On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Robert Tracinski to discuss the uprising in Libya, and Obama’s Free Range Chicken foreign policy. Then, Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Don Rumsfeld’s new book.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Tracinski: The Intellectual Activist
Our Schizoid Foreign Policy
Time for Barack Obama to say something about Arab democracy
Ben: Myths and the Muslim Brotherhood
Pej: My Podcast Interview With Donald Rumsfeld
Tracinski: Public Unions & the Socialist Utopia

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Our country has gone back to sleep, reverting to a 9/10 military posture vis-à-vis the Jihad being waged against us infidels. How can you tell? Once again, Progressive Americans are treating terrorists as though they are simply criminals who should face justice in a civilian-criminal court of law. When Yemen sends crotch and printer bombs, we send in the FBI. This was the 9/10 (or) Progressive response to the Jihad, which made possible the events of 9/11.

Another example of our return to a 9/10 mindset can be found in our reactions to Islamists declaring Jihad against us. When Osama did it in 1996 (FROM YEMEN), the West yawned. Who was this sandman to declare war on us, we thought. Only we declare war – nobody else has that power or capacity, right? Once again, Jihad has been declared against us, now by the Muslim Brotherhood directly. The West is yawning once more.

When we briefly adopted a 9/12 posture against our Islamist enemies, they were too busy running and hiding and dying, to be planning and launching multiple attempts to blow us out of the sky. Our enemies seem to have all the time and breathing room in the world now though, inspiring the question: What ever could have changed over the past couple of years, leading to this new “normal” of repeated Yemeni-Jihad bomb plots? Oh well, we could wonder for hours and probably never put our finger on it.

If we will not directly attack our enemies with at least the same determination that they bring to bear against us, we can only be defensive and reactive. That means we have no choice but to put up with this, and undoubtedly other, intrusions on our privates.

Again, if people do not like the invasive pat downs and full body imaging, too bad. We get the security we deserve. If we are not willing to fight the fight on offense, then we deserve the humiliations of our defensive posture, and all the cavity probings that come with it.

The terror-linked “peace activists” even brought their own “Hezbollah slingshots” with them on their “peace” mission. (IDF)

YNET News reported:

The ongoing interrogation of passengers who were aboard the Marmara – the Gaza aid flotilla’s flagship – revealed that the majority of those who attacked the Israeli Naval Commandos boarding the ship have direct and indirect Global Jihad ties.

Israel’s investigation has revealed some 100 people infiltrated the peace and humanitarian aid activists making their way to Gaza, with the explicit design to attack Israeli soldiers using cold arms.

Some among that group are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly al-Qaeda.

The majority of suspects are Turks, but some are Yemenites and Indonesian. One Yemenite Islamist was photographed with a dagger in his belt prior to the raid.

The suspects are not cooperating with investigators. Most of them have no identification papers, and Israeli authorities are still trying to ascertain their identity.

So, will the Western media omit this from their reports, too?

More… There were 3 Pakistanis with the Gaza Flotilla, too.

UPDATE: Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S, said the terrorists had ties to Al-Qaeda.
WCBS reported:

Israel also said terrorists were involved that have ties to al Qaeda.

“I believe that the organization involved in organizing the Turkish part of the flotilla was deeply linked to Islamic extremist organizations in the world,” Ambassador Oren said. “This is not just Israel’s conclusions. There is evidence from the CIA.”

Still more… MEMRI had this on the jihadists:

Arab Media Reports on Flotilla Participants: Writing Wills, Preparing for Martyrdom, Determined to Reach Gaza or Die

The Egyptian flotilla delegation included two members of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the Egyptian parliament: Muhammad Al-Baltaji and Hazem Farouq.

Al-Baltaji, who is deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc in Egypt, said at a March 2010 conference, “A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.” He also said that his movement “will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,” and that “resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia.[1]

More…

Prominent activists in the Yemeni flotilla delegation were three MPs from the Al-Islah party, an Islamist party that is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. One, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hazmi, was photographed on the deck of the Mavi Marmara brandishing his large curved dagger.

This is irresponsible and puts American lives at risk. Eric Holder is incapable of understanding the threats facing this nation. Eric Holder must step down.

Times Square car terrorist Faisal Shahzad worked with an accomplice in Pakistan who provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the botched plot. This information was provided after the accomplice’s arrest in Pakistan last week.

US Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the Times Square bomber was linked to the Taliban. Despite this information, the US Attorney General refused to use the term “radical Islam” when discussing the motives behind the Times Square bomber yesterday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The US Attorney General has information that the Taliban was behind the Times Square attack. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad had substantial connections to the Taliban, reached out to the Taliban, was influenced by Yemeni terror leader Anwar al Awlaki, made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999, and he bought a one way ticketwith cash to Pakistan. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad was blogging on terror websites about jihad since 2006.

Despite all of this information, Attorney General Eric Holder will not admit to the American public that Faisal Shahzad was a radical Islamist. This is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous.
Eric Holder should resign.

Here’s more information on Faisal Shahzad’s Pakistani connection from The Hindu:

A man believed to be an accomplice of Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad has been arrested in Pakistan and has provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the botched plot.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, The Washington Post reported on Friday that the arrest of the alleged accomplice of Shahzad in Pakistan had not been previously disclosed.

He provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the attempt and has admitted to helping Pakistani-American Shahzad travel to the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan for bomb training, the report said.

“What they (Shahzad and the suspect arrested in Pakistan) said has been corroborated by other evidence,” a senior law enforcement source was quoted as saying by the paper.

The suspect in Pakistani custody “is believed to have a connection to the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan),” a U.S. intelligence official said.

U.S. officials cited by the paper declined to identify the suspect in Pakistan, but said American investigators have had direct access to him, and described him as a facilitator for the Pakistani Taliban…

…U.S. Attorney General Eric H Holder has said there was evidence that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the May 1 plotin which Shahzad allegedly tried to blow up a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives in the crowded Times Square, one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.

How many Americans will have to die before Eric Holder understands the nature of our enemy?
Eric Holder must resign.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

Dar Al-Hijra is the mosque where Anwar al-Awlaki was Imam  between January 2001 and April 2002.  Al-Awlaki (bio here and here) was the senior al-Qaeda recruiter and motivator for various terrorists, including three 9/11 hijackers, the accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.  Al-Awlaki may still be alive in Yemen, and after some concerns about his civil rights, reportedly the Obama administration now has him targeted as a terrorist.

And who can forget that earlier Dar Al-Hijra Imam from 1995-1999, Mohammed Al-Hanooti,  named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  In 1999, when he was still Imam at Dar Al-Hijra, he testified in support of Ihab M. Ali, who had refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the 1998 United States embassy bombings.   Al-Hanooti told the federal judge that Islamic law “gives him [Ihab M. Ali] the right to abstain from giving testimony in case it hurts him or it hurts any other Muslim.”

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Studies teacher – and Dar Al Hijra Islamic Camp Counselor -  Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of providing material support to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and conspiracy to assassinate President Bush, now serving a life sentence.  Abu Ali was also valedictorian of his class at the Saudi Islamic Academy, the Saudi Embassy-backed 900-student school in the Washington, DC suburbs, that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly urged the US State Department to shut down on the grounds that it teaches religious intolerance.

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Imam between August 2003 and May 2005, the memorable Sheikh Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, formerly a Muslim Brotherhood member and Shariah judge in the Sudan, and one of the founders of both the mosque and the Muslim American Society (MAS), who left the mosque to become the executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America.

That’s the same  Fiqh Council that on February 9, 2010 issued a legal opinion – a fatwa – against the use of full body scanners in airports for Muslims.  He’s also active in bringing Shariah law to America, as the head of the Islamic Judiciary Council of the Shari’ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA).

And we cannot neglect to mention the member of Dar Al-Hijrah’s Executive Committee, Abelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, convicted in November 2007 of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusal to testify before a grand jury with regard to Hamas, and sentenced to 135 months in prison.   A major Hamas operative since at least 1988,  Ashqar was accused of opening bank accounts and maintaining U.S. records for Hamas.

