Thursday, January 18, 2007

Radical Islam's War Against the West


As we enter the sixth year without a terrorist attack on United States soil, the pain and devastation of 9/11 remains unforgettable.  But despite our memory of that day, there is danger that our success in thwarting additional attacks may eventually cause us to let our guard down.  That’s just what the enemy is counting on.

Who is the enemy?  We know them by various names; al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Ansar al-Islam, Hezbollah, Hamas and many others.  Occasionally, we see pictures of these groups in the press or media, mixed in with the other news of the day. But to really know and understand them is to realize that the threat to our country remains great.

In a documentary titled, “Obsession-Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” the threat to the United States and the rest of western civilization is depicted in a jarring, disturbing reality.  And although there is a cost for the one hour documentary, the trailer on the web site (www.obsessionthemovie.com) is enough to tell a very chilling story.

            

The documentary shows a culture of terror that is being taught to a generation of Muslim youth.  At the heart of this culture is the proposition that America is the great Satan and must be destroyed.  It is the basis for the indoctrination of ten-year old Muslim youth to a life dedicated to terror.  And it is being taught to these children as matter-of-factly as our children learn the alphabet.


If you watch the documentary, you must ask yourself where these children will be in five, ten or fifteen years from now.  What is being done to protect our country now and in the future? It is naïve to believe that the threat from radical fundamentalists is going away anytime soon.  And that makes it imperative that the protections against terror implemented since 9/11 remain in the forefront of our political debates.   

            

But with the passage of time, the lack of a 9/11 repeat, a new Congress and a new presidential debate heating up, I am afraid that our attention is easily turning to other matters.  No one should be lulled into thinking that the terrorists have given up on their intention to strike America again.  We learned from 9/11 that the fanatical jihadists are not disillusioned by failure and can take years to plan what Usama bin Laden would call a “spectacular event”. In fact, the 9/11 Commission Report points out that plans to attack the World Trade Center a second time began as early as 1995.  
            
And for every successful strike, such as the bombings in London, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Madrid, or for every failed plot, such as the plans to flood lower Manhattan by bombing the Holland tunnel, planning begins anew.  We all remember the bombing of the USS Cole in October, 2000, but few remember that this bombing was preceded by a failed attempt ten months earlier against the destroyer, USS The Sullivans in the same Yemen port where the Cole docked later that year.  The January attempt failed when the terrorist’s bomb-laden craft sunk before reaching its target.   But after the Cole attack, the ranks of al Qaeda swelled as fanatical Muslims flocked to bin Laden and his cause and today nearly seven years later, those like him are still out there, still recruiting, and still plotting. So, whether you watch the Obsession documentary, follow daily news reports or study our history, you must realize that the threat against the west by radical Islamic fundamentalists is today more aggressive as ever. And unlike World War I or II, Korea or Viet Nam… this is an unconventional enemy that you can’t see or touch, that wants to die for their cause and prays everyday that they get to do so. It is an enemy with a hatred for America and the west that we have yet to understand. Most importantly, let us not forget that they are not only at war with America, but also with western culture and civilization. They are also at war with their own… other Muslims with which they differ in belief.


That is the enemy… that is the threat. As they continue to plan and plot against us, I have to wonder… do we have the courage, the patience or the resolve to fight the fight that must be fought in the years to come.

Beware the Bully, Iran


You don’t stop a schoolyard bully by giving him your lunch money.  And you don’t stop a bully on the world stage by inviting him to that stage.  But with the conflict in Iraq still raging, it seems that pressure is building to reach out to terrorist sponsoring Iran to—let me understand this—stop the terrorism in Iraq? 


Is President Ahmandinejad of Iran, who recently said he could let loose 40,000 suicide bombers in the region, the person who can stop the car bombings and suicide squads in Iraq?   

I don’t think so.
            
For sure the situation in Iraq cannot continue on its current path.  But Iraq’s future must depend on Iraq, not Iran.  Last year, 12 million Iraqi citizens braved threats of violence to vote in free elections.  As President Bush said at the time You’ve stood firm in the face of horrendous acts of terror and sectarian violence – and we will not abandon you in your struggle to build a free nation.” 
            
That struggle for a free nation continues.  And a free nation is not what the leaders of Iran envision, for it would undoubtedly weaken their hold on power within their own country and the region as a whole.  For those reasons, it is incomprehensible that Iran would share a goal of stopping the violence in Iraq.  More likely, they have the power to stop the violence temporarily as a means of showing the world their “good intentions,” while in reality, they would consolidate control over the terrorists groups for their own purposes.

Iran is seeking to become a nuclear power.  President Ahmandinejad has said that the holocaust was a myth and that Israel should be “wiped off the face of the map.” It is pretty clear who we are dealing with here, is it not? Even Adolf Hitler was not so forthright about his intentions.  He played the “diplomatic” game to hide those intentions, and unfortunately, he played it well.

As Europe tensed prior to the outbreak of war, all diplomatic efforts were employed to avoid conflict.  Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, in a policy called appeasement, said “We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.”

His approach was weak and the policy of appeasement was wrong… dead wrong; and more than 60 million people perished as a result.

But one does not need to go back to World War II for examples of failed collaboration through personal contact with dictators.  In 1994 after then Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-il, the Clinton administration signed the so-called Agreed Framework whereby North Korea agreed to stop its program to build nuclear weapons. 
            
