ABE: Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West - a conversation with director Wayne Kopping

". . . And I always thought Churchill looked a little Jewish . . ."
Jerusalem's Grand Mufti and Adolf Hitler in 1941

Classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote recently:

“The great lesson of September 11 was not that the jihadists ever believed that they could kill us all. Rather, they trusted that enough of the West and indeed enough of us here in America, might at the end of the day declare that we had it coming.

In this long war, that belief was — and is — far deadlier even than an unhinged murderer at the controls of an airliner.”

“The greatest deeds are thoughts,” said Aristotle. For the substantial number of Westerners whose thoughts veer towards the “we had it coming” end of the spectrum, the newly available documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West should go a long way in changing minds.  I often hear things like, “Of course al Qaeda’s crazy, but if we change our policies in the Mideast they’ll keep their craziness to themselves.” Others offer, less delicately, “Let them rot.” Obsession, (available at Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Blockbuster, and other major outlets as of September 11 of this year) forces the viewer to confront the fact that our policies are beside the point, and that the rotting—well underway—refuses to be contained.

On the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks I spoke with the film’s director Wayne Kopping.

“A lot of people are getting terror fatigue or ‘war on terror’ fatigue,” he said, “and people are switching off, and then you get something like Obsession which is coming from an angle that they’ve never seen before and it makes them sit up and take notice.”

Here’s the fresh angle: taking jihadists at their word. It’s one thing to hear George W. Bush declare for the umpteenth time that Islamists hate us for who we are, not for our policies. It’s quite another to see a score of imams and Muslim leaders preach death to all non-Muslims and broadcast dreams of world domination to roaring crowds. There’s no escaping the conclusion that radical Islamists want us dead simply for not being them. What occurs between this film’s opening and closing credits is baptism by truth.

“Obsession shows how radical Islam views this war,” Kopping said. “Once you plug in that understanding it changes the whole equation.”

From Europe’s loudmouth imams, to Chechen terrorists, to the Secretary General of Hezbollah, the documentary lays bare the jihadist mindset and plan of attack.

Another key factor in the equation is the Islamists’ public relations savvy and their awareness of the West’s self-criticism and capacity for guilt.

“As you saw from Bin Laden’s recent communiqués to us infidels in the West he definitely knows how to play the game and play the Republicans off the Democrats, and he knows our weakness—our political correctness. Which is how groups like CAIR make charges of Islamophobia.”

Obsession reveals the Islamist double-talk that’s served jihad’s PR campaign so well these past years. We see footage of Muslim leaders condemning the September 11 hijackers amongst Westerners, before praising the “holy 19” when amid their own.

“We can almost be forgiven for misunderstanding the war. I’m not saying we in the West are perfect. We’ve made mistakes for sure, but we can’t seem to see the world through their [Islamists’] eyes,” said Kopping.

Americans’ reliance on reason and sense of compassion often make it impossible for us to comprehend the true nature and goal of the enemy.

“You often hear people say, ‘When they [Islamists] say you must slit the throat of the infidels and death to America, you see, they don’t really mean that. They mean the Palestinians should have a state, or they mean that America should be less involved around the world.’ No, they mean you must slit the throat of the infidels and death to America.”

Kopping is a thoughtful man. He’s not blind to the credible gripes of Muslims. Indeed, the film opens with a disclaimer of sorts, citing the peaceful Muslim majority. I asked him how he feels about the “root cause” arguments that adduce poverty and lack of education as catalysts for Jihad. “

“For sure these things are factors, but they aren’t the root causes,” he said. “Present and mitigating factors, but not root causes. The root cause is an ideology to defeat the West and spread Islam around the world. Period. End of story.”

Obsession shows this ideology for what it is, using a great deal of footage which captures the genocidal hate broadcast on Arab television. Why, I wondered, have we not seen more of this footage in the mainstream media?

Kopping said, “If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say that the mainstream media has been withholding this information, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think they’re just not aware of it. When they do become aware of it, they broadcast it as new news. Part of what’s compelling about Obsession is that it puts this footage into a larger ideological framework. It makes sense in a large way. If news programs were to just broadcast a hateful speech from some cleric in, say, Saudi Arabia, it may seem like a random provocation.”

And context is critical. Obsession doesn’t offer a static snapshot of radical Islam, but rather a multi-contextual backdrop against which one can more clearly appreciate the nature of the beast. The documentary details the foundational bond between today’s jihad movement and Nazism. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was not only a friend and ally of Adolf Hitler, but also a Nazi officer in charge of several all-Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans. This operational connection is only the most tangible example of the Nazi-jihad connection. The ideological ties are numerous: a commitment to fascist rule, the will to domination, and an ever-seething anti-Semitism.

