05/5/15

One Killed, Two Wounded in Jihad Attack on Bosnian-Serb Police Station. Read AP’s Bosnia-War Motives for Gunman with a Grain of Salt Lake City

This incident happened less than a week after a Bosnian-involved Aussie terror plot was foiled, and at the very police station where former NY cop Bob Leifels did a 1997-98 stint as international police.

Gunman Shouting Allahu Akbar in Bosnia Storms Police Station (AP; ABCNews.com, Apr. 27)

A gunman stormed into a police station in a northeastern Bosnian town shouting “Allahu akbar” on Monday, killing a policeman and wounding two others, authorities said.

The gunman was also killed during the attack in the town of Zvornik….The Bosnian Serb police chief, Dragan Lukac, identified the man as Nerdin Ibric.

Here comes the requisite retro-justification part of any MSM report when Serbs are targeted:

Zvornik is a town in the Bosnian Serb part of the country and it is located on the border with Serbia. Before the 1992-95 war, about 60 percent of the town’s population was Muslim Bosnians. Almost all were expelled and many were killed during the war as part of a Serb campaign to create a purely Serb area.

(Notice also the requisite omission of the population-trades that all three sides engaged in, called “ethnic cleansing” only when the Serb side did it. Nor is the reader given to understand that “many were killed” as fighters, not in civilian-massacres, as it’s made to sound, or that the Serb ambition wasn’t to create pure areas but to prevent war. Ethnic purity was a result of the war that the Serbs’ enemies and Washington, Bonn, and Vatican so wanted.)

Serbs managed to control half of Bosnia by the time the U.S. brokered a peace agreement in 1995 under which each warring party could keep their conquered territory. This is how the country ended up divided into two fairly autonomous regions — one for the Serbs, the other shared by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats. The two have their own governments, but are linked by a central government based in Sarajevo.

After the war, only a few thousand Muslims returned to the Serb area of Zvornik.

How many Serbs returned to this or that area of Muslim-won ground, we’re not told. But here’s just one random, May 2010 example of what happens when they do:

Bosnian Muslim high school students in the city of Maglaj went out on the streets to intimidate ethnic Serb returnees….parad[ing] with traditionally green Islamic flags and shouting anti-Serbian slogans….Bosnian Muslim police did nothing to enhance security. One of the Serb returnees, Vjekoslav Lazic, said that…life of ethnic Serbs is under threat. “We asked the authorities in the Serb Republic to help us so that we can collectively leave”….During Easter, Muslims in Maglaj invited local Serbian Orthodox priests to convert to Islam…Additional “invitations” were nailed to the doors of houses owned….Christian clergy approached the chief Maglaj imam to intervene but Imam Izudin Kruska told them that the problems…have not been organized by the Islamic Community of Maglaj. Dzevad Galijasevic, himself a former Mayor of Maglaj, says that Islamic extremism is on the rise in the city. Galijasevic, who is a member of anti-terrorism task force for the Balkans, warned that Maglaj Muslims are being systematically radicalized.

And a 2007 item:

70 villages in Bosnia, home to 15,000 Serb returnees, have reportedly been without electricity for several years. Media in the Republic of Srpska reported that…local Bosnian Muslim and Croat municipal authorities “deliberately bypassed Serb villages when it came to restoration of infrastructure destroyed during the 1990s war.” The period between 1992 and 1995 saw the expulsion of the Serb population from more than three hundred major settlements that now belong to the Muslim-Croat federation.

And have you seen Sarajevo lately? (Bosnia: Muslims dominate capital, claims Croatian MP — The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, once a symbol of ethnic diversity, has become an entirely Muslim city, a Croat deputy in the Bosnian Parliament, Branko Zrno, said…Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo have no institutional protection, and continue to leave the capital…Serbs claim that in the city of 400,000 only 7,000 Serbs have remained, compared to 160,000 before the 1992-1995 civil war…Muslim President of the Bosnian Helsinki committee for human rights, Srdjan Dizdarevic, said in a recent interview that Sarajevo had become a “monoethnic” city… “Ethnic cleansing in this city has, unfortunately, been successfully completed. If the will exists to reconstruct Bosnia on multiethnic principles, one should start with Sarajevo,” he concluded. But as ethnic tensions deepened, the Muslim chairman of a three-man rotating state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, on Wednesday launched a fresh attack on the Serb entity. Silajdzic repeated earlier claims that the Serb entity is a “symbol of genocide” allegedly perpetrated by its first president, Radovan Karadzic… “The international community is obliged to remove consequences of the genocide,” Silajdzic added, referring to the Serb entity. […])

Back to the AP article about the shooting:

…The Bosnian Serb government will hold an overnight emergency session and the regional president, Milorad Dodik, told Bosnian Serb TV he believes the attacker was instructed by someone else even though he acted alone.

