New Yorker Pleads Guilty to Supporting Terrorist Media
Posted by editor on 24 December 2008 at 2:19 am UTC
Pakistani-born New Yorker Javed Iqbal has today pled guilty to providing material support to Hizballah’s Al Manar television network.
According to a statement just issued by the Coalition Against Terrorist Media (CATM), a project of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): “Iqbal, who was due to stand trial on January 5, 2009 in New York’s Southern District Court, … admitted to providing satellite transmission services through his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd to Al Manar in exchange for payment, according to several reports.”
The CATM statement adds the Iqbal case “is believed to be” the first such case in the U.S. involving Al Manar.
“[Iqbal’s] guilty plea is significant and a sobering reminder of the threat Iranian-backed Hizballah continues to pose to Americans,” says FDD President Clifford D. May. “Al Manar was correctly designated as a terrorist entity by the U.S. government and many satellite companies around the world have made the right choice in stopping Al Manar broadcasts.”
May continues: “Free speech is no defense when a so-called ‘media outlet’ is working with a terrorist organization, and providing it with support for fundraising, recruitment and pre-attack surveillance. In providing this support, Al Manar does more than yell fire in a crowded movie theater. It provides the match, the gasoline and the arsonist.”
Lebanon-based Hizballah –- perhaps the most-dangerous foreign terrorist organization on the U.S. State Department’s designated terrorist list — is trained, equipped, and heavily financed by Iran, and the organization is operationally supported by both Iran and Syria. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has warned, Hizballah “makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team.” And earlier this month, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk referred to Hizballah as “a premier terrorist organization … Beyond that, it has built up an independent military capability that is greater than the military capabilities of the Lebanese armed forces.”
Al Manar, Hizballah’s satellite TV network, was at one time being broadcast over much of Europe, Africa, and the Far East until the U.S. government and others shut down much of its overseas operations. And when it was discovered that some American companies were continuing to advertise on al Manar in Lebanon, they too were pressed to pull out … and did.
The U.S. government listed Al Manar a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity” in March 2006. Iqbal was arrested and charged five months later.
Iqbal’s alleged “partner in crime,” Saleh Elahwal of New Jersey, is slated to be tried next month.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. online at uswriter.com.
Free and Fair Elections in Lebanon Impossible with Hizballah’s Weapons
Posted by editor on 17 December 2008 at 6:53 pm UTC
If the U.S. State Department-designated terrorist group, Hizballah, and Hizballah’s allies gain control of Lebanon through parliamentary elections slated for June 2009, “American support for Lebanon will be placed in jeopardy” and “we should have no illusions about that,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk during a panel discussion hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute, last week.
Indyk’s remarks reflect a particularly disturbing reality for the pro-democracy majority in Lebanon, which lost much of its political power to Hizballah and its allies when concessions were granted to Hizballah in order to persuade Hizballah to stop the killings (after the organization turned its weapons on the Lebanese people in May 2008). And the remarks should reflect a disturbing reality for the rest of the world.
“[Hizballah] is a premier terrorist organization,” Indyk said. “Beyond that, it has built up an independent military capability that is greater than the military capabilities of the Lebanese armed forces.”
Indeed, as we have time-and-again reported, Hizballah – the so-called “party of God,” which rules a Shia kingdom inside the sovereign state of Lebanon, which battled Israel in the 2006 war (inflicting enormous damage on Lebanon), and which gained enormous strategic / political leverage in May of this year – may well have evolved into the world’s most formidable terrorist army.
Consider the following:
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Hizballah is trained, equipped, and heavily financed (an estimated one-billion dollars annually) by Iran, and the organization is operationally supported by both Iran and Syria.
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Hizballah is expanding its base, and the organization is increasing its global reach.
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Hizballah has “conducted very large, spectacular” terrorist operations worldwide.
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Hizballah has defiantly refused to surrender its arms in Lebanon as called for under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701.
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Hizballah has demonstrated time-and-again since May that it has no qualms about overtly killing Lebanese civilians as a means of furthering the organization’s aims.
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Hizballah has heavily infiltrated the Lebanese Army.
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Hizballah, since May, has wormed its way into position as an official component of the overall Lebanese Defense apparatus.
Yet the U.S. has provided – and continues to send – hundreds-of-millions-of dollars in military aid to Lebanon’s armed forces and national police when some experts and analysts have surmised that money may well end up in the hands of the terrorists.
Moreover, last month, Lebanese Pres. Michel Sleiman – the pro-Hizballah, pro-Syrian former Lebanese Army commander – signed a new Defense pact with Iran, and Sleiman’s newly dubbed Army commander, General Jean Kahwaji, traveled to Damascus for a series of schmoozing sessions with his Syrian counterpart General Ali Habib.
On Monday, Naharnet reported Iran’s allocation of some “$600 million for the Lebanese elections” as told to the Kuwaiti newspaper, Alseyassah (Al-Siyassa).
Simply put, total control of Lebanon achieved by-and-for the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah axis may well-be in the offing and under our noses. The pro-democracy movement may be effectively quashed within six months, and the West may lose – in fact it may have already lost – its Lebanese front in the broader war on terror.
