GOP presidential hopeful and former senator Rick Santorum found himself amid a flurry of new attention after placing a close second in the Iowa caucuses. One of the fiery right-wing politician’s views coming under increased scrutiny is his attitude toward Islam. Already in this campaign, Santorum endorsed profiling in airport security and, when pressed, said, “Obviously, Muslims would be someone you’d look at.”

Now, journalist Max Blumenthal unearthed a 2007 speech Santorum gave to a Washington conference at the invitation of David Horowitz. In the speech (audio can be found at anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller‘s site), Santorum outlined the “war” against “radical Islam”:

What must we do to win? We must educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate. …

The other thing we need to do is eradicate, and that’s the final thing. As I said, this is going to be a long war. There are going to be pluses and minuses, ups and downs. But we have to win this war to — fight this war to win this war.

Santorum insists that he’s “not suggesting that we have to go in there and blow them up.” But, later in the speech, he compares the “long war” to World War II, adding, “Americans don’t like war. They don’t like suffering and dying. No one does.”

Both in this speech and in other writings and remarks, Santorum often specifies that he’s speaking of “radical Islam.” But what does “radical Islam” mean to Santorum? In fact, the former senator often times conflates extremists with the entire Muslim faith at-large and, at other times, he states outright that radicals dominate Islam. In the 2007 D.C. speech, Santorum compared Muslim wars from hundreds of years ago to 9/11: “Does anybody know when the high-water mark of Islam was? September the 11th, 1683,” he said to gasps from the audience.

As to what “losing” the war with “radical Islam” looks like, Santorum discussed Europe. “Europe is on the way to losing,” he said. “The most popular male name in Belgium — Mohammad. It’s the fifth most popular name in France among boys.” The other data point he cited was larger birthrates among “Islamic Europeans” as opposed to “Westernized Europeans.” Nowhere did he indicate a growing “radical” threat in Europe.

In October 2007 at his alma mater Penn State, Santorum gave a speech and failed to break out the radical strain from the faith at-large: “Islam, unlike Christianity, is an all-encompassing ideology. It is not just something you do on Sunday. … We (as Americans) don’t get that.” The quote is particularly ironic from someone who, among other such statements, has said, “[O]ur civil laws have to comport with a higher law: God’s law.”

In a January 2007 speech, Santorum suggested Islam at-large was responsible for religious freedom issues and put the onus Muslims to deal with these issues to end the “war”:

Until we have the kind of discussion and dialogue with Islam — that democracy and freedom of religion, along with religious pluralism, are essential for the stability of the world and our ability to cohabit in this world. Unless Islam is willing to make that conscious decision, then we are going to be at war for a long time.

If Santorum’s discourse sounds like some of the Islamophobia network outlined in CAP’s Fear, Inc. report, that should be no surprise. Horowitz has repeatedly hosted Santorum for “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week” events and Geller and her associate Robert Spencer cite his work approvingly.

In a 2008 appearance at the Christians United For Israel confab, Santorum outflanked even Daniel Pipes. When Pipes mentioned that radicals only constituted about 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide, Santorum, before wondering whether Muslims are capable of making moral decisions at all, challenged him:

It’s not a small number. OK? It’s not a fringe. It’s a sizable group of people that hold these views. [Pipes' notion of 'moderate' Islam] is the exception, I would argue, of what traditional Islam is doing.

No decent American — or anyone across the globe — should oppose “eradicat(ing)” extremist ideologies like militant, “radical Islam.” But Santorum’s history of statements raises questions about just exactly what and who he’s targeting for eradication.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Margon, associate director for Sustainable Security at the Center for American Progress.

With millions of Somalis still reeling from the 2011 famine, the recent decision by the Minnesota-based Sunrise Community Banks to shut down its Somali remittance service is particularly difficult to bear. Sunrise’s wire services have enabled Somali-Americans to send more than $100 million back home on an annual basis. Globally, the Somali diaspora sends about $530 million home each year, which, according to a joint CAP-One Earth Foundation report, tallies that up to be about $17.3 billion since the country collapsed in 1991. Somalia is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world.

Sunrise’s decision came about because of fears of violating existent terrorist financing regulations. Even while upholding all compliance requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act — which requires financial institutions to assist with the detection and prevention of money laundering, without additional protection — the bank deemed the risks as too high.

Sunrise’s closure tracks closely with the findings of a recent CAP report, Unintended Roadblocks, which illustrates how the numerous convoluted executive orders and vaguely defined laws related to counterterrorism present a host of expensive and ambiguous compliance challenges for organizations and companies doing business in places like Somalia. A climate of instability and unpredictability develops due to the absence of legal clarity. In a country like Somalia, which hasn’t had a central government in two decades and has been devastated by ongoing violence and political upheaval ever since, the inability — or perhaps unwillingness — of the Obama administration to clearly state what would constitute a violation of the law puts innocent lives at stake.

The Treasury Department has blogged about the Somali remittance issue recently which is an indicator of its attention to this issue, but it is no substitution for actual guidance — or even a policy memo. Similarly, simply noting that Sunrise bank has a “good compliance program, and [that] it would be rare for [the Justice Department] to prosecute a bank” does little to shift the onerous burden that results from ambiguous legal language. Humanitarian organizations like Oxfam America and American Refugee Committee released a statement in an attempt to call attention to the issue and delay the decision — but to no end.

The Obama administration should be applauded for the $870 million spent to meet ongoing and urgent humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa, including nearly $205 million for Somalia. Over the holidays, President Obama announced another $113 million to help those in need. In addition, USAID has launched an unprecedented relief campaign, which even includes TV ads, as it attempts to raise awareness about the crisis.

This relief assistance is of tremendous importance but it has not been able to genuinely reach those in need, in part because of the brutal nature of violence in Somalia but also because ambiguous counterterrorism restrictions have rendered humanitarian groups extremely risk-adverse. Without additional protection, Sunrise felt it had no option but to shut down its wire service. With more than 250,000 people at risk of starvation, this means a vital lifeline has vanished. Ultimately, cutting off remittances won’t make us any safer, but it may contribute to greater instability in Somalia and require even more spending on humanitarian assistance.

Today at the Pentagon, President Obama, Defense Secretary Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey laid out a new military strategy for the 21st Century that will move beyond the costly nation building enterprises such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and shift the U.S. military’s focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

While Obama noted that the strategy calls for a “leaner” military, he, Panetta and Dempsey assured that the United States will still be able to confront multiple military challenges around the globe simultaneously. And presuming to be responding to right-wing critics that the U.S. is not spending enough on the military, the president noted that in ten years, the U.S. will still spend more than the next several countries combined:

OBAMA: Over the past 10 years since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this, it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. …

PANETTA: Make no mistake, we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time. …

DEMPSEY: There has been much made and I’m sure there will be made about whether this strategy moves away from a force structure explicitly designed to fight and win two wars simultaneously. Fundamentally, our strategy has always been about our ability to respond to global contingencies where ever and whenever they occur. This won’t change. … We can and will always be able to do more than one thing at a time. More importantly, wherever we are confronted and in whatever sequence, we will win. … I’m pleased with the outcome. … and I’m hear today to assure you that it has real buy-in among our senior military and civilian leadership.

Watch clips of their comments:

While Dempsey noted that the new strategy won’t change the military’s ability to fight multiple wars at the same time, the National Security Network’s Heather Hurlburt writes that this so-called two war strategy “hasn’t been true, or truly doctrine, for a long time.”

“If it were a strategy, it doesn’t describe any strategy or capability we’ve had for decades,” says defense budget expert Winslow Wheeler. “People who declare coming off the two MRC [Major Regional Conflicts] ‘strategy’ as unraveling our defenses (eg. Dov Zakheim) are dilettantes.”

The U.S.-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) released a report (PDF) today revealing the names of 101 victims of secret executions in Iran. Defining secret as those that “are not publicly reported by authorities and the victim’s family and lawyers have no prior knowledge that the sentence is set to be carried out,” the group documented 101 such executions at only a single prison — Vakilabad — for a period in late 2010. Since January of that year, the group has documented 471 secret executions, with at least 161 in 2011 alone.

In comment to ICHRI, Nobel laureate and Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi put the practice in perspective, ascribing to it a political, and not anti-crime motive:

The Iranian judiciary and government know that the death penalty is not a suitable solution for fighting crime, particularly drug-related crimes. The basic question is this: why does the Iranian government use this type of punishment with such enthusiasm? The issue is that these executions only create fear and intimidation and serve only a political purpose. All of the statistics show that while the number of executions have increased the number of drug-related crimes have not decreased at all.

Iran executed a total of about 600 people in 2011. In 2010, the last year for which comprehensive statistics are available, Amnesty International placed Iran second on the world’s list for putting people to death (PDF). Since 2007, Iran is also second in total executions, only behind China which kills thousands a year and keeps exact figures secret.

In a December report, Amnesty said 81 percent of death penalties in Iran were for drug-related offenses, and called on Iran to stop the executions. The State Department’s country reports on human rights for 2010 also made a prominent issue of executions in Iran, documenting many cases of those sentenced to death, and raising the issue of secret executions:

According to multiple sources, the government executed approximately 312 persons in summary executions during the year, many after trials that were conducted in secret or did not adhere to basic principles of due process.

With the release of the ICHRI report, the group’s head Hadi Ghaemi said: “Iran has shown an inability to use the death penalty in a legal and accountable manner. With skyrocketing execution numbers marred by unfair trials and opaque judicial proceedings, it’s time for Iran to institute a moratorium and join the growing trend towards abolition.”

The Arab League has received immense criticism for its monitoring mission in Syria. Rights groups first questioned the organization’s decision to appoint a war crime-linked Sudanese general to lead the mission, while activists on the ground say the Assad regime is deceiving the monitors. The Arab League Secretary-General said this week that the monitors have failed to halt the violence in Syria and today, Qatar’s prime minister said the group has made a series of mistakes in its mission:

“This is the first experience for us. I said we have to evaluate what sorts of mistakes” have been made, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, who heads the bloc’s task force on Syria, was quoted as saying by the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA.

“There is no doubt for me. I can see there are mistakes, but we went there not to stop the killing but to monitor,” the Qatari prime minister added.

CNN reports that Syrians plead their cases to the monitors, most of whom simply drove through the most violent areas “like tourists,” but the Arab League representatives tell them to file a complaint. “They say come see us in our office. File a report,” activist Abdel Rahman told CNN. “I responded, do you want us all slaughtered?” Watch the CNN report:

Meanwhile, Reuters reports today that Syrian opposition activists said that despite Arab League claims, government forces have not pulled back from the streets in towns where the violence has been the worst. “We are not seeing the release of detainees or the true removal of a military presence from the streets,” said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Army tanks have been replaced with police armored personnel carriers that still have the capability to shoot heavy weaponry.”