Jim Geraghty writes a daily newsletter for National Review. He calls it Morning Jolt. This morning he gave a “jolt” to his readers. He recalled a feature article in Sunday’s New York Times with interviews from several favored persons who sat down recently with de facto President Barack H. Obama. During that sit-down, Obama seemed to give free advice to the “Islamic State.” Does Barack Obama now let would-be new States consult him on how to run a war? If so, he might have given the Islamic State the best advice he could have given them, advice in keeping with their real goals. And that only compounds his treason.

Obama the consultant?

Mr. Peter Baker, writing for the Times, discussed the sit-down. Most of those who talked to Mr. Baker, described how the policies of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, and more current events, “haunt” Obama. Mr. Baker emphasized one point most strongly: Barack Obama never wanted to be a wartime President. He campaigned on ending war permanently. And he never wanted to believe war could come to him. (No doubt some members of his base bitterly dispute that. After all, Woodrow Wilson also campaigned on staying out of the Great War. And he entered it anyway. But we digress.)

But Mr. Baker dropped this hint, entirely by accident, of where Obama’s allegiance might truly lie:

If he had been “an adviser to ISIS,” Mr. Obama added, he would not have killed the hostages but released them and pinned notes on their chests saying, “Stay out of here; this is none of your business.” Such a move, he speculated, might have undercut support for military intervention.

Geraghty recalled that with outrage. Obama did not, with those words, tell the Islamic State, as Actor Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk) might have said,

Mr. al-Baghdadi, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Instead he seemed to tell them,

You morons, you will ruin everything with your in-our-face displays of bravado. How do you expect me to keep my people complacent when you excite them this way?

[ezadsense midpost]

Of course, maybe al-Baghdadi ordered his men to chop off American (and British) heads because he thought that would scare the American people. Certainly Obama has played the scaredy-cat since he took office. Apology tours, bowing and scraping to Muslim kings, and telling an Egyptian audience he was “one of [them],” are all part and parcel of this. So why shouldn’t al-Baghdadi calculate that Obama will be ineffectual?

But the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) offers another insight. Provoking American wrath is the last thing the Islamic State wants, or even should want, to risk.

Three-stage plan for world conquest

MEMRI sent out this report, “Inquiry and Analysis No. 1117,”  about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his Islamic State. (MEMRI does not use the acronyms ISIS or ISIL or the names they stand for.) Al-Baghdadi grandiosely calls himself the New Caliph and expects all Muslims, the world over, to bow to him and acknowledge him as such. But he is no hotheaded, bloodthirsty killer. He is far more patient than the recent beheadings would suggest. (Or at least, that’s the impression MEMRI has.) He seriously wants to earn that title of Caliph. And he has a three-stage plan to do it. And a direct war with the West is not part of his plan. Such a war will be part of the third stage of his plan to conquer the world.

Seal of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in 2008 Original author: User Monotheist on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License

For the first stage, he wants to build the Islamic State into a true state, complete with industrial base, education base, professional cadre, and all the other things that make a nation-state succeed. He plans to conquer the Middle East as his second stage. He will wage the great millennial campaign (“O Muslim! There is an infidel hiding behind me; come here and kill him!”, etc.) as the third and last stage.

What, then, shall we make of reports of American and British passport holders flocking off to the Islamic State? According to MEMRI, he doesn’t plan to send them back to plant bombs. Or at least, not yet. He wants them to make their homes in the lands he controls. The Hadiths call this hijra, or migration. The other part he emphasizes is bay’ah: people pledging him their allegiance.

In other words, al-Baghdadi has thought this plan out for a long time, and thinks long-range. The report’s authors note: Muhammad did the same thing. He would hold off all-out war, and negotiate trade relations, for as long as it took him to build a base of support and supply, and solidify command and control.

The Islamic State poses a long-term threat

Al-Baghdadi seems cunning. If he follows this plan, he will meet the West with the full panoply of modern weapons. This would include “planes, guided missiles, and chemical weapons or some other kind of WMD.”

The last thing al-Baghdadi wants or needs is to take on the West at once. MEMRI does not note this, but the executioners of the two Americans and one Briton (thus far) have all been new recruits. Recruits tend toward a zeal that breaks discipline.

So why is Obama telling the new recruits of the Islamic State to “get with the program” and not provoke war? Does Obama really see himself a consultant to Islamists, as Geraghty said? Or is he really an agent of the putative Caliph?

What, then, did Obama mean last week, when he said “The Islamic State is not Islamic, nor is it a State”? Was he telling those overzealous executioners they are not behaving as Muhammad would have wanted them to behave? And also trying to tell the rest of us not to worry?

Wartime public announcements usually have two goals: to reassure the public and to mislead the enemy. But is Obama misleading the public, as to his own goals and to those of the Islamic State? Taquiyya, or strategic lying, came from Muhammad, as did al-Baghdadi’s likely plan. Making the public think the Islamic State are nothing more than hotheads, and all we need do is pull out of the Middle East and give up playing tourist in sensitive areas, would suit al-Baghdadi’s long-range goal. He does not want war with the West until he is ready to hit the West with overwhelming force. He needs the Obamas of the West to “rein in the dogs of war.”

Both men might be too late for that. One can usually count on libertarians to say one has no enemies except those one makes, and no threats except those one blows out of proportion. But when three heads roll, even a libertarian can get the message. And when one who has left the Muslim faith, speaks forthrightly about what Islam really means, anyone can now take a hint.

This, by the way, is why Al-Qaeda would dissociate with the Islamic State. Al-Baghdadi will let no one compete with him. “I’m the Caliph; you will bow to me,” he insists.

How should America respond? America must strike the Islamic State aggressively, and now. And America will need a better Commander in Chief than Obama.

[ezadsense leadout]

[subscribe2]