How to Lose the Fight Against ISIS

The image above may be the most egregious blunder the west has committed in the fight against the Islamic state. We can look forward to it being used in ISIS propaganda.

Today, protesters took the "draw Mohammad" day on the road, and gathered around a Mosque in Phoenix, Arizona. This in itself is not much to fret about. It's long past time for Islam as a religion to grow up and accept that all things, including and particularly religion, are subject to criticism.

Accusing the protest organizers of bigotry is not a sufficient response to this criticism. So it's not about that either.

But one need not be a pacifistic hippie peace activist to recognize the foolishness of gathering around a Mosque while brandishing weapons.

If ISIS were -- and they surely were -- hoping for the west to grant them some sense of legitimate grievance they could recruit off the back of, this is it. Among those Muslims to whom the idea of beheading someone for not being a Muslim, for for being the "wrong kind" of Muslim, ISIS needed no help recruiting. Among those legitimately fear genuine oppression in the west, who needed to be given a legitimate grievance in order to join up with ISIS, there could have been no greater boon than the sight of armed Americans surrounding an Arizona mosque.

If any ISIS sympathizers remained within that particular Mosque -- a Mosque that had been frequented by those responsible for the Garland, Texas shooting -- literally nothing could spur them to more radical action than the sight of armed men outside of their own Mosque.

Now, ISIS' call to "Jihad" can more easily be perceived as legitimate, or even justified. Islamic doctrine holds that Jihad may only be waged against "unbelievers" who fight against them, and in the way they fight against them.

Those are two very important boxes that would-be ISIS fighters, be them in Arizona, the United States, the west at large or even in the Middle East, can now check off. They can now refer to attacks on the west as "Jihad" with a closer semblance to legitimacy than ever before. The idea that Muslims in western lands are oppressed now has a very powerful propaganda image to back it up.

This was literally the worst blunder the protesters could have managed.

Protesters defended the presence of weapons at their protest by pointing out to ISIS calls for violence against the protesters. Fortunately, no ISIS fighters, actual or aspiring, turned up at the event. No shots were fired.

All this being said, it's not reasonable to pretend there was no threat of attack. It's not reasonable to suggest that protesters should not have taken steps to protect themselves against such attack. But there were better ways to do it than openly carrying semi-automatic rifles.

They could have done what Pamela Gellar did in Garland, TX and hired armed security to protect them. Failing that, they could at least have kept in mind that Arizona is a concealed carry state, and not carried weapons openly.

Of course that would have denied some of these neckbeards the thrill of playing soldier, patrolling a perimeter on US soil.

Certainly, ISIS propaganda could have still complained about weapons present, but those complaints are less potent without the image of them.

So these Arizona protesters may congratulate themselves for one thing: they handed ISIS a propaganda coup the likes of which they could only have imagined.

Good job, boneheads.

The Twisting Road to Victory Over the Islamic State

Even as Canada continues to reel from its first casualty in the war against ISIS, one important question must loom in our participation in this war effort is meaningful at all:

How does Canada, and how do its allies, intend to win this war?

Obviously, we intend to win it. If we didn't intend to win it there was no sense in going. Likewise if we didn't have any sense of how we were going to win it.

But how can the war be won? The war requires an endgame. And as Canada looks ahead to discussions about the potential extension of the mission, this is a necessity that must be at the front of our minds.

So what does victory over the Islamic State look like?

In my opinion, it looks a lot like a Kurdish state.

More specifically, in my opinion it looks like Kurdistan.

There should be no question that the Kurdish people have been our strongest and fiercest dog in this fight. They turned the tide of battle from near-defeat to victory in Kobane, and are generally believed to be giving at least as good as they get.

But they're always in need. Of materiel. Of reinforcements. And to that end, we in the west are not giving the biggest, fiercest dog in the fight against ISIS as much support as they need.

In fact, at least one British woman has been arrested for planning to leave the UK to fight not for ISIS, but for the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistani -- the Kurdish People's Party. They maintain the YPG and YPJ, the people's defense forces. The YPJ, specifically, is comprised of women fighting ISIS forces.

So with that in mind you'd think the PKK isn't an obvious villain in the region. Until you keep in mind that the British government -- in fact, virtually all western governments -- consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.

It's said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's been said often enough that the phrase has nearly transcended cliche. Yet in the case of the PKK, it's an obvious truism.

