THE E-JIHAD: In the National Post (Canada), FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Larry Footer explain how militant jihadis use the Internet to

indoctrinate, recruit, train, and finance the next generation of terrorists. Increasingly besieged on the battlefield, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and their Islamist brethren now seek anonymity and freedom of movement online through a vast and sophisticated terrorist web network. To counter their influence, policymakers and counterterrorism officials need to treat these outlets as indistinguishable from the terrorist organizations that use them.

The threat is real. A declassified April 2006 U. S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded: "The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint. We judge that groups of all stripes will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, propagandize, recruit, train and obtain logistical and financial support." …

Major General John M. Custer III, Commanding General of the U. S. Army Intelligence Center, underscores the impact of online terrorist media: "I see 16, 17-year-olds who have been indoctrinated on the Internet turn up on the battlefield ... You start off with a site that looks like current news in Iraq. With a single click, you're at an active jihad attack site ... You can see humvees blown up ... small arms attacks ... Next link will take you to a motivational site, where mortar operatives, suicide bombers, are pictured in heaven [providing] religious justification for mass murder."

Terrorist online platforms are a critical part of the battlefield on which the Long War against violent Islamist extremism is being fought. If they hope to persevere, Western democracies need to take aggressive and direct action against these media properties.

What can be done? A great deal as it turns out -- from shutting down these sites to exploiting them for counterterrorism purposes.

More here.

IRAN: FDD Freedom Scholar Michael Ledeen writes:

Those well-known chants of "Death to America!" are not slogans for domestic consumption; they describe the central thrust of Iranian foreign policy. The mullahs are now part of a global anti-American alliance that includes Syria, Russia, Eritrea, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, along with terrorist organizations from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to the Colombian FARC.

Therefore, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, no matter how well we do, no matter how many high-level targets we eliminate, no matter how many cities, towns, and villages we secure, unless we defeat Iran we will always be designing yet another counterinsurgency strategy in yet another place. We are in a big war, and Iran is at the heart of the enemy army. Alas, no American president since the Islamic Revolution has been willing to face the consequences of Iran's war against America. Most of the time, our leaders have refused to accept the fact that Iran will do everything possible to dominate or destroy us. Instead of trying to defeat the mullahs, every president has sought rapprochement, just as Obama is doing now. …

Nothing would so greatly help us in the big war -- most definitely including Afghanistan -- as the fall of the regime in Tehran, which is now a distinct possibility. The opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have promised to cut off Iranian support for terrorism and open all the nuclear facilities to international inspection, but our leaders don't want to have anything to do with them. Indeed, in an obvious appeasement message to the tyrants, a U.S. government grant was recently terminated to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in New Haven. To date, not a single Western government has made contact with the leaders of the opposition, let alone provided help.

More here.

What options does the administration have now?

"We could get the Europeans to immediately stop exporting gas to Iran," [military historian Victor Davis] Hanson explained. "We could have some kind of blockade of the Persian Gulf. We are talking about very serious things. But they would put pressure on Iran, ostracizing it." Will President Obama pursue such options? Does he possess the political will? Hanson and [former CIA operative Robert] Baer doubted it. "We have a president who likes to be liked," Hanson said. …

Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.

"The Israelis have some bunker busters," Baer said. "They could take out some sites underground. They could set the Iranian nuclear program back years." Would the Israelis be willing to accept the risks a military strike would entail? "This is just 65 years after the Holocaust," Hanson said. "My God, we are talking about 6 million people who were executed while the world watched, and now we have a person [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran] who is promising to do it again."

What is the probability that Israel will strike Iran within the next six months?

"Forty-nine percent," said Baer.

"I would say 50-50," Hanson replied.

More here.

KNOW THINE ENEMY: Sen. Joe Lieberman on the murder of Daniel Pearl:

What ended Danny’s life was a deliberate and calculated act of evil. He was murdered by men who knew what they believed, and who knew what they were doing. What animated and inspired them was not terrorism, which is merely a tactic, but a specific worldview and ideology.

It was the fanatical ideology of Islamist extremism that motivated Daniel Pearl’s killers -- an ideology that not only justifies but glorifies and rejoices in shedding the blood of innocents, and that I believe represents the most direct and dangerous threat in the world today to the quintessentially liberal values that Danny Pearl stood for, and that America was founded to stand for. …

Part of the perversity of evil is that, the greater its depravity, the greater is our temptation to avert our eyes from it, to look away, to convince ourselves that we cannot possibly be seeing what we are in fact seeing. Indeed, that is one of the reasons such evil persists. …

This war will end when a critical mass of people recognize that the ideology of our enemy is capable of creating nothing but hell on earth. It will end not when every conflict and injustice is solved but when the worldview of Islamist extremism is discredited, discarded, and reviled -- and when this set of ideas no longer inspires anything but frustration and disgust.

