By: Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.)
Right Side News

Using Drone Strikes While Embracing The Muslim Brotherhood Appears To Be Cognitive Dissonance

We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam.” ~ President Barack Obama, September 10, 2010

Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion. ~ Islamic Sharia Law [The Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam that specifies correct conduct in all religious and secular matters of human life. It is composed of precepts from the Quran and examples from the Prophet’s life as recounted in the Sunna, the teachings and practices of Muhammad.]

5:51: O you, who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing [Jewish and Christian] people. ~ The Islamic god, Allah, in the Quran

8:12: When your Lord inspired to the angels, “I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved [in Islam], so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.” ~ The Islamic god, Allah, in the Quran

9:29: Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day [Islamic eschatology] and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger [Muhammad] have made unlawful [that is, do not practice Islamic Sharia jurisprudence] and who do not adopt the religion of truth [Islam] from those [Jews and Christians] who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah [Muslim submission tax for non-Muslims] willingly while they are humbled. ~ The Islamic god, Allah, in the Quran

“I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight [all] people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah . . . .” [this recitation is the “Shahada” – recited when declaring oneself a Muslim] ~ Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, Islamic Sharia Law

Obama And Islamic Theology

President Barack H. Obama proclaims that the U.S. is not “at war with Islam.” The president then proceeds to draw an imaginary line between “moderate” and “radical” groups of Muslims that does not exist within the reality of Islamic “theology.” Obama claims that that there are renegade radical groups of Muslims who heretically distort the fundamentally peaceful message of Islam by misinterpreting Allah’s and Muhammad’s words to mean that they should make jihadist war on non-Muslims. But, as Muhammad makes irrefutably clear, the Islamic jihad is commanded by Allah to continue until the non-Muslims either convert to Islam or accept Islamic Sharia law to be the supreme governing jurisprudence on earth. The Islamic reasoning for imposing Sharia law on the entire world is that it is god-given. Therefore, once Sharia jurisprudence is in effect, all man-conceived legal systems, like the U.S. Constitution, will be null and void. However, in Obama’s inexplicable counterfactual interpretation of Islamic theology, Muslims are not commanded to fight violently to establish the dominance of Islam in the world!

As the basic tenets of Islam quoted above from the foundational book of the Muslim religion, the Quran, and the underlying Islamic Sharia law make undisputedly clear, the “terror-practicing Muslims” are not falsely defining or improperly fulfilling their jihadist duty as prescribed in Islamic theology. In fact, the “terror-practicing Muslims” are carrying out the warring commandments of Muhammad and Allah in both letter and spirit. Executing those specific Islamic mandates is what Sharia-allegiant Muslims have been doing in their most recent 30+year jihad against the U.S. and the West, which is actually just a part of the much longer 1400-year jihad that has been waged against non-Muslims since Islam’s founding.

The only charitable interpretation that the reader can give to Obama’s incomprehensibly benign understanding of Islamic theology is that he has not actually read the Quran and Sharia. But, such a charitable interpretation is a stretch, given Obama’s upbringing in Muslim Indonesia. Consequently, there is undoubtedly another explanation. The purpose of this article is to explore alternative explanations.

As a result of Obama’s demonstrated public partiality toward Islam, there has been a great deal of verbiage written speculating about whether or not Obama is actually a “closet” Muslim. While he claims fidelity to Christianity, what is in his heart and conscience is unknowable to others. However, it is possible to make some judgments regarding his personal allegiances based upon his actions. So, what are some of those actions that would illuminate his personal loyalties?

Obama And The Muslim Brotherhood

Obama has had many contacts and interactions with Muslims since assuming the presidency; however, none are more telling than his dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) — Arabic: Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-muslimun — and its domestic and overseas affiliates and front groups. Domestically the MB has a much greater presence than is generally recognized by the U.S. public because they are operating under the cover of various front groups like the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), and United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), to name some of the more prominent. All of these Muslim organizations were positively determined to be MB front groups and at present are unindicted co-conspirators resulting from the terrorist-funding 2007 trial, United States v. Holy Land Foundation. However, possible indictment and prosecution are pending against these groups for being part of a conspiracy that provided millions of dollars of material and logistical support to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations. Islamic charity (“zakat”) is in fact cover for obligatory fund raising to finance jihadist terrorism, as was exposed in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation conspiracy trial. In spite of this documented fact, Obama in his 2009 Cairo “New Beginnings” speech pledged to make it easier for Muslims in the U.S. to contribute to MB terrorism with these words:

For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation [as a result of the discovery of the nefarious purpose for the giving]. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

Additionally, according to a December 2012 story in Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef magazine, six American Islamist activists, who work at high levels in the national security policy structure of the Obama regime, are MB operatives. Again, according to this same story, these six agents of influence turned the White House “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Furthermore, one of the six, Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, is accused of improperly handling intelligence information from the Homeland Security database. It is worthy of note that Elibiary endorsed the jihadist ideas of radical MD luminary Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by the Egyptian government in the 1960s for advancing Islamist terrorism. The other five Islamists in the Obama regime also have MB connections that raise the obvious question: “Why are these six individuals, with dubious MB Islamist associations, in positions of authority to set counter-jihad policy for combating their coreligionist Islamists?”

