UPDATE: The War College disputes the charge. Maybe it’s just the research arm involved.
A year ago, I had several posts about a man named Hesham Islam, who appeared to be an Islamic mole in the Defense Department. It appears I may have been premature in celebrating his departure. This story suggests that the problem may not be solved.
“HAMAS’ political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainize the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group,” writes Sherifa Zuhur, a research professor at the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. “Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party-Fatah-cannot deliver the security Israel requires. . . . The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive . . . . Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace.”
This information is from Thomas Ricks’ blog posts at Foreign Policy. Ricks is the Washington Post’s military reporter. His comments concern this War College publication by a research professor at the College. This could simply be an example of using diverse sources of opinion except that it seems to be a trend. Ricks relates another story suggesting an atmosphere of censorship.
During the lunch in which I was approached by the faculty (three in all), I was told that my experience was not surprising. “The AWC is creating a closed idea environment by their policy of not allowing new ideas in here,” I recall one faculty member telling me. That statement, it seemed to me at the time, was a little too general. I had good contacts in the Pentagon, with very senior commanders and was reassured by them afterwards that my AWC experience was unusual. It would not have happened at Leavenworth, I was told.
The most serious issue is whether the study of militant Islam is being curtailed for political reasons.
As late as early 2006, the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered. (”The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law,” The Vanguard: Journal of the Military Intelligence Corps Association, 11:4 [Fall 2006], p. 10)
Maybe Hesham Islam has left his legacy after all.
Tags: army, Islam, terrorism, War College
Like Ricks, I didn’t know it was this bad. It’s really frightening that free discussion has been muzzled to this degree. I have a greater appreciation for what Mike LaRoche is up against.
You should see Annie’s course writing assignments. For English, she was to write a paper on sexism and racism in The Quiet Man. For History, she had an assignment to write an essay on how white males victimize women and minorities. We chose William Kennedy Smith as the topic for the English assignment and she got a 90 on it. I doubt they noticed the irony. These folks are not long in humor and irony skills.
She has decided to major in Art History, which we think should be relatively free of left wing bias. She had her first class today.
What is scary about the War College story is that we seem to be dismissing study of our obvious enemy.
I was reading Ladislas Farago’s The Game of the Foxes again this weekend. I had read it years ago. I was reading about the immediate pre-war period of appeasement. The German ambassador in 1936 was a Dr von Hoesch who was very close to the English upper classes and was a close friend of the Prince of Wales. Wales became Edward VIII just before the Rhineland crisis in March, 1936. During the crisis, Hoesch met privately with the KIng who assured him that England would not oppose German occupation of the Rhineland. Thus, the first step to war was taken with the assistance of the KIng. Hoesch actually was an Anglophile and hated Hitler but served his country. Unfortunately, he died a month later of a heart attack. Maybe, had he lived, he would have recoiled from Hitler’s later steps.
Now, we seem to have rot in our own War College.
If Iraq should have taught us anything it is that we are woefully ignorant about our enemy. A good strategist should understand the enemy better than the enemy himself. The trick is to teach it without having it seduce any of the students.
For History, she had an assignment to write an essay on how white males victimize women and minorities.
It sounds like academe is so far gone they may never recover.
I would have started such a paper with a quote from Steve Sailor:
For his encyclopedic Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century, Peter Watson interviewed 150 scholars from around the world. Watson recounted that
“…all of them—there were no exceptions—said the same thing. In the 20th century, in the modern world, there were no non-western ideas of note.”
As we all know, the reason we have Black History Month is precisely because every year is more or less White History Year. Similarly, we have Women’s Studies departments in universities because all the other departments are, in effect, Men’s Studies.
This is clearly evident in California, where, for instance, 94 percent of Hollywood studio movies are written by whites. The enormous Latino population is largely ignored by California’s white cultural elite, other than to ritually refer to Hispanic neighborhoods as “vibrant”. In the Sunday Los Angeles Times’ arts and entertainment section, only about one percent of all events listed are organized by Hispanics.
This predominance of white innovations is so overwhelming that it explains what Stuff White People Like is actually about: white v. white status striving. One-half of the white population is constantly developing new fads (Sea salt! Adults playing kickball! Barack Obama!) to distinguish itself from the more traditional half of the white population.
To the SWPL set, minorities are merely props to use in demonstrating their superiority over non-SWPL whites (who might actually be closer to blacks on an individual basis due to emotional bonding on football teams or in the military).
I appreciate your honesty in this blog. Keep bloging.
If there is a military 5th column no one is going to discover it. As the events are unfolding in the current United States we need a military 5th column.