Extremists

AL SARRAIN, Yemen - The U.S. drone flew over a cluster of mud houses on a ridge and, according to Yemeni officials, locked onto Adnan Qadhi, a mercurial man of many guises, including radical militant, peace mediator, preacher of violence and army general. Villagers said Qadhi climbed out of his utility vehicle the night of Nov. 7 to make a cellphone call shortly before the missile struck. His photo - broad face peering from beneath a tilted red beret, stars on his epaulets - now hangs in a small grocery store in a land where farmers work narrow fields below the villas of politicians, tribal leaders and a former president that rise like fortresses on nearby hilltops.

The U.S. economy is improving, yet Congress seems still to be in the grip of the delirium that shrinking the deficit in the near term is still a matter of paramount urgency. That's what's prevented lawmakers from dealing with their real task, which is to jolt the miserable jobs recovery into a higher gear and lift the budget sequester, one of the outstanding examples of mass insanity the country has ever seen. Consider the sequester as exhibit A. That's the package of mandated budget cuts enacted as part of the deal to raise the debt limit in 2011.

Can you accuse someone of having “extreme” views on abortion without implicitly endorsing a middle-of-the-road position yourself?  Strictly speaking, yes.  If I am an extremist on the right side of the spectrum -- the Todd Akin/Paul Ryan position of no abortions even in cases of rape or incest -- I can accurately observe that someone at the left end of the spectrum -- abortion should be legal in every circumstance, even late in pregnancy --...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections this weekend returns to power a seasoned politician who historically has had rocky ties with Pakistan's powerful military and is viewed by many as soft on militants and extremist groups. The expected showdown between Sharif, 63, and former cricket star Imran Khan never really materialized, as Sharif swept the elections and put himself in a position to become prime minister for an unprecedented third time.

The latest ploy by the environmental extremists S.O.S. (an outfit calling itself Save Open Space, but more accurately described as Sabotage Open Space) has been to file a lawsuit against the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy's $10-million purchase of superb parkland from a developer. The state attorney general's office has OKd the purchase, and the trial judge has denied Sabotage Open Space an immediate injunction to halt the purchase. With environmental extremists like these, reason and moderation are automatically rejected.

If we put aside all of the malarkey that is and has been generated in every political region on this Earth, the only chance we have for a recovery to a prosperous and civil American nation is to reject the extremists of either end of the belief spectrum and to form a strong centrist coalition of middle-of-the-roaders, moderate conservatives and liberals. When these groups do not realize the need to join into strong collegial bonding, the extremists can always manage to pull the system apart.

LONDON - Three men accused of plotting what would have been the biggest terrorist attack in Britain since the 2005 London transit bombings were found guilty on terrorism charges Thursday. The trio, British Muslims from the central English city of Birmingham, were accused of planning to set off up to eight bombs in backpacks in crowded places as part of a suicide rampage. Although no date or target was set for the attack, authorities who secretly recorded conversations between the men arrested them in September 2011 out of concern that they posed an imminent threat.

SABHA, Libya - Their fatigues don't match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert. "If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can't let that happen," said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors.

BEIRUT - An Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group in Iraq has united with one of Syria's most-feared Islamic opposition groups in a vivid display of how the two-year Syrian civil war has emboldened extremists across the two countries' borders. The group known as the Islamic State of Iraq also revealed its formative role in creating Al Nusra Front, or Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian group conceived last year that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, according to an announcement posted on militant websites late Monday.

It was interesting to read that the German production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" was closed "out of fear of inciting Islamic extremists" (Sept. 27). Most Muslim organizations were not aware of the opera; there wasn't even a single Muslim protest. What a contrast to the Jewish protest of the Oberammergau Passion Play, which was out-and-out antiSemitic and took hundreds of years to get toned down. I guess the moral of this story is that you have to become a terrorist to get results. Perhaps someone should teach the Jews to become terrorists.

WASHINGTON - Five days before two bombs tore through crowds at the Boston Marathon, an intelligence report identified the finish line as an "area of increased vulnerability" and warned Boston police that homegrown extremists could use "small-scale bombings" to attack spectators and runners at the event. The 18-page report, similar to others sent to police and first responders before major events in the Boston area, was written by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, which is funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security and helps disseminate intelligence information to local police and first responders.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave politicians everywhere some sound advice on gun control recently. Defending New York's tough new measures against critics who charge that the state has exceeded its regulatory authority, he said : “Yes, they are against it, but they are the extremists, and the extremists shouldn't win, especially on this issue when it is so important to the majority. In politics, we have to be willing to take on the extremists, otherwise you will see paralysis.” How obvious, and how true.

CAIRO - The Mass was celebrated as if from centuries past: A bearded priest veiled in incense chanted for grace in a church along the Nile, near the spot where Christians believe Jesus and his mother sought refuge in an earlier age of bloodshed and uncertainty. Marianne Samir knelt and prayed for the Coptic Christians killed in a spasm of sectarian violence that has further shaken a nation engulfed in economic and political anxieties. "I feel unsafe," said Samir, a high school philosophy teacher with a cross tattooed on her wrist.

BEIRUT - An Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group in Iraq has united with one of Syria's most-feared Islamic opposition groups in a vivid display of how the two-year Syrian civil war has emboldened extremists across the two countries' borders. The group known as the Islamic State of Iraq also revealed its formative role in creating Al Nusra Front, or Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian group conceived last year that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, according to an announcement posted on militant websites late Monday.

SABHA, Libya - Their fatigues don't match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert. "If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can't let that happen," said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors.

WASHINGTON - The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the first time for possible lethal drone strikes, according to current and former U.S. officials. President Obama has not authorized drone missile strikes in Syria, however, and none are under consideration. The Counterterrorism Center, which runs the CIA's covert drone killing program in Pakistan and Yemen, recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence collection on militants in Syria who could pose a terrorist threat, the officials said.

Villagers on the outskirts of this southern Punjabi city knew that Riaz Ali lived and breathed jihad. They read the jihadist literature he freely passed out. They saw the mullahs regularly meeting at his home, where his sister drilled the Koran into the minds of schoolchildren. It didn't matter. They admired his devotion to Islam, they said, and always knew that the enemy Ali narrowed his sights on was elsewhere, far away from the rutted dirt roads and cotton fields of their sleepy mud-hut hamlet.

Zahid Manzoor Bajwa wasn't exactly cop material. When police in the city of Lahore raided his house and those of associates in 2003, they found hand grenades, timers and loaded pistols. Asked about their arsenal, Bajwa and his friends acknowledged that they were planning to kidnap the son of a wealthy steel mill owner so they could buy enough explosives to kill foreigners. Somehow, Bajwa's two-year stint behind bars went unnoticed by security officials in Punjab province. In 2009, they made him computer section chief for the Punjab police's intelligence wing, a post that gave him access to investigations and special reports on militant groups, surveillance directives, even security arrangements for VIPs.

CAIRO - The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri is an unflinching man with a graying beard whose aim, as a Salafi, is to impose Islamic law on the divided country that has emerged since the overthrow of secular autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago. Seated at a rooftop cafe as dusk draped the Nile, traffic screeching and lights flickering in the ancient city below, he wagged a finger in the air and spoke of an "epic battle" to scour Egypt...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Western governments Sunday reported that a violent Islamist militia in northern Nigeria had likely executed seven foreign hostages, deaths that the governments called barbaric and cold-blooded. The group, Ansaru, announced Saturday that it had executed seven construction workers who were kidnapped last month in what appeared to be a well-planned, targeted attack. The Italian Foreign Ministry and Greek Foreign Ministry announced Sunday that they believed the claim.