Audio Version

 

Today, terrorism, perpetrated at the hands of radical Islamists, is a constant global threat. The fact of the matter is that fundamentalist Islamofascism is being fought in countries around the world. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Somalia and Sudan, Indonesia and India to Paraguay, Venezuela, China, Russia, the UK, France and the United States, radical Islamists are training, planning and engaging in activities meant to cause harm to the West in general while advancing their quest to establish a global Caliphate.

The Middle East

The area that comes to most peoples’ minds when radical Islamist terrorism is brought up is the Middle East and rightfully so. Groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood and hundreds if not thousands of other smaller but just as lethal groups call the Middle East home. From their training camps to their financial structures and systems of indoctrination and recruiting, radical Islam and those who practice it are engrained in the Middle Eastern culture, so much so that many Middle Eastern governments support certain elements of the ideology.

Perhaps the two most notable conflicts currently taking place in the Middle East are the US-led Global War Against Islamofascist Aggression – or the War on Terror – and the conflict that pits Israel, The United States and the West against Iran, Syria and their proxies Hezbollah, Fatah al Islam and to a lesser extent Hamas.

Iraq

Most of us here today are fairly well-informed on the issue of the battle theater in Iraq. Still, there are deep ideological divisions here in the United States about whether or not Iraq was a legitimate target in the War on Terror.

An in-depth examination of the Hussein regime’s declarations and actions certainly does indicate that he was in full support, both philosophically and materially, with the efforts of not only al Qaeda but the efforts of Hezbollah and Hamas in the form of financial stipends to the families of suicide bombers. This indicates that he was playing both sides of the Sunni-Shiite fence, supporting any effort to compromise the security and sovereignty of the United States.

Further, when examining the documents that were entered into evidence during the trials of Ramzi Yousef and Omar Abdel-Rahman, to name but two of those convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, one finds that those responsible for planning and executing the bombing were both: a) linked to al Qaeda, and b) traveled to the United States on both Iraqi and Kuwaiti passports, the passports belonging to Kuwaiti nationals captured during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. These facts are entered into testimony and confirmed, not only by Laurie Mill-Roy, adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, former professor at the US Naval War College and former advisor to President Bill Clinton on Iraq, but by former Iraqi General George Sada, commander of the Iraqi air force under Saddam Hussein and former CIA Director James Woolsey.

But, these two points – and the argument in general – become absolutely irrelevant when one takes Osama bin Laden at his word. He and his second in command, Ayman al Zawahri, have both repeatedly declared the battlefields of Iraq as the central battlefields in their war with the US and the West. To pretend that Iraq is not a central battlefield in a larger global and generational conflict, simply because we don’t want to be at war, because we are adhering to wishful ideology or for reasons of a politically opportune nature is very, very dangerous.

The Arab State, Terrorism, Israeli Issue

The other notable conflict fomenting in the Middle East is the Iranian/Syrian/Hezbollah/Israeli conflict. The elements surrounding this conflict are extremely volatile and present a danger not only to the continued existence of Israel but to the geo-political balance in that region.

On the one side we have the regions most formidable force in Iran who is allied with Syria and who literally gave birth to Hezbollah, a Shiite based Islamofascist organization designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. Until al Qaeda’s September 11th attacks, Hezbollah had been responsible for the deaths of more Americans through terrorism than any other organization.

You also have the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad giving material and physical support to Hamas – a violent outgrowth of the Sunni-aligned Muslim Brotherhood, who recently executed a bloody coup in Gaza. This violent take-over of Gaza from the ruling al-Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority, effectively divided the Palestinian occupied territories into two localized camps; the al-Fatah camp in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

We should take note that the Shiites, in the form of Ahmadinejad’s Iran, are aligning with Sunnis, in the form of Hamas, to threaten the security of a Westernized nation in Israel.

When we look at the facts as they present on the ground, we have Hamas occupied Gaza on Israel’s West and the al-Fatah occupied West Bank on Israel’s East , creating a pinch-point that effectively divides Israel in two, north and south. And we have a Hezbollah occupied Southern Lebanon and Syria to Israel’s North.