Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has the right to defend itself against Iran, which he said calls and works for Israel's destruction. He also stated that Iran should dismantle its underground enrichment facilities.
Netanyahu made the remarks Friday in a photo opportunity before meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa. (Photo: Netanyahu in Ottawa, Canada)
The prime minister dismissed the idea of renewed international negotiations with Iran aimed at preventing the country from building a nuclear weapon.
"It could do again what it has done before, it could pursue or exploit the talks as they've done in the past to deceive and delay so that they can continue to advance their nuclear program and get to the nuclear finish line by running up the clock, so to speak," Netanyahu said after concluding his meeting with Harper.
צילום: לשכת רוה"מ
The Netanyahus arrive in Ottawa
"I think the international community should not fall into this trap," he said.
Netanyahu will meet with President Barack Obama on Monday, and Iran will be a major concern.
Obama warned Israel in an interview with The Atlantic magazine published Friday that a premature attack on Iran would do more harm than good.
"At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally (Syria) is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?" he said.
In the interview, Obama also rejected as unreasonable a more limited policy of containment in confronting Iran's nuclear efforts.
Honest and blunt relationship with Netanyahu. Obama
"You're talking about the most volatile region in the world," he said. "It will not be tolerable to a number of states in that region for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and them not to have a nuclear weapon. Iran is known to sponsor terrorist organizations, so the threat of proliferation becomes that much more severe."
He also pointed to economic turmoil in Iran and reiterated that sanctions against the Iranian regime are starting to bite.
Speaking about his relationship with the Netanyahu, Obama said: "This is one of the few times in the history of US-Israeli relations where you have a government from the right in Israel at the same time you have a center-left government in the United States, and so I think what happens then is that a lot of political interpretations of our relationship get projected onto this.
"But one thing that I have found in working with Prime Minister Netanyahu is that we can be very frank with each other, very blunt with each other, very honest with each other," he said.
"For the most part, when we have differences, they are tactical and not strategic. Our objectives are a secure United States, a secure Israel, peace, the capacity for our kids to grow up in safety and security and not have to worry about bombs going off, and being able to promote business and economic growth and commerce. We have a common vision about where we want to go," Obama noted.
Last-ditch bid fails to bridge US-Israeli differences
In a dramatic U-turn to show Israel that Washington is serious about its military option against Iran’s nuclear program, Pentagon officials disclosed Thursday, March 1, that “military options being prepared start with providing refueling for Israeli planes and include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime. They include the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its elite Qods Force, regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in Washington’s first public reference to possible joint military action with Israel against Iran.
Earlier, Israel asked the Obama administration to finally set red lines for Iran’s nuclear program and abandon its “shifting red lines” option, as well as spelling out US military contingencies instead of using the worn-out “all options are on the table” mantra. DEBKAfile reported earlier Thursday on the deep discord marking the US-Israeli approach to the threat of a nuclear Iran:
Barring last-minute changes, US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will still be at profound cross purposes on Iran when they meet at the White House on March 5. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to Washington to try and work out with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Wednesday, Feb. 29 a formula for bridging the widening gap. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that notwithstanding their smiling embraces, Barak flew straight back home to inform the prime minister they had failed.
While still airborne, Barak heard White House Spokesman Jay Carney further sharpen Obama’s current tone: “I think we have been clear about this – that any (Israeli) military action in that region threatens greater instability in the region, because Iran borders both Afghanistan and Iraq – we have civilian personnel in Iraq, we have military personnel as well as civilians in Afghanistan.”
Carney added “But our approach right now is to continue to pursue the diplomatic path that we’ve taken, combined with very aggressive sanctions.”
Senior American and Israeli officials said on Thursday, March 1 that this statement confirmed that the president had turned down two key Israeli requests:
1. To set final and absolute red lines for Iran’s nuclear program which, if crossed, would provide the grounds for the US and Israel to strike its nuclear sites. Israel maintains that Washington’s Iran policy can be summed up as “shifting red lines:” Whenever Iran moves ahead with another nuclear achievement, the US sets new “red lines” to avoid a confrontation. This enables Tehran to jump its nuclear program forward from one US “red line” to the next.
2. To stop reciting the mantra that “all options are on the table’ for stopping Iran gaining a nuclear weapon and moving on to more definite language for specifying American military contingencies. However, the attempt to formulate a new locution evaded the efforts of Panetta and Barak.
President Shimon Peres is due to meet President Obama Sunday, March 4 although the hour has not yet been set. Whether it takes place before or after the US President’s speech to the AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) National Convention opening that day in Washington is significant.