The film includes interviews with several worried and informed Muslims, including journalists, a martyr’s daughter, and a repentant terrorist. Walid Shoebat, formerly of the PLO, offers testimony that’s chilling in its credibility. Shoebat describes the wholesale fabrications used to indoctrinate Muslims into jihad. I wondered if Kopping got any sense from Shoebat about how he reconciled himself to his past.

“I spoke to him at great length about that. As he explains in the film he was a product of this propaganda and hate speech from the PLO at the time. It was only after he came to the U.S. and began to see how the culture worked—that if two people have an argument you don’t have to kill the other person, that there are other ways—that he began to appreciate Western values. He’d been told so many awful things about Christians and Jews, then he read the Bible and said, what’s so bad about these people.”

I mentioned to Kopping that I recently heard preeminent Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis say he’s less confident today about the West’s ability to beat radical Islam than he was about the free world’s ability to defeat Germany in the thirties.

“Yes, I heard him say something similar. He said if Winston Churchill had to deal with the kind of media and press that hounds George Bush today he would have lost the war. It comes down to our inability to see ourselves as being in the right. We don’t recognize the righteousness of our cause, the preciousness of our values—the freedom of speech, women’s’ rights, the right not to be raped, not to be stoned. This is what they want for the U.S.—that the Koran replace the Constitution. We only have to look at Gaza to see what happens when that takes over. They took down the Russians and they think why not the U.S.”

What’s next for Kopping?

“Well, I wish I could say I was working on a happy film, but alas we are working on a another film that takes a deeper look at things. It may make Obsession look like a romantic comedy. So much has happened in the past few years, so much new info. We’re going to turn up the heat,” he said.

An historian in the film points out that in the 1930s Hitler had announced everything he planned to do to European Jewry, but no one really listened. I urge readers to click on the ad to the right and purchase the film. Let’s help Mr. Kopping turn up the heat.

Comments

[The Major]

When I returned from Iraq last year, my home town newspaper sent a reporter and photographer to interview me and my wife about the experience.

My town is famously liberal, and a great place to live. The local paper spends an awful lot of ink on the war, so it wasn't surprising that they'd want to interview someone who was born in the town and went through the public schools, and actually served in Iraq. After all, this was a rare occurrance. Most folks in my town were too "enlightened" to serve.
I am so far the only one.

The reporter arrived with a photographer, and began asking questions about my experience. I served inside the city of Fallujah, and spent my time either going on combat foot patrols, kicking in doors, or conducting raids.

It became apparent after a few questions, that our reporter was not well informed... She had never heard of "Fallujah". She did not know what an "IED" was. She asked if Fallujah ("how do you spell that?") was dangerous.
Hmmm.

I showed her some photos, and explained some of them to her. I showed her a Mosque where the local Imam would hand out grenades to kids, to be thrown at the Marines on patrol. He encouraged the younger kids to throw "grenade-sized" rocks at the patrols, too -in hopes that the Marines would learn to hesitate, or better accidentally shoot one of the kids, scoring a propaganda victory for the insurgents.

This is where we got into a little disagreement. She said that you can't really blame them for doing that, they were just defending their country. "I would never let my kids do my fighting", I countered. She said that you never know what you'll do.

"Well what about the beheading of the Korean journalist?" I asked. There's nothing that could compel me to lose my humanity in a way that would justify the beheading of innocents.
"You never know, what you'll do in such situations", again she countered.
At this point, I could see that the photographer was becoming uncomfortable, and a bit embarrassed. They decided to wrap it up.

As she was leaving, I offered her a copy of Big West's book "No True Glory". It is an accurate account of the battles of Fallujah. Mr. West lived with us for a week in Jolan. I told her that it was very informative, and might give her an idea of where I had served.

Here's where it got weird...
On the back of the book is the infamous photo of the charred mutilated remains of the four Blackwater contractors, hanging from "Blackwater Bridge". The people in the photo are all dancing and laughing, playing with the remains...

I told her that a little known fact about these photos, is that we used them to track down every single person in the photo. We got them ALL...

Upon hearing this she asked, "Why? To give them copies of the photo?"

She was serious. I didn't know what to say. I think I sputtered something along the lines of "No, to kill them or capture them...".
She just shrugged, sai "oh..." and strolled out of my house with her embarrassed photographer.

The interview was never published.

[Abe Greenwald]

Aristotle was wrong. The greatest deeds can't be thoughts, because tracking down the scum from Blackwater Bridge is a greater deed than I'll ever know. And I've had some good thoughts.

