Ignoring Islamo-Fascism at our Peril

By Alan Caruba

In early November 2009 Americans were shocked to learn that an Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had shot and killed twelve soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, and wounded thirty-one others. Because of the unrelenting political correctness prevailing in the Army and other services, all the signs that Hasan was a ticking time bomb were ignored.

Hasan was known to be a Muslim, had exhibited signs of a growing fanaticism, occasionally showed up in the post exchange dressed in Arab garb, and as it turned out later, was being mentored by Yemen’s al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki , an American citizen who was later killed by a drone strike. As Hasan stood before the soldiers, firing at them, he yelled “Allah Akbar.”

This and other attacks, planned, failed, and thwarted occurred before and since 9/11; an attack that stunned Americans, all contribute to the worldwide terrorism intended to bring about the domination of Islam. Not only has the memory faded, but in 2009 the Obama administration did away with the earlier description of “a war on terrorism”, it ordered the Pentagon to replace it with “overseas contingency operations.”

The administration’s magical thinking about the Islamo-fascist threat makes one wonder why it has a Department of Homeland Security.

When it became known that the New York City Police Department was training its force to be especially watchful for any signs of terrorist attacks and was paying close attention to the mosques in the city and across the river in New Jersey, there was an outcry that totally ignored the threat. Initially they were rebuked by the Governor of New Jersey, a state where the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers was planned. One of the conspirators arrested lived in my hometown!

A report by the NYPD notes that Newark police officers worked closely “at all times” with their New York City counterparts. Much of the criticism of the NYPD’s program has been due to its success!

In a new book by Peter Feaman, “The Next Nightmare: How Political Correctness Will Destroy America” ($14.99, Dunham Books, softcover), a trial lawyer with thirty years’ experience, warns against the way Americans are leaving themselves vulnerable to future attacks. “Intolerance of Christianity and Judaism, and violence against infidels, is preached weekly in mosques across the United States.”

A great deal of the problem is that Americans believe that Islam is a "religion." Historically, it has been a cult of conquest that merges its belief system with a political agenda in which Sharia law is intended to be imposed throughout the world. Its early, swift spread was based on terror and warfare.

No other “religion” preaches death to believers of other faiths. No other “religion” demands that apostates who convert be sentenced to death. No other “religion” resorts to intimidation on the scale of Islam. It is fascism masquerading as religion.

“At the end of World War II,” notes Feaman, “there were about fifty mosques located in the United States. Today there are more than 1,300—and the number grows monthly.” Much of the funding comes from Saudi Arabia for Sunni mosques and Iran for Shiite mosques.

There are moderate Muslims seeking reform within Islam and there are Muslims who are loyal Americans. They are, however, vastly outnumbered by those with very bad intentions.

The NYPD program aimed at monitoring mosques is critical to thwart future attacks. “The six men of the al Qaeda sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York—who were arrested by the FBI in 2001 for attending an al Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan—all belonged to the same Lackawanna mosque.”

“In Florida’s Dade and Broward Counties, an imam and his two sons were arrested on May 14, 2011, charged with funneling money to the Pakistani Taliban…”

“A Sunni mosque in suburban Beaverton, Oregon was the meeting ground for six members indicted by federal authorities in 2002 for conspiring to provide aid to the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.”

The Al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn has been in the public spotlight for more than ten years as a hotbed of Islamic radicalism, sedition, and treason. The imam there, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, was convicted in 1995 of conspiracy to bomb New York City landmarks.”

Islamo-fascism is spreading everywhere, but especially in Europe where many acts of terrorism have occurred. By 2050, Muslims will be in control of most European nations by sheer weight of numbers. The “Arab spring” is rapidly becoming the means by which Islamists are gaining control throughout those nations that overthrew their mostly secular dictators.

If we don’t want a repeat of the Fort Hood murders—labeled “workplace violence” by the Obama administration—if we don’t want another Times Square car bomb that mercifully was disarmed, if we want to be protected against future attacks, we must rid ourselves of the political correctness that will get us killed.

The notion that the New York City Police Department would come under fire for acting preemptively to prevent further attacks in the city is beyond absurd. It is suicidal.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

What Communism Feels Like

By Alan Caruba

Recently I received an email and requested permission to share it. It says a great deal about the danger of a government inclined to ignore the Constitution. December 15th is Bill of Rights Day; time to read them if you have not done so already.

The text below has been lightly edited for continuity and is published with the permission of its author..

Dear Mister Caruba,

I want to thank you for your Warning Signs blog. I want you to know that I am scared out of my wits with everything that is going on...

I was born, raised, and grew up in Communist Poland. I presently reside in the USA since June 1983. I love the country and love Americans. Every time the national anthem is played I tear up with happiness to be lucky enough to live in The Greatest Country on Earth!!

What I see happening all around us is very troubling, since Obama's election and the great number of people looking forward to change and hope to get us on track to build a better tomorrow. The light at the end of a tunnel, however, has turned out to be a TRAIN!!

Of course, as everyone, I have my opinion just about everything...