Lukac, the police chief, called on citizens to help police.

“We will fight against them and we will never forgive them, but police can’t do it alone. We need the citizens to help,” Lukac said, without specifying who he meant by “them.”

[Whom do you want him to mean?]

The imam of the Zvornik mosque, Mustafa Muharemovic, condemned the attack.

Of course he did. It also doesn’t hurt that minorities such as he have it good in the Serb part of Bosnia.

A weekend report from the Serb Republic News Agency:

FACT THAT AMBASSADORS ARE TURNING A BLIND EYE CANNOT DISPUTE THE ATTACK

GRADISKA, May 1 /SRNA/ – Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik said today in Gradiska that even though the ambassadors in BiH are turning a “blind eye” this cannot change and dispute the fact that Republika Srpska institutions were attacked in a terrorist attack in Zvornk.

“The police officer was wearing a uniform [with] insignia of Republika Srpska. There was not a single insignia of BiH [Bosnia-Herzegovina] there. When you [certain ambassadors] try to express your condolence to Bakir Izetbegovic [BiH president and son of the late fundamentalist wartime president Alija Izetbegovic] who is hesitating to take a political action to fight politically-motivated Islam and radical Islam, this speaks how much you want to distort facts in BiH,” Dodik told reporters in Gradiska.

[Politically-motivated and radical Islam. Perhaps that answers the AP reporter’s question above, as to whom police chief Lukac might have been referring to?]

Dodik said that the facts are that Republika Srpska was attacked, that a Republika Srpska police station was attacked and that a police officer, a Serb from Republika Srpska, was killed.

“I still very clearly say that a huge majority of Bosniaks are peaceful people, that we want peace and coexistence with them, but we also want an energetic fight against all those who bring violence, regardless of their motives,” Dodik said… “Everything is politics for them [foreign ambassadors distorting the target]. Of course, they have never dropped [the idea] to degrade and abolish Republika Srpska in a peaceful way, but also to strengthen BiH…” He said that this is a twisted approach by a segment of the IC [international community]….

“Republika Srpska police force does not exist in the FBiH [the Muslim-Croat Federation], in Brcko District, or in joint BiH institutions; it is a body of Republika Srpska, a body that was established by Republika Srpska laws and constitution which also represents a right that was given us by the Dayton Peace Agreement,” Dodik has concluded.

Two more AP reports follow. Watch how the whole thing morphs into a contemplation on supposed Serb bellicosity:

Police station attack in Bosnia reignites ethnic tensions

The killing of a policeman by a Muslim gunman prompted Bosnian Serb leaders on Tuesday to renew calls for independence from the federation forged in a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995. That’s dangerous talk in the Balkans, whose economically depressed states are rife with ethnic rivalries and border disputes that could explode at any moment.
…
The attack came only a week after a group of 40 masked gunmen forcibly took over a police station in a Macedonian border village, calling themselves members of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s. The attackers declare they were forming an independent state in Macedonia, another former member of Yugoslavia. [More on that to come.]
…
In the wake of Monday’s attack, the Bosnian Serb leader, who has been pushing for independence for the Serb region of Bosnia, said the country’s central institutions are “useless” and Bosnian Serbs should form their own intelligence service.

“This was a shot against Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb mini-state) and we have the right to defend ourselves and we will,” Milorad Dodik said.

A similar call was made by the Bosnian Serbs in 1992, which triggered their armed rebellion against Bosnia’s referendum for independence and in favor of forming a pan-Serbian state in the Balkans. [Whereas the rest of us would have no problem living under an Islamic regime.]

Bosnia has a national army, consisting of all three ethnic groups under a single command. But it has two separate police forces, one for the Bosniaks and Croats, and the other for Bosnian Serbs. Both forces are coordinated by the Ministry of Security.

In theory, Dodik could mobilize his own force, drawing from his region’s police officers and other fighters who might support the idea of secession from Bosnia. But that would be a serious violation of the Dayton agreement.

Emir Suljagic, from the Bosnian Democratic Front Party, said, “those who are trying to cynically use this event for gaining political points should be cautious and learn from the lessons of the past when major violence started with big words.”

