No Word of a Lie

 

Vincent J. Curtis


20 Nov 14
 

 

http://www.islam-watch.org/home/139-louis-palme/1095-knowing-four-arabic-words-may-save-our-civilization-from-islamic-takeover.html.

 

The above link discusses four terms of art in the Islamic world that name means of deceiving non-Muslims for the purpose of self-protection or for the advancement of Islam in some way.

 

These terms are:  takiyya, tawriya, kitman, and muruna.

 

Briefly, Takiyya refers to the dissimulation of one’s Muslim identity.  Tawriya means creative lying.  Kitman means the telling of a partial truth.  Muruna means the flexibly blending in with the enemy.  It is justification of departure from proper Islamic practice for purposes of deception.  The 9/11 hijackers employed Muruna.

 

These are terms of art which name practices permitted under Islam for purposes of deceiving the infidel or apostate.  These ordinarily would not be permitted to be used by one Muslim against another.

 

Together, these terms mean that it is impossible for a westerner to believe or trust a Muslim if the Muslim thinks it in his or Islam’s interest to be deceptive.

 

Often, commentary and editorials offered by offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood use the term ‘innocent,’ as in a condemnation of the killing of innocents.  It may be useful to understand that in a Muslim’s eyes an apostate is never innocent.  An infidel is not an innocent.  As between a Muslim and an infidel or a westerner, the Muslim is always the innocent party.  Thus when a Muslim employs the term ‘innocent’ to a western audience, the audience should be aware of the private meaning for innocent held by the Muslim.  In effect, when a Muslim uses the term innocent before a western audience, one of the forms of deception named above are being employed.

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A One-Way Dialog

 

 
Vincent J. Curtis


17 Nov 14

  

On July 13, 2011, columnist Mark Steyn wrote a piece entitled “How Unclean Was My Valley", which concerned the use of a high school gymnasium for Friday worship services by the school’s Muslim students.  Steyn observed, among other things, that such services were contrary to School Board policy which forbade religion services being conducted on school property and on school time.

 

In passing, Steyn remarked upon a difference between famous Canadian author Pierre Berton, and his less famous son, Paul.  At the time, Berton fils was publisher of the London Free Press and was noted by Steyn for his Islamophilia.

 

Since then, the younger Berton has moved on to bigger and better things and became the publisher of the Hamilton Spectator.  His noted Islamophilic ways must continue, as it was disclosed in a guest opinion column that a public forum and discussion would be held in the Spectator’s auditorium by none other than the Muslim Association of Hamilton.

 

I regarded this as a somewhat alarming development.  I served on the Hamilton Public Library Board from 1996-1999.  In that period, the Muslims Student’s Association of McMaster University applied to make use of the main library’s auditorium, ostensibly for an exposition of Islamic culture.  The recommendation was to turn down the request, as the previous year an exposition similarly described turned into a rather obnoxious effort at proselytizing Islam.  The actual event was dishonestly not as described in the application for use by the MSA.

 

On the Board at the time was a rather elderly member of Pakistani origin and a Muslim himself.  When he heard of the application he immediately became fearful.  He asked that it be recorded in the minutes that was not present for the vote on that agenda item.  Afterwards I asked him what the problem was.  He informed me of the then just developing Islamic supremacist movement in Canada and he said the MSA was a manifestation of that movement.  As a Muslim, he would have been a particular target of their wrath if they became aware that he was complicit in the thwarting of their aims.  He would not support them, and he would not be known to have opposed them either.  He regarded them as dangerous to him.

 

Upon reading the fact that the Spectator would host a Muslim-oriented event, I sent the editor something like the following:

The Spectator is going to have its hands full when it hosts the open discussion and forum planned early next year by the Muslim Association of Hamilton.  Mentioned at the end of the article written by Dr. Raza Khan, the forum will be an up close and personal encounter with Islamic supremacism, and with Islamic proselytization.