I am not the sharpest tool in a shed, but I call Obama "The Closer" just like the TV show I watched a few years ago. Over the years our society was brainwashed and socially conditioned

I've experienced it back in Poland when our party Leaders were feeding us utopia, talking about the greatness of our country, how proud we shall be, how lucky we are, how together we shall build it even stronger, work harder, save more, and as one we will overcome the BAD AMERICA!!!, the source of evil, racism and slaves!. All the time they kept us with no freedom and communist propaganda in the newspapers and on TV.

I remember as a young child---maybe 9 or 10---my Father and I would wake up at 2:00 AM to listen to 'Free Europe" (BBC station) a one-hour broadcast on the radio. The transmission was very much interrupted with static, but religiously we were finding out some truths. Our window was covered with a heavy blanket (we did not want to take any chance with neighbors or passing police patrol noticing any activities.)

Even when we talked about it later and I had some questions it was always done in such way that my 6-years younger sister couldn't be near for fear of her saying something to someone.

I remember when Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. The whole school was gathered by the main road, we were given Russian paper flags and were told to wave at the moving tanks and heavy military trucks and yell "hello" and clap and be happy that we have such good help in the Soviet Union to protect us from the 'evil movement' that had spread over Czechoslovakia that they said put us all in danger.

My late Father always told me "Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut and if you ever have an opportunity to escape safely don't even take a second to think about it. Just go for it and make a better life for yourself in a free world where you can talk without blankets in a window"

Sadly I see my country, the country that gave me the opportunity to enjoy freedom in all aspects slowly becoming a closed-door agenda, anti-American bills and policies not upholding the values on which it was established and for which thousands died to keep it true.

I am offended when Obama is not holding his hand over his heart when the anthem is played.

I am offended when he called me an enemy.

I am offended when he bowed to the Saudi Arabian king!

I am offended with his lies so obvious and bold that a deaf person could hear it!

As far as I am concerned he is not my president.

--End--

I am concerned we increasingly live in a society where everything we say or write can be fodder for those who think the Bill of Rights was written for a different age or people and no longer applicable.

On Bill of Rights Day it is useful to recall that several of the original States refused to ratify the U.S. Constitution unless the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments, was included.

If America is not about personal, individual, political, and spiritual freedom, than it is not America. It is about the rights reserved to the States and the People. Without them, life in America will be no different than the Communist Poland from which my correspondent escaped.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Halfway Between Sanity and Bedlam

By Alan Caruba

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

To listen, watch, or read the news these days, one is struck by the sheer insanity of most of the activities sanctioned by the government and encouraged by the signs of sanity reflected by the outcome of the midterm elections.

The people have spoken! And they are still at risk of being ignored by the White House and the Democrats.

For example, the “enhanced” airport inspections complete with full-body scanners and “pat downs” that have managed to enrage air travelers. The Israelis don’t do this and they have never had an El Al flight hijacked or blown up. Meanwhile, al Qaeda is enjoying the way the Department of Homeland Security has vastly over-reacted to its threat. As many rational observers have pointed out, identifying ARABS and/or MUSLIMS for a closer look is a very good idea. There is no record of a Catholic nun having ever hijacked a commercial jet.

In March of this year close to a million Americans showed up near the Capitol steps to protest Obamacare. They were dismissed by David Axelrod, a White House advisor, who said, “They’re wrong.” This was followed by Speaker Pelosi telling Americans that Obamacare had to be passed first so everyone could know what was in it and that included the members of Congress who voted for it. That is a definition of crazy. Almost immediately, corporations and unions began to file for waivers for their employees and members. Laws are supposed to apply equally to all Americans. Obamacare does so by raising your health insurance premiums.

The Federal Reserve, charged with the responsibility of protecting the value of the dollar, hasn’t done that for decades. Since the dollar is not pegged to a commodity such as gold, it is merely a piece of paper that the government promises to honor. That is now in jeopardy as the Fed engages in yet another “quantitative easing”, buying U.S. debt with devalued U.S. dollars. Other nations watching this slight-of-hand are not fooled and at some point they will stop buying $50 billion in U.S. securities every day.

One sign of sanity were the midterm elections that returned power in the House to the Republicans and narrowed the power of Democrats in the Senate. Members of the Republican Party and Independents are waiting to see if its leadership has figured out that they do not want any compromise with the White House that has never shown any compromise during the last two disastrous years.

The Republicans have real depth in terms of whoever they might choose to run against Obama, but all the “buzz” remains focused on former Governor Sarah Palin who can be seen these days in a Discovery Channel series about her family and Alaska. I doubt Sarah will take us on a tour of the utterly barren Alaska National Wildlife Refuge under which lies millions of barrels of untapped AMERICAN oil. It is just insane to not tap the enormous reserves of oil that are known to exist throughout and offshore of AMERICA.

On November 20, General Motors held an initial public offering (IPO). You will recall that, instead of being allowed to go through the normal process of bankruptcy and restructuring, the Obama administration stepped in and made all Americans part owners. Isn’t that called Communism?

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute said this of the IPO: “What exactly is so remarkable about a company coming back to life after a $65 billion taxpayer bailout, additional billions in tax breaks not available to other companies, and even an amazing “sovereign immunity” exemption for this IPO from anti-fraud securities laws and lawsuits? With this massive infusion of government aid and favors, even a company selling ketchup Popsicles to women wearing white gloves would likely show a profitable quarter!”

