The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war”
against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect
America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by
Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the
lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the
“civilian population wherever necessary.”
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the
Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been
canceled by the Pentagon brass.
It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to
light. Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and
reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the
class.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire
U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t
contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing. But
the officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A.
Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college,
pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains
and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the
inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level
assignments throughout the U.S. military.
For the better part of the last decade,
a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts
has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and
law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that
America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida
— but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these
anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to
its final, ugly conclusion.
“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in
a July 2011 presentation
(.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s
enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true
intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated.
Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”
Dooley could not be reached for comment. Joint Forces Staff College
spokesman Steven Williams declined to discuss Dooley’s presentation or
his status at the school. But when asked if Dooley was responsible for
the course material, he responded, “I don’t know if I would classify him
[Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school,
Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward.
That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking
material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible
four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam
religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a
cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” (It’s an
especially ironic suggestion, in light of today’s news that Saudi
intelligence
broke up the most recent al-Qaida bombing plot.)
International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer
relevant,” Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying
“the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to
Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s]
destruction.”
Dooley’s ideological allies have repeatedly stated that “
mainstream”
Muslims are dangerous, because they’re “violent” by nature. Yet only a
few of al-Qaida’s most twisted fanatics were ever caught musing about
wiping out entire cities.
“Some of these actions offered for consideration here will not be
seen as ‘political correct’ in the eyes of many,” Dooley adds.
“Ultimately, we can do very little in the West to decide this matter,
short of waging total war.”
Dooley, who has worked at the Joint Forces Staff College since August
2010, began his eight-week class with a straightforward, two-part
history of Islam. It was delivered by David Fatua, a former West Point
history professor. “Unfortunately, if we left it at that, you wouldn’t
have the proper balance of points of view, nor would you have an
accurate view of how Islam defines itself,” Dooley told his students.
Over the next few weeks, he invited in a trio of guest lecturers famous
for their incendiary views of Islam.
Shireen Burki declared during the 2008 election that “
Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate.” In her Joint Forces Staff College lecture, she told students that “
Islam is an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.” (.pdf)
Stephen Coughlin claimed in his 2007 master’s thesis that
then-president George W. Bush’s declaration of friendship with the vast
majority of the world’s Muslims had “
a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine.” (.pdf) Coughlin was subsequently let go from his consulting position to the military’s Joint Staff, but he
continued to lecture at the Naval War College and at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In
his talk to Dooley’s class
(.pdf), Coughlin suggested that al-Qaida helped drive the overthrow of
Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. It
was part of a scheme by Islamists to conquer the world, he added. And
Coughlin mocked those who didn’t see this plot as clearly as he did,
accusing them of “complexification.”
Coughlin titled his talk: “Imposing Islamic Law – or – These Aren’t the Droids Your Looking For!”
Former FBI employee John Guandolo told the conspiratorial World Net
Daily website last year that Obama was only the latest president to fall
under the influence of Islamic extremists. “
The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep,”
Guandolo alleged. In his reference material for the Joint Forces Staff
College class, Guandolo not only spoke of today’s Muslims as enemies of
the West. He even justified the Crusades, writing that they “were
initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western
lands.”
Guandolo’s paper, titled “
Usual Responses from the Enemy When Presented With the Truth”
(.pdf), was one of hundreds of presentations, documents, videos and web
links electronically distributed to the Joint Forces Staff College
students. Included in that trove: a paper alleging that “
it is a permanent command in Islam for Muslims to hate and despise Jews and Christians”
(.pdf). So was a video lecture from Serge Trifkovic, a former professor
who appeared as a defense witness in several trials of Bosnian Serb
leaders convicted of war crimes, including the genocide of Muslims. A
web link, titled “Watch Before This Is Pulled,” supposedly shows
President Obama — the commander-in-chief of the senior officers
attending the course — admitting that he’s a Muslim.
Dooley added the caveats that his views are “not the Official Policy
of the United States Government” and are intended “to generate dynamic
discussion and thought.” But he taught his fellow military officers that
Obama’s alleged admission could well make the commander in chief some
sort of traitor. “By conservative estimates,” 10 percent of the world’s
Muslims, “a staggering 140 million people … hate everything you stand
for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit” to Islam. He
added, “Your oath as a professional soldier forces you to pick a side
here.” It is unclear if Dooley’s “total war” on Muslims also applied to
his “Muslim” commander in chief.
After the Pentagon brass learned of Dooley’s presentation, the
country’s top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen.
Martin Dempsey, issued an order to every military chief and senior
commander to get rid of any similar anti-Islam instructional material.
Dempsey issued the order because the White House had
already instructed the entire security apparatus of the federal government — military and civilian — to
revamp its counterterrorism training after learning of
FBI material that demonized Islam.
By then, Dooley had already presented his apocalyptic vision for a
global religious war. Flynn has ordered a senior officer, Army Maj. Gen.
Frederick Rudesheim, to investigate how precisely Dooley managed to get
away with that extended presentation in an official Defense
Department-sanctioned course. The results of that review are due May 24.
Ironically, Dooley and his guest lecturers paint a dire picture of
the forward march of Islamic extremism right as its foremost
practitioner feared its implosion. Documents recently declassified by
the U.S. government revealed Osama bin Laden fretting about
al-Qaida’s brutal methods and damaged brand
alienating the vast majority of Muslims from choosing to wage holy war. Little could he have known that U.S. military officers were thinking of ways to ignite one.
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