MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Now here’s a sure way to demoralize and discourage the coalition of the willing. If you’re not really at war with an enemy you’ve just declared war against, you’re already walking the path of failure …

James 1:8, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

By Elise Labott, Laura Smith-Spark and Ray Sanchez, CNN – “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes ‘many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.’

‘What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation,’ Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. ‘It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.’

Kerry made a distinction between ISIS and terror groups operating in Somalia and Yemen.

‘ISIL is an animal unto itself,’ he said. ‘And it is significantly such a threat because of the foreign fighters that are attracted to it — which you don’t see in Somalia or … Yemen.’ Most importantly, Kerry said, ISIL has attracted a ‘significant coalition’ that is determined to go and destroy it.

Kerry, in Jeddah for meetings with Arab leaders to enlist regional support for a coalition to defeat ISIS, defended the administration’s insistence that the 2001 authority to go after al Qaeda and affiliates applies to ISIS. He insisted that, despite the split between jihadist groups, the origin of ISIS as an al Qaeda affiliate is enough to consider them connected.

‘This group is and has been al Qaeda,’ Kerry said. ‘By trying to change its name, it doesn’t change who it is, what it does.’

Asked how much of the interpretation lets Congress get away from a vote on going after ISIS — a scenario lawmakers would like to avoid in an election year — Kerry responded ‘none.’

Kerry said the opposition battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has been outgunned and outmanned, but the administration believes that equation can change ‘if they receive proper training, if there are recruits that come in, and if it grows over a period of time.'” Read more.

Will Barack Obama, who rarely has the stomach for war, do what ultimately needs to be done in order to win one? If not, then all the sabre-rattling and coalition building will be for naught, and an emboldened “Islamic State” will be viewed as virtually invincible in the eyes of the Muslim world …

Revelation 13:4b, “… and they worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’”

By Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times – “Trying to uproot and destroy the Islamic State’s army of terrorists in Iraq without American ground troops, as President Obama promoted Wednesday night, is doomed to failure, national security experts say.

At the least, the president needs to get ground troops closer to the fight, say some politicians and analysts. He should introduce special operations units to advise and join the Iraqis on hunt-and-kill missions against Islamic State leaders, as well as insert controllers to point out targets for warplanes.

‘What a waste of time,’ said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department. ‘We have not learned a thing in 80 years. [The Islamic State] is an army. The air power is not going to get the job done. Until you put troops in and kill these guys, they’re going to continue. They adjust to tactics. They meld into [the] civilian population.’

Militants in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, are so embedded in Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi and other Iraqi towns that it will take skilled land combatants to evict them, block by block, analysts say. Relying on the Iraqi security forces, even with front-line U.S. air power, is iffy at best, because Iraqi troops have conducted mass retreats rather than standing and fighting in major battlefield offensives.

Said an Army officer in the Pentagon: ‘Air power alone cannot win wars. [The president’s] stated strategy ignores this widely accepted truth. But with troops on the ground, in very small numbers, we can team with Kurds and Shia to support those ground forces in rapidly defeating ISIS.’

Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an architect of the 2007 troop surge carried out by Gen. David H. Petraeus, said that, at the least, the campaign needs American advisers closer to battle.

‘If the U.S.-led coalition conducts a very aggressive air campaign that hits ISIS hard, sustained and simultaneous[ly] in Iraq and Syria, then ISIS will lose freedom of movement [and] initiative, and will become defensive,’ Mr. Keane said. ‘However, defeat requires a ground counteroffensive to retake lost territory, led by the Iraqi army and the Free Syrian Army [and] supported by close air support.’

Mr. Obama Wednesday night refused to characterize as a ‘war’ his new campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State. Instead, he likened it to long-term counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen against al Qaeda and its spinoffs.” Read more.

Somalia and Yemen? You mean, those two havens for terrorists? …

The current month-long “cease fire” ends on an interesting date. September 25th is the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It is also the first day of the 2014-2015 Shemitah year on the Hebrew calendar and one that could, if Rabbi Jonathan Cahn is correct, see monumental changes take place that will affect us all …

Luke 12:37a, “Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching …”

By Daniel Gordis, Bloomberg View – “Is a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly emerging, or is renewed war with Hamas imminent? Given that this is the Middle East, it should come as no surprise that there’s movement in both directions.