If, by now, you have seen a pattern of public policy that has staggered back and forth between sanity and bedlam, you are not alone. The first two years of the Obama administration has systematically destroyed confidence in America from within and without.

The international slap-downs the President has encountered speak to an insane policy that includes adding trillions to the national debt; thus putting the United States on a par with member nations of the European Union that are in financial trouble.

Americans, usually known for their common sense, are in near rebellion.

They don’t want to be fondled on their way to a vacation or business flight.

They don’t want the government to tell them what they should eat.

They don’t want a million mandates about everything they purchase.

They don’t want their children brainwashed in schools and colleges to believe utter nonsense about “climate change” and all the absurd claims attached to it. Change is what the climate has done for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth.

They don’t want amnesty programs for people who entered the nation illegally.

They don’t like the fact that government workers, thanks to the largest union in America, earn far more than those in the private sector and receive outsized pension and health benefits.

Et cetera!

America lost its mind over a totally unknown Senator from Illinois in 2008. In 2010 it is struggling to regain its sanity and is demanding the same of those whom it has elected to protect the nation against him.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Islamic War for the Future of the World

By Alan Caruba

Muslims do not take kindly to criticism of any kind. Their solution, as often as not, is to kill anyone who criticizes them. Indeed, the Koran’s punishment for converting to another religion is death.

Islam’s primary weapon in recent decades has been terror. There are literally thousands of terrorist acts occurring throughout the world these days. 9/11 was the quintessential Muslim act of intimidation, but it was preceded and has been followed by many others.

In an act of political correctness and national suicide, Americans elected Barack Hussein Obama President in 2008. He has made no secret of his Muslim roots and beliefs. His very first television interview as President was with Al Arabia and, most recently, one of his appointees, Charles Bolton, the director of NASA claimed that he had been instructed to redirect that agency’s objectives to include a mission to the Muslim world.

Consider this, in 1952, President Truman established a National Day of Prayer and, in 1988, President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May each year as such. In June 2007 President Obama declared that the United States was not a Christian nation and this year he cancelled the 21st National Day of Prayer ceremony.

On September 25, 2009, there was a National Day of Prayer for Muslims that was held on Capitol Hill near the White House. There were more than 50,000 Muslims in attendance and as this is being written, Muslims are attempting to build a huge mosque within a block of Ground Zero in New York.

My friend, Amil Imani, born in Iran, an American citizen, has been courageously outspoken on the topic of Islam. Recently he published a book, “Obama Meets Ahmadinejad” that uses satire to reveal some fundamental truths about these two men. Ahmadinejad, of course, is the president of Iran and so hated there that crowds filled the streets of Tehran to protest. Iran is the classic Islamic nation that uses brutality and oppression against its own people.

Imani’s book has already been hailed by some of the leading voices warning against the Islamic threat to freedom and liberty. They include Robert Spencer, the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades; Dr. Wafa Sultan, author of “A God Who Hates”; and Dr. Ali Sina, the author of “Understanding Muhammad and founder of FaithFreedom.org. Let me add my recommendation that you get a copy for yourself.

In his most recent commentary, posted July 14, “Islam Must Be Stopped in America”, Imani makes a powerful case for the ways Muslims are using America’s traditional tolerance to make inroads that would impose Islam on the nation. He ruthlessly exposes the lies that Islam is a “religion of peace” or that Muslims believe there is “no compulsion” to convert.

“The Muslims,” Imani wrote, “and their apologists quickly run out of their few cards, and the rest of the Islamic deck is all about intolerance, hatred and violence toward the infidels, toward all others who are not true Muslims, and even toward those who consider themselves Muslims. Shiites, for instance, judge the Sunnis as traitors to Islam, and Sunnis condemn the Shiites as heretics. Each side deems the other worthy of death.”

Infidels, all those who are not Muslim, can see the truth with their own eyes as they observe “the savage Shiite-Sunni bloodletting in Iraq; the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region; the Somali killings; the Iranian mullah’s murder of their own people, and the support of mischief abroad; and the incessant terrorist acts of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad on Israel.” There are so many other examples that only fools would cling to the belief that Islam does not pose a threat to the world.

From the beginning of the Obama administration to the present, every effort was made to avoid identifying the enemy; most egregiously expunging any reference to “terrorism” from the language of its top officials including the Attorney General, the Director of the Department of Homeland Security, and a top national security advisor to the President, John Brennan, who has asserted that jihad does not mean war on the infidels. Tell that to 1.2 billion Muslims!

Americans have just over 900 more days of the Obama administration and the fate of the nation literally hangs in the balance until it is replaced.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Why Are We Still Asking Why?

By Alan Caruba

We are now nearly nine years passed the attack on September 11, 2001 that killed some 3,000 Americans in the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and seventeen years since the first attack, a car bomb, failed to bring down the Twin Towers.

Jihadists have been killing Americans for a long time; from the 1983 attack on the Beirut Marine barracks to the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, the recent Fort Hood attack, and now the abortive car bomb attack in Times Square.

Why are we still asking why?

