Cameron targets terrorist 'haven' in Mali

[Casino67]

Telegraph.co.uk:

 

British intelligence officers, Special Forces soldiers, aircraft and surveillance drones will all be deployed to “dismantle” terrorist groups based in northern Mali, David Cameron has indicated.

 

 

 

 

The Prime Minister said that Britain is now engaged in “generational struggle” against al-Qaeda affiliates like the group behind last week’s Algerian hostage crisis, whose leadership is based in Mali.

 

The National Security Council will today discuss boosting British assistance to the French intervention in Mali, he told MPs.

 

Islamic militants who are threatening the government there raise the risk of “a new terrorist haven developing on Europe’s doorstep,” Mr Cameron said.

 

Mr Cameron also said that ministers could “look again” at defence cuts and spend more on counter-terrorism capabilities and Special Forces like the SAS and SBS.

 

In a Commons statement, the Prime Minister sketched out a significant increase in Britain’s involvement in north Africa and the Sahel region.

[Valin]

Obama%20Proclaims%20Victory,%20Omits%20North%20Africa"]http://blogs.the-ame...ts North Africa

 

“A decade of war is now ending,” President Obama proclaimed today in his second inaugural address. Meanwhile in North Africa, a U.S.-assisted French surge in Mali continued into its second week. It’s not unusual for the President to be tight-lipped on the wars the U.S. is fighting, but as he moves into his second term his flailing strategy in the Sahel will need to be reassessed and, more importantly, shared with the American public.

 

The WSJ reported that behind the scenes, anxious White House officials are saying that Obama may already be reconsidering his approach:

 

Events in Mali, Algeria and other countries are now spurring a reconsideration of the military role the U.S. should take on the continent, U.S. officials said.

 

*The quick rise of Islamist militants . . . may mean that drones assigned to hunt al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan, or al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, could be reassigned to Africa.

 

The White House is right to be antsy. The president’s current strategy of marginalizing jihadis by empowering local moderates has seen some success, but it has also resulted in a small but formidable jihadi minority, particularly in North Africa. And the war is far from over:......

 

(Snip)

 

* Quick Rise? Well I suppose you could call 30 years quick.

[SrWoodchuck]

* Quick Rise? Well I suppose you could call 30 years quick.

 

I think they meant the last 4 years of Oblathers Jihadi Appeasement, @Valin.

[Valin]

* Quick Rise? Well I suppose you could call 30 years quick.

 

I think they meant the last 4 years of Oblathers Jihadi Appeasement, @Valin.

 

 

That only shows their ignorance.

[SrWoodchuck]

* Quick Rise? Well I suppose you could call 30 years quick.

 

I think they meant the last 4 years of Oblathers Jihadi Appeasement, @Valin.

 

 

That only shows their ignorance.

 

I refuse to argue with you about the fact that the Obama administration has bungled their "Arab Spring-i-ness " into a world that is now more dangerous, due to the empowerment of Jihadi-centric Muslim Brotherhood regimes in Africa & Indonesia. If ignorance is the refusal to accept reality....or to temper it with such fine distinction that it no longer has the quality of reality...then you may call me ignorant.....K?

[Valin]

* Quick Rise? Well I suppose you could call 30 years quick.

 

I think they meant the last 4 years of Oblathers Jihadi Appeasement, @Valin.

 

 

That only shows their ignorance.

 

I refuse to argue with you about the fact that the Obama administration has bungled their "Arab Spring-i-ness " into a world that is now more dangerous, due to the empowerment of Jihadi-centric Muslim Brotherhood regimes in Africa & Indonesia. If ignorance is the refusal to accept reality....or to temper it with such fine distinction that it no longer has the quality of reality...then you may call me ignorant.....K?

 

You need to step back and ask the question...Why? Why are the Islamist becoming a force throughout the Muslim world? Lets look at Egypt, and asdk Why? How did a small group like the MB acquire the power they did? We can go all the way back to the Muslim conquest of Egypt, but speaking practically (and in the interest of bandwidth), let's go back to the 1950's and the revolt of the colonels. The leaders of the revolt (Nasser...Naguib...Saddat) ran a game on the MB, support us and we'll give you power. After the revolt is successful the MB is arrested and imprisoned, tortured. This drives the MB underground, because the colonels have no interest what so ever in setting up Saudia Arabia on the Nile. They are interested in power, and anyone who gets in their way....well it does not go well with them. So over the years (decades) the MB build up an underground, money from (our good friends) the Saudis helps fund them and Mullahs coming out of Al-Azhar University. Meanwhile the government is arresting anyone who opposes them, often turned in by the MB if they are not their supporters. So by the time of the Arab Spring (which was bound to happen. and this is crucial to understanding what is going on) the only folks with an organization is the MB, (now you should understand in the world view of the Islamist the MB are Moderate, because they want to turn Egypt into Afghanistan over time, not the day after tomorrow). We can see similar things right across North Africa, and in other parts of the world. So it didn't really matter what Obama did or didn't do, this was bound to happen. It almost happened in the Bush Presidency, but the time wasn't quite right. If the Obama administration had come out and strongly supported Mubarak, it would have had little effect of what happened in Egypt, or for that matter anywhere else in North Africa.

