The Mother’s of Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden

Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity.

—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad


What do Spain, Britain, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the United States have in common? Each of them has been targets of Islamically-motivated suicide bombers. Sri Lanka has had its own sort of twisted suicidal terrorism. More recently Germany, and even Canada, has broken up major Islamofascist terrorist plots. In order to stop the murderous rampage from continuing and growing, a three-fold key is necessary: (1) intelligence must serve as a frontrunner to stop terrorists in the planning stages, (2) a greater urgency to understand the viciousness of the threat and stop the threat is mandatory, and (3) all strategic and tactical means must be implemented without timidity or apprehension. This includes focusing on women and mothers whose children grow up to be terrorists.

Operating Intelligently

I do not understand those who wholeheartedly, vehemently oppose wire tapping and records investigations in order to snuff out terrorists bent on murdering giant groups of innocent people and devastating economic centers. Do I think civil freedoms should be taken? Absolutely not. Do I think wholesale spying on every American is warranted? No. But peeking into the lives and communication portals of those who intend to inflict major harm in order to stop terrorists and stop terrorist’s acts will keep you and me safe.

Speaking of intelligence, how ‘intelligent’ was it for Columbia University to invite the President of Iran to come and speak recently during Ahmadinejad’s trip to the United Nations? Such a divisive move should be an affront to the decency of every freedom-loving country and countrymen. Such an invitation offered a platform for his dogma and anti-Western, anti-U.S. diatribe. Further, it undermines and usurps the U.S. government’s terrorism countermeasures.

The Iranian leader, who has made references to himself as the last Mufti, Islam’s savior incarnate, is accused of boldly rejecting sanctions and international mandates to not build nuclear weapons. The President of Iran, a known terrorist-sponsored State, has said that the Holocaust was fiction and that Israel should be wiped off the map. He and his cronies have boasted of having over 50,000 suicide bombers, including many women, ready too attack anyone (i.e. the U.S. and Israel) who tries to stop his nuclear weapons activities. Perhaps most shockingly, he is accused of being one of the hostage takers during the siege at the U.S. embassy in Tehran which began in November 1979 and lasted 444 days. This last accusation seems to have overwhelming merit in my book. There’s proof in the pictures!

Obviously, no, I don’t believe the pictures released to the major media networks were tampered with.

To make matters worse, the Columbia University’s President, Lee Bollinger, had the audacity to say, something to the effect of, “If Hilter were alive, we would have him come and speak too.” Having toured the melancholy walls of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, I was nauseated to hear such an epitaph. Is Columbia University really a veneer for anti-Semitism? My word!

Based on the supposed premise or argument that university students should hear an objective point of view goes out the window. Such an overt, counter-intuitive, anti-counterterrorist move went from bizarre to plain sadistic.

Do we need intelligence? Oh yeah, badly, especially our impressionable youth at the many liberal-leaning U.S. colleges and universities, whose many professors and pundits stand far from balanced or objective!

Facing Down the Foe

A friend and retired Marine Corps Sergeant Major, who had served in Lebanon in the 80s, sent me a note on October 23, 2007. That day was the 24th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut Lebanon. I’m glad he reminded me. Unfortunately the major media has somehow forgotten. That day was a major turning point for modern terrorism. It should never be forgotten. 241 U.S. service personnel died when a truck laden with several thousand pounds of high explosives drove into the USMC barracks building. Near-simultaneously, several French soldiers just down the road died the same way supporting the same mission. French jokes should come to a screeching halt at such a memory.

That suicide attack was the modern epicenter and proverbial launch pad for suicide bombers throughout Islam. It inspired the future terror magnate himself, Usama bin Laden and the Sunni-based al Qaeda group he would eventually create. It would eventually change the way Palestinian terrorists operated. Their hostage taking operations would soon become increasingly difficult against the aggressive Israeli commandos. The Syrian-led Hezbollah terrorist group would eventually train members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and, in time, adopt suicide-murder explosion tactics. It wasn’t only Islamists who committed suicide operations in the nationalistic fight in Lebanon in the early 80s; nonetheless, the suicide attacks were largely Shia-inspired.

The Shiites have an interesting history when it comes to martyrdom. Forget about the Day of Ashura. Forget about the ancient martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala in modern-day Iraq. Forget the annual public flogging and disturbing self-mutilation some Shiites engages in at that time. No, what I’m talking about is an incident that happened during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).

Ayatollah Khomeini and his Shia Islamic republic brutally forced hundreds of young boys into becoming human shields and ‘martyrs’. These boys were forced to run through fields and intentionally step on land mines. The boys lost their childhood, their hope, their innocence and their joy; they became human cannon fodder.