Why is the mainstream press publishing headlines such as the Associated Press gem, “NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery” or USA Today’s “Motive of NYC car bomb suspect remains a mystery.”

Why does the press continue to speculate or to publish the now standard “explanations” that the terrorist, whether it be Major Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 Fort Hood soldiers while yelling “Allahu Akbar” or the latest manifestation, Faisal Shahzad, who tried to kill countless Americans in Times Square on Saturday evening is motivated by anything other than Islam?

Every other reason than Islam is offered and this opinion-shaping process is getting old. Since 2002 the U.S. has tried dozens of Muslims involved in various plots.

It’s not some odd mental derangement. It is Islam.

It is not all Muslims, many of whom have ample reason to fear the jihadists in their midst, but there have been enough jihadists and more than enough terrorist events worldwide to recommend a united front against them.

It can be argued that more Muslims have died at the hands of the jihadists than “infidels”. A website, www.thereligionofpeace.com, has recorded 15,247 Muslim terrorist incidents since 9/11 and yet all manner of U.S. officialdom keeps saying there must be some other reason than Islam.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first response was that the car bomb might have been put in Times Square by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.” How detached from reality is the Mayor? Having asked, it’s worth noting that he also once proposed putting windmills on top of all the city’s buildings to generate electricity.

No one is more skilled at denying reality than Muslims themselves. Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper, followed the breaking Times Square bomber story. “We are shocked, why did he do this?” asked one man in the street in Peshawar.

Did it have anything to do, as Dawn reported, with the fact that “In the 1980s, when Shahzad was a child, Peshawar was a staging post for the mujahideen who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a place frequented by Osama bin Laden and swollen by a morass of two million Afghan refugees”?

Dawn interviewed Advocate Kifayatullah Khan, a former member of the provincial bar council. “He said the family believed that Shahzad had been framed. ‘The entire family is highly educated and enlightened. The villagers don’t believe that Shahzad could act in such a manner.’”

As any observer will tell you, an advanced education is often a component of the jihadist’s decision to use terror against America. Major Hasan and even 9/11 pilot, Mohammed Atta, were college graduates and Shahzad was a 2000 graduate of the University of Bridgeport (CT) with a degree in computer science who is a naturalized American.

Islam is in confrontation with every other religion worldwide and has been since the seventh century. It lacks any theological impetus toward tolerance. Its holy book, the Koran, heaps calumnies on Jews, Christians, and “those without a book”, Buddhists and Hindus. Any criticism is justification for threats and worse. It sanctions the killing of infidels and apostates,

It is the state religion and the highest legal authority of Middle Eastern nations that have proven resistant to any true modernization beyond the adoption of Western technology. All, with the exception of Turkey, are dictatorships or monarchies though Iraq, liberated by U.S. intervention, is moving slowly toward democracy.

Despite a long history of terrorist acts in New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai, and in the nations of Israel, Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, Russia, Iraq, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sudan, some people and elements of the nation’s media keep asking why!

For now and into the immediate future, it would be a good idea if the U.S. State Department stopped giving out visas like lollypops to Middle Easterners and others from predominantly Muslim nations.

It would be a good idea if the Department of Homeland Security would begin paying more attention to Arab visitors as well as native-born and naturalized Arabs in America instead of members of the Tea Party.

It would be a good idea of the U.S. military would take off the politically correct blinders and stop blathering about “diversity.”

It would be a good idea if we stopped listening to the eyewash of the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations and other apologists for Islamic terrorism.

At some point Americans have to stop asking why we are targeted.

We know why the car bomb was set to kill Americans in Times Square. We know why the Christmas Day bomber came close to killing those on the airliner. And we know that militant Muslims will try again.

For seven of the last nine years the Bush administration kept Americans safe from further attacks through vigilance and the preemptive use of power. Since the advent of the Obama administration in 2009, terrorist incidents have increased.

Worried about terrorism? We now have a president who, in his book, Audacity of Hope, wrote: “The stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their [Arab-Americans'] sense of security and belonging.... I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Most Dysfunctional Place on Earth

By Alan Caruba

We now live in a nation that will not name its enemy. Homeland Security wants to eliminate terms like Islamic jihad or terrorism from its vocabulary lest we offend some of the people trying to kill us.

The United States has global enemies of every description. Pretending they don’t exist is an invitation to attack. The most potent of our enemies are found in the Middle East, but for many Americans, trying to “make sense” of those who determine policies in the Middle East is impossible; the region is a giant hall of mirrors, a funhouse filled with guns and bombs.

Recently I had occasion to read a 2004 speech given by Haim Harari. It is quite prescient and rings true today. Harari is a theoretical physicist. From 1998 to 2001 he was the president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Suffice it to say he is an internationally respected Israeli scientist and educator.

While the audience may have expected him to discuss the situation in Israel, he began by noting that the millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel, nor did Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

Those who died from the genocide in Sudan where Christians are the target are unrelated to Israel. He reminded the audience that Syria’s former dictator, Assad, did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma because of Israel.

Israel was and is a convenient excuse for the bad intentions of those in the Middle East who, when not continually killing one another, have attacked Israel repeatedly over the course of its existence since 1947. Poised on its borders and funded by Iran are two proxy forces, Hezbollah and Hamas. Barring a nuclear attack on Israel, if they succeed the West is next.