[Interloper]

For the sake of argument, let's say that it was somehow necessary to hunt down and capture and/or kill all the men in the "Blackwater Bridge" photo. And let's, again for the sake of argument, assume that they were each granted due process and their appearance in the photo, and involvement in the incident, was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Fine. With the above accepted as fact -- for the sake of argument, mind -- I would at best respect the fact that the Major has a very difficult job that involves some exceedingly ugly tasks. But to celebrate that as a great deed? That's just fucking sickening.

Celebrating the capture and murder of these gentlemen makes you different from them how?

[Jamieson]

And your solution is?

This is a great deed to eliminate those who certainly would act again if given the chance. Did you even read Abe's post? I admire the Major for all his work and the difficult task of defending our freedom. The fact that you would question our military's integrity is fucking sickening!

[Jamieson]

And your solution is?

This is a great deed to eliminate those who certainly would act again if given the chance. Did you even read Abe's post? I admire the Major for all his work and the difficult task of defending our freedom. The fact that you would question our military's integrity is fucking sickening!

[Interloper]

Did you, Jamieson, even read my fucking comment? I reserved judgment on the deed, merely the celebration of it as "great." And then I drew a parallel between those men at "Blackwater Bridge" and those would ***celebrate*** as "great" their apparent capture and murder (I say apparent, as it's a bit of a leap of faith to assume the men they captured and killed were 100% the same as those in the photo).

[The Major]

Interloper,

Here is a photo of the men you describe as "gentlemen":

http://blackwatervictims.com/pics/Bridge.jpg

That you describe these individuals as "gentlemen" speaks volumes about who you are.

That you would describe the killing of any of these savages -DURING war- as "murder", also speaks volumes about who you are.

It also is the perfect illustration of the point being made in Abe's post.

And NO, it is NOT a "leap of faith" to assume that the men we captured and/or killed wre the same man that were in that photo.
Multiple photos, all source intelligence, etc. It's not a leap at all.

Calling the Marines who killed these savages "murderers" is low.
Shame on you.

[Jamieson]

Yes, I read your for sake of arguement crap and that is why I asked for your solution. I still haven't heard one yet!

But your doubt that our military could determine who was responsible with the help of a photo questions their competence.

So my opinion is that you are a disgrace!

[The Major]

Here are more photos of the atrocities committed by Interloper's "gentlemen"...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/art/highriskp.jpg

http://delivery.viewimages.com/xv/3178653.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193F669B259AB992A04AB95F60CCF8532C160695E8EB05F83E4

http://www.infowars.com/headline_photos/April/mutilated.jpg

http://www.newsdesigner.com/blog/images/wapofall.jpg

You describe them as "gentlemen", and the Marines are "murders".
Got it.

[The Major]

Here are more photos of the atrocities committed by Interloper's "gentlemen"...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/art/highriskp.jpg

http://delivery.viewimages.com/xv/3178653.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193F669B259AB992A04AB95F60CCF8532C160695E8EB05F83E4

http://www.infowars.com/headline_photos/April/mutilated.jpg

http://www.newsdesigner.com/blog/images/wapofall.jpg

You describe them as "gentlemen", and the Marines are "murderers".
Got it.

[The Major]

Interlopers moral relativism proves the thesis of Abe's post.

He sees no moral difference between the savages that ripped apart those four Americans and then gleefully toyed with their charred remains, and those Marines who were tasked with capturing and/or killed the perpetrators of these atrocities.

...except that he calls the individuals who committed the atrocities "gentlemen", and the Marines who subsequently may have killed them, "murderers".

So in a sense, Interloper is not guilty of Moral Relativism. He places the men who ripped apart his fellow Americans on a higher plane.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes, a great deed. As was downing Nazi U-boats, or shooting down Japanese pilots in the Pacific.

[King]

Our failure, as Westerners, to comprehend the threat we face from the radical Islam is rooted in our understanding of terrorism and the misapplication of the word "terrorist" to describe jihadists. Our cultural understanding of terrorism is based on our experience with the terrorist groups of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Groups like the PLO, IRA, Black Panthers, Red Brigade, ETA used hijackings, bombings and kidnapping in an attempt to achieve some stated and even potentially achievable goal. The goals were varied socialism, civil rights, independence, control of teritory. The implicit quid pro quo was if entity being attacked acceded to the demands the attacks would stop. The American policy of not negotiating with terrorist was to demostrate that we would never capitulate, so as not to foster more terror and more demands. The mere existence of a policy not to negotiate implies that negotiation could resolve the conflict. Other governments do negotiate with terrorists. Jihadists do not operate in that paradigm. They have no demands. There is no potential to negotiate. I advocate a two pronged approach. First kill the immediate threats. Second have a foreign policy that attempts to address the root causes. As an extension of that policy, we need to conduct ourselves in the Iraq war in a manner that doesn't create more enemies. If we make the mistake of killing the moderates and destroying their society we simply increase the the number of radicals and immediate threats. While the Major may be good at the first prong, he clearly fails to grasp the second.

