Yemen: HQ for rich man's jihad

The “poverty is the cause of terrorism” faction was up against it in 2009. Shirwa Ahmed left Minnesota to join the ranks of Somalia’s medieval al-Shabab, whose finances are better than those of the peasant infidels they burn alive. Earlier this year the FBI announced that Ahmed found his grim calling when he lived near the banks of the Mississipi River in a country where one hour sitting at a drive-thru window earns you seven double cheeseburgers. Then there was Major Nidal Hasan, who made good money – better than what any of the soldiers he killed made, anyway. And now there is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Western-educated young man hailing from one of the Nigerian capital’s ritziest neighborhoods, who tries to kill himself and a couple hundred others on a plane headed to the land of opportunity.

My friend Chris Harnisch is perhaps the leading expert on Yemeni terrorism. He has written a piece on the increasing role of Yemen-based Islamists in global terrorism. Their influence has reached Ahmed, Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and many others, thanks to the power of ideology above all else. Here is an excerpt and link to his piece on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Christmas Day attempt is proof of AQAP’s desire and ability to strike America and American interests. The recent U.S. and Yemeni strikes on AQAP strongholds and leadership may have weakened the group, but its recent statements suggest that it is still operational and under strong leadership. AQAP reiterated its desire to strike the U.S. in its statement claiming responsibility for Abdulmutallab’s attempt: “From here, we say to the American people: since you support your leaders and you stand behind them in killing our women and our children, rejoice for what will do you harm. We have come to you with slaughter and we have prepared for you men who love death as you love life. With permission from Allah, we will come to you from where you do not expect. As you kill, you will be killed. Tomorrow is near.”[40] AQAP has made its intentions very clear: it is no longer satisfied with attacking Saudi and Yemeni targets; it has every intention to kill Americans.

A hard, job-friendly rain

I might have been more careful when I wished, almost two years ago, that the yawner “green” movement would end its addiction to renewable clichés, and pump some poetic depth into the enviro-jihad. I suggested tweaking Bob Dylan’s “It’s a Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.” Last week I got what was coming to me: At Copenhagen’s “climate summit”– where guests required 1,200 limos, 140 private planes, and as much carbon as Kansas City, KS over 11 days – Al Gore smashed the meaningless “eco-friendly” rhetoric with a poem:

…Neptune’s bones dissolve
Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly…

Apparently the enviro-jihad’s poetry czars got my memo, almost verbatim:

Acid rain’s a-gonna fall, my blue-eyed son,

Rain’s a-gonna fall in winter instead of snow, my darling young one.

So now the “hard rain” crisis group has it all: a tragic premonition, a sympathetic international community, a promise of a “green jobs” recovery, and – at last – a poet.

One way to appreciate the disingenuous defense of this “slam dunk” case for government actions like “cap-and-trade” is to compare it to the “slam dunk” case for invading Iraq. Back in 2003, the premonition was vague: even President Bush didn’t say Saddam Hussein caused 9/11 (and there was no “science” to cling to, only a gray case for striking a WMD-craving chokepoint of the backward Arab world). The international community was profiting too much off of Iraqis’ misery to sympathize with an invasion. And while there was initial talk of oil revenues paying for the war, it soon became impossible to deny the American deaths and economic miscalculation.

But Iraq always had its poets. Whatever horrors Iraqis faced once the US invasion turned Iraq from a prison into a wilderness, few could help thinking of national poet Badir Shakir al-Sayyab’s promise of deliverance:

…I can almost hear Iraq gathering thunder

And storing up lightning in mountains and plains.

Ever since we were young, the sky was

Clouded in the winter,

And rain poured,

Yet every year when the earth bloomed we hungered.

Not a single year passed but Iraq had hunger…

The hard rain keeps falling on Iraq, and no one can refer to anything about the war as a “win-win.” Its defenders have not had the luxury of reciting poems at global lectures in Copenhagen where they can laugh and eat caviar. Everyone can see the price of their policies. Jon Stewart, therefore, criticized Douglas Feith (a DOD top-dog) a few years ago for underselling the dangers: “The fact that you seemed to know all the risks takes this from manslaughter to homicide.” Stewart is right: the administration should never have said “mission accomplished” and should have warned that it would be hard and long and deadly. But only a year into the war, “Is the sacrifice worth it?” was a question every supporter had to take seriously.

The Copenhageners, however, will never have to take that question seriously. The earth’s cycles will be too complex to allow us to diffinitively know whether cap-and-trade or a butterfly's flutter saved the polar bears. So too with the economy: President Obama can spend four years attributing our economic crisis to eight years of President Bush, and no one will be able to diffinitivly prove the green agenda's complicity. Thus, no need to admit that “going green” requires sacrifice.

The UN, for example, says climate change is the world’s top threat. But, they say, it’s “as much an opportunity as it is a threat, offering a chance to usher in a new age of green economics.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says, “Virtually everyone that I know has gotten more alarmed in the last half a dozen years.” But how alarming can it be if it is the pretext for his $39 billion “clean energy projects” save-the-economy stimulus? Just last week Chu was in Wisconsin lecturing on the win-win green jobs revolution.