More here.

EUROPE: Conquest is what the militant Islamists intend. They are not shy about saying so:

Islam will be implemented … Islam will come, and it will conquer the UK, it will conquer Holland, it will conquer Rome, it will conquer the world!

More here.

ISRAEL: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points out:

The so-called [UN] human rights commission accuses Israel that legitimately defended itself against Hamas of war crimes. Mind you, Hamas . . . committed four. First, they called for the destruction of Israel, which under the U.N. Charter is considered a war crime -- incitement to genocide; secondly, they fired deliberately on civilians; third, they hid behind civilians; and fourth, they've been holding our captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, without access to the Red Cross, for three years.

And who gets accused of criminal behavior at the end of the day? Israel that sent thousands of text messages and made tens of thousands of cellular phone calls to Palestinian civilians [to warn them to evacuate]. …

In regard to Iran, Netanyahu notes:

The issue is not merely the security of Israel but of the world. Free and open societies are menaced by a dark radicalism that is seeking to arm itself and its proxies with nuclear weapons.

More here.

Lally Weymouth's interview with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is here.

The need for a global strategy to defend America and the West is also the theme of my column this week. That’s here.

THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: The Washington Times argues:

There is no moral equality between Hamas and Israel any more than there is between al Qaeda and the United States. Yet under the Goldstone logic, terrorists and sovereign states are identical. The incidental, unintentional civilian deaths Israel caused during the Gaza conflict are condemned as war crimes; the widespread and intentional Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are basically ignored. The Goldstone model makes it impossible for civilized states to strike effectively against the world's barbarians who are fighting a shadow war against decency that views innocent noncombatants as both legitimate targets and useful shields.

More here.

John Bolton writes:

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head -- or, in the future, to America's. …

Quasi-religious faith in "engagement" and the U.N. has run into empirical reality. When the administration picks itself up off the ground, it should become more cognizant of that organization's moral and political limitations.

Although it will be hard for Mr. Obama to swallow, the logical response to Friday's debacle is to withdraw from and defund the HRC. Otherwise the Goldstone Report will merely be the beginning, next time perhaps with Washington as its unmistakable target.

More here.

DEADLY ANNIVERSARY: Col. Timothy Geraghty recalls the Iranian/Hezbollah attack on the US 26 years ago:

The death toll eventually reached 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers -- my men. It was the highest loss of life in a single day since D-Day on Iwo Jima in 1945. The coordinated, dual suicide attacks -- supported, planned, financed and organized by Iran and Syria using Shiite proxies -- achieved their goal: the withdrawal of the Multinational Force from Lebanon and a dramatic change in US policy.

The synchronized attacks had killed a total of 299 US and French peacekeepers and wounded scores more. The cost to the Iranian-Syrian supported operation was two suicide bombers dead. This was the beginning of the asymmetrical war radical Islamists waged against America and our allies. It has evolved today to be the major national-security threat to Western civilization.

Perhaps the most significant development that grew out of our Beirut mission was Iran's ascent. …

Today Iran is capable of causing havoc on several fronts and on its own schedule, which provides convenient distractions while its nuclear centrifuges spin.

Shiite Iranian mullahs, looking to fuel instability, support al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even though three of these groups are Sunni. They also back the Taliban in Afghanistan against NATO forces and use the IRGC's elite Quds Force to train, finance and equip Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq. …

Add to this the recent reports, confirmed by the Drug Enforcement Administration's former chief of operations, that Hezbollah operatives have formed a partnership with the Mexican drug cartels, using smuggling routes to get people and contraband into the United States.

More here.

HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN WRONGS: Robert L. Bernstein writes:

As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

More here.

PAKISTAN: Peter Bergen notes:

Nearly every major jihadist plot against Western targets in the last two decades somehow leads back to Afghanistan or Pakistan. The first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, who had trained in an Al Qaeda camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Ahmed Ressam, who plotted to blow up LAX airport in 1999, was trained in Al Qaeda's Khaldan camp in Afghanistan. Key operatives in the suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000 trained in Afghanistan; so did all 19 September 11 hijackers. The leader of the 2002 Bali attack that killed more than 200 people, mostly Western tourists, was a veteran of the Afghan camps. The ringleader of the 2005 London subway bombing was trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The British plotters who planned to blow up passenger planes leaving Heathrow in the summer of 2006 were taking direction from Pakistan; a July 25, 2006, e-mail from their Al Qaeda handler in that country, Rashid Rauf, urged them to "get a move on." If that attack had succeeded, as many as 1,500 would have died. The three men who, in 2007, were planning to attack Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. facility in Germany, had trained in Pakistan's tribal regions.