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic struck a more conciliatory stand on Tuesday, saying Bosnia’s stability has to be preserved and that Serbian and Bosnian security services must cooperate “in order to prevent provocations like this in the future.”

“Risks of similar attacks are high in our region, most of all from the radical Islamist movement,” he said.

On Tuesday, Bosnian police arrested two men with suspected links to the gunman in Zvornik.

New details begun [sic] to emerge about the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Nerdin Ibric, with residents from his village saying his father was taken away by Serbs in 1992 at the start of Bosnia’s brutal multi-ethnic war and never seen again. Local media reported that Serb police rounded up the father along with 750 Muslims from the town and killed them all.

Considering that killings on such a mass scale have yet to be demonstrated as real even for Srebrenica, this is to be taken with a grain of salt. But what one can take away from the detail of the father being led away, if that’s true, is the same lesson as that of the 2007 Trolley Square massacre in Salt Lake City: Like father, like son. A Bosnian “defender” breeds a jihadi offspring. And yet we’re supposed to believe that the Serbs weren’t dealing with anything related to jihad.

One of the suspects taken into custody on Tuesday is known to police and has been questioned in the past for possible Syria ties and recruitment efforts for the Islamic State group, Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said.
…
Bosnian security analyst Goran Kovacevic said, “This country is living in an atmosphere of war. All the people now in power emerged during the war,” he said. “Even 20 years later, they base their politics on war rhetoric and spread fear.”

The final AP article, from Thursday:

Bosnian Authorities Identify Police Station Attack Suspects (Apr. 30)

Bosnian authorities on Thursday identified two suspects arrested in connection with a fatal attack on a police station, including one already under investigation for allegedly helping to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group.
…
Prosecutors identified the two suspects as 24-year-old Avdulah Hasanovic, and 40-year-old Kasim Mehidic. The men were arrested on Tuesday.

Hasanovic was detained last year in a sweep against Islamic extremists who allegedly recruited people to fight for IS in Syria. He was later released, but his passport has been confiscated and he has had to regularly report to authorities. The group’s leader is on trial.

Radical Muslims were non-existent before the 1992-95 war in the Balkans when foreign mujahedeen arrived in Bosnia to help the Muslim Bosniaks fight against Serbs and Croats. Most of them left after the war but had managed to spread their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam among a few thousand locals, who stand out amid the majority moderate and secular Bosnian Muslims. [Ah, I almost thought they’d forgotten to include that mantra.]

Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said the investigation so far shows the gunman Nerdin Ibric was connected to such extremists.

Experts say some 200 Bosnians are fighting in Syria. IS recruiters mostly target young, jobless men with no hope for a better future in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent. The 24-year-old gunman fit this profile and was the son of a man who was killed during the war when Serb police from Zvornik rounded up over 700 Muslim men from the once predominantly Muslim town and executed them as part of a campaign to create a pure Serbian area.

Bosnia’s Islamic Community condemned the attack and said the perpetrator’s background is no excuse for committing such a crime.

That’s refreshing. Now if only the MSM could figure it out.

02/13/15

Warring Factions Threaten Clinton White House Bid

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Ongoing rivalries and dissension among Clinton loyalists have percolated up through the mainstream media, even The New York Times—whose own investigative reporting may have set off the latest salvo. It seems despite the president-in-waiting status often accorded to Mrs. Clinton, there might not be enough money to go around, evoking harsh internal criticisms.

David Brock, founder of the far-left Media Matters, “is a cancer,” argued John Morgan, a Florida lawyer connected to both President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to recent reporting by Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick at the Times. Brock made headlines earlier this week, when in response to their reporting, he sent out a letter that alleged “current and former Priorities officials were behind this specious and malicious attack on the integrity of these critical organizations” and “resigned from the board of the super PAC Priorities USA Action,” according to Politico’s Kenneth Vogel.

Brock is considering a return to Priorities USA, The Washington Post noted shortly thereafter. “People are starting to worry that Priorities could be a weak link,” one strategist told Vogel for his February 10 story about how this super PAC is “struggling in its early efforts to line up cash toward a fundraising goal of as much as $500 million.”

But one wonders whether the criticisms expressed in the media will sabotage Brock’s and other loyalists’ peacemaking. “If you care about your party and our country, you just do what you are asked,” said Morgan, according to Confessore and Chozick. “If you care about yourself, you take your toys and go home.” Morgan is apparently “close” to the co-chair of Priorities USA Action, Jim Messina. Messina served as President Obama’s campaign manager in 2012.