There is no difference in aim between Islamic supremacism and Islamic extremism or radicalism. What is notable about Islamic extremism or radicalism is the use of violence to achieve the end of Islamic supremacism.  Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are supremacists that are not violent, while al Qaeda and ISIS are supremacists that employ violence.  Each of those groups aim at the imposition of Sharia law; they simply use different means.

Since Dr. Khan was born and raised in Hamilton, there is no justification on the basis of culture for the jarring turns of reason he employed in his article.  These turns of reason bear the hallmarks of a Muslim Brotherhood spin piece that are used to beguile westerners who don’t want to be troubled with harsh truths.  He will not advocate violence, but he will justify anything that advances the cause of Islam.

You can see that in his article.  He seems to condemn the violence of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al Qaeda but then excuses their violence as a natural response to the violence suffered by Muslims at the hands of westerners and the Israelis.  The people who have called the Muslim Association of Hamilton concerning the murder of Cpl Nathan Cirillo have done so not to condemn or threaten as one would expect but, apparently, to seek understanding and to pay homage to Muslims and Islam.

His condemnation of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al Qaeda seems significant, but only to the uninitiated. Unless the condemnation of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al Qaeda was for heresy and for fraudulently misrepresenting Islam, the ‘condemnation’ is empty of meaning to Muslims.  This ‘condemnation’ was a turn for westerners, and is a well-understood tactic in the world of Islam for which there are specific terms of art.  He could be condemning them for bad table manners.

One also needs to understand who is ‘innocent’ in the eyes of a Muslim fundamentalist.  To every Muslim, and apostate is not innocent, despite the injunction against no compulsion in religion.  To Muslims in general, infidels are not innocent.  To all Muslims, between an infidel and a Muslim, the Muslim is the innocent party.  When you see a Muslim fundamentalist employing the term ‘innocent’, bear in mind what that term means to a Muslim not to a westerner.

The conversation Dr. Khan says he wishes to have will consist of a one-way talk of proselytization, for the meaning of Islam is “to submit” and a Muslim is one “submitting.”  Since he is a Muslim and the western interlocutor is not, it is the interlocutor who has to submit.

Islamic supremacism is all about the imposition of Sharia law, even in Canada.  So long as the Muslim community remains weak in Canadian society, we have no fear of violence from them here. We should however be under no illusions.  The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is quintessentially a statement of western values, and Sharia law is utterly in conflict with those values. Islamic supremacism, which seeks to impose Sharia law, should not be tolerated by those who value the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Charter.
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Meanwhile, an old passage written by Winston S. Churchill in The River War has been making the rounds:

 

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many
countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods
of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the
Prophet rule or live.  A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.  The fact that in Mohammedan
law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as
a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the
faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion
paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.  No stronger retrograde
force exists in the world.  Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant
and proselytizing faith.  It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising
fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the
strong arms of science, the science against which it (Islam) has vainly struggled,
the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”  

Churchill’s quotes were taken from the volume: Sir Winston Churchill; “The River War”, first edition, Volume II, pages 248-250, published by Longmans, Green & Company, 1899.

 

This passage occurs in the first edition, which consisted of a two volume set of nearly 1000 pages.  The book was revised, edited and shortened for a one volume version that was originally published in 1902, and the above passage did not make it into the revised version.  The book was revised to make the book more of a history and so as not to bore the reader with Churchillian philosophizing.

Muslim Community’s Call to Action

 

Vincent J. Curtis

 

27 Sept 2014

 

Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud was a Muslim of Somali extraction who happened to be born in Hamilton, Ontario.  This twenty-year old was in the news on account of his having been killed the previous week in northern Syria, of all places, fighting on the side of ISIS against Kurdish forces.

 

At the news of the circumstances of his death, the Muslim community in Hamilton sprang into action.  They called upon the Federal government of Canada to “proactively provide Canadian mosques with resources and tools” to support and expand programs aimed at offering youth chances for “peaceful dialog and civic engagement,” as reported by the Hamilton Spectator’s Bill Dunphy.