Nor is Dar Al-Hijrah  just your average, friendly neighborhood mosque.  In fact, their original Constitution required their Board of Directors to  include  leaders of  Muslim Brotherhood front groups who would later be identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial: “the Current Secretary General of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Current President of Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the Current General Manager of North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Current President of Muslim American Society (MAS).”  In 2005, when the current Imam Shaker Elsayed became Imam, he amended the mosque’s constitution to give precedence to the Muslim American Society, and now the mosque Board is run by the “Current President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Current MAS DC Area Chapter President, the Executive Director of MAS National Office.”  Elsayed had been Secretary General of the Muslim American Society before becoming Dar Al Hijrah’s imam.  The Muslim American Society was founded in 1993 as the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was Imam Shaker Elsayed who sent the email invitation text for the February 13, 2010 fundraiser for Sabri Benkhala:

“Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:22:48 -0700
From: legaladmin@universal-justice.net
Subject: Mark Your Calendar (2/13/10): Dinner

Dear Friends of Justice,

Assalamu Alaikum. The Universal Justice Foundation is pleased to announce that it will be hosting a fundraising dinner to support Br. Sabri Benkahla by contributing to his legal fees. The event will feature Dr. Jamal Badawi from Canada, Imam Rodwaan Saleh from Texas, and Br. Sabri’s attorney John Sheldon, Esq. and will be held at Dar Al Hijrah IslamicCenter’s Main Courtyard. Tickets are only $40 and registration will be at 5:30. The program will begin promptly at 6:00 P.M., and dinner will be served early. Please arrange to purchase tickets as soon as possible because space is limited! You may buy tickets at our website www.universal-justice.net or from Sh. Shaker at Dar Al Hijrah. If neither option is convenient, please email us at legaladmin@universal-justice.net and we will arrange your ticket sale…

May Allah reward you greatly for your efforts in serving justice!

Sincerely,

Shaker Elsayed
Founder and Chairman, UJF

Shaker Elsayed, the current Imam, and founder and Chairman of that “United Justice Foundation” fundraising organization for convicted terrorists,  is a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S.  He stated in  a sermon at the Dar Al Hijrah in 2005, shortly after becoming Imam there and stacking the Board of Directors with Muslim American Society leaders,  that “Islam forbids you to give allegiance to those who kick you off your homeland, and to those who support those who kick you off your homeland…We do have license to respond with all force necessary to answer our attackers.”  And in the same sermon he stated, “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”  He is also an outspoken supporter of Hamas and their objectives, including the destruction of Israel.

The Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hassan, attended Dar Al-Hijrah periodically when he lived in the Washington, DC area, up to 2009 when he was transferred to Texas, and his now infamous powerpoint presentation, “The Koranic Worldview as it Related to Muslims in the Military” is closely in line with the 2005 preaching of the current Dar Al-Hijrah Imam, Shaker Elsayed.    See for example slide 11 in that series: “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims”; the examples in slide 13; or the quote that appears to track exactly with Elsayed’s 2005 sermon, on slide 49:  “Fighting to establish an Islamic State, to please God even by force, is condoned by the Islam.”

Dar Al-Hijrah has been staffed by a series of Imams who  radicalize their members – the members don’t “self-radicalize,” as Major Hasan was said to do in the negligent report on the Fort Hood Shooting put out by the Pentagon.  The U.S. intelligence community missed the warning signals from Dar Al-Hijrah’s earlier Imam Anwar al-Awlaki; they should heed the warning signals from the current Imam, Shaker Elsayed.

More on this in days to come – including which invited elected officials could be coming to dinner at Dar Al-Hijrah in April, at their gala annual fundraiser…

As in the Cold War, the current battle of ideology takes place in proxy wars. Unlike in the Cold War, the war on terror is largely fought through symbolic actions. Islamists do not make tactical attacks. They do not bomb Boeing factories or destroy highways and rail lines. Instead they destroy iconic buildings, trains, and airplanes. They use the spectacle of destruction, carried out in a diabolical way by suicide agents, as their means of waging war. That is the definition of a terror campaign.

The proper response to terror is not appeasement but counterattack. Islamists wage their terror campaigns in order to cow American influence abroad, especially in the Gulf. The answer to such attacks, if we hope to avoid them in the future, is to increase American involvement in Muslim countries both through soft influence and force of arms. Such a strategy was one of the best but least articulated justifications for the Second Gulf War.

Obama doesn’t get this. When the State department closed its embassy in Sanaa, Yemen for two days earlier this week due to intelligence of an imminent terrorist threat, this action only increased the existential threat to Americans in Yemen and abroad. It came off as a symbolic withdrawal of American influence, especially so close to the attempted Northwest airline bombing. The temporary closing betokened a myopic vision of the war on terror as an isolated series of security issues rather than an ideological battle fought through connected symbolic action.