If it takes place after, it would mean that the Americans are no longer amenable to Israeli persuasion to give up their objections to an Israeli attack and they expect Jerusalem to respect the Obama administration’s demand to give sanctions and diplomatic pressure more time to persuade Iran’s leaders to pack up their nuclear weapon program.
Obama is waiting anxiously to see if the Iranians turn up for nuclear talks with the five UN Security Council permanent members and Germany in Istanbul next month. To meet one of their conditions for coming to the table, the US stalled on leading the West and Arab powers into military intervention to overthrow Syria’s Bashar Assad.
But even if Peres gets to see Obama before the AIPAC speech, there is not much he can do to persuade the US president to accept a compromise formula that would save his talks with Netanyahu from digging the rift between them on Iran still deeper.
Thursday, March 1, senior American sources listed the US-Israeli schedule for the coming days:
Thursday: Former US presidential adviser Dennis B. Ross holds a background briefing on US policy for Iran with American journalists. Although he holds no official White House position, Ross is considered sufficiently influential and well-informed to outline the next stages of the presidential Iran strategy.
Sunday, March 4: President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu both address the opening of the national AIPAC Convention in Washington. The extremely sensitive order of appearance has not yet been settled.
Jerusalem would rather Obama go first to give Netanyahu the chance to answer his comments. For that very reason, the Americans would prefer their president to follow the prime minister and so, in a manner of speaking, carve his policy in stone.
The White House is making every effort to make sure no public confrontation over Iran takes place between the American and Israeli leaders in their widely broadcast and televised appearances before an audience of some 14,000 Jewish delegates from across America.
Monday, March 5: The Obama-Netanyahu summit at the White House.
by Raymond Ibrahim Originally published by the Stonegate Institute
February 27, 2012
Many in the media are indignant with Reverend Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Invited on "Morning Joe" last Tuesday to discuss Christian persecution, the hosts turned the focus to interrogating Graham on whether he thought President Barack Obama was Christian or not. Though the Reverend concluded that Obama "has said he's a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is," he appeared skeptical, suggesting Obama's policies disagree with Christian principles, and thus earning the full ire of much of the fourth estate.
Obama bowing before the Saudi King, 2009.
Intrinsically trivial on many levels, this incident nevertheless brings several important points to the fore.
First, Graham was absolutely right to say that, "under Islamic law, the Muslim world sees Barack Obama as a Muslim, as a son of Islam": according to Sharia, if one's father is Muslim, one automatically becomes Muslim. In fact, the reason behind last week's church attack in Egypt, when thousands of Muslims tried to torch a church and kill its pastor, is that a Christian girl fled her father after he converted to Islam: she did not want to be Muslim, and was rumored to be hiding in the church. (This would not be the first time in recent months that churches were attacked on similar rumors.)
Because of this automatic passage of Islam from father to son—with the death penalty for those seeking to apostatize, the condemned Iranian pastor being just the most visible example—and because Obama attended amadrassa (a Muslim religious school) during his youth in Indonesia, many Muslims are convinced that Obama is a "secret" Muslim. In a Forbes article, "My Muslim President Obama: Why members of the faith see him as one of the flock," writer Asma Gull Hasan elaborates:
[S]ince Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice. "Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." …. Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not Muslim. Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam…. The rationalistic, Western side of me knows that Obama has denied being Muslim, that his father was non-practicing, that he doesn't attend a mosque. Many Muslims simply say back, "my father's not a strict Muslim either, and I haven't been to a mosque in years." Obama even toldThe New York Times he could recite the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, which the vast majority of Muslims, I would guess, do not know well enough to recite. [Read the entire article, which is more eye-opening than the author probably intended.]
Another reason why many Muslims believe Obama is Muslim (a reason Ms. Hasan's article understandably omits) is that, under the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, Muslims are permitted—in certain contexts even encouraged—to deny being Muslim, if so doing secures them or Islam an advantage. Accordingly, Islamic history is full of stories of Muslims denying and publicly cursing Islam, even pretending to be Christian, whenever it was strategic.
In other words, if an American president was a secret Muslim, and if he was lying about it, and even if he was secretly working to subvert the U.S. to Islam's advantage—not only would that be justified by Islamic doctrines of loyalty and deception, but it would have ample precedents, stretching back to the dawn of Islam. Such as when Muhammad commanded a convert from an adversarial tribe to conceal his new Muslim identity and go back to his tribe—which he cajoled with a perfidious "You are my stock and my family, the dearest of men to me"—only to betray them to Islam's invading armies.