Until the establishment of no-fly zones in northern Iraq following the first Persian Gulf War there was virtually no safe haven for the Kurdish people. Even after the establishment of those no-fly zones the region historically known as Kurdistan remains spread out across the states we currently know as Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Turkey is a particular issue in regards to the PKK. Since 1984 the PKK has conducted regular raids into Turkey, where the Kurdish population lives oppressed.

Turkey, meanwhile, is a NATO country. Which would complicate matters greatly for the UK even if it's government was sympathetic toward the oppression Kurds suffer there. The UK -- and the whole of NATO -- could not help but recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization lest it alienate an ally.

Turkey has been touchy enough about the Armenian genocide, often threatening geopolitical consequences if its western allies dare condemn it. And that was something that happened 100 years ago. Just imagine how Turkey would react were the west to condemn something it's still doing today.

So of course the UK must continue to recognize the PKK as a terrorist entity. Nor can it even partake in a serious push to reincarnate Kurdistan as a country without risking a key Middle Eastern ally.

This situation is in no small part analogous to the conditions that fomented the Israeli insurgency following the 1939 white paper. Then it was a British government dependent on Arab Muftis who ultimately controlled the flow of Middle Eastern oil to the British war effort, and placating them by limiting Jewish immigration into modern-day Israel to only 10,000. Then it was Jews -- particularly in the post-war years -- defying British law to immigrate there illegally, all so the Israeli people could have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination.

Now it's Yazidi Britons defying British law in order to repel the hordes of the Islamic State so that the Kurdish people may have a land in which to realize their right to self-determination. Them, and non-Yazidi citizens such as Aussie Ashley Johnson, who have joined the fight and in some cases even given their lives. (In Johnson's case, it's Australian law he has defied.)

In that western governments haven't arrested western fighters upon their return is indication that we have recognized the legitimacy of the PKK, at least by half-measures. We're willing to tolerate western fighters doing battle alongside them, so long as they don't intend to join full-time.

Half-measures are not even half-sufficient. While the contributions of western nations to the fight against ISIS are undoubtedly valuable, we must recognize that they are not enough to win the war.

I firmly believe that, in the end, only the Kurds can win this war. There's clearly quite a diplomatic and legal minefield that must be navigated in order to maximize the west's ability to fully contribute to that victory, but no other path to victory appears immediately feasible.

In terms of issues on which Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson could attempt to insert some leadership internationally, there are worse places he could look. There are few signs of anyone else trying to blaze this vital diplomatic trail.

Today We Are All Charlie

If no one has said this yet, I'm just going to come out and say it: Charlie Hebdo was a bit of an asshole.

He went where he wanted, said what he wanted, did what he wanted. And he didn't sit around worrying about what other people thought about that.

I hope he died as he lived: defiantly. Because if the terrorists who slew Charlie today -- just because he drew some cartoons that they didn't like -- have their way, they'll kill a little bit of the defiance in the freedom-loving people who survive him.

Right now, with all the murderers like Charlie's murderers determined to dictate to the rest of us how we'll live our lives, we'll need all the defiance we can muster.

Fuck that noise.

There are many good ways to live and there are many goods ways to die and I, for one, will not sit around waiting for ISIS or any other terrorist organization to choose mine.

So what if Charlie Hebdo was a bit of an asshole? He might mot be the asshole we deserve. But he's the asshole we need right now.

Je suis Charlie.

Let's Not Call it Jihad After All

I know what you're thinking: he must be joking right?

No.

I know what you're thinking now: then he must be nuts. Right?

No.

I know what you're thinking now: has he gone soft on Islamic terrorism?

No.

In writing this blogpost I fully expect a lot of my readers to have an impulse to disagree vehemently, especially considering the as-of-this-writing-ongoing terrorist hostage taking in Australia. I'm prepared to accept that. I also have faith in my readers to fully understand the argument I'm going to make. Whether or not you agree with it is, of course, entirely in your hands.

But I'm fully serious when I say that we shouldn't call Islamic terrorism "Jihad." And I'm entirely sincere when I say that we should call Islamic terrorists "Jihadis."

Here's why:

In calling their terrorism "Jihad," and in calling themselves "Jihadis," these terrorists are seeking something absolutely vital to their cause: a sense of justification. A means to aggrandize their barbarism. We shouldn't strengthen their claim.

Muslims do, indeed, treat Jihad as a religious obligation. Canadian traitor/walking bullseye Abu Anwar al Canadi said so himself. But then the question remains: what, exactly, is Jihad?