All of the West’s technology and intelligence can never prevent would-be terrorists from penetrating our defenses. The only way to prevent terrorism is to make it clear that terror attacks will result in symbolic outcomes that are most advantageous to us and least advantageous to them. We need a Containment Policy for the 21st Century.

It certainly was a holiday to remember.  Since I’m President of the United States, I was able to choose anywhere in the world to spend a long, lazy couple of weeks.  So, we got the 747 gassed up to head to Hawaii for the Holidays.  When I learned Health Care Reform might be held up in the Senate on Christmas Eve, many felt nervous that the holiday kickoff would hit a snafu.  Sure, it’s one of the most complicated and controversial bills in American history, but we had turkeys to baste and chestnuts to roast.

Great news, we cooked up a plan to slap a 10 percent tax on people who go to tanning beds — that ought to fix paying for all this!   Plus, Senator Harry Reid ensured the democrats who were going to bail on the bill were handsomely paid off, so we quickly squeaked out a win on that sucker before anyone had a chance to read it!  The partisan divide may now be bigger than ever, but I made it out of D.C. on time to head for some quality climate change —  to the land where palm trees sway for some holiday island fun — Mele Kalikimaka!

I didn’t want to start focusing on the failing U.S. economy until 2010.  So, while it was still 2009, I thought I’d stay in a rented $9 million oceanfront estate.  No sense in cutting back now –my health care bill will likely lead to government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.  If I’m going to behave like a king, might as well live like one.

Someone suggested attending church during Christmas as it is a celebration of the Savior’s birth. But I’m really just here to relax.   Besides, I need to wake up early tomorrow– it’s Christmas Day and first item on my agenda is to work out at the gym! Churchgoing is for the other 80% of Americans, I still haven’t even found one to go to in Washington… but I’m looking really hard.

We decided to release 6 Guantanamo detainees back to Yemen — I really want to empty that place out. (The timing was perfect, seems everyone was focused on the holidays, so the press buried the story).   I say, let’s send them back home, or bring them to America for trial — New York City preferably.

On Christmas morning, I did what most American dads do — I got up at 6:30 a.m. and headed for some body-sculpting.

Even though Michelle told the press she got me several things for Christmas,  turns out we aren’t even exchanging any gifts… so, she was either making the whole thing up or taking back everything she bought for me. What’s more, she asked me in front of Oprah what I got her this year — I told Oprah I give “nicer stuff than I get” — but we left out the part about not getting each other anything at all.  Nothing says Merry Christmas more than skipping out on church and no presents for your wife.

Oh, almost forgot.  Some kid tried blowing up an airliner flying to Detroit on Christmas morning. Thankfully, I was able to wake up, get the workout in and return to breakfast in paradise before anyone told me.  I didn’t bother commenting on it for a few days.  That’s what I have a Director of Homeland Security for – right?  Besides, even though the guy made it through several checkpoints and lit a bomb in the cabin, Secretary Napolitano assured everyone ‘the system worked.’   By ’system,’ we mean that passengers who see a man lighting himself on fire should start screaming and grab a fire extinguisher.   After all, I don’t even have a TSA director in place yet.  I’m at the beach.

Speaking of the beach, my golf game at the fabulous Luana Hills Country Club was interrupted.  A family friend’s son was injured while horsing around and I had to go check on him… was okay, but it gave us all a real scare… Phew!  Reminds me I need to make an official comment on this airline bomber — oh well, back to the golf course.

Jeez!  Back in the lower 48 they are all yammering about national security, I mean, you would think we were back in the stifling days of W.  Any case, I issued a statement 6 days after the attempted attack – so they all need to get off my back.   Okay, got a date at the Kailua Racquet Club.

Well, turns out, the attack was terrorists.  From Yemen.  Hope this doesn’t throw a wrench in shutting Guantanamo, half of everyone there is from Yemen.  Any-hoo, we’ll look into it sometime when I get back from the beach.  Take care and, like they say in Hawaii — a hui hou!

POST SCRIPT: Pres. Obama told reporters he “wasn’t ready” to return to DC.  ABC News reported “The First Lady went so far as to try to rally the traveling staff and press to remain in Hawaii a bit longer. “Let’s stay!” she said “Are we all in? I’m trying to mount a coup here!”