The West has tried to ignore this for a very long time. Bombings in Spain and in England, riots in France, fear throughout the Netherlands are all a portent of worse to come if militant Islam has its way. Even Russia has not been exempt.

Of the Middle East, Harari said, “The root of the trouble is that this entire Muslim region is totally dysfunctional by any standard of the world.”

He noted that “These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands, plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.”

There is no such thing as human rights throughout the Middle East. The social status of women is negated by Islam to that of mere chattel.

Harari took note of the “millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout Muslims or are not very religious, but grew up in Muslim families…The problem is the vast silent majority of these Muslims are not a part of the terror and of the incitement, but they also do not stand up against it.”

Add to this the ceaseless lies and propaganda to which they are exposed from birth about the world and its events, and it becomes easier to understand why they have little real understanding of the world outside the Middle East.

Harari identified four elements of the Islamic war against the West. The first was the use of suicide murder as an instrument of terror. The second was the endless tide of lies told inside the Middle East and repeated by the Western media. The third element was the money that enables the Muslim militants.

Harari cited the most essential factor as “the total breaking of all laws.”

While the present administration seeks to encumber efforts to find these enemies within our borders, to provide legal assistance to those sworn to kill us, to threaten the interrogators who secured information about future attacks, and to close down the Guantanamo facilities where they are detained, our enemies do not feel bound by any laws, international or domestic.

“The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the role of law in a totally lawless environment.”

Why has the president thwarted delivery of “bunker buster” bombs to Israel? Why is it now U.S. policy to refuse visas for Israeli nuclear scientists seeking to come here to advance their knowledge in physics, chemistry, and nuclear engineering?

That is the quandary in which Israel now finds itself as it wrestles with what action to take against an Iran sworn to annihilate it. It has clearly been abandoned by the present administration and has few real friends among Western governments.

Beyond Israel remains the West itself. Harari warned that we must never surrender to terror. If we continue to find words to obfuscate the threat, we will lose the capacity to address it.

© Alan Caruba

Taking Terrorism Seriously

By Alan Caruba

I keep wondering when the world is going to begin to take Islamic terrorism seriously.

The world’s leaders and, in particular, the media could begin by calling it “Islamic” or “Muslim” terrorism. The media were, of course, thrilled to discover that America had a small band of homegrown nut cases, a Christian militia arrested before they did some serious harm. That’s the kind of thing that happens when the president and the government begins to be regarded as the anti-Christ.

I liked Vladimir Putin’s response to the Moscow bombings. He said of those responsible, “We will destroy them.”

The suicide bombers in Moscow will no doubt be identified—there was video of their entering the station—and an efficient national security apparatus will find out who they are, who their family is, who their friends are, and invite them in for some interrogation. They are not likely to be read Miranda rights, nor will their lawyers be present.

The reason for this is that they are potentially all terrorists.

America has been devoted to treating the terrorists we captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq as humanely as possible. Those incarcerated at Guantanamo were given copies of the Koran, their dietary laws were observed, ACLU and other lawyers were permitted access to advise them of their “rights.” Under the Geneva Convention, however, they are exempt from the rules of war and have no rights as combatants.

The Attorney General of the United States of America, a former resident of La-La Land, didn’t think it was the least bit odd to suggest trying Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the 9/11 mastermind, in a civil court in the heart of New York City.

Any number of the Gitmo detainees have been returned to their homelands and have since turned up on the battlefield again. This suggests we do not take terrorists seriously. These are, after all, people who cut the heads off of other people.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has an odd notion of who poses a threat to the nation. They identified “right-wing extremists” as their primary concern, particularly those who express concern about the central government’s expansion, opponents of abortion, opponents of illegal immigration, and “disgruntled” veterans returning from the battlefront. No mention of left-wing extremists.

The first rule of war is “know your enemy.” In the space of a decade, they have shown up in New York, London, Madrid, Bali, Mumbai, and in Moscow; all killing civilians indiscriminately on buses, on trains, in subways, in skyscrapers, and at resorts. Before that, they devoted themselves to kidnapping Americans in Lebanon and blowing up two of our embassies in Africa.

From the streets of Paris where Muslims rioted at will to Malmo, Sweden where attacks on local Jews are driving them to leave the country, the story is always the same. Wherever Muslims become a sufficient number of the population, they begin to make demands, harass the locals, and in the Netherlands to murder an outspoken opponent of Islam in broad daylight. The Dutch response has been to put on trial a man who is warning of these dangers.

The British cannot accommodate them enough, while the French have decided it is far better to be French than Muslim, passing several laws to protect their cultural traditions and society.

The impact on Americans has mostly been to turn a trip to the airport into a complete nightmare, but few other restrictions have interfered with their normal activities. Despite valiant efforts by our border patrol, our southern border goes largely unprotected. The insane murder rate from the drug wars in Mexico will arrive any day now in the U.S.A.

The small U.S. Muslim population has been free of harassment, but the organizations claiming to speak for them have all been identified as having links to the Muslim Brotherhood and related jihadist organizations.