Egypt has presented a sweeping proposal for the creation of a Palestinian state, to be created on land that Egypt would willingly cede from the Sinai Desert, in an area contiguous with Gaza. The new state would cover five times the area now controlled by Hamas; Palestinians would abandon their demand for a state on the West Bank, but major Palestinian population centers there would be granted ‘autonomy,’ a murky concept long used in this region. This new Palestinian state would be demilitarized, but the substantial enlargement of Gaza would make it possible for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to be settled there.

Not surprisingly, reactions were varied. While Israeli leaders praised the initiative and deemed it worth exploring, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly rejected the deal out of hand. In classic Middle East fashion, after Abbas had rejected the deal, Tayeb Abdel-Rahim, secretary general of Abbas’s office, denied that the deal had ever been offered. The report of the proposal on Israeli Army Radio, he said, was ‘baseless.’ Why his boss would have rejected a deal that had never been suggested in the first place was not clear.

While Egypt is being creative, however, the winds of renewed war are beginning to blow. Over the past several days, the Israeli press has consistently noted that the quiet we’re now enjoying may prove short-lived. Avi Issacharoff, a former Arab affairs correspondent for Haaretz, wondered aloud in Times of Israel whether Israel was headed towards a renewed conflict with Gaza. With Israeli-Hamas negotiations apparently going nowhere, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s pugnacious Foreign Minister, warned that Hamas would never consent to being disarmed — and lest Israelis imagined they could live with that, he insisted that Hamas was no less dangerous to Israel than Islamic State. YNet noted that Hamas had begun re-digging the tunnels that the Israeli Defense Forces had destroyed; the report included responses from residents of the area that if the tunnels were really being rebuilt, Israel would have every justification for renewing the war.

As if those tunnels were not sufficient, Israeli TV reported on Friday night that the IDF is preparing for a ‘very violent’ war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which possesses 100,000 rockets (including 5,000 powerful, long-range missiles), and has apparently also dug tunnels into Israel.

It was all a reminder to Israelis that even if the Egyptian plan were ever to get traction (highly unlikely), Israel’s problems would hardly be over.

But there was also a more ominous note, the importance of which was overlooked by many. Ismail Haniyeh, second in command of Hamas’ political wing, warned the other day that if Israel does not lift the siege on Gaza, fighting will resume on Sept. 25.” Read more.

I’m not surprised that Turkey is refusing to assist Obama against the Islamic State. Turkey, as it stands, has been accused of being one of the biggest ISIS supporters in the region. Then again, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all assisted the rise of ISIS in some way, yet are three of the ten Arab nations now joining the coalition against the terror entity they helped to build up. The Islamic world. It’s a kingdom that’s divided in more ways than one …

Daniel 2:41, “Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay.”

Recommended: Right Move, Wrong Plan? Lawmakers Worried Obama Using Wrong Military Model To Target ISIS

By Howard Koplowitz, IBT – “An airstrike campaign in Syria won’t have Germany’s support, and Turkey said it will only cooperate in humanitarian missions in the fight against the Islamic State as U.S. allies weighed in Thursday on President Barack Obama’s plan to ‘degrade and destroy’ the militant group. It’s unclear what role Britain will play, while Israel has applauded the stragety against the militants also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier questioned whether Obama’s plan of airstrikes and equipping moderate Syrian rebels was adequate. ‘We haven’t been asked, nor will we do it,’ he said of the airstrikes. ‘We need to be honest with ourselves in the current situation, we don’t yet have a final, blanket strategy which guarantees that we’ll be successful against ISIS and similar groups.’

Turkey, a crucial U.S. ally in the Middle East that borders Syria, said it won’t allow the U.S.-led coalition to launch strikes in Syria from its air bases. It also won’t participate in any combat operations. ‘Turkey will not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations,’ an unnamed Turkish government official told Agence France-Press.