Graham further upset "progressive" sensitivities by saying "All I know is under Obama, President Obama, the Muslims of the world, he seems to be more concerned about them than the Christians that are being murdered in the Muslim countries," adding that "Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama."
What Franklin Graham's critics fail to understand is that, when it comes to Obama's religious identity, the Reverend probably has Jesus' dictum in mind: "By their fruits shall ye know them"—that is, pro-Islamic actions speak louder than Christian words.
Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.
Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time. By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today’s Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).
Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq’s (d. 767) Sira (“Life of Muhammad”), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi’s (d. circa. 820) Maghazi (“Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]”); Baladhuri’s (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan (“Conquests of the Nations”); and Tabari’s (d.923) multi-volume Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, (“History of Prophets and Kings”), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.
Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts—oral and written—tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).
It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the “Muslim world.”
According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.
The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad’s death in 632. Many tribes which had only nominally accepted Islam’s authority, upon Muhammad’s death, figured they could break away; however, Muhammad’s successor and first caliph, or successor, Abu Bakr, would have none of that, and proclaimed a jihad against these apostates, known in Arabic as the “Ridda Wars” (or Apostasy Wars). According to the aforementioned historians, tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword until their tribes re-submitted to Islam.
The Ridda Wars ended around 634. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. By the early 8th century, all of north Africa and Spain to the west, and the lands of central Asia and India to the east, were also brought under Islamic suzerainty.
The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or “dhimmis,” paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.
Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.
Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America’s classrooms, as many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion’s intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided—extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc.—by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued—and heavily taxed—subjects, not as Muslim equals.
Meanwhile, as U.S. textbooks equivocate about the Muslim conquests, in the schoolrooms of the Muslim world, the conquests are not only taught as a matter of course, but are glorified: their rapidity and decisiveness are regularly portrayed as evidence that Allah was in fact on the side of the Muslims (and will be again, so long as Muslims uphold their communal duty of waging jihad).
The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook’s mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad—Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations—which portrays jihad as a “spiritual-struggle” against one’s vices.
Contrast this definition of jihad with that of an early edition of the venerable Encyclopaedia of Islam. Its opening sentence simply states, “The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general.… Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.… Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.” Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.
Likewise, the Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam’s theological texts—the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures.
It should also be noted that, to Muslims, the Islamic conquests are seen as acts of altruism: they are referred to as futahat, which literally means “openings”—that is, the countries conquered were “opened” for the light of Islam to enter and guide its infidel inhabitants. Thus to Muslims, there is nothing to regret or apologize for concerning the conquests; they are seen as for the good of those who were conquered (i.e., the ancestors of today’s Muslims).
In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in U.S. textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history—which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum
Who did it, why and under what circumstances? What should and should not be done?
The military justice system demands justice for our troops.It does not permit revenge upon them to curry favor with others, even our enemies.
The burning of an unstated number of Korans in Afghanistan and the aftermath have been much in the news. However, little has been reported factually about who did it, who if anyone told them to do it and/or why. It has not even been reported, beyond speculation, whether the Koran Burners were members of the United States military, some other military organization or civilians. According to this NY Times article, it was done by “American” personnel who “threw Korans into a pit of burning trash.” According to the linked February 21st article, also at the NY Times,
According to Afghan workers who witnessed the events, around 10 or 11 p.m. on Monday a dump truck escorted by a military vehicle drove up to the landfill at Bagram Air Base, where 20 or so Afghans work. Two uniformed NATO personnel, a man and a woman, began unloading bags of books from the back of the truck and throwing them into a pit for incineration. NATO officials said it was not yet clear if the two people were troops or civilians. Some civilians also wear military uniforms and can easily be mistaken for soldiers. The Afghan workers described the pair as Americans.
Accounts from some of the workers at the landfill suggested that the two people were oblivious to the significance of what they were doing. They made no attempt to hide the books, instead appearing to be routinely carrying out their duties.
“When we saw these soldiers burning books, we moved closer to see what was going on, and one of the boys said, ‘It is Holy Koran,’ ” said one of the laborers, Zabiullah, 22. “And we attacked them with our yellow helmets, and tried to stop them. We rushed towards them, and we threw our helmets at the vehicles.” (Emphasis added)
Reliable information remains difficult to find. Let’s therefore assume that the uniformed people who threw bags of refuse into the fire were U.S. Military personnel, that they were not burning Korans for the mere joy of burning them and that they were performing duties assigned by someone in a position to assign those duties. If not, the apparently contrite letter written by President Obama (hardly his first apology to the world for our many sins) probably makes even less sense than is apparent — that’s speculation, since the text has not been released and, according to Press Secretary Carney, “is not appropriate to show” to reporters or, by extension, to the rest of us. According to a travel pool report, it was “a lengthy, three-page letter on a host of issues, several sentences of which relate to this matter.” In any event, whatever President Obama may have said seems not to have had many desirable effects.