Who takes the jihadists, the terrorists seriously? Saudi Arabia where they just rounded up a large ring of al Qaeda conspirators, Pakistan where they have finally begun to hammer the jihadis in Waziristan and other frontier provinces, and just about every nation with a Muslim majority.

The official and rather perfunctory response to the Fort Hood shootings and the “underwear bomber” on Christmas suggests that our government has forgotten the message that arrived on September 11, 2001 or has decided that “right-wing extremists” are the real problem.

That’s unfortunate because the terrorists have an agenda of their own and, unless the global effort is made to find them and kill them, the attacks will be as common as movie listings in the daily newspaper. Or should I say obituaries?

In Cairo, in 2009, President Obama said, “You might say the United States is a Muslim nation.” Some might call this seriously mistaken and some might say it is wishful thinking.

Islamic terrorism remains the great concern of most Americans who probably need to be more watchful of their Muslim neighbors and co-workers. That would have gone a long way toward saving the lives of the Fort Hood victims.

© Alan Caruba

American Al Qaeda is Captured

By Alan Caruba

The news on Sunday, March 7th, is that Adam Gadahn, an American who became a Muslim and then joined al Qaeda, was arrested in Pakistan by intelligence officers and the only question I have is how long will it take to ship his sorry ass back to the land of the free and the home of the brave?

This poor excuse for a human being grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, converted to Islam at a nearby mosque, and found his purpose in life with the enemies of his country and, for that matter, every country. Even the Pakistanis are not keen on al Qaeda and the Taliban.

If he stays in the Middle East, the chances of his being rescued by his al Qaeda buddies or that a sizeable enough bribe will leave his cell door unlocked escalate with each day. A bunch of these jihadists were broken loose from a prison in Yemen. It apparently was constructed from sponge cake and marshmallows.

If returned to the U.S., Gadahn, age 31, should be put before a military tribunal as an enemy combatant, tried, and then taken out to face a firing squad. This is the way the U.S. used to deal with traitors, but we have become so feminized that some will surely cry out that it is cruel and unusual punishment. There is, however, nothing unusual about it.

Briefly, Gadahn starred in several al Qaeda videos urging his fellow American Muslims to join the jihad against the Great Satan. After conversion, he moved to Pakistan in 1998 and went looking for an al Qaeda training camp. I’ve never been there, but you get the feeling that they have highway signs that say turn left for Rawalpindi and right for the Osama bin Laden Terrorist Camp.

By 2004 the Federal Bureau of Investigation put his face on a wanted poster and offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. In 2006, a U.S. court charged him with treason, making him the first American to face that charge in more than 50 years.

In his last video, he praised Major Hassan for having killed thirteen fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, calling him a role model for Muslims. To say the least, he is just one more twisted sister who has found the ultimate justification to kill civilians and military alike because Mohammed said it's okay.

What Americans need to draw from this is the reminder that mosques throughout our great, benevolent and tolerant nation are hothouses for jihadist recruitment and plots. Other favorite recruiting locations are prisons.

It doesn’t matter what the official spokesmen of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has to say. They are part of the “problem.”

To whom do all Muslims owe their loyalty? First, last, and always, it is to Islam.

Are there Muslim Americans who love America? Yes. Do some serve honorably in our military? Yes. Sorting them out from those who have bad intentions is the job of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. It would probably help if their next-door neighbors kept an eye on them as well.

The good news is that the U.S. and its Pakistani ally are beginning to make real progress in degrading al Qaeda through the capture of its various serial killers. The bad news is that these people and wannabe groups are not going to go away for a very long time to come.

Gadahn, the show-off, got most of the attention, but any number of Americans, mostly young men, either converts or born into Islam, have demonstrated that killing their countrymen was perfectly fine with them. They are not “crazy”, they are Muslims.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Department of Job Security

The Bigger They Are...

By Alan Caruba

The phrase, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” comes from the world of boxing, but it applies increasingly to government.

Americans have seen that the bigger the government grows, the less able it is to respond to both the major needs of Americans, like national security, and the immediate ones such as the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The thing I liked most about our response to 9/11 was the fairly swift response of President Bush and the U.S. military. It wasn’t long before bombs were falling in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora. The thing I liked least was the astonishing incompetence that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The lesson, I think, is that the military is ideally structured to identify and carry out a mission while its civilian counterparts are so mired in caution as to eviscerate any likelihood of success.

The consolidation of several agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security was possibly a good idea though it has its detractors. Americans are forced to believe that both they and our intelligence community are functioning well enough to protect us right up to the moment we learn they are not. It is thankless work to know you have deterred terrorist attacks only to have that wiped out with an incident like the one on Christmas.

It is made worse when, as in the normal course of things, the people at the top of the departments and agencies are too often the end result of politics, not competence. Janet Napolitano, the former Governor of Arizona, is a classic example of someone with virtually no security experience being tasked to oversee a department entirely devoted to security.

It is clear to everyone that Janet Napolitano needs to be replaced. She poses a danger to the nation’s security because she has probably demoralized her entire department and because her judgment is severely impaired.

Beyond Napolitano, there are the many “czars” that have been added to the White House payroll, the director of what has become a rogue agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and serious concerns about an Attorney General who dismisses action against union thugs at election centers while extending the rights asserted by the U.S. Constitution to admitted enemy combatants.