There was initial confusion after British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said earlier on Thursday the U.K. ‘will not be taking part of any airstrikes in Syria,’ according to AFP. A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said Hammond meant to say that the U.K. would not be bombing Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Guardian reported. Obama’s plan does not include any strikes against the Syrian leader.

Israel has emerged as the strongest proponent of the plan.” Read more.

Ten Arab Nations Join US-Led Coalition Against Islamic State – “Ten Arab nations have announced they are to join a US-led coalition against Isis (known as Islamic State) militants. In a joint statement, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, said they ‘will do their share’ to fight against the jihadist group that has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria. The development marks a major diplomatic success for Washington and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had embarked on a Middle East tour to lobby for a greater Arab role in the fight against extremists. In fact, some of the ten states have tense diplomatic relations due to their rivalry on other regional issues.” Read more.

Flashback: America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS – “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror… in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime. ‘Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,’ said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.” Read more.

Flashback: ISIS Fighter Claims Turkey Funds the Jihadist Group – “Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party have a well developed reputation for anti-Semitism and anti-Israel policies generally. But now ties to the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, are emerging. The Jerusalem Post reported one Islamic State member said Turkey, a member of NATO, provided funds for the terrorist group. ‘Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large [numbers] of our mujahedeen received medical treatment in Turkey … many Saudi families who believe in jihad do assist us. But anyhow, we will no longer need it, soon … We will build the Islamic state in the territories from Tigris to Jordan and Palestine and to Lebanon. Sunni Law will rule …'” Read more.

Any weapons that Obama gives to his fighting group du jour in Syria will inevitably end up in the hands of the very ones he’ll be fighting against …

Qur’an Sura 8:59a, “The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them …”

• Flashback: Is Al Qaeda Our New Peace Partner in Syria?
• Flashback: 2013: ‘Free Syrian Army’ Fractures, Rebels Defect To Islamist Groups
• Flashback: ‘Nowhere In Rebel-Controlled Syria Is There A Secular Fighting Force To Speak Of’

By Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag – “‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ Samuel Johnson said. A few centuries later his fellow Englishman, Winston Churchill, quipped, ‘The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.’

It’s not true of the United States, but it is true of Barack Obama who, having exhausted every alternative that involved appeasement or pretending that ISIS wasn’t a threat, has decided to do the right thing.

As long as he gets enough applause for doing it.

With his approval ratings, particularly on American leadership and national security, lower than Assad’s, he decided to exploit September 11 to butch up his foreign policy image.

After spending the last few years ignoring ISIS, he delivered a carefully timed speech vowing to take it on. The speech might have been a little more credible if it had not come from the man whose inaction allowed ISIS to take over parts of Iraq and Syria and who early this year was dismissing it as a JV team.

The scoundrel who lied and claimed that he had defeated Al Qaeda has been reborn again as a patriot who is promising to… defeat Al Qaeda. Even his usual boast of defeating Al Qaeda has been carefully walked back to a claim of having defeated ‘much of al-Qaida’s leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan’.

That brief moment of near honesty is diminished only by the fact that the war on Al Qaeda had moved on to the Middle East long before Obama even took office. It was Obama who decided to divert away from fighting Al Qaeda in the Middle East on a failed attempt to defeat the Taliban and an even more failed attempt to negotiate peace with the ‘moderate’ Taliban.

Obama’s strategy is a kitchen sink approach that promises air strikes for the patriots and multilateral coalitions for the appeasers. There will be coalitions with Sunni Arabs and with a new ‘inclusive’ Iraqi government. There will be coalitions with everyone. A UN session will be chaired. Syria will be bombed and ‘terrorists who threaten our country’ will be hunted down.

And all of it will happen without a single American soldier being put at risk.

It’s an utterly incoherent and calculatedly unobjectionable speech by a failing politician that fails to address why we’re in this mess and what past policies we have to rethink to get out of it.

In a telling sign, Obama’s giant goodie bag of ISIS proposals also includes arming ISIS.” Read more.