ISIS and al Canadi seem to think Jihad may be declared against anyone who takes up arms against them. Many Islamic scholars --
among them those of the Ahmadiyyah Jiamat -- would disagree. They would contend that Jihad has specific conditions which must be met. Those conditions, in short, are:

1. Muslims may only fight against those who prevent themselves or others from practicing Islam.
2. Muslims may only fight against those who fight them without cause.
3. If the above conditions are met, Muslims may only fight battles they have the means to win. They are not permitted to sacrifice their lives in vain.
4. Moreover, Muslims may only fight in the way in which they are fought.

Such scholars would contend that Jihad can take several forms, and the fourth condition described above is particularly crucial in this. Jihad could very well be an armed conflict. But it depends on by what means Islam is being attacked.

If the "attack" is religious criticism, then Muslims are encouraged to respond by debating their critics. If the "attack" is one of poverty, (the attacker need not even be another person or people) then Muslims are encouraged to give of their time and money to alleviate that suffering. If the attack is by force of arms then they are allowed to protect themselves by force of arms.

Taking a close look at these above conditions, it's clear that ISIS cannot truly justify any attacks they perpetrate as Jihad:

1. Neither Canada nor Australia prevent Muslims from practicing Islam.
2. Although Canada and Australia are both fighting against ISIS in Iraq, ISIS has given us cause to do so.
3. Even if condition #1 were met and even if condition #2 were met, ISIS does not have the means to defeat us in Iraq or Syria or in Canada or Australia.
4. Even if all above conditions were met, ISIS is permitted to fight us only in the way we fight them. In this case that means with their fighters operating openly, in uniform, under a declared state of war.

If any of the above conditions are not met, they cannot truly and rightly justify their actions as Jihad. And it isn't merely "any" of the above conditions that are unmet. It's "all."

So according to Islamic doctrine, the battles ISIS is waging, the attacks they are threatening us with, are not truly Jihad. It's merely terrorism. But if we ourselves call them "Jihad" we are helping them establish a religious pretext for their actions that they otherwise cannot truly and rightly establish.

Here is the reason why we should not call this Jihad: because if we do we are actually doing them a favour, and doing much of their dirty work for them. And we shouldn't do that.

We should just call it for what it is: terrorism. Barbarism. Because that's what it is. But let's not call it Jihad. Because that's what it isn't.

The Loopy Logic of Abu Anwar al Canadi & HIs Apologists

It was almost like clockwork: no sooner had John Maguire -- aka Abu Anwar al Canadi -- released his propaganda video threatening Canada and calling upon Canadian Muslims to kill non-Muslims, opponents of Canada's anti-ISIS mission began blaming this on the government.

Their argument? Terrorists would not be attacking Canada if we hadn't sent our forces -- first military advisors to the Iraqi military and now CF-18s -- to fight ISIS.

It's not a strong argument: one that suggests ISIS should be able to dictate Canada's foreign policy just because we're afraid that some Canadian Muslims have taken up ISIS' cause. It's an inherently cowardly argument: a suggestion that Canadians should submit to living under de facto occupation by the Islamic state.

That's a bad idea.

Anyone who thinks that such a strategy would protect Canada from attacks are sadly mistaken. And if they're using al Canadi's speech to support that argument they didn't listen closely enough.

From the treasonous little monster's speech:

"Have you forgotten that Allah tells us how the disbelievers will behave towards the believers? Allah says that the disbelievers will never cease fighting you, they will never cease fighting you until they turn you back from your religion, if they are able to do so. 

So, the mujaheddin continue to call you to one of two options: hijra [migration to the Islamic State] or jihad.

You either pack your bags or you prepare your explosive devices. You either purchase your airline ticket or you sharpen your knife.

You either come to the Islamic State and live under the laws of Allah or you follow the example of brother Ahmad Rouleau and do not fear the blame of the blamers."

Al Canadi -- he has comically taken a name meaning "the light of Canadians" -- has declared that Muslims in Canada must kill non-Muslims essentially just for being non-Muslims. He argues that non-Muslims will not refrain from oppressing Muslims and preventing them from practicing their religion, so it is permissible for them to kill us.

This is false and al Canadi knows it. The fact that he was not prevented from converting to Islam while in Canada is proof of it. The religious freedom of Muslims is guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That freedom does not exist in lands dominated by ISIS, not even for Muslims. In the so-called "Islamic State," it's Islam or death. Hell, it's one specific sect of Islam or death.