 

Surprisingly, the Federal government had not replied within two days of the call.  In fact, no politician at the civic or Federal level was available to explain to the Spectator why they were so tardy in their response to the call to action by the Muslim Community of Hamilton.  The guts of the Spectator story was a catalog of non-responses by politicians of all stripes at all levels of government.

 

The Muslim community seems to have contacted the Spectator in order to use the newspaper as a prod.  Worryingly, their phone calls weren’t being returned as they used to be, and (western) politicians were no longer so quick to make soothing noises protective of the Muslim community in the face of signs of Islamic radicalism.  Muslim communities throughout the western world used to be able to rely on western politicians to deny any connection between Islamic radicalism and the small Islamic community in the midst of the western community.  Those protective denials were not automatically made in the face of a Canadian-born and –raised Muslim of Somali extraction being killed in Syria while fighting for the Islamic Caliphate.  One wonders where the young man could have picked up such ideas.

 

Analysis of the ‘call to action’ by the Muslim community reveals some disturbing details.  The ‘call to action’ amounted to a demand for more money from the Federal government.  It would be unkind to call this a jizya or a tax Muslims took from Christians for the privilege of being Christian, but there is a vague similarity.  Withal, the basis of the ‘call to action’ was for somebody else to act, not the Muslim Community itself, and the act demanded was the giving of money.

 

What did not appear was what the Muslim community planned to do with the money they wanted.  Extra pay for their Imams is likely, but what are those Imams going to do for that extra pay?

 

Are they going to condemn ISIS in no uncertain terms in the mosque?  I’d like to hear the speech.  I'd like to see it on Youtube.

The Spec story contained nothing about what the Muslim community itself had done to justify additional support from the government to ward off Islamic extremism developing in Canada.

 

Because of the concepts of Taqiyya, Tawriya, Kitman, and Muruna, I don’t take as worth anything the word of a spokesman that Imam So-and-so believes such-and-such, or than he uttered a general banality like “peaceful dialog and civic engagement” as if it meant something.

 

I’d like to see the video on Youtube in which the local Imam in English and Arabic denounces the self-appointed Caliph of the Islamic State as a fraud and a heretic.

 

You won’t find such a thing because they don’t do it;  they rely on western politicians to do that.  But it is the Imam who does condemn Islamic radicals as heretics who deserves the bigger megaphone that Federal money can buy.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama cannot hold a candle to a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman when it comes to double-talk and lawyerly pettifogging.

For years it was politicians of a western persuasion that declared that successive acts of Islamic radicalism were aberrations and that Islam was a religion of peace.  Well, it is high time that western politicians shut up about it because it seems they were drowning out the voices of moderation and the real experts in the Islamic community.

It is time for western politicians shut up about Islam and the religion of peace business as these are matters they know nothing about.  They are not Islamic scholars, and so have no standing to say what Islam really means or does not mean, especially in and to the Islamic community.  Western politicians should get off the stage and allow leaders in the Muslim community, the Islamic scholars and Imams, to do the talking.

For some reason, having the western politians standing aside and giving them the public stage has the Imams feeling naked and afraid.  Anyhow, we're listening.

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Aboriginals should burn less and think more

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Oct 2014

Today, aboriginal protesters closed downtown Hamilton to traffic in a protest against the federal government's failure to bend to their latest demand.  Over a thousand aboriginal women are missing and feared killed over the last decade or so, and no one in power seemed to care.  It became the the cause du jour to demand that Prime Minister Stephen Harper order an inquiry into the matter.  The press picked up on it, being a handy tong with which to beat a man they don't like and would replace with Justin Trudeau.

Harper, however, stood his ground, saying the matter was already studied, and another one would not solve the problem.  Aboriginal women, leaving the reserve without an education or marketable skills, become addicted to drugs or alcohol and end up as sex workers for money.  Sex work is a very dangerous job, and some of the aboriginal women who engage in it end up killed.  What another study into causes would do to alleviate the problem is open to question.