In a letter just released by the World Council of the Cedars Revolution (Lebanon’s largest pro-democracy movement), WCCR president Joseph P. Baini calls on both Sleiman and the “parliamentary majority” to postpone elections until Hizballah and all armed militias lay down their arms.
I’m not holding my breath, but at least Baini is saying what must be heard.
“It should be clearly stated that Hizballah is not the only faction to be fully armed,” Baini writes. “There are of course its very close affiliates such as the Amal movement, the Palestinian Camps, and terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Fatah al-Islam and Islamic Jihad, who are all proxies for and subservient to Syria and Iran. Therein lies the real dilemma for the people of Lebanon and the Cedars Revolution. Most of the military arsenal within Lebanon is in the possession of organizations classified by the free world as ‘terrorists.’”
Speaking to Alseyassah, Tom Harb, secretary general of the International Lebanese Committee for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, says Hizballah must be disarmed before free and fair elections can take place.
“Elections cannot take place while groups are intimidating voters by force or the threat of force,” says Harb, and after all, “elections in Lebanon have been postponed in the past.”
If elections take place as is, Hizballah will be the one political party in possession of rifles, grenades, machineguns, missiles, and a demonstrated willingness to use them on anyone who does not wish for the same things the terrorists wish. And the Lebanese Army has demonstrated its unwillingness to confront Hizballah.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
Posted by editor on 11 December 2008 at 6:00 pm UTC
Poor ol’ Jimmy Carter. He’s a good man to be sure: an excellent Sunday School teacher I’m told, a Naval Academy grad and submariner (huge pluses in my book). But as a wartime commander-in-chief—and make no mistake the United States was at war (with the Soviets and their proxies as well as the Iranian revolutionaries) during his presidency—Carter has proven to be sorely lacking.
As an elder statesman, Carter has worked tirelessly building houses for the homeless and generally trying to further various human rights causes worldwide. And that’s great. But where he doesn’t need to stick his nose is in the realm of American foreign policy.
Cases in point are his recent offers to monitor the 2009 Lebanese parliamentary elections and meet with the Lebanon-based Shia terrorist group, Hizballah.
As far as the election monitoring is concerned, Lebanon’s interior minister Ziad Baroud said, according to USA Today, he “welcomed [Carter’s] offer but … the Cabinet must approve it.”
As far as the proposed meeting with Hizballah is concerned, the terrorist group — which Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff says “makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team” – rejected the offer because they say Hizballah doesn’t meet with current and former U.S. presidents.
My question is, what was Carter thinking? Maybe that’s it: He wasn’t. Few western leaders are thinking rationally when it comes to Jihadists like Hizballah (or Hamas whom Carter has already met with).
These people are killers – at war with the infidel (meaning us) – nothing more. Meeting with Hizballah (And, yes, Barack Obama has suggested meeting – without precondition – Hizballah’s primary benefactor, Iran.) would accomplish absolutely nothing for the West.
Hizballah cannot be taken at its word. Jihadists lie and deceive – and coerce or pay their supporters, sympathizers, and apologists to do the same – as a matter of strategic leverage (please see my piece on Al Taqiyya). Terrorists like Hizballah meet with their enemies in order to “clean their public faces,” appear more human, attempt to shift their enemy’s intelligence focuses, and buy time for the greater Jihad: There is no permanent peace with the Jihadists, only temporary truces so that they may regroup or strengthen their positions.
What such a meeting also would accomplish for Hizballah – whose leaders have proclaimed “Death to America” – is an undeserved recognition of the terrorist group as a formidable armed-power worthy of an audience with a former leader of the free world. Then it would give the terrorists an opportunity to reject such an offer, which is exactly what they did with the Carter offer.
In the end, the offer and rejection – in the eyes of Shia extremists like Hizballah (even their Sunni counterparts like Al Qaeda) – makes America appear weak, groveling, and jilted, which only fuels the enemy’s public standing in the Islamic world thus enhancing their recruiting and sponsorship efforts among rank-and-file Muslims.
Can anyone imagine a former U.S. president offering to meet with Hitler or members of the SS during the height of World War II? Or worse, Hitler or the SS saying “no” to such a meeting?
We are similarly at war with the Jihadists who ultimately want to subjugate or kill us. There is no negotiating with this enemy. We must come to grips with this fact, and stop trying to convince ourselves that Islamists think and reason like Westerners.
The only senior Western representative to meet with Hizballah should be the commanding general of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, and that meeting should be an unconditional demand that Hizballah surrender its arms as called for under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701.
As for Pres. Carter: He should stick to his volunteer work; building houses for the homeless and teaching Sunday School.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
Posted by editor on 5 December 2008 at 8:11 pm UTC
Review of LEADERSHIP: Combat Leaders and Lessons
(Essays by Members of the Class of 1959, United States Military Academy)
by Maj. W. Thomas Smith Jr.