There are thousands of murdered Christians, Kurds, and even Muslims of what ISIS deems to be the "wrong sect" scattered across ISIS-occupied Iraq and Syria to attest to that. Many among them are children.

And al Canadi somehow musters the gall to accuse Canada of committing atrocities... all while he knows full well that his ISIS friends have been murdering children.

In short: Abu Anwar al Canadi is a liar. When al Canadi is not lying he's making claims -- that ISIS only threatens and attacks Canada because Canada fights them -- that even if he actually believes them cannot possibly be true.

They're relying on the lies and demonstrable absence of logic in Canadi's speech in order to justify their position. And in doing so I'd argue that they're effectively giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The Canadian passport bearing the name John Maguire has now been revoked. There are only two ways he can ever return to Canada: either in handcuffs, or with a bullet embedded between his eyes.

Personally, I prefer the latter.

Unforgiven: Defeatists, Partisans & Peaceniks Need to Put a Sock In It

Today Canada was the victim of a low-grade 9/11-style coordinated terror attack. Shots were fired at four locations in Ottawa, including Parliament Hill and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. One Canadian Forces member is dead. So is his killer, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, reported as Canadian-born and a recent convert to Islam.

Many have taken to social media to insist that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is to blame for this: that Canada is under such attack only because we have sent CF-18s to bomb ISIS militants in Iraq.

The logic is flawed, and the greater implications of it are nothing short of alarming.

The attack in which Zehaf-Bribeau participated is only one of two in the past week. Martin Rouleau, also a Canadian-born convert to Islam, attacked Canadian Forces members in what many have described as a Lee Rigby-style attack. (In actuality, Ahmad de Converti -- Rouleau's chosen name -- was far more cowardly than Rigby's murderers, who at least stayed to face the police who arrived to shoot them.)

Not long ago I wrote a blogpost noting that we're fighting ISIS in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here. Well, as it turns out they're already here, and now we are fighting them here.

While I remain adamant that we must not treat Canada's Muslim populations as if they are all ISIS members or even as if they're potentially ISIS members, we can no longer deny that fighters for the Islamic State are walking amongst us. Perhaps not many, but clearly some. Two attacks within a week, with two victims, speak for themselves.

So suppose that we were to do what the various people who want to pin the attacks on Harper seem to want us to do: withdraw our warplanes from Iraq, abandon our alliance with Israel, and essentially allow them to dictate our foreign policy to us in order to placate these ISIS fighters already hidden in our midst. What would we have just done?

We would have just submitted to living under de facto occupation. Perhaps living under occupation by a force that we may not otherwise be confronted by, but under occupation no less.

We would have handed to ISIS, on a silver platter, Canada as their first conquest in an empire of fear.

I'd be tempted to tell these assorted defeatists (who seem to think we cannot defeat the Islamic State), partisans (who simply point the finger for political gain) and wannabe peaceniks (who seem to miss the detail that there can be no peace with organizations such as ISIS, by their own accord) that they're welcome to live like this.

But if they live like that, so do we all. So they aren't interested in it. And if they aren't content to face the reality of today's events then they just need to put a sock in it.

Fighting Them Over There So We Don't Have to Fight Them Over Here

In regards to fighting terrorism and Islamic extremism, it's the oldest line in the book, so much so that it's at risk of being dismissed as an exhausted old cliche: we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

There's actually good reason why this line is so frequently discounted as utterly hackneyed: it's been uttered by ever proponent f of the War on Terror who, when challenged on the necessity of the conflict, had no better answer. We're fighting them over there in Afghanistan, in Iraq, so we don't have to fight them over here.

With the United States, Britain, Canada and others set to open a new offensive against ISIS in Iraq, that line will be repeated again. But this time it's more true than ever before.

Let's look back a week: British aid worker Alan Henning -- not a soldier -- was beheaded by ISIS in cold blood. In response, The Independent ran a solid black font page. It read: "On Friday a decent, caring human being was murdered in cold blood. Our thoughts are with his family. He was killed on camera for the sole purpose of propaganda. Here is the news, no the propaganda."

It's a heartbreaking story. And sadly for Britain, it's not the first cold-blooded murder they've experienced at the hands of such extremists.

Let's look back a year: Just a little more than a year, actually. Lee Rigby is murdered in the streets of London, hacked to death by two Muslim extremists. Unlike Henning, Rigby was a soldier. Off duty, unarmed, beset upon by a pair of extremists with machetes in broad daylight. They then stood by Fusilier Drummer Rigby's corpse and professed their extremist beliefs until police arrived and promptly shot them (though unfortunately did not shoot them dead).