The protests themselves abounded with unintended irony.  The pagan ritual of burning a 'sacred fire' in front of Hamilton's court house, to avoid melting the pavement, was performed by burning the wood in a cast iron bowl.  Metallurgy and the casting of iron are the white man's inventions.  A large teepee was erected on the grounds opposite the court house to keep the participants dry during the frequent rain showers.  A teepee is an invention of the plains Indians.  The natives of the Hamilton area lived in longhouses, not teepees.  Faux and erstaz nativism reigned; and most were obvious to it.

Below are some thoughts which occured on the day of the protests.

The Aboriginal protests this weekend, which are meant to call for a study into violence against Aboriginal women, is a testament to willful ignorance.  The subject has been studied to death.

The website of the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada shows 39,600 documents responding to the search term “aboriginal women.”  These documents include numerous police reports and studies by the RCMP, statistical results from Statistics Canada, and reports from the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Status of Women Forum, which last issued its report on the subject on February 25, 2013.

The statistical results comprise the data upon which all the speculation as to causes is based.  Anybody can see from the statistics that there is a problem of violence against aboriginal women; the cause of this problem is sheer speculation.  Given the extreme political correctness that surrounds aboriginal issues, one can hardly trust any analysis.  An analysis which placed the blame for violence against aboriginal women squarely at the door of aboriginal society and culture would be denounced as racism and, if it were even published, would not be accepted by the people it most concerns.  An analysis which placed the blame at the door of white society would be regarded as old news.  Of course whites are responsible for everything bad that has happened to aboriginals in the last 400 years.  What else is new?

More thinking and less burning is required on the part of the aboriginal community if they are serious about addressing this problem of violence against their women.  Burning wood in the middle of Main Street and blockading traffic throughout the region amounts to a demand that the white man solve an aboriginal problem.  And, of course, such problems are solved by throwing money at them.

The problem of violence against aboriginal women has been studied to death.  The data is available for those who really care about such things.  One can speculate all one wishes as to why the figures are as they are.  Disrupting traffic as a means to call for another study is unserious.  Start by doing your homework, and then offer a serious proposal.
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LRT: The Big Issue in this Fall’s Election in Hamilton

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


18 August 2014
 

A billion dollar boondoggle is going to be the major issue in this fall’s municipal election.  In a worshipful gesture to the green movement, the Ontario government dangled a Light Rapid Transit line before Hamilton’s city council – for free!  And all the city has to do is implement the proposal.  Oh, and pay for its operation.  City Councillors are swimming around the bait like hungry trout.

 

Support for the proposal is a mile wide and an inch deep.  It is a mile wide because it is bad political optics to turn down a freebie like this.  It is an inch deep because everybody knows nothing is free and there has to be a catch somewhere.  Hamilton does not have the financial resources to carry a massive white elephant.

 

And white elephant is what it will prove to be, based on this short financial analysis.

 

The capital cost of the line is projected to be north of $800 million, but I’m going to assume that the final cost of installing the line is $1 Billion.  Depreciated over forty years, at a meagre 3 % bond interest rate, the line will have to bring in roughly $120,000 a day, every day for forty years, just to cover the mortgage.  Presently, about 13,000 people a day use public transit along the route of the LRT.  Those people would have to pay $9.23 in fares per day, every day, for forty years just to cover the cost of paying the bond.

 

But the line will have operating costs as well.  There will be labour and overhead, maintenance, and the cost of electricity to power the line.  Since the LRT is a gesture to the green movement, it would incongruous to power the line with electricity other than that from wind and solar, the most expensive electricity in Ontario.  Added to the cost of paying for the bond, income from fares, I’m guessing, will have to top $200,000 a day every day for forty years in order that the LRT be a paying proposition.