The November 2010 midterm elections will afford Americans the opportunity to rid itself of as many Democrats as possible in Congress and, presumably, Republicans that will replace them will have learned their lesson since 2006. There is one overriding requirement facing Congress and that is to put our fiscal house in order, pay down debts, and get out of the way of Main Street so they can begin to create jobs again.

The only jobs government can create are government jobs and there are clearly far too many of them.

I must confess I do not see the Obama administration doing any of this. What I expect is more idiotic “Cash for Clunkers” and “Cash for Caulkers” programs, more billions wasted on “clean energy” industries that cannot attract private investment, and in the fullness of time, more revelations about corruption in the body politic.

If the Republic should fail from the prolificacy we are witnessing, it will take all of us with it.

Obama: The Worst President Ever!

By Alan Caruba

Barack Obama’s deep bow to the emperor of Japan and earlier bow to the Saudi Arabian king is so deeply offensive to America’s history and traditions that it cannot and must not be explained away in any fashion.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution were particularly sensitive to the conditions under which a President could serve or any hint that a privileged, monarchal class might emerge.

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States. And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or foreign state.”

It follows that no U.S. President or office holder shall ever bow to a king, prince or foreign state. Obama has done this twice now in less than a year of taking the oath of office. Stated or unstated, the protocol of such matters precludes bowing.

This protocol is reflected in flag etiquette that prohibits it from being “dipped to any person or thing.”

For a man who allegedly taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, it is doubtful that Obama does not know this. It is doubtful that he cares. His first instinct with foreign leaders and foreign nations is to toady to their perceptions in the belief that America will gain their acceptance.

Any leader, however, knows that it is wiser to be feared than loved. It is the reason the U.S. maintains a powerful military. It is well to remember that our present Department of Defense used to be known as the Department of War.

That is why Ovbama’s decision to bring the 9/11 perpetrators to the United States and accord them all the rights of the Constitution in a trial for acts of war is a further abomination. This was not Eric Holder’s decision as Attorney General. This was Barack Obama’s decision, completely in line with his continued obeisance to Middle Eastern and Muslim sensibilities.

It is in line with the recent announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that the Obama administration will push for “immigration reform” which is a euphemism for amnesty to an estimated 14 million illegal aliens. The American public has made it abundantly clear they oppose this.

The majority of Americans oppose healthcare “reform”, a euphemism for a government takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy and an unholy intrusion into the privileged relationship between doctor and patient. It is socialism.

All Presidents have had to make decisions and take positions that are unpopular with some element of the public. No former President, however, ever increased the national debt more than all the previous presidents combined and did so within months of taking office.

This President simply does not care what Americans want. He does not “represent” Americans and cannot even manage to salute properly when the national anthem is played, though he did stage a photo opportunity to be seen saluting the returning war dead from Afghanistan.

This President may not even be “a natural born citizen” of the United States as required by the Constitution. He may have been born in Kenya. He may have been a citizen of Indonesia as a child and young man. We have no verifiable, authentic records of his early life, even as a college student.

None of his fellow students at Columbia University ever recall knowing him. His records at Occidental College and Harvard University remain sealed from view, as is his alleged Hawaiian certificate of birth there.

Based on his actions since January 20, 2009, he is in my opinion the worst President to ever hold that high office and he may have committed “a high crime or misdemeanor” when he took the oath of office. That is an impeachable offense.

In the meantime, by his actions, he gives every evidence of trying to bring this nation to a state of economic collapse, is deliberately undermining its Constitution, and by giving enemy combatants, terrorists, the stature of U.S. citizens, is encouraging our Islamo-fascist enemies to attack again.

He is an offense to every American and we are on a roller-coaster to a major Constitutional and economic crisis every day he remains in office.

Embracing Evil

By Alan Caruba

An interesting and disturbing pattern is emerging in the Obama White House. It evoked little comment in the mainstream press when he returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy and then gave short shrift to a recent visit by UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, albeit the UK’s support of this nation through thick and thin.

This was pre-dated by Obama’s calls for negotiations with Iran, an implacable enemy since it first took U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979. It includes more recent comments to the effect that we should be negotiating with members of the Taliban in Afghanistan. What’s next? An invitation to Osama bin Laden to share a glass of camel’s milk some weekend at his convenience?

The last century and now this one is testimony to the liberal embrace of every totalitarian regime and, in particular, those that engaged in mass murder, whether it be the Soviets, Mao’s Red China, the communist Vietnamese, or Fidel’s Cuba.

You could call it a fatal attraction and it is exposed in Jamie Glazov’s excellent new book, “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror” ($29.95, WND Books). I recommend it because, as you read it, you will begin to understand why so many “intellectuals” of the Left and many of the Hollywood community were and continue to be eager to embrace the enemies of freedom throughout the world.

The most famous of the latter is Jane Fonda who visited North Vietnam at a time America was engaged in war with that nation. More recently, Sean Penn disgraced himself as an apologist for the tyranny of the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein, as well as becoming the new-found friend of Venezuela’s Huge Chavez. Jimmy Carter has never met a dictator or Islamist terror organization he could not embrace.

