During today’s often-interrupted Senate hearing on the rise and threat of the Islamic State, Gen. Martin Dempsey testified that ISIS’ fighters have taken up the fight over “grievances.”
Use of that word would seem to justify their actions, or at least give them some moral cover for them.
Gen. Dempsey testified: “The nature of the threat is such that, as I mentioned, it will only be defeated when moderate Arab and Muslim populations in the region reject it. And therefore, the way forward seems to me to run clearly through a coalition of Arab and Muslim partners, and not through the ownership of the United States on this issue. And so the strategy does that.”
“It seeks to build a coalition, encourage an inclusive government to address the grievances that have caused this in the first place, it applies U.S. military power where we have unique capability to do so, and over time it allows those populations to reject ISIL.”
What “grievances” have causes ISIS’ rise “in the first place?” Dempsey did not elaborate, and he was not asked to explain.
Dempsey has a checkered history when it comes to dealing with so-called “grievances.”
Just over two years ago, on September 12, 2012, Gen. Dempsey personally called Florida pastor Terry Jones and asked him to “withdraw his support” for Innocence of Muslims. That was the obscure YouTube video that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were blaming for the terrorist attack at the US facility in Benghazi, Libya on the day before.
Jones also planned to burn a Koran on video in 2010. It was Gen. Dempsey again who called Jones and asked him not to do it, so as not to offend Muslims.
h/t Weekly Standard
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