And yet, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can therefore defeat the former while tolerating the latter; that flushing jihadists out of one failing state will merely cause them to pop up in another anarchic corner of the globe; that, in the age of the Internet, denying terrorists a physical safe haven isn't all it's cracked up to be.

These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest. But those who make this case could not be more mistaken. Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism -- and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan. …

Al Qaeda was founded in Pakistan in 1988, and many of the Taliban's leaders and foot soldiers emerged out of Pakistani madrassas and refugee camps. The political vacuum in Afghanistan during the 1990s allowed these militants to expand into the country. The result, clearly, was a much stronger Al Qaeda.

More here.

Shuja Nawaz on how Pakistan can be helped -- and help itself -- here.

Investigators have discovered a "Jihadi village" of white German al-Qaeda insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas close to the Afghan border.

Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistan intelligence officer, who describes himself as a friend of Osama bin Laden, said he was aware of a German contingent and that there were a number of Swedish converts too who had arrived in Pakistan "for Jihad".

"The Europeans are there [in Waziristan]. The most dedicated people there are from Europe. They will do anything for Islam. They are not there because their fathers are Muslim, but by choice," he said.

More here.

The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service says there is a

"growing number of indications" that more Europeans are attending [terrorist training] camps in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan [and that] al-Qaeda's ability to carry out attacks has generally improved in recent years largely because it has successfully bolstered its alliances with other terrorist groups.

More here.

WAR AND PEACE; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey argues that civilian courts are not the place for terrorist trials:

[T]he rules for conducting criminal trials in federal courts have been fashioned to prosecute conventional crimes by conventional criminals. Defendants are granted access to information relating to their case that might be useful in meeting the charges and shaping a defense, without regard to the wider impact such information might have. That can provide a cornucopia of valuable information to terrorists, both those in custody and those at large.

Thus, in the multidefendant terrorism prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others that I presided over in 1995 in federal district court in Manhattan, the government was required to disclose, as it is routinely in conspiracy cases, the identity of all known co-conspirators, regardless of whether they are charged as defendants. One of those co-conspirators, relatively obscure in 1995, was Osama bin Laden. It was later learned that soon after the government's disclosure the list of unindicted co-conspirators had made its way to bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, where he then resided. He was able to learn not only that the government was aware of him, but also who else the government was aware of.

It is not simply the disclosure of information under discovery rules that can be useful to terrorists. The testimony in a public trial, particularly under the probing of appropriately diligent defense counsel, can elicit evidence about means and methods of evidence collection that have nothing to do with the underlying issues in the case, but which can be used to press government witnesses to either disclose information they would prefer to keep confidential or make it appear that they are concealing facts. The alternative is to lengthen criminal trials beyond what is tolerable by vetting topics in closed sessions before they can be presented in open ones. …

[C]ritics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad -- people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.

More here.

SEPTEMBER 10: FDD’s Tom Joscelyn worries that

Federal courts with no particular knowledge of or expertise in understanding al Qaeda are determining how America’s warriors can fight back.

More here.

GITMO GRADS: Another former detainee at Guantanamo is released, re-joins the jihad and is killed. Tom has more here.

AFGHANISTAN: Elise Jordan writes:

A highly regarded Kabul newspaper editor imprisoned multiple times for criticizing the Taliban regime divides Afghan media into three spheres of influence -- outlets attempting to stay independent; networks operated and controlled editorially by warlords; and entities funded by Iranians, who openly aim to culturally persuade Afghanistan and use their Kabul-based stations to celebrate Al-Quds Day and Khomeini Day.

As the Iranians make a concerted effort to influence Afghans, we remain on the sidelines. As the Obama administration conducts yet another strategic review, there's no sign of any appreciation that any successful strategy must include overtures to Afghans active in civil society that will help us project as part a clear message of American intentions.

Unless we do, the rumors and unfounded speculation that the Taliban propagate will continue to diminish our influence -- and lead Afghans to hedge their bets. If not addressed soon, public opinion could turn against a U.S. presence.

More here.

Meanwhile, senior officials in the Obama administration are batting around the notion that the Taliban in Afghanistan could play a role comparable to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is not something anyone should want, writes FDD’s Tony Badran. He notes:

Hezbollah's political participation is the utter bastardization and inexorable destruction of democracy. They are using the system to protect their status outside of it, not to integrate within it.