Flashback: Horror In Syria: ‘Free Syrian Army’ Rebels Executing Soldiers Were Reportedly Executing Christians – “Reports from Syria indicate members of the Free Syrian Army have started executing Christians while claiming they’re shooting Syrian soldiers. A video of a Nov. 1 attack in which black-clad Syrian rebels reportedly killed 28 men has been posted on Youtube.com. An Agence France-Presse story on the attack identified the victims as Syrian soldiers. But Religious Freedom Coalition President William Murray said two of the victims were associated with his cooperating organization in Syria, which distributes aid. The victims were not soldiers, he said, but civilians from the same neighborhood, ‘so they were all probably Christians.’” Read more.

Barack Hussein Obama just finished telling America that “ISIL is not Islamic” because no religion “condones the killing of innocents.” Well, Mr. President, if that’s the case then Robert Spencer is right and you, as the leader of the free world, ought to be calling this ignorant politician from a Muslim country and explain to the misguided believer why he’s not really a Muslim. And, while you’re at it, enlighten the leader of the Islamic State as well. Just pretend that his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies also has absolutely nothing to do with Islam …

Qur’an Sura 4:89, “Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers [non-Muslims] wherever you find them.”

Hadith, Tabari 9:69, “Killing Unbelievers [non-Muslims] is a small matter to us” – The Words of Mohammad, “Prophet” of Islam

By Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch – “Wherever Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi is located, he should expect a knock on his door, and Barack Obama, David Cameron, Philip Hammond, Yvette Cooper, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Rev. Professor David Thomas, and a host of other non-Muslims to walk in and explain to him that he is misunderstanding Islam, and that the Islamic State has nothing whatsoever to do with the genuine article.

Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi also faces a good deal of opposition on this from Muslims as well. How has it come about that Egypt’s Grand Mufti can say that the Islamic State is “far from Islam” while Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi affirms just the opposite, that “there is no such thing as ‘ISIS ideology’ – it’s Islam”? There needs to be a public discussion about this dichotomy and how it came about, and whose position is better represented among Muslim populations worldwide, as well as in light of Islamic tradition, theology and law. But that would require some honesty and balance in the public square, which doesn’t appear to be on the horizon.

‘Jordanian-Palestinian Politician: There Is No ISIS Ideology – It’s Islam; Syrian Soldiers Deserved to Be Slaughtered,’ MEMRI, August 31, 2014 (thanks to Michael):

Palestinian-Jordanian politician Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi recently defended ISIS, saying that its doctrine “stems from the Quran and the Sunna.” The Syrian soldiers recently killed at the Tabqa airbase “deserved to be slaughtered 100,000 times over,” said Al-Tamimi, a member of the Jordanian Umma movement. According to Internet reports, the show was not broadcast by the Jordanian ANB TV channel that had produced it, but it was posted on the Internet by ANB TV on August 31, 2014.

Interviewer: What is our position, here in Jordan, with regard to ISIS and the ISIS ideology?

[…]

Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi: I reject the use of the terms “ISIS” and “ISIS ideology.” It sounds like you are talking about a Satanic weed or a Satanic ideology, which has come from out of nowhere.

Interviewer: But isn’t that true?

Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi: No, it is not. The problem with the analysts and the TV commentators who talk about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is that what they say is completely off-track. They have accused ISIS of being an Iranian product, an American product, the product of the Syrian regime, the product of all the world’s devils… But it has become evident that ISIS is waging an all-out war against each and every one of these players. It is waging war in Read more…

Saying that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is like saying the Holocaust had nothing to do with Hitler’s Third Reich. It’s high-time for the authorities to start picking up the Qur’an to actually read what it teaches before telling us what it doesn’t …

Hostile Activities: Qur’an Sura 3:151, “We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve …”

By Neil Doorley and Connor O’Brien,The Courier Mail – “TWO men will be charged with preparing to send fighters to join the conflict in Syria, after a year-long counter-terrorism investigation.

AFP National Manager Counter Terrorism Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan confirmed Omar Succarieh was one of the men arrested today.

