President Trump has claimed that the Islamic State has been defeated simply because they have been successfully pushed from Syria and Iraq. Pushing something to relocate to a different hot-spot is not eliminating it. To eliminate the Islamic State, President Trump is going to have to go to places he prefers to ignore or it will come back to bite him in the future. The Islamic State is exactly what one might think about their losses in Syria and Iraq, madder than all get up, we thought better than saying the wording which first came to mind. But they have not been defeated and just like other terror groups which were claimed to be defeated but simply relocated, Islamic State is still a viable threat. The bad news for President Trump is that the Islamic State he claims to have defeated has relocated many of their resources and leading people to the Sinai Peninsula where they are a threat to the Egyptian government as well as to Israel. The good news for Israel is that having the Islamic State in the Sinai threatening Egypt has caused Egypt to close their border with Gaza making arming Hamas more difficult for those wishing to press that front against Israel. Egyptian President Sisi would be wise to ask President Trump to aid Egypt in ridding the Sinai of the Islamic State menace along with numerous other criminal and terrorist entities.
But we want to talk about the forgotten from which belongs to the Islamic State but has been conveniently dismissed as unimportant by the developed world including President Trump. The loss of four Americans in Niger, four Green Berets Special Forces, in an ambush by Islamist terrorists, Boko Haram terrorists, is sad and some have asked why United States forces are in Niger. We ask the opposite question posing why there are but eight-hundred troops stationed there largely as advisors and training officers. All told, six-thousand United States military personnel are deployed in Africa where the majority works on construction projects and in supporting the aerial drone surveillance operations. Why is there not a more substantial support in Niger as the United States had in Syria and Iraq against Islamic State? Perhaps we need refresh memories with two small items. First, Boko Haram swore their allegiance to Islamic State over two year ago in early 2015. President Trump promised to defeat the Islamic State wherever they existed and did not claim only in Syria and Iraq. But maybe President Trump meant he only wanted to destroy the Islamic State where the media was covering the fight as he wished for glory, not results. Islamic State terror must be fought wherever it takes root and everywhere it takes root or that weed has not been pulled. Islamic State is Boko Haram and Boko Haram is Islamic State, the two are wed in ideology and their desire to take their destructive ideology and spread it over the entirety of our planet. This is the reason that they must be eradicated from every corner they have infested, and that includes across the entirety of the continent of Africa.
African Transition Zone
To make things easier for President Trump, please allow us to present the above map of the region known as the African Transition Zone where Africa is divided between the areas controlled by Islam and the Christian, Animist and other religious beliefs. North of the zone is Islamic and south is not and the terrorists operating along the entire region intend to push the dotted boundary of Islam ever southward until stopped. Maybe Africa does not have the attention of the Middle East, but it is no less important in this battle for world dominance between Islam and everybody else. This is not the great battle between Communism and Democratic freedom, this is the great battle between Islam and freedom of religion or even freedom from religion if you happen to be a post-modernist European leftist who believes that religion is the opiate of the masses. Trust that Islam will devour your socialist religion free society and force everyone to bow to Allah just as fast as they would a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto or other religious nations. The Islamists do not care what religion or lack of religion you worship or refuse to worship, they only care that you do not believe the religion that they hold to and they are willing to kill everybody who refuses to follow Islam if that is what it takes to make the world follow Islam and only Islam. Don’t even think for a moment that you have nothing to fear about the message Islam presents just because you are an Atheist, because the reality is you have the most to fear as they consider Atheists to be idolaters. And yes the continent of Africa is worth saving just as Europe is worth fighting to keep free, Asia is worth retaining as free, and the Americas are worth fighting to keep free and Israel is worth defending despite or because it is in the center of the maelstrom. The fight against Islam, or at least to reform Islam, is the most imperative and important struggle the world faces and the entire world faces this whether they wish to admit such or not.
Currently there are forces who believe they can bait the tiger and come away unscathed because the tiger is devouring others. This is foolish thinking and will only serve to allow the tiger to feast unmolested for so long. Eventually the tiger will desire feasting on something new and that might be when the tiger turns on those befriending it today, as that is what tigers do, they eat by preying on others. Perhaps the tiger is not the best animal to use in the analogy for Islam. Islam is more like locusts or army ants devouring everything in their path and when they finish one area then continue on to the next area. Then, from time to time they cease, and appear to go into hibernation until the wind picks up in just the right direction or the urge to move the next strikes and they fly or march on to new grazing grounds and eat everything in their path along the way. They marched across the Middle East into India and across Northern Africa and into eastern and western Europe between 622A.D. and 750A.D. (see map below) before resting. They then resumed their expansion as the Ottoman Empire before being pushed back and then presumably defeated during World War I. This was a very temporary defeat as we are witnessing today.
Expansion of Islam Across MENA and into Europe before Ottoman Rule
The victors in World War I colonized the areas where the Arabs and Muslims had conquered with the exception of Iran, Turkey, Albania and a few other places. The only places where Islam has been pushed from largely are Spain (Andalusia) and India though Muslims still live in both nations. Israel is the other place where Islam lost their control but that has been fraught with continuous attempts to rectify the situation; one might say, with the Israelis proving quite a bit stubborn about holding on to their lands, something they had been thousands of years prior as well. Islam slept for close to a thousand years and is once again waking and becoming resurgent. Should this be permitted to continue without some modifications allowing other religions and even no religion to coexist with Islam, then people had best ready their prayer rugs and be prepared to pray facing Mecca five times every day. There currently is no compromise once Islam takes control of an area. There are records of places where Islam permitted non-Muslims to reside as Dhimmi, a form of second-class personage, for as long as they served Islam and remembered their inferiority. Even with good behavior, eventually the Muslims reach a point where they demand everyone convert to Islam or be put to the sword, or of late a knife. This is a reality which the entire world could face should the non-Islamic powers not wake and realize the peril they are actually facing. History is a brutal teacher but as in the West history is not a subject much studied any longer, perhaps those who have studied history might refresh everybody’s memory and grab a few leaders’ attentions. For our American friends, allow us to give them two wars they might wish to study, the First and Second Barbary Wars. The Barbary Pirates were Islamic terrorists of their day and that is the most revealing way to describe them. You see, the United States has been fighting Islamic terrorism since day one. That is a truth and the American people would be well advised to realize what they are facing before it becomes too late.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 