Furthermore, Hezbollah's participation in politics has enabled it to direct the political dialogue in its favor. As Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary-general, articulated in the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, "The question no longer was whether the Resistance will remain or not." Rather, "the question is, how does the rest of society integrate into the Resistance?"

More here.

THE TALIBAN: Where do they get their money? According to The New York Times, they have imposed

an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash. …

American officials say that they have been surprised to learn in recent months that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban.

“In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in June. “That is simply not true.” …

The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by The Washington Post.

Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.

More here.

- Cliff May

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

IN THE MEDIA

Unfortunately, Failure Is An Option
10/26/2009, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Lawrence B. Lindsey, The Weekly Standard
One of the standard accoutrements of the decision making process in the West Wing is the three-option "decision memorandum." The memo itself is drafted by the national security adviser, the National Economic Council director, or the assistant to the president for domestic policy, depending on the issue.

Imprison Here, Release Here
10/23/2009, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online
If Guantanamo Bay is closed, scores of trained jihadists, committed to killing Americans, will be released to dwell among us: It is that simple.

The Pretense of Reform
10/23/2009, Tony Badran, Mara E. Karlin, The Washington Times
Senior officials in the Obama administration are batting around the notion that the Taliban in Afghanistan could play a role comparable to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to The Washington Post.

The Government's Allegations Against Tarek Mehanna
10/23/2009, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, The Long War Journal
On Wednesday, Tarek Mehanna of Sudbury, Mass., was charged in federal court with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

The Strategic Challenge of Somalia's Al-Shabaab
10/22/2009, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Middle East Quarterly
Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation.

The New U.S. Sudan Policy: A Preliminary Review
10/22/2009, Dr. J. Peter Pham, World Defense Review
Only time-and deeds-will tell whether or not the result of the new policy actually delivers what President Barack Obama described in a White House statement as "a comprehensive strategy to confront the serious and urgent situation in Sudan."

U.N. Injustice
10/22/2009, Claudia Rosett, Forbes.com
Founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," today's United Nations is instead laying the groundwork for war galore. In the name of "justice," the U.N. handicaps democracies trying to defend themselves against tyrants and terrorists.

Disconnecting the Dots
10/22/2009, Clifford D. May, Scripps Howard News Service
Don't fault President Obama for reconsidering his strategy in Afghanistan. Fault him for reconsidering his strategy only in Afghanistan.

The Problem of Evil
10/21/2009, Dr. Michael Ledeen, The National Review
This war against America was never about Afghanistan or Iraq, but has always been a regional war, with malefactors are up to no good around the world.

Taliban Rattles Pakistan
10/20/2009, Dr. Walid Phares, Newsmax.com
As the Taliban send suicide bombers inside Pakistan's cities, observers focus on the horrors and the continuing bloodshed.

We Have Met the Enemy . . .
10/20/2009, Dr. Michael Ledeen, The Weekly Standard
Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan-- which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders.

The Code Is Mightier Than The Sword
10/20/2009, Mark Dubowitz, Larry Footer, The National Post (Canada)
The Long War against radical Islam is a war of ideas as much as a war of arms. Yet, for too long, the incitement and violent propaganda from Internet platforms operated by violent Islamist extremists have gone unnoticed and unanswered.

The O'Reilly Factor
10/20/2009, Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, Fox News Channel
America's strategy in Pakistan.

Cross Talk
10/20/2009, Dr. Walid Phares, Russia Today
Pakistan and the Taliban.

News Update
10/20/2009, Dr. Walid Phares, Russia Today
Run-off elections in Afghanistan.

The Ed Show
10/19/2009, Clifford D. May, MSNBC
America's strategy in Pakistan.

Happening Now
10/19/2009, Dr. Michael Ledeen, Fox News Channel
Terrorism in Iran.

Covert Radio
10/26/2009, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Syndicated
Somalia's al-Shabaab.

Accuracy in Media Conference
10/23/2009, Andrew C. McCarthy, C-SPAN 2
Andrew C. McCarthy speaks at the Accuracy in Media Conference.

Business News
10/22/2009, Mark Dubowitz, BBC World Service
The need for the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act.

Secure Freedom Radio
10/22/2009, Clifford D. May, Syndicated
Pakistan's future.

News Update
10/22/2009, Dr. Walid Phares, BBC Arabic TV
Iran's future.

Lee Rodgers Show
10/21/2009, Dr. Michael Ledeen, KSFO - San Francisco (CA)
Iran and Dr. Ledeen's new book, Accomplice ot Evil.

Curtis Sliwa Show
10/20/2009, Clifford D. May, WABC - New York (NY)
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

News Update
10/19/2009, Dr. Walid Phares, BBC Arabic
Afghanistan and Pakistan.