Confessore, a liberal writer/editor transplanted from Washington Monthly to The New York Times, seems to have access to a considerable circle of influential Democrats connected to the Clintons. After all, he sat down with John Podesta in 2003 and 2005. And his August 2013 exposé on mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation, co-authored with Chozick, included interviews with “more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family”—most unwilling to speak on the record.

Like the 2013 piece, Confessore and Chozick report for the Times on February 10 that “most people interviewed for this article declined to speak on the record for fear of angering either the president or the woman who hopes to replace him.” But these persons are willing to speak to the Times about their frustrations.

“The Hillary people were more in it for themselves,” said Jonathan Alter, MSNBC political analyst, when he appeared on the February 10 Ed Schultz show on MSNBC. Alter was referring to the 2008 Democratic primary campaign against Obama. “If we get a repeat of that this time, she won`t have the passion and a genuine commitment that she needs to go the distance.”

“…what this is about is that is that there was a fundraiser who raised millions of dollars for these different groups including David Brock`s, but she was taking a 12.5 percent commission,” Alter said. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum described Mary Pat Bonner’s reported 12.5% commission as “way over the top.”

Confessore and Chozick cast this Democrat infighting differently. They describe the latest meltdown among Clinton movers and shakers as a conflict between two worlds: former Obama staffers who have been imported as strategists for Clinton, and long-time Clinton loyalists. But these writers aren’t the only ones with conflicted interests. The reality appears to be that many in the liberal media, including some reporters at The Washington Post and New York Times, want to tear Hillary and the Clintons down for being too close to Wall Street. But on the other hand, they realize that Mrs. Clinton is the overwhelming favorite to get the Democratic nomination, meaning they will undoubtedly support her when it comes down to her vying against any Republican candidate.

As I’ve reported in the past, The Washington Post—even amidst Mrs. Clinton’s “worst week in Washington” and her tone-deaf comments about being “dead broke” after leaving the White House—still gave her favorable coverage in order to ensure that a Democrat would retain the presidency. “The Post has issued wall-to-wall coverage of this subject, but most of it is about ensuring Hillary’s chances,” I wrote last July.

But when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) launched her populist offensive in the Senate, hope sprang anew among die-hard liberals and some in the media that Mrs. Clinton, with all her baggage, might not be a shoo-in. The Post’s Paul Kane practically salivated over Sen. Warren’s presidential chances back during the December revolt. Sen. Warren has said she’s not running, but the Post continues to run articles like this: “Democrats suffering from Clinton fatigue say they’re ready for Warren.” Chozick recently described Sen. Warren as “an effective tool in moving Mrs. Clinton off message” whom Republicans favor as a candidate to create dissension within the Democratic primary.

Accuracy in Media has argued in the past that the Times’ David Kirkpatrick piece on Benghazi was a way of inoculating Mrs. Clinton while trying to make the definitive case supporting the Obama administration’s actions and justifications for Benghazi. But that obviously didn’t work, and revelations confirming the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s conclusions continue to break, implicating Mrs. Clinton not only for poor security preceding the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but her blind push to intervene in Libya in the first place. When Mrs. Clinton most likely appears before the Select Committee on Benghazi, an even greater spotlight will shine on her role in these attacks.

It looks like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is very tempted to run against Mrs. Clinton from the left, and former Virginia Senator James Webb might run more or less from her right. The sharks are circling this establishment candidate; will Mrs. Clinton successfully fend them off?

And clearly others at the Times aren’t so interested in inoculating her. But in the meantime, the left is having a catfight, and it may be that some reporters are interested in stirring the pot for dramatic effect—and to cause some angst for Mrs. Clinton from their end.

Confessore’s bio from the Times states that he covers the “intersection of money, power and influence.” A visit to his Twitter page reveals that he, like many liberals, doesn’t like the Citizens United ruling very much. His twitter feed recently stated, “Thanks to Citizens United, we can now have campaign infighting without the campaign.” He also has tweeted about the Clinton Foundation’s $81 million received from “clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.”

He also wrote an article with Chozick in July of last year which stated, “Few political families are closer to Wall Street than the Clintons … And the Clintons often interact with the titans of finance on the Manhattan charity circuit and during their vacations in the Hamptons.”

Could it be that at least one New York Times staffer doesn’t favor Mrs. Clinton for her entrenched, big-money establishment ties much, either? Or perhaps it’s just that Confessore, Chozick, and the Times itself want to go around poking sleeping tigers before an election to see what they can stir up.

