[redpillage]

Original article at the NYT (archived copy).

Robert Spencer over at the JihadWatch delivers good pertinent commentary:

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Break out the champagne: State Department officials quitting over “complete and utter disdain for our expertise”

We can only hope that with the departure of these failed State Department officials, their failed policies will be swept out along with them. Chief among these is the almost universally held idea that poverty causes terrorism. The United States has wasted uncounted (literally, because a great deal of it was in untraceable bags full of cash) billions of dollars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and other countries in the wrongheaded assumption that Muslims turn to jihad because they lack economic opportunities and education. American officials built schools and hospitals, thinking that they were winning over the hearts and minds of the locals.

Fifteen years, thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later, no significant number of hearts and minds have been won. This is partly because the premise is wrong. The New York Times reported in March that “not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001…Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.”

CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”

Yet the analysis that poverty causes terrorism has been applied and reapplied and reapplied again. The swamp is in dire need of draining, and in other ways as well. From 2011 on, it was official Obama administration policy to deny any connection between Islam and terrorism. This came as a result of an October 19, 2011 letter from Farhana Khera of Muslim Advocates to John Brennan, who was then the Assistant to the President on National Security for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism, and later served in the Obama administration as head of the CIA. The letter was signed not just by Khera, but by the leaders of virtually all the significant Islamic groups in the United States: 57 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian organizations, many with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Relief USA; and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

The letter denounced what it characterized as U.S. government agencies’ “use of biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam.” Despite the factual accuracy of the material about which they were complaining, the Muslim groups demanded that the task force “purge all federal government training materials of biased materials”; “implement a mandatory re-training program for FBI agents, U.S. Army officers, and all federal, state and local law enforcement who have been subjected to biased training”; and more—to ensure that all that law enforcement officials would learn about Islam and jihad would be what the signatories wanted them to learn.

Numerous books and presentations that gave a perfectly accurate view of Islam and jihad were removed from coounterterror training. Today, even with Trump as President, this entrenched policy of the U.S. government remains, and ensures that all too many jihadists simply cannot be identified as risks, since the officials are bound as a matter of policy to ignore what in saner times would be taken as warning signs. Trump and Tillerson must reverse this. Trump has spoken often about the threat from “radical Islamic terrorism”; he must follow through and remove the prohibitions on allowing agents to study and understand the motivating ideology behind the jihad threat.

The swamp needs draining indeed. This news from the State Department, and the New York Times’ grief over it, are good signs that the U.S. is on its way back on dry land.

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WASHINGTON — On the first Friday in May, Foreign Affairs Day, the staff gathers in the flag-bedecked C Street lobby of the State Department beside the memorial plaques for the 248 members of foreign affairs agencies who have lost their lives in the line of duty. A moment of silence is observed. As president of the American Foreign Service Association, Barbara Stephenson helps organize the annual event. This year, she was set to enter a delegates’ lounge to brief Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on its choreography before appearing alongside him. Instead, she told me, she was shoved out of the room.

Stephenson, a former ambassador to Panama, is not used to being manhandled at the State Department she has served with distinction for more than three decades. She had been inclined to give Tillerson the benefit of the doubt. Transitions between administrations are seldom smooth, and Tillerson is a Washington neophyte, unversed in diplomacy, an oilman trying to build a relationship with an erratic boss, President Trump.

Still, that shove captured the rudeness and remoteness that have undermined trust at Foggy Bottom. Stephenson began to understand the many distressed people coming to her “asking if their service is still valued.” The lack of communication between the secretary and the rest of the building has been deeply disturbing.

An exodus is underway. Those who have departed include Nancy McEldowney, the director of the Foreign Service Institute until she retired last month, who described to me “a toxic, troubled environment and organization”; Dana Shell Smith, the former ambassador to Qatar, who said what was most striking was the “complete and utter disdain for our expertise”; and Jake Walles, a former ambassador to Tunisia with some 35 years of experience. “There’s just a slow unraveling of the institution,” he told me….

[Once Was Not]

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From 2011 on, it was official Obama administration policy to deny any connection between Islam and terrorism

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came as a result of an October 19, 2011 letter from Farhana Khera of Muslim Advocates...The letter was signed not just by Khera, but by the leaders of virtually all the significant Islamic groups in the United States: 57 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian organizations, many with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Relief USA; and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

Quote:

The letter denounced what it characterized as U.S. government agencies’ “use of biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam.” Despite the factual accuracy of the material about which they were complaining, the Muslim groups demanded that the task force “purge all federal government training materials of biased materials”; “implement a mandatory re-training program for FBI agents, U.S. Army officers, and all federal, state and local law enforcement who have been subjected to biased training”; and more—to ensure that all that law enforcement officials would learn about Islam and jihad would be what the signatories wanted them to learn.