 

That works out to $15.38 per ride from 13,000 people.  Right now, $5.00 will get you a good parking spot in downtown Hamilton for a day.  So, why would a good environmentalist pay $15.38 in fares when he can park for a third of that?

 

In order for the fare to be comparable to parking, the number of riders of the LRT will have rise to 40,000 a day, more than triple the current ridership along the route.  That would bring the fare down the $5.00.  But notice what happens as a consequence.

 

The line will run roughly from Stoney Creek to Westdale.  For ridership to more than triple, the population of Stoney Creek is going to have to increase comparably, while the jobs and entertainment of these new masses in Stoney Creek will have to be in Westdale!   To carry that passenger load, there will have to be parking along the route.  The cost of parking will be a further charge to the passengers over and above their fares.  Economically, it could still make more sense to drive.

 

Nobody in city government is making plans for the population of Stoney Creek to triple by the time the LRT is ready to go, or for that necessary massive expansion of commercial activity in Westdale for all those people to need to use the LRT.

 

Folks in Flamborough, the Mountain, Ancaster, and Dundas (FMAD) will get no service whatsoever from the LRT.  But like all other Hamilton taxpayers, they will be on the hook to cover the financial losses.  For FMAD, the LRT is all risk and no reward.  That much is guaranteed.

 

The boosters of the LRT say that the line will bring additional commerce along the line.  What these boosters fail to answer is where will this additional commerce will be coming from?  More commerce will have to come from either more wealth or more population, and none of the boosters are offering hard numbers on either score.  “If you build it, they will come,” seems to be their mantra.

 

It’s not their money the boosters of the LRT are placing at risk.  It is taxpayer’s money.  I have no faith in the wisdom of risking a billion or two upon an altar of environmentalism.

 

I am going to support candidates that are adamantly opposed to the LRT and aren’t foolish enough to be tempted by freebies.

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Taking Out ISIS is Simple, and Complicated.

Vincent J. Curtis

4 September 2014

When even Libertarian-ish Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) is changing his mind about intervention in Iraq against ISIS, you know something is up.  Emotions are running high, and President Obama’s apparent indifference and lackadaisical attitude is not calming the waters.  After the beheading by an ISIS thug of a second American journalist and fear mongering about ISIS attacks in homeland America, there is a powerful emotional wave demanding something be done about ISIS.

President Obama has been widely criticized by both Republicans and leading Democrats over his remark that he has no strategy as yet for dealing with ISIS.  President Obama in the same press conference in Estonia said that ISIS would be destroyed and reduced to manageable proportions.  Well, critics say, which is it?

As a technical matter, the elimination of ISIS is a simple thing to formulate.  But, as military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz wrote, in war the simple things are always hard.  The elimination of ISIS involves questions that none of President Obama’s critics have thought much about.

First, the elimination of ISIS.  The ISIS force in Iraq consists of somewhere between six and ten thousand men who are loosely strung along the network of roads leading from the Syrian border down to Fallujah and north of Baghdad.  The network is only strong if pushed northward from Baghdad back to Syria.  It would be easier to cut the network in half by a seizure of land north of Mosul from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Jordanian border, severing ISIS communications south of that seizure.  Either during or immediately after communications were cut, ISIS would be brought to a major battle.  Between competent land forces defending the seized land and U.S. air power, the ISIS forces attempting to break out of southern Iraq would be annihilated.  The loss of a large proportion of their force and the humiliating loss of territory would be morale shaking, and a lot of the foreign fighters would head for home, further accelerating the decline of ISIS.

So far, so good.  But here is where it gets complicated.

To completely eliminate ISIS, the land force which destroyed ISIS in battle would have to invade Syrian territory to clean out the remainder.  In clearing out the rest of ISIS, the force would solve a major problem for embattled Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. ISIS is one of the major forces seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. Assad is the fellow that last year President Obama said had to go; and now the United States would be saving his hide.  Putin would surely enjoy the irony of it all.  The Mullahs of Iran would be astonished at the strange but satisfying workings of Allah.