In the tradition of Eric Hoffer’s breakthrough book, “The True Believer”, Glazov points to the way those that blame America for its capitalism, its economic success, and its celebration of consumerism, as the reason why some hate us. They always profess to be advocates for “peace”, “social justice” and “equality.”

They are people who profess to love “humanity” and who empathize with the alleged “victims of capitalism.” Glazov says “The megalomania and narcissism from which most believers suffer reinforce this dynamic.”

“To keep this toxic mindset in place, the believer must convince himself that he knows something that ordinary human beings do not.”

One of the most distinguishing factors of totalitarian regimes, aside from the fact that they murder or imprison countless people deemed “enemies of the state” is the way they make mush of words that describe reality.

We saw this practice emerge in the Obama administration when the new Director of Homeland Security could not bring herself to actually say the word “terror” when testifying before Congress. Memorandums are flying around DC agencies to avoid words like Islamist and terrorist, substituting “extremist” instead.

Glazov points out it should come as no surprise that “fascism and communism were centrally involved in the birth and development of Islamism. The Nazis, for instance, helped create Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a pioneering Islamic extremist group founded in 1928.”

Why, for example, would the Obama administration offer nearly a billion dollars to Hamas to “rebuild Gaza” when they spent the last four years rocketing Israel?

Conservatives know there is evil in the world and they have their antenna on alert for signs of it here at home and abroad. Too many celebrated and party line Liberals, however, are drawn to today’s ideological butchers like moths to a flame.

Read Glazov’s new book. Watch who Obama calls his friends, appoints to position of power, and how he steers America’s foreign policy to reflect the Left’s love affair with murderous regimes while dissing our real friends.

Do You Feel Safer Now?

By Alan Caruba

Now that we have Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security, do you feel safer?

I don’t. Aunt Janet could not manage to say words like “terrorism” or “9/11” in her recent testimony before a congressional committee. If you recall, the whole reason for the reorganization that created the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 was, well, homeland security.
It brought together 22 agencies and some 220,000 federal employees to ensure the nation was not attacked again and, if attacked, could coordinate recovery procedures.

This worked fine under the Republican administration of George W. Bush during which Tom Ridge and Michael Chernoff were in charge of the department, but Democrats and, in particular, those of an extreme Leftist point of view are always ready to embrace our enemies and blame America for any attacks or other threats they pose.

In a new book by Dr. Jamie Glazov, a historian who is managing editor of Frontpagemag.com, “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror”, the author points out that, “Throughout the twentieth century, the Western Left supported one totalitarian killing machine after another. Prominent intellectuals from George Bernard Shaw to Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming America, and even the victims for the crimes.”

Today, the Left’s spokespersons include former President Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Tom Hayden. And President Barack Hussein Obama who, in the first two months of his new administration has reached out to Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, and initiated measures to eliminate restrictions on Castro’s Cuba.

Obama was elected for his opposition to the war in Iraq that deposed one of the most vicious despots of our times, Saddam Hussein, and which is demonstrating in its aftermath that democracy has taken root in Iraq. It is no accident that Obama's first television interview was with Al-Arabia or that he is proposing to give nearly a billion dollars to Hamas to "rebuild Gaza."

Will this administration decide not to call Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda or the countless other Islamist groups “terrorists”? Maybe it will begin to call them “tourists”? Granted Obama wants to increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, but that is virtually a guarantor of failure and he knows it. British and French generals have recommended returning Afghanistan to the tribes that have always run it. Let them fight the Taliban like they fought the Russians.

During the Clinton years, attacks on American embassies were seen as issues for the Justice Department. That’s why Osama bin Laden was allowed to slip away even when Sudan offered his capture. That’s why, when one agency of the U.S. knew that the 9/11 perpetrators were here illegally, they were not permitted to inform another agency and thus likely undermine their plot. The firewalls that permitted this travesty were put in place by Leftist Clinton appointees.

Lawyers, unlike military or counterterrorism experts, have a very different view of protecting the nation. They believe that the “rights” of terrorists take precedence over the rights of Americans to be protected against them.

This might be why the Village Voice, a very liberal weekly, opposed Aunt Janet when word circulated that she might be appointed to head the Department of National Security. She was scorned for having taken any action to defend Arizona’s border with Mexico. To the Voice, her failure to welcome every illegal Mexican at the border was a sin.

Napolitano is the ultimate political animal, always ready to test which way the wind is blowing, always eager to run to the front of the parade, and now prepared to ensure that the indifferent and dangerous policies of the Obama administration will be reflected in the work of her mega-agency.

As we have seen with the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, probably no U.S. government agency can effectively deal with an act of God, but the National Security Agency should surely be expected to motivate its personnel to remain vigilant against potential threats. They are some very good people who get up each day to protect us. They know who the enemy is, whether it is an al Qaeda operative attempting to sneak into the nation or a Mexican drug smuggler. We owe them our thanks and our respect.

The problem for the rest of us is that Aunt Janet cannot bring herself to use the word “terrorist” or even refer to “9/11”. This is perfectly understandable when the President cannot bring himself to refer to “the war on terrorism.”