Exclusive to Accuracy in Media

One of the worst things that political and military leaders of a country at war can do is to misrepresent, or not understand, the threat doctrine and objectives of the enemy. Like it or not, America has been at war since November 1979 when Iran took over our embassy in Tehran.

On 15 May 2016, The Washington Post carried an article by retired General David Petraeus, which was his attempt to offer some insights for our next President on how to combat the current threat posed by the Islamic State (IS). He also attempted to address the broader Islamic jihadist ideology that animates them! In so doing, there is an unstated presumption throughout the article that “Islam is a religion of Peace” that has been hijacked by Islamic extremist groups, e.g., Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, al-Nusrah, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.

General Petraeus fails to mention that the so-called “violent extremist groups” are all part of the Global Jihadists Movement (GJM). They, in fact, are carrying out the core principles of Islam as specified in the Quran, Shariah and the hadiths. Muslims do not consider Islam to be a “religion.” They call it a “complete way of life.” Clearly, our leaders need to understand that Islam is a totalitarian ideology, governed by an alien legal system called Shariah that obligates all Muslims to carry out jihad to conquer the world and subjugate it to Islamic Law. Jihadists plan to accomplish this by capturing our “soul” through the use of terror. Not understanding this is how we find ourselves in our current predicament.