[Abe Greenwald]

King,

What do you believe are these "root causes" that need addressing?

And as for the U.S. Armed Forces' conduct in Iraq, it's been overwhelmingly honorable. If anything, all the media scrutiny has contributed to a dangerously soft standard of engagement. In terms of "creating more enemies," Iraqis now know they have no worse enemy than al Qaeda and they're acting accordingly. Not bad for a war that supposedly played into Bin Laden's hands, huh?

[Interloper]

Major,

Fair enough. Shame on me.

I don't cry for these men. The men in that photo are/were pieces of shit.

If you're 100% confident that the marines have only killed the right men, that not one innocent man has died in this war, believed a terrorist erroneously, then I will dance in the streets in your honor.
But, since innocent men have died, assumed guilty of crimes they did not commit, then I find it no great deed at all, but a fucking travesty. Because this shit happens during times of war, it's one more reason why we should avoid war at all costs.

The bloods on my hands too, no doubt, but you're bathing in the shit.

[The Major]

Interloper,

You've shown your true colors.
You describe the savages who with smiling faces, slaughtered and mutilated your countrymen, as "gentlemen", and the Marines who brought them to justice as "murderers".

You can now try to obfuscate and squirm away from your own words -it will do no good.

You've tipped your hand.

[The Major]

"While the Major may be good at the first prong, he clearly fails to grasp the second" -King

On what basis do you make this claim?
Please explain how I have "failed" to grasp your second prong.

As I have exhaustedly expressed, time and time again, the key to our success lies in adhering to Counterinsurgency doctrine.

That means not only must we kill those who are unreformable, we must sit down with and reconcile with, those insurgents who are willing to rejoin civil society.
-I have done this. As unpleasant as it seems, you have to have "chai" with men whom you are certain had killed your friends. This is part and parcel of COIN.

[Interloper]

I would also describe you and your fellow Marines as "gentlemen." That's just needlessly formal jargon on my part. Sorry Mr. Major.

Having not described you and your fellow Marines as murderers as such -- but merely the action of taking a human life with malice aforethought as "murder" -- I shouldn't even humor your second point. But I WOULD describe the men in that picture as murderers, and NOWHERE DID I APOLOGIZE FOR THEIR ACTIONS OR EVEN FUCKING IMPLY OTHERWISE.

You didn't ask, and you twisted my words, as you twist the words of so many here.

No one is squirming, and only one of us has taken human lives and is proud of that fact. So, it would seem to me you've much more in common with the men in that photo -- gentlemen and murdered each of them -- than I.

[Interloper]

"So, it would seem to me you've much more in common with the men in that photo -- gentlemen and murdered each of them -- than I."

As it changes the meaning of my sentence radically, I MUST correct the typo here and -- although I'm sure the Major would insist that it's a telling slip -- and make it clear that this should say: "gentlemen and murderers each."

[The Major]

Keep it coming Interloper.
Dig, dig, dig.
Deeeper and deeper.

I love it when people show their true colors.
I appreciate your honesty.
It's rare these days.

[Interloper]

Dig? I'm not sure what you mean. What kind of a hole am I digging? Are you going to KILL ME?

OH NO! The MAJOR'S GOING TO KILL ME!!!

True colors? I don't apologize for terrorists. I have no problem whatsoever with our military. I have a problem with your macho bullshit bragging of having killed a bunch of guys, and my friend's sycophantic response.

I am NOT digging a hole for myself, unless there's some consequence for what I've typed here of which I'm unaware... Like you're going to kill me...

You dig your own hole, Major. I realize your job entails killing people, and I realize that sometimes that may have been necessary -- although not nearly to the extent that you think -- but even when the killing was "righteous," celebrating it puts you right in a class with the men we're supposed to hate.

How many different ways can I say this?

I'm not sure what I'm "digging" -- the implication being that I'm making things worse for myself -- as my stance hasn't changed a bit.

[King]

The Major " I think I sputtered something along the lines of "No, to kill them or capture them..."."

While it is a difficult task to convince someone who believes they understand a concept that they don't. Here I go.

First Blackwater USA employees and other "private security" contractors are in Iraq plain and simple mecenaries. Read The Prince by Machiavelli to hear a timeless opinion of mecenaries. From the Washington Post.com in 2005 "We're seeing personal security teams are getting hit more," said Richard Hicks, Blackwater's operations manager in Baghdad. "There's been a definite increase in attacks, to hit us where it hurts the most."

