[Peace-discuss] WP 0, PG 1

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The War party gave up a casualty to the Permanent Government faction 
last week in the bitter internal battle within the the effective branch 
of the USG, the executive.  But at the same time, the War Party, in 
strategic retreat to the private sector, manages to replenish itself 
from the public coffers: the Pentagon's "Counter-Intelligence Field 
Activity" office (CIFA), which claims to monitor terrorist threats to 
U.S. military bases in North America -- and was once reprimanded by the 
U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists -- has just awarded a 
multi-million dollar contract for unspecified “security services” to a 
company that recently hired Donald Rumsfeld’s spy chief, Stephen Cambone 
-- who helped create CIFA in the first place...  So they haven't gone 
away. --CGE]
	
	'War of ideas' claims neo-con casualty
	By Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON - Neo-conservative hawks lamented the latest casualty in the 
"war on terror" last Friday, as the ax fell on Stephen Coughlin's job. 
The Pentagon decided not to renew the contract of its "foremost" 
specialist on Islamic law and Islamic extremism when it ends in March, 
citing budget cuts.

But Coughlin's supporters say the jihad maven was unjustly fired because 
his message was too politically hot and far too inconvenient for 
government bureaucrats eager to make nice with Muslim groups that - so 
decry right-wing hawks - merely serve as front organizations for more 
nefarious "Islamo-fascists".

And it appears they are waging a campaign in the conservative press to 
combat what they believe amounts to the double standards within the warm 
and fuzzy "politically correct" Washington bureaucracy. While most 
policy-makers and experts acknowledge that Washington has a serious 
public diplomacy problem on its hands - especially with regard to Arabs 
and Muslims - Coughlin's dismissal and its aftermath reflect the latest 
salvo by neo-cons to retain the dubious language of the "war on terror".

"If allowed to stand, the effect of Major Coughlin's dismissal would be 
a surgical strike on a man who is arguably one of the most knowledgeable 
opponents of sharia - not only in the Defense Department, but inside the 
entire US government," wrote right-wing polemicist Frank Gaffney, who 
also heads the Center for Security Policy, in the Washington Times. As a 
casualty in the war of ideas, he sarcastically wrote, Coughlin may 
perhaps "receive its first Purple Heart".

Gaffney and others continue their efforts to wrest the "battle of ideas" 
from the jaws of what they presume to be "political correctness", 
instead arguing for an aggressive and unapologetic doctrine that dares 
to confront "radical Islam" - to clarify a choice between two 
fundamentally inconsistent strategies. Either we protect the nation or 
we choose to be politically correct. Either we confront the threat of 
"radical Islam" head on, or we perform ill-advised outreach to Muslim 
groups.

Coughlin was presumably the model soldier in the battle of ideas, 
delivering tough and blunt analysis; and he didn't mince words. From the 
laudatory statements of his supporters, it appears he was a powerful 
bulwark against the Islamo-fascist threat currently facing the US 
mainland. And for his service to the cause of battling Islamic 
extremism, he became a victim of the type of misguided sensitivity that 
fears to lift the veil from radical Islamist front groups.

Wrote Washington Times editorial columnist Diana West: "'Islamist' and 
'extremism' - like 'Islam fascism' and other euphemisms - are words that 
draw a PC [politically correct] curtain over mainstream Islam. They 
effectively shield the religion and its tenets from the scrutiny 
necessary to assess the ideology driving our jihadist enemies. Of 
course, lifting that PC curtain on Islam and its jihadist tenets is 
precisely the effect of Stephen Coughlin's Pentagon brief. It goes 
against what political correctness tells us; it also goes against what 
Islamic advocacy groups tell us."

But for all his motivation and zeal, Coughlin is not the Islam "expert" 
he and his supporters claim he is. In fact, he has no academic 
background in Islamic law or extremism. A reservist in the US army, 
Coughlin holds a masters degree in strategic intelligence from the 
National Defense Intelligence College, with a focus on global terrorism 
and jihadi movements, as well as a law degree from the William Mitchell 
School of Law.

Said former Central Intelligence Agency agent Larry Johnson, who has 
helped script exercises for the US military forces that conduct 
counter-terrorism missions: "Does [Coughlin] speak Arabic? No. How about 
Urdu? Nope. He studied Islam where? No clue. But he graduated from an 
ABA-sanctioned second-tier law school. A good school, but it is not 
known as a center of Islamic study. Unfortunately, Coughlin's 
broad-brush approach to Islam is more polemics that scholarship."

As reported by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, Coughlin's recent 
misfortunes transpired after a confrontation with Hasham Islam, a 
high-level aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who 
reportedly asked Coughlin to "soften his views on Islam" after the 
"specialist" emphasized the relationship between Islamic law and 
Islamist jihad doctrine, a belief which runs contrary to the White House 
view of Islam as a religion of peace hijacked by extremists.

Over the weekend, Fox News Channel spun the centrifuges of 
Islamo-hysteria faster, featuring an interview with self-declared 
"terrorism expert" Steve Emerson, who alleged that radical Islamists had 
infiltrated the US government and had gained enough clout to manipulate 
who gets hired and fired. Emerson called Islam - Gordon's aide - "an 
Islamist with a pro-Muslim Brotherhood bent who has brought in groups to 
the Pentagon who have been indicated as co-conspirators".

Emerson said that Coughlin had analyzed "hundreds of thousands of 
documents" released during the trial of the Muslim charity Holy Land 
Foundation in Dallas, Texas. He said the documents showed that there was 
a secret Muslim Brotherhood plan to acquire influence in the US to 
undermine democracy and establish a caliphate.

"Mr Coughlin wrote a memo spelling out the implications of these 
documents and the profound nature of what would happen if the US 
government decided to start doing dialogue and embracing the very 
organizations that were intent on undermining US national security," 
said Emerson.

The Holy Land case, which ended with no convictions in late October 
2007, was widely viewed as the Bush administration's flagship 
terror-financing case. President George W Bush announced he was freezing 
the charity's assets in 2001 because he said the radical Islamist group 
Hamas had "obtained much of the money it pays for murder abroad right 
here in the US".

Prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to convince jurors that the foundation 
and five of its backers had supported terrorism by sending more that $12 
million to charitable zakat committees, social services organizations 
that build hospitals and feed the poor. Prosecutors claimed that the 
committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by 
helping the group spread ideology and recruit supporters.

The most pointed criticism of Coughlin's approach of analyzing extremist 
doctrine has come from terrorism experts who believe that by directly 
linking the Koran to Islamic extremism, Coughlin unwittingly bolsters 
the message of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

After being falsely accused by Coughlin of somehow being sympathetic to 
the presumably nefarious aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jim 
Guirard - a long-time chief of staff to US Senators Allen Ellender and 
Russell Long and current anti-terrorism strategist - wrote in the small 
wars journal blog:

     The truth of the matter is that while I am trying to undermine bin 
Ladenism's self-canonizing language of "jihad by mujahedeen and martyrs 
destined for Paradise as a glorious reward for killing all of us 
infidels and for destroying the Great Satan", it is Mr Coughlin and 
others of his persuasion in the government, the media, the universities 
and elsewhere who are busy parroting and promoting this perverse 
[al-Qaeda] and Muslim Brotherhood narrative as the true face of Islam 
rather than as a satanic deviancy and an apostasy toward that religion.

(Inter Press Service)