What the fuck? Our entire government's approach to security and terorrism was altered by a single letter. That's it. That's how influential Muslims are in the United States. And I think we're at a consensus that they are in numbers not anywhere near enough to prove a threat or have meaningful EU level influence. And yet here they are, already shaping national policy when they probably aren't even in the double digits in population.

No one thought it was weird or absurd or laughably wrong that Muslims, and no one else, were trying to force the government to stick it's head in the sand in regards to proven facts about the religion. They just pulled the race/religion/leftist victim card out of the deck and Obama's government just bent over and got on their knees. Victory for them, game over for us. I can't imagine what happens when/if they get to say 15% of the population, at 30% probably a caliphate long before then.

I seriously hope this is being overstated because I can't wrap my head around a single freaking letter having that much influence.

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Instead, she told me, she was shoved out of the room.

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Stephenson, a former ambassador to Panama, is not used to being manhandled at the State Department

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Stephenson began to understand the many distressed people coming to her “asking if their service is still valued.” The lack of communication between the secretary and the rest of the building has been deeply disturbing.

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An exodus is underway.

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Nancy McEldowney, the director of the Foreign Service Institute until she retired last month, who described to me “a toxic, troubled environment and organization”

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Dana Shell Smith, the former ambassador to Qatar..."what was most striking was the “complete and utter disdain for our expertise”..."There’s just a slow unraveling of the institution,”

Yes, Yes, very good. Now...

[Easy_C]

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What the fuck? Our entire government's approach to security and terorrism was altered by a single letter. That's it. That's how influential Muslims are in the United States. And I think we're at a consensus that they are in numbers not anywhere near enough to prove a threat or have meaningful EU level influence. And yet here they are, already shaping national policy when they probably aren't even in the double digits in population.

Or....more likely it has something to do with these rather bizarre financial ties that exist between the DNC and Pakistan.

[h3ltrsk3ltr]

(07-31-2017 07:12 PM)Once Was Not Wrote:  

What the fuck? Our entire government's approach to security and terorrism was altered by a single letter. That's it. That's how influential Muslims are in the United States. And I think we're at a consensus that they are in numbers not anywhere near enough to prove a threat or have meaningful EU level influence. And yet here they are, already shaping national policy when they probably aren't even in the double digits in population.

No one thought it was weird or absurd or laughably wrong that Muslims, and no one else, were trying to force the government to stick it's head in the sand in regards to proven facts about the religion. They just pulled the race/religion/leftist victim card out of the deck and Obama's government just bent over and got on their knees. Victory for them, game over for us. I can't imagine what happens when/if they get to say 15% of the population, at 30% probably a caliphate long before then.

I seriously hope this is being overstated because I can't wrap my head around a single freaking letter having that much influence.

Apparently some Iranian doctor said that Iraquis would be throwing flowers in the streets if we invaded so that's why we destabilized the region by ousting Saddam, therefore strengthening Iran.

It was on Stephan Molyneux's coverage of the Awan Bros. scandal which has been pretty well hushed up.

[Once Was Not]

(07-31-2017 08:07 PM)Easy_C Wrote:  

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What the fuck? Our entire government's approach to security and terorrism was altered by a single letter. That's it. That's how influential Muslims are in the United States. And I think we're at a consensus that they are in numbers not anywhere near enough to prove a threat or have meaningful EU level influence. And yet here they are, already shaping national policy when they probably aren't even in the double digits in population.

Or....more likely it has something to do with these rather bizarre financial ties that exist between the DNC and Pakistan.

Oh yes, there are undoubtedly many more influential factors in the way Muslims are being handled by the leftists and globalists of present day. And I'm sure more went into it than a single letter, as there are many out there interested in this path. My main point is how easily policy is pushed around on terrorism and national security. Specifically on the objectively true evidence that there are no extenuating factors within Islam explaining away their conquering jihadist terrorizing ways.

They're upset being painted as a blatant threat and an entire half of this country is more than willing to roll over at the slightest command to provide cover for them. Our vulnerability shown here is insane. They threw out everything, all of it, all education and information and procedure. We need to do serious damage to the left in these eight years. I will never feel safe settling down and raising a family in this country knowing it can turn on a dime and open itself to people who want to destroy everything I am. Stuff like this can't be allowed to happen, the globalist thumb has to be thrown off our nation.

We'll see if the democratic party survives this Awan thing. My gut feeling is it will all blow over and they'll keep getting away with their traitorous ways. Earlier I saw on fox news that there was absolutely zero coverage of this on the major networks. Zero. In eight years that kind of miscarriage of journalism has to be unacceptable.

[Foolsgo1d]

In regards to the Muslim numbers and their influence.

It only takes a couple of them with knives or guns to take a bus, plane or train hostage and put their demands into action. Those demands are submission to Jihad and their god.