At the same time, Hicks said, contractors are under pressure to curb their aggressive methods, although they lack the firepower and backup enjoyed by the U.S. military. Early in the Iraq conflict and up until last year, "there were no rules" limiting contractors' use of force in Iraq, Hicks said. More recently, the State Department imposed restrictions discouraging the contractors from firing warning shots. There are still daily reports of contractors running Iraqis off the road or injuring or killing innocent people, he said."

From the Canadian Press today:
"BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister Wednesday disputed Blackwater USA's version of a weekend shooting that left at least 11 people dead, saying he cannot tolerate "the killing of our citizens in cold blood.""

They are valid targets in a war and their conduct certainly is not conducive to good relations with the Iraqis and probably fosters just a little bit of hatred towards Americans. If Blackwater were occuppying my country, I would celebrate the death of people who displayed such a wanton disregard of the lives of my countrymen . So it is a strecth to link the people who appear in the pictures to the insurgency.

Second I have looked at every picture you have posted. I seriously doubt that anyone pictured participated in the killing. Mostly the people are young and all are unarmed. Usually insurgents display thier weapons and hide their faces in propoganda. Some of their behaviour in defiling the corpses can be explained by crowd psychology. In the south in the first half of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for large groups of men, women and children to pose by the corpse of a lynching victim. The picture was not prima facie evidence that they participate in the lynching or were in the Klan. The same holds true here.

Third, under state law in the United States desecration of a corpse is a relatively minor offense a low level felony or a misdemeanor. It is an offense against sensiblities and civility. The people were already dead.

Therefore rounding up and killing those pictured probably served little purpose other than satisfying an urge for vengence and most likely inflamed the populace of Iraq against America and America's occupation of Iraq. Our occupation of Iraq and the conduct of our military and subcontractors is one of the root causes of the rise of fundamentalism in the Islamic world and their hatred of us.

I will expand on my views of the root causes but I wanted to address this ancillary issue.

[The Major]

Never have I said anything that could possibly be construed as "celebratory" -in the context of this thread, or "killing". If I have, QUOTE ME. Show me where I engaged in "macho bullshit bragging of having killed a bunch of guys". You can't, because it's not true.

Do I think that our hard work as Marines in tracking down and captureing/killing dangerous terrorists who slaughtered and mutilated four Americans is a GOOD thing?
Why, yes. Yes I do.

But I've done nothing in terms of "celebrating" or "bragging". That you perceive it as such is as telling of your character as is your description of the Marines as "murderers" (and YES, when you say someone "murdered" someone, you are calling them a "murderer").

The hole you are digging is a rhetorical hole. It is a filthy pit where you have decided that Marines are "murderers" and terrorists are "gentlemen".
While engaging in this morally dubious exercise of slander, you even go so far as to equate me with the savages that butchered your countrymen.

[The Major]

So King, let me see if I understand where you're coming from....

You are saying that Blackwater's conduct from 2003 until the Spring of 2004 when the four were killed in Fallujah is what sparked the attack?

The people who initiated the attack had no idea who these men were. They did not know who Blackwater was, nor was there any way to identify them as such. Blackwater had not engaged in any behavior in that area that would contribute to any rage expressed by the crowd. Blackwater had never operated there.

You cannot go back to 2004, and view the intent of the crowd through the lens of the past three years. That is a faulty way to make such determinations. You need only to look at the days leading up to the ambush, the acts and intent of Sheikh Janabi and his follows, and the foreign fighters who were operating freely within the city. Look also to the recent clashes with American at the Gov Center and the School -people had been killed. Americans were responsible.

But Blackwater? They had nothing to do with it. They were not a contributing factor to the situation.

As I said, it is NOT a "stretch" to link the people in the photo to the insurgency. We had realtime observation of what was occurring, and when these individuals were captured, they told their stories.
Were ALL of them insurgents? No. But those who were NOT insurgents helped to identify those who were. THAT is why we "tracked down every single person in the photo".

The Marines did not KILL anyone who happened to be in the photo. I did not say that nor dod I imply that. We captured and/OR killed them. Those who died were the ones who fought. Either way, each person in these photos was eventually identified and tracked down. Some of them were identified after they had been killed fighting in Al Fajr -months later.

Your insistance that I don't understand so simple a concept is faulty. It is as faulty as your revisionism regarding the motivations of the attackers of the Blackwater employees.

[The Major]

Here's the message written on the Bridge by the Marines of 3/5...

http://www.sondrak.com/archive/fallujafuckyou