As noted by Ambassador Bolton, President Obama’s apology probably enhanced the Islamic sense that the United States (or at least the Obama Administration) is increasingly weak, gutless and ineffectual. That perception appears to have been gaining international acceptance. While consistent with the Obama presidency, that is not a wise message for any President of the United States to send.
A suicide car bomber struck early Monday at the gates of Jalalabad airport in eastern Afghanistan, officials said, killing nine people in an attack insurgents said was revenge for U.S. troops burning Qurans.
. . . .
The bomber drove up to the gates of the airport — which serves both civilian and international military aircraft — shortly after dawn and detonated his explosives in a “very strong” blast, said Nangarhar provincial police spokesman Hazrad Mohammad.
Among the dead were six civilians, two airport guards and one soldier, Mohammad said. Another six people were wounded, he said.
An AP photographer saw at least four destroyed cars at the gates of the airport.
NATO forces spokesman Capt. Justin Brockhoff said that no international forces were killed in the early morning attack and that the installation was not breached by the blast.
. . . .
“This attack is revenge against those soldiers who burned our Quran,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an email.
More than 30 people have been killed in protests and related attacks since the incident came to light this past Tuesday, including four U.S. soldiers.
At least in the absence of reliable information about who did what, in what circumstances and why, does this apology to “the noble people of Afghanistan” by the commander of the NATO coalition in Afghanistan, United States General John Allen, make a great deal of sense?
According to the young gentleman interviewed in the first video, we need to be even more respectful of the feelings of
savages
devout adherents to the Religion of Peace who like to behead and otherwise kill us and other “infidels” because otherwise we will continue to lose their hearts and minds. We will also continue to lose our own because we will continue to be beheaded and killed in other Islamically acceptable ways. Might the young gentleman be right? Clearly, savagery trumps patience and reasoning, or at least that seems to be the administration position. As asked here,
What, if anything, does the president have to say to the parents, orphans and widows of the murdered Americans in Afghanistan? His silence on those murders suggests, at a minimum, some sort of deranged “understanding” of the killers’ motivation, as if to say, “well, what do you expect? American soldiers slimed the Holy Koran, so obviously angry Muslims were going to slaughter some Americans.”
Does this mean that the president has issued Muslims a pass on barbaric violence? Does it mean that he sees a moral equivalence between burning holy Islamic writ and killing infidels?
Let’s assume that the beastly Koran burners are members of the United States military and therefore cannot be tried by a court dispensing Islamic justice. In the absence of a Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Afghanistan that so provides (none exists), they are instead subject only to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) — as are their military commanders. What happens next? Here is what President Karzai said:
[A]ccording to a BBC translation of his remarks made Sunday, [Karzai] told the Afghan people he was speaking to them after discussing the matter with “jihadi leaders,” “prominent scholars,” and Afghan elected officials, and that he spoke for the “pure sentiments” of the “Afghan nation” and the “Islamic world,” when he said: “We call on the US government to bring the perpetrators of the act to justice and put them on trial and punish them.”
NATO officials promised to meet Afghan nation’s demand of bringing to justice, through an open trial, those responsible for the incident and it was agreed that the perpetrators of the crime be brought to justice as soon as possible.
How can the demands of the pure sentiments of the “noble” Afghan people for “justice,” public trial and punishment be met? Who are to be tried? The two apparently low-ranking enlisted personnel who threw the bags into the fire? Whoever told them to do it? Whoever might have been his supervisor? How far up the chain of command can it go? Can guilt be presumed, a public
trial
farce held following which they shall be punished to Afghanistan’s “pure” satisfaction? How? By being hung, disemboweled and/or beheaded and their bodies dragged through the streets? Less probably would not be satisfactory and — in view of General Allen’s statement in the video above — could instead be a signal for further rioting and death at the hands of those same noble people. What should happen?
In a January 16th article entitled Should politics and foreign policy affect our military justice system, I wrote based on my experiences as an Army JAG captain (1966-1970) about the UCMJ and its implications for several marines who had childishly had a video made of themselves urinating on deceased Taliban heroes. Obviously, their actions were intentional and they knew what they were doing. The same principles should and must apply here if we are to make any legitimate claim that we follow the rule of law and are not descending to a level of savagery approaching that in Afghanistan.
