Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Jihad is Their Way


Part of the solution in dealing with a problem is recognizing you have a problem in the first place. In few places in our society is this more apparent than in our nation's military and how it deals with terrorists in its ranks. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Security Committee noted during a special joint House-Senate hearing, "The Department of Defense considers the U.S. homeland the most dangerous place for a G.I. outside of foreign war zones––and the top threat they face here is from violent Islamic extremists." [Washington Times, 12/7/11]  Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee pointed out that the Congressional Research Service had identified 54 homegrown terrorist plots and attacks since 9/11 and, of those, 33 were directed against the U.S. military. Bottom line: serving in the military has become dangerous duty, indeed . . . and not just abroad.

In my previous post, I reminded readers of the dangers of political correctness in a counterterrorism context. The current administration––and the defense department, specifically––refer to the Fort Hood rampage as "workplace violence." The Oklahoma City bombing wasn't terrorism, but rather a "criminal" act. Nor is such naivete and political expediency confined to the current administration. Author Paul Sperry, in his book on muslim spies and subversives, points to the number of traitors who have infiltrated the U.S. military to undermine it and even kill their fellow soldiers, as was perhaps the case in the Fort Hood massacre. The Muslim-sensitivity training program mandated by FBI director Mueller after 9/11, criticized by agents and civilians alike, warned against referring to even the most serious terrorist threats against America as being "Islamic." "He [Mueller] typically describes terrorism in generic terms, such as 'international terrorism'"and is reluctant to use Islamic and terrorism in the same sentence. President Bush, similarly, struck a deal with Muslim-rights groups to avoid describing terrorism as "Islamic." [Infiltration, Paul Sperry, Nelson Current (2005)]

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey makes a distinction between "Islamism" and the religion of Islam itself, tracing Islamism's roots to the 1920s, when the Muslim Brotherhood was established. The movement came to out shores "at the latest in the 1980s," when a couple of FBI agents spotted a group of men taking target practice and acting suspicious in Calverton, Long Island. "They [the agents] were accused of what we now call racial profiling, and they backed off." Shortly thereafter, Meir Kahane was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel. Years later, the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, and plots to blow up other New York landmarks were uncovered, as was a plot to assassinate Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak when he visited the UN. All were treated as a series of crimes, not terrorism. And while the policy makers dream about democratic movements in the Middle East, Mukasey argues, the Muslim Brotherhod's credo is "succinct and chilling: Allah is our goal, the Prophet Muhammad is our leader, the Qu'ran is our constitution, jihad is our way, and death in the way of Allah is our promised end." ["Executive Power in Wartime," Michael Mukasey, Imprimus, October 2011]

Not all terrorism is Islamic-based, of course. We've got left-wing anarchists, right-wing, white separatists, anti-government radicals and other potentially dangerous groups. But only by recognizing the problem, defining its characteristics and concentrating our resources in a proper manner, can terrorism be defused––as much as we're physically and technically able to do so.

As a footnote, last week, on the third anniversary of the Fort Hood shootings, 148 victims and family members sued for compensation in the attack, alleging negligence by the government, claiming that the defense department is avoiding legal and financial responsibility for the killings by referring to them as "workplace violence," rather than a terrorist attack. The victims assert that the military knew for years before the shootings that Major Nidal Hassan was a "fanatic Islamic extremist who supported jihad, suicide attacks and violence" and failed to act. [Fort Hood Shooting Victims Sue Government," Huffington Post, 11/5/12]


http://www.richardholcroft.com

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