President Obama, too, makes the solution seem fun: “The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.” Cap-and-trade, he says, is “a jobs bill.”

The Islamic Republic’s Ayatollah Khomeini once told an economy critic, “we did not make the revolution to lower the price of watermelons.” The “green” debate would benefit from such candidness. Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, for example, asks why we are preparing to spend trillions for benefits 50 years out. He concludes that spraying light-reflecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere through a 25 click hose would be wiser than cap-and-trade (which will cost $822 billion, according to the CBO). And that is to assume a problem even exists: at Copenhagen, Gore’s “slam dunk” case for the probability of the north polar ice caps completely melting in 5 years was refuted by the very scientist he based his claim off of (the ice caps have expanded since 2006). Meanwhile, no one has been able to explain the current decade of cooling, nor the reason that in five of the past six ice ages, carbon levels were actually higher than they are now.

If global warming is worth taking seriously, solving it will be hard. When Gore talks about “a hard rain” in his bizarre poem, he’s saying it can be avoided. Yet Badir Shakir ended his poem at peace with irony: “Iraq will bloom with rain.” Unfortunately, he was right.

"They heard music in their villages for the first time"

Here is the latest on Rob and his platoon in the Taliban-infested Buji Bhast Pass.

3/4 Marines Face Two-front Engagement During Operation North Star
Story and photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola

FARAH PROVINCE, Afghanistan – At first glance, the area known as the Buji Bhast Pass in southern Afghanistan looks much like the rest of Farah province. Mountain peaks tower over vast desert valleys spotted with small adobe villages, herds of grazing animals and local farmers tilling their fields.

Whereas other areas in the region are proving relatively receptive to coalition forces, the pass and surrounding towns remain a haven for Taliban fighters.

Threats and kidnappings, made by armed enemy fighters in the dead of the night, have sent a wave of fear and compliance over local villagers. This forced obedience, coupled with a high number of Taliban fighters lurking in nearby mountains, has produced an area hazard to both coalition forces and local Afghans alike.

The danger was apparent when Marines and sailors from India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, visited surrounding towns of the Buji Bhast Pass area as part of Operation North Star, Nov. 15-17.

The key to securing the pass, which serves as a line of communication between the populated areas of Delaram and Golestan, lies in securing the trust and assistance of the local villagers.

Before laying the foundation for a more permanent and healthier relationship with the villagers,
coalition forces must first earn the respect and influence of the towns' elders.

"The elders are key to holding any kind of relationship with the local populace," said 1st Lt. Scott Riley, 25, the executive officer for India Co. "They want to help the coalition forces. They want us there, and they make it well known, and the fact that the Taliban are still [in the area] really worries them."

The operation initiated such a plan on the first day by visiting the town of Gund, which lies on the pass' southern door step, but the town quickly proved to be unlike other provincial areas.

On past patrols, India Co. has often been greeted by the curious, but sociable farmer, or local children in search of gifts. Upon its arrival to Gund, the company was welcomed by Taliban gunfire from fighting positions in the surrounding mountains.

Undeterred by an enemy incapable of matching the Marines' firepower, the patrol continued with its mission, and attended a shura with the town's elders the following day.

The Taliban's fear of elders' power and influencing could encourage local Afghans to support the provisional government was evident shortly after the meeting had concluded.

Taliban small-arms fire from the surrounding hills again targeted the Marines in a futile attempt to harass and disrupt any progressive discourse between the Marines and their Afghan hosts.

"[The Taliban] responding to the shura in that matter. [By] shooting at us, they're just trying to reinforce their presence there to the locals. They wanted to let [the locals] know, 'Hey, we're still here, we see you talking to the coalition forces, and we don't like it,'" said Riley, a native of Wake Forest, N.C.

Taliban fighters increased their efforts to reinforce their influence over the region later in the day. This third attempt by insurgents targeted the Marines, using an improvised explosive device.

"We turned around to look at how beautiful the valley was up there with all the mountains, when we saw a huge plume of smoke and dirt shoot up. Then we waited and eventually heard the explosion," said 2nd Lt. Robert Fafinski, a platoon commander with India Co. "We were pretty sure somebody had died, and eventually we were able to learn from the locals that it was the IED emplacers."

The failed emplacement only strengthened the Marines' message that uninhibited Taliban movement and violence poses the same threat to local villagers as it does to coalition forces. As the operation moved to the nearby village of She Gosa Janobi, India Co. used the incident as an example of the Taliban's disregard for the safety of those Afghans living in the Buji Bhast area, and to promote coalition support of Afghan national security forces.

Another shura was held with the elders of She Gosa Janobi, while dismounted patrols through the town allowed the Marines to speak with villagers directly.

The Marines listened to local concerns about security, shared food with those in need, briefed local farmers and businessmen about new Afghan laws pertaining to agricultural fertilizer use, and dispersed hand-cranked radios.

"We were able to pass out a good number of [radios]," said Fafinski, from Chaska, Minn. "It was very rewarding for the Marines to see the joy on the Afghan faces, when they heard music in their villages for probably the first time ever."

In addition to playing music and the call for prayer, the radios will also help keep Afghans in the Buji Bhast area better informed about their role in safeguarding the local area.