He said a 31-year-old from Kuraby would be charged with providing funds to terrorist organisation Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.

Assistant Commissioner Gaughan said the man was also charged in relation to preparations for incursions into Syria with the intentions of engaging in hostile activities.

He said a 21-year-old from Baronia Heights would also be charged with two offences under the Crimes Incursions Act.

He said one charge was in relation to preparations for incursions into Syria with the intentions of engaging in hostile activities while the other was related to recruiting persons to engage in hostile activities in Syria.

Police will allege the men helped a ‘small number’ of individuals.

Assistant Commissioner Gaughan said there was no information or intelligence available to police to indicate the men were involved in planning any terrorism attacks in Australia.

‘This has got nothing to do with Islam, this is criminal behaviour by Australians involved in terrorist activity,’ he said.

He said the arrests followed a 12-month investigation.” Read more.

We have a lot of foolish politicians leading the West. I guess “Allah” managed to deceive them, too …

Qur’an Sura 3:54, “… Allah is the best of the deceivers.”

• Flashback: French President: Islamic Terror Has Nothing To Do With Islam
• Flashback: US President Obama: Islam Has A Proud Tradition Of Tolerance
• Flashback: British Prime Minister: Nothing In Islam Justifies Islamic Beheading
• Flashback: US Secretary Of State: The Real Face Of Islam Is A Peaceful Religion Based On The Dignity Of All Human Beings

“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest” – Benjamin Franklin

Islamic Terrorists Holding Pro-Terror Qur’an, But Worry Not, It Has Nothing To Do With Islamic Terrorism

By Michael Coren, Toronto Sun – “Only a bigot believes that all Muslims are terrorists, but only a fool believes there is no link between Islam and terrorism.

Yet as still another innocent person is beheaded and paraded before the world, there are two odious coalitions that refuse the embrace or admit the truth.

The first is in some ways easier to deal with. This dark gang includes Islamic fundamentalists, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic fanatics, haters of the west and in particular the United States and hard left extremists who believe all violence and instability aids their cause.

The second is more complex and nuanced. This alliance involves the cowardly, the absurdly naive, the usefully stupid, the relativist deniers and those who due to good will or a total lack of historical consciousness believe all religions are the same and if only everybody had high speed Internet and a full belly we could all dance together into the sunset.

There are in fact four stages involved in the denial of Islamic terror. The first is where we empty our heads. The second is where we bury of heads. The third is where we bow our heads. The fourth is where we lose our heads.

The first three are metaphorical, the last is literal.

The first stage involves ignorance. We assume Islamic violence is all our fault because of, for example, the Crusades.

This is what I call the Kevin Costner school of history.

In the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, dashing Kev tells us that his dad thought it wrong to try to convert people to another religion. Quite so, but Robin’s dad obviously knew little of the Crusades because they never tried to convert Muslims and were a direct response to 300 years of Islamic violence in the Holy Land. They were a product of Islamic brutality, not its cause.

From the Crusades we blame imperialism, even though the major empire o f the Islamic world was Turkish and Muslim; we blame Israel; we blame George Bush; we blame everyone and everything other than the genuine article.

The second stage is an attempt to …” Read more.

Qur’an Sura 8:12b, “… terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.”

Flashback: Muslim Columnist: We Must Be Honest About The Qur’an, ‘Muslims Are Caught In A Conundrum’ – “In the aftermath of Islamic jihadis — the Boko Haram — enslaving Christian school girls in Nigeria, the Muslim intelligentsia, instead of doing some serious introspection, has chosen to exercise damage control. Columns by my co-religionists have appeared in newspapers ranging from the Toronto Star to The Independent in London and on CNN.com, where they avoid any reference to Sharia laws that permit Muslims to take non-Muslim female prisoners of war as sex slaves. The fact is Muslim armies throughout history have been permitted under Islamic law to make sex slaves of non-Muslim prisoners… But courage to face facts is rare among many Muslims today. I asked the writers of the Toronto Star and The Independent columns why they had not addressed the passages of the Qur’an that permit Muslims to take slaves. They did not answer.” Read more.