Khomeini, perhaps a too-powerful icon, promised all the boys a key to Paradise.

One day while Iraqi tanks were advancing towards Iran, 13-year-old Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh grabbed a hand grenade, pulled the pin and dove under an on-coming tank. The suicidal explosion stopped the tank.

Khomeini called the boy a national hero and a leader. Murals, posters, book bags, and even a stamp with his name and face were created. A shrine was erected in Tehran that has become a monarch. There is no doubt that many Iranian mothers have spoken to their sons about the great ‘honor’ of the young ‘martyr’.

Is it possible that too much emphasis has been put on this boy’s death, insomuch that it’s created a societal homogeny eager to commit suicide in order to kill others?

…And Their Mother’s Taught Them

As much as I detest giving bin Laden any more voice, I feel quoting him here has merit. Here’s what he has said:

Jihad against America will continue, economically and militarily. By the grace of Allah, America is in retreat and its economy is developing cracks ever-increasingly. But more attacks are required. I advise the youth to find more of America's economic hubs. The enemy can be defeated by attacking its economic centers. (Emphasis mine)

Here’s my concern: the youth! Kids take guns and bombs to school, kill as many as they can, then turn the guns on themselves. American kids! Columbine was not an isolated event. Jonesboro and Virginia Tech were not anomalies. These kids are on the edge from turning into full suicidal bombers. Some are eager to follow bin Laden. Consider this statement from a young National Guard tanker, Specialist Ryan Anderson, “I wish to desert from the U.S. Army. I wish to defect from the United States. I wish to join al Qaeda, train its members and conduct terrorist attacks.”

Some have followed bin Laden de facto. American traitor Adam Gadahn now runs al Qaeda’s media center. He’s the violent, perfidious felon who stated that the “streets of America will run red with blood.” He’s a traitor and under the U.S. Constitution he should be hanged.

Consider the 21-year-old Colorado born, U.S.-native Joel Hinrich III, a young Muslim convert and college student in Oklahoma at the time he accidentally blew himself up less than 200 meters from a packed college football stadium on October 1, 2005. He had ties to Algeria; his roommate was from the Middle East. He, and possibly his roommate, had cooked up several pounds of TATP (triacetone triperoxide), a highly unstable explosive Middle Eastern terrorists have labeled ‘the Mother of Satan’, and had hid it in his backpack. His target: undoubtedly the large crowd of football fans. Fortunately, he was the only lifeless byproduct of his demented plan.

Here in Iraq prepubescent children are being used as pawns. (The nostalgic era of Iranian callousness comes to mind.) Kids are encouraged and/or forced to place improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which target the coalition forces as well as the pro-Western Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army officials. (IEDs or EFPs, explosively formed projectiles, smuggled in from Iran, that is.) Children have even been told to point and shoot toy guns that look real at U.S. troops. Should a soldier or Marine shoot a child with a ‘toy’, that would incite a national outcry; it could turn the local people against the U.S. forces, and stir a Congressional denouncement.

Psycho-analyst and terrorism expert, Dr. Nancy Kobrin, has studied about and written extensively on Islamic females and the mothers of suicide bombers. She and I have had many interesting conversations about terrorism, including TATP referenced as ‘The Mother of Satan’. Dr. Kobrin is the author of the yet-to-be published book, The Sheik’s New Clothes: The Naked Truth About Islamic Suicide Terrorism. I believe she would agree that terrorism cannot cease until mothers teach their boys correct principles instead of encouraging violence and ‘martyrdom’—a euphuism for ‘suicide’ since suicide is outlawed in Islam.

There was a little-known incident that took place here in Iraq a year or two ago. A mother strapped with a bomb walked with two of her sons towards a checkpoint. One son was 11-years-old and one 15-years-old (ages are approximate). The IED was intertwined between her and both of her sons. While walking up to the checkpoint, the older son broke free and ran away from his mother. This exposed the wires and stopped the explosive device or at least shocked the mother so much that she did not detonate herself and her other son. The woman was apprehended and the boys were saved.

Golda Meir, a former Prime Minister of Israel, once said: “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children [‘martyr operations’] more than they hate us.”

There is a fine line between respecting culture—behaving culturally taboo—and properly conducting counterinsurgency operations. When U.S. troops are told to stop communicating with the Iraqi women because “we don’t want to offend our ‘gracious host nation’”, (of course, I’m being sarcastic with that last phrase) then we’re merely circumventing and thumb-twiddling instead of fighting the battle head-on in a place where it can be stopped: motherhood.

Something more needs to be done to help influence the minds for good to the women in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And, as evidenced by my earlier reference to the unbalanced youth in America, perhaps we need to take a serious look at helping motherhood in our own country too.