 

(see The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 The best readable history on this that I've come across)

 

I don't argue, I merely point out certain facts I've come across in my studies of this.

[SrWoodchuck]

Thanks for your input, Valin. I choose to believe differently...more like the post at this link:

 

Unless we become as single-minded as the fanatics, we are all hostages now

 

http://melaniephillips.com/until-we-become-as-single-minded-as-the-fanatics-we-are-all-hostages-now

 

For it is not just that the Algerians’ response in that hideously complex situation cannot be judged without understanding precisely what they thought the hostage-takers were about to do. It is also that the ruthless Algerian approach acknowledges a reality on the ground that the West seems incapable of grasping.

 

The Algerians refuse to negotiate because they know that the Islamists’ position is simply non-negotiable.

Unlike other hostage-takers, they usually have no interest in getting out alive; they intend to die as ‘martyrs’, and of course have no compunction about killing their captives.

 

Moreover, the purpose of taking hostages is either to kill ‘infidels’ or to extract ransom money for them — which will merely finance more kidnappings and terrorist atrocities.

 

Such terrorists thus regard with contempt all negotiation as a sign of weakness. And in the world of Islamic fundamentalism, weakness is an incentive to further violence.

 

Only a display of uncompromising strength — including, most importantly, strength of resolve — has any chance of being a deterrent.

 

The Algerians understand this very well. The West does not — instead assuming that everyone on the planet thinks like it does and is thus similarly governed by self-interest.

The most devastating consequence has been the West’s refusal to acknowledge that it is not fighting a series of brush fires based on local political grievances, but a war of religion being conducted against the free world in order to destroy it.

 

This fundamental misjudgment has meant not merely that Western governments failed to grasp the threat that would be posed by the dispersed al Qaeda franchise in the Sahel region of west and north-central Africa.

 

It has also caused them to make a series of dreadful errors which have led Islamic extremists to conclude that victory is within their grasp.

 

Failing to deal firmly with terrorist regimes such as Syria, Iran or North Korea, which pose a mortal threat to peace and freedom, Western governments instead helped remove admitted tyrants in the Muslim world who were nevertheless allies (however fragile) of the West.

 

Blundering about with their asinine belief that elections are the antidote to holy war, they have merely produced chaos in which Islamic fanatics and terrorists have been the main beneficiaries.

 

In a bitter irony, advanced Libyan weaponry that fell into terrorist hands after Colonel Gaddafi was ousted — courtesy of the UK, France and the U.S. — has been used against the French in Mali.**

...Islamist fanatics play the longest game in town. With their heads still stuck fast in the seventh century, they think nothing of fighting at least until the end of the 21st.

 

What inspires them to further violence is their perception that the West is wide open for the taking — because it simply doesn’t have the will to fight for what it believes in.

 

This is demonstrated not just in the military sphere, but in the way in which it has allowed the radical Islamist agenda to make inroads into its own societies, courtesy of the perversities of human rights culture and the craven willingness to silence all such concerns on the grounds that they are ‘Islamophobic’.

 

This lack of will is on show in the U.S. no less than in Britain. Indeed, one of the most devastating blows to the defence of the West is that President Obama, having helped the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the Middle East, has in effect pulled up the drawbridge by declaring that his interests now lie across the Pacific instead.

 

America may be committing a few drones to the fight in Mali or the badlands on the border of Pakistan. But with its strategic shift and planned defence reductions, the Obama administration is signalling that the U.S. is no longer willing to lead the defence of the West.

 

**Benghazi-Obama's plan to give weapons to Syrian "Freedom Fighters" [Al Qaeda]....that ended in 4 American deaths...and large numbers of missiles as well as conventional arms in the hands of these killers.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255792137222984.html

 

 

 

I also suspect the arms arms deal was part of a package that intended to leverage a swap of our "captured" Ambassador for the Blind Sheik so that he & Morsi could reap the political benefits.

 

Less political dissection & more steel on target.....or we'll be politely discussing this when it happens at a US refinery.