The Obama overseas MB connections figure primarily in our diplomatic relations with Egypt. At Obama’s highly touted Cairo speech, wherein the president declared that we are not at war with Islam and that he intended to make it easier for U.S. Muslims to contribute to jihadist terrorism under the cover of Islamic charitable zakat giving, he made a major concession to the MB by inviting them to attend. At the time that Obama officially invited ten MB officials to his Cairo speech, the MB party was outlawed by the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak. Obama’s invitation was a slap in the face to Mubarak and a message to the MB that he was open to cooperation with them. In the speech he signaled his openness to cooperate with the MB through his apology to the Islamic world for America’s “past sins of hard power coercion” in Muslim affairs.

Subsequently, Obama facilitated the MB’s rise to power in Egypt by withdrawing U.S. support from the anti-MB Egyptian president and telling Mubarak that he must resign immediately. Obama then credited the MB’s ascension to power to the “Arab Spring” movement, which he falsely labeled “democratic.” But in no time at all MB leader Muhammad Morsi revealed the true undemocratic nature of his tyrannical Sharia government by announcing that he was assuming dictatorial powers. It is only a matter of time until the MB, led by Morsi, totally consolidates its Sharia-based control over the 82 million Egyptians, the largest Arab population in the Middle East. In the near future, once the MB’s Egyptian power base is consolidated, Sharia jihadist conquest will eventually engulf the Middle East.

In a recently discovered video from a speech in 2010, current Egyptian President Morsi urges more Jew-hatred in the Islamic world, calling Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” White House spokesman, Jay Carney, scolded Morsi that his anti-Semitic, vitriolic hate-speech was “deeply offensive.” Morsi displayed typical Islamic “Sharia-contrition” by explaining to the Obama regime, with an obvious lie, that his remarks were taken out of context. In spite of Morsi’s betrayal of the hate of non-Muslims that underpins the Quran and Sharia, the Obama regime apparently has taken Morsi’s “out of context explanation” as sufficient penance because the first four state-of-the-art F-16 fighter jets departed the U.S. bound for Egypt on January 22nd. These fighters were the first contingent of twenty F-16s and 200 Abrams M-1 tanks that Obama has decided to give to the MB Egyptian government prior to the end of the year pursuant to a foreign aid deal signed in 2010 with longtime U.S. ally, then-Egyptian President Mubarak.

There are critics, exercising sanity and logic like Rep. Louie Gohmert, (R-Texas), who question the wisdom of Obama’s decision to go forward with this weapons transfer, in view of Egypt’s political instability and Egyptian President Morsi’s past anti-American and anti-Israel comments. The logic of Obama’s motive in supplying world-class weapons to the Egyptian MB-run government under these circumstances is questionable, to say the least. Here is the State Department’s explanation for the weapons transfer that ignores the facts on the ground:

“Delaying or cancelling deliveries of the F-16 aircraft would undermine our efforts to address our regional security interests through a more capable Egyptian military and send a damaging and lasting signal to Egypt’s civilian and military leadership as we work toward a democratic transition in the key Middle Eastern State.

“Egypt is a strategic partner with whom we have a long history of close political-military relations that have benefited U.S. interest. For the past 30 years the F-16 aircraft has been a key component of the relationship between the United States military and the Egyptian Armed Forces.

“Maintaining this relationship and assisting with the professionalization and the building of the Egyptian Armed Forces’ capabilities to secure its borders is one of our key interests in the region.

“Egypt continues to play an important role in the regional peace and stability. In all of our engagements with President Morsi and his staff, they have reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to its international agreements, including its peace treaty with Israel.”

What the State Department says about Egypt’s role in keeping regional peace and stability was true for 30 years under President Mubarak, but that we can look forward to the same degree of partnership and commitment to Middle East peace-keeping from the new Egyptian MB government of Morsi seems highly unlikely, given Morsi’s past animosity expressed toward Israel and the U.S. Perhaps a wiser policy would have been to wait and see how dedicated to peace Morsi actually is, and whether or not Morsi is going to follow through with the MB’s well-known agenda.