These aren’t Mrs. Clinton’s only problems. She also has what might become known as a “Brian Williams problem,” meaning she “misremembered” coming under sniper fire on a runway in Bosnia, and she repeated the story on more than one occasion, yet there were plenty of eyewitnesses who knew it was a complete fabrication. It cost Williams his esteemed position, and a lot of money. Will Hillary pay a similar price?

Plus, former President Bill Clinton is becoming a problem again based on his being linked in the media to a sex scandal involving a good friend of his who is a convicted pedophile. It’s certainly never dull when the Clintons are involved.

02/4/15

And the Islamists Remained…

By: Frank Salvato

Conjuring images of the dying who had clawed at the dank walls of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh grabbed at his head, screaming out in agony as he fell to his knees, his body burning, his brain slowly cooking. His Daesh (Islamic State) captors had abruptly abandoned disingenuous negotiations with the Jordanian government for his release, their hostage having actually been killed many days before. Instead, they decided to record al-Kaseasbeh’s purposeful immolation. Having drenched him in accelerant, the savages lit the liquid fuse that set the young lieutenant ablaze. As he writhed, they filmed, indignant to his agony; his humanity. Barbarity for the purpose of terrorist propaganda had been achieved.

Just a month earlier, tens of thousands had taken to the streets in major Middle Eastern cities in support of Islamofascist assassins who slaughtered the staff at Charlie Hebdo. Turkey’s president, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, publicly intimated that the attacks in Paris were justified due to the magazine staff’s transgressions against Muslim sensibilities. And he went further than that, stating, obtusely, that Muslims have “never taken part in terrorist massacres.” Erdogan made these alarming statements as Boko Haram waded through the blood of the 2,000 people they slaughtered in the Nigerian town of Baga, in the name of Islam. So, violent, intolerant Islam is on the march.

Islamists have always been an aggressive faction. Starting with Muhammad and continuing on through the Byzantine-Arab Wars (634-750), the conquests of Persia and Mesopotamia (633–651), Transoxiana (662–751), Sindh (664–712), Hispania (711–718) and Septimania (719–720), the attempts to conquer the Caucasus (711–750), the conquest of Nubia (700–1606) and Anatolia (1060-1360), the incursions into southern Italy, including the conquest of Rome (831–902) and the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (1299-1453), Muslims have sought to establish control of any and all lands they set foot on, whether by violence or attrition. However, one chapter of Islamic conquest – or bid for conquest – is seldom mentioned in the history books, and perhaps for good reason: World War II.

It is common knowledge – although today that cannot be assumed, given the Progressive Movement’s penchant for “nuancing history” – that during World War II Germany, Japan and Italy allied to form the Axis Powers in their war efforts. There were other affiliate and co-belligerent states (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Thailand, Finland and Iraq), as well as “client states” (Albania, Burma, China, Croatia, India, Mengjiang, Manchukuo, Philippines, Slovakia and Vietnam), officially considered to be independent countries allied with Germany.

Furthermore, there were key geopolitical players who supported and collaborated with Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the Axis Powers as a whole throughout the conflict. One such geopolitical player was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Sunni Muslim cleric in charge of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy places, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The designation of “Grand Mufti” identifies the bearer as the:

“…highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatwas, on interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence…The collected opinions of the Grand Mufti serve as a valuable source of information on the practical application of Islamic law as opposed to its abstract formulation.”

During World War II the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was Haj Amin al-Husseini, who:

“…collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping the Nazis recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. On meeting Adolf Hitler he requested backing for Arab independence and support in opposing the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. At war’s end, he came under French protection, and then sought refuge in Cairo to avoid prosecution.”

When al-Husseini first met with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1941, he assured Hitler that:

“The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies…namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists.”

Al-Husseini’s efforts in recruiting Muslim fighters for the Nazi cause resulted in the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar Brigade. The Handschar earned a reputation for being particularly brutal in exterminating partisans in north-eastern Bosnia. In fact, many local Muslims who stood witness to Handschar viciousness were driven to align with the Communist partisans.

The Grand Mufti was also integral in the organization of Arab students and North African immigrants to Germany into the Arabische Freiheitkorps, an Arab Legion in the German Army, that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front.

It would be right to conclude then that al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, home to one of Islam’s holiest shrines, was a willing collaborator with the Nazis and Adolf Hitler; someone who willingly facilitated the Nazi SS and their “Final Solution”; the genocide of the Jews. Yet, in the end, al-Husseini, perhaps the principle Muslim leader throughout that period, walked away from the conflict paying no price for his murderous deeds.