Each generation of military officers is both similar and unique: As young cadets, midshipmen, and officer candidates, they are cut from the old school wisdom of senior officers and NCOs. Once they become officers, they continue to learn from both seniors and subordinates, as well as from drilling, training, and schooling; personal experience; natural maturing; and real-world command challenges over a period of years.
The United States Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1959, is no exception.
As cadets, the boys of ‘59 learned from the combat veterans of World War II and Korea (Certainly some of the more senior professors would have chewed dirt on the Western Front in 1918.). And as newly minted officers in a new nuclear Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps (The Air Force Academy was barely up and running in 1959, and a handful of Marines were trained at West Point, though most leathernecks attended Annapolis), these graduates of West Point were soon among the first to be schooled in – or in some way affiliated with – the new official art of special forces operations. Members of the Class of ‘59 held company level – and higher – commands during America’s involvement in Vietnam. They held commands throughout the most-challenging decades of the Cold War, the violent early years of the Jihadist terror awakening, and up through and beyond Gulf War I.
Now, 50 years after receiving their commissions as second lieutenants, several members of the “Long Gray Line” – many of them now retired generals and colonels – have written a series of essays for the next generation of combat commanders, the Class of 2009, compiled in a new book: LEADERSHIP: Combat Leaders and Lessons.
I just received my copy this week, signed by my friend, retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely (an internationally respected military analyst who has held combat commands at many levels; is himself a West Point graduate, Class of 1961; and whose StandUpAmericaUSA published LEADERSHIP). And I’ve barely been able to put the book down.
Without giving away the entire game (because I urge every American military commander and future commander to purchase and read this book), essays include conversationally written leadership lessons and anecdotes covering everything from “leadership under fire” to “a failure of courage,” to responsibility, loyalty, sacrifice, and the criticality of preserving operational security and, yes, military integrity at all costs.
Lt. Gen. Thomas L. McInerney, USAF (ret.) discusses the leadership and op-sec challenges he faced as commander of Third Air Force during the raid on Libya in April 1986. Gen. Frederick M. Franks, Jr., USA (ret.), commander of the now famous “left hook” that smashed Saddam Hussein’s army in 1991, addresses the essentials – “character, leadership, and competence” – for a commander to win on the battlefield. Maj. Gen. Nicholas Krawciw, USA (ret.) lends perspective from his personal experience in the Middle East during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Maj. Gen. John S. Grinalds (from my own Marine Corps), Maj. Gen. William A. Cohen, Brig. Gen. William J. Mullen III, Colonels Andrew P. O’Meara Jr., James L. Abrahamson, and others round out this collection of sage narratives.
It’s a quick read and a must: Nothing academic, just the proverbial nuts and bolts of military leadership in peace and war.
And make no mistake – though there may be parallels between military command and other styles of leadership – these essays are a stark reminder that running a corporation or a political campaign are nothing like commanding an infantry battalion. Though a good business leader or politician would do well to read this book.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
Also visit medalofhonorconvention.com.
Gen. Petraeus meets Lebanese Leaders
Posted by editor on 2 December 2008 at 5:14 pm UTC
By Maj. W. Thomas Smith Jr.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut is reporting today’s meetings between U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus – commander of the U.S. Central Command – and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Lt. Gen. Jean Kahwaji, commander-in-chief of the Lebanese armed forces.
According to an Embassy statement: “The discussions focused on the United States’ continued assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces so it can maintain peace and stability, and safeguard the Lebanese people. The U.S. Government has provided over $410 million in military aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces and it will continue to support the legitimate institutions of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people as they seek to preserve their independence and security.”
No surprise, as we’ve been reporting our $ millions in military assistance to Lebanon for months. And there is no question but that we must assist Lebanon and regain our vital Lebanese front (which we’ve lost to the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah axis in the months since Lebanon-based Hizballah attacked the Lebanese government and citizenry in May 2008). But should we not be supporting the pro-democracy resistance against Hizballah instead of the army?
Let’s not forget:
- The Lebanese army – then under the command of Gen. Michel Sleiman (Kahwaji’s predecessor) – refused to fight Hizballah in May.
- Hizballah – a U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization which our own Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff says “makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team” – has heavily infiltrated the army.
- Hizballah is now considered an official wing of the overall Lebanese Defense apparatus.
- Iran – a designated state sponsor of terrorism – finances Hizballah to the tune of $ one billion annually.
- Sleiman – who is today president of Lebanon in part because he refused to fight Hizballah in May – signed a five-year defense pact with Iran last week.
- Kahwaji has returned from Syria – also a designated state sponsor of terrorism, which has long provided operational support to Hizballah — where he was schmoozing with his Syrian counterpart Gen. Ali Habib just a few days ago.
Don’t misunderstand me: I am a huge supporter of both Gen. Petraeus (who no doubt will go down in history as one of the great captains of counterinsurgency) and Lebanon. But if anyone would simply take the time to connect the dots, they would come to no other conclusion but that our Lebanese policy is seriously and dangerously flawed.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the author, and do not represent the opinions of World Defense Review and its affiliates. WDR accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the content of this or any other story published on this website. Copyright and all rights for this story (and all other stories by the author) are held by the author.
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