Denying That Islam Is A Threat To America

But who is the MB, and what is the MB’s well-known agenda? The MB is a global Sunni Muslim movement, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, for the purpose of waging worldwide jihad to establish an Islamic Caliphate (a Muslim theocratic-political government ruled by a single religious-political leader who would be the successor to Muhammad). Vicious Sunni jihadist terror groups like al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are all spin-offs of the MB, and their founders were members of the Egyptian MB prior to the parting of ways with their parent organization.

As to the MB’s well-known agenda – the reason why their agenda is well known is that it is an oath published on the Internet:

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” ~ Muslim Brotherhood Oath

With “jihad” being the “way” of the MB, it is well to remember what jihad means according to the Sharia: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion.” This oath makes clear to anyone with a room temperature IQ that the MB is an enemy of the U.S. because the U.S. Constitution and the Islamic Caliphate cannot coexist in the same geographical territory. In the previously mentioned terrorism financing trial, United States v. Holy Land Foundation, it was revealed that the MB has embarked on a massive subversive enterprise involving almost all of the 29 MB front organizations in America. An internal MB memo captured by the FBI was released in evidence at the trial that stated:

The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

So, in evaluating actions in an attempt to illuminate Obama’s personal loyalties, Obama’s Cairo promise to the MB to make it easier for Muslims in the U.S. to contribute monetary zakat to jihadist terrorism, permitting six MB operatives to have influential positions shaping national security policy in the war against their Muslim coreligionists, and arming the Egyptian MB with state-of-the-art F-16 fighters and M-1 tanks, all indicate that Obama is disposed to aid the MB, rather than thwart it.

Obama And Drone Strikes

So much for the negative side of the ledger, on the other side of the ledger, Obama’s wide-ranging employment of CIA unmanned aerial vehicles, or “drones,” to kill jihadists in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia has been effective in stymieing, but not eliminating, the Islamic jihadist threats in those countries. The U.S. Air Force controls the drone strikes in Afghanistan, which have been as effective in the same measure as the CIA drones. Accurate unclassified CIA drone statistics are somewhat difficult to obtain, but most unclassified numbers on various Internet sites are all in the same ballpark. For instance, there is general agreement that as of the end of 2012, strikes in Pakistan under President Bush numbered 52 and under President Obama the total was 310. The estimated total of those killed under Bush in five years is put in the range of 400-450, while kills under Obama in four years are estimated in the range of 2050-2100. That works out to six times more the strikes and five times more killed under Obama in one less year of drone operations. There are two arguments advanced to explain these numerical differences – one is that the drone program was just beginning and gearing up under Bush, so it was not at full operational capability, and two, under Bush the targeting was more selective in only concentrating on confirmed jihadist leaders, while Obama inherited a fully operational drone program and his targeting is much more indiscriminate.

One additional factor that is thought to explain Obama’s increased use of drones to kill jihadists is that by killing them, he does not have to deal with detaining and incarcerating them. Since Obama and his leftist constituency are obsessed with closing the jihadist detention facility at Guantanamo, and the Congress has blocked Obama’s attempts to intern Islamic terrorists in continental U.S., civilian penal facilities, killing rather than capturing solves Obama’s leftist ideological problem regarding not using Guantanamo.

Cognitive Dissonance

Given Obama’s demonstrated propensity to aid the MB, the ideological fountainhead of Islamic jihadism, both domestically and overseas, while simultaneously unleashing an unrestrained drone strike offensive against jihadist forces where they are attempting to establish remote operating bases, it is as if the U.S. Commander-in-Chief has cognitive dissonance. This condition is described as:

Cognitive dissonance can occur in many areas of life, but it is particularly evident in situations where an individual’s behavior conflicts with beliefs that are integral to his or her self-identity.

Of course, such a psychological explanation is difficult to accept because Obama appears so certain in what he professes to believe in all areas of life; so the mystery remains in the quest to explain the contraction of Obama’s professed benign understanding of Islamic theology and his disposition to assist the MB in achieving their objectives, in contrast to his ferocious drone strike program. In many respects Obama seems to walking an ideological tightrope.

