays, Greek philosophy, and Greek science. There’ll be peace and prosperity. You’ll be able to travel the roads freely, all the way to Europe. And the Persians won’t be bothering you any more.”
“Excuse me, sir, but what if we don’t want to become part of this new empire?”
“Oh, no problem. We’ll just come here, kill all the men, rape all the women, sell them and the children into slavery, raze your village to the ground, burn all your crops, plow under your fields, and sprinkle them with salt.”
I understand Big Al only had to carry out his threat a couple of times before everybody decided Alexander was just the guy they needed. And the Greco-Bactrian Empire lasted 300 years.
There are no limits to my response if jihadists harmed my kin. I would feed any muslim I could lay my hands on to my cousin’s hogs, with her assistance and blessing. No quarter, no mercy. If you as a muslim have not publically and loudly announced that you will shun/kill jihadists you are the enemy. Until the west adopts this resolve, we are playing a losing hand. No quarter, no mercy.
parker:
Any Muslim?
Isn’t that pretty much equivalent to the jihadi point of view?
See this.
Any muslim. We are, unfortunately, at the point where all must be held to account. If they have not publically renounced jihad, they are the enemy. We are, unacknowledged, in a war of barbarism versus western civilization. No quarter, no mercy.
Not all terrorists are Muslim. Everybody knows that. Most terrorists are Muslim. In the US, we have to go back to Ayers, McVeigh, and the feds at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
However. Once you have a sufficient number of non-terrorist Muslims, they begin generating terrorist Muslims, after generating no-go areas, rape epidemics, gay-bashing, jew bashing.
So, not all Muslims are terrorists. There is, one way or another, something to think about.
I shan’t criticize or judge Mr Foley for whatever he may have said or done. I do’;t know what duress he was under or how many takes there may have been. The one thing that I think everyone should learn from this is that regardless of what you think of ISIS or the merits of their cause, and regardless of what you think of the rights and wrongs of America’s Mideast policy, there are no safe neutral observers when you are dealing with savages. A number of reporters have found this out in the Middle East, and some of them found it out the hard way. James Foley was one. Lara Logan was another. There was a book out some time back by an Italian journalist who had been taken hostage by the Taliban, and while he got out with his life, he got to watch them saw his Pakistani driver’s head off.
People have a tendency to believe that because they’re there to be an impartial observer that they’re safer than they really are. And we should think carefully about this because apparently Special Forces soldiers put their lives on the line in an attempt to save Mr Foley. Had they been caught, they too would have been beheaded.
Maybe the message needs to be that if you choose to play observer in this place and with these people, you do so at your own risk.
I am not labeling all muslims as jihadists. What I am saying is muslims who are not jihadists tolerate/fear jihadists who live in their communities. Can anyone cite one single fatwa issued by an iman condemning those who slaughter and enslave in the name of allah??? Unless ‘moderate’ muslims become intolerant, with extreme measures, of those who commit violence in the name of allah they are by default guilty by association.
To judge a man by what he says while a sword is being held to his head and he is defenseless is silly. The words he said when he died are not important.What is important is the picture of his execution. It is the picture of pure evil. Why do we ban this picture (as we did the pictures of 9/11)? Because we do not want to admit that there is pure evil in the world? Why does our government engage in the semantic war of whether the executioneer is a good muslim or not? Is our government seeking a divinity degree from Harvard? Why doesn’t our government call the executioneer what he is–pure evil? Might it be because we are expected to do something about pure evil, but we are cowards?
Anybody can see the “beheading” video is fake. Anybody can see the “grieving parents” are either not his parents, or they ARE his parents who secretly know he’s actually still alive – or were parties to his death.
Get a clue, folks, it’s just another lie by the warmongers and oppressors. GET A CLUE.
Mark:
Step away from the computer and take a break.
Another possibility — Steven Sotloff was dressed in an identical orange outfit. Possibly the killers told James that they would kill Steven too if he didn’t read it . . . or maybe even that they’d kill Steven instead. I’m not saying that this is what happened. But no one knows what happened, and there are all sort of ways they could have gotten him to read it. The least likely option seems to be that it was what he wanted his final words to be.
It seems like the person who will best be able to answer this question in Steven. I hope he will be able to come home soon and answer it for us.
I believe Foley who was a graduate of three prestigious schools would have had more eloquent last words even under the conditions. One could say that he was forced to say certain things under duress but he seemed rather composed considering. When looking at his final statement, the first two parts are very generic and could have been dictated to him. The last part, the part where he addresses his brother – that’s where it gets weird. He sounds different – there is a strange rhythm to it. He addresses his brother in twelve sentences compared with the single sentence that referred to his parents. His brother is in the Airforce and Foley implores his four times to: Think John. Why? Is he trying to send a message? Honestly, I’m leaning towards him trying to code lat and long for the location they are being held at.
Richard Saunders
I would not go there. ISIS doesn’t have enthusiastic support from the population in the territory they control. However, you are right on one point. Massive military force must be applied against barbarians.
I deliberately stopped my war plans in middle, to allow myself some time to reflect.
The problem of Western Muslims going to join ISIS (Jihadi John) is especially serious. During WW2, ethnic Japanese (and IIRC Italians) were put in internment camps. Perhaps we need something similar here.
4) Resolve that we are, indeed, at War with the Religion of Islam, at least with certain people’s interpretation of it. Please, no more of this nonsense from Judge O’Toole, claiming that the Jihadi version of Islam is Not a True Scotsman. He, and we, should knows better.
4a) People suspected of sympathizing with the enemy should be given the option of publically swearing allegiance to the Government of the country in which they reside, and renouncing the use of violence against that Government, its citizens, its laws, and its allies. This should take place in a courtroom, before a Judge. The person making the oath shall, furthermore, sign his or her name, to a typed copy, which will be further signed by the presiding Judge, and kept on file.
4b) Any action, OR SPEECH, found (by a Court) to be in violation of the oath, will result in that person being stripped of his or her citizenship, classified as an enemy spy, and handed over to the Military as an Enemy Combatant.
Pursuant to item (2), that person will no longer be protected by any Right, Law, or Treaty, that is not recognized and generally adhered to by the forces with whom we are at War.
4c) Anyone who declines to make this oath, after being duly ordered by a Court to do so, shall be placed in an Internment Camp for the duration of the War.