It was the most brazen terror attack in British history. Not during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, not even on 7/7 did terrorists so readily stand by their handiwork.

And the Rigby murder was not an isolated incident. They're threatening to do it again, right in the streets of Britain.

Peace-loving Muslims -- the ones who came to Britain to escape the barbarism of these extremists, the ones so frequently overlooked at times like these -- reacted now as they did then: with outrage over these heinous acts. They know as well as anyone what fighting this kind of savagery really means. As with their extremist counterparts we may not necessarily know them to see them, but we will know them by their actions. If they haven't already, they will let us know where we stand. We should be wise enough to embrace them when they do.

Canada would at least seem to have been far more fortunate. Islamic terror plots here have been thwarted. The RCMP and CSIS will likely have to be every bit as vigilant as they have been to date in order to ensure this remains the case. Judging from Britain's example we can't expect to continue to be so fortunate by fate alone.

We know who we're fighting. We've seen their handiwork. And we fight them in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here.

It's not a cliche anymore.

Whip Out Your Ideas, Justin Trudeau: Let's See How Big They Are

“Why aren’t we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in, rather than trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are?” Justin Trudeau asks.

Hoo boy. Leave it to the Liberal leader so simultaneously dump on the professionalism of the Royal Canadian Air Force -- as if they specialize in global pissing contests -- and provide an idea that, while it seems on the surface to be the sort of sunny response to a global situation that Liberals are known for, also turns out to be entirely half-baked.

Not that he really has any ideas.

In the course of a speech given to the Liberal-organized Canada 2020 conference, the only thing Trudeau would commit to in terms of ideas is that he hasn't made up his mind. He has no idea how to respond to the ISIS threat in the Middle East. He has no ideas, but he insists that Canadians shouldn't listen to the ideas of the other guys.

Good gawd. This is the guy who wants to be Canada's next Prime Minister. Who Liberals want to be Canada's next Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will roll out his government's proposal on how Canada will deal with ISIS tomorrow. The debate will be on Friday. Yet he and his party are acting as if they'd rather debate the matter this minute... with a leader who hasn't made up his mind yet.

This could only come from the Liberal Party and be passed off as if it were a tenable position. They've learned the easy way to not expect a lot of Canadians to think even once, let alone twice, about the base fatuousness of this position. Perhaps with good reason: one cannot think about the shortcomings of even the meagre offerings Trudeau has already mustered and still maintain that narcissistic sense of unjustified intellectual vanity that so often comes with being a Liberal.

Suppose that Canada were to do as Trudeau suggests, and send only a humanitarian mission to Iraq. How has ISIS already embraced aid workers there? They beheaded British aid worker David Haines. So if we provide aid to the two million people currently displaced within Iraq -- as well we should -- but do so without any boots on the ground to protect aid workers, what happens?

ISIS takes the heads of any aid workers they can get their hands on, and probably kills a good number of the people who those aid workers are intended to help. Hell, ISIS has placed that genocide on their agenda already.

Then ISIS takes aid supplies and turns it to their own use. Whether he intended to or not, Justin Trudeau would have just provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Not by treason, but by naivete.

No wonder Justin Trudeau won't talk about any ideas he may have. And I wouldn't expect him to anytime soon. No. Instead, he'll talk about the past: he'll talk about how Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2003 (when he wasn't yet Prime Minister) being taken by bad intel regarding the status of Saddam Hussein's ongoing quest to procure weapons of mass destruction.

Two million refugees in Iraq would happily -- if not cheerfully -- explain the difference between the 2003 and 2014 scenarios to Justin Trudeau if given the opportunity.

It's not likely that Trudeau is talking to many of them. No, he's too busy impugning the professionalism of the RCAF and making juvenile dick jokes to get around to that.

It's with the detail that the polls are currently in Justin Trudeau's favour that one of his vaunted advisors -- perhaps General Andrew Leslie -- should pull him aside and tell him to get his head in the game. Should he become Prime Minister he won't have the luxury of kicking back and making penis jokes while global events unfold. If, right now, he wants to become Prime Minister then he'd better start showing Canadians he's ready for it.

The time is now, Justin Trudeau. If you have any fully-baked ideas for how Canada should respond to ISIS, whip 'em out. Show us how big they are. But they'd better be bigger and better than what you've produced to date.