The position of leader gives a perspective on things which few except other leaders can appreciate.  It is easy for critics to say what ought to be done, when they are not the ones who have to do it.  There are further complicating things besides saving Assad which critics of inaction have not addressed.

The first thing President Obama’s critics have not answered is, why should the President of the United States save the people of Iraq from themselves?

The elimination of ISIS is going to involve a lot of bloodshed.  Are the critics prepared for the kind of brutality and bloodshed which annihilating ISIS will involve, or will they blanch at the horror?  I use the term “annihilate” in its technical sense to name the fate of ISIS forces.  That term means that practically every last one of the ISIS fighters is killed.  Prisoners will not be taken; or if taken, they will be killed in the same manner as ISIS killed their prisoners.  That brutality is all ISIS understands. But are Obama’s critics prepared to order that this be done?  There is going to be someone who observes that there seems to be little difference in method between ISIS and American backed forces.  How are Obama’s critics going to answer that charge?

Otherwise, do critics think that some prison system somewhere is going to hold, protect, and look after the majority of the ISIS thugs, those who surrendered?

There is simple talk that striking at the head of the snake in Syria would be sufficient to deal a death blow to ISIS.  Even if that did work, nothing is proposed to be done with the body of the snake, which comprises all those individuals who committed the blackest of human crimes.  What is supposed to be done with them?

If lawmakers want a blow to be struck at ISIS, they could start by passing a law declaring ISIS to be an outlaw organization, and that membership in ISIS or aiding and abetting ISIS is a criminal offense punishable a minimum of twenty years in prison.  It was made a criminal offense to have belonged to the German SS, and lawmakers can do a similar thing now.  Thus all those foreigners who served ISIS and escaped death on the battlefield could be imprisoned under domestic law.

ISIS is a threat to countries in the Middle East.  They are a threat to the existing Islamic order, and particularly the Arabic Islamic order.  Their empty threats against homeland America are meant for Middle Eastern consumption.  There is no particular urgency for the United States to save Iraqi Arabs from their own kind.  America has something of an obligation to protect the Kurds, who, while Islamic, are not Arabs, and are immune from pan-Arabic Islamic radicalism.

The beheading of two Americans by ISIS thugs has raised demands that ISIS be destroyed.  Rather than take measures within their own competence to do, lawmakers are busy saying what the President should do without addressing all the complicating issues.  The president’s go-slow policy is sensible in view of all the complicating factors.

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ISIS: Still a JV Team

Vincent J. Curtis 

11 August 2014

When he was first asked about the danger posed by ISIS, President Obama described them as a Junior Varsity team, and said that a JV team putting on the sweaters of the Los Angeles Lakers did not turn them into Kobe Bryant, the Lakers’s star player.  With the success of ISIS since those comments were made, the JV remarks are being thrown back at President Obama by his panicking critics.  Nevertheless, those remarks remain true.

What a real Lakers team has done lately is use air strikes to selectively suppress ISIS forces – individual artillery pieces- and then precision air-drop food and water that is enabling 40,000 Yazidis to escape from ISIS encirclement on Mount Sinjar.  All from half way around the world.

Before yielding to panic, a more balanced assessment of the threat ISIS represents is needed.  One ought do what General Ulysses S. Grant used to do: look at the weaknesses of the enemy and seek ways to exploit them.

What are the weaknesses of ISIS?  They can be reduced to three: (1) that ISIS is militarily overextended; (2) they have now come out of the shadows and, having done so, created hostages to fortune; (3) they have created new enemies in the Islamic world on account of having proclaimed a Caliphate.

ISIS is said to comprise some 10,000 fighters, of which 6,000 are in Iraq.  Of these 6,000, half are said to be “foreign” fighters, that is, Muslims whose primary residence is in Europe, Australia, or North America.  These foreign fighters fight for ISIS for the personal satisfaction of engaging in jihad and for the chance to indulge in the blackest of human desires.  ISIS has posted on the social websites the gruesome atrocities its members have committed against innocent victims.  Members of ISIS have also demolished ancient structures of veneration of both Muslim and Christian faiths.