Putting It All Together

But aside from Obama’s unrelenting drone campaign to kill jihadists in remote areas of the world, most of the evidence indicates that Obama’s loyalty weighs most heavily on the side of enabling the agents of Islam to progress toward Allah’s objective as described by Muhammad, “I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight [all] people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah…

High level regime officials speaking for Obama, including Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, have all declined to publicly acknowledge the obvious fact that Islam was the motivating factor behind the Fort Hood jihad mass murders, the attempted jihad car bombing in Times Square, and the Christmas underwear jihad bomber over Detroit! A very telling example of Obama’s “non-declaration of war” occurred when two MB front groups, CAIR and ISNA, made the politically correct demand that all FBI training materials for law enforcement and intelligence agents be purged of any mention of Islam or jihad! In complying with this Muslim demand, the Obama regime’s sympathetic and supportive policy toward Islam was forcefully enunciated by Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon:

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”

After reading the Quran and Sharia quotations opening this article, a non-ideological observer with common sense has to marvel at the above statement by U.S. Attorney Holton! That same observer also has to question the motivation of the Obama regime in taking such a counterfactual position on the nature of Islam, especially since the Allah-mandated objective of Islam would destroy the U.S. Constitution!

There are two apparent explanations for Obama’s baffling benevolent policy toward Islam – one innocent but foolish, and one not so innocent. The innocent explanation is based on the American liberal belief that, irrespective of the incontestable Quranic and Sharia jihadist exhortations, there are “moderate” Muslims who totally ignore the central organizing principle of Islam – to spread the religion and Sharia law through jihad, which begs the question: Why are they Muslims? Since in the minds of American liberals, there are these moderate Muslims, they do not wish to antagonize them by publically recognizing the Quran and Sharia mandate that Islam is the avowed enemy of U.S. constitutional government. Clearly, such liberal belief is founded on hope – not fact, history, and reason.

The not so innocent explanation is that Obama is pro-Islam, as this historically unsupportable statement attests: “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s history.” ~ President Barack Hussein Obama, Cairo Speech, Jun 4, 2009. [Unless he is referring to the historical fact that Islam has been attacking the U.S. as an enemy since 1786.] Given a unmistakably pro-Islam mindset, for whatever reason, Obama aids and abets the MB Islamic cause by lifting U.S. legal restrictions on zakat terrorist fund raising, by putting MB operatives in U.S. national security policy-making positions, by removing cautionary explanations of Islamic jihad from law enforcement and intelligence training materials, and by arming a hostile MB-run Egyptian government with top-of-the line U.S. weapons systems. (There are many more egregious examples like Benghazi that space precludes examining here. See The Disgrace of Benghazi.)

There are logical explanations for Obama’s drone warfare. In order to not make U.S. patriots in the law enforcement, intelligence, and military communities too upset or suspicious, Obama has turned loose U.S. killer drones to exterminate as many fanatical jihadists as possible in remote jihad breeding grounds. This mass killing of extreme jihadists from the air in an “antiseptic way” has a number of benefits for Obama. First, it gives cover to Obama’s pro-Islamic actions to deceive concerned Americans. Second, it eliminates incorrigible jihadists who cannot be bargained with and who would attack U.S. interests, thus embarrassing Obama and putting irresistible pressure on him to act more decisively against Islam. Third, killing these jihadists cancels the need to incarcerate them at Guantanamo, thus alienating Obama’s leftist allies. And four, killing not capturing precludes gaining beneficial intelligence from prisoners to use against the Islamic jihadists.

Conclusion

It is terrible to have to write an article such as this one, questioning the dedication of the president to perform his number one mandated constitutional duty – that is, to defend the citizens and the Constitution of the U.S. from enemies, foreign and domestic. However, as presented above, Obama’s conduct of the national defense raises very serious questions.

In order to quell doubts about Obama’s allegiances, Americans need definitive answers to basic questions. We must begin demanding that our elected representatives, senators, and the news media publically question the motives of Obama’s pro-Islamic actions in the jihadist war that the Islamic god, Allah, and his Prophet Muhammad mandated Muslims to conduct against non-Muslims. Americans must stop mindlessly accepting Obama and his government minions telling us the counterfactual assertion “that Islam embodied a religion of peace, fairness and tolerance“! Americans must challenge the liberal fantasy that the majority of followers of Islam are “moderate Muslims” by questioning the government’s misinterpreting/ignoring the explicit jihadist commandments in the Quran and Sharia. Finally, Americans must believe the truth of what they see in the Islamic terrorist attacks like Fort Hood, not what Obama and his lackeys tell them they should believe because our national security is not being well-served by the Obama regime’s denial of the dangerous reality of Islamic jihad.

A good opening question would be:

Islamic Sharia law decrees: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion. . . I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight [all] people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah…

So why does President Obama maintain – “We are not at war against Islam” – when they are clearly at war with us?

Col. Thomas Snodgrass, USAF (retired) served over a year in Peshawar, Pakistan working with Pakistani military intelligence, and he was an Intelligence Officer and International Politico-Military Affairs Officer with assignments in six other foreign countries during a thirty-year military career.