From Hitler’s Foreign Executioners; Europe’s Dirty Secret by Christopher Hale, pages 373-374:

“By the Winter of 1944, Berlin was no longer a safe haven for men like the Grand Mufti. He had never been a brave man and was often found cowering under tables as the great armadas of Allied bombers pounded the capital of the Reich. His allies in the foreign office, like Erwin Ettel, did what they could to protect their esteemed Muslim guest and tried to coax him to escape Germany to whatever safe haven he chose by U-Boat. The Mufti was simply too timid to contemplate such a journey and held on in Berlin to the very end. At the end of May 1945, the Grand Mufti and his entourage at last picked up and fled. He knew that once the British reached Berlin they would waste little time tracking him down. After many tribulations, they managed to reach Constance in the French zone of occupation. Recalling how well he had been treated after his flight from Palestine, when he escaped to French Beirut from British Palestine, the Grand Mufti surrendered to the French authorities. He was soon relaxing in an opulent villa near Paris…

“The Mufti had little time to enjoy French hospitality. His protectors discovered that an ‘Irgun’ assassination squad had arrived in France. On 28 May 1945, el-Husseini bolted to Italy, then secretly boarded a British ship, the SS Devonshire, bound for the Egyptian port of Alexandria.

“The return of the Grand Mufti electrified the Arab world. At a rally at Heliopolis in Cairo exultant crowds swamped his convoy – and King Farouk offered him appropriately sumptuous accommodations in his ‘Inshas Palace.’ The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, breathlessly declared: ‘The hearts of the Arabs palpitated with joy at hearing that the Grand Mufti had succeeded in reaching at Arab country…The lion is free at last and will roam the Arabian jungle to clear it of wolves. The great leader is back.’”

Today, as we witness the barbarous immolation of a warrior who dared to confront a culture of death, the Islamists remain. In the aftermath of the assassination of those who engage in free speech, as Daesh executes conquest after conquest leaving myriad atrocities in their wake, the Islamists remain. And as leaders of Islamic countries (read: Turkey) advance excuses for the barbarity of Islamist executioners; ideological operatives who slaughter ruthlessly in the name of Islam, the Islamists remain. Little has changed in the violent Islamist world from the days of the Handschar. Indeed, in a time when the president of the United States refuses to consider his country at war with Islamist extremists and the massive movement they represent – and as he maintains a refusal to even speak the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” one can argue that violent Islamists are in a better position today than they were under Hitler.

At the end of World War II, the Allied Powers insisted on attaining unconditional surrender from each of the Axis Powers. Germany, Italy and Japan signed and agreed to unconditional surrender, their satellite nations in tow. Suspiciously absent from the list of Axis power aggressors agreeing to unconditional surrender is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; the Muslim facilitator of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS, the Handschar. Why was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing this to happen?

I can’t help but feel that had the Allied Powers exacted an unconditional surrender from the Grand Mufti of all forces under his influence; had the Grand Mufti been brought to his knees in capitulation, perhaps – just perhaps – we would not be facing the “emboldened swords” of Daesh on the streets of the Western World and in Islamofascist occupied territories throughout the Middle East. I cannot help but feel that somehow, for some reason, the job of winning World War II was left unfinished…and the rise of violent Islamist terrorism is the price we are paying.

The world – much like in the nascent days of World War II – must once again strive to put aside the geopolitics of the day to come together in a definitive effort to confront the inglorious barbarity of Islamofascism. The peoples of the world must attack Islamofascism militarily, economically, historically and ideologically. Just as we must physically vanquish jihadists who would behead the innocent and set ablaze those who fight against them, so too must we starve them of operating capital globally, even as we correct the fictionalized history of “the religion of peace,” and especially as we deny them the ability to replenish their ranks; especially as we win – unconditionally – the war of ideas for all generations to come.

Today, the smoldering ashes of Jordanian Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a warrior who came to the aid of those being slaughtered by Daesh, lay denigrated underneath a pile of rubble, an excruciatingly painful death his reward for humanity’s service. And the Islamists remained. I can’t help but feel that the free world has unfinished business…until no Islamist remains.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization, and a division of The Archangel Organization, LLC, His writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com: Because Our Republic Is Worth It. Mr. Salvato sits on the board of directors for Founders Alliance USA, a solutions-oriented non-profit organization. He also serves as the managing editor for NewMediaJournal.us. Mr. Salvato is the author of six books including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio across the country. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements. He can be contacted at [email protected].