Five years later when a Congressional study determined that the dictator was violating the agreement, Secretary Albright insisted that the agreement was working and simply dismissed the report.  Today, we all know better and even the Secretary has admitted that the North Koreans were indeed cheating.  But her admission was not a result of diplomatic investigation or tough inspections; it was a self-evident admission only because the facts compelled it.  So 1994 was just a diplomatic photo-op that solved nothing.  
            
If this sounds familiar, it should.  It is exactly what is happening in our country today with respect to solving the problems in Iraq; the calls for “diplomacy” to deal with killers and tyrants.  It didn’t work in North Korea, or countless other hot spots around the world.  How many people have died in Darfur as diplomats and politicians continue to debate a course of action? 
            
And more recently, the United Nations brokered a ceasefire to end the Israeli–Lebanon conflict.  The resolution, among other things, called for the disarming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Does anybody believe that Hezbollah is disarming?  And what provision is there to ensure that this happens. None! More empty words, similar to previous UN resolutions calling on Lebanon to take control of its southern territory to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against Israel.   Instead, where once the PLO controlled Southern Lebanon, now Hezbollah— funded by Iran—controls it, and the attacks continue. 

And where are Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah inside Israel that sparked this recent conflict?  They are still captives of Hezbollah with no agreement for their safe return in sight. 
            
So the record of accord with the bullies of the world does not inspire an expectation that Iran will change course and assist Iraq to prosper as a freely elected democracy. That does not mean that we should not, to borrow Chamberlain’s words, establish “personal contact with the dictators.” 

Only that we should not be fooled into thinking that our goals for Iraq, the Middle East and the right to live in a terror free world, are the same as theirs.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

We Just Don't Get It!

Two vehicles loaded with fuel, propane tanks and nails, much like the vehicle-born IEDs in Iraq today, are found in London’s Piccadilly Circus, our equivalent to Times Square. Then two Islamic radicals slam a car loaded with the same into the Glasgow Airport in Scotland, while the US Department of Homeland Security is reporting that the Al-Qaeda chatter indicates their desire to commit an act of terror against the west that is a “spectacular event”, much like the September 11th attacks. The investigation in the UK has moved quickly and has resulted so far in eight arrests, most of who appear to be Muslim medical doctors.

In the last several days, the press and media, but more so the general public appears to be shocked by the recent events and the “spectacular” chatter. Many political leaders have expressed shock that most of the participants arrested in the UK terror plot were educated doctors.

What I don’t understand and what concerns me is, why the shock and disbelief?

The fact that the alleged participants in the UK plot are educated men shouldn’t surprise anyone at all. Don’t forget…Osama bin Laden was highly educated with an engineering degree, as is Ayman al Zawahiri his chief deputy in Al-Qaeda who studied behavior, psychology, and pharmacology at Cairo University graduating in 1974 and earning a Masters degree in surgery in 1978. Mohamed Atta and the other 18 men that banded together for the attacks on 9/11 were all studious, educated and well traveled, much like the suspects recently arrested and being detained by the British authorities.

Six years after 9/11, and after many attacks against the west and the many attempts that have been prevented since that day, we still have people in this country, including many political leaders, who refuse to acknowledge the continuing threat that we face from radical Islamists.  Where have these people been?

Perhaps they missed Osama bin Laden’s threats prior to 9/11 or even his statements in its immediate aftermath. But surely they’ve heard at least one of Zawahiri’s twenty or so messages over the past five years, or Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s in Iraq before he was killed by the coalition, or Adam Yehiye Gadahn who recently threatened an attack that would make us forget all about 9/11.

So, is it that we are not listening or is it that we just don’t get it? My fear is the latter… and here’s why. Spectacular these days, do not mean jumbo jets flying into skyscrapers or oil refineries or the White House. It no longer has to be a nuclear device or dirty bomb. The FBI, the U. S. Department of Justice and Homeland Security have foiled some major events in the past five years and are getting better everyday. But what if one of these groups took another approach as they attempted to do in the UK? Coordinated attacks designed to create carnage and mayhem, but done so in four or five different cities around the country, like New York, Los Angles, Orlando, Chicago and maybe Miami. In a tourist site or God forbid a school like they’ve done in Beslan? Maybe they kill fifty to three hundred innocents’… men, women and children. Would that be spectacular? More than you can imagine. The economic impact on tourism, the airline industry, the stock market and every other financial indicator in this country would mirror, if not surpass, the impact of the attacks of September 11.

We as a people need to wake up and realize that we are truly at war with an enemy that is on the attack. It’s not a poverty stricken enemy as some would have you believe and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they could be living amongst us already as we’ve just witnessed at Fort Dix, New Jersey and in the United Kingdom.

Muslims are not our enemy… radical Islamic fundamentalists are. If we don’t understand it, then learn more about it. The western world needs to help promote the real Muslim clerics that teach true Islam and hold those clerics accountable that promote jihad and the killing of innocent people, Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.

We are at war with an enemy that wants us dead because our religious, economic or moral beliefs differ from theirs and they want to martyr or kill themselves in this battle to prove their point. They have no rules, laws, guidelines or Geneva Convention, making everything including children fair game. If our will to fight this enemy is the problem, then our political leaders need to stop fighting each other long enough to fix it. If they do not and they’re more concerned about their political positions than they are fighting this war, then show them the door.

Beirut, 9/11, the USS Cole, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Amman, Madrid, London, Glasgow, Ft. Dix, JFK and even Saudi Arabia. There is a war against us. When exactly are we going to get it?