Whether the, as yet, undisclosed military personnel who burned some Korans are to be tried by court martial or by a potentially less severe system of justice should not be up to the whims of Afghanistan or to those in the Obama Administration intent upon apologizing to that (or any other) country. Nor, if they are to be punished, should punishment dictated by “pure Afghan sentiments” — or by those of the no less “noble” Obama Administration — be imposed.
If punishment is to be sought, there are essentially five ways to proceed:
General court martial;
Special court martial;
Summary court martial;
Field grade non-judicial punishment (Article 15) and
Company grade non-judicial punishment.
They are listed above in descending order of potential severity; the first two are generally open to some extent to the public under conditions ensuring the maintenance of proper military decorum conducive to the administration of justice. A conviction is ordinarily treated as conviction of a federal felony, the effects of which can jeopardize future prospects (if any) of the felon. The latter is not the case for the last three. Under none of the five procedures can the verdict to be delivered and the punishment to be imposed (other than what is maximum punishment possible) be foreordained.
What has the Obama Administration properly to do with any of this? It should have very little to do with it. The Manual for Courts Martial (MCM), an Executive Order supplementing and consistent with the UCMJ, provides:
Rule 104. Unlawful command influence
(a) General prohibitions.
(1) Convening authorities and commanders. No convening authority or commander may censure, reprimand, or admonish a court-martial or other military tribunal or any member, military judge, or counsel thereof, with respect to the findings or sentence adjudged by the court-martial or tribunal, or with respect to any other exercise of the functions of the court-martial or tribunal or such persons in the conduct of the proceedings.
(2) All persons subject to the code. No person subject to the code may attempt to coerce or, by any unauthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal or any member thereof, in reaching the findings or sentence in any case or the action of any convening, approving, or reviewing authority with respect to such authority’s judicial acts.
Although not themselves subject to the UCMJ, the Commander in Chief, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense should respect the intent of the MCM, an Executive Order. They should not take actions which, if taken by a commander, would amount to command influence. Leaving aside all other considerations, they should refrain because defense counsel in a military trial would likely raise what they had done — possibly by analogy to command influence and at least in the context of pre-trial publicity. Counsel’s failure to do so could and probably would be cited as incompetence in any subsequent appeal.
We may already have passed the point of no return. We don’t know what instructions the NATO field commander, United States General Allen, has given (or may give) to his subordinates or they to theirs. Assuming trial by court martial or non-judicial punishment proceedings under Article 15 of the UCMJ, to what pressures will subordinate commanders be, or consider themselves to be, subject? Will they feel under obligations to do what they believe President Obama (or President Karzai) desires rather than what their consciences and their oaths of office — to the United States Constitution and to neither President Obama nor President Karzai — and the UCMJ demand of them? The oath of office for U.S. military officers is as follows:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Let’s hope that they as well as their superior commanders, including the Commander in Chief, remember and honor that oath. Let’s also hope that none of them take this satirical video by Andrew Klaven seriously.
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
A tempest in a tea pot. garbage was breing burnt, some soiled and crappy kuran that had been used by prisoners were being taken tio teh dump to be disposed of. Afghans went crazy for their book, the roadmap given by Mohamed on how to kill mame and otherwise lie with no consequences because Allah said it was ok. The Kuran also says that any thing from teh mind of man must be destroyed more so if its from teh west. Well anyone who believe that a pedophile named Mohamed received the words from Allah and for 20m years recited them to his scribe and voila we have the kuran. More likely you had Mohamed who likes screwing children and decides to make it official and tells everyone these are the laws Allah gave me obey them. It tells everyone who to lie to and who to kill and if you are a believer you get to be a pedophile too if you want. The kuran tells Muslims its ok to lie to non believer kill them, enslave them and beat them. But a Muslim must never lie to another muslim. The gig up Mohamed put this together from his own mind, time to destroy the kuran it was not created by Allah but by a pedophile Muslim seeking to legitimize his weakness for children. Now why the fuck are we apologizing to these people. If they want to get uposet go for it. When they try to kill a few of us we unleash holy hell on them to make them understand you don't f@#k with us. Why is it Obama sucks up to these scum and reveres them He defines himself as a muslim. He bows to muslims and he has sold the USA once teh greatest country on earth down teh toilet. Wake up America real quick throw Sheik Obama out of Office because if he gets back in, your women will be wearing Birka and the men will be praying five times a dqay. The Muslim nation of America is on the rise. Sghut it down and dont apologize .
Netanyahu made the remarks Friday in a photo opportunity before meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa. (Photo: Netanyahu in Ottawa, Canada)
1 comments: