By: Todd Beamon
Reports Thursday that the Islamic State (ISIS) trains its recruits with a manual that advocates brutality as a powerful tool for goading the West stunned Republicans, with Louisiana Rep. John Fleming telling Newsmax that the only response is "we have to go kill them."
"The ones that we've captured need to remain in prison until the fighting is over — and that could be many, many years," the four-term congressman added, referring to holding detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"ISIS is a battle-hardened, highly trained organization that is well-funded. They're one of the strongest armies in the world for their size.
"They can punch above their weight class and they should not be taken for granted," said Fleming, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. "They should not be underestimated. It's going to take a first-class military to defeat these people."
The authors of a book published in the United States this month, "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror" disclosed that the group justifies its brutality with certain texts from the Quran and with in-house clerics at ISIS training camps in Syria.
Critical to this brutal fanaticism, however, is a manual called "The Management of Savagery." The document advocates violence to push the West into overreaction, according to the authors.
"Recruits receive military, political, and religious training," said one of the book's authors, Hassan Hassan. He is a Syrian-born journalist who now works as a think tank researcher in Abu Dhabi. "They are also trained in counterintelligence to avoid being infiltrated.
"After they graduate, recruits remain under scrutiny and can be expelled or punished if they show reservations, or sent back to the camps to 'strengthen their faith,'" Hassan said.
"Recruits receive military, political, and religious training," said one of the book's authors, Hassan Hassan. He is a Syrian-born journalist who now works as a think tank researcher in Abu Dhabi. "They are also trained in counterintelligence to avoid being infiltrated.
"After they graduate, recruits remain under scrutiny and can be expelled or punished if they show reservations, or sent back to the camps to 'strengthen their faith,'" Hassan said.
He wrote the book with Michael Weiss, a journalist based in the United States, and the pair interviewed dozens of ISIS members and fighters. The training camps last from two weeks to as long as a year.
The authors also found that many of the Islamic State's views are widely shared within Iraq and Syria, Hassan said.
"It presents itself as an apocalyptic movement, talking about the end of days, the return of the caliphate and its eventual domination of the world," Hassan said.
"These beliefs are not on the margins. They are absolutely mainstream. They are preached by mosques across the world, particularly in the Middle East.
"ISIS takes these existing beliefs and makes them more appealing by offering a project that is happening right now," Hassan said.
The group's terrorism includes the torching of a captured Jordanian pilot last month, which was captured in a video posted Tuesday on social media, and the beheadings of five Westerners and two Japanese hostages.
Late last year, the jihadists slaughtered four children, all reportedly younger than age 15, because they refused to embrace Islam.
When told of the ISIS manual, Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn responded, "Wow!"
"It shows that there truly is such a thing as evil in this world," the Republican legislator told Newsmax. "It's amazing to me that brutality like that can appeal to anybody.
"There is evil in this world and it must be defeated," said Lamborn, who also sits on the Armed Services Committee.
Both congressmen called for strong military action against ISIS, saying that it must be anchored by forces from Jordan and other Mideast nations, and slammed President Barack Obama's weak foreign policy for giving rise to the jihadist group.
"We're also not doing a good job of getting the Arab countries to step up to the plate and take responsibility," said Lamborn, who is in his fifth term. "A few are, but not nearly enough. Others are talking a big game, but they're not doing much."
Fleming characterized Obama as "the worst foreign policy leader really in our history.
"His policy has been that of appeasement. He sees that, whether we are winning or losing, we should pull out of any type of conflict.
"It's his objective that he wants to go down in history as the president who ended wars," Fleming added, "and it doesn't matter that we're losing them in the process."
In the meantime, "we're stuck for two years with having to deal with a president who is guaranteeing that he will be weak and feckless in dealing with foreign powers," the congressman said. "We're reading that he is cutting a very bad deal behind the backs of Americans with the Iranians to allow them to nuclearize themselves — and we get nothing in return.
"If you have a president like that, one who's willing to break the law and turn his back on the Constitution, it just goes to show how important our presidential elections are and how there's very little a nation can do once a president is put into office."
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
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