ISIS boosts the strength of its numbers by the terror they inspire.  Like a stock market gripped with irrational exuberance, the prospects of ISIS get better and better.

The tough Kurdish Pershmurga once showed reluctance to engage ISIS out of fear of a terrible death should they be captured.  Now that they believe America will stand by them, they have recaptured lost territory and are helping rescue the Yazidis.

The fact remains that there are only a limited number of ISIS fighters, who cannot be everywhere at once.  Half of these are foreigners for whom home will eventually beckon.  Each new recruit represents an untrained, undisciplined mouth to feed.  With one serious morale-breaking defeat, these foreigners will find home beckoning strongly, and will desert the cause.  One serious morale-breaking defeat and the myth of ISIS invincibility will be shattered, and with it the effectiveness of their use of terror.  After a defeat, the employment of gruesome murder would be seen as a sign of desperation, not as a sign of holy rage.  The fortunes of ISIS would collapse as rapidly as it grew.

Video clips of ISIS in battle have shown nothing except that they have mastered the art of driving pickup trucks in convoy.  They have not demonstrated the capacity to maneuver substantial bodies of troops in a real battle.  They lack the staff, the communications, the training and the discipline to do so.  And by a ‘real battle’ I mean a mere brigade-sized action, which would require the fielding of the majority of their fighting force in Iraq.

As between a pickup truck sporting a machine gun and an Abrams tank, there is no doubt about the outcome of a trial by battle.  One reason for the utter collapse in morale in the Iraqi government forces when faced with the ISIS incursion was the pilfering of soldier’s pay by the Iraqi officers.  Few men are willing to fight for a man who stole his wages.  At one time, the Iraqi army boasted of its fearsome Republican Guard divisions, which fought American troops tenaciously.  Now former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki allowed the Iraqi army to rot from within.

In a conventional army, seven or eight men are needed to support one man in combat.  Nearly all of the ISIS men are described as “fighters,” meaning few or none of them do what is done by the seven or eight men in a conventional army.  ISIS will find it difficult, then, to replenish itself with ammunition and other necessities in the event of a major battle.  It is also vulnerable to a battle of attrition.

Having proclaimed a Caliphate and called upon all Muslims to “obey” him, the boss of ISIS, Caliph Ibrahim, created more weaknesses.  With a Caliphate and the naming of Mosul as its temporary capital city, ISIS has come out of the shadows.  It has real property, and it pretends to govern.  Upon the first act of terrorism committed or attempted against the United States by the Caliphate, its cities are liable to a retaliatory strike.  The home town of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit, could easily be flattened by the United States Air Force in retaliation for another underwear bomber tied to the Caliphate.  If the Caliph wants a war of terrorism, America has the power to fill his boots with it.

Like other terrorists, the Caliph has made ferocious threats.  “We will see you in New York,” he said.  To get there under his own power, the Caliph and his emissaries have to board a commercial airliner and pass through U.S. Customs before they can strike the homeland.  Not exactly a Utah beach like threat of invasion.

By claiming to be the Caliph, Ibrahim has said indirectly that the Kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the presidents of Egypt, Turkey, and Iran are his vassals and their countries are under his suzerainty.  I wonder how they feel about that?  Perhaps western diplomats should ask them about their diminished status in the world.

The Caliphate is a crisis in the Islamic world.  Only by having threatened to attack the United States has it deflected attention from the crisis it poses to the current Islamic order.  A Caliphate undermines the religious legitimacy of the governments of other Islamic countries.  ISIS is far more a threat to the Middle East than it is to the United States.

If a means can be found to inflict casualties on ISIS in a continual way, or if it can be brought to battle by a serious military, ISIS will deflate like a broken balloon.

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